Dashed Off XII

 rightful authority acting in an appropriately human way according to natural law for just end

The flaws of fan fiction often arise from treating a story as if it were a playable game.

Nobody in practice treats their pleasures as fungible or as all on a level.

A universe capable of being the habitation of what has dignity, itself has dignity.

The worry that immortality would be boring is the worry that thymos depends on (the possibility of) death.

"Coincidences obvious, explicit, direct, might result from truth, but would be compatible also with forgery. But oblique allusions, wherein the coincidence has to be pointed out, and does not lie on the surface, are just such as nature and truth would produce, and which no forger would ever insert." Fausset

"Coincidence consists in the concurrence or consistency of evidence. If testimony coming from two different sources perfectly agrees, and though touching upon different points harmonises in the end, we have a coincidence.---If that coincidence is manifestly undesigned, unintentional, the proof arising therefrom is proportionably stronger. The *minuteness* of a coincidence bestows greater value upon the argument founded on it; the more circuitous it is, the more difficult would it have been to fabricate; and again, if a narrative and a recapitulation of it at first sight, seem to contradict one another, but upon further investigation are ascertained to agree, then the proof of the truth and reality of the whole is augmented." George W. Hill

Becoming convinced by an argument is not an instantaneous process; where conclusions touch on matters central to a person's perspective, they can take very long to have a stable effect.

Our actual conversations with people often have very little to do with our interests and motivations.

The tendency to think of mana as a force or energy rather than a status or dignity seems reflective of late-19th and 20th century prejudices rather than of its actual roles in Polynesian and Melanesian society.

All good taste begins with insight.

Either we have human rights from the very beginning or we never really do.

Events may be by chance so as to be for the sake of something, like shuffling a deck of cards and dealing in order to play a game. Chance may itself have no particular end, but something's being by chance may have an end.

As rationality with sympathy makes us civic animals, so rationality with sexuality makes us marital animals.

Passions enable us to act even when we lack knowledge; a life of giving in to the passions is a life that can be improved but little by knowledge.

Evolution is possible because the laws of nature have greater intelligibility than what is evolved according to them; the apparent rise of order comes from the order inherent in the cosmos.

Probabilities for something being inscrutable do not rule out reasons for and against, because not all reasons are associated with definable probabilities.

Communal personal relationship is a greater good than individual personal relationship.

All authority is either bestowed, or acquired, or adjoined.

They who claim to know all God's purposes will always find themselves surprised.

Wheter 'good' or 'right' are thick or thin terms depends on context.

Every prayer requires a warrant, establishing our standing and our reason for that kind of prayer.

the interpenetration of Faith, Writ, and Church, each as an aspect of divine revelation

rumor as a mechanism for our general sense of the human community

The first step of catechizing is familiarizing with the vocabulary that makes further communication possible.

a definition of 'cringe':
-- a kind of failure
-- such as to provoke a negative aesthetic response
-- which would still allow for possible sympathetic response
-- except that the doer lacks awareness of the failure
-- in a way that is itself a social failure
-- that itself provokes a response of disapproval

Human beings think in metaphors, and the biggest divides are between people who know they are thinking in metaphors and people who think they are not doing so.

2 Sam 12:20 as type of sacrametns (baptism and eucharist, especially)

Money derives from abstractions of want.

Empiricists often confuse the beginner state and the expert state; that is, the kinds of inferences/associations of experience to which empiricists appeal are often themselves things that can only be learned over time, and are more associated with the highly experienced than originary. We do not, for instance, begin with atomistic impressions, ideas, or intuitions, but learn to analyze them out; nor kinds of association but with huge tangled masses of associated things; we learn over time different ways to develop stable expectations; etc.

Empiricism has always struggled to account for our experience of experiencing.

Brilliance and education both often founder on unexamined assumptions.

Literature grows out of ritual.

The history of the Church is a history of struggle over authority.

To understand the causal relation between grace and free will, one must first begin with the causal relations between creation and free will; the temptation is always to start somewhere else.

Since the fourth century, the clergy have not taken with adequate seriousness the problem laity face of trying to treat the Eucharist with adequate reverence while being stuck with living lives in the world that can easily erode this. Attempts by the laity to solve this problem have historically included things like rare communion, or seeking communion outside of Mass, or paraliturgical devotions, in and out of Mass, that bridge the liturgical and the more secular (like common devotional rosary prayers, adoration, etc.). In encouraging *frequent communion within a Mass in which the congregation has a direct active role*, modern bishops have, whatever the undoubted and undeniable benefits of such a policy, made the problem worse and provided nothing at all to help deal with it -- have not, in fact, even seriously acknowledged it.

We never start with clarity; we always muddle through until we clarify.

sacramentals & holy metonymy

Church Militant: the Church as sacrifice on the altar
Church Patient: the Church as sweet aroma of sacrifice
Church Triumphant: the Church as sacrifice received by God

the point of a game vs. the point of playing a game

For two probability assessments to be compared, they have to be calibrated in terms of the same field of possibilities.

When we consider our debt, we find a hierarchy: private benefactors, public benefactors, ancestors; but there seems an overplus beyond these, obligations more general even than parental/ancestral onese, and ignoring these gives our ethics a chopped-off feel. We have debts as wide as the universe itself and as deep as our existence itself. But even before those limits, we discover debts broader and deeper than the private, public, and ancestral ones we generally find in our human relations, e.g., recognizing that we owe something in some way to our broader environment.

the feeling of owing something to the beautiful or the sublime

Jn 20:22 and exsufflation rites (also Gn 2:7, Wis 15:11, Job 33:4, Ezk 37:9)

Propositions do not probabilize other propositions (outside of the analytic cases) in isolation; the links between propositions are always in light of all other relevant propositions.

An important question in Christian theology: Do you say that, or do Christ's prayerful faithful suggest that?

'the natural effects of exceptional causes'

A very large portion of human thinking is backwards -- that is, when we compare it to how it is naturally presented, it actually went in reverse from how it is presented.

mutuation: the act of borrowing or exchanging

"The contract of usury is nothing else but illiberal mutuation." Blaxton

Most major American cities are near a river and mountain fall line; riverheads of navigation and early railroad/trade-travel prominence also helps (making the place a default hub). A secondary factor is having unusually good weather for a region (e.g., shelter from storm, agricultural eminence, tourism potential). 

Theatrical performances are ritually demarcated.

sources of possible injustice in contract: direct loss, indirect loss, direct risk, indirect risk, uncompensated broader service, direct coercion, indirect coercion

assertion and denial --> domains of discourse --> manifold of domains --> world as limit

We describe the world with layers of kinds of assertion and denial.

principle of noncontradiction --> being ut primum cognitum --> being as primary and secondary --> creative being and creature being

ancestral piety as a bridge to religious piety

the extrinsic quasi-intrinsic and the intrinsic quasi-extrinsic

'quod quis vehementer desiderat, facile credit' Aquinas (2-2.162.3ad2), of the proud man

Green and grue imply different causal claims about the world.

Real grue-like classifications imply intelligence. (It's because we sometimes organize the world in grue-like ways that grue classifications seem possible.)

Induction is related to expectation not from bare series but to expectation from established possibilities.

Fiction/Nonfiction is a functional distinction, based on the kinds of function a thing affords in broader discourse.

fiction vs. mistaken nonfiction

durability of analogy

One of the functions of obligations in reasoning is to distinguish the morally stupid from the merely nonideal.

Positive law presupposes language already having legal force.

The notion that illocutionary force is 'suspended' when an actor says something on stage, is obviously absurd, and shows a complete philistinism about drama. Stage utterance shifts perlocutionary force in aiming at aesthetic effect in the audience; but it cannot do this if illocutionary force changes much.

In the Incarnation, theology became fully philosophical while not reducing to philosophy.

Much of political discourse is argument over the best metaphors.

inference from the best metaphor

We develop foresight out of hindsight.

There is vast power in the death of a good person.

Hallowed Be Thy Name: faith
Thy Kingdom Come: hope
Thy Will Be Done: love

A remarkable amount of the Industrial Revolution is due to northwest England happening to find low-sulfur coal deposits near iron deposits.

What is one's right is an offshoot of what is prudent.

tantundem
In irregular deposit, one gives the depository money to create a custody of the tantundem (the equivalent quantiity), with the tantundem to be returned on demand.

"...while all God's actions manifest both, justice is less causative than mercy, and explains less about a divine action." James Chastek

Dante's depictions of infernal punishment are somewhat limited by the fact that his means can only represent sins qua principal or dominating vices.

People do not evaluate debates logically but rhetorically.

Institutions within and under law can be artifacts; this is different from saying that law itself, or the legal system itself, is an artifact.

Law is more often used to simplify coordination problems than to solve them.

All legal systems get their primary unity from reason. 

Tamanaha's "The Problems with Artifact Legal Theory" -- very good

Prices pre-exist money, being measurements in exchange.

forms of deontic causation
(1) imposed (e.g., on pets)
(2) delegated (e.g., soldiers, servants)
(3) dispositive/framework (e.g., citizens)
(4) contractual

The yir'ah of the Lord: fear, awe, reverence, respect
Ps 55:5 yir'ah = horror/fear/terror

ga'on Micah 5:$, Pr 16:18
=highness, overness (ga'avah works similarly)

Rationally coming to know presupposes the falsehood of determinism with respect to coming to know, because rationally coming to know precludes the conclusion and the inquiry being set in advance.

