Links of Note

 * David Oderberg, Life makes mistakes, at "Aeon"

* Scott Casleton, Grotius Contra Carneades: Natural Law and the Problem of Self-Interest (PDF)

* Shalom Goldman, Israel as the Jesus among Nations, about the roles of the ideas of Chesterton and Maritain in shaping the Holy See's developing relation with Israel, at "Tablet"

* Maristela Rocha, A Study of the Metatheory of Assertoric Syllogistic (PDF)

* Matthew B. Crawford, Why Individualism Fails to Create Individuals, at "Hedgehog Review"

* Hein van den Berg, Wolff and Kant on Scientific Demonstration and Mechanical Explanation (PDF)

* Paul Kingsnorth, The Everlasting Man, at "The Abbey of Misrule"

* Gilbert Plumer, When Paintings Argue (PDF)

* Nadya Williams, You Are Not in Control: The Death of Boethius 1,500 Years On, at "Religion & Liberty Online"

* Amy Tyson, The False Promise of Device-Based Education, at "After Babel"

* Anna Giustina, Moods as Ways of Inner Awareness (PDF)

* Sean Parnell has recently had two good short popular op-eds on attacks on the Electoral College: 'One Neat Trick' to Rig the National Popular Vote Compact, and National Popular Vote Would Increase Distrust in Elections, both of which make points that are often overlooked.

* Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but just the punctuation

* Jason Runyan, Including or excluding free will (PDF)

* Nguyễn Bình, “America’s Literary Giant.” On the Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe in Vietnam, at "LitHub"

* Harriet Fagerberg, A Domino Theory of Disease (PDF)

* Alexander Douglas, A Philosophical Blandemic?, at "As Difficult as Rare"

* Ana-Maria Cretu, Human Computers as Instruments (PDF)

* Sofia Quaglia, Animal Embryos Can Sense Predators and Food While Still Inside the Egg, at "Discover"

* Thomas D. Howes, Who's Who: Martin Rhonheimer, the Church's Swiss Army Knife, at "Public Discourse"

Aquinas's Third Way

 Aquinas's Third Way is often treated as a form of what later came to be known as an argument from contingency. This is perhaps natural, because it makes use of concepts of necessity and possible-to-be-and-not-to-be, but is in fact not true. The reason for this is that the conception of necessity and its opposite are very different from what later is characterized in similar terms. In Quodlibetal Question X, question 3, article 2, Aquinas has an objection and reply that is useful for clarifying the real meaning.

The question is whether the rational soul is corruptible. The second objection argues that it is:

Something with the power to exist always does not exist at one time and not at another (for a thing exists as long as its power demands). Hence anything that exists at one time and not at another lacks the power to exist always. But everything that begins to exist, exists at one time and not at another. Hence, nothing that begins to exist has the power to exist always, and thus nothing that begins to exist can be incorruptible. Yet the rational soul begins to exist. Therefore, the rational soul cannot be incorruptible.

[Thomas Aquinas, Quodlibetal Questions, Nevitt & Davies, trs., Oxford University Press (New York: 2020), p. 138.]

Aquinas responds to this:

The argument is the Philosopher's proof in book I of On the Heavens that every generated thing is corruptible. But it applies to things that come to exist and cease to exist by nature: their lack of power explains why they cannot always have existed and will not always exist. The argument does not apply to things that come to exist by creation: God gives such things the power to exist always, although they cannot exist before being given that power.

[Ibid., p. 141]

That the Third Way is connected to Aristotle's argument in De caelo for the nature of the entire universe was shown by Lawrence Dewan quite some time ago, but it seems not generally to have diffused out. As Aquinas's reply indicates, a key concept of the De caelo is that generability and corruptibility are coextensive; what is generable is corruptible (and vice versa), and likewise what is ingenerable is incorruptible (and vice versa). The generable/corruptible is something that has the power to-be-and-not-to-be; the ingenerable/incorruptible is something that has a power to-be-always. The Third Way is an argument, based on this, that there must be something with power to-be-always; as Aquinas notes in the reply, the power to-be-always can be 'given' to something -- i.e., it's not an abstract possibility but one that is based on existing, so something has to exist before it can have it. Either it has always existed in itself, or it depends for this power to exist always on something that ultimately has to have always existed in itself.

