Aquinas on the Right

 Summa Theologiae 1.57.1, my very rough translation. The Domincan Fathers translation is here, the Latin is here. This passage is quite tricky to render into English! English, unlike some European languages, has long since dropped the distinction between 'right' and 'law' -- what we call 'philosophy of law', for instance, is called 'philosophy of right' in some other languages. We usually use 'right' terms for what is sometimes called 'subjective right', not, as they would originally have been used, for 'objective right', as here. And we have no word at all that corresponds to fas; perhaps in some very limited contexts, a word like 'religion' is used in something like this sense, and in others 'divine law' or 'eternal law', but there is no consistency at all on the point. In addition, in this article Aquinas is sorting through words that are closely related, and sometimes nearly but not exactly synonymous, and the shades of similarity and difference are difficult to preserve in translation. There are also a few words that have both common meanings and technical meanings, and sometimes they are both in view.

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It seems that the right [ius] is not the object of justice. For the jurist Celsus says that the right is the art of the good and equitable. But an art is not the object of justice, but is by itself an intellectual virtue. Therefore the right is not the object of justice.

Further, law, as Isidore says (Etym.), is a kind of right. But law is not the object of justice, but rather of prudence; thus the Philosopher posits 'legislative' as a part of prudence. Therefore the right is not the object of justice.

Further, justice principally subordinates man to God; and Augustine says (de mor. Eccles.) that 'justice is love serving God alone, and from this ruling well all other things that are subordinate to man'. But the right does not pertain to the divine, but only to the human; thus Isidore (Etym.) says that 'the divinely ordered [fas] is divine law, but the right [ius] is human law'. Therefore the right is not the object of justice.

But contrariwise is what Isidore says, in the same, that the right [ius] is so called because it is the just [iustum]. But the just is the object of justice; thus the Philosophers says (Ethic. V) that 'all call justice the disposition by which just things are done'. Therefore the right is the object of justice.

I reply that it must be said that it is proper to justice among other virtues to order man in those things in which he is 'to the other'.  Thus it implies a sort of equality, as its name shows, so that it is commonly said that what is made adequate is just, for equality is 'to the other'. But other virtues complete man only in the things which befit him in himself. Therefore what is right [rectum] in the works of other virtues, to which the disposition of virtue tends as to its proper object, is not attributed except by comparison to the agent. But what is right [rectum] in the work of justice, besides being by comparison to the agent, is constituted by comparison to the other, so that what is said to be just in our works is that which is according to some equality to another, like the payment of a wage owed for a performed service. Therefore something is said to be just [iustum], as having the rightness [rectitudinem] of justice, which is that in which the act of justice terminates, even without considering the way it is done by the agent, but in other virtues nothing is determined to be right [rectum] save in that way that it is done by the agent. And because of this justice is specifically determined beyond other virtues according to its object, which is called 'the just' [iustum]. And this is the same as the right [ius]. Thus it is obvious that the right is the object of justice.

Therefore to the first it must be said that it is customary for names to be turned from their first imposition to another meaning, just as the name 'medicine' is in the first place imposed to mean that which is given to the sick to make them healthy, but is then applied to meaning the the art by which it is done. So also this name, 'the right', is first imposed to signify the just thing itself [ipsam rem iustam], and afterward is applied to the art which knows what is just; and further to note the place in which the right is administered, as when someone is said to be in jure; and even further to saying that the right is administered by one whose office it is to do justice, even if his judgment is wicked [iniquum].

To the second it must be said that just as there preexists some proportion [ratio] in the mind of the artisan for what is done externally by an art, which is said to be the rule of the art, so also for the just work itself there preexists in the mind some proportion [ratio] by which its proportion [ratio] is determined, as it were some rule of prudence. And if this is collected in writing, it is called law, so that law, according to Isidore, is written system [constitutio scripta]. And thus law is not the same as the right, properly speaking, but a sort of proportion of the right [ratio iuris].

To the third it must be said that because justice implies equality, but we are not able to give God equivalent recompense, therefore we cannot give what is just, according to complete proportion [secundum perfectam rationem], to God. And because of this, 'the right' [ius] is not properly said of divine law, but 'the divinely ordered' [fas], because God is satisfied if we do what we can. But justice tends toward man, insofar as he can, giving recompense to God, by totally subordinating his soul to him.

