The Upanishads, The Orient And The Mideast

Aristotle began his Metaphysics with the statement “all men by nature desire to know.” The result of this natural need of man is his effort to reduce chaos to order, multiplicity to unity; in a word to see the world as an intelligible whole and so he forms his philosophy. John Henry Newman said, “Not to know the relative disposition of things is the state of slaves or children, but to have mapped the universe is the boast or at least the ambition of Philosophy.” Later, Robert M. Hutchins wrote, “Man is a rational animal, essentially distinct from the brutes by his intellect and will; therefore his education should consist in the cultivation of his intellectual and moral virtues.”

Now, the Orient and the Mideast have both produced many great thinkers and philosophers. The study of the great writings from China, Japan and India is a fascinating enterprise full of wisdom. Suffice it to say, reading the Upanishads, the Vedas and the Puranas, particularly, the Bhagavad Gita ---a book

Historically this term has implied two distinct elements: (1) A theoretical or speculative explanation of reality, the Truth about the cosmos which is an object of the intellect; and (2) A practical program of human conduct based on the speculative Truth, which is called Virtue, which is the object of the Will. “Sapientis est ordinare,” (to know is to order) was an axiom of Aristotle. St Thomas Aquinas in his commentary on the Ethics of Aristotle explains it as follows: The Philosopher (Aristotle) says in the beginning of the Metaphysics, ‘sapientis est ordinare,’which means that to know and establish the order of things is the proper function of the wise man.” This is true because wisdom is the highest perfection of human reason whose special purpose is to know the appropriate order of things. The sensory cognitive processes can know things as individuals, but to know the relation of one thing to another is proper only to intellect and