Habitude XXI

 To the fourth one proceeds thus. It seems that the definition of virtue usually assigned is not fitting, to wit, virtue is good quality of mind, by which one lives rightly, which no one uses badly, which God works in us without us. For virtue is human goodness, which is that which one having it good. But goodness does not seem to be good, as neither whiteness white. Therefore it is unfitting to say that virtue is good quality.

Further, no difference is more common than its genus, because it is divisive of the genus. But good is more common than quality, for it is converted with being. Therefore good ought not to be put in the definition of virtue as difference of quality.

Further, as Augustine says in De Trin. XII, where something occurs primarily that is not common to us and to cattle, it pertains to mind. But some virtues are also of irrational parts, as the Philosopher says in Ethic. III. Therefore not every virtue is good quality of mind.

Further, it seems rightness pertains to justice, so that the same things are called right and just. But justice is a species of virtue. Therefore right is unfittingly placed in the definition of virtue, as is said, by which one lives rightly.

Further, whoever is proud of something, uses it badly. But many are proud of virtue, for Augustine says, in the rule, that pride also ambushes good works that they may perish. Therefore it is false that no one uses virtue badly.

Further, man is justified through virtue. But Augustine, on John, He shall do greater than these, that he who created you without you will not justify you without you. It is therefore inappropriately said that God works in us without us.

But contrariwise is the authority of Augustine, from whose words the aforementioned definition is collected, and especially in On Free Will II.

I reply that it must be said that this definition completely encompasses the whole notion of virtue. For the complete notion of whatsoever thing is collected from all of its causes. But the aforementioned definition encompasses all causes of virtue. 

(1) For the formal cause of virtue, as of anything, is taken from its genus and difference, so it is called good quality, for quality is the genus of virtue and good the difference. However, it would be a more fitting definition if habitude were put instead of quality, which is the closest genus.

(2) Now virtue does not have from-which matter, as neither do other accidents, but it has about-which matter and in-which matter, to wit, the subject. The about-which matter is the object of virtue, which was not able to be placed in the aforementioned definition, because through the object the virtue is determined to the species, but here is assigned the definition of common virtue. Thus the subject is put in the material cause's place, when it is said that it is good quality of mind. 

(3) But the end of virtue, since it is working habitude, is the working itself. But it must be noted that some working habitudes are always to bad, such as vicious habitudes; while some are sometimes to good, sometimes to bad, as opinion has itself to true and to false; but virtue is habitude always having itself to good. Therefore, to distinguish virtue from those which always have themselves to bad, it is said, by which one lives rightly, but so as to distinguish it from those which sometimes have themselves to good, sometimes to bad, it is said, which no one uses badly.

(4) But the efficient cause of infused virtue, for which the definition is given, is God. According to this it is said, which God works in us without us. If this phrase is removed, the rest of the definition will be common to all virtues, both acquired and infused.

To the first therefore it must be said that what first falls into the intellect is being, whence we attribute everything apprehended by us to being, and so by consequence one and good, which are converted with being. Thus we say that beingness [essentia] is being and one and good, and that oneness is being and one and good, and likewise for goodness. But this does not have a place in specific forms, such as whiteness and health, for everything we apprehend, we do not apprehend under the notions of white or health. But nonetheless it must be considered that as accidents and non-subsisting forms are called beings, not because they themselves have actual being but because something is by him, so also they are called good and one, not indeed by some other goodness or oneness, but because something by them is good and one. So therefore virtue is also called good because by it something is good.

To the second it must be said that the good put in the definition of virtue is not common good, which is converted with being, and is in more than quality, but it is the good of reason, according to what Dionysius says in Div. Nom. ch IV, that the good of the soul is according to reason.

To the third it must be said that virtue is not able to be in the irrational part of the soul, save inasmuch as it participates reason, as is said in Ethic. I., as therefore reason, or mind is the proper subject of virtue.

To the fourth it must be said that justice is its own rightness that is constituted about external things that come into human use, which are the proper matter of justice, as will be obvious below. But rightness which implies order to due end and to divine law, which is the rule of human will, as was said above, is common to all virtue.