James Earl Jones, 1931-2024

 James Earl Jones died today, in Dutchess County, NY; he was 93. With his passing, it seems like an entire era has passed. He received a B.A. in drama in 1955, and did various theatre gigs before and after a stint in the U.S. Army. During the Army he became Catholic, and continued to be for the rest of his life. After some moderate success on stage, he had his film debut with Dr. Strangelove in 1964 (Kubrick had liked his stage portrayal of Othello), but his career really began to take off with his role in 1970 with The Great White Hope (he had starred in the stage version a few years earlier). He was quite busy from then on, but of course had his most iconic voice role in 1977, when he was dubbed in for Darth Vader in Star Wars. It was an uncredited role, as would be the same role in Empire Strikes Back, and the first movie earned Jones a grand total of $7000, although he did receive credit in The Return of the Jedi. (Jones himself would always say that he didn't think of it as an ordinary acting role, but more as a contribution to special effects, so he didn't mind not being credited for it, but by the third movie thought he might as well be, given that everyone knew it was him, anyway.) But this was far from Jones's peak as an actor; he contributed to a long string of very successful movies in the 80s and 90s, becoming one of the most recognizable actors of the era. 

In the past several years, James Earl Jones signed a few contracts to allow certain rights-holders to continue to use his voice, as imitated by computer software, for new parts. But the world is less for the loss of the warmhearted and famously approachable man behind the voice.

And Lots of Little Things Like That

 Ballade of Capital
by G. K. Chesterton 

 The Earth is full of mud and meat,
And malt and salt and sand and spice,
And ships and shells and sugar-beet,
And bread at the Imperial price,
And glass and brass and rum and rice,
And oak and talc and turtle-fat,
And fire and snow and sea and ice,
And lots of little things like that. 

 And all these things we meet --
Are capital: and should suffice
(You say) to do us quite a treat --
As if you and I have each a slice --
… But one whose clothes could scarce entice
Held recently a ragged hat
In which you put the best advice
And lots of little things like that. 

 I own the scheme is very neat,
I do not think it very nice
That we should own the blooming street
With all the people poor as mice.
I have old views: that loaded dice
Are “wrong”, and even Tit-for-tat
“Heathen”, that virtue is not vice --
And lots of little things like that. 

 Envoi
 Prince, Pharoah trounced them in a trice,
The poor that groaned at him: whereat
God sent him flies and frogs and lice
And lots of little things like that.

Fortnightly Book, September 8

 The Jomsvikings were a semi-legendary and highly selective military fraternity in the tenth and eleventh centuries, famed for their fearlessness. They were headquartered in Jomsborg; we don't know exactly where that is, but it was somewhere on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, often thought to be near modern-day Wolin in Poland. They were mercenaries selling the services of their well-organized navy at the highest prices. The order began its decline in the 980s when they were on the losing end of some very disastrous battles in the tug-of-war struggle for power between Norway and Denmark. One of these battles was the Battle of Hjǫrungavágr, which is significant for Scandinavian literature, because quite a few Icelanders fought on the Norwegian side against the Danes and the Jomsvikings, and then went back to tell and write stories about it, several of which were preserved. One of these is the next fortnightly book: The Saga of the Jomsvikings, which focuses on their founding and then on the Battle of Hjǫrungavágr.

Hartmann von Aue, Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry

 Introduction

Opening Passage: From the Gregorius:

My heart has often compelled my tongue to speak much of things that seek worldly reward. My naive years advised it thus. Now this I know to be true indeed: whoever in his youth trusts the scheming of hell's jailer, and, trusting in his youth, sins and says to himself: you are still a young man; there is still plenty of help for all your wrongdoings; you can certainly do penance for them in your old age -- such a person thinks other than he should. These thoughts will easily vanish when the common fate of us all hinders his will to repent, in that bitter death takes vengenace on his earlier way of thinking, cutting short his life with a sudden end. Bereft of grace, he has then chosen the worse course. And even if we were born of Adam, at the time fo Abel, and were to preserve his soul unmarred by sin until Judgment Day, he still would not have done enough to gain eternal life that has no beginning and will also never pass. (pp. 167-168)

Summary: Besides a number of smaller poems that mostly relate crusading and wooing, and the Lament, an apparently early longer work that involves a debate between the body and the heart in matters of love, the works of Hartmann von Aue are Erec, Gregorius, Poor Heinrich, and Iwein. They are all knightly romances. Erec and Iwein are Arthurian romances, and, in fact, are translations and adaptations of earlier Arthurian romances by Chretien de Troyes. Gregorius and Poor Heinrich are non-Arthurian. All four deal with knights who find themselves having to navigate situations far outside the ordinary regions of life.

