Devereaux on Spiritual Power in Tolkien

 Bret Devereaux, at "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry", recently had a very good series on Rings of Power, that touches on issues that go well beyond that series, with problems in how one's handling of medieval settings in fantasy fiction can go wrong:

The Siege of Eregion, Part I: What Logistics?

The Siege of Eregion, Part II: What Siege Camp?

The Siege of Eregion, Part III: What Catapults?

The Siege of Eregion, Part IV: What Siege Equipment?

The Siege of Eregion, Part V: What Tactics?

He's also had two other post that are not strictly part of the same series, but do have some broader thematic links:

Why Celebrimbor Fell but Boromir Conquered: The Moral Universe of Tolkien

How Gandal Proved Mightiest: Spiritual Power in Tolkien

The latter is especially good, and is the one to read if you only read one. One thing I will add is that the Wizards' staffs seem to function as insignia of (spiritual) authority, and thus (like their words) as part of how they exercise authority (which for them can have effects on the world) -- this seems quite clearly indicated by Gandalf's breaking of Saruman's staff, in which, having been promoted by higher powers, he is effectively removing Saruman from office, both substantively and symbolically. (It's an interesting comparison and contrast with the Ring. The staffs seem to be just effective symbols of an authority received by mission from a higher power; this is essential to the function of Wizards, who are in fact massively more powerful than they appear but who are only authorized to use that power for purposes related to their mission. With the Ring, however, Sauron has alienated much of his own power into an artifact in order to use his own power more effectively -- he is a case study in the evil of using yourself as a mere means. The Ring is not a sign of his authority, because he has no mission, but just is partly Sauron himself. And the closest we get in The Lord of the Rings to seeing Sauron himself directly exercise power is when Frodo, seeming to be a figure in white with a wheel of fire on his chest, faces Gollum and out of the fire a commanding voice tells Gollum to go, and if he ever lays hands on him again, he shall be cast into the Fire of Doom. And it is so. Frodo is not Sauron -- but the command through the Ring has much of the authority of Sauron, limited only by the limitations of Frodo himself. Someone like Gandalf or Galadriel could do far more with it, effectively adding much of the power of Sauron to their own; and Sauron, of course, far more still.)

Sympathetic Affections

 It is true that nature has sympathetic affections gently inclining us to love and do good to our neighbour. Philosophers did not delay in firmly attaching their shaky morality to them, but the effort was soon seen to fail. Good sense saw that sympathetic affection and gentle inclinations did not contain the authority of law. Subject to illusions and eccentricities, and even to serious disorders, they also vary capriciously in different individuals,a nd sometimes lead us to offend rather than practise virtue. Affections, therefore, could not be considered the principle of the moral activity necessary for individuals, for society and for the human race. Moreover, even if we found affections on the same level and with the same nature in everyone, and free from the restrictions we have mentioned, we would still have to take account of their uncertain tenuous power....

[Antonio Rosmini, The Essence of Right, Cleary and Watson, trs., Rosmini House (Durham: 1993), pp. 119-120.]

Another Himself

 Today is the feast day of St. Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa, Virgin and Doctor of the Church. usually known in English as St. Catherine of Siena. From the Dialogue:

The soul, who is lifted by a very great and yearning desire for the honor of God and the salvation of souls, begins by exercising herself, for a certain space of time, in the ordinary virtues, remaining in the cell of self-knowledge, in order to know better the goodness of God towards her. This she does because knowledge must precede love, and only when she has attained love, can she strive to follow and to clothe herself with the truth. But, in no way, does the creature receive such a taste of the truth, or so brilliant a light therefrom, as by means of humble and continuous prayer, founded on knowledge of herself and of God; because prayer, exercising her in the above way, unites with God the soul that follows the footprints of Christ Crucified, and thus, by desire and affection, and union of love, makes her another Himself. Christ would seem to have meant this, when He said: To him who will love Me and will observe My commandment, will I manifest Myself; and he shall be one thing with Me and I with him. In several places we find similar words, by which we can see that it is, indeed, through the effect of love, that the soul becomes another Himself.