To the fifth it must be said that someone is able to use virtue badly as an object, such as when he feels badly about virtue when he hates it or is proud of it, but not as a source of use, so that the act of virtue is bad.

To the sixth it must be said that infused virtue is caused in us by God without our acting, yet not without our consenting. And so it must be understood when it is said that God works in us without us. But what is enacted through us, God does not cause in us without our acting, for he himself works in all will and nature.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.55.4, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.] 

Thus, taking all of this together, virtue is rational habitude ordered solely to what is good by reason, by which one's actions are regulated according to due end and divine law. Infused virtue is caused by God with our consenting but not through our acting; acquired virtue is caused by God working through our own acting. (Note that Aquinas very clearly does not say in the reply to the sixth objection that acquired virtue is caused by us rather than God.)

This passage, incidentally, is why one should understand the discussions of virtue in the Summa to be primarily about infused virtue, although, of course, Aquinas often uses the analogy between acquired and infused moral virtues to explain the latter.

It's an interesting question how this definition relates to Aristotle's definition of virtue: virtue is habitude of choice consisting in a mean relative to us as determined by the reason of a prudent person. Aquinas's reorganization of the concept of habitude means that all rational habitudes involve choice in some way or another, so that is already here, and reason of a prudent person (who is concerned with regulation according to due end, which Aquinas elsewhere calls regulation by reason); the mean relative to us as decided by such reason is Aristotle's way of talking about regulating our action toward good. Thus, there is a way to identify a correspondence between the two. 

Nonetheless, while St. Thomas doesn't think that Aristotle's definition is wrong, he thinks it has a serious limitation, one which comes up when he later discusses the mean of virtue. On Aquinas's account, all virtues can in some sense be said to involve a mean relative to us. Moral and intellectual virtues both essentially consist in a mean, and this is true whether they are acquired or infused. But theological virtues (faith, hope, charity) are more complicated because their proper rule and measure is God Himself, not us (even, as with the infused moral virtues, considering us as raised by grace to be members of the Kingdom of Heaven). This is not to say that they don't have a mean relative to us (they do because that's how we our structured); it's just that, since they are in fact ordered to God rather than us, that mean is incidental rather than essential to their nature, arising from our conditions rather than the conditions of the virtues themselves. What the theological virtues consist in by their own nature is not the mean of reason but the infinity of God.

The Feast of St. Agnes

Beside a Bright and Glassy Heaven-Sea

Beside a bright and glassy heaven-sea
One lights the lamps of truth, the One Alone,
the High Priest of all high eternity
who lifts all prayers up before the throne.
Remember now the Bridegroom, who still waits,
the Virgin standing near with Spirit's breath,
and walk with confidence through heaven's gates,
with roses prayed against the bonds of death.
Now rising to the milky river's washing-shore
the starry sheep from woolly folds all run.
The heavens open wide like swinging door,
and we like owls blink quickly in the sun. 

Thus cast aside the flashy lights of care;
take heart in heaven, young but ancient-old,
which casts a light unseen and scents the air
like beads of incense burning bright and bold.
Through hands then, by some channel, deep within
the prayers roll upon the blessed string
and one by one march out to conquer sin
in subtle ways that none can know or say,
so that a sabbath-rest wells up inside
on St. Agnes' day, the lamblike day
when Bridegroom bows to greet his glowing Bride.

A Poem of St. Agnes

The little lambs on heaven's field
remind me of a girl who fought
against the darkness, for the fair,
whose heart was free from trembling fear,
who would not falter, did not fail,
but held her ground against the foe.
"I faithful stay to Spouse and Friend,
my Jesus; I am truly free
with him," she said, her voice not faint.
And then she bent her head, with faith
exposed her neck. The death-stroke fell.