Thus we can gloss the Third Way in the following way:

The third way is taken from the possible and the necessary, and is as follows. We find in things those which are possible to be and not to be, because they are found to be generated and corrupted, and consequently are possible to be and not to be.

The possible and the necessary here are in fact the generable/corruptible and the ingenerable/incorruptible. 

It is impossible that all the things that are be such, because what is possible to be and not to be, sometimes is not.

An existing thing that is generable must at some time have been generated, because a thing cannot be generable if it has always existed.

Therefore if all things are possible not to be, at some point there was nothing in things.

This is the point in the argument that often trips people up. Why couldn't there be a series of things 'possible not to be' that caused each other in an overlapping way, infinitely back? But this worry depends crucially on the false assumption that a series of existing things is not something existing. If there existed a series of existing things that itself has always existed, the series would not be possible not to be -- it would be something that always existed, and therefore necessary in the sense used in the Third Way, which would mean that not all things are possible not to be. Thus if the series of things has not always existed, at some point there was nothing; if the series of things has always existed, there is something that did not begin to be.

But if this is true, then now there would be nothing, because what is not, does not begin to be save through something that is; if therefore nothing were a being, it was impossible that something began to be, and so nothing would be, which is obviously false.

 Causes that do not in any way exist do not cause anything; so if there was nothing, nothing could be caused to exist.

Therefore not all beings are possibles, but something must be necessary in things.

That is to say, if there are generables/corruptibles, there must be something ingenerable/incorruptible.

But everything necessary either has a cause of its necessity or does not have one.

That is, what exists always must exist always either because of itself or because of something else. This is the point that Aquinas is making in the response in the quodlibetal question.

But it is not possible to proceed infinitely in necessaries that have a cause of their necessity, just as was proven for efficient causes.

The argument in the Five Ways that comes closest to being an argument from contingency is the Second Way, which does tie in because the Third Way refers to the Second Way; this is another element that makes the Third Way look like an argument from contingency. However, the element of the Second Way that is used here is specifically the structure of its argument against an infinite regress of causes.

Therefore it is necessary to posit something that is necessary through itself, not having any other cause of its necessity; but what is cause of the necessity of others, that all call God.

A naturally always-existing cause of other things being able to exist always, in other words. 

One of the important aspects of the Third Way is that it more directly considers the entire universe -- unlike the First Way, whose primary consideration is changed things, or the Second Way, whose primary consideration is series of causes, the Third Way considers things that are such as to be always or not always, and as the roots of the Third Way in Aristotle's cosmological treatise, De caelo, indicate, this touches on general considerations of the nature of the universe as a whole. Either the universe is such as to be generable/corruptible, or it is not; if it is, it depends on something else that is ingenerable; if it is not, it is itself ingenerable, and its ingenerability is due either to its ingenerably existing by nature or being such that it ultimately has ingenerability from a cause that ingenerably exists by nature.

Wild Woodland Music on the Pipes of Pan

 Enchantment
by Madison Cawein 

 The deep seclusion of this forest path,--
O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy,
Along which bluet and anemone
Spread a dim carpet; where the twilight hath
Her dark abode; and, sweet as aftermath,
Wood-fragrance breathes, -- has so enchanted me,
That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be
Some sylvan resting, rosy from her bath:
Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams,
That every foam-white stream that twinkling flows,
And every bird that flutters wings of tan,
Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems
A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows
Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan.

Fortnightly Book, October 27

 Earlier this month, I went with a friend to a college production of the Ellen McLaughlin modernized adaptation of Euripides' Helen, often billed as a "fresh take on Euripides' tragicomedy". I didn't find it awful, although I think many of the modern aspects made the play less interesting, and I'm not sure, based on memory, how tragicomical the original is. But, much as I like Euripides, my favorite Greek playwright, it has been years and years since I've actually picked up the Helene and read it. So after some searching, I found the version I have on my shelf, Three Great Plays of Euripides: Medea, Hippolytus, and Helen, translated by Rex Warner. I'm definitely not averse to re-reading the Hippolytus, and have actually been intending for a while to re-read the Medea, so the Three Great Plays will be the next fortnightly book.

