Saturday, July 02, 2011
Music on My Mind
I do love Pearl Bailey. They just don't make entertainers like that any more. A little known fact: she had a bachelor's degree in theology from Georgetown University. She got the degree at the age of 67.
Comic Strips
In general comic strips try to have two attributes: funny and makes-you-think -- sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both. Comic strips are, after all, witticisms in pictures. And setting aside soap and adventure comics, which by their nature have only long story arcs over a number of strips, it has to be done, of course, in a few panels. This is a pretty difficult thing to do consistently, and yet amazingly there are strips that consistently do it -- the two grand masters, of course, being Watterson and Schulz. You can pick almost any Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts strip and it's one of the two, usually both. I was browsing some classic Peanuts recently and was struck by how funny they were -- not usually rolling-on-the-floor-laughing funny, but somehow funny. There was one (this one, in fact) which was very simple -- it consisted almost entirely of Snoopy being hit repeatedly by a water sprinkler -- but nonetheless just tickled me pink. It was funny precisely because it's the type of funny thing you might see a dog do in real life, and the strip just summed up that whole type of experience. And there are just endless numbers of things one could say about this Calvin and Hobbes.
There really should be some philosophical work done on comic strips in the way that people have done philosophical work on novels or horror movies -- not, I mean, philosophy inspired by them, but the philosophy of them, looking in more detail at what makes comic strips funny and thought-provoking. But I don't think I've ever come across it.
There really should be some philosophical work done on comic strips in the way that people have done philosophical work on novels or horror movies -- not, I mean, philosophy inspired by them, but the philosophy of them, looking in more detail at what makes comic strips funny and thought-provoking. But I don't think I've ever come across it.
Friday, July 01, 2011
Omnibenevolence
John Wilkins had a post up with this comic at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal on theodicy and the "omniscience,omnipotence,omnibenevolence" approach to it. It does do a good job, albeit I think unintentionally, of showing that this way of stating the problem of evil owes more to rhetorical parallelism than real substance.
As I've mentioned before the 'omnibenevolence' leg of the stool has no real existence prior to the nineteenth century; nobody attributes the term "omnibenevolence" to God prior to that. Indeed, even in the nineteenth century, the term 'omnibenevolence' is usually used in ways that are too weak to formulate any sort of problem of evil, since the term originally seems to have meant merely, 'wishing everyone well' with all the vagueness and flexibility that can have, and which is, in any case, hardly a distinctively divine attribute. The first Christian I've found using it in definitely something like the sense in which it is usually used is Robert Browning, who has Guido argue, in The Ring and the Book:
(I have found a few prior to Browning, like William Penn; but in each case the force of the term is either ambiguous or obscure.) But, of course, it's still functioning in a different way: Guido's point is that "there's a wink somewhere", the claim being that Christianity is just paganism on the sly -- a higher moral tone, yes, but it's all a mask to allow sin loopholes. That is, we don't have the problem of evil here; we just have an argument (not Browning's own) that Christian doctrine is a breeding ground for hypocrisy. It's really only in the twentieth century that one finds any Christians using the term in a positive context and in a way that suggests its use in the argument from evil; and these are clearly backformations. The real source of all this seems to be Hugh MacColl shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, who, while not really read today, seems to be the only source who was widely read enough and who actually uses the formulation for the argument from evil. (MacColl also is the first to respond to the problem by arguing that evil is necessary, in particular for the progress of the universe; which, of course, was the whole point of his putting the argument this way, since progress as an 'omnibenevolent' objective would have been a relatively easy sell, even if the necessity of evil for it wasn't.) Even the freethinkers don't use the term for the argument from evil much earlier than the 1890's.
In any case, even if this isn't so, as it's not a traditional term, and as the root word, 'benevolence', does not generally convey any particular necessity or specific duty, the question does arise as to why one would think that anyone is committed to holding that God is omnibenevolent, at least in any sense that would cause a problem with regard to theodicy. Indeed, it's not even clear what the term means; it could mean 'wanting good for people in everything' or 'wanting what is best for each and every person' or 'wanting what is best overall for everyone' or 'always acting with a view to another's good', or any number of other things. In order to make the argument from evil work it has to be strong enough to establish a duty or obligation; but 'benevolence', as I've said, is a weak word as it is used colloquially, so it's not helpful for extrapolating any meaning. Why then does it persist? Because of the rhetorical parallelism: it makes it sound more distinctively divine, and gives the illusion that it is structurally parallel either to omniscience or to omnipotence -- an illusion because it is never explicated in a way that would actually make it so. The argument from evil is really the claim that, given the existence of any evil, every good is in some key way useless or ineffective; the parallelism conveniently hides the fact that the crucial issue in the argument is not one's account of God but one's account of good. It wraps it all up in what looks like a tidy and memorable package. Never mind that it isn't actually tidy when you start asking critical questions; packages that are memorable have a power to endure, as cognitive science shows us, and memorizing formulaic labels is easier than remembering entire theories of the good or of good will, which is what actually has to be doing the work.
In any case, as I've also said before, the intelligent person, faced with a relative neologism like 'omnibenevolence', will ask for the underlying account of the term, and only move on the basis of the account, not the similarity of the word to other words.
As I've mentioned before the 'omnibenevolence' leg of the stool has no real existence prior to the nineteenth century; nobody attributes the term "omnibenevolence" to God prior to that. Indeed, even in the nineteenth century, the term 'omnibenevolence' is usually used in ways that are too weak to formulate any sort of problem of evil, since the term originally seems to have meant merely, 'wishing everyone well' with all the vagueness and flexibility that can have, and which is, in any case, hardly a distinctively divine attribute. The first Christian I've found using it in definitely something like the sense in which it is usually used is Robert Browning, who has Guido argue, in The Ring and the Book:
Let the law stand: the letter kills, what then?
The spirit saves as unmistakably.
