This gets me toward the end of September 2014 in my notes. I have at least four more little fat notebooks to go to catch up.
Living reason involves both memorial and anticipation.
nonengagement; marginal engagement (containment); proxy engagement; limited engagement; major engagement; coalition campaign
tradition as integrating, sanctifying radicating, and evangelizing
antiquity: apostolicity; consensus of antinquity; (tending to) consensus with antiquity
refractions of ideas through practices
the uncanny as a font of inquiry
reciprocal action as a sign of composition
intentio, stability, coherence, and proportion in material substances
Torah as watering paradise (Sirach 24:23ff)
"One who admits his fault will be kept from failure." (Sirach 20:3)
projected sculptures & fictional characters
fictional characters to be acted (false identities, covers, cons, plays)
historical characters that, known only indirectly, may not be real
Reasonableness does not suffice for avoiding conflict.
Diamond: in one's power; Box; beyond one's power to avoid
We have a mastery of other things in the measure we have mastery of ourselves.
faith as making us instruments of divine teaching authority
timing/time as the matter of cinema (Tarkovsky)
All historical disciplines, including those of natural history, begin with direct attestation of some present evidence and work out from there by affinity and parsimony.
agents: proper authority
agents-means: public declaration
means-end: (1) feasibility (2) proportionality
end-highest end: (1) last resort (2) just cause
agents-means-end-highest end: right intention
last resort ; feasibility :: just cause : proportionality
(1) Caretaker for what is common: proper authority
(2) for common good: just cause
(3) ordering of reason: feasibility, necessity (last resort), proportionality, right intention
(4) promulgation: public declaration
That is not charity which does not boldly fight injustice and error; charity uses higher means to further good and impede bad, and thus does so more than even justice, albeit in new ways.
(1) distinction between sense and intellect -> antecedent possibility of angels
(2) existence of God -> antecedent possibility of angels
(3) perfection of cosmos -> antecedent possibility of angels
(1) + (2) + (3) -> antecedent probability of angels
Cant 4:7-8 Immaculate conception (note v. 12) + assumption + coronation (note v. 14 re intercession?)
Immaculate Conception as a sort of assumption of soul completed in Assumption of body and soul
Mary as the ephod of priesthood
Mary as Tabernacle (the Word tabernacled among us)
Virginity as understood by the Fathers is not a mere physical condition but a spiritual one; thus the perpetual virginity of Mary is more than a claim about sexual status.
consentient council of doctors (Vincent of Lerins)
immortality as a postulate of philosophical inquiry (cp Rep 611e-612a)
sages -> nobles -> merchants -> mobs/gangs -> warlords
All probabilities presuppose a prior division of a universe of discourse.
Trust creates social resilience.
The key question for any society is: What makes this society one? What does the real work of integration?
unexpected coherences as motives of credibility
approaches to personal identity // approaches to change
Relying on immigrants for one's work is not structurally different from relying on mercenaries for one's army.
Human beings are present to each other by signs; in some cases we can make ourselves the signs by which we are present to others -- but also in some cases this can be more difficult than it sounds.
The ordinary presence of God is not primarily by sign; rather, He is present in such a way that that to which He is present is a sign of Him.
"A prophet mediates between the angels and the people." Aquinas
Theological insight can be welcomed but cannot be forced.
Statesmanship must be guided by reason, but by a reason that takes sympathy into account.
Solomon's Temple is loftier than the temples of natural reason.
The Jews more than any other people have understood the powerful truth that nations are signs, and that nations must form themselves as signs of things that are not base.
the canonical Spirit,
exceeding all measure,
measuring all
Chance sometimes proves the wisest strategist.
philotimia, philomatheia, and philanthropia as propaedeutics to philosophia
Xenophon & the importance of making virtue visible
"Questioning is a kind of teaching." Xenophon
utilitarianism as reducing human beings to their productive value as a source of profit (that the human beings may share in the profit is not relevant -- actual sharing of profit only enters as producing)
the nonrational creation as a trust
the improvement of moral thought by metaphor and exhortation
the parable of the Good Samaritan and the sacraments of initiation (inn, oil, wine)
almsdeeds as sabbath rest
the wonderful, the uncanny, the fantastic
"Sameness consists of at least three elements: for there to be sameness a thing must needs be the same as another according to a particular condition." Marsilio Ficino
The reason for trusting rules is so that we can trust people more, not less.
the Passion as sacramental premotion
Tobit 12:15 // Rv 8:2-4
oil as a symbol of Mary (cf Gregory Thaumaturgos)
the natural respect of a man for his tools
No one but God is an expert on God.
reflections of angelic choir in the prayer of the Church
boredom-quit and frustration-quit in argument/inquiry
the importance of "unexpected flashes of instruction" through "fortuitous collision of happy incidents, or an involuntary concurrence of ideas" (Johnson Rambler 154)
Wealth does not spoil character, but it can accelerate the spoiling of it.
