Baroness de Chantal

Today is the feast of St. Jeanne-Françoise Frémyot, Baronne de Chantal. She was born in 1572 to an important political family in Burgundy; she married the Baron of Chantal in 1592 and became active in helping him to manage his estate. He died in a hunting accident nine years later, and she took on the burden of managing the estate and raising their children as a widowed mother. A few years later, she met St. Francis de Sales and convinced him to become her spiritual director. They corresponded regularly, and St. Francis often shared parts of various treatises he was working on.

She eventually began working with St. Francis to build a new religious order, the Visitation of Holy Mary; it was a new kind of order, because the nuns were not intended to be cloistered, but active in the world, since part of the intent was for them to minister to people who could not leave their homes; unlike many religious orders, its rules were designed on the assumption that the elderly and the disabled might join. The problem, however, was that in an attempt to rein in the wild proliferation of religious orders, many of which were poorly thought out, the Counter-Reformation was cracking down on religious orders that did not have a clear structure and that deviated very far from the standard pattern. The Archbishop insisted on cloister; St. Jane Frances and the nuns protested; it went all the way up to the Pope, who sided with the Archbishop. So the nuns gave in. (It's a very good example of the trade-offs that inevitably arise in such matters; the rules being imposed on religious orders were very much needed, and yet St. Francis and St. Jane Frances were certainly right that there was a need for the religious order that they proposed. Two perfectly legitimate, perfectly reasonable lines of motivation, both of them truly concerned with the good of the Church, and both of them right in their way. But they were inconsistent with each other, and, as the ingenuity required to work around the inconsistency was lacking, one of them had to give.)

As superior general of the Visitationists, however, St. Jane Frances was active both in the order and in the convent by her correspondence, which became massive. We only have a tiny portion of it, but hundreds of her letters have survived, and they are virtually all very much worth reading. She was beatified in 1751 and canonized in 1767, and one of the reasons for it was her devotion through all states of life -- as a maiden, as a wife, as a mother, as a widow, as a nun.

Dashed Off XVI

If factual statements can tell us what is possibly and necessarily true, they can tell us what is permissibly and obligatorily true.

Exact resemblance is not an ontological free lunch; it requires conditions for possible comparison (e.g., to distinguish it both from mere identity and mere resemblance).

As field values in physics may be scalar, vectorial, or tensor, there seems reason to deny that 'field' is strictly univocal.

Tropes always make more sense as part of a theory of the phenomenal than as a theory of the real or mind-independent.

compresence as teleological

tropes : terms :: compresence : syntax

the Transfiguration as the emblem for iconography (it raises the question of whether similar emblem-isms are possible for other sacred artforms; it seems plausible to take the Ascension as emblem for music, for instance,and Annunciation or Nativity for painting or sculpture)

The sacredness of art in any medium is directly related to its suitability for public prayer.

the internalization of honor as converging on virtue

The central concept of honor is victory in the sense of overcoming.

"The word of God is addressed to all people, in every age and in every part of the world, and the human being is by nature a philosopher." John Paul II

It is an error to treat philosophy of language as if it were epistemology.

The final end of things is a convergence of equitable justice, restoring grace, ordering providence, and sovereign creation.

Church Militant : Tabernacle :: Church Triumphant : Temple

Law should favor widespread ownership: (1) universal destination of goods; (2) subsidiarity; (3) human dignity.

the inherent tendency of philosophical inquiry to universal community
the inherent tendency of philosophical inquiry to reason-based morality

sequential vs. spiraling curricula of philosophy

Antiquities are preserved through long ages by accident or by tradition.

Democracy is most attractive to those who cannot imagine any reasonable and honest person disagreeing with their most cherished beliefs.

anticipatory trial and error as a mark of skill

the Eightfold Path and knowing happiness by remotion

Nobody starts with experience; experience must be built on a basis of prior capacities and resources, which themselves only come to be known in learning other things.

ceremony & the principle that one should do good things on receiving good things

Medicine is of all areas of human life the one in which everyone is most naturally inclined to think in ways leading to superstition. (Indeed, one sees this even in religion itself -- superstitious practices are most likely to grow up where religion meets matters of health and sickness.)