Omniscience sees, Omnipotence could stop,
Omnibenevolence pardons, — it must be,
Frown law its fiercest, there’s a wink somewhere.
(I have found a few prior to Browning, like William Penn; but in each case the force of the term is either ambiguous or obscure.) But, of course, it's still functioning in a different way: Guido's point is that "there's a wink somewhere", the claim being that Christianity is just paganism on the sly -- a higher moral tone, yes, but it's all a mask to allow sin loopholes. That is, we don't have the problem of evil here; we just have an argument (not Browning's own) that Christian doctrine is a breeding ground for hypocrisy. It's really only in the twentieth century that one finds any Christians using the term in a positive context and in a way that suggests its use in the argument from evil; and these are clearly backformations. The real source of all this seems to be Hugh MacColl shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, who, while not really read today, seems to be the only source who was widely read enough and who actually uses the formulation for the argument from evil. (MacColl also is the first to respond to the problem by arguing that evil is necessary, in particular for the progress of the universe; which, of course, was the whole point of his putting the argument this way, since progress as an 'omnibenevolent' objective would have been a relatively easy sell, even if the necessity of evil for it wasn't.) Even the freethinkers don't use the term for the argument from evil much earlier than the 1890's.
In any case, even if this isn't so, as it's not a traditional term, and as the root word, 'benevolence', does not generally convey any particular necessity or specific duty, the question does arise as to why one would think that anyone is committed to holding that God is omnibenevolent, at least in any sense that would cause a problem with regard to theodicy. Indeed, it's not even clear what the term means; it could mean 'wanting good for people in everything' or 'wanting what is best for each and every person' or 'wanting what is best overall for everyone' or 'always acting with a view to another's good', or any number of other things. In order to make the argument from evil work it has to be strong enough to establish a duty or obligation; but 'benevolence', as I've said, is a weak word as it is used colloquially, so it's not helpful for extrapolating any meaning. Why then does it persist? Because of the rhetorical parallelism: it makes it sound more distinctively divine, and gives the illusion that it is structurally parallel either to omniscience or to omnipotence -- an illusion because it is never explicated in a way that would actually make it so. The argument from evil is really the claim that, given the existence of any evil, every good is in some key way useless or ineffective; the parallelism conveniently hides the fact that the crucial issue in the argument is not one's account of God but one's account of good. It wraps it all up in what looks like a tidy and memorable package. Never mind that it isn't actually tidy when you start asking critical questions; packages that are memorable have a power to endure, as cognitive science shows us, and memorizing formulaic labels is easier than remembering entire theories of the good or of good will, which is what actually has to be doing the work.
In any case, as I've also said before, the intelligent person, faced with a relative neologism like 'omnibenevolence', will ask for the underlying account of the term, and only move on the basis of the account, not the similarity of the word to other words.
Two Poem Drafts
Unhand!
You catch my heart; yes, you presume
to catch my heart and my life doom
to love of you. Shall such demand
be satisfied? My heart unhand!
Be satisfied to know my smile,
in passing tarry but a while,
for never shall I know your brand.
Release me now, my heart unhand!
Faithless Summer
Fly from me, faithless summer, fly
and give me no more alibis,
but flee my wrath, and take your lie
to some sad soul more like to cry.
You shall not turn me, though you try;
I care not for your whats and whys;
your soft, persuasive arts go ply
on some sad soul more like to cry!
You said you'd love me till you died,
but sought to give me cuckold's sigh;
fly from me, O summer, fly,
to some sad soul more like to cry!
You catch my heart; yes, you presume
to catch my heart and my life doom
to love of you. Shall such demand
be satisfied? My heart unhand!
Be satisfied to know my smile,
in passing tarry but a while,
for never shall I know your brand.
Release me now, my heart unhand!
Faithless Summer
Fly from me, faithless summer, fly
and give me no more alibis,
but flee my wrath, and take your lie
to some sad soul more like to cry.
You shall not turn me, though you try;
I care not for your whats and whys;
your soft, persuasive arts go ply
on some sad soul more like to cry!
You said you'd love me till you died,
but sought to give me cuckold's sigh;
fly from me, O summer, fly,
to some sad soul more like to cry!
Rune of Roses
Sapientia Lunae
by Ernest Dowson
The wisdom of the world said unto me;
“Go forth and run, the race is to the brave;
Perchance some honour tarrieth for thee!”
“As tarrieth,” I said, “for sure, the grave.”
For I had pondered on a rune of roses,
Which to her votaries the moon discloses.
The wisdom of the world said: “There are bays:
Go forth and run, for victory is good,
After the stress of the laborious days.”
“Yet,” said I, “shall I be the worms’ sweet food,”
As I went musing on a rune of roses,
Which in her hour, the pale, soft moon discloses.
Then said my voices: “Wherefore strive or run,
On dusty highways ever, a vain race?
The long night cometh, starless, void of sun,
What light shall serve thee like her golden face?”
For I had pondered on a rune of roses,
And knew some secrets which the moon discloses.
“Yea,” said I, “for her eyes are pure and sweet
As lilies, and the fragrance of her hair
Is many laurels; and it is not meet
To run for shadows when the prize is here”;
And I went reading in that rune of roses
Which to her votaries the moon discloses.
Dashed Off
As always, notes to be taken with a grain of salt.
We spend our lives learning how to understand and deserve the goodness of being alive.
putting temptation ten thousand miles away from your heart
We expel dangerous fancies and recollections by replacing them with things that are good and noble.
the first step of conversion: Lord, what will you have me do? (Acts 9:6)
the second step: The Lord is my strength (Ps 117:14)
The life of the beginner consists in finding the good things that purify.
We cannot love God on our own in a manner suitable to Him; and thus we must love God with God's own love.