It's worth keeping in mind that Greek tragedies were not actually written to be separate. The major Greek tragedies that we have were all parts of a set of four, each set consisting of a tragic trilogy and a more farcical satyr play. This set would be performed at a great religious festival in a competition in which they would be judged. It is a good reminder of how little we have of ancient Greek tragedy. Of all the writers who composed tragedies for the competitions over many years, we only have complete tragedies from three -- Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides -- and only one satyr-play at all has survived (Euripides' Cyclops). Granted, there seems a general recognition that these were the best, but we don't even have most of theirs. Euripides competed himself in the Dionysian festival from 455 BC to 408 BC (although his final plays were performed posthumously in 405 BC, where they won first prize), winning first prize five times. He wrote at least ninety plays; we have nineteen, one of which is not known certainly to be Euripides'. The extant plays are often divided into two groups, the Select plays and the Alphabetical plays, because the two primary sources we have for them, and the reason why these plays are extant, consist of a single school anthology (the Select plays) and one volume of a multi-volume alphabetical complete works of Euripides (the Alphabetical plays). (Medea and Hippolytus are Select plays and Helen is an Alphabetical play.)

Medea is the only surviving play of its set, which included the tragedies Philoctetes and Dictys and the satyr play Theristai; it was submitted to the City Dionysia festival in 431 BC, making it one of Euripides' earliest plays. In that festival, Euripides won third prize.

Hippolytus, sometimes known as Hippolytus Stephanopohoros to distinguish from another play with a similar title, was submitted to the City Dionysia in 428 BC. As far as I know, we don't have the titles that went with the other plays in the set, but the set won first prize, usually regarded as well deserved -- Hippolytus has a reputation for being a well constructed tragedy.

Helen was submitted to the City Dionysia in 412 BC. We know the title of one of the others in its set (Andromeda), because some fragments survive and it is often referred to (Andromeda seems to have been one of those works that is both widely loved and widely mocked). We don't know about the others, although some people have suggested on thematic grounds that Iphigenia among the Taurians, which is another extant play, might have been the third. That's very speculative, but it's not impossible. As an Alphabetical, it's a pure accident of history that it survived; unlike the Select plays, we don't have it because someone thought it was especially good, but just because its volume of the collected works survived. The set did not win a prize.

So this fortnight will be devoted to "the most tragic of poets", as Aristotle called him.

Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz

 Introduction

Opening Passages: As a book of literary sketches, there is no opening in the usual sense, but the sketches are divided into four groups -- "Seven Sketches from Our Parish", "Scenes", "Characters", and "Tales", so these are the opening passages of the opening sketches of the four groups, as a sampling.

From "The Beadle -- The Parish Engine -- The Schoolmaster", in "Seven Sketches from Our Parish":

How much is conveyed in those two short words—‘The Parish!’ And with how many tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined hopes, too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery, are they associated! A poor man, with small earnings, and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to day; he has barely sufficient to satisfy the present cravings of nature, and can take no heed of the future. His taxes are in arrear, quarter-day passes by, another quarter-day arrives: he can procure no more quarter for himself, and is summoned by—the parish. His goods are distrained, his children are crying with cold and hunger, and the very bed on which his sick wife is lying, is dragged from beneath her. What can he do? To whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity? To benevolent individuals? Certainly not—there is his parish. There are the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle, kind-hearted men. The woman dies—she is buried by the parish. The children have no protector—they are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved by the parish; and when distress and drunkenness have done their work upon him, he is maintained, a harmless babbling idiot, in the parish asylum.

From "The Streets -- Morning" in "Scenes":

The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise, on a summer’s morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene. There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive.

From "Thoughts about People" in "Characters":

It is strange with how little notice, good, bad, or indifferent, a man may live and die in London. He awakens no sympathy in the breast of any single person; his existence is a matter of interest to no one save himself; he cannot be said to be forgotten when he dies, for no one remembered him when he was alive. There is a numerous class of people in this great metropolis who seem not to possess a single friend, and whom nobody appears to care for. Urged by imperative necessity in the first instance, they have resorted to London in search of employment, and the means of subsistence. It is hard, we know, to break the ties which bind us to our homes and friends, and harder still to efface the thousand recollections of happy days and old times, which have been slumbering in our bosoms for years, and only rush upon the mind, to bring before it associations connected with the friends we have left, the scenes we have beheld too probably for the last time, and the hopes we once cherished, but may entertain no more. These men, however, happily for themselves, have long forgotten such thoughts. Old country friends have died or emigrated; former correspondents have become lost, like themselves, in the crowd and turmoil of some busy city; and they have gradually settled down into mere passive creatures of habit and endurance.