Intellect and Alternate Possibilities

If we look at positions that accept the idea that human beings can select from alternative possibilities, we can divide a large portion of them into two families.

(1) Both the intellect and the will are free powers. On this view, the full phenomenon of what we call 'free will' involves not merely freedom of choice in the will but also a kind of freedom in the intellect (sometimes called freedom of decision). The intellect, when dealing with matters less than perfectly certain can decide to suppose, or presume, or hypothesize, or guess, or select, or some such, entirely as part of its own operation, and in a way that is distinct from any choice of the will. (This is not necessarily to say that every case in which the intellect seems involved with alternative possibilities is purely on the part of the intellect; depending on the specifics of the position, there may be cases in which the will can direct the intellect as well.) An example of a major philosopher who accepts a position like this is Thomas Aquinas. 

However, this is by far the minority view. The majority view is:

(2) The intellect is a natural power and the will a free power. While the will may freely choose from among alternatives, the intellect is entirely natural and determinate; any case in which the intellect seems to be doing something involving alternative possibilities is in reality a case in which the will is directing the intellect. The Cartesians are a major modern example of (2); this position in fact plays a significant role in Cartesian theories of error. As Descartes develops the idea in Meditation V, we only ever go wrong because the will misuses its freedom to jump to a conclusion that is not clearly and distinctly perceived. 

Malebranche gives a slightly different, and much more explicitly developed, version of the Cartesian position in The Search after Truth (Book One, Chapter Two). As Malebranche develops the idea there, for something to be genuinely evident (i.e., obvious), the intellect has to have examined the matter fully, and in particular has to have considered all relevant relations. This is pretty much the entire function of the intellect -- it perceives, either incompletely or completely, either clearly and distinctly or not. When the intellect has done so, there's nothing left for the will to do -- it can't will for the intellect to consider a new relation, because there isn't any, so it has to repose with what the intellect has done. 

On Malebranche's account, this repose is what we are talking about when we talk about judgment and inference as if they were involuntary things. The will is in fact what does them, it's just that it has reached the end of what it can do, so it rests. In matters in which the intellect has not done a complete examination, however, so that parts of the subject are unexamined or still obscure, the will can choose to have the intellect look at something new, or it can stop. This covers cases in which our judgments and inferences seem to be voluntary.

As Malebranche notes, this account means that there is no fundamental distinction between what is called intellectual assent and what is called the consent of will; intellectual assent just is volitional consent. When we are dealing with good, most people can easily recognize that consent to good is a voluntary act of will, but they struggle when it comes to consent to truth:

But we do not likewise perceive that we make use of our freedom in consenting to truth, especially when it appears altogether evident to us; and this makes us believe that consent to truth is not voluntary. As if it were necessary that our actiosn be indifferent to be voluntary, and as if the blessed did not love God quite voluntarily, without being diverted by anything whatever, just as we consent to this evident proposition, that twice two is four, without being diverted from believing it by anything indicating otherwise. (LO 9)

The real distinction between the two doesn't have to do with the act but the object; the true consists in the relations we perceive between things, whereas the good consists in the relation things have with us. The will merely consents to their being relations between things we perceive, but it consents both to the relation of a thing to us and also to our impulse to it, and it is the double consent in the case of goodness that makes it more obvious to people that the will is involved. 

Error, of course, is when we either consent to a relation that the intellect has not actually perceived or consent to a love or impulse that is imperfect. However, Malebranche's conception of this is somewhat different from Descartes's, because he takes us to have an experience of "inward reproaches" (LO 10), shocks or blows as he calles them elsewhere, of reason, and he relies on this more than on the bare case of clear and distinct perception. Thus the rules for avoiding error are, paraphrasing slightly:

1. Never give complete consent to something as true unless it is so evident that we cannot refuse our consent without experiencing internal pain and "inward reproaches" of reason. 