"Let knowledge be used to erect the structure of charity." Augustine Ep. 55
Jesum quaerens in libris
purgative
(1) cultivation of discipline
(2) acquisition of prayer
illuminative
(1) preparation for infused virtues
(2) habituation to (consolidation of) prayer
unitive
(1) preparation for spiritual gifts
(2) simplification of prayer
study as a form of mortification
Plato's Cave & the Witch of the Green Kirtle
Proslogion II: not just 'quod sit Deus' but 'quod vere sit Deus'
Anselm tells us (Inc Verb vi) that he wrote the Mologion and the Proslogion in order to reply against those who, unwilling to believe what they do not understand, deride believers; and also to aid the religious study of those who humbly seek to understand what they firmly believe. And the remarkable thing is that, even if not in the way he hoped, his argumetns have fulfilled these purposes to an extraordinary extent. For it has touched off in believers many new ideas; and, often and repeatedly, those who have argued against Anselm have been shown to argue not from clear understanding but from the belief that the argument must be wrong somewhere. Over and over again Anselm has shown, in case after case, that we may believe in order to understand, and do nto always need to understand in order to believe.
As charity gives supernatural form to virtue, so also it gives supernatural form to honor.
The Spirit works through the words of a confessor who takes his task seriously and does what he ought.
We mortify the intellect directly by study and reflection (which dissipate ignorance) and indirectly by patience (which opposes diseased curiosity) and humility (which opposes pride).
three aspects of purity: intention, moderation, and mortification
Acquired virtues presuppose a power and by presupposed repetition come to give a tendency and facility to an operation; infused virtues give us a power and a tendency, but only give facility as a result of repretition that presupposes the virtue.
The radication of infused virtue has as an incidental result the acquisition of acquired virtues.
The Spirit makes the Son clear to us.
adapting Hume on causation as a theory of inquiry into certain kinds of signs
poetic, rhetorical, and dialectical forms of evidence
Ming is that which can proceed from an interior word, and zheng ming is the purification of these expressions so that they are appropriate.
cheng as truthfulness
the proper mean between Yang Zhu and Mo Di
correspondence to, supplementation of, and transcendence of Confucianism (Zhang)
Paul was given the privilege of writing more for the canon precisely because he had been an enemy (cf. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat Lect 10.18).
divine energies : divine essence :: good (or true) : being
Music concerns itself with non-verbal analogies.
Nothing can be an organ unless it can be instrumental to an end; it is precisely this that allows us to identify something as one organ.
We should think not so much in terms of laws of nature as in terms of laws of natures.
One of the valuable features of Lent is that it provides you an opportunity for seeing how limited your will really is.
"In teaching the instructor often learns more than his pupils." Clement of Alexandria Strom.
Evolutionary theory concerns the generation and corruption of pluralities or populations over iterations of the generation and corruption of individuals. Obviously what is essential to this is reproduction and death, but the generation and corruption of populations cannot be reduce to reproduction and death because there are secondary changes that affect the generation and corruption of populations but do not reduce to reproduction and death: migration and isolation, for instance.
Harvey's omne vivum ex vivo rule
Psalm 4 as a prayer concerned with natural law (both St. Albert and Aquinas make this connection).
The market to which Smith attempted to appeal was a market ordered to public interest, and to the interest of sellers only in a secondary way, insofar as the latter could contribute to the former. This is why Smith is both pro-market and highly cynical and critical when it comes to business.
Ps. 38 as a sabbath psalm (Augustine)
Natural philosophy & moral philosophy are alike in the extent to which they consider contingent particulars.
Wholes and parts are explicable in terms of divisions and indivisions.
Time is not number abstracted from the numbered things but number in the numbered things.
light as it were the primum mobile
Humean psychology as the imagination in reminiscence
Natural philosophy gives fullness, and moral philosophy completeness, to the contemplation at the heart of philosophy.
The Johannine Gospel gives the beginning, the Johannine epistles the middle, and the Apocalypse the end.
Christ clings to the Church, His helpmeet, having descended from His Father to cling to her, and thus she becomes the mother of the living.
to observe & ponder in her heart is an essential capacity of motherhood
We understand mysteries by examination of analogies and of coherences.
True politics is simply ethics given cooperative social life and its tradeoffs.
Good catechetical instruction is seen in that it refutes not only the heresies of the day but also, as was said of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, later heresies "by a kind of foreknowledge."
Scientific inquiry is the cooperation of prudence and art to the end of understanding natural beings in their changes.
Skepticism requires holding that the relation between cognition and truth may be accidental.
Sacraments are more properly things we receive than things we do; it is especially important to remember this with reconciliation, matrimony, and ordination, for we are tempted to treat these things as though we did them rathern than as is the case, that we are showered with them.
eremitic life : monastic life :: celibate life : married life
I Sam 21:5 and the priesthood
The Old Testament (& Mt & Lk) shows that genealogy is extraordinarily important to covenant & thus to theology.
The laity are only sane when they largely follow such common sense as is rooted in the saints and hallowed by custom, making their aim not to bend the rest of the Church to their will but simply to be the Church, doing whatever they do. But flesh, the world, and the Devil constantly push to make it otherwise.
Every inference which is truth-preserving with negated premise (or conjunction of premises) & negated conclusion is falsity-preserving.
Scientists generally go wrong in philosophical matters when they fail to adequate means to ends properly. This typically occurs in two ways: either through excessive confidence in the means or, more commonly, through failure to distinguish ends that are in fact different.
First Commandment: to revere God in our hearts
Second Commandment: to revere God in our words
Third Commandment: to revere God in our actions
We cannot keep the Sabbath holy by our Sabbath life alone.
praying that the saints' prayers for others may be effective
In the life of the Church, ritual and music provide the pattern for authority.
Who does not understand providence has no way of becoming a good bishop.
Ture authority is an activity of virtue.
philosophy as euporia with aporia
There are philosophical activities that are to what we usually call philosophical activities as flower arranging is to gardening; and, however limited and derivative flower arranging may be, a world without flower arranging is a world less congenial for gardening.
Liberty cannot be protected without protecting the home, for home is for most people the primary, or even the only, space for freedom.