Etiological accounts of function only give us a species-function -- to wit, the function of the thing in preventing the traited population from going extinct.

Given a function, one can always distinguish esse from bene esse with respect to that function.

The wetness of water is not just 'there'; it is an internal activity of water, composed of interacting smaller internal activities, involving the causal capacities of water-components.

Life functionally incorporates drift and chance.

luck as a component of inquiry

Truth is sign of itself.

the intrinsically deontic character of truth -- the true as partially characterizable in terms of what ought not to be regarded as false

the obligatory character of the principle of noncontradiction

Zwinglianism is implicit liberal Christianity.

In a fully democratic society, checks and balances mean nothing more than people stopping other people.

Anything can look epiphenomenal to one who has only a partial causal explanation.

Anticipation of nature can distort our experimental reasoning, but it is our capacity to anticipate nature that makes experiment possible.

language (vestment of thought) // clothing (vestment of body)
sincerity of speech // modesty of clothing

The background of every experiment is an abstract classification of possibilities.

shared beauty as the root of the importance of fine art

"Symbolic figures are a valuable adjunct to philosophy: they help men to integrate and bear in mind the essential meaning of complex issues." Rand

component strictly necessary for function (esse)
component quasi-necessary for function (bene esse)
component redundant under strict necessity
component redundant under quasi-necessity
component incidental for function
-- is quasi-necessity indirect strict necessity? (i.e., the result of strict necessity for a related function)

Newton's argument against vortices
(1) Celestial motions are (a) more regular than if they arose from vortices and (b) observe other laws so that vortices do not regulate but would disturb celestial motions.
(2) All phenomena of the heavens and the sea follow precisely from gravity acting in accordance with the laws of gravity.
(3) Nature is simple.
Therefore: (4) Other causes than the laws of gravity are to be rejected.
Therefore (5) The heavens are to be considered without matter as far as possible, lest the celestial motions be impeded or rendered irregular.

Descartes's discussion of gravitas can be turned upside down to form an analogical argument for final causes.

Arguments tend to have a certain symmetry -- ponens can be tollensed, apparent demonstration parallels apparent reductio, etc. Truth breaks the symmetry. But even abstracting from truth, asymmetries can arise through differences in generality or in circumstances. Genus-species introduces a privileged direction of relation, and circumstances can introduce exceptions (the things that do not fall under 'for the most part'). (Perhaps there are also asymmetries linked to the privilege of First Figure and analogously of modus ponens?)

change as a precondition of testing
actuality and potentiality as preconditions of testing

Statistical sampling is used to cross modal differences: different times & places, counterfactual possibilities

one-or-many as a transcendental disjunction (ST 1.30.3)

icons as memorials of real presence and anticipations of sacramental presence

structural works of mercy (hospital, school, recovery house, hospice) -- the infrastructure of alms

a mereotopological analysis of food entering a city from outside its circumference and distributing over its area

"he who prefers the common good before what is proper to himself is above all acceptable to God." Josephus

To translate well into English requires that English be able to bear what is translated, and this cannot always be guaranteed. Sometimes one must wait centuries for the right fashion, the right consensus, , the rediscovery that builds the right vocabulary to translate some aspect of a text. And sometimes, having had it, one loses it and must endure the inadequate again.

Philo on the doctrine of the mean: Migr xxvi.147; Immut. xxiv.163-164

"What is commonly asserted by all, cannot wholly be false." Aquinas (De etern 2.34)

It is an error to assume that mind and body are only related in one way.

Aquinas's probable arguments against the eternity of the world:SCG 2.38; SCG 1.3; SCG 2.31

Hume and Malebranche on pride

Chrysostom's contrasts between the apostles and the Cynics (in Ep I Cor 35.4)

academia and the collection of career-tokens

It makes little sense to treat the human body the way Kant treats the physical world; the body is, as it were, not mere phenomenon, but already in some fashion transcendental subject.

