"The incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale are in our world coeval." Tolkien
the free adjective as the foundation of fantasy (Tolkien)
4 characteristics of true contrition
(1) real and not merely verbal
(2) from faith rather than incentive
(3) complete in its recognition of the evil of sin
(4) complete in the scope of sins recognized
abstract object realism // immateriality of the soul
Human sexuality is a sign-making thing.
marriage as locution with illocutionary and perlocutionary force
"...a word, whether spoken or written, has a remarkable, even paradoxical quality,--namely that it both goes out and remains where it was to start with." Barfield
The 'cult of victimhood' is an attack on habits of mercy, (1) by making mercy dependent on some status as victim and (2) by encouraging unmerciful behavior to victimizers and (3) by discouraging merciful action by victims. It perversely takes a genuine ground for mercy and twists it to block mercy. It is consistent with, and indeed conducive to, some acts of mercy; but there are few things more toxic to merciful character, because it sets so many different kinds of impediments to mercy.
Genealogy is a matter of culture as well as biology.
Given the way he characterizes the Supreme Law of Human Action, Whewell's Five Virtues are perhaps best considered to be kinds of disposition to human common good: uniting affection (Benevolence), excluding of selfish desire (Justice), maintenance of common understanding (Truth), control of appetites (Purity), and distinct and definite conception of standards (Order).
St. Andrew of Crete on the garments of the Transfiguration, figurally understood:
(1) the words and deeds of the Savior in earthly life (spotless, showing the divine in the mundane without circumscribing it)
(2) the magnificence of those things brought into existence by the Word, esp. Scripture (made pure by the Spirit, revealing the Word to those perfected in the Spirit -- those like Peter, representing depth of faith, firmly anchored in the rock, carrying the Church, and James and John, representing the breadth and height, entrusted with mystical vision)
The book of Jude shows that there may be true prophecy amidst speculation and fable.
Scripture insinuates that the wine of the chalice is to be mixed with water, but gives no explicit institution of it.
Secularization is a disease of custom more than anything.
Titus 1:5 -- the establishment of elders by appointment by appropriate authority arising from the apostles
Acts 6:3 -- while the people select, only the apostles appoint
"there is one chair belonging to one, upon which now by divine authority three bishops sit" Gregory (letter 37 to Eulogius of Alexandria)
*Direct* temporal authority by the pope arises from the custom of the liturgical commonwealth and not from anything intrinsic to the papacy.
five works proper to God (Bellarmine): Creation, Conservation, Salvation, Foreknowledge of the hidden, Miracles
"The same act belongs to the mover as wherefrom it is and to the moved as wherein it is." Aquinas
One who has a democratic mindset and who begins to ridicule without intent to hurt will eventually ridicule with intent to hurt; ridicule is naturally escalating in an environment emphasizing persuasion.
"The Natural Affections are the proper moral School of the Heart." Whewell
From Christ the King, the Church receives the right of global and catholic mission.
The Church does not offer the sacrament of marriage; she receives it from Christ.
Life itself is a beginning of happiness.
Our duties are inevitably going to be somewhat general under most circumstances.
When dealing with wrongs, it is idle to talk about whether society should retaliate; the fact is that it inevitably does so, often as a reflex. The question is not whether but how it should retaliate, and what should be done to guarantee that it only does so in the right mode.
Human beings are such inveterate storytellers that we will defy heaven itself if we like the role it gives us in the imagined stories of our lives.
Acts of justice often arise out of the spontaneous negotiations of life and thus could not always have been determined beforehand.
Opus human generis totaliter accepti est actuare semper totam potentiam intellectus possibilis. (Dante)
Analogical inference requires not merely similarity but similarity within a universe of discourse.
- Can this perhaps give us a good account of a legitimate fallacy of alse analogy, as ignoratio elenchi arising through failure to respect the universe of discourse?
analogical inference as preserving possibility with respect to similarity-as-evidence (evidential possibility given similarity)
The love in charity is God's own religious act.
square of opposition for: theism, non-atheism, atheism, nontheism
Spontaneous interjections are often difficult to interpret due to a surplus of meaning, not a paucity.
rational zymurgy, the zymurgy of reason
Complete holiness is found only in the fullness of divine love.
causation, eminence, and remotion in the interpretive work of HoP
The right to vote is a right for protecting other rights; it does not exist for its own sake.
Christ is both symbol and means of the union of God and man.
"Every philosophic system is the outcome of that or those put forward before it, and contains the germs of its successor." Erdmann
"If Philosophy is the self-comprehension of the spirit, the proof that a philosophic system does not understand itself, is also a proof that it is not a complete philosophy, and therefore must be transcended."
Habituation as such is not a reversible process; one can lose habitus, the effect, but not by reversal, only by moving forward again. It's not like simply changing one's mind.
Universalist arguments seem unusually likely to commit the fallacy of simpliciter et secundum quid. Think about this.
NB that Aristotle treats music not only as imitative but as paradigmatically so.
The Fall of Man is not yet complete.
Hoffman
(1) What moves by locomotion has determinate direction. (2) What has determinate direction is determined to that direction rather than some other. (3) This is final causation.
(1)What moves in a given direction has a tendency to continue in that direction. (2) A tendency to do something is final causation.
"Each thing insofar as it is simple and undivided, always remains in the same state, quantum in se est, and never changes except as a result of external causes." Descartes Principles 2.37 (AT 8a62; CSM 1.240-1)
"Each thing, quantum in se est, strives to persevere in its being." Spinoza, Ethics 3P6
Descartes's df of conatus (Principles 3a56 AT VIIIa, 108, CSM 1, 259): "they are positioned and pushed into motion insuch a way that they will in fact travel in that direction, unless they are prevented by some other cause."
- Hoffman suggests that striving adds to the tending the notion of quantum in se est.
force as actio ad mutandum
Shared skeptical opposition tends to pressure dogmatisms to unite.
"...syncretism is dogmatism as well as scepticism, and it is just in this that the chief weakness of the system, and its formal inconsistency, consists." Erdmann
Is Erdmann right that imperial systems tend toward philosophical syncretisms?
reason : eclectic mixture :: understanding : organic fusion
filmlook & soundflow
possibilities in terms of (a) powers (b) objects of thought
are these, taken broadly, exhaustive?
Philosophy itself is a form of shared intentionality.