How often people trade adamantine arguments for weak & watery feelings! But in truth the two must be conjoined, bright sentiment growing on rigorous reasoning like roses on trellises, or great vines on strong stone cliffs.
That poetry is more philosophical than history does not imply that history is in no way philosophical.
mythology in the service of ideas
experimenting with lightness & multiplicity in the search for truth (Novalis)
Who loves wisdom finds it everywhere.
God called His people to remember the Sabbath because of creation and to observe it because of salvation.
Exodus tells us not to bear false witness, Deuteronomy not to bear vain/empty/worthless witness.
Why was the Virgin immaculately conceived? That she might consent on behalf of the whole human race, and not merely on her own behalf.
Ritual derives from imitation of regularity and order in things
(1) in order to teach that regularity;
(2) in order to celebrate that regularity;
(3) in order to conform ourselves to that regularity;
(4) in order to imitate that regularity by serving as a stable background for other things.
It presupposes the ability to distinguish right and wrong with respect to that order.
Ritual and respect are closely related.
Authority is neighborly by nature.
music of Shao : kallipolis :: music of Wu : timarchy :: tunes of Cheng : oligarchy &c.
To make one's life a sort of music, balanced in its patterns and proportions, is a worthy task.
The body by the water partakes of the grace.
If we live in the light of God, from us, as if through crystal, every kind of goodness, justice, and truth will proceed, fruitful works pleasing to the Lord.
Dali was right about time -- it is not so mucht hat it flies as that it melts. All of our lives is time melting through our fingers, the world drooping and liquefying in a great sun that will never stop.
In one's mind one may both answer a fool according to his folly and not do it; and this is an aid to prudence. Outside the mind, of course, the solution is to avoid fools.
theological incentives in philosophy
-> analogy, parsimony & the like can be seen as philosophical incentives in experimental inquiry; likewise there are many ethical incentives in scientific work
-> incentives as such may or may not dominate, may or may not impede
-> incentives weight theories & approaches
-> incentives of this sort arise when a field of inquiry is considered in light of what would be most convenient in another field of inquiry
the prefinition of worlds (Eph 3 Douay-Rheims 1582)
heirloom seeds of tradition
Behind every error is a power for truth.
We see the sum in the cogito only because being is first in the apprehension of anything, even ourselves.
We know even indemonstrable principles by abstracting them from singulars.
The universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one can be saved, is that in which the Priest is the Sacrifice, saving by His body & blood.
What Vatican I actually defined with regard to infallibility is (1) that the Church itself is infallible in defining doctrine in faith and morals; and (2) that the Roman Pontiff understand conditions adequately represents the Church in this respect, as heir to Peter.
The Church rarely defines but always teaches.
Hos. 2:19-20 & marriage
Judas, Peter, & John as 3 types of Christian loyalty to Christ
the Rock that begot you, the God who birthed you (Dt. 32:18)
As active magisterium the bishops do not impose the truths of faith on the laity but educe them from the laity themselves, who already bear the potential. And both are required for the full magisterium of the Church as teacher of all mankind.
"Other effects only point out their causes in an oblique manner; but the testimony of men does it directly, and is to be consider'd as an image as well as an effect." T 1.3.9.12
-> Hume, of course, draws skeptical conclusions from this because of his account of causal inference; but a more robust account of causal inference can take this true insight in very different directions.
-> We have to be very careful about the sense in which testimony is an image; in effect this is handled by a proper theory of naming.
What gives a philosophical system force is both the coherence of its parts and the support for each part.
"'Tis evident an experiment in the past proves at least a possibility for the future." T 1.3.12.14
"beauty is such an order and construction of parts, as either by the primary consitution of our nature, by custom, or by caprice, is fitted to give a pleasure and satisfaction to the soul" T 2.1.8.2
(1) Not all causes are of the same kind.
(2) There is more than one kind of necessity.
(3) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
(4) From the effect we can form at least a partial idea of the cause.
Christ's prayer in Gethsemane was heard (Hb 5:7).
Practical deliberation is always a study of appropriate classifications.
Divine mission is divine principiation with appropriated temporal effect.
Psychology is a sort of philosophy of novels.
"Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them." Santayana
At the associative level of Scriptural study, anything may be juxtapose dwith anything else; this raises possibilities, questions, and puzzles. At the reflective level of Scriptural study, the results of association are sorted out dialectically.
Youth is very sincerely inauthentic.
Human joys and sorrows never stop to ask what year it is.
relevance under a notion
relevance intrinsic to the thing
The greatest delusion of economists consists in thinking that economic policy is or even can be governed primarily by economic reason rather than (from below) by the reasoning implicit in the social life of the people and (from above) by the reasoning implicit in the political structures and procedures of the nation.
the importance of developing more commodious arrangements and constructions of arguments
inquiries of light, of distinction, of fructification
Liturgy, taken in a broad sense, is the ecology of faith.
4 grounds for evaluating liturgy
(1) internal consistency
(2) relevance to love of God and neighbor
(3) symbolic adequacy to theology
(4) pedagogical force
Economics has no value for policy unless it provides ways to provision families better.
What does the City of God share with the City of Man? The mortal condition. But the relation between the understanding of this in each is analogical, not univocal.
(1) Knowledge of effects & their cause in the effects themselves
(a) as to particular details
(b) as to general character
(c) as to participation in the cause
(2) knowledge of effects in universal causes
(a) as to removal of impediments
(b) as to action of cause
(c) as to directive principle in cause
(3) knowledge of effects in the first cause
(a) as to how effects considered in themselves participate divine ideas
(b) as to how effects are in the divine ideas
(c) as to how effects are in God as last end
Deuteronomic theodicy does not explain why troubles come, but why we cannot rise above them.
liturgy as memorative prenotion
Love casts out fear because faith casts out fear.
