What is certainly good in capitalism is its recognition fo the extraordinary importance of exchange.
the analogies between circumcision and conscience
the verve and cadence of thought
In human society, communication is always partly productive: it is a skill of fashioning, put in the service of certain inds of common cognitive ends.
4 elements of the explanation of the content of ideas, positions, arguments
(1) association (mere)
(2) motivation (motivated association)
(3) causation
(4) intention
When speaking of casuistry it is a mistake to focus too exclusively on cases of conscience; the proper object of study for casuistry is prudence, and all else only secondary to, and derivative from, this.
faith as a taste for truth that saves
cause:effect::rosebud:rose
have no doubt
Zeno will at last win out
in the coffin you'll a Stoic be
What has only finite power cannot maintain itself indefinitely (Saadia).
the mukhassis argument
tajwiz (affirmation of admissibility)
Maimonides (GP 1.73) notes that this cannot be true if we are thinking of imagination.
"Our intellects are incapable of apprehending the perfection of everything He has made and the justice of everything He has commanded." Maimonides (GP 3.49)
the influence of science on the public by sub-intellectual induction
3 kinds of argument for the eternity of the world
(1) eternity of matter
(2) eternity of motion
(3) eternity of cosmos
arts for the sake of knowing
Ruddick's maternal practice & the Marian work of the Church
(1) preserving life
(2) fostering growth
(3) training minds
We feast not merely on food but also on joy.
The world is better for being known.
Phenomenology studies the world according to its organization in second intention.
"It is the asceticism proper to a created intellect that idealism rejects." Maritain
possible being as good for existing
So rich is the notion of being that it raises the prospect of an infinite task of theoretical determination.
judicium est completivum cognitionis
Genuine concern for intellectual progress requires a restrained but real tolerance for inconsistencies: they form aporia by resolution of which we may progress, but in the meantime we are left with good reasons both for & against.
The vices of 'big government' cluster around two points: poor process of appointment and poor use of civil service.
We are such failures as rend the heart; and thus are eminently suitable to be loved.
The purpose of government is to facilitate civic life.
Without the convertibility of good and being it is easy to confuse the discussion of Consolation Book IV with tout-est-bien theodicy (which conflates prevolitional & volitional [moral] good).
philosophy as the sciences of the ends of rational beings
Rejecting convertibility of good and being forces shifts in the evaluation of a number of arguments, e.g., that for God in Cons Phil 3, or argumetns for the claim that nothing happens for the sake of evil as such, which in turn is so important elsewhere.
Educators have always appealed to fear and hope as well as to reason.
The property of the Church is for the purposes of admonition, instruction, edification, and consolation.
Mendelssohn: property rights (esp. pertaining to contracts) presupposes the possibility of using a thing out of benevolence
the separation of school and state
It is notable that the vast majority of the grand projects of the Ancient and the Medieval periods failed, and those that did not usually had only temporary and limited success. What has survived has been the steady work of good teachers and great artisans, insightful philosophers and inspiring writers. And so it shall be with us.
The Spirit confesses within us that God may forgive in Christ.
There is no civility without a prior community.
Dialectic is intellectual catharsis. Poetic catharsis is dialectic of passion and imagination.
Sacramental repentance makes possible the cure even of the intemperate.
Many problematic features of human thought could be removed if only one could convince people of two things:
(1) that being, good, and true are convertible;
(2) that it is more accurate to say that pleasure subserves complete action than that action subserves the end of pleasure.
the Crusades as a parable for or figure of sacramental repentance: in ideal as conveying truths about penitence, in real failing as warning of ways we fail in preparation for and action from the sacrament
acid stress, heat stress, cold stress, osmotic stress
Analogy often has greater psychological force than demonstration;t his is because it is more easily felt, and to minds heavily dependent on imagination and sense it thus seems more real than intellectual rigor does. The same point underlies the bizarre reaction one sometimes finds to rigorous argument, that it is too intellectual and not sufficiently rooted in 'real life', as if there were any better cognition of 'real life' than intellectual cognition. But what is meant is that it is not sufficiently felt and sensed, for they mean by 'real life' nothing other than 'what I sense and feel'.
Experiments are not direct sources of proof but of signs or indications; proof comes at a higher level, whereby one deduces the cause or reason responsible for the whole topography of signs and indications.
localization, assimilation, and motivation in forming community networks.
the preconditions of association
- Part IV of the Treatise is what you get if you attempt to account for preconditions of association wholly by association.
Principles of association describe not causation but coherence.
