As always, dashed-off notes, usually from about a year ago, occasionally to be taken with a grain of salt.
***
The true emergency powers in any good constitution must lie with the people.
Lumen gentium says that the bishop has "the fullness of the sacrament of orders", that they are "the higest degree of the priesthood and that priests are united with them in sacerdotal dignity, being one priesthood with them."
"Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future." C. S. Lewis
Monetary value is always based on requirement; negotiation, contract, competition, speculation, fractional reserve, etc., then build on top of this. Fiat currency works first and foremost by governments instituting situtations that require it (like taxes and fees).
The crucifix is a totem in Durkheim's sense -- indeed, more properly so than more typical totems.
persons as having intrinsic potential for consecration
societas civilis // koinonia politike
It is never prudent to be a fool, but it is sometimes prudent to seem one.
rights and the moral commons
Clothes are something we do other things by.
'People' has three elements (Aquinas, Beata gens): numerous multitudes ("one or two do not make a people"), ordered distinction, harmonious unity.
-- based on Aug (Civ Dei 19.31): A people are an assembly of the multitude united together by consensus of right/law in association of utility, populus est coetus multitudinis juris consensu utilitatis communione sociatus.
Sensory information already comes to us with menaing.
Something can be functionally money just by customs of exchange; 'currency' adds to 'money' a performative declaration of monetary status.
"Every individual *implies* or *presupposes* society by the very foundations of his being." Constance Naden
a danger of social media: training people in pettiness
The miracles of saints are little pictures of grace.
A unified community requires some standard of decency.
One cannot adequately talk about humane excellence without drawing on religious vocabulary.
A market always occurs under some kind of protection.
argument as communication : conception as act :: argument as communicable : conception as object
A common error in persuasion is to assume that arguments move as moving causes, when in reality they 'move' as objective causes, like templates or recipes.
All reading involves some filling-in-of-gaps based on a larger context.
weakly interacting and strongly interacting ideas
the commemorative hierarchy of the liturgy
-- commemoration in the Divine Liturgy is not something the priest does on his own
There is a grave danger of confusing being devout with faking sainthood.
The heart of a republic is its common and public memory.
kinds of subordinate end
(1) contributing constitutive (component end of superordinate end)
(2) contributing nonconstitutive (end that is distinct means to superordinate end)
(3) noncontributing nonconstitutive (symbolic, proxy, substitute)
(1) The human person has an intrinsic tendency to unite other things under the aspect of good to himself, to make them in some way his own.
(2) This owning, which includes more than mere commodity-owning, participates the features of the person, because it in some sense makes other things part of the person.
(3) Because the person is incommunicable, the owning is in some way exclusive.
(4) Because the person has personal identity through time, this owning has some kind of perpetuity.
(5) Because the person is one, this owning is in some way unified.
(6) Because the person is free, this owning is in some way open to activity without definite limit.
(7) A person's own being in some way part of the person, the person has a right to their own, an own-right pertaining to the fact of owning and having the same characteristics.
(8) There are many different kinds of owning, and thus different kinds of own-right, each based on rational reflection on that particular fact of owning.
(9) That which is one's own in some way is had as belonging to one, a possession that may be physical, moral, juridical, etc.
(10) That which is our own is in some way there for us to be able to draw on in our actions.
American hegemony, like the imperial power of Augustus, is built on the *nonseizure* of a vast number of powers that people are convinced to allow the United States to exercise, in acts of rule without the name of rule.
rights as rational faculties for acting
perversions of rights
"Considered in general, competition through honest means is a natural right relative to all kinds of earning." Rosmini
constitutive vs demonstrative signs of consecration
The grace we receive in this life must be the first step toward being a new creation, an anticipation and sign of it.
The becoming of civil society is for life; the being of civil society is for good life.
The People, as an authoritative body, have an inherent right to execute laws, suppress insurrections,a nd repel invasions.
quality, reaction, mediation
"Personality essentially involves the capacity for rights and constitutes the concept and the basis (itself abstract) of the system of abstract and therefore formal right. Hence the imperative right is: 'Be a person and respect others as persons.'" Hegel
tending rites as the basic hieratic act
(1) sacrality in the abstract
(2) personal sacrality
--- (a) properly
--- (b) by extension
(3) communal sacrality
--- (a) familial
--- (b) associational
--- (c) ecclesial
sacraeprudentia // jurisprudentia
Everything has an implicit capacity to be a sacral sign.
