St. Thomas Aquinas Day

Here in Austin we're icing over slightly, so the college called off classes. The roads are actually not very bad. I know this, because classes were cancelled quite late, so by the time they had cancelled classes I had driven the fifteen miles up the Interstate to northern Round Rock in heavy traffic and had been on campus for an hour; after which, having done some minor bits and pieces of work I drove back. Well, it's probably for the very best; Austin drivers tend to lack the concept of 'following distance', and going up I passed three or four accidents.

In any case, I'll take the holiday. Today is the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church. It is also the 1200th anniversary of the death of Charlemagne. So, how about a little medieval political philosophy to celebrate? Here's a passage from Summa Theologiae 2-1.105.1, my translation:

With regard to the good ordering of the government [principum] of some city or nation, two things must be attended to. One is that everyone should have some part in the government [in principatu], for through this is conserved the peace of the people [pax populi], and everyone loves and takes care of such an ordering, as is said in Politics 2. The other is that one must attend to the kind of ordering of regime or government. For whereas these are of diverse kinds, as the Philosopher hands down in Politics 3, nonetheless especially significant is kingdom, in which one rules according to virtue, and aristocracy, that is, governance by the best [potestas optimorum], in which a few rule according to virtue. Thus the best ordering of government is in a kingdom or city in which one is distinguished so as to rule all according to virtue; and under him are several ruling according to virtue; and nonetheless rule belongs to everyone, both because anyone can be chosen and also because they are chosen from all. This, then, is the best polity, well-mixed from kingdom, inasmuch as one is preeminent, and aristocracy, inasmuch as many rule according to virtue, and democracy, that is, governance by the people [potestas populi], inasmuch as the princes are chosen from the people and to the people belongs the choosing of princes [electio principum].

This follows fairly straightforwardly from Aquinas's account of law, which is based on common good, and his conception of who has the authority to do what is required to take care of the common good. From Summa Theologiae 2-1.90.3, also my translation:

Law properly, primarily, and principally is concerned with order to common good. But to order something to common good belongs either to the whole multitude or to someone acting as proxy [gerentis vicem] for the whole multitude. And thus making law either belongs to the whole multitude or to some public person who is to care [curam habet] for the whole multitude. For in everything else to order to the end is his to whom the end belongs.

And what follows about the responsibilities of such a government. In De Regno 1.13 lays out what he sees as the seven responsibilities of the one charged with caring for the multitude (also my translation):

Thus taught by divine law, he should set himself especially to the study of how the many subject to him may live well; which study is divided into the three parts, as the first is to institute a good life in the many subjects, the second to conserve what is instituted, and the third to move what is conserved forward to what is better [conservatam ad meliora promoveat].

And for good life for one man two things are required, one principally, which is acting according to virtue (for virtue is that by which one lives well), the other secondarily and as it were instrumentally, which is sufficiency of bodily goods, whose use is needed to act virtuously. But the unity of that man is caused by nature; while the unity of the many, which is called 'peace', is procured through the industry of the ruler. Therefore for the instituting of good life for the many three things are required. [1] First of all, that the many be established in the unity of peace. [2] Second, that the many united by this bond of peace be directed to acting well. For just as a man can do nothing well unless a unity of his parts is presupposed, so a multitude of men, lacking the unity of peace, by fighting among themselves are impeded from acting well. [3] Third, it requires that through the industry of the rulers there be present a sufficient abundance of things necessary for living well.

So when the good life by the duty of the king is established for the many, it follows that he must set himself to conserving it. But there are three things which do not allow public good to last, of which one arises by nature. The good of the many should not be instituted for only one time, but should in some way be perpetual. Yet men are mortal; they are not able to abide perpetually. Nor, while alive, are they always vigorous, because they are subject to many variations of human life, and thus men are not able to perform their duties equally throughout their whole lives. And another impediment to conserving the common good, proceeding from inside, consists in perversity of will, in that some either are lazy [sunt desides] in performing what the commonweal requires or, beyond this, are noxious to the peace of the multitude, in that by transgressing justice they disturb the peace of others. And the third impediment to conserving the commonweal is caused from outside, in that through the incursion of enemies the peace is dissolved and sometimes it happens that the kingdom or city is scattered.

Therefore to these three a triple charge is placed on the king. [4] First, that he prepare for the succession and substitution of those who fulfill diverse duties; just as through the divine government of corruptible things, which cannot abide forever, provision is made that through generation one should take the place of another, so that the integrity of the universe is conserved, so also is the study of the king to conserve the good of the many subject to him, in that he concerns himself attentively to fill with others places that are empty. [5] And second, by his laws and precepts, penalties and rewards, he should force [coerceat] men subject to him away from iniquity and encourage [inducat] them to virtuous works, taking God as example, who gives law to man, favoring those who observe it, repaying with penalty those who transgress it. [6] Third, a charge is laid on the king to restore safety against enemies to the many subject to him. There would be no use in eliminating internal dangers if one could not defend from external ones.