2. Never completely love something if we can refuse to love it without remorse of conscience.

It's important, however, in the case of the first rule that it's not the bare experience of internal pain when we try not to consent, but the experience of it on the basis of the evidentness of the thing, which is tied, again, to the intellect having thoroughly examined the matter. This way of thinking means that the thorough examination rule from Descartes's rules of method plays a much more obvious role than it sometimes does in other Cartesians, including Descartes himself. Malebranche holds that we should sometimes consent to probabilities, albeit specifically in a way that recognizes them as such, as parts, so to speak, of an inquiry not yet finished. It also means that we can in principle always tell whether we are in error or not simply by self-examination.

In any case, the work here is all done by the will, which directs everything. The intellect is a passive power, and Malebranche thinks that treating it as if it were an active one like the will is a serious mistake that creates methodological problems. There are other varieties of the second family noted above, however, that regard the intellect as active -- they would in fact distinguish assent and consent, they just think that the assent of the intellect is natural. Thus we get the division:

	The intellect itself is a free power	The intellect itself is not a free power
The intellect is an active power	(1), e.g., Thomas Aquinas: the intellect and the will each have their own distinctive free acts	(2a), e.g., John Duns Scotus: the intellect has its own distinctive acts, but all free acts are of the will
The intellect is a passive power	(completely empty, as far as I know)	(2b), e.g., Nicolas Malebranche: the intellect merely receives representations of relations, and all acts, free or not, are of the will

****

Nicolas Malebranche, The Search after Truth, Lennon & Olscamp, eds., Cambridge UP (New York: 1997).

A Poem Re-Draft

 Triptych 

 I. Fire Sermon
Of earth, which slides toward hell 

 Beneath the wisdom tree,
made free,
we see the final victory;
alas,
the world is gone
if we move on!
Without the piety of dawn,
alas,
the world is gone!
Proclaim it
and convey it
in its pure and spotless form;
all who go forth to meet it
are rescued from the storm:
All is burning,
burning,
everything is burning,
all things in fire turning
as ember in the flame.
The eye is burning,
burning,
its vision consumed the same.
With craving and aversion,
with the darkened mind's delusion,
the eye is burning,
burning,
an ashen end is earning.
The ear is burning,
burning,
the nose to flame is turning,
the tongue its fire earning,
body and mind are burning.
The noble seeker tires
of his senses
with their fires,
and casts aside all craving,
all aversion with its raving,
the mind from delusion saving,
now made free.
For beyond rebirth is victory,
the victory of sanctity,
the sanctity of sanity,
an ecstasy fulfilled and done. 

 II. Raja-Yoga
Of purgatory, which stills all desire 

 Work,
devotion,
insight grow,
an intermingled fire-glow,
into a kingly lore,
growing more and ever more
in light
that purges every sin,
purifies the hearts of men,
with inner splendor shining,
every glory intertwining.
The world of flesh is ever-changed,
battered,
moved,
by force deranged,
but it cannot enchain
the light unmoved to fear or flight,
unchanged above the fight.
Those who tread the holy course
come to rest in purest source,
which is both psalm and sacrifice,
which is both priest and priest's device,
the ever-burning fire
that quenches all desire,
the candle,
offering,
and adored,
the Prayer,
Priest,
and holy Lord,
the baptizing font of eternity
beyond and more than victory!
Who will in hope of heart convert
will to heaven's Lord revert,
no matter sin,
no matter shame,
return again to holy name.
Fix heart and thought on what endures,
the being,
thought,
and bliss most pure! 

