“All men by nature desire to know,” reads the first line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. A bit of clarification is in order. Not all of the many students I’ve taught wanted to know about this bold claim. For some (like Bubba in the back row) it’s TMI, too much information. And given our “bandwidths” we humans can’t know everything. We have our limits.

Aristotle would agree with these clarifications. Doubtless he had his good days tutoring Alexander the Great, a student who was keen to know and to travel. But others weren’t pleased. After Alexander died, Aristotle went into exile “lest Athens sin twice against philosophy.” Who could forget the fate of Socrates?

To be sure, Aristotle is quick to explain his claim that we by our very nature desire to know. He points to “the delight we take in our senses.” No one questions their usefulness, but beyond their utility, “they are loved for themselves.” He gives pride of place to sight: “For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else.” So it is that at the start of the day we open our eyes. So it is that the injunction “Open your eyes!” has a special urgency.

In his Art of Rhetoric (Bk. 3, chapters 10 and 11) Aristotle, in a way that might surprise us, connects our desire to know with the appeal of an apt metaphor. He writes that “learning something easily is pleasant by nature for everyone,” and thus “words that prompt us to learn something are most pleasant.” As an example, he gives us Homer’s metaphor: old age is a dried stalk. It’s a striking way to learn how withered we become. (Nonetheless, gentle reader, I prefer Robert Browning’s invitation in his Rabbi Ben Ezra: “Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be,” / The last of life, for which the first was made.)

But let’s return to the pivotal role of sight. Aristotle tells us that metaphors, as well as other figures of speech, can be especially successful “by making things appear before the eyes of the audience.” And why is this? It is because people “should see things actually being done.” As an example, he again cites Homer: “In the earth the spears stood, longing for their fill of flesh.” Such a metaphor opens our eyes very wide.

At this point, there is a key distinction in Aristotle’s account of knowledge that needs underscoring. It’s the distinction between discursive and intuitive knowledge, in his terms between episteme and nous. In discursive reasoning we argue from premises to conclusions, and doing so characterizes scientific and demonstrative reasoning. But all such reasoning must ultimately begin from first principles. Just here, starting at the beginning, intuition (nous) comes into play. Either we directly perceive the objects of our senses or we are trapped within our own minds. In a like way, the object of intellectual intuition is “before our eyes.” We do not reason to first principles, rather we reason from them. Without first principles we are left with nowhere to begin and have nowhere to go.

Aristotle’s distinctions, it turns out, find a home in the Catholic understanding of faith and knowledge. Note, first, that faith is not blind. Rather, we see with the eyes of faith. It is faith, as well, that best leads us to seek understanding. Consider St. Thomas’s arguments to show the reasonableness of belief in God’s existence. Thomists (and others) continue to deepen and defend them. And yet there will come a time when such arguments, as well as the faith that inspires them, will fall away. At every funeral I attend, and there are more and more of them, I think of what a priest said at the too early death of a close and mutual friend of ours: “Now he knows!”

While even the souls of the lost know that God exists, those in the presence of God enjoy the Beatific Vision. Their Creator is now, as it were, “before their eyes.” And all of us who are still pilgrims would do well to share Rabbi Ben Ezra’s confidence.

Our times are in His hand
Who saith, ‘A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be
afraid!’

Does this sound familiar? St. John Paul II deepened such confidence with his resounding and insistent message of evangelization, “Do not be afraid. Open, I say open wide the doors for Christ.”