Erec, the first Arthurian romance to be written in German, follows the adventures of a young knight named Erec, who is humiliated in front of Queen Guinevere by the dwarf of a knight named Iders; Erec attempts to trace down the knight, but as he does so, he spends the night at the house of a nobleman named Coralus, where he meets Coralus's beautiful daughter, Enite. He also learns about an upcoming Sparrowhawk Tournament, in which a sparrowhawk is given as a prize to the knight who successfully proves in battle that his lady is the most beautiful; he learns, moreover, that Iders is participating in the tournament. Borrowing armor from Coralus, he defeats Iders in the tournament, proving Enite the most beautiful lady; they marry and return to Erec's home city, Karnant, where Erec becomes ruler. However, as often happens, the life of ease turns out to be bad for Erec; he spends so much time with his wife that he neglects his duty as a ruler. Erec eventually learns that even Enite thinks he has deteriorated, so he sets out for adventure, taking Enite with him but forbidding her to speak to him. This rule she breaks several times, each time saving his life. They have several adventures, ending with Erec fighting and defeating a powerful knight named Mabonagrin in order to save the widows of eighty knights whom Mabonagrin has killed. Erec defeats the knight and tehrefore is able to return with this honor to the court of King Arthur.

Gregorius tells the story of Gregorius, a knight who discovers that his parents are actually only his by adoption,a dn sets out to learn more about his biological parents, discovering, to his horror, that his parents were brother and sister; that is, Gregorius is the child of incest. He attempts to rise above this by knightly deeds, which lead him to meet the woman who will eventually become his wife. Unfortunately, an accident reveals that she is in fact his mother. This horrifying discovery leads Gregorius to live his life as a holy hermit, living chained living the penitential life on a rock in on an isolated rock in the middle of a large lake. Seventeen years go by, and in Rome, God reveals to some of the clergy that the next Pope will be discovered on a rock in Aquitaine. They find Gregorius there and he becomes Pope.

Der arme Heinrich is about a knight, Heinrich, from Ouwe (Aue), who is a paragon of knightly virtues but is struck by leprosy. He does not take it well, and after consulting every doctor he can, he discovers that there is one and only one cure: the life-blood from the heart of a virgin, freely given. That seems as good as saying that cure is impossible, so Heinrich goes to stay with one of his caretakers, the only person who does not completely shun him for his leprosy. The daughter of the caretaker becomes taken with Heinrich, and when she learns what the cure is, offers her own life so that he might be healed. Being an extremely obstinate and eloquent girl, she manages to convince both Heinrich and her parents that it is useless to try to stop her. They find a doctor, who is for obvious reasons very reluctant to perform this operation; but he too is eventually persuaded. However, Heinrich through a crack in the door sees the girl lying on the table, and is struck by guilt; he prevents the operation, saying that this has made him accept his leprosy. The girl is just as obstinate as she was, and berates him as a coward, but he does not relent. However, as they return to Ouwe, Heinrich's leprosy unexpectedly clears, and Heinrich and the girl marry.