"the church is the primary work of the Holy Trinity" Turretin

colors as actions (flavors would also obviously be analogous)

It seems there has to be a level of authority between individual bishops and the college of bishops; this is synodal, and in particular is a local gathering of bishops representing, formally and functionally, the whole college. This contrasts with (for instance) episcopal conferences, which do not have this representation of the whole, being administrative conveniences for the parts.

Rights of conscience are indirect rights of God.

(1) Heaven and earth are finite.
(2) What is finite cannot have infinite force.
(3) Infinite force is required for infinite duration.
(4) Therefore heaven and earth have beginning and end.
(Saadia Gaon)

The greater the love, the less changeable it is.

A republic, more than any other government, must insist on the value of deliberation if it is to avoid fatal corruption.

"Comedy is music. It has a rhythm and a melody." Sid Caesar

All love strives toward impassibility. (Thus the lover's emphasis on stability, purity, eternity, certainty, the impossiblity of lessening; thus also the attributes of I Cor 13.)

Grace is our personhood reflecting divine personhood.

Family always suggests something of the eternal.

Reasons for polytheistic competition naturally drive polytheism toward henotheism; reasons for polytheistic cooperation naturally drive polytheism toward theomonism (although the latter tendency seems weaker, or at least slower, than the former).

the conditions for interpretatio graeca

the analogue of the Euthyphro dilemma for mathematical necessity
-- Note that there are several strong modalities (Always, Everywhere) in which it would make sense to say that they are so because God makes them so.
-- Note that we can even find such for ourselves (Proven, which is so because we have made it so). - Cartesian creation of eternal truths as constructivism at the limit.

love is makrothymei (cp Ex 34:6; Nm 14:18)
love is chresteuta
love is not zeloi or perpereuetai, nor physioutai
aschemonei, paroxyneta ou logizetai to kakon (It does not log/inventory what is bad)
sygchairei te aletheia (it celebrates the right)
panta stegei (it is restrained with all)
panta pisteuei (it has faith in all)
panta epizei (it has hope in all)
panta hypomenei (it endures all)

Literacy can be partly domain-specific because part of reading a text is recognizing its rhetorical features, which can often vary from domain to domain.

To think of belief entirely in terms of external action is to lose sight of the functioning of belief under conditions of abeyance of action.

Arguments usually convince only by clarification.

the responsibility for mutually beneficial discussion

mereological fusion and transcendental unity

shared humanity and the right to ask for reasons

Love hopes because the one who loves treats those he loves aspirationally.

Exchanges are externalizations of reasoning.

The Fallacy of Special Pleading

'Special pleading' was a system used in British common law by which the precise point of dispute would be established for a trial. In other systems, this is done by the court, which looks at the arguments on both sides, filters out the irrelevant, looks at how one side's arguments relate to each other, and takes into account what has already been established by the evidence, as opposed to requiring the determination of the court. In special pleading, this was done by the plaintiff and defendant themselves through a very rigid and complicated process. The plaintiff would declare his complaint; then the defendant would plead; then the plaintiff would respond; then the defendant would respond; all according to special rules. This would continue until one of the parties could not proceed under the rules, and the point at which it stopped was the issue of special pleading, and the point that particularly needed to be considered by the court. A clever system -- it forces the parties to be precise without having to rely on the critical capacities of the judge to identify correctly what the parties are, in fact, actually arguing about. But it was also liable to abuses; the rules governing it grew to an extraordinary degree of complexity; you had to hire a special pleader to navigate it all and even then your plea might be dropped for very strange legal technicalities; and through much of the nineteenth century, when the vocabulary often used to talk about fallacies consolidated, it was a point of intense controversy whether the system should be abolished. It is thus perhaps not surprising that special pleading, often being associated with reasoning that often gets by on mere technicalities rather than substance, is often mentioned in association with fallacy, and ended up giving a term to the fallacy lists, although the process of how this happened is very difficult to trace.