And then for the instituting of the good of the many there is a third thing belonging to the duty of a king, [7] that he attentively move it forward, which is done when, in each thing noted before, he studies to perfect it, correcting what is disordered, supplying what is missing, and doing better what he can.

She Sleeps

The Sleeping Beauty
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1

Year after year unto her feet,
She lying on her couch alone,
Across the purpled coverlet,
The maiden's jet-black hair has grown,
On either side her tranced form
Forth streaming from a braid of pearl:
The slumbrous light is rich and warm,
And moves not on the rounded curl.

2

The silk star-broider'd coverlid
Unto her limbs itself doth mould
Languidly ever; and, amid
Her full black ringlets downward roll'd,
Glows forth each softly-shadow'd arm,
With bracelets of the diamond bright:
Her constant beauty doth inform
Stillness with love, and day with light.

3

She sleeps: her breathings are not heard
In palace chambers far apart.
The fragrant tresses are not stirr'd
That lie upon her charmed heart.
She sleeps: on either hand upswells
The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest:
She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
A perfect form in perfect rest.

The third stanza approaches perfection.

Some Notable Links

* Trent Dougherty on Skeptical Theism at the SEP

* John C. Wright on the Green Hornet

* Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, ‘Beyond all holiness’: St Nicolas Cabasilas on the Mother of God

* Dorothy Cummings McLean on apostasy and liturgy in Benson's Lord of the World.

One thing that would be interesting would be more people reading Dawn of All, which can be seen as the next step. Lord of the World showed that if things went very bad for Catholics, the true Catholic must be willing to accept martyrdom, should faith ever demand it. Dawn of All showed that if things went very good for Catholics -- then the true Catholic must be willing to accept martyrdom, should love ever demand it. Good or bad, the measure of Christian life is the same, and the measure is a Man willing to suffer and to die on a Cross for us and for our salvation.

* A lecture from the early 1960s by James Weisheipl, O.P., on Communist philosophy (PDF) (ht)

ADDED LATER

* Peter Brooks on Balzac

Unsettling Omen

Two white doves that were released by children standing alongside Pope Francis as a peace gesture have been attacked by other birds.

As tens of thousands of people watched in St. Peter's Square on Sunday, a seagull and a large black crow swept down on the doves right after they were set free from an open window of the Apostolic Palace.

One dove lost some feathers as it broke free from the gull. But the crow pecked repeatedly at the other dove.

It was not clear what happened to the doves as they flew off.

While speaking at the window beforehand, Francis had appealed for peace in Ukraine, where anti-government protesters have died.

(From here)

Unfortunately, given the way the world works, it's probably an accurate symbol regardless of whether anyone believes in omens or not.

Incidentally, I find it somewhat remarkable that we get news reports on what happens when the Pope releases doves.

They All the Mysteries of Friendship Know

The Defence
by John Norris

I. That I am colder in my Friendship grown,
My Faith and Constancy you blame,
But sure th' inconstancy is all your own,
I am, but you are not the same;
The flame of Love must needs expire
If you subtract what should maintain the Fire.

II. While to the Laws of Vertue you were true,
You had, and might retain my Heart;
Now give me leave to turn Apostate too,
Since you do from your self depart.
Thus the Reform'd are counted free
From Schism, tho they desert the Roman See.

III. The strictest Union to be found below
Is that which Soul and Body ties,
They all the Mysteries of Friendship know,
And with each other sympathise.
And yet the Soul will bid adieu
T' her much distemper'd Mate, as I leave you.

Donne couldn't write a metaphysical poem with metaphysical conceits that were more metaphysical; the oddity of the second stanza Protestantism metaphor (the breaking of a friendship as the Reformation) is as striking as a good metaphysical conceit should be, and that in the third, while less original, is well expressed.

John Locke and John Norris had their big break in 1692. Collection of Miscellanies, which this is from, was first published in 1687 (and went through nine editions by 1730). Unfortunately, I don't have any access to the earlier editions; I am assuming that this was in the original. If that's so, then it predates the Locke/Norris spat, making it somewhat ironic, since it fits what must certainly have been Norris's perspective on the quarrel perfectly. An additional irony is the explicit Protestantism of the poem, given that one of the many insults Locke and Masham applied to Norris after the break was that his views were Papistical superstitions imbibed from Malebranche.