Human beings are constantly deriving physical conclusions from moral and a priori conclusions; it's why, ofr instance, we characterize alleged physical situations as absurd or obvious, impossible or necessary, explicable or inexplicable, conceivable or inconceivable.

The things that matter most cannot be deserved.

The distinction between a priori and a posteriori has to be teased out of our reasoning, which almost always intertwines both.

Ps 4:5 penance
Ps 4:6 eucharist
Ps 4:7 baptism (lumen) and confirmation (laetitia)
Ps 4:8 orders
Ps 4:9 unction

first principles as signate light

"Virtue is more precise and better than every art, as is nature as well." Aristotle NE 1106b

ordered structures that replace the need for particular trust with the need for only general trust

A population of living things often works somewhat like a living thing (herding, flocking, territorial defense, pack hunting, etc.).

Hope in a Morning Blighted

 April Sonnet II: April Cruel
by Francis Bennoch

April, ah me! how swiftly changes come,
How soon the month we love we learn to hate,
When boughs deflowered hang down disconsolate,
And clouds of grief make dark our garden home,
Where genial shunshine lingering loved to wait;
With joy we grafted in thy wounded rind
The fairest branch that ever blossom bore;
Clasped close, incorporate as one combined,
A newborn rapture trembled in thy core
As budding life expanded, more and more
We longed to reap the fruit; but woke to find
Hope in a morning blighted; from the shore
A ruthless wind stole with untimely frost,
And all thy cherished bloom was shrivelled, loosed, and lost.

April, 1855

Birthtime of Beauty and of Poesy

 April Sonnet I: April Kind
by Francis Bennoch 

April, though treacherous and changeling named,
Wanton and wayward in thy nature, still
Revealest thou those mysteries that fill
All hearts with love's deep sympathy, and famed
For blooms that odorous balm distil.
Birthtime of beauty and of poesy:
When birds betrothed melodious from the hill
Rain down their morning song of ecstasy.
When amorous bees toy fondly with the flower,
And drain its humid sweets deliriously,
Faint with excess, in love's delicious bower
Softly infolded, blossom-couched he lies:
Whilst draughts of fragrant dew oblivious sleep supplies. 

 April, 1855.

Habitude XXXI

 It seems that synderesis is a sort of specific power distinct from others, for what falls under one division seems to be of one kind. But in Jerome's Gloss on Ezek. I, synderesis is divided from the irascible, the concupiscible, and the rational, which are sorts of powers. Therefore synderesis is a sort of power.

Further, opposites are of one genus. But synderesis and sensuality seem to be opposed, because synderesis always inclines to the good, but sensuality always to the bad, hence it is signified by the serpent, as is obvious from Augustine, De Trin. XII. It seems therefore that synderesis is a power, as is sensuality.

Further, Augustine says, in the book on free choice, that in natural judgment there are sorts of rules and seeds of virtues that are true and immutable, and these we call synderesis. Since, therefore, the immutable rules by which we judge pertain to reason according to its higher part, as Augustine says in De Trin. XII, it seems that synderesis is the same as reason. And so it is a sort of power.

But contrariwise, rational powers have themselves [se habet] to opposites, according to the Philosopher. But synderesis does not have itself to opposites, but is inclined only to good. Therefore synderesis is not a power. For it were a power, it would need to be a rational power, for its not found in beasts.

I respond that it must be said that synderesis is not power but habitude, though some have proposed that synderesis is a sort of power higher than reason, while others have said that it is reason itself, not as reason, but as nature. But to make this evident, it must be considered that, as was said above, human reason, as it is a sort of change, proceeds from intellection of some things, to wit, those naturally familiar [naturaliter notorum] apart from investigation of reason, as from a sort of immutable source. and it is also ended in intellection, inasmuch as we judge from sources naturally familiar to us through themselves [per se naturaliter nota], about those things which we discover by reasoning. Now it is sure that, just as reflective reason reasons about reflective matters, practical reasons reasons about workable matters. Therefore they must be instilled in us naturally, just as sources of reflective matters, sources of workable matters. Now the first sources of reflective matters naturally instilled in us do not pertain to any specific power, but to a sort of specific habitude, which is called intellection of sources, as is obvious in Ethic. VI. So also sources of workable matters naturally instilled in us do not pertain to a specific power but to a specific natural habitude, which we call synderesis. So too synderesis is said to incite to good and to grumble about bad, inasmuch as we proceed through first sources to discover, and to judge the discovered. It is obvious, therefore, that synderesis is not power but natural habitude.

To the first, therefore, it must be said that Jerome's division is directed toward diversity of acts, not diversity of powers. But different acts can be of one power.

To the second it must be said that likewise the opposition of synderesis and sensuality is directed to opposition of acts, not according to different species of one genus.

To the third it must be said that these immutable reasons are the first sources of workable matters, about which it does not happen to err; and they are attributed to reason as power and to synderesis as habitude. So too we naturally judge by both, to wit, reason and synderesis. 

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 1.79.12, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here. ]

I should have done this article when discussing natural habitudes, but forgot; this will be an OK place to insert it, though.

'Synderesis', as one would expect from St. Thomas's comments, comes from St. Jerome; Jerome would have actually written syneidesis, which he glosses as scintilla conscientiae, the spark of consciousness/conscience. Conscientia is the direct Latin translation of syneidesis, and they both literally mean 'co-awareness/co-knowing'. A corruption entered into the manuscript tradition, so syneidesis became synderesis. 

St. Thomas distinguishes synderesis and conscience. He notes in the next article that synderesis is often called conscience by a figure of speech, but he reserves 'synderesis' for the habitude that is the understanding of practical principles and 'conscience' for the act that actually applies such principles in witnessing, judging, excusing, accusing, or punishing. Of course, in modern English, 'conscience' is used for both synderesis and conscience.

As a natural habitude, synderesis would fit into the taxonomy of natural habitudes as a natural habitude directed to operation according to the nature of the species, arising partly from nature, partly from external source, in apprehensive powers, just like its counterpart for speculative principles, and both are completed by cultivating intellectual virtues. For synderesis, this cultivation, especially of prudence, is what we are talking about when we talk about 'formation of conscience'.

And Sweet Is Sweet

 Envoy
by Francis Thompson 

Go, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play;
Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow:
And some are sung, and that was yesterday,
And some unsung, and that may be to-morrow. 

Go forth; and if it be o’er stony way,
Old joy can lend what newer grief must borrow:
And it was sweet, and that was yesterday,
And sweet is sweet, though purchasèd with sorrow. 

Go, songs, and come not back from your far way:
And if men ask you why ye smile and sorrow,
Tell them ye grieve, for your hearts know To-day,
Tell them ye smile, for your eyes know To-morrow.

Links of Note

 * Jordan Schneider and Phoebe Chow, Civil Service: A History, at "ChinaTalk"

* Bill Vallicella, Intentionality in Thomas and Husserl and the Question of Realism, at "Maverick Philosopher"

* Frederico Zillio, Metaphysical Accounts of Personhood and Their Ethical Implications for the Vegetative State (PDF)

* Benjamin Stubbing and Oscar Sykes, A brief history of instant coffee, at "Works in Progress"

* Brendan Hodge, America's new Catholics, by the numbers, at "The Pillar"

* Riin Sirkel, Aristotle on Household Hierarchy and Metaphysical Explanation (PDF)

* Matthew Walz, Recovering the Origin of Catholic Social Teaching, Part One, and Part Two, at Catholic World Report

* Robert Pondiscio, Why is Education So Damn Fad-Prone?, at "The Next Thirty Years"

* Daniel Gregory, Inner speech and sign languages (PDF)

* Brian Kemple, Disintegrating Sensation: Perceiving the Truth in an Age of Digital Simulacra and Artificial Intelligence

* Daniel Andreas, The Most Important Woman in Kant's Life

Music on My Mind

 

Clamavi De Profundis, "Ye Sons and Daughters (O Filii et Filiae)".

He Is Risen

 Sonnet 68
by Edmund Spenser 

Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day
Didst make thy triumph over death and sin,
And having harrowed hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win:
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin,
And grant that we, for whom thou diddest die,
Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin,
May live forever in felicity:
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love thee for the same again;
And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,
May love with one another entertain.
So let us love, dear love, like as we ought,
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

Happy Easter! 

The Mystery of Piety 1.5.3

This is a bit of a mess, but required pulling together a lot of things in a way that I don't think has really been done before. In any case, I have been picking at this for some months now, and it seems best just to get it out and move on.

1.5.1&2

 1.5.3  On Divine Presence

Throughout sacred scripture we find references to God's face (Hb. panim, Gk prosopon) or countenance and to facing God, the face being that which more than anything else is associated with presence. Thus we are told that in the garden, the man and his wife hid themselves from the face of the Lord God (Gn 3:8). Jacob says (Gn 32:30), I have met God face to face and names the place Peniel, the Face of God, because he survived having met God in such a way, and of Moses is likewise said (Ex 33:11), The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend, after which God promises him (Ex 33:14), My face will go with you and give you rest. Moses then asks of God (Ex 33:18), Show me your glory (kavod), but God says to Moses (Ex 33:20), you cannot see my face, for none shall see me and live. Within the Tabernacle, as well, and later the Temple, there was the Bread of Presence (lehem panim), which was before (le-phanay, facing) the Lord (Ex 25:30). In Aaron's blessing, he prays (Nm 6:25), May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, and the Psalmist prays (Ps 4:6), Shine the light of your face upon us, O Lord. And it is said of the blessed in the new creation (Rv 22:4), And they will see his face. We find also in the Psalms (139:7-10), Where can I walk away from your spirit, or where can I escape from your face (mippaneka)? If I ascend to the heights, there you are; if I bed down in the abyss, there you are. I take the wings of dawn, dwelling in the ends of the sea; even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand hold me. Of this passage, Clement says (1 Clem 28:4), Whither shall one depart, or where shall one flee, from Him who embraces the universe? All of these are concerned with presence, for human beings are social animals who communicate with their faces, and therefore the face is that of whose presence we are often most aware. In order better to understand this as applied to God, whose presence must be considered in many ways, we should consider first the presence considered generally, and then through the gradations of presence we should reach those kinds of presence of which one may say in some sense that they are face to face, that is, as Maimonides says (Guide 1.37), presence that is in some way "without intermediary" between two people, and finally consider the communication through this countenance, including that which is described as light or glory.