As different terroirs yield different kinds of wine, so different cultures yield different kinds of doctors, virgins, & martyrs.
The unity of the Church is made possible throught he formation of pedagogical and cooperative polymers.
If you fail to make distinctions it will never be surprising if you get contradictions.
the suggestive in both science & poetry
It is important in sacred doctrine to recognize that an inexact or approximate answer may be adequate for essential purposes, even when an exact answer is available.
progress in exactness, definiteness, and distinctness (progress in description)
sophistics as the logic of semblance
the use of the intellect that most agrees with the nature of the itnellect
(1) universal reasons
(2) congruous similitudes
(3) probable arguments
(4) aids to understanding
Ages of reformation are also ages of heresy: that whereby one reforms is also that whereby one may deform, and where reformation is widespread there will always be found those who deform.
Deference is achieved by negotiations.
Without honesty there is no accuracy of description.
The tendrils of ethics run through all forms of inquiry.
Salt suppresses bitter tastes; even so are we to suppress and dampen bitterness in the world.
A is said to participate B when:
(1) A particularly recieves what pertains to B universally
(2) A recieves in a way determined to one thing (concretely) what pertains to B without such determination (abstractly)
(3) A is an effect that receives in a lesser way what is in its cause in a greater way.
The fall of Eve, life, results in Adam, the earth, receiving also the poison that has corrupted life.
Humility is the virtue to which receptivity to the sublime most properly pertains.
The sentiment made use of by the lector is not the sentiment of dramatic placement in the situation but the sentiment of recollection in tranquillity.
If you have no craft you have no art.
The liberal arts are arts, and as such the teaching of them should be devoted to inculcating the skills required to producint intellectual products that are elegant and are useful for tasks suitable to free and rational people.
The claim that morality is ultimately about pleasures and pains, or that pleasures and pains do not belong to actions but are ends in themselves, is the first step in the process by which Hell attempts to blackmail Heaven.
The diversity of formal systems of reasoning points to the need for an Illative Sense.
NOMA is Kantianism lite.
bene moratus as a shadow or symbol or initial seed of moraliter bonus
worth as immaculate & worth as forgiven
the implicate religion of reason
The sense of 'true' used in the physical sciences is actually an artistic sense, or a close cousin of it, i.e., 'true to life'.
Nothing is a demonstration that does not directly or indirectly deal w/ the full aporia.
Not every taste for logic is a sign of wisdom, but the taste for the order of logic is.
Pr 27:19 as speaking of Chesed
Wisdom generates all other things by measure and meaning.
God in His providence provides, and punishes, and patiently waits.
Even the well-intentioned and honorable have their Adalias.
incompatibility: logical, causal, practical
God can work with noodles, but it takes no vast survey to see that He prefers to use steel.
relative capacity to outendure in cyclic situations
the will as our power for exaltation
Nobility (nobilitas) is a matter of the degree & manner in which a thing is for its own sake.
2 ways to derive quiddity:
(1) from sensory perception by moving from sensible accident to essence
(2) from another, more universal, science
A positive property, in a broad sense, is that which is demonstrated by using the quiddity as a middle term.
One of the things Plato does with myth is use it to draw together various strands of argument.
grounds of suspicion: analogy, simplicity, promise
4 manifestations of natural desire for immortality (Wordsworth):
(1) primal sympathy
(2) spontaneous hope
(3) faith
(4) reason
cf. Rep 582 for Mill's higher and lower pleasures
Sometimes it is a good strategy to try to get it wrong, at least in imagination, so that one may see what makes its wrongness.
Even genuine virtue can coexist with acceptance or approval of moral wrong as a lapse, and even more easily can it accept or approve of it under a description that does not identify it as morally wrong, not realizing that there is more to the matter. Even the finest prudence needs to draw often on actual experience, which may be limited or faulty.
iterations of despair
the endless moving masses crying 'mercy me!'
Religious experiences -- like all experiences -- give us not truths but objects about which we may truly (or falsely) judge.
We should not be glib about saying that two experiences contradict or conflict with each other; this is harder to show than it sounds. (Hume is a salutary warning; blind men & elephant)
analogy of capacity for religious experience with ear for music
Faith is
(a) an intellectual habit (b) of assent, (c) caused by the will (d) in order to acquire some good, (e) to claims (f) that are not evident (g) but are gauth by an authority (h) in the position to know.