The theory of fallacies is merely partially systematized folklore; as one would expect from folklore, it is a weird brew of logical tidbits, practical advice, ethical admonition, historical detritus of exploded or doubtful theories, things people thought clever or neat at some point, and misunderstandings. I've given a number of examples over the years. A very obvious example is that of faulty analogy; the 'fallacy of faulty analogy' was put on fallacy lists by utilitarians, to whom it meant 'you are using an analogy that would suggest that utilitarianism is wrong', given a somewhat more rigorous, and less obviously tendentious, account by Mill on the basis of a theory of analogy almost nobody has ever accepted, and from there was copied from text to text, most often uncritically and sometimes with mutations when you get to an author of a critical thinking text who actually engages in critical thinking and starts wondering what explains this being on a list of fallacies. The 'fallacy of special pleading' is another good example of this mess. If you look at serious work in informal logic over the past forty or fifty years, one gets a farcical comedy of baffled intelligent people trying to make sense of its status as a fallacy. Giving an account of it that fits the examples to which it is typically applied seems to make inexplicable why it is treated as a fallacy; giving an account of it that makes it definitely a fallacy suddenly leaves it orphaned, since almost nothing to which it has ever applied then turns out to be an example of it.

As one might expect in these circumstances, there are quite a few different things called 'special pleading', and which one a person is using typically depends on whatever third-rate informal logic manual they got the concept from, or even on a person's vague impression of how the term is used in ordinary conversation.

A very common way of trying to make sense of it is by treating it as a form of double standard: an exception to a general rule is given and not justified. At this level of generality, it's useless; we need more precision about this 'general rule'. For instance, is it a generally accepted rule or a rule that the person in question is accepted. If the latter, that could possibly be a case of someone reasoning fallaciously, but then it just seems to be ordinary contradiction put inexplicably in fancy dress, since the actual fallacy is just self-contradiction. If the former, that would suggest reasons to have a particular category called 'special pleading', but also makes it not a fallacy -- it cannot be an error of reasoning to insist that there is an exception to a rule that only people other than oneself take to be general. The fact that justification is required also seems to suggest that it has to be the person's own rule; but if that's the case, and you are not just contradicting itself, it seems like the only other possibility is that the other party is mistaken in thinking that the rule is in fact a relevantly general rule -- perhaps it is only a rule for a specific domain and was never formulated for the domain of the exception, or perhaps it is a crude rule of thumb, or the like.

Older books often classify it as a particular form of fallacy of accent, which notoriously makes no sense whatsoever and has baffled logicians ever since -- fallacy of accent is an ambiguity arising through prosody (for instance, change of stress), but the older authors seem to be treating it as a confusion of aspects. As near as we can tell today, it seems that the idea was that they were taking it to cover any kind of difference in emphasis. Out of this line of thought comes the account on which special pleading is one-sided argument. Thus if you only give the reasons for something and not the reasons against it, you are special pleading. This actually has an advantage of making sense of the label itself, but as has been pointed out for years and years now, this is not a fallacy, it's just ordinary argument.

As usual, the mess becomes even more obvious when one looks at examples. Here is Nizkor's best example:

The person committing Special Pleading is claiming that he is exempt from certain principles or standards yet he provides no good reason for his exemption. That this sort of reasoning is fallacious is shown by the following extreme example:

Barbara accepts that all murderers should be punished for their crimes.
Although she murdered Bill, Barbara claims she is an exception because she really would not like going to prison.
Therefore, the standard of punishing murderers should not be applied to her.

This is obviously a blatant case of special pleading. Since no one likes going to prison, this cannot justify the claim that Barbara alone should be exempt from punishment.

