Accidents are likenesses of substances with respect to being.
Whatever we know of a thing, we know through knowing its substance.
"Any proposition whatever concerning the order of Nature must touch more or less upon religion." C. S. Peirce
"It is impossible to define velocity without some reference to the past and to the future." Whitehead
When young, we tend to act in light of what we think might work; when old, in light of what we know will not.
Political sovereignty has the same root as human rights.
the infant as a natural icon of the promise of humanity
Freedom of speech plays an important role in making it possible to assess and diagnose the moral rot of society.
Ritual is important for medicine in providing a clear framework, putting patients at ease, simplifying the work of doctors in dealing with patients, providing people with insulation from difficult events, etc.
The formal cause of justification is divine justice as given, and it is given morally (renewal of mind), jurally (imputation of justice before the divine tribunal), and sacrally (integration into heavenly liturgy).
It is remarkable how easily socialized healthcare slides into euthanizing infants and the elderly.
"God, grant human beings the power to see in small things the common principle of things both small and great." Augustine
We only have knowledge of the future in the sense that we have knowledge of dispositions.
Interpretation of Scripture is done before God the Teacher and Judge.
The 'state of nature' was a philosophical fiction constructed to evade and overwrite the actual state from which modern states arose: that which is broadly called 'feudal'.
We find no object adequate to the depths of the potential andpromise of human loyalty and fidelity except in God.
We generally think of successions as having a first; to get an infinite succession, we start with the first and move forward. Given this, we can turn it around and think of infinite succession backward; given this, we can splice the first of the backward succession to the first of the forward succession and get infinity both ways with respect to our reference point, the dual-sided first. Then we recognize that any point could be treated as first in this way, and abstract from the first by, so to speak, spreading it everywhere.
"For by Moses the one God attuned the Holy Scriptures to the minds of many people, who would see different things in those words, all of them true." Augustine
"For God in his Christ has made in us too a heaven and earth, the spiritual and the carnal members of his Church."
The young have difficulty disentangling ethics from their insecurities, and the old have difficulty disentangling their ethics from their comforts.
Animals, plants, and landmarks get something like rights from having roles in human traditions and communities.
A continual problem in talk of representation in political philosophy is equivocation between the sense in which representative represent everyone (i.e., exercise powers on their behalf) and the sense in which they definitely don't (i.e., picking which values and principles on which to act).
"A gift is the thing given by the person who bestows what we need, such as money, food, drink, clothing, shelter, assistance, whereas the fruit is the good and upright will of the giver." Augustine
To understand the demonstrative proof, you must understand the dialectical matrix.
Augustine's Confessions move from restlessness to rest.
In creating, God makes the capacity to imitate God.
"What is the principle of movement in the soul? Clearly just as in the whole it is God, so too in this. For the divine in us somehow moves all things." Aristotle (EE 1248a)
"Christ, according to his humanity, is the altar on high of God's majesty, on which we are offered when we are incorporated into him in glory." Albert
Too much discussion of evangelism focuses on the persona of the Christian and not on the person of Christ.
agent intellect : terminative object :: possible intellect : specificative object
Both bread and wine presuppose water.
In the sacraments, words represent the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit has, indeed is, absolutely infallible Magisterium; Scripture and the Church participate in this under certain conditions as the Spirit's instruments; Ecumenical Councils and the Pope under certain conditions participate in this instrumentality as representatives of the Church.
rememorative allegory as a principle of the liturgy
the scent of distance (related to concentrations detectable to the sense of smell)
--> arguably this requires a kinaesthetic element; it is change in intensity of scent that provides distance information
Nietzsche makes amor fati to be learning how to see the necessary as beautiful.
the internal morality of trade
"Usura solum in mutuo cadit." Bernardino
It is important to grasp that much of the traditional opposition to usury was driven by bankers and merchants. (It was seen as unfair trade practice, and also as endangering the reputation of the entire profession.)
the notes of development as modes of tradition
For Sikhs, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib is in a sense doubly Guru; it embodies the spirit of the Guru verbally (Guru Arjan Dev) but also receives commission as the Guru of the Panth (Guru Gobind Singh). In this twofold aspect it carries forward the double action of a guru: to teach the truth and to form a community for the truth.
Delicacy without good sense is a dangerous combination in both aesthetics and ethics.
"A poem is a stone thrown into the pool of the mind." David West
Caesarius of Arles on the ecclesiological interpretation of Pr 31 -- Sermon 139
Suffering does not bring wisdom; reflection, even on one's suffering, sometimes does.
(1) Recognizing the normative value of our own natural good, we must recognize the normative value of natural good in other cases.
(2) The child in the womb has a natural good.
A society that respects human dignity must prepare for those who will be born into it, as well as for those who will leave it by dying.
Faith is not a preoccupation; it is title to what is not immediate, like testimony, like inheritance, like promise, a having broadly what is not had strictly, and what is more, a shared having, a one faith and not many faiths, and what is more, it is received (as indeed testimony, inheritance, and promise are).