Christian faith: (c) the will is moved as an instrument of grace; (d) the good is everlasting happiness; (g) the authority is God
the proportion objection to the necessity for revelation
"Nature is not lacking in what is necessary." Aristotle DA III,9
(1) as to powers of cognition
(2) as to capacity for fulfillment
It is clear from the Baptist and from Jeremiah that sanctification does not require the use of reason.
The first effect of truth in us is illumination. The consequent effect is refutation.
A person may fail to see either from material impediment (defect of organ), or from absence of light, or from refusal to look.
studious vs curious scrutiny
The intellect's power to judge and reason with its terms is not dependent on the origin of its terms.
Logical positivism reduces all necessity to hypothetical necessity.
Liguorian theory of good faith
From the evil of one's own error only a fool will conclude there is no truth.
the analogy between inherence of indivisible intellect in body & the Real Presence (Ockham & Buridan)
intellectual intussusception
the different ways in which intellect & will are each a vis collativa
bonum honestum as intelligible beauty
Household management is financial insofar as it concerns things and political insofar as it concerns people; and this is true of economics more broadly.
No argument that can be put into words can compel, because words cannot carry compulsion.
explication of sensed relevance
Poetic description assists in discovery by
(1) making similarities and dissimilarities salient
(2) providing access to experiences that may detach from the description
(3) carrying forward experiences into new contexts
(4) increasing and diversifying the competition of descriptions
Every government is in some sense a rule by the majority, but the sense varies somewhat from government to government.
the essential components for a true 'respect for reason'
(1) a delight in promising ideas
(2) a concern for good judgment
(3) an interest in the order and structure of reasoning
(4) an appreciation of the value of deliberation
(5) an endeavor to match reason and life together
- these are quasi-integral parts of 'respect for reason' broadly understood
- a common failing is to think that pursuit of an adjunct or potential part of the respect for reason could somehow excuse the lack of a quasi-integral part. But without the latter there is no respect for reason as such, only at best things associated with it.
To accept the rationality of existence is not an act of faith but of understanding.
Change is from terminus to terminus in a genus, through intermediates in that genus.
(1) The terminus of the generation of a thing must be the thing itself and not merely something prior to it.
(2) What can never be the terminus of generation is ingenerable.
(3) What is ingenerable is indestructible.
Wordsworth's Intimations as an argument that we have a natural desire for eternity.
samsara as a figure of the life of sin
Something that is true of every skill is that if we stop practicing basics we begin to get sloppy ("rusty"). If this is true of skills, what could there possibly be about virtues to prevent them from exhibiting the same characteristic? Nothing whatsoever.
pratitya samutpada implies intelligence, but not an intelligence like ours
If something is X and "that is all there is to it", "that is all there is to it" itself needs explanation.
A free market presupposes that the participants have sufficient education and means to take advantage of a wide variety of opportunities.
No one learns anything from history when it is always used as a club.
the askesis of proclamation
Honor is founded on traditions.
It makes sense to respect beliefs for their truth, for their beauty, and for their utility to good, because it makes sense to respect anything for these.
ecclesiological, Mariological, and hagiological interpretations of the Song of Solomon
Mary : Church :: Joseph : prelates (Albert)
Pr 31:10-31 & the Bride of the Lamb
Col 1:10 as the key text of iconography
If it is demonstration that gives knowledge, why does Scripture proceed poetically? To give discovery.
the two questions criticism of Hume
Theological truths supersaturate philosophical forms for expressing them.
the sense in which wearing a blindfold is natural but gouging out one's eyes is not
Contradiction explosion requires selective destruction of information.
Composition of relevance requires sameness of kind.
pleasantness as an image & symbol of happiness
noncoercion as an image & symbol of liberty
originality as an image & symbol of magnanimity
sociability as an image & symbol of morality
The humanity of Christ, creaturely happiness, & the Virgin as finite things of infinite dignity & worth (cf. ST 1.25.6ad4)
the socially convenient ambiguity of the notion of 'design' in design arguments
apologetic, polemic, hermeneutic, & edifactory uses of arguments
- defense, offense, explication, and encouragement
Ps 90:2 & creation ex nihilo (Saadia)
Suppose we call goods that are purely or nearly purely skill-dependent conjurable goods. An example of a conjurable good would be reliable answers to difficult mathematical equations. We often talk abut hte economics of conjurable goods as if we paid for skills, but, in fact, we rarely if ever pay people for their skills but instead for the goods they conjure with them. Likewise, conjurable goods are not services but products, although we often in practice confuse conjurable goods with services.