 III. The Most Songly Song
Of heaven, which is the saint in God 

 May he kiss --
 -- your love more sweet than wine,
the bliss
beyond all fruit of vine --
 -- the incense fair,
a holy name,
all things love you,
who are one and same;
as king into the inmost place,
loving lure and loving chase --
-- all wealth is as nothing next to you --
 -- like crocus I am overflowing dew,
more pure than all,
with love lily-true.
He is an apple tree,
freshly sweet;
beneath his shade I take my seat.
Refreshed with apples,
drunk with love,
may his hand be underneath me,
he above,
like gazelle leaping on the hill,
a splendor that my eyes would fill --
 -- the flowers bloom;
in spring is heard
the singing of the gentle bird;
arise,
my love,
come away,
my love,
unveil your splendid ray:
let loose your voice,
unhide your face --
-- with him do I find my place,
thought and thought intertwine,
for I am his and he is mine.
O north-wind rise,
upon this garden blow;
O come,
my love,
as breeze-held spices flow! --
-- I come into my garden,
O bride most fair and mine,
and gather myrrh,
taste honey,
and drink my wine --
 -- a mansion of riches is my beloved,
marble and gold to his feet,
altogether lovely
and mouth most lovely sweet --
 -- my pure,
my dove,
is one and only one,
joysome as dawn;
she is fair as moon,
clear as sun;
I went down to the garden
to see the earth bloom bright
and I was made a king
by the sight --
 -- I am my beloved's,
his love is for me;
let us go down to the garden,
the blooming to see --
 -- set me as a seal upon your heart,
forever same,
for love is strong as death
and (I dare to speak the Name),
it is God-flame,
unquenched by any water's flood,
ever-resting,
ever-acting,
ever good.

Non-Papabile

In times of papal conclave, people can't help but speculate about who might be the next pope. Here's the most helpful graphic for such speculations (it's been going around online, and I don't know who first started it).

 

Dashed Off IX

This begins the notebook started in January 2024.

***** 

It is in the sacrament of marriage that we most clearly see the transfiguration of the earthly and mundane (water) into the heavenly and spiritual (wine).

levels of pedagogy
(1) nominal (classification scheme)
(2) verbal definition (how classifications are used)
(3) representational (experiential familiarity)
(4) knowledge (logical ordering)
(5) understanding

"Consciousness is a being outside being within being." Novalis (tracing out an idea in Fichte)
"Science [Wissenschaft] is the projection, grapsed in signs of the essence and qualities of A Whole."
"Almost every person is already an artist to a limited extent."
"The ground of all perversity in attitude and opinion is -- mistaking the means for the end."
"Marriage is to politics what the lever is to mechanics. The state does not consist of individual people, but of pairs and societies. The condition of marriage is the condition of the state -- wife and husband."
"The art of estranging in a pleasing way, of making an object strange and yet familiar and attractive -- that is romantic poetics."
"Where there are no gods, ghosts rule."

The citizen is not the servant of the state; the state is the servant of the citizenry as a whole.

Landmarks are used in navigation to orient forward/backward, to identify points of turn, to confirm correctness of path, and to provide warning of navigational error.

the importance of doing things the hard way for training one's skill and taste

"In every sphere, through everything that becomes present to us, we gaze toward the train of the eternal You, in each we perceive a breath of it; in every You we address the eternal You, in every sphere according to its manner." Buber

The -le at the end of many English verbs seems to be a frequentative, indicating a repetitive or continuous action. (E.g., sparkle, repeatedly or continually giving sparks.)

the importance of a man finding his comfortable oddity

Revolutions are forest fires, and they are fools who set them lightly.

Dogma expresses itself into praxis.

free will, chance, rationality (providence), and original sin (broadly construed) as the key principles underlying good historical scholarship

No amount of emphasis on method can eliminate the need for good taste in historical scholarship.