Presence is as it were a secondary aspect of being, in that it is a kind of being to another; thus presence or absence is therefore always with respect to some kind of relation. In particular, one thing is said to be present to another insofar as its being is by relation united to the other in some way, either in an unrestricted way or by the removal of something that externally restricts presence. Thus presence in itself may be with respect to being, or with respect to being as related to something external that serves as a measure, or with respect to acting, or with respect to being an object of cognition or volition.

I. Subjective divine presence with respect to being. If we begin with presence said with respect to being, someone is said to be by presence in those things with which his substance itself may be considered united in some some way. Someone is said to be present in all those things within the range of vision, either directly, or mediated, as with telepresence. We say someone is by power in all those things subject to that power, as a king in his realm.  It is customary to say that God is present in all things in three ways that are something like these.

(1) By essence or priority, because his essence is innermost in all things, not as part of the essence of those things,  but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For, as Aquinas says (Sent 1d37q1a1), God is most intimate in everything, as the proper being of a thing is most intimate in the thing itself, and again (In Io. 134, and also ST 1.8.1) that every agent as acting has to be immediately joined to its effect, because mover and moved must be together, for the causing and being caused are one act. Since God is very being by His own essence, being itself in itself, actual being in other things must be His proper effect. Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must as its cause and precondition be immediately present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things, being that on which everything else depends. Hence it must be that God is in all things in an immediate and innermost way. Thus Augustine (Conf. 3.6.11): You were more inward to me than my most inward part and higher than my highest. And Aquinas says (ST 1.8.1), God is said to be in all things by essence, not indeed by the essence of the things themselves, as if He were of their essence; but by His own essence; because His substance is present to all things as the cause of their being. We see this further in that things are possible; for it is only by the presence of divine being that anything is possible at all. Because of this we can even say that it is more proper to say that things are in God than that God is in things. Thus Paul at the Areopagus says (Acts 17:27-28), And He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and are. 

(2) By cognitive presence or knowledge, because there is nothing for which He has no thought. Newman says (Letter to Godfrey Faussett), Presence then is a relative word, depending on the channels of communication existing between the object and the person to whom it is present. It is almost a correlative of the senses. A fly may be as near an edifice as a man: yet we do not call it present to the fly, because he cannot see it, and we do call it present to the man, because he can. But God takes thought for all things. As it is said (Pr 15:3), The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good, and (Hb 4:13), There is no creature hidden before Him; everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of Him with whom is our reason (logos). In this way we say that God is all-seeing or omnivoyant, because, as Nicholas Cusanus (De vis. Dei 4) says, As your seeing is your being, therefore I am because you regard me. And if you take away your face from me, I will not subsist at all. This type of presence is perhaps also what is meant in the Qur'an (2:115), "To Allah belong east and west, so wherever you turn you face Allah; surely Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing," and likewise (57:4), "He knows whatever goes into the earth and whatever comes out of it, and whatever descends from the sky and whatever ascends to it; and He is with you wherever you are, for Allah is All-Seeing of what you do." As previously noted, our own intellect reaches toward the infinite, and this ordering of the intellect would be in vain were there no infinite intelligible; this infinite intelligible, from which all things get their intelligibility and which is the ultimate final cause of our intellect, is God. This infinite intelligible is thus also truth itself, and as truth itself must be intellectual; and, again, it must be pure act, but the intelligible that is act is itself intellect. Thus there is nothing intelligible which God does not apprehend, i.e., see, and therefore God is cognitively present to all.  We see this in that things are intelligible; for it is only by fundamentally being related to God that anything is intelligible at all.

(3) By effective power or will, since all things are subject to his power; as the Psalmist says (139:10), I take the wings of dawn, dwelling in the ends of the sea; even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand hold me. We find this in the Sri Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS 1), as well: "Everything is subject to His command; nothing is beyond His command."  Every operation is attributed causally to what gives the power for it, but every power in any agent is from God as from the first mover and ultimate final end. As Irenaeus says (Adv. Haer. 2.1), He is the only God, the only Lord, the only Creator, the only Father, alone containing all things, and Himself commanding all things into existence. We see this in that things actually exist at all; for it is only by divine will that anything other than God exists at all, and when we consider God according to the notion of efficient cause, possible being are relative to his power. 

We can easily recognize that the divine presence can have no restrictions on the part of the divine being itself; for every limitation indicates a lack of being, but God is subsisting being itself. Further, all inquiry and explanation, carried on sufficiently, eventually reaches infinity of some kind, something unrestricted, since the possibilities that are to be explained are infinite. Such an ultimate infinite cannot be a material infinite, which is potential to many forms, because what is material is restricted by its form, the material being this or that according to its form, which completes it. Likewise, however, it cannot be a formal infinite of the sort that is associated with that form, in which it can be common to many, because the formal that restricts the material is restricted by it, because it is contracted to this material thing. Thus something truly unrestricted would have to be formal in the way being is formal, and it would moreover have to be being that is not received in anything. But this is divine being, which is subsistent in and of itself. Thus God himself must be infinite and complete. Likewise, being is infinite considered simply in itself, because the modes in which it can be participated are infinite. If something has finite being, therefore, it follows that that that being must be limited by something else, as for instance by a cause. But there can be no such limitation by another for the divine being, for God, being subsistent being itself, is necessary through Himself. Therefore, His being is infinite. Further, actuality is limited and restricted by potentiality, but God is pure act, and therefore infinite.

We can see this again with the argument commonly used by the Cartesians. Aspiring to be more than we are, we recognize ourselves as finite or limited, as well as incomplete, which is true, because what can aspire to be more cannot be unlimited and complete. But in order to recognize this, we must have some notion of being that is infinite and complete. Since we are finite and incomplete, however, we cannot get this notion from ourselves, for no amount of the finite and incomplete, not yet recognized as such, can give one a notion of the infinite and complete, but only a greater finite and incomplete. Therefore our notion of the infinite and complete must come, directly or indirectly, in some way from what is actually infinite and complete from which we can receive it, and this all call God. Likewise, as we have previously argued, God is the infinite intelligible; given any finite quantity, our intellect can think of a greater one, but this requires that there be an infinite intelligible, God, who is therefore infinite. Likewise, our intellect is a participation in the infinite intelligible, which is ultimate final cause of all things, but an effect cannot transcend its causes. Thus the intellect cannot think of anything greater than God, who is, indeed, that than which no greater can be thought. If, therefore, it can think of something greater than any finite, as we see it can in fields like mathematics, it follows that God cannot be finite. 

II. Subjective divine presence with respect to something external. Because being unlimited or infinite belongs to the divine presence, we must, in our attributions with respect to divine presence, exercise the discipline of remotion, removing all things that restrict presence on the part of the one present. Restriction of presence of the part of the one present may happen in two ways; either the one present may be restricted in presence on the part of itself, in itself, thus limiting its ability to be present, or it may be restricted in presence according to some measure of its ability to be presence. In the first way, something may be limited in its presence due to its composite nature or mutability or contingency. In the second way, it may be limited in its presence due to its being measurable in terms of place, time, or count.

(1) God, as first efficient cause, cannot be composite, because if he were composite, he would have a cause of composition. Therefore, the divine presence is not restricted by divine parts of any kind, not being the kind of thing that can be partitioned. God as a whole is present under whatever conditions he is present. Further, as first moving cause, God is immutable, and therefore the divine presence on the side of the divine being must be immutable, not receding or extending. For a similar reason, the divine presence cannot be in itself contingent, because God is subsistent being itself, on which other beings depend; the divine presence, considered as divine, cannot vary across contingent possibilities, because all contingent possibilities presuppose God as a necessary precondition and first cause. Further, first being is being through its essence, but because of this must be most perfect, that is, wholly complete in being. It pertains to what is most perfect that it should not be limited or restricted in that which pertains to itself, which in this case is being. Were first being limited or restricted in presence, it would be be limited or restricted in being. Therefore first being is infinite in presence. Its presence therefore does not have in itself any restriction or limitation at all.

(2) Spatiotemporal measurement is a measure of change, and therefore of incomplete actuality. Thus God himself, who is complete actuality, both simple and immutable, cannot be measured by containing boundary or clock or correspondence, for God is, as IV Lateran says, eternal and immense, and the Quicunque Vult says, The Father is infinite; the Son infinite; and the Holy Spirit infinite. The Father is eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Spirit eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated, nor three infinites, but one uncreated and one infinite. However, when considered with the divine presence, more must be considered, because while God himself is immeasurable by place or temporal interval, that to which he is present can itself be local or temporal, and therefore we can speak of the eternal and immense deity in terms of those places and times which are related to him by his presence. The presence of things that are local or temporal are restricted in ways that can be measured, even though the divine presence is not.