Links of Note

 * Tapio Korte, Ari Maunu, and Tuomo Aho, Modal logic from Kant to possible worlds semantics (PDF)

* Rob Alspaugh, Delectatio, Gaudium, Fruitio, at "Teaching Boys Badly"

* Adam Harmer, Leibniz on determinateness and possible worlds (PDF)

* Edward Feser, Church History Does Not Support Trump's Expansionism, at "First Things"

* Edward Feser, Socratic Politics: Lessons from the Gorgias

* Stephen Schmid, Suárez and the problem of final causation (PDF)

* John Psmith reviews George Polya's How to Solve It, at "Mr. and Mrs. Smith's Bookshelf"

* Matthew K. Minerd, The Metaphysics of Non-Being, at "The Journal of Absolute Truth"

* Markus E. Schlosser, Causal exclusion and overdetermination (PDF)

* Fulton Sheen is expected to be beatified soon.

* Emily Thomas, The shape of time, at "Aeon"

* Andrew Bacon, The Broadest Necessity (PDF)

* William Lambert, Iris Murdoch's Dog's Tooth, at "Short Views"

* João Marcos, Adam Přenosil, Paul Egré, Many-Valued Logic, at the SEP

* Aleksandra Gomułczak, Ingarden’s Criticism of Twardowski’s Philosophical Programme and the Reception of Phenomenology in the Lvov-Warsaw School (PDF)

* Flame & Light, Fictional Characters as Dependent Intentional Objects

I Made My Heart into a Sky

 Yesterday
by Nora May French 

Now all my thoughts were crisped and thinned
To elfin threads, to gleaming browns.
Like tawny grasses lean with wind
They drew your heart across the downs.
Your will of all the winds that blew
They drew across the world to me,
To thread my whimsey thoughts of you
Along the downs, above the sea.

Beneath a pool beyond the dune--
So green it was and amber-walled
A face would glimmer like a moon
Seen whitely through an emerald--
And there my mermaid fancy lay
And dreamed the light and you were one,
And flickered in her sea-weed’s sway
A broken largesse of the sun.

Above the world as evening fell
I made my heart into a sky,
And through a twilight like a shell
I saw the shining sea-gulls fly.
I found between the sea and land
And lost again, unwrit, unheard,
A song that fluttered in my hand
And vanished like a silver bird.

Habitude XX

 To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that it is not part of the notion of virtue to be good habitude. For sin is always drawn from bad. But there is also in sin some virtue; according to I Cor XV, the virtue of sin is law. Therefore virtue is not always good habitude.

Further, virtue relates to power. But power does not only have itself toward good, but also toward bad; according to Isaiah V, Woe to you who are powerful toward drinking wine, and strong men to mixing drunkenness. Therefore virtue also has itself toward good and toward bad.

Further, according to the Apostle, II Cor XII, virtue is completed in weakness. But weakness is a sort of badness. Therefore virtue does not have itself only toward good but also toward bad.

But contrariwise is what Augustine says, in the book on the customs of the Church, that no one doubts that virtue makes the soul optimal. And the Philosopher says, in Ethic. II, that virtue is what makes the one having it good and renders his work good.

I reply that it must be said that, as was said above, virtue implies completion of power, whence the virtue of anything is determined to the limit in which that thing is able to be, as is said in On the Heavens I. Now the limit in which whatsoever power is able to be needs to be good, for every bad implies a sort of defect; wherefore Dionysius in De Div. Nom. chap. IV says that every badness is weak. And according to this it is needful that virtue be said of whatever thing in terms of ordering to good. Thus human virtue, which is working habitude, is good habitude, and working of good [bonus habitus et boni operativus].

To the first therefore it must be said that, as complete, so also good is said metaphorically of bad things, as is said of a complete thief or robber and a good thief or robber, as is clear from the Philosopher in Metaphys. V. According to this, therefore, virtue is also said metaphorically of bad things. And thus the virtue of sin is called law inasmuch as sin is occasionally increased through law, and as it were comes to the maximum of its ability.

To the second it must be said that the badness of drunkenness and excessive drinking consists in a defect of rational ordering. But it happens, with defect of reason, that there is some inferior power complete as to its own kind, even with repugnance to or defect of reason. But completeness of such power, because it is with defect of reason, is not said to be human virtue.

