Like to a Good Old Age Released from Care

October
by William Cullen Bryant 

 Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath!
 When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
 And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,
 And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
 Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay
 In the gay woods and in the golden air,
 Like to a good old age released from care,
 Journeying, in long serenity, away.
 In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
 Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks,
 And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
 And music of kind voices ever nigh;
 And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
 Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

Dashed Off XXIII

 love, joy, and peace as three aspects of solidarity

The only justice that is complete is the justice that is ordered to beatitude.

Human beings are organized hierarchically because they are hierarchical internally.

Pride is a greater corruption than other vices, but by the same token shows more of the spiritual glory that it corrupts, as in a caricature or parody.

Permissions are context-sensitive; A permitting X and B permitting X will often be very different kinds of action. This becomes very obvious if A and B have very different levels of knowledge about X, or if A and B have very different duties with respect to X, but it happens elsewhere and in other ways as well.

narrative vs schematic classification
detection-based classification vs rule-based classification

space and time (history) as themselves systems of alternate possibilities

The Gospel of Mark emphasizes the failures of all of Jesus' followers.

Citizens of the Kingdom of God are armigerous, bearing spiritual arms in their spiritual citizenship.

Living organisms are complex material systems that can be considered immaterially, in varying degrees depending on the kind of life.

clothing as passive tool use

true - intellect - wisdom
good - will - love
beautiful - ? - happiness

being
1. actuality
-- -- 1a. immutability
-- -- 1b. simplicity
-- -- 1c. eternity
2. modality (perseity)
-- -- 2a. necessity
-- -- 2b. immensity
-- -- -- -- 2b1. with respect to place
-- -- -- -- 2b2. with respect to time (atemporality)

Historical explanations involve explaining in terms of causes-in-readiness, showing that there are such causes in readiness and showing that effects emerge out of this ready reserve of causes.

classification, imputation, ordination

The root of human dignity is so because it is our capacity for sacramental and social union with God.

Scientific inquiry is an intrinsically social endeavor.

rites as means of customary law

the Transfiguration as the model of all iconography

Nothing is more inclusive than hell.

Acts 9:32-35 Aeneas as a type of Rome

Acts 9:36-42 on the order of the widows

1 Cor 11:12 & Mary as New Eve

substituting signs vs guising signs
uniforms as vestments serving as guising signs

language as index, as icon, and as symbol of reason

signs that are instruments of what they signify

autonomy as a work of grace

Myths work themselves out into rituals.

Ritual is a means of thinking outwardly and experiencing inwardly.

The adjective 'real' often designates a priority or superiority in likeness to the paradigmatic.

'Man' and 'woman' have generic functionality in the life of the human species; this generic functionality is given customary specification in a society.

Love only justifies to the extent it converges on divine love.

spiritual power directly serving spiritual ends
spiritual power cooperating with the temporal power's indirectly serving spiritual ends
temporal power cooperating with the spiritual power's directly serving spiritual ends
temporal power directly serving temporal ends and indirectly serving spiritual ends through them

Every experience of actual regularity suggests a greater possible regularity.

Spiritual ends require indirect as well as direct means.

the Church's right to non-interference in sacramental and doctrinal matters

All fallen human loves are interwoven with betrayals, although some much more, and much more seriously, than others.

deacon : baptism :: priest : confirmation :: bishop : ordination
--> There seems something to the analogy, but it is difficult to identify any unified principle of relation.

Both the spiritual and the temporal powers may delegate power to each other, for mutual benefit.

philosophy qua field as the field where all fields meet, the field between all fields

the importance of avoiding political agnosticism

Descartes's infinite perfect being as a way of talking about God as the infinite intelligible

mosaic as a symbol of providence

The existence of a contingent thing implies the existence of a broader system, however loose, of which it is a part or a consequence or both.

God is not a deceiver = What is purely intelligible involves no falsehood.

obstinacy as penalty

Doing things out of love is not inconsistent with doing them out of a motive of duty; love takes duties and transfigures them.

No one has acceptance without exception.

Every political scheme eventually reaches the stage of pathology.

the legal organization of the natural capabilities of the human race

traditionally recognized excuses for criminal responsibility: automatism, infancy, insanity, involuntary intoxication, duress, entrapment, mistake of fact, mistake of law

"The notion of a role has built into it a notion of some conduct as appropriate." Dorothy Emmet
"...casuistry is a necessary excercise in trying to determine the limits of principles in regard to new and varied circumstances, and in trying to resolve conflicts of principles."

