Dashed Off IX

the relation between normativity and future passive constructions (gerundives)

the great ocean of intelligible beauty

exhibition of true good as a philosophical activity
- exhibition of true good itself and exhibition of true good in a field or discipline

virtue & the unwavering heart

mission as an expression of heart

the verbum of friendship

seeking out the li or principle of a text

Kant's transcendental ideas as actually intentions of internal sense

tradition & giving birth to that with which one is already pregnant
- the eros of tradition & giving birth in beauty

Every skill, craft, art, considers tendencies to ends: medicine, those of the body; music, those of patterns of sound; and so forth.

Loss, sorrow, etc., make things beautiful by putting them into stark relief.

marriage as a preservation of the past

romance as like divination

fiction as the loosely anchored version of what we strictly anchor in rigorous inquiry
fiction - speculation - determination

the heart as theological sign and corporeal signifier
the holy thymos of Christ

prayer as interpreter of intention
the Lord's Prayer as Messianic intention

argumentative prudence

using little disasters to undo great disasters (demolitions, surgery, etc.)

Standards are structures of means as determined by ends.

A requirement for choice is a qualified restriction on futures.

Our ideas of space, time, etc., are ideas of restriction or limitation of something.

Convergences of arguments are more than unitary arguments but less than systems of arguments
terms - convergences of terms (lists, term relevances) - propositions - convergences of propositions - arguments - convergences of arguments - systems of arguments - convergences of systems - movements - convergences of movements - schools - convergences of schools - civilizational schemes

Nothing is capable of friendship except to the extent it is angel-like.

Fully understanding consecrated virginity requires understanding how angels can be role models.

angels & subsidiarity

the practice of free crafts and cultivation of nonservile skills

"wine refreshes the heart and both allays worry like a sedative and feeds the flame of good cheer like oil" Xenophon

mereotopology as the connecting point between logic and mathematics

capability control and motivational selection in constitutional design

identity & individuation conditions for philosophical questions

quasi-implicational dependencies among impossibilities

Taking oneself too seriously is a quick way to spoil good taste.

In the experience of Christian charity, we experience the Holy Trinity.

Plato's argument for women's education is based on the idea of education being directed to common good -- which is one for all and must be taught to all.

cryptography as causal reasoning concerning the disparities in (potential) capability between those whom one wants to break the security and those whom one doesn't

precedent-based reasoning in engineering

testing philosophical positions in terms of capacity to identify the as-yet undiscovered, to solve difficulties swiftly, to handle many problems at once, to interlock with other philosophical positions, to overpower contrary positions

categorical syllogistic : mereological syllogistic :: x : mereotopological deduction

To become an expert one must uncover the little known.

Comparison of essences shows the need for actual being; comparison of actual beings shows the need for causes.

Anti-natalism is a form of tutiorism.

The structure of the sacrament of matrimony is that of human nature lifted up by grace.

material causes as instrument-constituting causes

The principles of classification are at root mereological.

buddha-lands as Kantian postulates in Buddhism (conditions of rational hope in escape from the cycle of suffering)

Perpetual Virginity as a symbol of Immaculate Conception

one purpose of wealth as being to offset the difficulties of aging

Common good is intrinsically and necessarily subsidiary in its structure.

consecrated virgins as signs of divine wisdom itself (Pr, Wis, etc. as the books of consecrated virginity)

People defend scientism almost entirely by poetic expressions.

To consider: The coming to be of a particle (an actual localizable measure) presupposes the actuality of a field (an actual measurable through space)?