The Bible has its authority not as read by people but as addressing them, especially in a literal manner as read aloud in synagogue or church.
the cadence of being
intelligibility as being illuminated by the intellect
The invariances of the universe are together that whereby the universe imitates the immutable divine.
A book is a social entity, and Scripture is not an exception.
"When we ask how good a man is, we do not ask what he believes or hopes, but what he loves." Augustine
"Friendship begins with one's spouse and children, and from there moves on to strangers."
We do not force concepts onto objects; they are objects because we conceive them.
"God is the cause that acts and is not acted upon." Augustine Civ. Dei 5.9
Genuine conversation presupposes the free contribution of all parties involved. If we converse, we are free.
When people try to strip metaphysics out of something, they generally make it less human.
"...love is proportionate to apprehension." Maimonides Guide 3.51
"When you walk in the way of the moral virtues, you do justice to your rational soul, giving her the due that is her right." Guide 3.53
Our first conception of the cosmos is as a confused unity.
By prayer, even considered only as a human activity, we given things a relational status.
NB that Maimonides holds that prayer is a duty in the Law, whereas Nahmanides holds that it is not but rather a natural & spontaneous response to God's lovingkindness.
-- Maimonides' foundation for his position: Ex 23:25, Dt 13:5, Dt 11:13, Dt 6:13, Nm 10:9
"Know that all the practices of wroship, such as the reading of Torah, prayer, and the performance of the other commandments, have only teh end of training you to occupy yourself with His commandments, may He be exalted, rather than with matters pertaining to this world; you should act as if you were occupied with Him, may He be exalted, and not with that which is other than He." Maimonides Guide 3.51
"We, the community of those who adhere to Law, say that He knows with one single knowledge teh many and numerous things. For as far as He, may He be exalted, is concerned, insigths do not differ because of the difference of the things known, as is the case with respect to us." Guide 3.20
R. Joshua b. Levi: Hallelujah is the most perfect kind of praise, because it includes both praise and the Name (BT Perakhim 117A).
Paraphrases of literal expressions are often only indirect or approximate, so we should expect the same of paraphrases of figurative expressions.
broadcastmindedness (Knox): "the habit of taking over, from self-constituted mentors, a ready-made, standardized philosophy of life, instead of constructing, with however imperfect materials, a philosophy of life for oneself"
Professional ethics is inherently casuistical.
History absolves no one.
Every 'bounded ideality' has within it an abstract form or general structure, a historical representation, a functional timeline, geography, demographic, etiology, etc., that conforms to its general principles.
Interpreting the Good Samaritan as a figure of Christ, "Go and do likewise" is a command to be Christlike. Cf. Knox: "The mercy of God shown to us in the Incarnation is to be the model for all our acts of human mercy."
The Church is as if God, finding the treasure of Christ buried in the field of humanity, bought the whole field for the sake of the treasure.
The work of the vineyard is not to make the plants grow but to provide what they need.
Civil rights are always deteriorating and so always needing to be renewed.
The rosary is a conceptual prayer-garden.
"If you start by treating the uniformity of nature as a hypothesis and no more, you will find your hypothesis is upset by every recorded case of witches flying, tables turning, Saints being levitated, oracles coming true, horoscopes being verified, broken limbs being cured by faith-healing, and the like." Knox
"Everybody knows that all hypotheses are in the last resort partial and insecure as a representation of truth; at the best, they cannot be postiively proved, they can only escape refutation."
"The witness of power needs to be supplemented: that does not mean that it can be dispensed with."
It is easy to prepare oneself intellectually for matters of faith; the difficulty is preparing oneself morally.
All sacraments, major and minor, are transsignified and transfinalized.
Someone's being blameworthy implies that it is permissible to blame them.
Moving from confused and obscure cognition to distinct and clear cognition is generally a slow process requiring custom-tailored adjustment.
Our knowledge of our concepts is reflective, not direct, and is expanded by causal reasoning from communicating, whether by word or deed, as well as classificatory extrapolation from perception and practice. In a prephilosophical posture, things are known conceptually but the concepts are 'in use' rather than 'under study'. Puzzles about things lead to reflection on the concepts that we use; this is often done briefly, loosely, and in a limited way. The Socratic innovation is to take this reflection to a full study.
In practical classification, classes often do not correspond to unified concepts.
Our first articulated believing presupposes the guidance of authority.
"No explanation of the universe can be regarded as adequate which does not take account of all the phenomena of the universe, and among these human intelligence is surely not the least important." E. W. Trueman Dicken
"Morality is no less of an art than is the making of violins."
The point of the Sermon on the Mount is not the replacement of the Law but the transfiguration of the Law.
categories -> transcendentals -> immaterial being
Gratitude to God expands the circle of human beings to whom and for whom we must be thankful.
the motivational state of rule-regulation (Darwall) -- the commitment to abiding by rules of conventions of justice
self-love, private benevolence, public benevolence
(these can be regarded as three categories of wanting to do good, classified according to whose good)
Classification by smell is arguably the classification that best fits nominalist and empiricist accounts of classification.