This is a very odd example. Nizkor takes the fallacy to be one "in which a person applies standards, principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate justification for the exemption". 'Punishment' and 'going to prison' are not synonymous, so the 'exception' would not, strictly speaking, be an exception to this rule in particular. If you go with one or the other, though, Barbara has merely contradicted herself. If the rule is actually general, no exception could have justification; if we are considering whether there are exceptions, then it is an open question whether the rule is actually general, and therefore one should not simply be assuming that it is. Barbara explicitly gives a justification for her conclusion, so the final comment puts all the emphasis on the adequacy of her justification. But why is her justification inadequate? Only because it is irrelevant. But this means that to determine that this is special pleading, we had first to identify a different fallacy that is usually given a different name, and then we called that fallacy 'special pleading' for reasons that are unclear. This latter kind of thing would be possible if, for instance, 'special pleading' were a label for an ethical fallacy, since another fallacy could also be an ethical fallacy in a particular context, but that is not how the fallacy was characterized, and it is not how the example is set up.

Nizkor goes on to claim that the fallacy of special pleading is a violation of the principle of relevant difference -- things can only be treated as differently if they have a relevant difference -- (and this seems to be what FallacyFiles has in mind, as well, although since their primary example is not even a fallacy, it's less clear) but Barbara is identifying what she takes to be a relevant difference. So the problem must be that it's not actually relevant, which means that either she's really committing an ignoratio elenchi (which is a very plausible diagnosis here), or is just wrong -- and it's not a fallacy to be wrong. So, again, it seems that we determine that something is special pleading by first determining that it is, in fact, another fallacy, and then we call it 'special pleading'. A different example just confirms this:

Bill and Jill are married. Both Bill and Jill have put in a full day at the office. Their dog, Rover, has knocked over all the plants in one room and has strewn the dirt all over the carpet. When they return, Bill tells Jill that it is her job to clean up after the dog. When she protests, he says that he has put in a full day at the office and is too tired to clean up after the dog.

This is a very plausible violation of the principle of relevant difference. But while Bill's reason is relevant to why he should not clean up after the dog, it is not relevant to why Jill should do it, because Jill has the same reason. So again, we seem to have ignoratio elenchi.

Perhaps one could say that 'special pleading' is in fact an ignoratio elenchi applied to oneself? But it's not clear why applying to oneself would be an important classificatory factor here. It might be if 'special pleading' is, again, an ethical criticism. And this would explain some things. In practice people tend to use 'special pleading' like they use 'straw man' -- it looks like a neutral term but over and over again one finds that people use it to insinuate bad motives. You are treating yourself as special by not holding yourself to standards to which you hold others! It is always presented as a formal and objective criticism of the argument, but it gets its bite from being treated as if it were an ethical criticism of motivations. Perhaps, then, it's strictly speaking an ethical criticism presupposing a formal inconsistency; but it's difficult to find cases in which people actually use it this way -- the ethical criticism would require information beyond the argument, whereas people treat special pleading as diagnosable from the argument itself.

The IEP gets a much cleaner account at the cost of just making 'special pleading' another name for logical inconsistency, or perhaps for logical inconsistency on matters that interest the arguer, which seems pointless and useless.

If we attempt to think through fallacies critically rather than in the uncritical way most people do, a question that immediately comes to mind is, "How does one determine that something is an example of this particular fallacy and not something that merely looks like it?" If the answers you get amount to, "Prove that another fallacy is committed, or prove that it's wrong," this should be an immediate red flag: the former seems to reduce your fallacy to another fallacy, and the latter makes it not a fallacy, since merely being wrong is not a fallacy. This is exactly the situation with 'special pleading'; the answers are almost always, "Because the person contradicted themselves" or "Because their reason isn't relevant" or "Because they are wrong". If they are contradicting themselves, why not say that? If they are wrong, why not say that? On the other hand, if the complaint is that they are arguing dishonestly, why are you phrasing a complaint about their motives as if it were a complaint about their argument? It's not that you couldn't have good answers to these questions in particular cases; but they don't seem to apply generally. Likewise, maybe a particular instance of 'special pleading' is used meaningfully -- but it looks much like you can't assume that everyone will understand your use in the same way, and it will always be unclear how much of your use is just rhetorical flourish. The whole practice of classifying reasoning as 'special pleading' continues to be problematic.