All human beings fictionalize the world to some extent -- by anthropocentrism and personification, by allegory, by pedagogical illustration, by transference from story to nature, and more.

development of doctrine // philosophia as shared love of wisdom

Newman's Notes of Development as ways of learning doctrine

NB Conyers Middleton's argument (in Introductory Discourses) that essential seeds of 'Popery' were established by the fifth century at the latest: "the institution of Monkery; the worship of reliques, invocation of saints, prayers for the Dead; the superstitious use of Images, of the Sacraments, of the Sign of the Cross; and of consecrated oil." He takes these to be confirmed in the eyes of the Fathers by primitive miracles, so that "if we admit the Miracles, we must necessarily admit the rites, for the sake of which they were wrought; they both rest on the same bottom, and mutually establish each other." Thus he rejects the one by rejecting the other. It is not surprising, I think, that magisterial Protestant divines often saw this as an attack on them, not despite but because of Middleton's insistence that this line of thought was a necessary implication of Protestantism. (Note that on at least a few things, like the Eucharist, Middleton traces the line all the way to the second century; he holds that the assertion of miracles, although dying out with the Apostles, was revived about fifty years later.)

From scoffing premises it is hardly surprising that one derives scoffing conclusions.

An ideal can only be fully grasped in a person.

"As we cannot give a general definition of energy, the principle of the conservation of energy siply signifies that there is a *something* which remains constant." Poincare

"An affirmative hypothetical is not simply convertible, and in respect of distribution, its consequent practically corresponds to the undistributed predicate of an affirmative categorical in which the terms are general. On the other hand, a negative hypothetical *is* simply convertible and its consequent corresponds to the distributed predicate of a negative categorical." J. N . Keynes

NB Keynes' use of Euler circles to illustrate distribution of predicate

Words shift about in meaning depending on the sentences in which they are found.

Copulas are not identity functions.

"Who is a hero? He who subdues his inclination." Ben-Zoma, in M. Avot 4.1

You are not called to complete the great task but to continue it.

"Science is permeated with values, ethics in the search for truth and aesthetics in the conceptual judgment of hypotheses." Eccles

Sensory impressions mostly affect us by jostling with other sensory impressions.

Critique is dialectical and tehrefore interpretable only in light of an end.

The existence of the Other extends my freedom.

History is woven of many histories.

Freedom cooperating with freedom is much more than two freedoms.

Always look skeptically at the self-assertion of the University; the politics may change but the nastiness of it does not.

Grace is the only revolution that ultimately matters.

the atmosphere of truth, goodness, and beauty

"Science is a continuous human struggle with what is as yet unintelligible, and this struggle is its very life. The petrified science of an inferior text-book is not science at all." J. S. Haldane

If consciousness is epiphenomenal, scientific inquiry is also epiphenomenal; if the universe is deterministic, scientific inquiry is also deterministic; if everything in the universe is a physical process, scientific inquiry is also a physical process.

"We discover natural law not because Nature is obviously an orderly system but because we labor and struggle to extract order from the chaos of experience. Natural law is a result obtained when man works for an end." E. W. Barnes

"Revolutions have never found it easy to give power to the people when revolution is accomplished. Liberals were not always democrats. The power of the people is not invariably exercise to make men more free." Owen Chadwick
"Religion is a commoner interest of most of the human race than is Physics or Biology. The great public was far more interested in Science-versus-Religion than in Science."

evolutionary selection by recurring development of habits of behavior (Lamarck takes this to be far too direct and singular)

Part of the problem with Veatch's attack on 'Hippocratic ethics' is seen in the discussion of confidentiality, in which he attributes to the Hippocratic ethics exactly the opposite of what the Hippocratic Oath says. The Oath makes it a matter of sacred oath not to disclse the secrets of the patient, and Veatch repeatedly claims that the "standard Hippocratic position" requires disclosures for benefit. This is tied to his (incorrect) reading of the Hippocratic tradition as consequentialist.

