It is problematic to treat florilegia as a bunch of texts piled together rather than as building an impression in 'brushstrokes'.
the perlocutionary effect of a philosophical dialogue
--look at Thomas Roderick Dew's adaptation of Burke and Hume in *Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1831 & 1832*
liturgy as monumental history
the Filioque and the appropriateness of mediation to the Second Person of the Trinity; the Word as Mediator
'the grace of imitating the apostolic way of life'
Chandi in Chandi Charitar as mythological/allegorical representation of victory of divine good over evil
The possibility of sin is in itself the possibility of hell.
Analytic philosophy of religion, when talking about higher theological topics (beyond basic natural theology) seems very often to conflate subjective effect and objective nature.
Anyone rational enough to evaluate evidence is rational enough to evade it.
A schismatic church tends to be a church subservient to secular pressures.
Perfect understanding of sin requires union with God.
The horror of sin is such that it involves deadening us who sin to the horror, like drugs that cloud the mind as they kill us in degrading ways.
Guru Granth Sahib as lyrical philosophical contemplation
"The syllable gu means darkness, the syllable ru, dispeller; because of the power to dispel darkness, the guru is so named." Advayataranka Upanishad 16
"it would be in vain for a thing to be tending to what is impossible for it to reach." Aquinas DC 132
"heavy and light bodies are moved by the generator or the remover of impediment" Aquinas DC 148
DC 165: Every natural body must have a natural inclination to some kind of change, and thus a natural aptness to be moved, if it is to be moved even by compulsion, which must be from a proper inclination by a stronger force.
Every irregular motion or change possesses intension, power (maximum), and remission.
the Mass as linking public and private prayer
pro bono work as a common constituent of humanitarian traditions
Sometimes by attempting to find a way to communicate a position simply, we find its pure cure.
"Beauty is a transcendental, a perfection in things which transcends things and attests their kinship with the infinite, because it makes them fit to give joy to the spirit." Maritain
poetry as trying to capture things by remotion, eminence, and causation
the being-in-the-story aspect of reading
the three great philosophical contemplations: self, world, God
The generated intimates the ingenerable.
the rejection of idolatry, murder, and adultery as key to proper understanding of the image of God in us
"Piety is nothing else than the recognition of God as parent." Lactantius
"A poet of original genius is always distinguished by his talent for description." Hugh Blair
Arguments persuade not directly but by raising the recognizable cost or increasing the recognizable benefit of a position. These costs & benefits may be rational or not.
Anything that can calculate is to that extent a computer; but in this sense there is no meaning to talking about something being 'merely' a computer.
"The sound method of demonstrating a truth is to expose the fallacy of the objections raised against it; and the disgrace of the deceiver is complete if his own lie be converted into an evidence for the truth. And, indeed, the universal experience of mankind has learned that falsehood and truth are incompatible, and cannot be reconciled or made coherent; that by their very nature they are among those opposites which are eternally repugnant, and can never combine or agree." Hilary De Trin 5.6
A template exists as a such only within a larger system.
The 'primitive' character of folk ballads is often really a quality of 'undergrowth', arising from their unsupervised and sometimes even outlaw or clandestine character.
Integrity concepts have to have a tolerance for defect or no one has integrity.
positions as methods for drawing conclusions
"In their several assertions and denials, there are points in which each heresy is in the right in defense or attack; and the result of their conflicts is that the truth of our confession is brought into clearer light." Hilary DT 7.7
"Our method is that of using bodily instances as a clue to the invisible. Reverence and reason justify us in using such help , which we find used in God's witness to Himself, while yet we do not aspire to fina parallel to the nature of God. But the minds of simple believers have been distressed by the mad heretical objection that it is wrong to accept a doctrine concerning God which needs, in order to become intelligible, the help of bodily analogies." Hilary DT 7.30
The danger of apologetics is losing the forest in the trees.
Anthony of Padua & concordantia as an exegetical principle
'Argent' and 'silver' are conceptually linked, but they are, as it were, differently tinged, and this is not a mere difference of sound or marks, but of associations that affect fitness of application. Substituting 'silver' for 'argent' may not affect truth value, but in many cases it will be a less fit term to use, because it will not have the right library of classifications and shared associations.
Utilitarianism is the theory of everything having a price.
territorial, national (ethnic), and ritual principles of ecclesial jurisdiction (noticeably, things can get very tangled when they conflict)
imperfect duties as character-focused
Every constitutive principle implies regulative principles.