Since truth coheres, sciences interpenetrate, sometimes in conclusions, sometimes in methods; and sciences admit of analogies even in many of the facets in which they differ.
propositional dynamic logic as a calculus of strategies
It is poets & artisans who most properly exercise human dominion over the world.
realism about the beautiful ont eh basis of truth as congruence of mind and thing
Note association between circumcision & purification of the mother in Lev. 12 (& also the redemption of the firstborn Son)
Whoever claims that sexual reproduction is merely a biological function has clearly not given much thought to the amount of planning and practical adjustment required for having children.
the experience of skin as a limit of ourselves
We cannot even consider a thing as a possible miracle without considering it as being possibly a means to an end.
Pr. 31:10-31 describes a woman's life in heroic terms (note vocabulary especially).
->It is a woman's might, not beauty, that is lauded.
the ecclesiology of Pr. 31:10-31
-> Then Pr. is bookended by the call of divine Wisdom & the Church as wise Bride working the world in response to this call.
The proper language of poetry is the common language of people who read poetry.
3 forms of participation
(1) by intimate possession (reception/imitation)
(2) by knowledge (reflection)
(3) by subordinate action (aspiration)
Light is a more general feature of the background of human life than the sun is; light precedes the sun in dawn and outlasts it in dusk; and light goes where the sun does not reach. Indeed, there is no feature of the background of human life that is more fundamental or more far-reaching.
In moral life our liabilities exceed our culpabilities.
Original sin is privation of suitability as a candidate for beatific vision.
effects of original sin
in person
(1) four wounds
(2) death
between persons (distributive)
(1) complicity
(2) imitation
in persons as a society (collective)
(1) pleonectic deterioration
(2) corruption of the world
original sin as languor of nature (ST 2-1.82.1)
Pelagianism confuses effects for causes.
Torah as pure image of truth is changed into Logos as pure and incorruptibel truth.
It makes sense of a Kantian to say that cause & effect do not apply beyond the (broadly) empirical (cf. CPR B 705) because cause & effect are in his view a principle governing temporal order (although not necessarily temporal lapse) among empirical appearances. BUt this is not essential to all ideas of cause & effect.
A precondition for justice in society is unity of heart.
convalidation of rationalization (sanatio in radice of post-hoc reasoning)
Etiology is always telic or tychic or a mixture of the two.
The blues are an echo of gospel music in a world of sin and sorrow.
All of secular philosophy is merely a surface volume and facet of the tesseract of Christian thought.
What matters in Buddhism is not the answer to the question but the openness of the mind when faced with the question.
The avoidance of surprise is an irrational object for a mutable intelligence in a mutable world.
Marriage is a peculiar sacrament because it was instituted as a sacrament in stages; thus, for instance, marriage under the Mosaic law was sacramental, but not as completely so as under the New Law, since it did look toward Christ's passion & the church, but only confusedly and by figure, and, so to speak, by mediation of God's covenant with Israel, itself a holy prefiguration of the New Covenant. Unlike any other sacrament, matrimony was constructed in stages over millenia.
We receive reason as a gift from God, and reason gives itself to others in communication. Practically everything in reason's activity intimates its communicative meaning.
the munus of conscientious scholarship & the officia to God, self, and others that follow on it
On Peirce's account of abductive inferences, they only preserve possibility, not truth -- i.e., from two or more true premises we get a possible conclusion (problematic or conjectural) as our strongest conclusion. Givent eh truths, the conclusion is not ruled out -- it si possible, but no more. Contrariwise, everything in the conclusion is in the premises, but not so as to be formally truth-preserving, i.e., the conclusion is in the premises but only qua possible.
The power of personality depends on the capacity of others to remember.
We spend our lives learning how to understand and deserve the goodness of being alive.
putting temptation ten thousand miles away from your heart
We expel dangerous fancies and recollections by replacing them with things that are good and noble.
the first step of conversion: Lord, what will you have me do? (Acts 9:6)
the second step: The Lord is my strength (Ps 117:14)
The life of the beginner consists in finding the good things that purify.
We cannot love God on our own in a manner suitable to Him; and thus we must love God with God's own love.
"Let knowledge be used to erect the structure of charity." Augustine Ep. 55
Jesum quaerens in libris
purgative
(1) cultivation of discipline
(2) acquisition of prayer
illuminative
(1) preparation for infused virtues
(2) habituation to (consolidation of) prayer
unitive
(1) preparation for spiritual gifts
(2) simplification of prayer
study as a form of mortification
Plato's Cave & the Witch of the Green Kirtle
Proslogion II: not just 'quod sit Deus' but 'quod vere sit Deus'
Anselm tells us (Inc Verb vi) that he wrote the Mologion and the Proslogion in order to reply against those who, unwilling to believe what they do not understand, deride believers; and also to aid the religious study of those who humbly seek to understand what they firmly believe. And the remarkable thing is that, even if not in the way he hoped, his argumetns have fulfilled these purposes to an extraordinary extent. For it has touched off in believers many new ideas; and, often and repeatedly, those who have argued against Anselm have been shown to argue not from clear understanding but from the belief that the argument must be wrong somewhere. Over and over again Anselm has shown, in case after case, that we may believe in order to understand, and do nto always need to understand in order to believe.
As charity gives supernatural form to virtue, so also it gives supernatural form to honor.
The Spirit works through the words of a confessor who takes his task seriously and does what he ought.
We mortify the intellect directly by study and reflection (which dissipate ignorance) and indirectly by patience (which opposes diseased curiosity) and humility (which opposes pride).
three aspects of purity: intention, moderation, and mortification
Acquired virtues presuppose a power and by presupposed repetition come to give a tendency and facility to an operation; infused virtues give us a power and a tendency, but only give facility as a result of repretition that presupposes the virtue.
The radication of infused virtue has as an incidental result the acquisition of acquired virtues.
