Soloviev:
shame -> existence of a supernatural, spiritual aspect to human nature
pity -> existence of a unity of nature or solidarity of all beings
reverence -> existence of a higher principle
-- in each case, he takes the moral disposition to establish existence without giving us a theoretical conception or account
shame, pity, and reverence as instruments of conscience
One of the things that is most clear about the religious life of the Holy Family is that they went on many pilgrimages to Jerusalem.
We should accept the pious speculations of saints insofar as we may say of them, "potuit, decuit, prohibentes removenter".
Superfluity arguments are always relative to the ends of an inquiry.
Conception is the proportioning of the object to the power.
the virtues of a free society: amiability, generosity, truthfulness, vindication, and gratitude
-- by the same token, ingratitude, vindictiveness, dishonesty, stinginess, and hostility can eat away at a free society very quickly
To understand any field of thought better, look for that in it which is sublime.
Since God is our beatitude, all the Beatitudes concern ways of participating God.
Kant's ethics can give formal universality but not final universality.
'facts' as beings of reason
"A knowledge of proverbs contributes to a number of things, but to four especially: philosophy, persuasiveness, grace and charm in speaking, and the understanding of the best authors." Erasmus
"Mencius said, There is no attribute of the superior man greater than his helping men to practice virtue." Mencius 2A.8
"Zeng said, 'There are three degrees of filial piety. The highest is honoring our parents; the second is not disgracing them; and the lowest is being able to support them." Book of Rites, Ji Yi 25
All inquiry is inquiry with others, the expression of a common pursuit.
primary being of a thing: substance, quantity, quality
secondary being of a thing: relation
tertiary being of a thing: sex principia
predication of genus or difference : analytic :: predication of property or accident : synthetic (Welton)
A permanent possibility is an actuality with potential.
imperfect definitions
(1) inadequate
(2) imprecise
(3) obscure (incl. symbolic, figurative)
(4) tautologous
(5) negative
plurative propositions as particular-tending-to-universal
"Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia." Ortega y Gassett
The pleasant is the symbol of the blessed.
In every generation, human beings necessarily try to understand the natural on the model of the artifactual, and it is an error to think you can avoid it entirely.
existence, identity, predication as the three moments of being.
The later Heidegger attributes to the poet what could only be true of the prophet.
"Joy untouched by thankfulness is always suspect." Theodor Haecker
"In fact it is the 'how' which decides the value of a man or a policy. The revolution brought about by Christianity is in the 'how'."
"God's revelation is a revelation concerning the means which man is to use in order to achieve salvation."
"Immortality is in love. It is love which first makes it intelligible and, what is more, desirable. Without love immortality would be frightful and horrible."
"One begins to philosophise with wonder. But then, too, philosophy ends in wonder. Is this wonder perhaps a sign that the spirit of man is created? For why, otherwise, should being be in wonder at itself, at being?"
"The truly philosophical spirit is a contemplative spirit. It is not captivated by the things that one can change, but by those, precisely, which cannot be changed."
"Love is the *fulfillment* of the Law, not its destroyer. It is hierarchical, not anarchical."
"Wonder is the qualitative distance which God placed between man and truth. It enables man to find the truth."
"Men no longer test words to see what truth there is in them. The majority are only interested in knowing what their effect will be."
"Lies have their day. If after a certain time they are not drawn out by the truth, then it is by another, and perhaps greater, lie; but they are always driven out."
The being we find in the world is a many requiring a unity.
To recognize the universe as created is in part to recognize that one's community extends to include all of it. All our lives are a neighborhood in a commonwealth that includes quarks and stars and angels.
To be American is to be a generous but not profound muddle. But muddling through works well practically, and generosity is sometimes better than any profundity.
When people speak of the sacramentality of nature, they are usually describing its being a gift.
Oratory plays a mediating role in historical films, between event and audience.
The rights of families are expressions of the sovereignty of the people.
Conscience tends toward beatitude.
Hope springs eternal because it is an orientation to something immutable.
"The chief end of fasting is mortification of the flesh, that the spirit may be more strengthened." Bellarmine
Experience is 'given' in the sense that it is always received as belonging to something other than ourselves.
We all want to have done the good thing; it is harder to want to do it.
title -> right -> claim
the Tenth Amendment as preserving rights under common law and custom and reason
(a common failure of constitutional theorists is the refusal to recognize that no powers are reserved unless there are actual powers that can be reserved)
The fact that atrocities are committed in the name of law is in and of itself reason to regard law as having reference to morality, for elsewhere it is only things moral, either strictly or loosely, that anyone ever uses to excuse their atrocities.
