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.

live 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...."

Three Poem Drafts

The Death of Turpin

The Archbishop on swooning Roland gazed
and to his quick he felt the pang of grief;
he seized a helmet close at hand; his mind
was all to aid the knights, lest death they meet.
Not far, he thought, a river runs its course;
it flows with healing water cold, clean, and clear;
and with the helmet from that crystal deep
perhaps he could retrieve a balming drink.
He rose, unsteady, legs in tumbling sway,
all airy felt his head, and near to swoon.
A sudden ache like lightning pierced his brow;
his hand to head, he felt the flowing blood.
With step by slowing step, he walked, but faint
he felt, and might like shadows fled,
and forward down he went, in dreadful pain,
as, deathful, thus found Turpin paradise.

Early Night Scene 

The cricket-sounds are dawning, bright with cheer,
as moths like dust in flurries float away;
the leaves are swaying softly there and here
as evening casts aside the dizzy day.
The grass is wet, as wind in breathing coolly sighs,
and little evening primrose, pink and fair,
in swaying dance like maiden fresh but wise
gives heed to cricket-courtiers gathered there.
Above, the sky with countless seeing gleams
looks down untroubled with its purple face
and, tearful, drops down misty bits of dreams
that settle on my head, and every place.

Wandering

Oh, I
am the fool who wanders lost
through the pain and bitter cost
as I search in hope
for you,
the sad sorrow in my sighs,
the truth amidst the lies,
my Muse who never dies,
till justice renders due,
and I,
though I weep for moments gone,
old remembrances of the dawn,
yet still I seek
for you,
who, a sun in heaven's sky,
my polestar and my why,
can give me wings to fly
with rightful heart and true.

My Face Turned Upward to Pale Gleams that Stray

 By Moonlight
by Nora May French

Is this the world I knew? Beneath the day
It glowed with golden heat, with vivid hues --
Mountains and sky that merged in melting blues
And hazy air that shimmered far away.

This world is white beneath a silver sky --
White with pale brightness, luminously chill.
The moon reigns queen, but faintly shining still
The dim stars glimmer on the hilltops high. 

Here, where long grasses touch across the stream
That threads with babbling laugh its narrow way,
My face turned upward to pale gleams that stray
Through whispering willow boughs ... I dream and dream.

Habitude XIX

 To the second one proceeds thus. It seems that it is not proper to the notion of human virtue that it be working habitude. For Tully says, in Tuscul. quest. IV, that as health and bodily beauty, so too virtue of the soul. But health and beauty are not working habitudes. Thus neither is virtue.

Further, in natural things virtue is found not only to be to act but also to being, as is obvious from the Philosopher in On the Heavens I, that some things have virtue so that they are always, but some not so that they are always, but for some determinate time. But as virtue has itself in natural things, so human virtue has itself in rational things. Therefore human virtue is also not only to act but to being.

Further, the Philosopher says in Physic. VII that virtue is the disposition of the complete to the optimal. But the optimal to which human beings should be disposed through virtue is God himself, as Augustine proves in book II of the customs of the Church; to whom the soul is disposed through likening to him. Therefore it seems that virtue names a sort of quality of soul in ordering to God to the extent of likening to him but not in ordering to operation. Therefore it is not a working habitude.

But contrariwise is what the Philosopher says in Ethic. II, that virtue in whatsoever thing is that which renders its work good. 

I reply that it must be said that virtue, from the very notion of the name, involves a sort of completion of power, as said above. Thus, as power is twofold, to wit, power to be and power to act, the completion of each being called virtue. But the power to be holds on the part of matter, which is potential being, but the power to act holds on the part of form, which is the source of acting, because each thing acts inasmuch as it is actual. But in human constitution, body has itself as matter but soul as form. And with respect to the body, the human being shares with other animals, and likewise with impulses common to soul and body, but those powers that only are proper to the soul, to wit, rational, are human as such. And thus human virtue, of which one speaks, is not able to pertain to the body, but pertains as such to what is proper to the soul. Thus human virtue does not involve ordering to being but rather to acting. And so it is in the notion of virtue that it is working habitude.