Protagoras' 3 stages of learning justice
(1) language
(2) poetry, music, athletics
(3) law
aphorism as an approach to multiplicity of proof
philosophical inquiry as a model of ethical life, ethical life as a model of philosophical inquiry
new indicators & ongoing indicators for presumptive reasoning
Matrimony reflects ordination in ordination's aspect of being the sacrament of tradition; it does so by being itself the sacrament of genealogy, which is a sign of tradition.
Trinitarian procession as giving the structure of sacred Tradition
natural marriage as our way of reaching toward eternity (permanence, fecundity, union)
"The heretics cling to one point -- that the sacrament is figurative -- and to that extent they are not heretics." Pascal
pleasure and pain as good qua remedial
pleasure as a coming-to-be
arguments against usury
(1) from protection of the poor
(2) from justice of exchange
(3) from sterility of usury
Live-and-let-live requires a presupposition of harmlessness.
three-eyed Plato is a swan
Reductionism usually consists entirely of a network of metaphors.
"mind belongs to that kind which is cause of everything" Philebus 30e
immediate vs memory-mediated pleasures
People are more likely to get angry at being accused of lacking knowledge than they are when accused of lacking pleasure.
Justice requires calling the noblest things by the noblest names.
Outrage may be a legitimate motivation, but even so it is not a plan.
patience as the marrow of piety (Catherine of Siena)
The possibility of supererogation follows from any position that allows a distinction between the first principles of practical reason and the principles of obligation.
Ecclesiastes as a book of repentance (Wesley)
consciousness as partial conscience
Bragging is not about inducing believes in others -- people brag to people they know will not believe them, and peopl brag in cases where the point is simply to make themselves feel better.
Each of the Ten Commandments indicates a way in which human beings violate divine prerogatives or act as gods over others.
Arguments from divine hiddenness boil down to the claim that if God's existence is not self-evident to us, God does not exist.
In coming to know God from creation, we come to see creation in a new light.
sacred languages as memory systems for the Church
"Unless we have a moral principle about such delicate matters as marriage and murder, the whole world will become a welter of exceptions with no rules. There will be so many hard cases that everything will go soft." Chesterton
wine "intended to be a medicine and to produce reverence in the soul and health and strength in the body' (Laws672d)
Lack of evidence only becomes significant in itself through complicated counterfactual reasoning.
"the way to heaven is like heaven itself" Sigrid Undset
True love of God and neighbor requires the prayer of faith.
Grace is the beginning of faith.
religious festivals as periods for restoration of character (Laws 653b)
'Induction approximates truth because of uniformity of nature' vs 'Induction approximates truth by ruling out causes of falsehood' (Peirce is esp. good on this)
"the poetic tribe, with the aid of Graces and Muses, often grasps the truth of history" (Laws 682a)
A very significant number of bad skeptical inferences consist of conflating immediate and particular grounds of particular inferences with remote and general grounds of knowledge in general.
Most arguments over burden of proof are signs of intellectual laziness; they involve arguing over who is supposed to do the work.
Desert is a social concept.
"the moderate man is God's friend, being like him" (Laws 716d)
"mankind is by nature a companion of eternity" (Laws 721c)
"Truth heads the list of all things good, for gods and men alike." (Laws 736)
Theos is the first word of Plato's Laws.
All human authority is implicit in human nature, which is given by God, and by human work it is specified and furthered.
modesty & treating oneself as a person
the preludial system of legislation is especially appropriate to natural law theory
constancy and coherence as intimations of the real
the First Way and the intrinsic conditions of empirical experience
St. Catherine of Siena and moral miracles of conversion
the episode of the moldy flour in St. Catherine's life as an emblem of salvation
personal identity // transworld identity // material constitution
vagueness states // possible states or temporal states
(i.e., vagueness as an unusual diamond modality)
a church as a memory palace
matrimony as the sacrament of hospitality
the fate-level and the free-will-level of a narrative
The water of natural marriage becomes the wine of sacramental matrimony.
Love enlivens virtue.
the primary thesis of Plato's Laws: Law is a sort of divine order because it expresses reason, which is the divine in us because it has kinship with the gods.
"What we call a bad civilization is a civilization not good enough for us." Chesterton
Labeling oneself a skeptic remarkably often leads into the intellectual laziness of not bothering to earn the label with serious thought.
"It is when the work has passed from mind to mind that it becomes a work of art." Chesterton
All states not explicitly recognizing institutions beyond their control tend toward the totalitarian.