Literature, art, & experimentation presuppose people operating in relevant social roles.

habitus as role carried around with us

mystical experiences as limit cases of ordinary cognitive experience

memory as anticipation of present

elections as creating 'interference patterns' in results

"Do not think, he says that you are destined for easy struggles or unimportant tasks. You are the salt of the earth." Chrysostom

Human beings have no intrinsic title to the life of another human being; the extrinsic titles are:
(1) personal self-defense
(2) defense of another's life
(3) defense of public good (just punishment).

God has intrinsic title to anything to which any created being has extrinsic title; this title is creation.
--> This explains many dispensations.

covenant -> free will

-- the relevant titles for each of the Ten Commandments

Political power is exercised by patterns of exclusion.

Oppression is not a system in the proper sense; it is incoherent.

Conservatism always eventually dissipates; progressivism always eventually eats itself.

Knowledge is something we do not discover by considering our experience alone but by considering what is shareable among many.

"Errasse humanum est, et confiteri errorem, prudentis." Jerome (Ep 57.12)
"Humanum fuit errare, diabolicum est per animositatem in errore manere." Augustine (Serm. 164.14)

The law is a sign and symbol of grace.
-- Torah and grace are both expressions of divine wisdom.

Actions do not float free from the powers or capabilities of which they are exercises, and apparently similar descriptions of actions that are expressions of different capabilities  does not make the actions the same.

Human beings grow into their hierarchies, shaping them in various ways as they go.

promise -- verity -- memorial

In the sacrament as convenantal act, there is simultaneously promise, fulfillment, and memorial.

Links of Note

 * Jill North, The Complex Structure of Quantum Mechanics, at "Blog of the APA"

* Agnes Bolinska & Joseph D. Martin, The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history and philosophy of science (PDF)

* Srikanth Reddy, Hannah Arendt, Poet, at "The Paris Review"

* Owen Ware, The Unity of Reason and the Highest Good (PDF)

* Michael Lucchese, Christian Institutions in a New World, at "Public Discourse"

* Marius Stan, Laws and natural philosophy (PDF)

*  Paul Kalligas, Plotinus, at the SEP

* Dolores G. Morris, Closure as a Stance (PDF)

* Helen DeCruz, Her lively and sweet countenance, on the notion of 'countenance' in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, as well as some of the philosophical ideas behind it, at "Wondering Freely"

* Christopher P. Martin, Spinoza's Formal Mechanism (PDF)

* Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, God Is Not a Thing: A Response to Dale Tuggy, a guest post at Fr. Aidan Kimel's "Eclectic Orthodoxy"

* Philip Cary, The Inner Word Prior to Language: Augustine as Platonist Alternative to Gadamerian Hermeneutics (PDF)

* Albania is considering the possibility of ceding a token territory and recognition of sovereignty to the Bektashi Order, which, if done, would create a new European microstate. The Urdhri Bektashi was originally founded as a Sufi brotherhood in the Ottoman Empire, which moved from Turkey to Albania when its lodges were forcibly closed during the founding of the Turkish Republic.  The Dedebaba (spiritual leader of the Bektashis) has apparently indicated that he envisions the state as being organized on the analogy of Vatican City. Without knowing much about the particular local details, this general sort of move seems reasonable to me, at least when it is actually feasible; and, as the history of the Bektashi Order itself shows, there is a potential value to major religious organizations not being subject to the whims of nationalist politics.

* Christopher Smeerk, Philosophical geometers and geometrical philosophers (PDF)

* Evan Thompson, Clock time contra lived time, on the debate between Einstein and Bergson, at "Aeon"

Securing Human Rights

From James Nickel & Adam Etinson, Human Rights, at the SEP:

Attributing human rights to god’s commands may give them a secure status at the metaphysical level, but in a very diverse world it does not make them practically secure. Billions of people today do not believe in the god of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. If people do not believe in god, or in the sort of god that prescribes rights, then if you want to base human rights on theological beliefs you must persuade these people to accept a rights-supporting theological view. This is likely to be even harder than persuading them of human rights. Legal enactment at the national and international levels provides a far more secure status for practical purposes.