Veatch seems not to grasp that his deployment of diversity against professional codes actually works against his own common morality approach, as well, with very little modification. Nothing in Veatch's account of secular ways of knowing norms is consistent with Barth, proving the falseness of the 'common'. (And it's worth noting in connection with this that Veatch completely bungles the discussion of Catholic medical ethics.)

the Poirot conundrum -- when we know what *must* have happened, but not *that* it happened (Death on the Nile)

social functions as arising from intentions + incentives + constraints

What we identify as our interests is based on what we take to belong to us, including what belongs to us by right.

Canonical texts are, as canonical, an expression of the effectiveness of pedagogy.

Autonomy is a matter of the universality, the unboundedness, of reason.

types of cheese; fresh, soft-ripened, semi-soft, semi-firm, firm, blue

"The Categorical Imperative, in all its versions, including the Formula of Autonomy, articulates this double modal structure fo the supreme principle of reason for the domain of action: we *must* act on principles others *can* follow." O'Neill
"If blanket scepticism is not a feasible basis for life we must place trust selectively and with discrimination even when we lack any guarantee that agents or institutions of any specific sort are unfailingly trustworthy."
"The first step in a pursuit of greater trustworthiness is to ask how and how far structures are in place to ensure that institutions and individuals generally act in trustworthy ways."
"Trust will be restored only if the public have ways of judging matters *for themselves*."

Trustworthiness can be built. Trust must be grown.

faith as an organizer of our sense of loyalty and our sense of adventure

"We have made alive everything through water." Sura 21:30

"Free will is the endeavor to thank God for His beneficence." Rumi

category theory & demonstrative regress in the order of formal causes

A formal model is a logical structure (set of relations associated with set of objects) consistent with a set of admissible expressions.

the actuality operator as a what-if-actual operator

Liberty of conscience is required in some form for the community actually to be common, and thus a community, not merely an imposed association.

Human nature posits an ideal commensurate with its own potential.

"An institution is a pattern or framework of personal relationships within which a number of people cooperate, over a period of time and subject to certain rules, to satisfy a need, fulfil a purpose, or realise a value." Macbeath

Only God and the Devil actually have the patience to be utilitarians, and neither is one.

In scholarship you do not merely learn about the thing, you participate in it, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly and in more complex ways, sometimes even by a sort of opposition.

the liturgical system: the Church Triumphant reflected in the Church Militant
the penitential system: the Church Patient reflected in the Church Militant

the habitudo between subject and predicate arising from their locations in a common classification

Every person is a sign of God's holy work.

The unity of the Church is not based on ambiguity.

Understanding the spiritual aspects of sex requires extraordinary ascetic discipline; it is purification, not sexual experience, that creates the insight.

kinds of murder mystery
time-shifted murder 
time-shifted alibi
person-shifted alibi (decoy)
time-delay (prepared) murder (trap)
remote-initiated murder (mediated)
-- the alibi must apply to the relevant person at the right time, in such a way as to prevent the murder being able to prevent the murder being able to be perpetrated by that person (are there stories that disrup this latter that aren't traps? Right person at right time, but in fact the alibi only apparently shows that they couldn't do it. [place-shifted alibis! mediated murder])
-- decoy can be intentional or accidental/opportunistic 

possibility-exclusion scenes, possibility-discovery scenes

whodunit, howdunit, whydunit, howcatchem

Mos Def's characterization of pop music: "compatible with shopping"

Locked Room solutions
(1) Locked Room is after murder (time-shifted).
(2) Locked Room has non-obvious access.
(3) Murderer was nonobviously in the Locked Room.

Jane Kalmes:
The victim was (1) alone (or alone with patsy) in a (2) locked room in which (3) he died.
-- eliminate (1): murderer was in the room
-- eliminate (2): there was actually access
-- eliminate (3): the death was at a different time

-- any form of apparently impenetrable security or apparently unsurmounted loneliness can be the structure of a 'locked room'

The human body is always already juridical.

Hegelian philosophy can be seen as a gesture toward the hypercivilizational tier of philosophy, but is too crude to be successful at that level.