One of the noteworthy things about conjurable goods is that they allow people to produce something almost out of nothing -- strictly, out of no more than the energy required to put the skill into effect (although some resources, e.g., pen and paper, will also, as it happens, be involved). The rsult produced, however, is exchangeable for nonconjurables like money and food. The exchange rate is subject to supply and demand, and the value of conjurable goods can be depreciated by technology. (We see both in action throughout history: the conjurable good, reliable answer to arithmetical problem, has lost its value over time due both to the spread of the skill and the invention of calculating devices.) Conjurable goods throw off conservation laws for economics, but they are valued goods nonetheless; they thus are relatively free of material resources and requirements and tend to be the offshoots of the valuable of our general problem-solving capacity, reason. Liberal arts in the strict sense are the skills or crafts that produce conjurable goods. One notices that we tend to conjure with language and number, and it is perhaps the case that all conjurable goods are in some way directly connected to either or both.
One of the interesting economic features of fantasy worlds with magic is that in them material goods become conjurable goods, more like the results of liberal arts (applied mathematics, applied language skills) than they are in our nonmagical world.
Note also that there are institutional or official conjurable goods. CHurches, for instance, create space on liturgical calendars; this requires only the energy of promulgating the calendar & the conjurable goods associated with calendar making (astronomy in the old-fashioned sense). In general they don't sell these for material goods, but this for ethical rather than economic reasons. Likewise a voudou priest or priestess can make a contract with spirits, and charge you for the good produced, much the same way a lawyer cna charge you for the contracts conjured, or a notary for a signature. (Voudou and its cousins are especially interesting in this regard because they are religious systems whose most obvious characteristic is their elaborate, complex, and often highly rational economies of conjurable goods.)
Conjurable goods guarantee that economic systems are not closed systems.
We need a theory of good taste because beauty is what pleases on being seen; and because beauty is predicated analogically we need to recognize different kinds of good taste.
The one thing that makes organ music generally suitable to church use is reverberation: you don't just hear it but feel it inside you, even if only subtly.
The resentment of the Pharisees (faithful son) contrasts with the joy of the angels (shepherd & woman).
Most people who identify themselves as 'skeptics' are really just people who are abnormally likely to assume that the crude rule-of-thumb distinctions we all pick up for practical purposes are in fact universal and exceptionless.
The ninety-nine, the lost coin, & the prodigal son all indicate that the joy in heaven over the repenting sinner is the joy of relief (or something analogous).
- it is a joy sprung from patient (and active) waiting.
Standard propositional logic is properly speaking a logical theory of eliminative arguments. It applies to real life arguments only insofar as they can be reworked into eliminative form.
the poet as perirrhanterium
The primary teaching authority of the Church is exercised in authorizing, permitting, and tolerating, and only thereafter in warning and forbidding.
Moral virtue is like knowledge or craft on one side and health and bearing on the other.
the sorrow that eaches pity and patient hope
Simply assuming that the answers to one's questions will be simple is the first step toward believing extraordinarily stupid things.
The naive believer in progress thinks that when you reach the top of a mountain you keep climbing to get to the stars. Such naive extrapolation overlooks the possibility that the stars can only be reached in a completely different way.
the dependent origination of all virtues
Circularity in argument is only of concern where a distinction between the less known and the better known must be drawn.
What measures must share something of the nature of what it measures, & be in agreement with it along the lines of what it shares.
It is obvious that music is primarily discovered in sound, but it is a mistake to think it is only found in sound; for at least some of the fundamentals of music are available to sight and touch, things like rhythm. For music at its most basic & general is sensed mathematics as measured by time and time alone.
Every unit of measure msut be something that can be treated as indivisible for all practical purposes.
From one's theory of friendship a whole theory of human nature can always be drawn.
With simples, truth is acquisition.
"Hell is superficial." Simone Weil
How foolish are those who are never wrong! They can only be so by never exploring.
Joy goes with understanding as beautiful freshness goes with youth.
Colin Maclaurin takes Newton's 3rd Law, or rather its necessity "for preserving the regularity & uniformity of nature" as an example of 'final causes'.
Derrida as philosophical panopticon
The prmary value of a notation is not abbreviation but transparency or surveyability.
to lend to many nations but to borrow from none
The key point of the master-bondslave cycle, and it is often overlooked, is the acquisition of the standpoint of one who crafts.
Puddleglum's wager as a wager for transposition
creation & providence as providing a middle way that avoids Platonic excessive emphasis on archetypal form & Aristotelian excessive emphasis on essential form (Stein)
validity -> quia
validity + essential relevance -> propter quid
The conditional is related to the A proposition by ascent and descent.