Iwein is the story of Iwein (Ywain), cousin of Gawain, who sets out to avenge the defeat of another cousin, Kalogrenant, at the hands of the knight Askalon. He does so, killing Askalon, but is trapped in Askalon's castle. He only manages to escape with the help of Lunete, the handmaiden of Askalon's wife, Laudine. Iwein happens to see Laudine, however, and falls in love with her; he wins her hand in marriage with the help of Lunete, who convinces Laudine that there is no one else who can provide better protection. However, Gawain notes that Iwein is not adventuring as he used to; he is turning out, in fact, to be something like Erec, so Iwein heads out to see what might befall, but only after having given Laudine a promise that he would return by a year and a day from the time he left; in a sense the year-and-a-day is the time after which a man is legally dead and someone else can usurp his estate, so if he does not return by then, he will have failed as protector. However, Iwein gets so caught up in the tournaments he is attending that he misses the deadline. Lunete brings Laudine's complaint before the Round Table itself, and Iwein is dishonored. Having lost wife, estate, and knightly honor, Iwein goes mad and becomes a wild man, from which state he is rescued by the Lady of Narison, who happens to have a magic salve made by Morgan le Fay, which heals him. In return, he helps her, but he refuses from that point on either to become ruler or to marry, and among his adventures he ends up rescuing a lion from a dragon. The lion becames a loyal companion, so Iwein becomes known far and wide as the Knight with the Lion. He eventually discovers that Lunete has been sentenced to death, and so he defends her innocence in trial by combat, which he is able to do in part with the help of the lion. Through a further set of adventures, Iwein undertakes to help another woman in trial by combat; she is in a dispute with her sister over inheritance. The sister's champion turns out to be exceptionally good, and their fight goes on and on, until nightfall requires the finish of it to be postponed to the next day. By chance, Iwein discovers that his opponent is actually Gawain; King Arthur comes to the rescue by Solomoning the situation, asking the older sister a question that gives her away and proves the younger sister right. Thus Iwein is allowed back into court, but it takes Lunete to trick Laudine into giving Iwein a chance again, which she does by setting up a situation in which Laudine, who does not know Iwein's new identity, to help the Knight with the Lion in regaining his lady's favor. They renew their marriage and live happily ever after.

All of the stories are concerned with honor, of course, but they are also concerned in great measure with the power of love to face adversity, even the most terrible -- a power that love very much needs, because human nature being as it is, without that power, love could not survive humanity itself. We in our folly and failing guarantee that love will face adversity. But love is not conquered by our folly and failing.

Favorite Passage: From the Iwein:

Looking farther, he saw a beautiful big hall, which he and the girl inspected without finding a soul there. He followed a side path leading to a road that went past the hall. Searching carefully, he noticed some stairs. They took him to a huge park, more beautiful than any he had ever seen. There he saw an old knight lying comfortably on a couch, with which the goddess Juno, in her greatest splendor, would have been pleased. The beautiful flowers, the fresh grass enveloped him in a sweet aroma -- it was a pleasant place for the knight to be lying. He was handsomely mature, and in front of him sat a lady who was doubtless his wife. For all their advanced years the pair could not have been more handsome nor have acted with greater dignity. In front of them, in turn, sat a girl who, so I've been told, could read French very well and was entertaining them by doing so. Often she made them laugh. Because she was their daugther they thought whatever she read was fine. It is right to praise a girl who has good manners, beauty, noble birth, youth, wealth, modesty, kindness, and good sense. She had all this and everything else which one could wish for in a woman -- besides which she could read very well. (pp. 303-304)

Recommendation: Recommended.

*****

Hartmann von Aue, Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry: The Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue, Tobin, Vivian, and Lawson, trs., The Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, PA: 2001).

God Almighty and the Ladies

 Religious principles are also a blemish in any polite composition, when they rise up to superstition, and intrude themselves into every sentiment, however remote from any connection with religion. It is no excuse for the poet, that the customs of his country had burthened life with so many religious ceremonies and observances, that no part of it was exempt from that yoke. It must for ever be ridiculous in Petrarch to compare his mistress, Laura, to Jesus Christ. Nor is it less ridiculous in that agreeable libertine, Boccace, very seriously to give thanks to God Almighty and the ladies, for their assistance in defending him against his enemies.

[David Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste", par. 36.]

This is an interesting passage, because the association of the erotic/romantic and the religious is very close to being universal; and perhaps more immediately to the point, a Petrarch who wouldn't associate Laura with religious tones would not have written the poetry he did, and likewise with Boccaccio and his stories, and that would not have been an obvious improvement in the field of 'polite composition'. Nor, if you actually look at either Petrarch or Boccaccio, do the religious elements seem particularly intrusive. It's worth quoting an example of what Hume is complaining about, from Boccaccio's Decameron (in "Conclusion of the Author"):

Most noble damsels, for whose solace I have addressed myself to so long a labour, I have now, methinketh, with the aid of the Divine favour, (vouchsafed me, as I deem, for your pious prayers and not for my proper merits,) throughly accomplished that which I engaged, at the beginning of this present work, to do; wherefore, returning thanks first to God and after to you, it behoveth to give rest to my pen and to my tired hand.