From "The Boarding-House" in "Tales":

Mrs. Tibbs was, beyond all dispute, the most tidy, fidgety, thrifty little personage that ever inhaled the smoke of London; and the house of Mrs. Tibbs was, decidedly, the neatest in all Great Coram-street. The area and the area-steps, and the street-door and the street-door steps, and the brass handle, and the door-plate, and the knocker, and the fan-light, were all as clean and bright, as indefatigable white-washing, and hearth-stoning, and scrubbing and rubbing, could make them. The wonder was, that the brass door-plate, with the interesting inscription ‘Mrs. Tibbs,’ had never caught fire from constant friction, so perseveringly was it polished. There were meat-safe-looking blinds in the parlour-windows, blue and gold curtains in the drawing-room, and spring-roller blinds, as Mrs. Tibbs was wont in the pride of her heart to boast, ‘all the way up.’ The bell-lamp in the passage looked as clear as a soap-bubble; you could see yourself in all the tables, and French-polish yourself on any one of the chairs. The banisters were bees-waxed; and the very stair-wires made your eyes wink, they were so glittering.

Summary: It is in some sense impossible to summarize a large book of literary sketches like this; all the parts are, by the very nature of the work, relatively independent, impressionistic, occasional, episodic, mostly descriptive (although with plenty of the anecdotal), and brief. But in some sense this works very well, because perhaps we should understand Sketches by Boz is as a portraiture, or better, a gallery of portraits with a theme, and the theme is something like the character of London in the 1830s. We see 1830s London in fifty-six different sketches. So let's reflect a moment on this titanic and legendary character, the City of London, at this bustling and bursting time of her life.

She is bustling, a swiftly expanding metropolis beginning to feel her full vigor. We see this in many of the titles of the sketches in the "Scenes" section of the work: "The Streets -- Morning", "The Streets -- Night", "Shops and Their Tenants", "Hackney-coach Stands", "London Recreations", "The River", "Private Theatres", "Vauxhall-gardens by Day", "Omnibuses", "A Parliamentary Sketch", "Public Dinners", "Brokers' and Marine-store Shops", "Gin-shops", "The Pawnbroker's Shop", "Criminal Courts". It's like a walk around the city, although we have the benefit of Dickens's native eyes and, better still, his genius for vivid and striking description. This only becomes more clear when we look at the content of the sketches. We are only getting little samples, and yet all of these sketches are almost bursting with sights and scenes and activity. The London we see is a city of trade and business, with shops apparently everywhere and constantly changing, as new tenants rent old shops and redecorate them and do their business and eventually close, leaving the space to be rented again. Coaches and omnibuses, both old and new, speed everywhere. But it is also a city of delights, full of gardens and picturesque streets and theatrical events of a wide variety.

London as Dickens presents her is also very much a people-city, large numbers thrown together of every type and stereotype, and yet also each one extraordinarily unique. I open the book to a random page, in the midst of the sketch, "Public Dinners", about a dinner held by the charitable institution, "Indigent Orphans' Friends' Benevolent Institutions" (which the narrator assures us is an abbreviated version of the actual name), and we find a crowd of people watching the hackney-coach drivers drop off the indigent orphans' friends, waiters, the important and self-important committee members, low and high tables filled with guests, and musicians. Most random pages in the book would serve the point just as well: we are in an endless sea of interesting people.

Dickens being one of the great character writers of all time, excels at the people, and many of my favorite sketches in the book are my favorites because they exemplify his talent for swiftly describing a peculiar character in a way that is difficult to forget. I liked "The Election for Beadle", as the election for beadle (one of the elected representatives of the parish-neighborhoods of the city) heats up between Spruggins and Bung, the two primary candidates; Spruggins takes the lead early because he has ten children, two of them twins, and a wife, but Bung, suffering under the political handicap of having only five children, none of them twins, powers through, benefited by being only 35 to Spruggins's 50 and, more importantly, having a system for getting drunks and elderly ladies to the voting booths. I also particularly liked "Private Theatres". Theatre in nineteenth century London was a big thing. There were the great licensed theaters --  Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and the Haymarket; theatricals required licensing. But there were two other kinds of theaters without licensing that made a space for themselves in the interstices of the licensing rules. The first were places like Astley's Royal Equestrian Amphitheatre, that officially provided non-theatrical entertainment (equestrian, of course), but in reality was a theatre that just made sure that its theatrical productions had horses in them. The second were places that got around the rules by being small places where the money was made not primarily by audiences paying tickets (there were tickets, but very cheap), but by stage-struck amateur actors paying to be in a production. From what I gather, the private theatre would often have its own small company of actors, but they would be supporting characters; amateurs from around the city would, of course, pay to be the leading ones in famous scenes:

All the minor theatres in London, especially the lowest, constitute the centre of a little stage-struck neighbourhood. Each of them has an audience exclusively its own; and at any you will see dropping into the pit at half-price, or swaggering into the back of a box, if the price of admission be a reduced one, divers boys of from fifteen to twenty-one years of age, who throw back their coat and turn up their wristbands, after the portraits of Count D’Orsay, hum tunes and whistle when the curtain is down, by way of persuading the people near them, that they are not at all anxious to have it up again, and speak familiarly of the inferior performers as Bill Such-a-one, and Ned So-and-so, or tell each other how a new piece called The Unknown Bandit of the Invisible Cavern, is in rehearsal; how Mister Palmer is to play The Unknown Bandit; how Charley Scarton is to take the part of an English sailor, and fight a broadsword combat with six unknown bandits, at one and the same time (one theatrical sailor is always equal to half a dozen men at least); how Mister Palmer and Charley Scarton are to go through a double hornpipe in fetters in the second act; how the interior of the invisible cavern is to occupy the whole extent of the stage; and other town-surprising theatrical announcements. These gentlemen are the amateurs—the Richards, Shylocks, Beverleys, and Othellos—the Young Dorntons, Rovers, Captain Absolutes, and Charles Surfaces—a private theatre.

But, you say, bustle and people are the stuff of all cities? Ah, not so; the life of London in the 1830s is actual life, lively life, fullness of life, where everything is done by people working with people. Machines are as yet just clever devices; the gas-lamp and the steam engine are assistance and nothing more. Everywhere you go, people are busy with making connections with other people, busy with building actual things, busy with participation in social ventures bigger than themselves. You can walk out to the street and find it so. The same cannot be always be said for our money-farms. 

But there are features distinctive to London in her growing spurt. She is a city of English humor, and we see her through the humor of a Dickensian narrator. The citizens of London live lives of joke, sometimes pleasant and sometimes absurd; London herself is a grand fair of humor, with her people fitting themselves into, and seeing themselves as participating, in a great humorous venture. There is nothing more English than that, to make civilization, and one's entire part in it, a bit of a playful joke. It's not an England that is entirely gone yet, but in 1830s London, humorous England rose to heights that astounded everyone who witnessed it.

She is also a city of great tragedies, broken lives, terrible sorrows -- she must be, because she is The City. But in London of the 1830s, as Dickens presents her, the tragedies are not unknown, the sorrows not unseen; they are not dulled by familiarity. She is not a mere market for woe. Every tragedy, ever sorrow, every failure, is an opportunity, an invitation, to see the tragedy, the sorrow, the failure, and help out. People often do not -- but sometimes they do, and always they can. Dickens is stronger with humor than with sympathy, I think; that is, he has an ability to uncover humor that is not obvious, but he sometimes over-relies on the reader to sympathize. But his slides to heart-string-tugging are lightened by their sincerity; he is not going through motions but trying to make people see. We see this in the best of the darker and more tragedy-oriented sketches, "A Visit to Newgate", about prison. And it makes the whole better. Dickens's is not an advertiser, marketing London to us; he is showing us around, and points out to us the flaws as well as the glories.

But most of all, the 1830s London of Dickens is, for all her faults and absurdities, lovable. She is a home, one with her own culture, her own life, her own customs. She is beginning to be queen of the world, but she has not yet forgotten her humbler days or her ancient heritage; she is already a legend, but, not resting on her laurels, continues to do things of legend, and yet at the same time is personable. Because the personable London, I think, is the London Dickens himself knew and loved, and however fragmentary literary sketches may be, they combine together in a messy medley that mirrors the city itself, and shows how one may love a city.

Favorite Passage: From the "Tale", "Sentiment":

‘Lavinia, hear me,’ replied the hero, in his most poetic strain. ‘Do not condemn me unheard. If anything that emanates from the soul of such a wretch as I, can occupy a place in your recollection—if any being, so vile, deserve your notice—you may remember that I once published a pamphlet (and paid for its publication) entitled “Considerations on the Policy of Removing the Duty on Bees’-wax.”’ 

