Baptism & eucharist, organizing the sacramental economy, also function as ordinances in the social economy of the Church, in which they function as signs and seals of the New Covenant.
the headship of Adam as moral, jural, and sacral
People will easily make small sacrifices for what they think obviously ethical; as either the sacrifices grow greater or the obviousness grows less, people begin to struggle; and eventually all people reach a point at which they need assistance.
In politics it often happens that people associate themselves with values that do not come easily to them -- they take these values to be especially valuable because they work so hard for them, but for some of these they have failed to notice that other people, due to different backgrounds, do not have to work hard for them at all. This explains some of the behavior of political partisans, particularly when they start drawing the conclusion that other people can't exemplify the values because they are obviously not doing the work for them.
'Correct' is always 'correct for such-and-such perupose'.
Popularity works by association with that to which people are already attending.
arguments as keys to intelligibilities
What makes a nation in part is deliberately choosing not to be enemies.
If you don't work on yourself, the devil will take the job.
man as the most imitative animal (Aristotle)
self-imitation and memory
habitus vs. self-imitation
"Art partly completes what nature cannot bring to finish and partly imitates her." Aristotle
Human beigns are hyperimitative because it is natural to us to imitate the divine.
The ghost is always where one does not quite look.
We may act in patterned ways, and we may produce patterns of actions, and these are distinct.
All art finds its completion in worship, either by integration or by sign; but particular works can be inherently defective.
Physicists study the musica mundana, the mathematical harmony of interaction with interaction across the entire cosmos.
The only true rationality is a kind of spirituality of reason.
"Books delight as through and through, they talk with us, they give us good counsel, they enter into a living and intimate companionship with us." Petrarch
NB that Leunissen argues that Aristotle himself does not use final causes as middle terms but as major terms -- thus not as explanatory of the conclusion but as identifying the presence of a feature argued for on the ground of some other cause; that is, as limits of developments.
The final cause unifies the other three causes.
"The arts make their material, some without qualification, others as good to work with, and we use it as if everything exists for the sake of us. For we too are in some sense ends." Aristotle 194a33-36
Darwin's general argument for natural selection (by comparison to artifiical and unconscious selection) can be generalized to an argument for natural teleology.
Aristotle takes nature to have two kinds of action: the necessary and the better (optimizing).
The modern approach to legislation grows out of petitioning and still has the structure of petition (bill), deliberation, and decree.
The stories of our lives are for the sake of our lives, not vice versa.
The 1215 Lateran Council seems to have touched off extensive judicial reforms across Europe.
Institutional corruption is methodical rather than occasional.
To establish a civil right one must first establish a civil duty as its context.
social roles as extrinsic denominabilities
"Christ, loving all men, and rendering all men lovable in Him, has made them all neighbors." Rosmini
Pragmatism mostly works because practical success loosely approximates success for understanding.
In inquiry we use our mind as if it were a lens.
As understanding things requires contrasts, it therefore requires beings of reason.
Obligations 'to our past selves' or 'to our future selves' are just obligations to ourselves, in respect to something past or future.
Reason requires nothing other than itself to be practical.
Aquinas on powers flowing from the essence of the soul: DQ in DA q10 ad 12, q 12 corp.
Ideas that are obscure and confused can have an intellectual picturesquenes, suggesting without requiring, giving room for association and guess.
'natural' and 'unnatural' as aesthetic terms
The human intellect is not an unlimited intellect but an intellect appropriate to a rational animal, and its apprehension of being is that appropriate to a rational animal.
Being as first known to the intellect is the canvas on which all our understanding is painted.
Phantasmata are not merely of singulars but also of similars together.
Terms can be applied
(1) inequatively: according to different grades of perfection of the ratio/notion
(2) attributively: according to ratio being intrinsic or extrinsic
(3) extensively: accoring to ration being proper or improper
(4) proportionatively: according to ration being primary or secondary
(5) simply: according to the ratio being same and equal
Accordingly, the ways one term can be different in different uses are:
(1) more or less full
(2) by what it is itself or relative
(3) strict or loose
(4) primary or secondary.
ways of thinking about concepts
concept : by origin :: formal sign : by end :: species expressa : by genus :: verbum mentis : by species
"Understanding naturally seeks out and erupts into manifestation." John of St. Thomas
manifestation as expression of presence into representation
problems with idealism
(1) We do not experience experiences as purely mental.
(2) The idealist has to admit that we know there are things independent of our own minds (i.e., other minds). -- cp. Shepherd
(3) We identify the phenomenal as phenomenal, appearances as appearances, only because we take them to express things other than themselves.
(4) We do not experience ourselves as purely mental.
the externality of the world as a specific form of its inequality of relatedness (we are not related to everything in the same way)
-- Shepherd's kinaesthetic argument fits very well with this.
utilitarianism as ethical idealism (the good is wholly in its appearing)
"The principle of probability is the principle of least action (least arbitrary action) in logic." William Pepperell Montague
the civil obligation to give counsel
Augustine on Scripture: "one must stoop to enter but it is lofty within, and veiled in mysteries"
charity as uplifting all friendship, whether of pleasure, or of use, or of virtue
"Blessed are those who love you, and their friend in you, and their enemy for your sake. For they alone lose no one dear to them to whom all are dear in him who is not lost. And who is this but our God, who made heaven and earth and fills them, because by filling them he made them." Augustine Conf. 4.9.14
Over time, the hammer of argument in factional politics cracks, fractures, fragments political ideas and ideologies; if these are not made to recohere, you get a sort of political brain damage, in which one part of a political project is not communicating with another part relevant to it, thus inducing confusions and inconsistencies in an ever-breaking slide to political insanity.
(1) Groups are not merely fusions of their members.
(2) Whether groups should be considered as singular or as plural depends on context.
(3) If two groups have the same members, they are not necessarily the same group.
social expectancy: A social expectancy is a rule of behavior to which people conform on the basis that (a) most poeple in the reference network conform to it and (b) most people in the reference network treat it as normative.
-- this is sometimes called a 'social norm', but the latter should be reserved for the broader genus
faith: kingdom of God in potentiality :: hope : the kingdom of God in becoming :: charity : the kingdom of God in actuality
The lesser is the analogue of the greater; this is a major principle of teaching.
The Church is a Temple composed of temples.
Genuine ecumenism requires a shared ecology.
Every virtue is a kind of being of love.
Human beings quite obviously have a design suitable for cooperation in long-term projects, which made us effective cursorial hunters and makes us effective engineers.
'Determined' is ambiguous between a formal and an efficient reading.
One liberty amplifies another.