The two primary sources of multicultural society are empire and trade.
As need gives less ground to argue, people invent new grounds for arguing.
"The greatest gifts are often seen, in the course of nature, rained by celestial influences on human creatures; and sometimes, in supernatural fashion, beauty, grace, and talent are united beyond measure in one single person, in a manner that to whatever such an one turns his attention, hi severy action is so divine, that, surpassing all other men, it makes itself clearly known as a thing bestowed by God (as it is), and not acquired by human art." Vasari (on Leonardo)
Personal 'authenticity' is often just a story in one's head.
final causation a precondition of objective causation (indeed, all extrinsic formal causation)
the title to the hoped-ofr, the proof of the unseen
Sex does not reach its proper form until it is an act of justice to the other, an act of mutual justice.
In a sense, God does not accept us, because we have nothing to give Him that is not already His; He has no need to receive us, for He is not lacking us, although we may lack Him. It is we who need to accept God.
iconodoulia and respect for the image of God in humanity
There are situations, at the extremes of enmity especially, in which there is no way to be just to one's enemies without loving them.
the Holy Virgin as the pinnacle of Holy Israel
No politics is adequate unless it provides the conditions for civic friendship throughout civil society.
the Myth of Judgment as a picture of philosophy
Being a subject and being an object are not incompatible.
thinking of sunyata as openness rather than bare emptiness
Stupidity, like wrongdoing, is something of which one may repent.
All major sacraments require authorization (or jurisdiction) set by either law or authorizing act, but some sacraments have a wide authorization by divine or ecclesial law. This is the point at which authorization and institution are related; and that connection means that authorization of the right sort is essential to the sign. Major sacraments are not any arbitrary signs; they are authoritative signs.
Authority is carried by rites, transferred by rites, reshaped by rites.
Aquinas on the Immaculate Conception
Sent 1d44q1a3ad3: "Such was the purity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was exempt from both original and actual sin."
ST 3.27.2ad2: "IF the soul of the Blessed Virgin had never incurred the stain of original sin, this would be derogatory to the dignity of Christ, by reason of His being the universal Savior of all...The Blessed Virgin did indeed contract original sin, but was cleansed therefrom before her birth from the womb."
Exp. sal. ang.: "For she was most pure because she incurred the stain neither of original sin nor of mortal sin nor of venial sin."
"Love is the epitome of all theology." Francis de Sales
Nobody wills to pursue pleasure or to avoid pain simply and without qualification.
"Every man is by the frame and structure of things, possessed of some right or property, which cannot be violated without pain or injury to him." Susanna Newcome
Being nasty to the tax collector is not being compassionate to the poor.
The human control of fire is a cooperative and communal control.
We understand being better than we understand intellect.
The second Agrippan mode falsely assumes that nothing can be known except as a conclusion, that nothing can be known as a principle.
The union of matrimony is simultaneously natural, moral, legal, and sacral.
In sacramental marriage, the spouses participate Christ's Passion spiritually, thereby uniting the conjugal union as a sacral order to Christ, and thus constituting the domestic church and making the marriage a sign of the union of Christ with His Church.
The family is both proto-city and proto-church.
Ignatius, Ep ad Polycarp, c. 5: Christian marriage should be with the approval of the bishop, that it may be according to the Lord.
-- note that this seems, in how it is expressed, to be bene esse rather than esse.
All friendships by nature exclude relationships inconsistent with themselves, for instance, relationships constituted by betraying one's friends to their enemies.
strengthening an argument
(1) intrinsic
-- (a) logical
-- (b) evidential
(2) extrinsic (other argument)
-- (a) confirmational
-- (b) analogical
The distinction between subjective right and objective right is not well-formed.
the free citizen and the ius contradicendi (cp St 2-1.58.2 00 the possession of ius contradicendi distinguishes from the slave)
natural, neutral, and violent applications of rights formulations
law as the exemplate of ius
individual freedom vs the common freedom
All democracies depend on public festivals, feasts, and holidays for civil unity.
A genuine right protects the whole community.
Anger is often a means we use to protect ourselves from shame. We would usually rather be angry than ashamed.
The person of equity allows for imprecisions of law and is satisfied with less than his due in such cases (Aristotle, EN 1137-1138).