The claim that legal enactment is a more secure foundation for the position that human rights exist "in a very diverse world" than divine commands seems a common view in some circles, but it also seems straightforwardly false, and it's difficult to see what conceivable argument for it could even be plausible. Legal enactment requires recognized legal authority; there is no legal authority at the national and international levels -- at all -- that has universal or even practically universal recognition as an authority capable of being a source of human rights nor is this surprising, since human rights are (as the authors recognize) generally taken to be at least mostly universal, and therefore seem to require an authority with at least mostly universal scope for the human race, which gives us a very limited set of candidates. Many, many more people believe in the existence of a God who can endow human beings with rights than accept the authority of any international or national agency in existence. Christians and Muslims alone make up more than half the population of the earth, and it's not clear you could get even half the population of the earth to accept that the United Nations actually has the authority to provide a "secure status for practical purposes" for human rights existing.

What's more, the proverb, "What's good for the gander is good for the goose", comes to mind here: If there are many people who believe that human rights exist because of God's commands and not any human agency -- and there undoubtedly are, and they are many -- the argument given here against the divine command option applies a fortiori to the legal enactment opposition; if people do not believe that international agencies, or the sort of international agencies that exist, can prescribe human rights, "then if you want to base human rights on" legal enactment, "you must persuade these people to accept a rights-supporting" view of international law that can actually ground human rights. Nickel & Etinson seem to assume that it's obvious that because legal agencies can recognize the existence of human rights that legal agencies can account for their existence; but there are many views on which the latter is not possible. The concern for a "diverse world" here seems to be fake, or at least based on a failure to think through the argument. Yes, it's true that many people have views that make a divine-command-based view impossible; it is at least as obviously true that many people have views that make a nation-and-international-law view a non-starter. The actual tendency of the argument, if we accepted it, is to the position that there is no way to explain the existence of human rights, because if theism doesn't unite a sufficiently large and diverse portion of the planet to count, nothing available does. No legal authority is as widely respected and deferred-to by as large and diverse a population as divine authority is, and it's not even close. 

Part of what is happening, of course, is that the diversity of theistic views about God is being treated as a strike against theistic grounding, while the diversity of juridical views about legal and political agencies is being ignored. But the two cases are in fact parallel. Theism in this context merely has to be adequate to establish that human rights exist -- that is compatible with widely different views of God's nature and acts, and also with considerable disagreement about which things in particular we should consider to be divinely endowed human rights. The details can be worked out by argument --  just exactly as they have to be on the legal-enactment view, which assumes that people who do not at all agree on the nature and scope of authority of national and international legal powers are nonetheless able to come to adequate agreement "for practical purposes" on human rights.

Of course, we should not accept the argument at all. If you are really concerned with "a diverse world", all views have to be taken seriously; if you are really interested in truth, it does not matter that there are people who are not persuaded, but only what is the right view; if you are really interested in persuasion, you have to go with the view that actually persuades more people; if you are really interested in practical security of human rights, you should work with the views on which people actually base their practical reasoning. On all of these grounds, one should reject an argument like this, even if we assume (which we should not) that what explains the existence of human rights must be some sort of positive enactment like a divine command or legal enactment at the national or international level.

The Dabbler

 42. The dabbler does not know in any art what it is all about -- he imitates like a monkey -- and has no sense of the essential course of art. The true painter etc. certainly can distinguish the picturesque from the unpicturesque everywhere. So it is with the poet, the novelist, the travel writer. The writer of chronicles is the dabbler in history -- he wants to give everything and gives nothing. So it is throughout. Every art has its individual sphere -- he who does not know this exactly or have some sense of it -- will never be an artist.

[Novalis, Logological Fragments II, in Novalis: Philosophical Writings, Margaret Mahony Stoljar, ed. and tr., SUNY Press (Albany, NY: 1997), p. 42.]

The Little Flower

 Today is the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church. From The Story of a Soul, Chapter IX:

Among the numberless graces that I have received this year, not the least is an understanding of how far-reaching is the precept of charity. I had never before fathomed these words of Our Lord: "The second commandment is like to the first: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." I had set myself above all to love God, and it was in loving Him that I discovered the hidden meaning of these other words: "It is not those who say, Lord, Lord! who enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the Will of My Father." 

 Jesus revealed me this Will when at the Last Supper He gave His New Commandment in telling His Apostles to love one another as He had loved them. I set myself to find out how He had loved His Apostles; and I saw that it was not for their natural qualities, for they were ignorant men, full of earthly ideas. And yet He calls them His Friends, His Brethren; He desires to see them near Him in the Kingdom of His Father, and in order to admit them to this Kingdom He wills to die on the Cross, saying: "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 

 As I meditated on these Divine words, I saw how imperfect was the love I bore my Sisters in religion. I understood that I did not love them as Our Lord loves them. I know now that true charity consists in bearing all our neighbours' defects—not being surprised at their weakness, but edified at their smallest virtues. Above all I know that charity must not remain shut up in the heart, for "No man lighteth a candle, and putteth it in a hidden place, nor under a bushel; but upon a candlestick, that they who come in may see the light." 