How ridiculous this very mild expression of an author who is responding to criticisms of his work as being immoral or impious may be, is perhaps more controvertible than Hume suggests; at the very least, the association of God Almighty and the ladies is not itself ridiculous. One is inclined to suggest that Hume's Scottish Presbyterian background is showing through here. It seems a touch of bigotry to deny a poet the right to appeal to God Almighty and the ladies; particularly as it is a right that poets have had in possession from time immemorial, and God Almighty and the ladies are the only consistent patrons of poetry through the ages.

Small, Mysterious Threads

 I was looking up something in Nehemiah this morning, and grabbed a Bible that I don't normally use, which I've had for a very long time; it is a 1929 American Standard Version published by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and has the written inscription, 

Presented to Mr. & Mrs. White 
by Harrisburg Christian Church 
December 1, 1949

I don't know these people, although the Harrisburg Christian Church was perhaps a church in Harrisburg, SD, for reasons that become obvious below (I could find no church of that name currently in Harrisburg, SD). In any case, the reason I record this information is that as I was looking up the passage, a little tiny clipping of an obituary fell out. The obituary:

Zipporah Huntley was born in New Lyme, Ashtabula Co., Ohio, Jnne, 3rd, 1825. She was married to F. W. Rice, Jan. 17th, 1850; this union was blessed with three children--two sons and one daughter. She was for many years a devoted member of the Congregational church. She fell asleep in Jesus Oct 22nd, 1912, leaving one son, one daughter and eight grandchildren. Her husband preceded her in death by four years. In the Father's house she awaits the home coming of her loved ones.

(The 'Jnne' for June is in the original.) There is no indication of what newspaper is the source of the clipping.* I don't know either Zipporah Huntley or F. W. Rice, either.  

I cannot remember how the Bible came to me; I would have said that it was probably from my grandparents' library, and thus either from my grandmother or grandfather, but for all I can be sure, I may have picked it up in some free book bin or at a used book sale somewhere. Do I have any familial connection at all with Mr. & Mrs. White, or were they friends of family, or are they simply strangers? I do not know. What connection did they have with Zipporah Huntley or F. W. Rice? I do not know. It's entirely a mystery. And yet here I was this morning somehow connected, in some unknown way, with Zipporah Huntley who died in 1912.

Online, there is some limited information about Zipporah Huntley, although none that I could find about her husband; she has an Ancestry.com entry, which has very limited, tentative information, saying that she was born June 1826 in Ohio or Connecticut and died in Lake Preston, South Dakota on October 22, 1912. It gives her parents as Selden Huntley and Louisa Peck, and gives her children's names as Flora Estella Rice and Sherman E. Rice. The South Dakota place of death is one possible reason to suspect that I just picked up the Bible somewhere; I have a few books that were picked up that way in South Dakota. 

So for all I know the Bible may be in my hands due entirely to the chance event of my rescuing a Bible from a free book bin. But Zipporah Huntley lived and had a family and friends and died in 1912; a church gifted a Bible to a couple in 1949; and at some point, someone put the tiny clipping of the 1912 obituary into that 1949 Bible; and somehow or another that Bible happened to come into my hands. The Bible was an important enough gift to be formally inscribed; the obituary was important enough to somebody to keep in a Bible and carefully preserve, even to the point of ending up in a Bible that did not exist when the obituary was written. And whoever Zipporah Huntley was, someone at least somewhere found her in their family tree in order to put up a brief record about her on the internet. Of such things are most human connections made. And so I put up this record of an obituary clipping found in a Bible, partly to have it in case I ever discover more about it; partly because that obituary clipping will eventually completely disappear, however important it might have been, and it seems a sort of respect, for someone having considered it so important, to reduce the chances of that happening any time soon; and partly so that the information will be available online if anyone, hunting down some genealogical connection, tries to find information about Zipporah Huntley in the future. And also it serves as a reminder that we are connected to other people in many ways. These ways are mostly tenuous, but they are very many, and make up the greater part of what binds the human race together.

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* Since it could be relevant at some future date to determining the source of the obituary, I will note that the reverse of the clipping looks like it is a bit about 'Poor Nobles of Italy' and mentions some medieval castle in a hill town in Central Italy that was sold to an Englishman for $195.