Distribution is what supposition tells you about verification.
Mansfield Park as a study in feminine fortitude
The preservation of culture depends on the cultivation of virtues.
The difficulty with teaching virtue ethics side by side with utilitarianism and deontology is that the latter two are theories; virtue ethics is something more like a civilization.
Much of Shakespeare's work is concerned with the problem of what happens when love is not allowed to grow along its natural lines but is instead forced into an unnatural course.
The first principle of poetry is that even in sensing we go beyond the senses. The second is that even the most attenuated understanding must convert to what the senses give us.
Because of the real presence we do not merely remember Christ's death in the eucharist; we also remember his resurrection.
identity through time as an analogy for transubstantiation (Descartes -- the River Loire / the living body)
gravity as an analogy for real presence (Leibniz)
Each of the sacraments sheds light on atonement.
Genuine humility is a more personable virtue even than generosity.
Utility subserves friendship, not friendship utility.
Smith: commercial society impreoves probity & punctuality in exchange but degrades education & character
- this can be offset by voluntary association and state support of education by law
From Adam, the earth, comes Eve, life, its intimate companion.
the cultivation of a marital ethos
In refusing the Ring, Galadriel overcomes the pride and ambition that made her an exile from Aman.
All science and prudence presuppose a quieting and calming of the passions.
Metaphysics is not founded on demonstration of the first mover and of the immateriality of intellect; but these are areas where the need for metaphysics, i.e., for a first philosophy that is not physics, is most manifest.
Aquinas identifies three kinds of abstraction. The first is abstraction of the universal from the particular, and this belongs to physics. The second is abstraction of form from sensible matter through intellectual conception, and the his belongs to mathematics. And the third is separation through composition and division, i.e., judgment, and this belongs to metaphysics. Now it cannot be that St. Thomas means that these sciences or levels of science are the only ones that use these intellectual operations. For one thing, the lower operations are important for the higher operations, and the first level of abstraction is common to all science whatsoever. For another, the claim cannot be that there is no composition and division in physics and mathematics. The claim instead is about how it is that our minds can take the objects of these sciences as objects.
polemics as a philosophical history of dogmatics (Herder)
votive religion vs. mystery religion
A sacrament is an initiation.
Myths and parables diffuse more widely than their explanations.
To recognize anything as falsfiable we must already have in hand those causal facts about the world that would be relevant to falsification.
the book of Job & the moral postulate of Last Judgment
Appeal to coincidence is explanatory because chance is efficient causation; and it is imperfectly explanatory because chance is efficient causation per accidens.
One of the most dangerous views in ethics is the view that you cannot sin against yourself.
Identification of natural evils requires the presupposing of a natural teleology.
Formal causes are ordered by relations of perfection and imperfection.
If your conception of reason does not make music an activity of reason, you have the wrong conception of reason.
Mediate propositions are actually one but potentially many because a middle can be taken when we have such propositions, thus yielding more than one proposition, just as a line is actually one but potentially many lines. But immediate propositions are actually and potentially one, just as a point is actually and potentially one.
We disfavor bizarre hypotheses because they are inconveniently bizarre; we don't necessarily counta s bizarre even unusual hypotheses we disfavor.
When we call hypotheses bizarre, we are not merely saying that they are unusual, and we need not be saying that they are bad; but rather that they clearly violate certain reasonable expectations for hypotheses on a given topic.
When we are dealing with practical reasoning, there are typically probabilities greater than zero that are nonetheless negligible, regardless of the payoff; negligibility is determined on other grounds.
prayer as the psychological form taken by reconciliation
Divine atonement applies not only to the children of Israel but also to resident strangers (Num 15:26).
atonement as a response to the ethical life as an infinite task
Judaism has not so much a doctrine of the Messiah as a doctrine of the Messianic Age.
Every Wager-type argument is an argument based on division, and thus has the strengths and weaknesses common to arguments from division.
Ad hominem in general concerns itself with untenability.
Just as it is good for even extraordinarily talented musicians to practice their basics, like scales, so too it is good for even the most sophisticated philosophers to practice the basics of analysis, so too it is good for everyone in every field to refresh themselves in the foundational elements of their field.
Ad baculum et al. stand a chance of being legitimate when they can be seen as proposing tests against living experience.