The Spirit makes the Son clear to us.
adapting Hume on causation as a theory of inquiry into certain kinds of signs
poetic, rhetorical, and dialectical forms of evidence
Ming is that which can proceed from an interior word, and zheng ming is the purification of these expressions so that they are appropriate.
cheng as truthfulness
the proper mean between Yang Zhu and Mo Di
correspondence to, supplementation of, and transcendence of Confucianism (Zhang)
Paul was given the privilege of writing more for the canon precisely because he had been an enemy (cf. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat Lect 10.18).
divine energies : divine essence :: good (or true) : being
Music concerns itself with non-verbal analogies.
Nothing can be an organ unless it can be instrumental to an end; it is precisely this that allows us to identify something as one organ.
We should think not so much in terms of laws of nature as in terms of laws of natures.
One of the valuable features of Lent is that it provides you an opportunity for seeing how limited your will really is.
"In teaching the instructor often learns more than his pupils." Clement of Alexandria Strom.
Evolutionary theory concerns the generation and corruption of pluralities or populations over iterations of the generation and corruption of individuals. Obviously what is essential to this is reproduction and death, but the generation and corruption of populations cannot be reduce to reproduction and death because there are secondary changes that affect the generation and corruption of populations but do not reduce to reproduction and death: migration and isolation, for instance.
Harvey's omne vivum ex vivo rule
Psalm 4 as a prayer concerned with natural law (both St. Albert and Aquinas make this connection).
The market to which Smith attempted to appeal was a market ordered to public interest, and to the interest of sellers only in a secondary way, insofar as the latter could contribute to the former. This is why Smith is both pro-market and highly cynical and critical when it comes to business.
Ps. 38 as a sabbath psalm (Augustine)
Natural philosophy & moral philosophy are alike in the extent to which they consider contingent particulars.
Wholes and parts are explicable in terms of divisions and indivisions.
Time is not number abstracted from the numbered things but number in the numbered things.
light as it were the primum mobile
Humean psychology as the imagination in reminiscence
Natural philosophy gives fullness, and moral philosophy completeness, to the contemplation at the heart of philosophy.
The Johannine Gospel gives the beginning, the Johannine epistles the middle, and the Apocalypse the end.
Christ clings to the Church, His helpmeet, having descended from His Father to cling to her, and thus she becomes the mother of the living.
to observe & ponder in her heart is an essential capacity of motherhood
We understand mysteries by examination of analogies and of coherences.
True politics is simply ethics given cooperative social life and its tradeoffs.
Good catechetical instruction is seen in that it refutes not only the heresies of the day but also, as was said of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, later heresies "by a kind of foreknowledge."
Scientific inquiry is the cooperation of prudence and art to the end of understanding natural beings in their changes.
Skepticism requires holding that the relation between cognition and truth may be accidental.
Sacraments are more properly things we receive than things we do; it is especially important to remember this with reconciliation, matrimony, and ordination, for we are tempted to treat these things as though we did them rathern than as is the case, that we are showered with them.
eremitic life : monastic life :: celibate life : married life
I Sam 21:5 and the priesthood
The Old Testament (& Mt & Lk) shows that genealogy is extraordinarily important to covenant & thus to theology.
The laity are only sane when they largely follow such common sense as is rooted in the saints and hallowed by custom, making their aim not to bend the rest of the Church to their will but simply to be the Church, doing whatever they do. But flesh, the world, and the Devil constantly push to make it otherwise.
Every inference which is truth-preserving with negated premise (or conjunction of premises) & negated conclusion is falsity-preserving.
Scientists generally go wrong in philosophical matters when they fail to adequate means to ends properly. This typically occurs in two ways: either through excessive confidence in the means or, more commonly, through failure to distinguish ends that are in fact different.
First Commandment: to revere God in our hearts
Second Commandment: to revere God in our words
Third Commandment: to revere God in our actions
We cannot keep the Sabbath holy by our Sabbath life alone.
praying that the saints' prayers for others may be effective
In the life of the Church, ritual and music provide the pattern for authority.
Who does not understand providence has no way of becoming a good bishop.
Ture authority is an activity of virtue.
philosophy as euporia with aporia
There are philosophical activities that are to what we usually call philosophical activities as flower arranging is to gardening; and, however limited and derivative flower arranging may be, a world without flower arranging is a world less congenial for gardening.
Liberty cannot be protected without protecting the home, for home is for most people the primary, or even the only, space for freedom.
How often people trade adamantine arguments for weak & watery feelings! But in truth the two must be conjoined, bright sentiment growing on rigorous reasoning like roses on trellises, or great vines on strong stone cliffs.
That poetry is more philosophical than history does not imply that history is in no way philosophical.
mythology in the service of ideas
experimenting with lightness & multiplicity in the search for truth (Novalis)
Who loves wisdom finds it everywhere.
God called His people to remember the Sabbath because of creation and to observe it because of salvation.
Exodus tells us not to bear false witness, Deuteronomy not to bear vain/empty/worthless witness.
Why was the Virgin immaculately conceived? That she might consent on behalf of the whole human race, and not merely on her own behalf.
Ritual derives from imitation of regularity and order in things
(1) in order to teach that regularity;
(2) in order to celebrate that regularity;
(3) in order to conform ourselves to that regularity;
(4) in order to imitate that regularity by serving as a stable background for other things.
It presupposes the ability to distinguish right and wrong with respect to that order.
Ritual and respect are closely related.
Authority is neighborly by nature.
music of Shao : kallipolis :: music of Wu : timarchy :: tunes of Cheng : oligarchy &c.
To make one's life a sort of music, balanced in its patterns and proportions, is a worthy task.
The body by the water partakes of the grace.
If we live in the light of God, from us, as if through crystal, every kind of goodness, justice, and truth will proceed, fruitful works pleasing to the Lord.
Dali was right about time -- it is not so mucht hat it flies as that it melts. All of our lives is time melting through our fingers, the world drooping and liquefying in a great sun that will never stop.