To the third it must be said that reason is shown to be more complete the more it can overcome or endure the weakness of the body and the inferior parts. And therefore human virtue, which is attributed to reason, is said to be completed in weakness, but weakness of body and the inferior parts.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.55.3, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

All Pain and Peril of Seraphic Wars

 The Tides of Change
by George Sterling

Wherewith is Beauty fashioned? Canst thou deem
Her evanescent roses bourgeon save
Within the sunlight tender on her grave?
Awake no winds but bear her dust, a gleam
In morning’s prophecy or sunset’s dream;
And every cry that ever Sirens gave
From islands mournful with the quiring wave
Was echo of a music once supreme.
All æons, conquests, excellencies, stars,
All pain and peril of seraphic wars,
Were met to shape thy soul’s divinity.
Pause, for the breath of gods is on thy face!
The ghost of dawns forgotten and to be
Abides a moment in the twilight’s grace.

Dashed Off II

 People crave and seek for a kind of infinity in every aspect of their life -- in ability and in pleasure, in access and in reward, in sex and politics and entertainment and work. Unable actually to achieve it, we either roam restlessly from one thing to another, or try to find symbolic substitutes of the infinite, or ape the infinite by breaking boundaries and crossing lines as if doing so were itself infinity.

life as occurring within cycles: energy cycle, oxygen cycle, various material cycles, chronological cycles, ecosystemic cycles

All coherent and adequate theories of experimental inquiry require both free decision and free choice in the experiment inquirers.

Norton's "Causation as Folk Science" only establishes that 'cause' is not univocal, not that the world is not fundamentally causal.

To be usable in an ensemble, an experiment must be abstractible from its history.

sat (true) as mearked by being trikalaabaadhyam (available always) [cf. Shankara, Brahma Sutra Bhasya 1.1.2]

"That ominscient and omnipotent source must be Brahman from which occur the birth, continuance, and dissolution of this unvierse that is manifested through name and form, that is associated with diverse agents and experiences, that provides the support for actions and results, having well-regulated space, time, and causation, and that defies all thoughts about the real nature of its creation." Shankara

People regularly attribute to the state powers that it is difficult to see how it could have unless citizens were natural slaves, with the state as their master.

Many fine arts proceed by massive numbers of revisions of the same thing, which are made more manageable by (1) development of a planning process (2) ongoing anticipation of kinds of revision that will be needed (3) blocking and chunking and layering of revisions of specific kinds (4) condensation of multiple stages of revision into one by experience or ingenuity.

For a number of rights, we have both personal title (with respect to the community of persons) and human title (with respect to the human community specifically), just as we often give civil title for rights to which personal and human title already exist.

No legal system is hermetically sealed from all others.

change to a philosophical system by
(a) formal pressures (objections and replies)
(b) quasi-material pressures (changes in available archive of evidence, etc.)
(c) agential pressures (imposition from outside)
(d) final pressures (internal refinement and following of implications)
(e) accidental gain, loss, and drift

Exodus 9:16 and the Great Commission

substantial inexhaustibility of inquiry
(1) mathematical and logical infinity of domain
(2) indefinite artifactual expansion (cognitive & material)
(3) inexhaustibility of persons

Over time, human beings pull apart philosophical systems into aphorisms and then re-form and re-systematize them.

If there is error, there is omniscience in light of which it is genuinely error.

Freedom only becomes real to the extent one can answer the question, "Freedom for what?"

A person generally has reasons to favor her own reasons over those of others, namely, greater familiarity and more common understanding.

We accept things on memory not because we have experiences of confirmed memory but because memory is already on the premises: experiences of disconfirmed memory may qualify our acceptance, but even they cannot prevent memory often being a starting point. We accept memory because it is always already there.