(2.1) Location is at least a measurement of presence with respect to a containing boundary, and thus presence is a more fundamental idea than location, which requires relation to boundaries that can serve to measure what is located. It is tempting to think of local presence as nothing but sharing of location, that is, as merely the sharing of a containing boundary, but this would make everything in space locally present to everything else, since you can identify boundaries arbitrarily. Actual presence is always an active causal notion; we see this even in the theory of the external world or of other minds, in which we determine whether things are locally present by causal reasoning. Local presence, therefore, has to be a matter of reach of action associated with a containing boundary.

Presence may be restricted because it is circumscribed by a containing boundary, whether the boundary is real (such as an actual physical container) or rational (such as a boundary mentally drawn around the thing so contained). We call this being present in a place by circumscription, and this circumscriptive presence is the most proper and strict way in which something may be in place; it is the kind of presence we usually mean when we say that something occupies a place. Leibniz (New Essays 2.23.21) characterizes it as "point for point", so that it involves specifying points in the located and relating them to points in space, which is not adequate, and indeed, fails to capture why one would call it 'circumscriptive' at all. It is true, however, that, if certain conditions are met, bodies that are circumscriptively located have parts that are related to the whole in a way that corresponds to parts of the region marked by the boundary of the body in a way that preserves how those parts of the region are related to the whole region. It is also true that the inability to identify such points is a sign that something is not circumscriptively located, but this is merely a sign and a rough test. A more accurate account of presence in a place by circumscription is to say that for each thing circumscriptively in a place, it has a part in part of what is contained and the whole of it is in the whole of what is contained. From this it can easily be seen that God's presence is incircumscribable because it is simple and is not divided into parts, and it is likewise indivisible because God's presence is not divided among different places; God does not fall under the genera of divisible things or circumscribable things. That is, God's presence in each place is not measured by a containing boundary, nor is his presence divided by such boundaries. Rather, He is prior to all place; by the immensity of His presence He touches on all things that are in any way located, as the universal cause of their being; and He is present wholly wherever He is, because He is simple.

A thing may in a broader sense be in a place when the whole is not outside what is contained, the whole is in each part of what is contained, and the whole is in the whole of what is contained. This is called being present in place by definition, because it involves being related to a place not by being within a boundary but by taking the place so bounded as a specific term of one's presence. This definitive presence has sometimes been said to be the sense in which angels are in a place. As angels are simple substances, they have no parts and therefore cannot be circumscriptively in a place, but angels were thought to be present to a place, and and because their ability to be so is not unlimited, they were thought to be able to be present in this place and not outside of it, by their whole substance having a relation to all of the parts of the place and the whole place. Thus St. Thomas says (ST 1.52.1), an incorporeal substance virtually contains the thing with which it comes into contact, and is not contained by it. However, God is also not definitively in a place, because His presence is not limited in its term.

The third way is that something may be present wholly and without limit, whether of boundary or term. This is called being in present in place by repletion, i.e., by fullness, because of the words of the Prophet Jeremiah (23:23-24): I am a God nearby, says the Lord, and not a remote God. Can anyone hide himself in coverts so I do not see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord. Compare also Wisdom 1:7, The Spirit of the Lord has filled the world. What is repletively present at a place is not located at that place, nor does it occupy that place the way a material body does; that is, the boundaries of the place do not measure it either directly or indirectly by marking the limits of its term, but rather it fills the place without being bounded or restricted by it, that is, is wholly everywhere as a whole. As Anselm says (Mon. 22), But whatever is not at all bound by the containment of place and of time is not bound by the law of place or the law of time with respect to multiplicity of parts, or is not prevented from being present as a whole at the same time in many places or at many times. Of this, Leibniz says (New Essays 2.23.21), "God is said to have it, because he fills the entire universe in a more perfect way than minds fill bodies, for he operates immediately on all created things, continually producing them, whereas finite minds cannot immediately influence or operate upon them." Likewise, some of the rabbis (Bereshit Rabbah 68.5), commenting on the verse (Gn 28:11), He encountered the place, read 'the Place' (Ha-maqom) as a name for God, with Rav Huna saying, "It is because He is the Place of the world, and His world is not His place." This may also be the idea in the verse of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS 797), "The perfect Lord has established the perfect creation. Behold the Lord pervading everywhere." Thus God is repletively present in every place.

Given that there are places, God is either somewhere but not elsewhere, or nowhere, or everywhere. He is not only at some places, because then he would be limited like other things that are determined, circumscriptively or definitively, to a certain given place. If we say, however, that he is nowhere, and by this do not simply mean that he is not exclusively some particular where, then the same thing may be said from the other side; that is, if he is nowhere, he is excluded from place and therefore limited. Therefore it is necessary for God to be everywhere or ubiquitous or omnilocal, because he cannot be excluded from any places there might be.  Instead, God fills every place, not like a body is said to fill place by excluding the co-presence of another body, but by giving being to the things that fill every place and to the whole cosmos. This we saw noted previously; Clement says (1 Clem 28:4), Whither shall one depart, or where shall one flee, from Him who embraces the universe? And as Turretin says (Institutes 3.9.6), "wherever he is, he is wholly; wholly in all things, yet wholly beyond all; included in no place and excluded from none; and not so much in a place (because finite cannot comprehend infinite) as in himself." Further, if God were not everywhere then it seems that He could not be immutable, since He could then change places, i.e., change in such a way that His change was measurable by different boundaries. St. Anselm says (Monologion 22), Whatever is not at all bound by the containment of place and of time is not bound by the law of place or the law of time with respect to multiplicity of parts, or is not prevented from being present as a whole at the same time in many places or at many times. Therefore God must be, as Augustine says (Ep 187.14), whole in the heavens alone and whole on the earth alone and whole in the heaves and in the earth, contained in no place, but whole everywhere in himself.

This conclusion is somewhat more robust than that reached by Maimonides (Guide 1.19), in which takes claims like (Is 6:4) The whole earth is full of his glory to be interpretable along the lines of "'All the earth gives evidence of his perfection', i.e., leads to knowledge of it." This is true, being a form of mediate presence such as we will discuss below, but it is because God is repletively present as first cause and actuality that all the earth is able to give evidence of His perfection. 

Because God is repletively present in any place as precondition for all actual places, we can go farther than this. If we were to suppose that the world were limited, in such a way that there is some boundary beyond which there is no further boundary, then all actual places must be within this boundary. However, we can think of the possibility of places beyond this boundary, not in the sense that there are ghostly non-actual places outside the boundary, but in the sense that the boundary could be more permissive than it is, and therefore could contain as actual some places that are not actual. This is what is known as imaginary space. Imaginary space, constituted by such merely hypothetical places, is a being of reason, sometimes useful for thinking about real space, and we can think of imaginary space because there is nothing about the concept of place itself can prevent the possibility of always having a more expansive place. Because God is precondition to any place at all, however, we can say that God is present not merely to real space, that is all the actual places whatever they may be, but even if these are limited and finite, to imaginary space, that is, all the hypothetical places that could possibly be. God is present not merely to actual places but also to possible places, not, of course, as actual, but as possible, in that without his already existing presence they could not be possible. Whatever number of places might be supposed, even if an infinite number be supposed besides what already exist, it would be necessary that God should be in all of them; for nothing can exist except by Him, and his presence therefore does not depend on the place, but the place on his causally prior presence. This could perhaps be called God's hypothetical ubiquity. However, this must not be misunderstood; it means not merely that God would hypothetically be present in any place that might be, but that God is present in such a way that in any place that might be He would be present. Therefore to be everywhere primarily and absolutely belongs to God and is proper to Him: because whatever number of places be supposed to exist, God must be in all of them, not as to a part of Him, but as to His very self. All possible places presuppose His actual presence; the divine presence cannot be limited by the distinction between actual and possible borders or places. Likewise, we can say that if there were separate spaces, so that there was no boundary such that the places of one could be related to the places of the other, that God would be everywhere in both by repletion, and, by hypothetical ubiquity, all possible places of all possible spaces presuppose the divine presence.

Someone might say, of course, that something that exists anywhere does not transcend space, but God must do so to be God; therefore, God cannot exist anywhere, and therefore a fortiori cannot be omnipresent. But, as we have noted, when we say that God exists somewhere, we say that He does so, not by being contained or limited to a place, but as the precondition for anything being in that place. To say that God transcends space is to say that He is not circumscribable and limitable by spatial measures, not that He is excluded from what is measured by such measures.

(2.2) Presence may also be restricted because it has, so to speak, a boundary or limitation in time, as determined by some change that functions as a clock. What is present sometimes implies that there be something present always, for what is sometimes is understood as such in relation to other things that are sometimes, and the possibility of having this relation depends on those things that are sometimes sharing something that gives them this relation. For instance, if we have A, which is sometimes, and B, which is sometimes, either they have no relation at all to each other or, if they are part of one series or system of times, must have something that unites them into one series or system, such as the universe of which they are apart. Therefore every series or system of things that are sometimes present requires that there be something or some set of things that are always present, where what is always present is that which has temporal measurement that is not only sometimes present. Further, what is only sometimes present is something that begins to be and ceases to be. If everything began to be, including the series or system of things that begin to be, then there would at some point have been nothing; but if nothing exists, nothing can begin to be, because the cause of something beginning to be must always be something that is. Since things do begin to be, then, there must be something of some sort that is not only sometimes present. This, however, must either have its being in and of itself, or must receive it from another, in which case there cannot be an infinite regress. In either case, there must be something that is always, not merely because it receives the ability to be from another, but because it exists in such a way that by its very nature it is not merely sometimes present. This is what all call God, and by virtue of this, and in this particular sense, we may say that God is always or omnitemporal, his presence not being subject to a restriction to anything that measures him as only being sometimes.  