Mrs. Elton's Sister's Barouche Landau

Both a barouche and a landau are fancy kinds of carriages, and a barouche landau is a carriage that includes some of the features of both to make a fancy-fancy kind of carriage, a sort of high-dollar convertible. The barouche landau is an occasional joke in Emma, one easily missed but funny when noticed:

Volume II, Chapter XIV (one part of a hilarious scene in which the grasping Mrs. Elton repeatedly treats herself as an expert on matters of good taste and high class while talking to Emma, who is actually upper class and of good taste):

“My brother and sister have promised us a visit in the spring, or summer at farthest,” continued Mrs. Elton; “and that will be our time for exploring. While they are with us, we shall explore a great deal, I dare say. They will have their barouche-landau, of course, which holds four perfectly; and therefore, without saying any thing of our carriage, we should be able to explore the different beauties extremely well. They would hardly come in their chaise, I think, at that season of the year. Indeed, when the time draws on, I shall decidedly recommend their bringing the barouche-landau; it will be so very much preferable. When people come into a beautiful country of this sort, you know, Miss Woodhouse, one naturally wishes them to see as much as possible; and Mr. Suckling is extremely fond of exploring. We explored to King’s-Weston twice last summer, in that way, most delightfully, just after their first having the barouche-landau. You have many parties of that kind here, I suppose, Miss Woodhouse, every summer?”

“No; not immediately here. We are rather out of distance of the very striking beauties which attract the sort of parties you speak of; and we are a very quiet set of people, I believe; more disposed to stay at home than engage in schemes of pleasure.”

“Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. Nobody can be more devoted to home than I am. I was quite a proverb for it at Maple Grove. Many a time has Selina said, when she has been going to Bristol, ‘I really cannot get this girl to move from the house. I absolutely must go in by myself, though I hate being stuck up in the barouche-landau without a companion; but Augusta, I believe, with her own good-will, would never stir beyond the park paling.’ Many a time has she said so; and yet I am no advocate for entire seclusion. I think, on the contrary, when people shut themselves up entirely from society, it is a very bad thing; and that it is much more advisable to mix in the world in a proper degree, without living in it either too much or too little. I perfectly understand your situation, however, Miss Woodhouse—(looking towards Mr. Woodhouse), Your father’s state of health must be a great drawback. Why does not he try Bath?—Indeed he should. Let me recommend Bath to you. I assure you I have no doubt of its doing Mr. Woodhouse good.”

Volume II, Chapter XV:

“You appear to feel a great deal—but I am not aware how you or any of Miss Fairfax’s acquaintance here, any of those who have known her longer than yourself, can shew her any other attention than”—

“My dear Miss Woodhouse, a vast deal may be done by those who dare to act. You and I need not be afraid. If we set the example, many will follow it as far as they can; though all have not our situations. We have carriages to fetch and convey her home, and we live in a style which could not make the addition of Jane Fairfax, at any time, the least inconvenient.—I should be extremely displeased if Wright were to send us up such a dinner, as could make me regret having asked more than Jane Fairfax to partake of it. I have no idea of that sort of thing. It is not likely that I should, considering what I have been used to. My greatest danger, perhaps, in housekeeping, may be quite the other way, in doing too much, and being too careless of expense. Maple Grove will probably be my model more than it ought to be—for we do not at all affect to equal my brother, Mr. Suckling, in income.—However, my resolution is taken as to noticing Jane Fairfax.—I shall certainly have her very often at my house, shall introduce her wherever I can, shall have musical parties to draw out her talents, and shall be constantly on the watch for an eligible situation. My acquaintance is so very extensive, that I have little doubt of hearing of something to suit her shortly.—I shall introduce her, of course, very particularly to my brother and sister when they come to us. I am sure they will like her extremely; and when she gets a little acquainted with them, her fears will completely wear off, for there really is nothing in the manners of either but what is highly conciliating.—I shall have her very often indeed while they are with me, and I dare say we shall sometimes find a seat for her in the barouche-landau in some of our exploring parties.”