The material cause is that cause which, considered as such, is not a principle of action. The other three causes are principles of action understood as ordered to each other in the act: the end as first, moving the agent; the agent as second; the form as third, being applied to the action by the agent.
being-act, form-act, operation-act
The distinction between active and passive power is not based on whether there is activity, since even passive powers typically involve some activity. The distinction is instead made through comparison of power and its object: if the object is related to the power as moved, the power is active; if the object is related to the power as moving, the power is passive.
The potential is known under notes derived from the actual.
Immanent actions intrinsically bear something of an infinite character: understanding and willing, having transcendent objects, i.e., the true or the good, have scope as vast as being itself; and even sensation, which does not have such scope, has infinite scope in a qualified way, since it is open to any sensible object that might be appropriate.
God wills that we understand His admonitions even in the dreams of sinners. (cf. Ambrose Ep. 51)
The history of historical study shows that the critical tools used by historians repeatedly are broken against new biases and presuppositions of the historians themselves, biases and presuppositions against which the critical tools are powerless. The fundamental problem of historical study, for the historian interested in progress toward knowledge, is how to rise above his own weaknesses; for evidence is powerless against them, since these weaknesses can affect what even is regarded as good evidence, so much so that even a true ground of important historical information can become regarded as an impediment to discovery and learning. the historian settles down behind a protective wall of defective critique, shutting himself into a selective obscurantism that he labels good scholarship.
Admissions against interest as often have to do with confusion or stupidity as with honesty.
metaphysics as the science of dispositions and completions
Pleasure is good with respect to sensory appetite; but whether it is good with respect to rational appetite depends on circumstances.
three ways of speaking of being
(1) in terms of categories
(2) in terms of act and potency
(3) in terms of propositions
with regard to (3), everything is called being about which one can form a true affirmative proposition
the life of virtue by way of penitence
courtliness and homeliness in liturgy
ceremonies of aspiration, of initiation, of affirmation, of consummation
tactical sequences vs. tactical themes
Wager arguments & the promising
sensible vs. intelligible miracles
What we encounter in experience is not experience but the experienced.
Kant & the rediscovery of common sensibles as forms of experiential acquaintance
Fidelity is the core of fatherhood.
Consequences enter into moral evaluation not generally but by way of intention or by way of natural connection with the intended.
Accuracy is never misguided, but precision sometimes is.
A question that must always be asked with regard to argumetns from evil (and yet rarely is asked) is: on the moral principles assumed here, to what am I committed? What kind of life does this argument require?
Abraham, acting in faith, reasoned about God.
When skepticism tangles with practical reason, skepticism always loses.
When people reject strong skepticisms, they usually do so for practical reasons, not theoretical ones.
Suspense of judgment is governed not by theoretical principles but by practical principles.
solipsism in symbolism
3 positions allowing corruptibility of soul
(1) The soul is a body.
(2) Intellect and sense do not differ.
(3) Intellect is a separate substance.
Faith or trust is important in matters of science because of subalternation; for faith is, so to speak, deferred understanding, or more properly, participation of understanding through deference.
Preference is always relative to a division.
The soul is the form of the living body in such a way that it is also the mover and the end of it; and one's account of life will depend on the particular aspect under which one investigates it.
affordances as intentiones
natural vs informational immutation of sense
The mode of desire follows the mode of knowledge of desire's object.
religion & the aesthetic gravity and constancy of moral principles
higher criticis (source, form, redaction &c.) of oneself
Simile is perhaps the most natural figure with which to speak about music.
A metaphor is a metamorphosis in terms.
"The chief songs of the Church are songs of the heart; but they are expressed vocally so as to arouse the songs of the heart, and for the benefit of the simple and uncultured." Aquinas
Etymologia give to the dialectic of the scholastics a poetic bent that would otherwise be lacking, and give an elucidatory role to poetic reasoning and association even in the midst of the pursuit of demonstration.
"Kindness is like a good fire." Aquinas (i.e., benignitas, bene igneitas)
"It is against reason for someone to be a burden to others, for example, by offering nothing for their delight & by hindering the delight of others." Aquinas ST 2-2.16.8
Rhetoric is concerned with modes of persuasion and modes of persuasion are quasi-demonstrations.
Perversions in sexual matters are usually more serious than perversions in matters of food because persons are usually more implicated in the former, and thus the stakes are higher.
Every natural desire is emblematic of every other natural desire; and something similar occurs with aversions.
Every biological function admits of possible perversions, although not all are equally perverse. But it is not the mere function itself that makes this so but the interplay of biological function and reason.
Everyone likes the deus ex machina that is to their taste.
We understand actuality not by defining it but by comparing actual things.