This makes sense in general. Temporality is a form of incomplete actuality, namely, that incomplete actuality whose incompleteness can be measured by another incomplete actuality that functions as a clock measuring it. Incomplete actualities must participate actuality itself or pure act, which is God, but actuality itself is not incomplete actuality, and therefore has no incompleteness at all that can be measured by a clock. Further, given that there are times, God is present either only sometimes, or never at all, or always. He cannot be present only sometimes, because then he would be limited in not being present at other times. Neither can it be said that he is present at no time, or never, simply speaking, because then the same thing may be said from the other side; that is, if he is never present, and this is not taken figuratively to mean merely that he is not exclusively at any particular time, the divine presence is limited in not ever being present at any time. Therefore it is necessary to say that God is present always, because if anything exists at any time, God cannot be so limited as sometimes not to be present.

Just as with places in space, however, we may say that God is eternally present in such a way as to be present even to merely possible times. If we suppose that the world is limited in a way measurable by time, so that there is a beginning or ending to the world as measured by time, we can still think of the possibility of times before the beginning or after then ending, not in that they actually exist, but in the sense that the beginning of the world could have been, by temporal measurement, earlier, or that the ending of the world could have been, by temporal measurement, later. As time is a numerical measurement of change by change, nothing about its nature as a measurement requires that the world begin or end at a certain point, for the same reason that nothing about the nature of numbers requires that negative or positive numbers be finite. The possible but not actual times that are implicit in the nature of time as a measurement are known as imaginary time. Imaginary time, constituted by such merely hypothetical times, is a being of reason, sometimes useful for thinking about real time, and we can think of imaginary time because there is nothing about the concept of time itself that prevents having more expansive temporal measurements. Because God is precondition to anything temporal at all, however, we can say that God is present not merely to things as measured by real time, but even if there is a beginning and ending to them, to imaginary time. For nothing can exist except by Him, and his presence therefore does not depend on the time, but the time on his causally prior presence. This could perhaps be called God's hypothetical omnitemporality. To be always primarily and absolutely belongs to God and is proper to Him: because whatever times may be supposed to exist, God must be in all of them, not as to a part of Him, but as to His very self. All possible times presuppose His actual presence. 

However, because of this God may also be called, and in a sense more fittingly, atemporal and pretemporal, because the manner of his presence lies in being not intrinsically measured by any temporal measurement but in being a precondition for anything that is temporally measured. To say that something is itself temporally measured is to say that it is a change and related to another change that, conceived as a cycle, functions as a clock for it, indicating how much it has changed by the comparison to the other change. God, however, is immutable, and therefore cannot be measured by any cyclical change at all. Rather, as he is first unmoved mover, or the first unchanged changer, all changes and all clocks presuppose his causal act. Further, as he is being itself, ipsum esse, all things that are participate him, having being in a more restricted way that does not apply to him; and one of these participating restrictions is temporal. Things that are temporal by nature therefore presuppose his presence, but no clock properly measures the divine presence because it is the precondition for any such measurement at all. God is therefore said to be omnitemporal, that is, at every time, because he is pretemporal, that is, before time, where the 'before' is not temporal but indicates a logically prior condition, and precisely as he is said to be pretemporal he is timeless or atemporal, that is, beyond or outside of time and free of temporal restriction. Thus Ignatius says (Polyc 3:2) that God is above all time, eternal and invisible, and the Psalmist says (90:2): Before mountains were brought forth and you had ever formed land and habitable place, from perpetuity to perpetuity you are God.

An objection that is sometimes made to this is that then the divine eternity co-exists with one moment and time and also with another, so that times would then co-exist each other, and thus all distinction among times would vanish. However, it does not follow that if the eternal is coexistent with everything temporal that the temporal is coexistent with the eternity as such according to the measure of time, nor that if the external is coexistent with each time that every time is coexistent with each time, because times are limited by measure, and therefore cannot have relations to each other that are not so limited. Times are not eternal with respect to other times. Thus the coexistence objection could only succeed if eternity and times were themselves commensurable, that is, if eternity were a temporal measurement. As Turretin says, (Inst. 3.10.10), "Although time coexists with the whole of eternity, it is not therefore eternal because that coexistence is not adequate (as if they were of the same duration and nature), but inadequate (of a thing evidently heterogeneous both as to nature and as to duration)."

An objection against omnipresence, taking this to include both omnipresence and omnitemporality has also been put forward by Matt McCormick, based on ideas from Kant, which may be summarized as follows. If some being is able to distinguish the object of a representation and representation itself and has the ability to apply concepts and form judgments, then it must be able to distinguish itself from what is not itself. A being that is omnipresent and omnitemporal is present in all places and times. Therefore it cannot distinguish self and not-self; but it is absurd that God, who is said to have intellect and be omniscient, would be unable to do so. This assumes, of course, that the only ways in which we can distinguish self from what is not self is by difference in place or difference in time; but this is false. As Aquinas says (ST 1.7.1 ad 3), The fact that the being of God is self-subsisting, not received in any other, and is thus called infinite, shows Him to be distinguished from all other beings, and all others to be apart from Him.

(2.3) Presence may also be restricted because there are countable things to which its presence does not extend, so that we may partition countable things into those to which it is present and those to which it is not. Every count is in respect of units, which classify the count; thus, measuring by count in this way is a way of using classification to measure something. If I say, 'There is one apple on the table', the unit of 'apple', which is a classification, then frames and makes possible the count of 'one'; the unit that makes counting possible is in this sense more fundamental than the counted one. However, anything that exists so as to be classifiable in this way, presupposes divine presence; an agent cause must be present to its proximate and immediate effect, but in everything there is a proximate and immediate effect of God, namely, its being. Further, every creature must be co-existent with God, and thus such that God is present with it, as to its duration and capacity to be, for every limited capacity to be derives from God's unlimited capacity to be. Therefore, every creature is such that God is present to it. As Aquinas says (ST 1.8.1), God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. The Sri Guru Granth Sahib says something similar (177): "The One who holds all creatures in His hands is never separated from them; He is with them all." God may be said then to be universally compresent with all countable things, so that there can be no countable thing to which he is not present. 

Reasoning similar to that which we have given for places and times also applies here. Given that there are other things, God is either with some, or with none, or with all. God cannot be only with some, because then he would be limited like other things that are only with some but not others. Neither can he be with none, because then the same thing may be said from the other side; that is, if he is nowhere, he is limited by the number of things he is with. Therefore it is necessary to say that God is with all, because, if there are things, he cannot fail to be with them. Likewise, as there are things that could exist but do not, we can say that those things that do not exist but might constitute imaginary multitude, which is a being of reason by which we better reason about the things that exist even if they might not. With these things, the divine presence will have hypothetical compresence, in the sense that all possible countable things and multitudes presuppose God's actual presence as a necessary precondition.

(2.4) It is clear from what we have said about place, time, and count or tally, that the argument can be generalized to a broader field of modalities. We may distinguish between modalities that are purely mind-dependent and those that concern, directly or indirectly, mind-independent things; we set aside the former here and focus on the latter, the real modal states of being. As we are here considering the ways in which divine presence is immeasurable, we will also consider only those real modal states of being that, like place, time, and tally, are determined with some respect to some measure. Given such modalities, God is either present with regard to only some, or none, or all. He cannot be present with regard to only some and not others, because then he would be limited by exclusion from those modal states to which he was not present. For instance, if some possibilities are not accessible to him, then he is limited in the same way as anything else to which only some possibilities are accessible. Neither can it be said that God is present to none of them, because then the same thing may be said from the other side. For instance, as said above, he is limited if he is excluded from all places or times. Therefore it is necessary to say that God is present with regard to all real modal states of being that are metrical, whatever they may be, whether possibilities as measured by other possibilities, or places, or times, or spacetime regions, or measurable states of change like beginning (incipit) and ending (desinit), or or countable subjects measured by states of real classification like genera. Likewise, we recognize that, as God is that than which no greater can be thought, the divine presence cannot be measurable in itself by any means of measuring, which would imply that something greater than he could be thought, namely, what was without the restrictions or limitations involved in those measurements. The divine presence may therefore be said to be supermodal or premodal.

III. Subjective divine presence by action. In all of this we attribute to God a presence by being, and thus it may be said that (Acts 17:27-28) he is not far from any of us, for in him we live and move and have our being; but we attribute to God presence by acting or operating, as well. This operative presence is often described by the metaphor of God 'dwelling' in creation or among creatures. Thus God says (Ex 25:8), And let them make a sanctuary that I may dwell among them and God is said (Dt 33:16) to have dwelt in the burning bush; likewise, the people of Israel are commanded (Dt 12:11) to bring sacrifices to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. This likewise gave rise to the later rabbinical term for the divine presence in the world, Shekhinah, which comes from the verb meaning 'to dwell or to inhabit'.The Revelator also tells us (Rv 7:15), And the One Seated on the Throne will dwell (skenosei) among them. When, however, 'dwelling' is used in the other direction, for the world or creatures dwelling in God, this is often a figurative expression for repletive presence, which we discussed above, although of rational creatures it is often an indication of objective presence, which we will discuss below, as in Jer 3:4 LXX, Have you not called me as it were a home? Sometimes the divine nature is also itself called the dwelling place of God, sometimes with Heaven being a metonymic name for God; thus to say that God dwells in Heaven is to say that God rests in God; a similar expression is found in 1 Tim 6:16, where it says that God dwells in unapproachable light, the unapproachable light being God Himself.

