"As God He was the motivating principle (kinetikos) of His own humanity, and as man He was the revelatory principle (ekphantikos) of His own divinity." Maximus Confessor
No virtue can be had without some kind of contemplation of good.
rationalization vs pretextualization
"We can love evil things but not as evil, finite things but not as finite, so love as such is of an infinite good." James Chastek
Possession is natural to the human being; property as a jural concept is instrumental to this.
being (ousia) : creation :: motion (kinesis) : providence :: difference (diaphora) : judgment/distribution [Maximus Confessor]
The human body is hierarchical by nature; and thus skill in using it is experienced as hierarchical, the higher illuminating the lower.
the importance of posterity as a concept in constitutional jurisprudence
Consequentialism inevitably corrupts all scientific inquiry because there are always good and bad consequences that can interfere with the integrity of inquiry, and force manipulation of the inquiry in a supposed good cause.
aion as "time deprived of motion, whereas time is the aion measured by motion" (Maximus)
persons as self-symbolizing
Pharaoh is always setting the Israelites to make bricks without straw; it is the structure of all oppression and persecution, religious or otherwise. People are kept down by demanding impossible tasks and punishing those who fail them. Honest people may punish failures or by accident set impossible tasks, but the one who demands the impossible and, rather than apologizing for it, punishes you when you fail to reach it, is your enemy.
Divine truth both is given to us and must be sought.
Doctrines are usually proposed by the individual and proven by the Church.
The Creeds are capable of being both professions and protests.
The idea that one may only use in argument evidence and reasons the interlocutor would accept, inevitably favors those with the most restrictive and unyielding account of evidence and reasons, regardless of whether those restrictions are reasonable or the lack of yielding mere obstinacy.
The Thirty-Nine Articles are articles of surrender, even if they are called 'articles of peace'.
In the long run, only the Catholic Church will preserve even Protestant things.
Faith is the divine gift to the individual soul, but not merely such, for faith is also a confidelity given to the Church.
Animal loyalty is not the greatest thing, nor even always a great thing at all, but it has kept many people from any number of depravities and corruptions, and it has ameliorated many situations in which it has survived such depravities and corruptions.
principle, content, nexus triads
power, wisdom, goodness // miracles, doctrine, saints (grace)
Philosophical topics are only as boring as you are stupid enough to make them.
Formal arguments shortens processes by which one understands, as medicine does the physical processes of healing.
traces & vestiges : God :: relics : saints
Analytic philosophy is a philosophy of 'here's an idea'; its rigor is of trying to be precise, not a rigor of reasoning itself; even its formalized arguments are cases of just trying to be clear about what they are rather than full reasoning.
Any theory of meaning has to allow for 'close enough' meaning, like when we call an unknown kind of animal by the closest known kind of name, perhaps with a clarificatory qualification ('red dog' for fox, 'striped horse' for zebra), and are wholly understood.
misindication vs misrepresentation
To identify something as a benefit or harm is an appeal to teleology.
selected-effect functions vs selected-structure functions
Freedom is the human form of order.
the search for truth as the structure of moral probation
death as the unfinishing of business
-- but note the 'It is finished'
Consistency is more powerful a test of truth than it seems in the abstract because everyone believes at least some truths on good grounds.
If we respect Christian truth, we must respect things analogous to it, not in blurring the boundaries but in caution, lest disrespect of the analogues might start carrying over to truths to which they are analogous. If we respect the Church, we must respect things that are like it, not in conflation, but to prevent our disrespect of the mere analogues from bleeding back into the aspects of the Church to which they are analogous. What counts as respect enough in such cases will, of course, depend on circumstances.
real memory vs abstract & notional memory
(remembering it vs remembering that we experienced it)
regarding the world
(1) qua simple present (sense)
(2) qua qualified/ampliated present (memory)
(3) qua absent (imagination)
-- experiencing, having experienced, supposing the experience to be such
-- note that this does not always match to common classification (e.g., hallucination is not imagination but sensing what should be imagined)
If Descartes draws everything from doubt, Malebranche draws everything from attention.
'nothingness has no properties' and the existence of substances
The difference between Mass and televised Mass shows that what we do in communion is something involving place and time, co-location and contemporality with the present Christ.
our sense of the resistance of ideas (Malebranche, DMR 1.8)
-- note that Malebranche takes the sense of intelligible resistance to differ from the sense of physical resistance in that the latter is confused and unreliable, but the former clear and reliable.
the danger of attempting to splice a deontological account of liberty to a consequentialist account of equality
three ways to perceive a circle (Malebranche DRM 1.10): conceive, imagine, see
Consumerism reverses the appropriate relationship between desire and enjoyment.