 It seems to me, dear Mother, this candle represents that charity which enlightens and gladdens, not only those who are dear to us, but all those who are of the household.

The Thunderer

 Today is the feast of St. Jerome, Doctor of the Church. In his De viris illustribus (Of Famous Men), he gives a list of 135 Christians important for their work in Christian letters. (He actually includes three Jews -- Philo Judaeus, Josephus, and Justus -- and one pagan -- Seneca -- on what might be called 'the grounds of close enough', each contributing something important to Christian letters, and in the cases of Philo, Josephus, and Seneca, there being some reason in their texts or in popular traditions to think that they were at least broadly friendly to Christians.) The final Famous Man of Christian Letters that Jerome mentions is himself:

I, Jerome, son of Eusebius, of the city of Strido, which is on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia and was overthrown by the Goths, up to the present year, that is, the fourteenth of the Emperor Theodosius, have written the following: Life of Paul the monk, one book of Letters to different persons, an Exhortation to Heliodorus, Controversy of Luciferianus and Orthodoxus, Chronicle of universal history, 28 homilies of Origen on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, which I translated from Greek into Latin, On the Seraphim, On Osanna, On the prudent and the prodigal sons, On three questions of the ancient law, Homilies on the Song of Songs two, Against Helvidius, On the perpetual virginity of Mary, To Eustochius, On maintaining virginity, one book of Epistles to Marcella, a consolatory letter to Paula On the death of a daughter, three books of Commentaries on the epistle of Paul to the Galatians, likewise three books of Commentaries on the epistle to the Ephesians, On the epistle to Titus one book, On the epistle to Philemon one, Commentaries on Ecclesiastes, one book of Hebrew questions on Genesis, one book On places in Judea, one book of Hebrew names, Didymus on the Holy Spirit, which I translated into Latin one book, 39 homilies on Luke, On Psalms 10 to 16, seven books, On the captive Monk, The Life of the blessed Hilarion. I translated the New Testament from the Greek, and the Old Testament from the Hebrew, and how many Letters I have written To Paula and Eustochius I do not know, for I write daily. I wrote moreover, two books of Explanations on Micah, one book On Nahum, two books On Habakkuk, one On Zephaniah, one On Haggai, and many others On the prophets, which are not yet finished, and which I am still at work upon.

As the Garments of the Saints

 26. The poet ends the move as he begins it. If the philosopher only orders everything, places everything, the poet would loosen all bonds. His words are not common signs -- they are sounds -- magic words which move beautiful groups around themselves. As the garments of the saints still retain wondrous powers, so is many a word sanctified through some splendid memory, and has become a poem almost on its own. For the poet language is never too poor but always too general. He needs words that often recur and are played out through use. His world is simple, like his instrument -- but it is just as inexhaustible a source of melodies.

[Novalis, Logological Fragments I, in Novalis: Philosophical Writings, Margaret Mahony Stoljar, ed. and tr., SUNY Press (Albany, NY: 1997), p. 54.]

A good example of what Novalis has in mind, I think, is the word 'mother', which is in bare sense something like 'the designation of a woman relative to her children'; but how far this falls short of the word's meaning! The word 'mother' is indeed "a poem almost on its own", and Novalis surely has something of the right idea about what makes it so -- it has not only a bare common meaning but is a word that is associated for many with "some splendid memory", and therefore its actual meaning is many-layered from being used in such a richly varied portion of overall human experience. It is this many-layered character that makes it suitable for many of the figurative expressions in which it shows up; to speak of Mother Church or Mother Russia or Mother Earth is not merely to carry over some kind of analogy with a 'woman relative to her children' but to carry over analogies with these layers -- the phases of motherhood, the actual relations of children to their mothers, the all-encompassing providence of which motherhood makes such an excellent symbol precisely because it is an eminent example of something that involves a sort of all-encompassing providence. The layers are what make the word an instrument capable of being "inexhaustible" as "a source of melodies." And so on with many other words that are in common use across a richly varied part of human experience, the second-class relics of the human person.