Even the merely contingent overlap of law and morality has more robust ramifications than Hart ever pursues; for law must be such that overlap is possible as a general matter.
When legal positivists do more than merely gesture at 'substantive morality', what they describe as 'substantive morality' is always mythical.
legal systems as participations of law, often defective and always limited
legal systems have systemic moral features that justify them and by virtue of which hey have what authority they do
-- legal systems in this sense may include both laws and usurpations
-- legal systems presuppose constituting laws that make them able to be systems
legal positivism as inconsistent with popular sovereignty
(1) Judges should decide cases in reasonable and not unreasonable ways.
(2) Deciding cases in a reasonable way cannot be done without regard for moral principles.
the virtual juridical order of conscience
the tribunal of conscience as the exemplate of the divine tribunal and the type of the Last Judgment
unction as indicating that *this* body will be resurrected
baptism, matrimony, and unction as sacraments of the resurrection
The grace given in sacramental unction is a foretaste in the soul of that which, in the resurrection of the body, will be had so superabundantly that it will overflow into the body as incorruption, glory, power, and spirituality.
Natural law is even more properly law than positive law.
law : rule of art :: particular just work (the right) : thing to be made
The right is something commensurated to another with respect to some equality either (1) by nature or (2) by agreement or consent, whether (2a) by private agreement or (2b) by public agreement, the latter either (2b1) of the whole community or (2b2 of the principal member.
We have rights to have what is our right, which is the right with respect to us.
fortitude and the trial/test/challenge
"The right is that thing which, given its attribution to a subject, who is its titleholder, is owed him in virtue of a debt, in the strict sense of the term." Hervada
Common good always exceeds the sum of rights in the community.
Common good is always common goods formed as common by a unifying and ordering good, which latter constitutes the unity and order of the community.
populus Dei
(1) in anticipating form: Israel
(2) in completed form: liturgical commonwealth / sacramental society
--- (a) generally considered (societas perfecta): union around common good as gift, received by sacrament, considered either
--- --- (1) individually
--- --- (2) domestically
--- (b) as ordered by reception of gift: hierarchy
--- (c) as operative
--- --- (1) munera
--- --- (2) as historical entity
--- (d) as consummated
--- --- (1) in heaven
--- --- (2) in age to come
Scratch a person, find a surprise.
the apportionable entitled-to-be-one's-own
(1) non-particularly
(2) by debt in a loose sense
(3) by moral debt
(4) by legal debt
--(4) is something that is one's right in strict sense
law : justice :: courtesy/etiquette : temperance
-- rules of etiquette as like a reflection of natural law on temperance-virtues insofar as they affect others. 'the courtesy' then becomes perhaps the analogue of 'the right', but the due in etiquette is always loose and conditional, because it is not justice but temperance-based facilitation of justice that is relevant. But perhaps etiquette is not just temperance-based facilitation of justice but also justice-based facilitation of temperance, because it's really a matter of the two insofar as they have unity, a mutual facilitation.
-- a question is what we get in fortitude-based facilitation of justice; perhaps 'sacrifice' in the colloquial moral sense is an approximate analogue.
Rights come from laws by laws forming things as titles, by virtue of which other things are conceived as under the relation of being due.
Human nature is an intrinsic title; this is the foundation of human rights. It is an intrinsic title because, as rational, it has a law natural to it by which it is recognized that some things are due to the person who has it; it has naturally the law that forms it juridically as a title.
title : sign :: what is ones right : object :: duty : interpretant
Pastors have an authority to act in the interest and on behalf of their flock, and this includes an 'envelope power' into which their congregation may by gift or custom place specific authorities and powers beyond and distinct from general pastoral authority.
"The force of law depends on the extent of its justice." Aquinas
the neighborhood school as an outgrowth of associations of households
Difficulties becomes challenges in light of the virtue of fortitude.
An internal disposition to something truly transcendent must be expressed externally.
"As Mary bore the earthly Christ, so the Church bears the Eucharistic Christ." Henri de Lubac
Given people's actual choices, it seems plausible to think that people take fairness to involve a merit principle rather than Rawls's difference principle; people want primary goods to reward effort and contribution, and take anything else to be, at best, second-best. This structures people's actual policies, and trying to get people to pity others so as to aid them always has to work around it; and no society that ignores that people act this way can be suitable for them.
