Every ugliness posits a beauty with respect to which it is ugly.
We should be very cautious with respect to our inclination to moralize our certainties.
The Magna Carta is sui generis, but has the rough form of a feudal title because it is a negotiated settlement concerning feudal allegiance, whose historical value consists in part in the legal fiction -- not falsehood, but artificial construction after the fact -- that it was a gift of the barons to the whole people, the barons claiming the rights, liberties, and concessions for everyone. This latter occurs by stretching the phrase "all freemen of my kingdom and their heirs forever" from its technical sense (feudal vassals officially recognized as having freehold) to a later colloquial sense (including villein and burgess classes), and incorporation of all the rest under this semantic change, with the result that even indirect benefit to the lower classes was treated as if it were intended benefit. But by this, the Magna Carta became, and genuinely became in customary law, much larger than it was in original settlement.
(1) Ethical knowledge and value requires an idea of self in which it participates something larger than itself.
(2) Choice presupposes vision.
(3) Our contingency and weakness must be faced squarely.
The author is a final cause
who gives the story stable laws
to which the things of story tend
utnil they find their proper end.
Liberties are particular forms of commonality among human beings, ways of being the same for the same reason.
"A person is a person because of other persons." Ifeanyi Menkiti
"I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am."
It is always easier to improve the aesthetics of a course than its pedagogy.
'the aim of a thoroughly interconnected experience' (Kant 5:184)
(1) Organisms are purposive systems,
(2) which suggests that the whole of nature is a purposive system
(3) which, because human persons have moral ends,
(4) can only be if the whole of nature in some way is able to incorporate moral ends.
We often treat as X what is a fitting sign of X.
the intellectual vocation of the human senses
causality proper
causality involving temporal succession
causality involving spatial containment
causality involving both
We have regular experience of moral choices not being wholly a matter of internal and external sanctions, in temptation, in weakness of will, and resistance to sanction.
We use acquired dispositions, rites, and institutions to fill out our moral, jural, and sacral personhood.
Reasoning and deliberation, know-how and counsel, and the like can be shared among persons, communicated, and thus, to the extent that the communication can be regimented into rule or pattern, can be implemented in external practice or product.
one being as standing for another vs one benig as the guise of another
The roots of all service are debt, penalty, or exchange.
The Christian owes God service by debt, as creature; by penalty, as fallen; by debt again, as saved; and by exchange, as in covenant with God.
delegation of authority as creation of an alienable right
anosiurgotropos: skilled in works of impiety
In poetry as in drawing, one must copy a lot to create a lot.
Ritual as we know it presupposes grammatically articulated language.
Language builds on the mimetic skills to which human beings naturally tend.
'to be able to see some of the qualitative consequences of the equations by some method other than solving them in detail' (Feynman's description of understanding physical equations)
"If *Adonai* had ever been a God-hypothesis there would be no Jews." Fackenheim
"Judaism, like Christianity, embraced the belief in a hereafter the moment it focused on the individual, as well as collective human destiny."
"The Torah manifests love in the very act of manifesting commandment, for in commanding humans rather than angels, it accepts these humans in their humanity. Hence in accepting the Torah, man can at the same time accept himself as accepted by God in his humanity."
The first word of the Decalogue is 'I'.
The balance of reasons is a whirling and changing thing.
Philosophia finds its proper home in the philia of the wise.
Friendships of virtue give greater use and pleasure and to virtue.
Cassian on charity as friendship (Conferences XVI)
three acts of friendship: concordia, benevolentia, beneficentia
Our loves are the flowerings of faiths and hopes that led to them, and show their origins.
formal benefit: beneficent will
instrumental benefit: good given
Friends will and nill alike because they take each other into account in the willing and nilling.
Pride destroys the conditions for concord of wills.
Charity posits that others have good hidden from us, and as this is always true, charity is needed for right estimate of persons.
In everyone is the image of God; no human mind has plumbed its depths.
We must not confuse lack fo zeal for justice with compassion or mercy.
gift of faith --> sincere, generous, and merciful action
'that what it celebrates in mystery it may accomplish in power'
OM as a symbol of the Divine Word
the Divine Word as Shabda Brahman
"Om is the agreement with a hymn. Likewise is tatha [so be it] with a gatha. But Om is something divine and tatha is something human." Aitareya Brahmana 7.18.13
"Om is the bow, the arrow is the Self, Brahman the mark; by the undistracted man is it to be penetrated, one should become one in it, as the arrow becomes one with the mark." Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.4
A: Father
U: Son
M: Spirit
Note Sikh divine epithet, Ik Onkar, i.e., 'One Om'
the analytical, dialectical, and narrative modes of each philosophical position and argument
The qualia debate seems to be based on a garbled attempt to capture the difference between presential knowledge and objective knowledge. This becomes clear when one looks at the kinds of position proposed in it, which themselves seem garbled versions of accounts of that distinction, or at least something similar.
Most forms of modern paganism are just more distal kinds of Christian heresy; but thi sis also true of most forms of modern atheism.
'understanding approximately up to a certain degree of culture'
-- narrating history, appealing to examples, explaining examples
to be amen to Christ the Amen
To have less than paradise often rankles even the virtuous.
moral authority, sovereignty, sanctity
It is not being defeated by one's own flaws and failings that is the source of human greatness.
The world is full of endless numbers of tiny, beautiful things.
NB Gorgias 475d in light of Gorgias's claim that the rhetor is better equipped to get the patient to submit to teh doctor than the doctor is.
Organs have functions but this can only be if there is an overall functionality or function of the whole with respect to which they have these functions.
immediate inferences based on
(1) reorganization
(2) weakening
(3) translation
Every function posits classifications relevant to it.
--- input classification
--- --- trigger/nontrigger
--- --- appropriate/inappropriate
--- output classifications
Every classification posits possible functions to which it might be relevant.
existing being --> informational being
three aspects of fate: spinning, measuring, unturningness
Philosophical systems are limited by the limits of their accessible and usable archive.
natural law precept to act according to virtue -->
(1) defeasible moral right to act in ways appropriate to that virtue
(2) strict moral right to act in the only way appropriate to that virtue, when there is only one;
(3) where the precept to justice also applies: jural right
(4) where the precept to religion also applies: sacral right
Human beings seek dwellings that are kind to them.
arguments as knots in the endless thread of reason