In one's mind one may both answer a fool according to his folly and not do it; and this is an aid to prudence. Outside the mind, of course, the solution is to avoid fools.
theological incentives in philosophy
-> analogy, parsimony & the like can be seen as philosophical incentives in experimental inquiry; likewise there are many ethical incentives in scientific work
-> incentives as such may or may not dominate, may or may not impede
-> incentives weight theories & approaches
-> incentives of this sort arise when a field of inquiry is considered in light of what would be most convenient in another field of inquiry
the prefinition of worlds (Eph 3 Douay-Rheims 1582)
heirloom seeds of tradition
Behind every error is a power for truth.
We see the sum in the cogito only because being is first in the apprehension of anything, even ourselves.
We know even indemonstrable principles by abstracting them from singulars.
The universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one can be saved, is that in which the Priest is the Sacrifice, saving by His body & blood.
What Vatican I actually defined with regard to infallibility is (1) that the Church itself is infallible in defining doctrine in faith and morals; and (2) that the Roman Pontiff understand conditions adequately represents the Church in this respect, as heir to Peter.
The Church rarely defines but always teaches.
Hos. 2:19-20 & marriage
Judas, Peter, & John as 3 types of Christian loyalty to Christ
the Rock that begot you, the God who birthed you (Dt. 32:18)
As active magisterium the bishops do not impose the truths of faith on the laity but educe them from the laity themselves, who already bear the potential. And both are required for the full magisterium of the Church as teacher of all mankind.
"Other effects only point out their causes in an oblique manner; but the testimony of men does it directly, and is to be consider'd as an image as well as an effect." T 1.3.9.12
-> Hume, of course, draws skeptical conclusions from this because of his account of causal inference; but a more robust account of causal inference can take this true insight in very different directions.
-> We have to be very careful about the sense in which testimony is an image; in effect this is handled by a proper theory of naming.
What gives a philosophical system force is both the coherence of its parts and the support for each part.
"'Tis evident an experiment in the past proves at least a possibility for the future." T 1.3.12.14
"beauty is such an order and construction of parts, as either by the primary consitution of our nature, by custom, or by caprice, is fitted to give a pleasure and satisfaction to the soul" T 2.1.8.2
(1) Not all causes are of the same kind.
(2) There is more than one kind of necessity.
(3) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
(4) From the effect we can form at least a partial idea of the cause.
Christ's prayer in Gethsemane was heard (Hb 5:7).
Practical deliberation is always a study of appropriate classifications.
Divine mission is divine principiation with appropriated temporal effect.
Psychology is a sort of philosophy of novels.
"Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them." Santayana
At the associative level of Scriptural study, anything may be juxtapose dwith anything else; this raises possibilities, questions, and puzzles. At the reflective level of Scriptural study, the results of association are sorted out dialectically.
Youth is very sincerely inauthentic.
Human joys and sorrows never stop to ask what year it is.
relevance under a notion
relevance intrinsic to the thing
The greatest delusion of economists consists in thinking that economic policy is or even can be governed primarily by economic reason rather than (from below) by the reasoning implicit in the social life of the people and (from above) by the reasoning implicit in the political structures and procedures of the nation.
the importance of developing more commodious arrangements and constructions of arguments
inquiries of light, of distinction, of fructification
Liturgy, taken in a broad sense, is the ecology of faith.
4 grounds for evaluating liturgy
(1) internal consistency
(2) relevance to love of God and neighbor
(3) symbolic adequacy to theology
(4) pedagogical force
Economics has no value for policy unless it provides ways to provision families better.
What does the City of God share with the City of Man? The mortal condition. But the relation between the understanding of this in each is analogical, not univocal.
(1) Knowledge of effects & their cause in the effects themselves
(a) as to particular details
(b) as to general character
(c) as to participation in the cause
(2) knowledge of effects in universal causes
(a) as to removal of impediments
(b) as to action of cause
(c) as to directive principle in cause
(3) knowledge of effects in the first cause
(a) as to how effects considered in themselves participate divine ideas
(b) as to how effects are in the divine ideas
(c) as to how effects are in God as last end
Deuteronomic theodicy does not explain why troubles come, but why we cannot rise above them.
liturgy as memorative prenotion
Love casts out fear because faith casts out fear.
Since truth coheres, sciences interpenetrate, sometimes in conclusions, sometimes in methods; and sciences admit of analogies even in many of the facets in which they differ.
propositional dynamic logic as a calculus of strategies
It is poets & artisans who most properly exercise human dominion over the world.
realism about the beautiful ont eh basis of truth as congruence of mind and thing
Note association between circumcision & purification of the mother in Lev. 12 (& also the redemption of the firstborn Son)
Whoever claims that sexual reproduction is merely a biological function has clearly not given much thought to the amount of planning and practical adjustment required for having children.
the experience of skin as a limit of ourselves
We cannot even consider a thing as a possible miracle without considering it as being possibly a means to an end.
Pr. 31:10-31 describes a woman's life in heroic terms (note vocabulary especially).
->It is a woman's might, not beauty, that is lauded.
the ecclesiology of Pr. 31:10-31
-> Then Pr. is bookended by the call of divine Wisdom & the Church as wise Bride working the world in response to this call.
The proper language of poetry is the common language of people who read poetry.
3 forms of participation
(1) by intimate possession (reception/imitation)
(2) by knowledge (reflection)
(3) by subordinate action (aspiration)
Light is a more general feature of the background of human life than the sun is; light precedes the sun in dawn and outlasts it in dusk; and light goes where the sun does not reach. Indeed, there is no feature of the background of human life that is more fundamental or more far-reaching.
In moral life our liabilities exceed our culpabilities.
Original sin is privation of suitability as a candidate for beatific vision.
effects of original sin
in person
(1) four wounds
(2) death
between persons (distributive)
(1) complicity
(2) imitation
in persons as a society (collective)
(1) pleonectic deterioration
(2) corruption of the world
original sin as languor of nature (ST 2-1.82.1)
Pelagianism confuses effects for causes.