“Poor Jane Fairfax!”—thought Emma.—“You have not deserved this. You may have done wrong with regard to Mr. Dixon, but this is a punishment beyond what you can have merited!—The kindness and protection of Mrs. Elton!—‘Jane Fairfax and Jane Fairfax.’ Heavens! Let me not suppose that she dares go about, Emma Woodhouse-ing me!—But upon my honour, there seems no limits to the licentiousness of that woman’s tongue!”

Later in Volume II, Chapter XV:

Emma could not but rejoice to hear that she had a fault. “Well,” said she, “and you soon silenced Mr. Cole, I suppose?”

“Yes, very soon. He gave me a quiet hint; I told him he was mistaken; he asked my pardon and said no more. Cole does not want to be wiser or wittier than his neighbours.”

“In that respect how unlike dear Mrs. Elton, who wants to be wiser and wittier than all the world! I wonder how she speaks of the Coles—what she calls them! How can she find any appellation for them, deep enough in familiar vulgarity? She calls you, Knightley—what can she do for Mr. Cole? And so I am not to be surprized that Jane Fairfax accepts her civilities and consents to be with her. Mrs. Weston, your argument weighs most with me. I can much more readily enter into the temptation of getting away from Miss Bates, than I can believe in the triumph of Miss Fairfax’s mind over Mrs. Elton. I have no faith in Mrs. Elton’s acknowledging herself the inferior in thought, word, or deed; or in her being under any restraint beyond her own scanty rule of good-breeding. I cannot imagine that she will not be continually insulting her visitor with praise, encouragement, and offers of service; that she will not be continually detailing her magnificent intentions, from the procuring her a permanent situation to the including her in those delightful exploring parties which are to take place in the barouche-landau.”

Volume III, Chapter V:

In this state of schemes, and hopes, and connivance, June opened upon Hartfield. To Highbury in general it brought no material change. The Eltons were still talking of a visit from the Sucklings, and of the use to be made of their barouche-landau; and Jane Fairfax was still at her grandmother’s; and as the return of the Campbells from Ireland was again delayed, and August, instead of Midsummer, fixed for it, she was likely to remain there full two months longer, provided at least she were able to defeat Mrs. Elton’s activity in her service, and save herself from being hurried into a delightful situation against her will.

Ed Ratcliffe has a fascinating paper on the different kinds of carriages in Austen's novel, and what they say about the personalities and social stations of those who own them.

Edith Stein

Today is the feast of St. Teresa Benedicta a Cruce, more commonly known as St. Edith Stein. Raised an atheist in a secular Jewish family, she studied philosophy under Husserl and was baptized into the Catholic Church on January 1, 1922. She taught at a girl's school until she was forced to resign by anti-Jewish laws put into effect by the Nazis. She then became a Discalced Carmelite in 1934. She and her sister, also a convert, were eventually sent to a monastery in the Netherlands in the hopes of protecting them, but the Nazis invaded shortly thereafter. And on August 2, 1940, she and her sister were among a large number of Catholic Jews in the Netherlands who were rounded up by the Nazis in retaliation for Dutch Catholic policies, and they were sent to Auschwitz. We don't know precise details from there, but she is thought to have died in the gas chamber on August 9. She was canonized in 1998 by St. John Paul II.

From her work Potency and Act, which she wrote as a thesis in 1931 but which was not published until after her death:

Genera and species prescribe beforehand a framework that abides throughout the individual's entire duration in being and is concretely fulfilled successively by variable [veränderlich] accidents. We should then take substance here (in the sense of "second substance") as an instantiated general species. It becomes a concrete individual by being successively filled, and for the first time actual being accrues to the concrete individual--with its abiding stock as well as its changing stock.

Actuality cannot be due either to the abiding stock, or to the changing stock, or to the form of the individual; for each of these "abstract parts" of the concrete individual requires the others, nor can the individual being bring them about or draw them into itself. Thus all mutable being, all becoming, points to an upholding outside of itself, to something immutable, to absolutely actual being. What becomes must take its origin [Ursprung] from what is immutably and thereby it must be upheld.