When 'dwelling' is used to indicate the divine subjective presence by action, it describes God's love taking some creature or creatures as a term. For 'dwelling' is closely associated with love; lovers are said to indwell each other mutually, and we dwell where we love, and, as Gregory says (Moral. 8.74), Everything that we love, we as it were make our dwelling place by reposing on it.

There are other ways that God's subjective presence by action is described. For instance, it is described as 'wrath' when it is action taking as a term those who have made themselves enemies of God, as with John 3:36, Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him, or Exodus 15:7, You send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble. However, it is called 'wrath' not because God is subject to being overwhelmed by passions, but because it is an act of justice against those hostile to God. And in general, whenever terms derived from the passions are applied to God, it indicates a kind of subjective presence by action.

IV. Objective divine presence. Besides subjective divine presence, there are several kinds of objective presence, and the differences among them can be important because people interact and connect with each other in different ways by them. St. Clement says (1 Clem 28:4-29:1), Whither shall one depart, or where shall one flee, from Him who embraces the universe? Let us therefore approach Him in holiness of soul, lifting up pure and undefiled hands unto Him, with love towards our gentle and compassionate Father who made us an elect portion unto Himself. Notice that he tells us both that the divine presence embraces the universe, so that no one can depart or flee from it, and that we may approach the presence in holiness of soul. We have so far considered how God is present through all things caused by Him, as the efficient cause is present to the effect; but we may also consider how God is present as the object of action is in the agent. This is found when we say that God is present to the soul or the mind, as the known or loved is in the knower or lover. In this way God is present to the rational being that knows and loves Him, whether actually or habitually, and thus we can consider ways in which such presence might be restricted, not on the part of the divine presence in itself, but on the part of the being to which God is present. That is to say, something may be relatively 'distant' from the divine presence through lack of knowledge of God or through lack of love of God. This distance must be 'relative' because God necessarily has remote objective presence to the intellect and will, as the infinite intelligible that is their ultimate final cause and that is the exemplar that makes possible their having objects at all. However, in terms of more proximate objective presence, as in that of which our minds are explicitly thinking, we may not be thinking of or loving God. This is due not to any limitation of the divine presence itself, what in scholastic terminology might be called 'subjective presence', i.e., presence as subject, for, as Augustine says (Ep.187.18 to Dardanus), If God is received less by one to whom he is present, he is not therefore himself less; but it is due rather to the limitation of our own intellects and wills with respect to having objects present to us.

More specific objective presence can be immediate or mediate. Immediate objective divine presence is either complete, in which case it is called the Beatific Vision, and is a divine presence only among the angels and saints, or incomplete, as when it is said of Moses (Ex 33:11), And the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, in which case it is a special grace that is given as a sign of the Beatific Vision.

 The other kind of specific objective presence, which we more commonly consider, is mediate objective presence. This may be general, as when the world is taken to mediate the presence of God to us, as in the book of Wisdom (13:5), From the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their creator. Or it may be through a specific action of the creature; thus in thinking of God and loving Him, God is present as object. Sometimes in the latter case, the action of the creature expresses the subjective presence of God by action, and it is that which is found in many theophanies, visions, spiritual locutions, and the like. 

Mediate objective presence may be considered insofar as the medium is primarily understood to mediate the presence as an instrument mediates its principal agent, or as a sign mediates its signified. 

When the rabbis discuss (Vayikra Rabbah 30) the traditional four species (cf. Lv 23:40), one of the things they do is to associate them symbolically with a form of divine presence. The es hadar, or 'trees of splendor', he associates with that described in Psalm 104:1, You are clothed in glory and majesty (= hadar). The temarim, or palm trees, he associates with Psalm 92:12, The righteous bloom like a palm. The leafy trees or myrtles, es abot, he associates with Zechariah 1:8, And He stood among the myrtles. And the willows of the brook, arbe nahal, he associates with Psalm 68:4, Extol Him who rides the clouds. What the hadar trees, the trees of splendor, directly symbolize is the hadar, splendor, that God may be said to wear as if it were a vestment. Vestments or clothes are things very closely associated with a person that are nonetheless not the person; the splendor understood here is not the divine being itself but something very closely associated with it which is an instrument of divine manifestation. Likewise, Psalm 92:12-13 talks about how the righteous are palm trees in the divine court, that is, the righteous or just considered as an instrument of the divine majesty. In Zechariah 1, the one standing among the myrtles of the ravine is the Angel of the Lord, closely associated with God as His messenger. The word for 'willow' and the word for 'cloud' are related, so the rabbis here take the willows to stand for the clouds associated in divine revelation with the divine chariot. In each case what is directly symbolized is not God but something closely associated with God by which God manifests His presence: the divine 'vestment', the divine court of the just, the divine messenger, the divine chariot. All of these things represented by the species are instruments by which the principal agent from which they work, namely, God himself, can be known and through which he reveals himself. An instrument in the most proper sense is a moved mover, by which a principal moving agent enacts a change in some moved thing, in such a way that the act of the moved mover can be attributed to the principal agent. Thus the principal agent can be said to be present to the effect by way of the instrument, in the manner of efficacy. 

When people establish various kinds of moral, juridical, or ritual presence to each other, on the other hand, the mediation must be by some kind of sign. All signs involve something that provides an object to something capable of taking it as object, as when a word suggests an object to a cognitive power. However, the object of a word is distinct from the thing itself; it is the thing only insofar as it is considered in a particular way in a cognitive power.  In the four species interpreted in the way noted above, we find the species themselves to be primarily signs by which the human mind itself can know God, who then is said to have ritual objective presence to the mind.  

Specific things may be signs of God in a more special and illuminating way, either morally, juridically, or liturgically, due to imposition by God or by human persons. However, all creatures, as effects, can also be seen as signs of God as their Creator, as a trace or vestige of him; as the Psalmist says (148:5), Let them praise the name of the Lord, for at his command they were created. Therefore we may call this the symbolic omnipresence of God, in that through anything and everything God may be brought to the human mind, to be known and loved. This symbolic omnipresence is related to the divine glory, which we will consider on its own.

*****

G. W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, Remnant & Bennett, eds. & trs., Cambridge UP (New York: 1997), 221-222.

Matt McCormick, "Why God Cannot Think: Kant, Omnipresence, and Consciousness", Philo Vol. 3, No.1 (2000) pp. 5-19.

Holy Saturday

Great Saturday of the Light 

O Lord, we have battled!
We have fought to exhaustion;
we have borne long combat,
we have known the endless ordeal.
In the night we have watched;
we held at length the painful line;
we served Your covenant.
Have mercy on us, Most High God,
for you are rich in grace.
In compassion blot out our sins.
Wash us till we are clean;
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day. 

Your will we disobeyed;
we offended You with our sins.
Your judgment was righteous
on we who were born into sin.
But You love faithfulness,
and You have taught us Your wisdom,
planted truth in our hearts;
now sprinkle us with Your mercy,
cleanse us with hyssop wand,
that we may be made right and true,
washed more clean than pure snow.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day. 

How great is Christ's bright love!
Who can understand its vastness?
Its scope is truly great,
its width, its length, its height, its depth.
It was seen on the cross,
in His passion and death for us.
Love is the light of grace;
by it mysteries are unveiled,
without it none are known.
Christ loved to the bounds of all love:
He died for us, His friends.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day. 

We in hope await peace.
We are confident of glory,
confident in trouble,
knowing that pain proves endurance,
that endurance proves faith,
that proved faith is ground for sure hope.
Turn Your eyes from our sins,
blot out the record of our guilt!
Breathe new life into us
as we await resurrection.
Strengthen us in Your grace.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day.

Dashed Off XI

 (1) If nothing is actual, nothing is possible.
(2) It is impossible that nothing be possible.
(3) Therefore it is necessary that there is something actual.
(4) For it to be necessary that there is something actual, there must be at least one thing that is necessary.
(5) Therefore, etc.

doxastic necessity as licensing theoretical postulation

Kant's table of Nothing
Nothing as:
(1) empty concept without object -- ens rationis
(2) empty object of a concept -- nihil privatum
(3) empty intuition without object -- ens imaginarium
(4) empty object without concept -- nihil negativum
-- It's odd for two kinds of nothing to be being; 'nothing' is here really the opposite of 'real being'.
-- It's unclear how (1) and (4) are really being distinguished.
-- Placing it in a table suggests (1) corresponds to quantity; (2) to quality; (3) to relation; and (4) to modality. And Kant is attempting this. But it seems impossible to make this work. (1) as none, rather than all, many, or one, e.g., 'noumena'. This makes Kant's account of ens rationis very peculiar (it includes soul, world, God, freedom, because these are not given in intuition). (2) as opposed to reality as something (but what of negation and limitation? Thus, perhaps, privation -- privation as such is neither negation or limitation). (3) is mere form of intuition, the merely formal condition of an object "like pure space and pure time" -- thus no inherence, causality, or community. (This is perhaps the greatest stretch.) (4) is the object of a self-contradictory concept -- but note that this seems to give it the modality of impossibility, which makes it *not* nothing in that category. One really should have something not even impossible, providing no modality to judgment.
-- note (3)'s odd shift to intuition and the lack of an empty object without an intuition.