 ‘I do—I do!’ sobbed Lavinia. 

 ‘That,’ continued the lover, ‘was a subject to which your father was devoted heart and soul.’ 

 ‘He was—he was!’ reiterated the sentimentalist. 

 ‘I knew it,’ continued Theodosius, tragically; ‘I knew it—I forwarded him a copy. He wished to know me. Could I disclose my real name? Never! No, I assumed that name which you have so often pronounced in tones of endearment. As M’Neville Walter, I devoted myself to the stirring cause; as M’Neville Walter I gained your heart; in the same character I was ejected from your house by your father’s domestics; and in no character at all have I since been enabled to see you. We now meet again, and I proudly own that I am—Theodosius Butler.’ 

The young lady appeared perfectly satisfied with this argumentative address, and bestowed a look of the most ardent affection on the immortal advocate of bees’-wax. 

Recommendation: Recommended, although this is a book more for dipping into than reading straight through.

Dashed Off XXIV

 Many times when we get a Box statement, we are getting it for a domain; if we do not keep track of the domain, we may confuse the relevant strong modality and absolute necessity.

Pr 25:2 and royal munus

Vengefulness is a kind of madness.

just taste : union of internal senses :: character : union of virtues

"Poetry is a complication of beauties, reflecting by their union additional lustre on one another. The sublime, the new, the elegant, the natural, the virtuous, are often blended in the imitation; brightened by the power of fiction, and the richest variety of imagery, and rendered more delightful by the harmony of numbers." Gerard
"As one *science*, by supplying illustrations, makes another better *understood*; so one *art*, by throwing lustre on another, makes it more exquisitely *relished*."

union of internal senses, sensibility of heart, accuracy of perception

'This is my body' as a divine exercitive

Mittamus lignum in panem (Jer 11:19 Vulg).

res : eucharist :: person : Incarnation

In arguing against transubstantiation, Vermigli argues against a certain kind of perspicuity of Scripture.

The human body is an inhering sign of the person.

"A monstrosity belongs to a class contrary to nature  not in its entirety but only to nature in the generality of cases." Aristotle

pooling a soupy mixture of suggestions and conjectures until something definite crystallizes

Many of the things we associate with technology are associated not so much with the technology itself but with the scale at which we use it.

ruling out defective causes in experimental reasoning

impeding vs misdirecting defective causes

beauty as a kind of authority

Prudence gives judiciousness to the cultivation of taste.

A community is always something beyond our experience that enters into our experience in a way that draws *us* into *it*.

Human beings give to pets something analogous to grace -- we lift up our pets so that they can participate in their own way in human lives.

On Aquinas's account of transubstantiation, it is an expressino of God as actus infinitus.

"All is given to the church so that the church may return it to the Word." Jean-Luc Marion

God as Agent Future in the eucharist

The Eucharist as memorial is not merely a remembering but a memorial before the Lord.

As change occurs, the microstate tends to become less predictable from the macrostate. -- Think about this.

Scripture is not merely read but co-read.

Wisdom is the intellect most fully commensurate with being.

Freedom is intrinsically a means and always a sign of something higher than itself.

People often need others to ask them to do things in order to have clear evidence of their own value.

Objections to a position become its glory when by their repeated failures they manifest its likeness to truth.

Every number can be treated as a shifted zero.

The Loomis Method structures drawing on the model of clay-sculpting.

The face gives us more information relevant to practical action than literally anything else in our sensory experience.

'Marginalized' is a not a category of person.

the Church as that in which the history of Christ is recorded

As the Body of Christ, the Church is the principle of spiritual instrumentalization of the things of the world.

A memorial (zikkaron) in the Old Testament is a manifestation by sign of ongoing presence.

"...God has promised himself in order to give human beings a pattern by which they can praise him in a seemly fashion." Augustine (Exp. in Ps 144 (145))

Intentionalism is the most natural way to read anything; it recurs spontaneously and it is always clearly where most people start. Other forms of interpretation are modifications of it for particular ends.