Torah as pure image of truth is changed into Logos as pure and incorruptibel truth.
It makes sense of a Kantian to say that cause & effect do not apply beyond the (broadly) empirical (cf. CPR B 705) because cause & effect are in his view a principle governing temporal order (although not necessarily temporal lapse) among empirical appearances. BUt this is not essential to all ideas of cause & effect.
A precondition for justice in society is unity of heart.
convalidation of rationalization (sanatio in radice of post-hoc reasoning)
Etiology is always telic or tychic or a mixture of the two.
The blues are an echo of gospel music in a world of sin and sorrow.
All of secular philosophy is merely a surface volume and facet of the tesseract of Christian thought.
What matters in Buddhism is not the answer to the question but the openness of the mind when faced with the question.
The avoidance of surprise is an irrational object for a mutable intelligence in a mutable world.
Marriage is a peculiar sacrament because it was instituted as a sacrament in stages; thus, for instance, marriage under the Mosaic law was sacramental, but not as completely so as under the New Law, since it did look toward Christ's passion & the church, but only confusedly and by figure, and, so to speak, by mediation of God's covenant with Israel, itself a holy prefiguration of the New Covenant. Unlike any other sacrament, matrimony was constructed in stages over millenia.
We receive reason as a gift from God, and reason gives itself to others in communication. Practically everything in reason's activity intimates its communicative meaning.
the munus of conscientious scholarship & the officia to God, self, and others that follow on it
On Peirce's account of abductive inferences, they only preserve possibility, not truth -- i.e., from two or more true premises we get a possible conclusion (problematic or conjectural) as our strongest conclusion. Givent eh truths, the conclusion is not ruled out -- it si possible, but no more. Contrariwise, everything in the conclusion is in the premises, but not so as to be formally truth-preserving, i.e., the conclusion is in the premises but only qua possible.
The power of personality depends on the capacity of others to remember.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Three Poem Drafts
Visions
With words, and O! such words! we dream,
with gestures born of consolations
and hopes that capture sunrise gleams
to bloom upon the all-creation.
And shall we shirk to dream such shades,
as if in shame to shrink from lie?
Nay; rather for these dreams are made
all human hearts, our minds and eyes:--
no human souls their promise know
save where such gilded visions glow.
Psalm 98
Sing a fresh psalm to God, doer of wonderful deeds,
with right hand, with holy arm, winner of victory.
God has revealed his liberation, His justice to nations;
He has recalled His kind steadfastness to Israel's household.
From end to end the earth has seen our God in liberation.
Rejoice before God, all of earth, burst out in song, sing praise!
Sing praise to God with harp; with harp's melodious hymn,
with trump, with sounding horn rejoice before our King.
Let sea and all within resound, the world and its indwellers,
let rivers applaud with hands, hills give harmonious shout,
before God who is coming, who comes to judge the earth:
with justice He governs the earth, with fairness its peoples.
Psalm 19
The skies proclaim God's splendor,
the height His artistry;
day tells day, night teaches night,
speechless and tongueless,
with unheard voices,
their witness throughout the earth,
their message runs to World's End.
There He has pitched the sun's tent,
that bridegroom springing from his chambers,
rejoicing, an athlete after races.
His procession is from the sky's edge,
His course is to its very end,
and nothing escapes his heat.
God's Torah is complete, refreshing life;
God's decree stable, making the simple wise;
God's precepts right, rejoicing the heart;
God's commandments pure, illuminating eyes;
God's reverence clean, lasting forever;
God's judgments steadfast, utterly just.
More alluring than gold, than much pure gold,
sweeter than honey and nectar.
Your servant is enlightened by them,
in keeping them is great reward.
Who finds failing? Cleanse from the unknown,
restrain your servant from the voluntary,
that they never dominate me,
that I may find blamelessness before you,
that I may be free of grave defect.
Let the words of my mouth have your favor,
the thoughts of my heart be before you,
O God, my rock, my rescuer.
With words, and O! such words! we dream,
with gestures born of consolations
and hopes that capture sunrise gleams
to bloom upon the all-creation.
And shall we shirk to dream such shades,
as if in shame to shrink from lie?
Nay; rather for these dreams are made
all human hearts, our minds and eyes:--
no human souls their promise know
save where such gilded visions glow.
Psalm 98
Sing a fresh psalm to God, doer of wonderful deeds,
with right hand, with holy arm, winner of victory.
God has revealed his liberation, His justice to nations;
He has recalled His kind steadfastness to Israel's household.
From end to end the earth has seen our God in liberation.
Rejoice before God, all of earth, burst out in song, sing praise!
Sing praise to God with harp; with harp's melodious hymn,
with trump, with sounding horn rejoice before our King.
Let sea and all within resound, the world and its indwellers,
let rivers applaud with hands, hills give harmonious shout,
before God who is coming, who comes to judge the earth:
with justice He governs the earth, with fairness its peoples.
Psalm 19
The skies proclaim God's splendor,
the height His artistry;
day tells day, night teaches night,
speechless and tongueless,
with unheard voices,
their witness throughout the earth,
their message runs to World's End.
There He has pitched the sun's tent,
that bridegroom springing from his chambers,
rejoicing, an athlete after races.
His procession is from the sky's edge,
His course is to its very end,
and nothing escapes his heat.
God's Torah is complete, refreshing life;
God's decree stable, making the simple wise;
God's precepts right, rejoicing the heart;
God's commandments pure, illuminating eyes;
God's reverence clean, lasting forever;
God's judgments steadfast, utterly just.
More alluring than gold, than much pure gold,
sweeter than honey and nectar.
Your servant is enlightened by them,
in keeping them is great reward.
Who finds failing? Cleanse from the unknown,
restrain your servant from the voluntary,
that they never dominate me,
that I may find blamelessness before you,
that I may be free of grave defect.
Let the words of my mouth have your favor,
the thoughts of my heart be before you,
O God, my rock, my rescuer.
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