Much of Kant's philosophy is tied to taking 'object in general' rather than 'being' as the prime principle of metaphysics.

software as a description of a final cause

manipulating semiotic being to explore abstract being

paperwork pollution

opnions vs private-good beliefs vs common-good beliefs
(private-good and common-good here are neutral adjectives -- beliefs held as good for oneself or as part of shared good, regardless of whether it actually is)

Etiology is a subdiscipline of teleology.

Positive law is not reducible to nothing but positive law.

elements of incorruptibility of soul
(1) The human soul as such is not decomposable.
(2) The human soul does not wholly depend on what is decomposable.
(3) The human soul is not naturally subject to annihilation.

Kant's attempt to refute Mendelssohn on immortality requires that existence be a predicate; otherwise it does not admit of diminution, at least in any way that seems to make sense in Kantian philosophy.

Music is a shape for thinking in, while language is a frame for thinking through.

All human beings become disabled eventually; we are mortal beings.

NB that Feser argues that the disembodied soul is a whole reduced to a single proper part (i.e., weak supplementation does not apply).

To be a plant or an animal is to be a teleology.

Becoming good at doing something requires developing good taste with respect to its means.

We assess equivocation in arguments by assessing whether the propositions are co-supportable in a relevant context.

"No collection of experts will add up to a wise man." Josiah Royce
"When the philosopher wishes to know what will happen when this theory is proposed or that line of reasoning pursued, he does not have to speculate. He can delve into the history of philosophy and find recorded there the accumulated experiences of the human mind in dealing with these problems over the centuries."

self -> recognition of others -> recognition of self as relative to and other than other selves -> recognitino of self qua self in distinction of self qua other -> self-personation to others -> structured personas in the moral ambit of a person (in the form of one's honor, one's love, one's self-branding, etc.)

In modern advertising, the ads often present products and services as persona-tools.

Politics is structured by the relation between the more local community (ultimately the household) and the more general community (ultimately humanity).

*Surprised by Joy* as a study of how a thoughtful man changes his mind on a fundamental matter

Tradition is a training in the good, and the quality of the tradition is related to both the quality of the training and the quality of the good.

invoking forms and banishing forms of symbols

summarizing arguments using other arguments (the argument-summarizing function of arguments is not sufficiently studied, and has not progressed much beyond Aristotle's recognition of the enthymeme)
argumetns constructed to be paradigmatic types in a family of arguments
simplified approximations of arguments
leading-idea-and-conclusion summaries of arguments

property law and the justly acquired

Lk 22:35-38 and the temporal power of the Church (money purse, food pouch, defensive sword as teh gear for journeying in dangerous environments)

immediate vs mediate acquisition

ministerial causation and the deontic

design argument + impssibility of infinite regress in designers (having design as such does not exclude infinity in this way, so the latter has to be based on making causes, i.e., being made to have design)

Things are imagined under appearances and the same thing may be imagined under very different appearances.

intention overlap, intention underlap, intention convergence

(1) The President is an office established by the Constitution;
(2) George Washington is not an office established by the Constitution;
(3) George Washington is the President.

Much of fantasy works by literalizing the overplus of metaphorical achievement over literal achievement. The literal difference between a competent but average graduate and Albert Einstein in physics is impressive, but less than one might expect; however, Einstein's achievements metaphorically expressed massively outstrip anything the graduate student might expect to achieve; they are semi-divine, world-shaking, caught glimpses of the mind of God, as physicists themselves cannot help saying. In a science fantasy tale, however, one might have a physicist who literally catches a glimpse of something like the mind of God.

3 modes of participating in a game: play, spectation, reflection

Society runs on a ritual infrastructure.

Declarations of rights establish a shared vocabulary of assessment and justification.

Artemis II

 NASA's Artemis II mission launched at 6:35 pm EDT, and just recently finished its perigee raise maneuver, which completes its first phase. The mission is intended to loop around the moon as the first manned mission beyond low earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, and is planned to be back on April 10. Godspeed!

All Forms of Art She Uses at Her Need

Beauty
by Constance Naden 

Eternal Beauty, Truth’s interpreter,
Is bound by no austere æsthetic creed;
All forms of art she uses at her need,
And e’en unlovely things are slaves to her:
And we, whose hearts her lightest breath can stir,
Must prize her flowers, whoe’er has sown the seed,
And love each noble picture, song, or deed,
Whose soul is true, although the form should err. 

 She is God’s servant, but the queen of man,
Who fondly dreams she lives for him alone,
And while her power is felt through time and space,
Proclaims her priestess of some petty clan,
Catching but transient glimpses of a face
Veiled in rich vestures, loved but still unknown.

Unpardoning

 Dennis Lytton has an article at "Liberal Currents" arguing for what he calls a 'reform' of the presidential pardon power. This is a grotesquely bad idea. A few points.

(1) When people, right or left, make arguments like this, it is always important to make clear what their actual argument is, however they may dress it up. They want to be able to be more vindictive to political opponents. Lytton does everything but admit this outright; all of his argument is a complaint that people to whom he is politically opposed are not being punished hard enough because they are getting pardons and reprieves. He wants to end this, and be able to punish them more harshly. Indeed, he goes farther; he doesn't just want to end the pardoning and reprieving of people he doesn't like, he wants to revoke their pardons and reprieves. He wants to undo any mercy extended to them. But he is not advocating a general consensus view; it is a very explicitly partisan one.

There are proposals to reform the pardon power that are worth taking seriously. Some states have a pardon-board process that, if done properly (it is not always done properly), can make it easier for people to get pardons and reprieves for recognized categories of cases, which supplements or organizes the governor's pardon power. There are some arguments that can be made for something like this. But one of the reasons why the head of the executive branch generally gets the pardon power is that the pardon power is something that requires definite decision (not compromise and legislative horse-trading) but also requires the capacity to make discretionary decisions that take into account the overall political situation by someone who is beholden ultimately to the people and not to political appointment. Lytton, of course, is objecting precisely to cases that involve the latter, and wants to eliminate it entirely. This is effectively trying to find a way to break people under the law even if large portions of American society are sympathetic to them. That is, at minimum, placing an immense amount of trust in Congress to pass only moderate and reasonable laws, and prosecutors to exercise their own inevitable discretion in enforcement of the law in moderate and apolitical ways.

(2) What is worse, Lytton does not actually propose a reform of the pardon power. The proposed amendment does give Congress the power to establish by joint resolution an independent body to grant pardons and reprieves and the power to grant by joint resolution pardons and reprieves. (Joint resolutions, except those involving proposals to amend the Constitution, usually require the Presidential signature or a veto override, because they usually just work like laws; Lytton's very defective amendment does not say which is relevant here, although presumably he wants Congress to be able to pardon and reprieve without the President vetoing it -- but maybe not, who knows?) This, first of all, gives Congress the power to make arbitrary exceptions to its own laws, but, second, notably does not require that Congress do either of these things. 

That is to say, Lytton is not 'reforming' the pardon power; he is making it massively harder for anyone to get pardons and reprieves. Congress of course doesn't have to establish an independent body to grant pardons and reprieves; it doesn't have to give any pardons itself, and giving pardons itself requires exactly the same political negotiation and horsetrading it takes to pass a law. But Congress (unlike the President) does not have much incentive for making it easy to get pardons to the laws passed by Congress. Every pardon suggests a possible defect in a law; and Lytton is giving it entirely to either the legislators themselves or people who are definitely subordinate to the legislators.

But under our current regime, for every one of the news-grabbing dubious pardons, there are literally dozens of pardons and reprieves for entirely reasonable circumstances. And even so, there are many cases that arguably should be heard. In a serious pardon reform, pardons should be easier for ordinary people to get, not harder. Lytton's proposal provides no mechanism that gives any reasonable guarantee of a better system. We're all at the mercy of whether Congress comes up with a reasonable set of procedures. This is not a reform but a degradation of a key power mitigating the sledgehammer of the laws.

(3) The proposed change for the pardon power itself is bad. But his proposal for a process to revoke pardons and reprieves is morally atrocious. It applies to any pardon or reprieve given under Presidential power at any time, and pardons or reprieves are explicitly defined as "pardons, conditional pardons, commutations of sentence, conditional commutations of sentence, remissions of fines and forfeitures, respites, and amnesties." People who were restored the right to vote in their state because their felony status was pardoned could have it stripped away again. Immigrants given amnesties and pardons for irregularities in documentation could suddenly be deported. People whose fines were forgiven could be re-fined. People trusting the explicit word of their government that their punishment was over, backed by the presumed rock-solid status of the Constitution itself, could find themselves suddenly punished. And all of this can be done arbitrarily. This is not just unmerciful, it is unjust and dishonorable.

(4) And why are we to rip up by its roots an entire clemency system? All to hurt a few very specific people who got pardons and reprieves. This is an abusive way to think about government.

The Ailing Soul

 The Redeemer presents himself to the world as a charitable physician, and the sicknesses of the body belong to the ultimate purpose of his redemption because they are parables for the operation of the ailing soul. Among the many troubles by which the dominion of Satan was evident in our Savior's times, three especially are noted here: demon-possessed people, whose soul was perhaps less fettered and whose body Satan therefore regarded as his own, so that it was nothing better than stage for the slavery of souls; lunatics, people whose conceptions and acts did not depend on the will of their souls but on external impressions, people who were therefore not in a self-conscious state...; cripples with a paralysis of limbs that makes us unable to use them. Taken together, all three show the corruption, the misery, that our sin has inflicted on us.