2 Macc 14:35 -- A temple for your tent-building (skenosis) -- cp. Jn 1:14

Wisdom is associated with beginnings and sources.

adikia as rooted in not glorifying God as God (Rm 1:18, 21)

lovingkindness : wrath :: mercy : justice
-- NB in Hos 12:6, Ps 33:5, that pairs lovingkindness and justice; cp also Neh 9:17, linked to mercy and slowness to anger
-- lovingkindess is also often linked with truth

When people talk about epic fantasy, they sometimes mean fantasy structured by at least some epic conventions and sometimes instead fantasy in which worldbuilding itself plays an essential role in the story.

When someone says both A and B, and they appear to conflict, the actual relation between the two may be
(1) contradictory 
(2) inexplicable, e.g., if they aren't sufficiently thought through to have an identifiable relation
(3) consistent under closer logical analysis
(4) consistent under closer contextual analysis, when circumstances are specified
(5) consistent under a more appropriate interpretive method.

assuming for the sake of argument & dialectical fictions

Scientific investigation is always difficult and usually doesn't suceed very well. But the successes it does have are sometimes considerably valuable.

In matters of free speech, people tend to think others should be allowed to speak but they themselves deserve to speak, the asymmetry runs through a great many discussions.

the culture of the temporary

Half of problem-solving is just shifting perspectives to find a better one.

field as function of space and time associated with an equation of motion (describing change over time)

Much of learning is coming to understand less stupidly.

Every axiom, theory, or theorem of physics that has ever had success in solving problems becomes a possible postulate for physicists solving problems, for the rest of time, regardless of its precise status with respect to truth.

The sacred, by nature, is many-leveled in its manifestations.

Because we have obligations we do not choose, we have rights for which we do not have to beg.

Actual hierarchies, rather than schemes in people's heads, tend to be fairly flexible.

Minor repair plays a much more important role in civilization than generally appreciated.

Prudence can imitate prudence and art can imitate art, although only in such ways as are appropriate to itself.

Pedagogy creates canons as a byproduct.

Every serious account of development of doctrine is also an account of the degradation or deterioration of doctrine.

intuition as evidence vs. intuition as sense of evidence

Being, as Kant understands it, is the commensurate object of positing.

We posit things as possible-for-something.

Positive law does not propagate instantaneously; it ripples out through intermediating channels.

Law piggybacks on reason.

Most of sacred scripture's influence is subtle, and much of it is indrect. Protestants sometimes make the mistake of assuming that perspicuity means that the effects and benefits, rather than the core meaning, are clear, but in fact we often do not trace Scripture's effects and benefits until long afterward, and there is evidence enough that we do not fully understand them all.

Our bodies have meanings for us that are not made by any human mind.

yin/yang and the nonseparateness of things

Every sacrament is an exemplate of Christ.

"If divinity alone stood forth on behalf of sinners, the devil would have been conquered not so much by reason as by power. On the other hand, if mortal nature alone pleaded the cause of the fallen, it would not be divested of its condition nor free of its race." Leo

Jesus' history associates him with multiple states of Jewry: Judean, Galilean, Egyption diaspora.

Shantarakshita's objecgtion to the Nyayaikas on enduring selves runs into the problem that receptacles aren't only used to restrain things from moving.

metaphysical noncontradiction -> logical noncontradiction
- (under mental conditionality / proper functioning) -> doxastic noncontradiction
- (under social conditionality /  proper functioning) -> linguistic/communicative noncontradiction
- (under social conditionality / proper functioning) -> legal/directive noncontradiction

assertoric modality -- 'it is said that', 'X says that', 'according to X', etc.
-- fictional modalities are plausibly assertoric modalities

the importance of a rich ecology of arguments

Life shifts what possibilities are available.

Christ's unique mediation does not exclude the mediations of prophet or apostle or evangelist.

Freedom is a deontic power.

Chameleon

A worldly Christian resembles a chameleon which possesses two independent eyes addicted to looking in opposite directions. 

 One eye, let us say, peers frankly downwards fly seeking. 

 The twin eye peers skywards. 

 A chameleon used to enjoy the credit of living on air: surely an all but angelic reptile! 

 Such was the verdict of ignorance. The verdict of knowledge, nowadays, is that the chameleon simply lives on insects. 

 His downward eye contemplating earth hunts a walking fly. His upward eye scouring heaven presumably hunts a floating fly, but still a fly. 

 There remains no difference worth speaking of between his upward eye and his downward eye.

Christina Georgina Rossetti,  Time Flies: A Reading Diary, October 24.