To the first, therefore, it must be said that the mode of action follows the disposition of the one acting, for each thing, in the way it is, works in such a way. And so, because virtue is the source of some working, it ought to be that in the one working there pre-exists according to some virtue some corresponding [conformis] disposition. Now virtue makes an ordered working. And so virtue itself is a sort of ordered disposition in the soul, to wit, inasmuch as powers of the soul are ordered to one another somehow, and to what is outside them. And so, virtue, inasmuch as it is fitting disposition of the soul, is likened to health and beauty, which are due dispositions of body. But this does not hinder virtue from being a source of working.

 To the second it must be said that virtue that is to being is not proper to the human being, but only virtue that is to rational works, which are proper to the human being.

To the third it must be said that, because the substance of God is his action, the highest likening of the human being to God is according to some working. Thus, as was said above, happiness or blessedness, through which the human being is most conformed to God, which is the end of human life, consists in working. 

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.55.2, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

In Habitude VIII, we completed a taxonomy of natural habitudes that looked like this:

NATURAL HABITUDES INSOFAR AS THEY ARE ORDERED TO NATURE 

 (1) According to the nature of the species
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (e.g., natural disposition pertaining to human species, presumably those natural balances that are necessary for vital human functions)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (e.g., one's vital functions as restored or corrected by medicine) 

 (2) According to the nature of the individual
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (e.g., variant forms arising from the latitude of the natural disposition pertaining to human species, such as sickly or healthy physical temperament)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (perhaps as examples we could include healthiness in part from dietary regimen, or physical fitness, which refine the natural health of the body)

NATURAL HABITUDES INSOFAR AS THEY ARE ORDERED TO OPERATION 

 (1) According to the nature of the species (in human beings, on the part of the soul)
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (do not exist in human beings, although angels have them, e.g., innate intelligible species through which the angel understands by nature)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (in natural incipience or inchoation)
 --- --- --- --- (a) in apprehensive powers (e.g., understanding of first principles)
--- --- --- --- (b) in appetitive powers (do not properly exist, although in a loose sense seminal virtues in the apprehensive powers, insofar as they prepare for appetitive operation, can be considered as standing proxy for them) 

 (2) According to the nature of the individual (on the part of the body)
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (do not properly exist)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (in natural incipience or inchoation)
--- --- --- --- (a) in apprehensive powers (e.g., sensitive virtues, i.e., better disposition of the physical organs so as to facilitate understanding, like quickness of imagination or clarity of memory)
--- --- --- --- (b) in appetitive powers (e.g., bodily temperaments facilitating character)

What this and the previous article are investigating is how virtues, as rational habitudes, relate to this taxonomy. They have established

(1) Virtues are rational habitudes;

(2) Rational habitudes are not natural habitudes, and therefore require their own compartment in the classification;

(3) The analogy between rational habitudes and natural habitudes is real but limited;

(4) All rational habitudes, as orderings of rational powers, are ordered to operation on the part of the soul.

Links of Note

 * Juan Carlos Gonzalez, Finding Aristotle: An Unspoken Debt in Kant's Teleology (PDF)

* The "Public Domain Review" discusses some of the things that became public domain in the United States on January 1.

* Chih-Wei Peng, Primal Wonder as a Sprout of Intellectual Virtue (PDF)

* James Chastek, Divine Permission of Evil, at "Just Thomism"

* Suki Finn, Deflating Fictionalism (PDF)

* William Friedman, Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality Is a Disney Movie About a Serial Killer, at "As Our Days"

* Esther Berry, Dependent Rational Animals, at "The Literate Woman"

* Elena Cagnoli Fiecconi, Enmattered Virtues (PDF)

* James Franklin's book, The Necessities Underlying Reality, is currently open access.

* Nik Prassas, The Break, on David Jones's Art and Sacrament, at "Nik's Substack"