The phenomena of archeology are detritus, artifacts, and other traces specifically insofar as they are associatable with a timeline.

central market, circuit market, and periodic market forms of intellection interaction

"...we are bound to be baptized in the terms we have received, and to profess belief in the terms in which we are baptized, and as we have professed belief in, so to give glory to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit..." Basil
"I, however, call on all who trust in Christ not to busy themselves in opposition to the ancient faith,b ut, as we believe, so to be baptized, and as we are baptized, so to offer the doxology."
"As we are baptized, so we profess our belief. As we profess our belief, so also we offer praise."

"History is largely meaning." Lonergan

To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see: none of the are the same as perceiving.

The interesting thing about Hume's 'when I enter most intimately into what I call *myself*' is the unexplained notion of 'entering', which is taken as already obvious in meaning.

Perceptions overlap with perceptions both as to act and as to object.

if we say 'X is predictable from Y', we must explicate this 'from Y'; people are not usually meaning that we treat Y as a divine omen or magical oracle, for instance.

unintentional humor vs wit

knowing how as a rationally selective tendency to hit a mark

'Intelligent action' involves not just acts from know-how but also acts to know-how.

We may know how to do something before we know what it is.

objecthood --> co-objecthood --> general objectivity

the use of non-insight in inquiry

Impressions only become ideas in relation.

Abilities have integral, subjective, and potential parts.

Given any experience, we form ideas of similarity, contiguity, and causality with respect to it.

In psychoanalysis, one reshapes oneself to the model of humanity used in that form of psychoanalysis, simulating it in oneself and attempting to instrumentalize that simulation to particular ends.

A continual temptation in academia is the temptation to treat scaffolding as substance.

"One promotes progress by being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible not only in all one's cognitional operations but also in all one's speech and writing." Lonergan

Inquiry is only as authentic as the liberty by which it is done.

"A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to a tradition." Polanyi
"The large amount of time spent by students of chemistry, biology and medicine in their practical courses shows how greatly these sciences rely on the transmission of skills and connoisseurship from master to apprentice."

Sometimes inquiries just need a starting point, and any initial assumption will do; these cases seem to be when the inquiry is to find investigating material. In other cases, the assumptions structure the inquiry and its potential, and must be selected carefully.

Through the instrumentality of his humanity, Christ gives us grace not merely individually but also communally. There are specific graces for the Church as a social entity, a moral person.

Historically the creeds have not only settled doctrine but have been used by laity to hold bishops to account and as guides in the interpretation of common law.

How often do we think we are being just or kind when in reality we are just being silly? As with all things worth doing, developing the real quality involves much blundering. Thus we should also give some good will toward those we see blundering.

In matters of morality, we often confuse urgency and overall importance; the common morality of every age treats some things that are merely matters of urgent attention in a society as if they were definitive for all morality.

validity as obligation to conclude, invalidity as permissibility not to conclude

In matters involving the state, start with determination of authority, not the assumption of it.

We can only bind ourselves because we are already normatively bound.

What is known per se is necessary for theoretical reason and normative for practical reason.

It is easier to have a character arc for a shallow character than for a deep one; deep character is slow-changing.

Most character arcs involve no character development, just character adjustment to new situations.

The simplicity of notation of physical law is somewhat misleading because it hides (e.g.) the entire apparatus of real number arithmetic and analysis.

A notation distinguishes what can be taken for granted and what needs in the circumstances to be tracked.

-- Spinors involve rotations whose properties are path-dependent, such that these properties can be differentiated into classes that differ by sign.
-- Spinors seem to represent the spatial affordances of rotatable things -- the ability of things to rotate without their spatially structured relationships 'tangling' -- which seems to be why they can represent all known material particles.
-- Note that physicists often attempt to train intuition for spinors using orientation entanglement scenarios and the need to distinguish twisted and untwisted cases.

Andrew M. Steane, "An introduction to spinors": "One could say that a spinor is the most basic sort of mathematical object that can be Lorentz-transformed." "It [a rank-1 spinor] can be pictured as a vector with two further features: a 'flag' that picks out a plane in space containing the vector, and an overall sign." "The spinior has a direction in space (flagpole), an orientation about this axis ('flag'), and an overall sign...."