[Johann Georg Hamann, The Complete London Writings, Kleinig, tr., Lexham Academic (Bellingham: 2025) p. 256. This comment is on Matthew 4:24.]

Links of Note

 * John A. Goldsmith, With charisma to spare, on Franz Brentano, at "Aeon"

* Paul Lodge, Leibniz's Philosophical Dream of Rational and Intuitive Enlightenment (PDF)

* Hamish Russell, Balancing, Shielding, Filtering: Three Models of Role Morality (PDF)

* Ioannes Chountes de Fabbri, Jürgen Habermas’ lost world: the coffee-house and the public sphere, at "Engelsberg Ideas"

* Karen Crowther, Dumb Holes: Universality or Analogy? What Makes an Analogue Experiment an Analogue Experiment? (PDF)

* Oliver Traldi, Jane Austen's Virtuous Liberalism, at "Fusion"

* James Chastek, Talk at Benedictine College, on the sublime, at "Just Thomism"

* Doug Campbell, Plato's myth of Atlantis, at "Plato's Fish-Trap"

* Bernard Sleigh's Anciente Mappe of Fairyland, at "Public Domain Review"

* Edward Feser, The Epistemology of Microphysics

* Joseph Heath, The Two Nightmares of Jürgen Habermas, at "Persuasion"

* Ella Frances, The Sublime in Action: Kant, Awe, and Creative Power

* D'Artagnans remains may have been found; d'Artagnan, of course, is the historical Musketeer on whom the d'Artagnan of Dumas's The Three Musketeers is based.

* Fr. Justin Hewlett, A Proper Approach to Polytheism, at "Geek Orthodox"

* Michael Pakaluk, The Meaning of "Pursuit of Happiness"

* James DiFrisco & Steven Hecht Orzack, Biology Needs Philosophy, But What Philosophy?

* Amod Lele, Habermas and a road not taken, at "Love of All Wisdom"

Habitude XXX

 To the fifth one proceeds thus. It seems that intellectual virtue is able to be without moral virtue. For the completion of the prior does not depend on the completion of the posterior. But reason is prior to sensory striving [appetitu sensitivo] and changes [movens] it. Therefore intellectual virtue, which is the completion of reason, does not depend on moral virtue, which is the completion of the striving part. Therefore it is able to be without it.

Further, moral things [moralia] are the matter of prudence, as makeables are the matter of craft. But craft is able to be without its own material, as the smith [faber] can be without iron. Therefore prudence is also able to be without moral virtues, though it seems of all intellectual virtues to be most conjoined with moral things.

Further, prudence is the being-counseled-well virtue [virtus bene consiliativa], as is said in Ethic. VI. But many are counseled well but lack moral virtues. Therefore prudence is able to be without moral virtue.

But contrariwise, to wish to do evil is directly contrary to moral virtue, but it is not opposed to something that can be without moral virtue. Yet it is opposed to prudence to sin willingly, as is said in Ethic. VI. Therefore prudence is not able to be without moral virtue.

I respond that it must be said that other intellectual virtues are able to be without moral virtue, but prudence without moral virtue is not able to be. The reason for which is that prudence is right reason of enactables, not only in the universal, but in the particular in which there are actions. But right reason pre-requires the sources [principia] from which reason proceeds. And reason about particulars should proceed not only from universal sources but from particular sources as well. Indeed, about universal sources of enactables, a human being rightly has himself [se habet] through natural intellection of sources [naturalem intellectum principiorum], through which the human being cognizes that nothing bad is to be enacted, or even through some practical knowledge [scientiam practicam]. But this does not suffice for reasoning rightly about particulars. For it happens sometimes that this kind of universal source cognized through intellection or knowledge is deteriorated [corrumpitur] in the particular through some passion, such as craving [concupiscenti], for when craving conquers, what is craved seems good, even if it is against the universal judgment of reason. And therefore just as the human being is disposed to rightly having himself [se habendum] with respect to universal sources, through natural intellection or through the habitude of knowledge, so also in order that one hold oneself [se habeat] rightly with respect to particular sources of enactables, which are ends, it should be that one is completed through some habitudes according to which it becomes in some way connatural to the human being to judge rightly of the end. And this is done through moral virtue, for the virtuous one rightly judges of the end of virtue, because as each one is, so the end seems to him, as is said in Ethic. III. And thus for right reason of enactables, which is prudence, it is required that the human being have moral virtue. 

To the first therefore it must be said that reason, so far as it grasps the end [apprehensiva finis], preceds striving for the end, but striving for the end precedes reason as reasoning in choosing those things that are for the end, which pertains to prudence. So likewise in reflective matters, understanding of sources is the source of reason as deducing.

To the second it must be said that the sources of things of craft [artificialium] are not judged by us well or badly according to the disposition of our striving, as with ends, which are sources of moral things, but only through consideration of reason. Therefore craft does not require virtue perfecting striving, as prudence requires.

To the third it must be said that prudence is not only being counseled well [bene consiliativa] but also judging well [bene judicativa] and regulating well [bene praeceptiva], which is not able to be unless there be removed passional impediments corrupting the judgment and regulation of prudence, and this by moral virtue.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.58.5, my translation. The Latin is found here, the Dominican Fathers translation is found here.]

Most of the discussion of virtues as habitudes has not been too difficult, but this was a bit more of a challenge than I expected, particularly given that I am trying to do a fairly close (perhaps sometimes woodenly so) translation that does not rely too much on the usual jargon (however useful it may be elsewhere) to carry the meaning.

There are several -iva words here that, if just transliterated, might make for odd and sometimes misleading claims. 'Consiliativa' is particularly difficult; it means advising or counseling, but it can be used for being advised and being counseled, and also can mean deliberating, and in the context of prudence, it can mean any of those things. Essentially, for Aquinas, both giving and receiving advice are extensions of deliberation, so for him they are basically all one thing, except that advice involves another person (or, if you prefer, deliberation is giving advice to yourself). There is no one word in English whatsoever that fits that. Possibly it would be better to translate it by 'deliberate' words here; thus 'prudence is the virtue of deliberating well, but many deliberate well but lack moral virtues' and 'prudence is not only of deliberating well but also of judging well and of commanding well', which is all true. That would perhaps work more smoothly. But it's also all true, and a correct translation, if we put it in advice and counsel terms. We split them up almost completely; St. Thomas does not really split them up at all, and indeed it's clear elsewhere that this is not an inadvertence -- he deliberately doesn't, although well aware that you can in particular cases distinguish them.

I very much like the triadic aspect of prudence (bene consiliativa, bene judicativa, bene praeceptiva), and think it probably should be emphasized more in discussing the virtue. As is clear from the reply to the third objection, the fact that prudence unites these three does some important work for understanding how prudence relates to other virtues.

Between this article and the last, what we have learned is that moral virtue does not require sapience, science, or art (which is not to say that these might not sometimes be helpful to it), but it does require intellection and prudence. Moral virtue requires intellection, or cultivated understanding of principles, because it needs to be structured according to principles of practical reason. However, these principles, which are universal, need to be applied to particulars, which is what prudence does. And prudence itself is in the Aristotelian definition of moral virtue, i.e., that moral virtue is an operative elective habitude consisting in a relative mean determined by prudent reason. Prudence is what makes it possible for us reliably to hit the balance-point in different situations.

In the reverse direction, sapience, science, intellection, and art do not require moral virtue. Prudence, however, does, and this is related to what we previously learned about prudence, namely, that while it is properly an intellectual virtue, its field of action is the field of action of moral virtue, which is why it is counted as a moral virtue as well. The reply to the third objection seems to suggest that prudence as deliberative/consiliative might not require moral virtue, while prudence as judicative or as preceptive does, but I don't think that this can be quite right when one looks at how prudence and its adjunct virtues ('potential parts') work. Rather, I think it's more that the role of moral virtue is less direct in the consiliative work of prudence than it is in the judicative and preceptive work, so St. Thomas just focuses on the latter two as the easy cases.

In effect, prudence thinks through and governs and determines and organizes the moral virtues, but it does so by developing the moral virtues. Prudence gets good at determining the mean because it cultivates virtues that hit the mean. Thus to develop prudence, one must also simultaneously develop moral virtue, and working to develop any moral virtue requires also simultaneously working to develop prudence with respect to that area of moral life. This is what St. Thomas thinks Socrates, claiming that virtue is knowledge, gets right: moral virtue requires intellectual virtue, both understanding and prudence, and both prudence and moral virtue co-develop. Moral virtues are constitutively dependent on prudence and prudence thinks through moral matters partly by way of the moral virtues themselves.

This is noteworthy, in terms of habitude generally, in that we see here that habitudes can be instrumental to and (so to speak) continuations of other habitudes. That is, holding yourself [se habendum] in one way with respect to something can explain or be explained by, and can facilitate and further, holding yourself another way with respect to something else, and much of the meaningful structure of human life is ultimately based upon this. This has been implied in some of the examples and particular arguments that Aquinas has used, but it is here in virtue, where it plays such a fundamentally important role, that we see it most clearly and obviously. And, indeed, St. Thomas will structure his entire discussion of virtue on the basis of this organizational aspect of habitude, i.e., habitudes organizing and causing habitudes in various ways.