[Edith Stein, Potency and Act, Redmond, tr., Gelber and Leuven, eds. ICS Publications (Washington, DC: 2009) p. 70.]

Astell on Improvement of Understanding

259. All understandings should be improved. All understandings are not of equal reach and brightness, but all may and ought to be improved; the most excellent because they are most capable of improvement, and the meaner because they need it most. But whether the having too high or too low an opinion of our own abilities is the greater hindrance, is not easily determined; for they who think they can't improve, will no more attempt it than they who think they need not. Experience shows, that people often act in this case just contrary to what they ought; it being easier to make some ladies understand everything, than to persuade them that they are capable of understanding anything. On the other hand, they are usually most confident of themselves, who have least reason to be so.

[Mary Astell, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, Broad, ed. Iter Inc. & Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (Toronto: 2013) p. 201.]

Pure as White Lilies

A good poem for a birthday.

The Great Minimum
by G. K. Chesterton

It is something to have wept as we have wept,
It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.

It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.

To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,
Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
It were something, though you went from me today.

To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky.

In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.

Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.

Ozymandias

In 1817, Shelley had a sonnet-writing competition with his friend Horace Smith (and a number of others); there had been a recent announcement by the British Museum of the acquisition of a large statue of Rameses II, and that seems to have inspired the idea to use a passage about Ozymandias (a Greek name for Rameses) in Diodorus Siculus's Bibliotheca Historica 1.47 about a giant statue of him and its boasting inscription:

And it is not merely for its size that this work merits approbation, but it is also marvellous by reason of its artistic quality and excellent because of the nature of the stone, since in a block of so great a size there is not a single crack or blemish to be seen. The inscription upon it runs: "King of Kings am I, Osymandyas. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works."

Shelley's sonnet was published in 1818 in The Examiner, under the pseudonym 'Glirastes':

Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Smith's sonnet was also published in The Examiner, a few weeks later.

Ozymandias
On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below
by Horace Smith

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows.
"I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone,
"The King of kings: this mighty city shows
The wonders of my hand." The city's gone!
Naught but the leg remaining to disclose
The sight of that forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What wonderful, but unrecorded, race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

There is no question that Shelley's is the greater sonnet -- it has a better build-up and a more flexible use of language -- but it is not a failing for a sonnet to be less good than one of the greatest sonnets ever written, and the last half of Smith's is excellent.

Music on My Mind

Maddy Prior, "The Rolling English Road". A G. K. Chesterton poem, of course.

Transfiguration

Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord

You, O Christ, assumed our human nature,
undiminished in Yourself and Your glory,
and yet like us in all things except sin.
You shone brightly before Peter, James, and John,
a foretaste of the happiness You bring.
Shine on our minds that we may be enlightened;
allow us to taste the sweetness of light.
How good it is that we may dwell in Your grace,
for You are resplendent on the mountain!

One in nature with Father and Spirit,
to exalt servants You became a servant,
and yet in serving You were not severed:
there is one Power, one Kingship, and one Light.
Because of You, we heard the Father's voice,
and You have shown us the way of salvation.
Before the glory upon Golgotha,
You revealed Your majesty on Mount Tabor,
in beauty resplendent on the mountain.

On Tabor You showed us You are God's Son,
for the Father confirmed it with splendid love.
You gave us a taste of heavenly life
and showed us the beauty of Your Father's light,
the bright blazing in which You will return,
in the body but glorious in Godhead.
May our bishops, Lord, remember their task,
to show the brilliance of Your divinity,
bright, unending, resplendent on the mountain.

Today we hear the voice of the Father,
saying, "This is my beloved Son; hear him."
Today the Church cries out with rejoicing,
for this is the Son who has come to save us.
May all be touched by Your light and transformed;
may we carry Your name to all the nations,
revealing the light You revealed to us,
that we may contemplate Your face forever,
radiant, resplendent on the mountain.