(1) Tutiorism is false
(2) Persons themselves are intrinsic goods
(3) The lives of all persons are rich with goods
(4) To have and raise children is a natural human good
(5) Interests may matter morally even if not to the organism whose interest it is
(6) The human race itself is a good
(7) Moral intuitions of a certain kind are reasonably reliable if certain conditions are met, so that being counterintuitive in this way is a reason to disbelieve an ethical theory
(8) Benefits and harms do not exhaust goods and evils
(9) The Beatific vision is possible and infinite good
(10) Human society itself is a good
(11) Moral life creates new good and makes local bads contextual goods

Error, an evil for the pursuit of truth, is transformed into a contextual good by the pursuit of truth.
error // natural evil

Only understood as design does an experiment contribute to scientific inquiry.

It is necessary to the role experiment plays in scientific inquiry that in it the same effect be wholly attributable to both principal and instrumental causes, allowing, of course, for a certain element of chance.

the paradox of poetry: the excellence of good poets exceeds the capacity of poetry to describe

Those who complain that metaphysics has no practical utility still go about using causal reasoning for practical purposes and assume things about practical ends.

the Assumption sa Second Eve undoing the exile from the Garden

Epistemology is not what entitles one to believe; it is merely investigation of such entitlements.

Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and good taste in religious experiences

the gift of wisdom as God's good taste

music & poetry as athletics of the soul

"the best things are less liable to alteration or change" Republic 380e

Efficiency is only as valuable as the problems it solves less the problems it creates.

Christ as the principal agent of catechesis

Spirit in Providence // Spirit in Magisterium

the labels with which we vest ourselves in communication

Newman's illative sense as part of an account of motives of credibility.

Classification requires a middle way between Heraclitus and Parmenides.

scientism as a collage of minimal deterrence strategies

retorsion-testing of arguments
intrinsic vs conditional retorsion (this is in fact just the kind of necessity/impossibility involved)

intellectual responsibility as an anticipation of the infinite horizon of being (Lonergan)

Is 22;23 and papal infallibility

To seek humiliation and not reconciliation is a sign of corruption.

tracks or clues left behind in language by virtues

"a soul that is always reaching out to grasp everything both divine and human as a whole" Republic 6.486

"all great things are prone to fall" 497d

"nothing incomplete is the measure of anything" 504c

"Every soul pursues the good and does whatever it does for its sake." 505e

the analogy between habitus and vestment (the former being internal/intrinsic and the latter external/extrinsic - but they are similar enough that they can often be discussed in the same terms)

the songs of ascent as marking out 15 degrees of virtue (Durandus)

vestment as a term of being acted upon
position (arrangement) as a term of acting upon
disposition as an ordering to

analogies regimented by other analogies

An accessibility relation is what you have to add to a modal operator to make it work like a different modal operator.

relics & narrative lines uniting the liturgical commonwealth

categorical vs transcendental parthood

alienating qualifications and modal shifts

act | potency
substance | quantity
quality | relatedness
action | passion
position | vestment
when | where

moral sense theory and causal sense theory (esp interesting to think about in the case of Hume -- i.e., what would a moral account // to his causal account and a causal account // to his moral count be like?)

Spinoza's weakness is his view of actual and potential

the value of destructible good as the basis for a refutation of tutiorism

kinds of argument in a tradition
(1) reconstructive: original intent
(2) lectoral: present reading
(3) structural: implicit principle in practice
(4) precedentive: previously formulated explicit principle
(5) pragmatic:constraints of practice

Persuasion is accomplished thread by thread.

To describe a term qua productive is to describe it in light of something other than itself.

Extrinsic denomination presupposes intrinsic denomination.

A principal agent and an instrumental cause differ in that the instrumental cause introduces the similitude of another into the effect; the principal agent introduces its own. Cp Sent 4d19q1a2q1

The character of the acting is proportioned to the agent.

Civil authority proceeds from god in a sense analogous to the way that what is natural proceeds from God.

divine being as beyond modality (premodal)

Divine action pre-exists all things by which we name it.

The water, the oil, the matter of any sacrament are, as sacramental, not the minister's but belong to the one in whose name they are administered.
The sacrament administered by the priest does not come from the faith of the priest.

Acts 5:34 and the Holy Spirit as God