Procedural fairness requires systems of honor to uphold the procedures and apply them properly.
Genuinely practical reasoning may nonetheless be highly abstract.
a natural stimulus to philosophy: reflection on the limits of application of aphorisms
"Every novelist ought to invent his own technique, that is the fact of the matter. Every novel worthy of the name is like another planet, whether large or small, which has its own laws just as it has it is own flora and fauna." Mauriac
the constative and performative force of sacraments (to show Christ to us and to make us Christ)
entertaining a proposition and judging it to be apparently possible/coherent/intelligible (I entertain the possibility that p, or the coherence or intelligibility of p)
Shelley's Prometheus Unbound as an allegory of the human mind
Vice obscures.
faith, hope, and charity as related to the natural structure of good marriage
one : remotion :: true : supereminence :: good : causation
teaching, sanctifying, and governing as all tending to hierarchical structure
The office of each bishop flows out to all the Church by (1) communion with the See of Peter; (2) communion under the see of Peter; (3) collegiality with fellow bishops.
Narrative retold tends toward stylization.
"The spirit of the world cares much for words but little for works." Francis de Sales
The Silmarillion as a myth concerned with Free will (cf. Letter 153)
docilitas and active participation in the liturgy
natural : conventional :: necessary : contingent
emotive theories of ethics & the experience of music
the meaning of music & shared expressive/emotive meaning (music as dialogical, at least semi-dialogical like the epistolary) -- note that Stevenson's view is indeed cooperative in this way
music & interjections (Uncle Toby is a good place to see the basic similarities)
The fashions of the world ape the powers of the world.
passions, moods, interactions of moods (ambiences)
the Tower of Babel and the temptation to try to seize divine gifts by method
Computing machines operate as parts of interpretation loops.
Dooyeweerd's theory of enkapsis seems to work best for artifacts.
an argument from per accidens causal series on the model of the Third Way
Sometimes when people speak of historical memory, they really mean historical unforgiving.
It is remarkable that science fiction often depicts futures that have no science fiction.
The power of a law is cumulative and builds slowly; it requires consistency in interpretation and enforcement.
An infinite per accidens series is only possible through the action of a cause outside the series that has infinite power.
the three primary episcopal munera/officia: (1) unity of faith; (2) integrity of sacraments; (3) harmony of the churches
"Every good poem must be wholly intentional and wholly instinctive." Schlegel
"Everything in a truly poetic book seems so natural -- and yet so marvelous." Novalis
Scholasticisms eventually collapse under their own weight because human ingenuity cannot rise to higher-level simplifications fast enough to keep up with the complexification that comes from human discursive reasoning.
Hume's account of causation has difficulty making sense of temporally extended effects except as mental conveniences; this follows from the role of successive contiguity.
All per accidens causation requires a larger causal system.
Bellarmine's discussion of the notes of the Church as an outline of a theory of motives of credibility
truth as (defeasibly) recognizable by: label, primordiality, durability, consensus of many, provenance, temporal coherence, structural coherence, internal goodness, efficacy, goodness-causing, diagnostic sign, predictive confirmation, confession of adversaries, detriment of denial, benefit of acceptance
"The emotive meaning of a word is the tendency of a word, arising through the history of its usage, to produce (result from) affective responses in people. It is the immediate aura of feeling which hovers about a word." Stevenson
moral sense of responsibility // musical investment
- a musical sense theory (cf. Hutcheson on the sense of harmony)
Music is motivating, in at least a vague way.
Disapproval cannot be mere dislike, and comparison of cases of disapproval shows that it generally has reference to a standard.
It is remarkable how often emotivist and expressivist accounts of ethics read as if they were written by people who have no conception of human emotional life or its expressions.
obligations arising from the need to do good before death, if possible
fiction : lying :: lending : usury
hypothesis as fiction under inquiry, postulate as fiction under practical problem-solving
the diversity of rites as allowing self-correction and redundancy
self-correction, redundancy, cooperation, complementarity, hierarchy, restraint, rich perspective
exemplar-occasion, exemplar-agent
That we can have means to ends establishes that there are causal dispositions.
Experimental design is planning using knowledge of causal dispositions.
deontic limitation as intrinsic to the notion of marriage
hidden decency as a narrative trope
Nietzsche on objectivity as intellectual castration.