Mereological Loves

[A] man's children are more lovable to him than his father, as the Philosopher states (Ethic. viii). First, because parents love their children as being part of themselves, whereas the father is not part of his son, so that the love of a father for his children, is more like a man's love for himself. Secondly, because parents know better that so and so is their child than vice versa. Thirdly, because children are nearer to their parents, as being part of them, than their parents are to them to whom they stand in the relation of a principle. Fourthly, because parents have loved longer, for the father begins to love his child at once, whereas the child begins to love his father after a lapse of time; and the longer love lasts, the stronger it is, according to Sirach 9:14: "Forsake not an old friend, for the new will not be like to him."

(Aquinas ST 2-2.26.9)

I've always thought the first and third are especially interesting arguments, because I think there is almost certainly something to the basic idea, but it's very difficult to pin down exactly how to understand it in a way that goes beyond a vague sense of analogy. (It's also a good example of a way in which mereology can arise in unexpected places.) The basic idea, of course, is that parent is to child as whole is to part. Aquinas, of course, is not claiming that there aren't defective parent-child relationships, in which it does not turn out this way; the point, which has some precedent in Aristotle but is taken well beyond anything in Aristotle himself, is that parenthood as such involves taking one's children to be in some way a part of one's own self, while the reverse relationship of being a son and a daughter involves taking one's parents to be in some way a whole of which one's self is a part. This is not intended to be a metaphor. And it does seem that there is some broad, morally relevant sense of the term 'self' where both of these end up being true. The basic norm for parenthood in Aquinas's account is necessarily Christian love of neighbor -- loving others as oneself. Thus the parent is to love the child as himself or herself, and the child is to love the parent as himself or herself. But this does not mean that they are symmetrical, because it is modulated by this part-whole asymmetry. The parent ideally loves the child as himself or herself, but in a sense the child is already a definite part of the parent's self. The child ideally loves the parent as himself or herself, but for the child the parent is much more like an environment, a background, or, to use the mereological terms, a whole of which the child is a part.

In the Sentences commentary (In III Sent d 29, a 7), Aquinas links this idea to the causal relation between parent and child. For the parent, the generation of child is not really all that much different than the development of a body-part; the child is a res patris (a thing belonging to the parent, or, sometimes more narrowly, a thing of the father)and res patris diligentis est, ut membrum ipsius (the thing belonging to the loving father is as his own body-part). The child is in some sense a natural expression of the parent, whereas the parent is more like the world in which the child finds itself. Because of this, Aquinas argues, as he does above that there's a legitimate sense in which the love of the parent for the child is capable of greater intimacy (nearness) than the love of the child for the parent.

The mereological asymmetry does other work in Aquinas, although it's not often brought out in a way to make it blindingly obvious -- for instance, it is the reason that parents have authority over children, namely, that as the 'whole' they are natural caretakers for the common good they share with the child, which takes precedence over the individual good of either the parent or the child -- but we really don't need to get into it for the basic idea. (Although it's worth noting how often Aquinas puts social order in mereological terms.) As I said, it's one of those ideas that seems to have something in it -- even if it turns out unworkable as is, it seems to capture something -- but it's difficult to get traction on this idea beyond the basic idea itself.

Fortnightly Book, January 26

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a prolific author; he could often write for sixteen hours a day with no more than minor breaks (and a lot of coffee). At some point amidst all his novels and plays and short stories, he began to see that much of what he was doing somehow was tied together, and in 1830 he began to formulate this tie by grouping works together in a sort of super-opus, which he eventually called La Comédie humaine, The Human Comedy. In a sense it kept outgrowing itself. He originally just grouped some of his works under the label Scènes de la vie privée, Scenes of Private Life, which naturally suggested the possibility of something more expensive; he then conceived of the idea of a sister series, Scènes de la vie de province, Scenes of Provincial Life. As this series progressed he began using occasionally recurring characters from work to work.

By 1834, he recognized that a different organization could include a handful of his other works, and that there might be a better way to group the works already there. Thus he came up with the idea of a three-category classification for this super-group: Etudes de Moeurs au XIXe siècle, Studies of Nineteenth-Century Manners, which was largely built around his original conception and natural extensions of it, and was concerned with the effects of society; Etudes philosophiques, Philosophical Studies, which were more fantastic, building on ideas that were spiritualistic or quasi-counterfactual, which he took to shed light on social causes; and Etudes analytiques, Analytical Studies, which was taken up by one of the works Balzac had wanted to add in, The Physiology of Marriage, and which, being more abstract and removed from narrative, he took to explore the principles connecting cause and effect in society. The first category, however, kept growing, until it contained not only the first two Scènes but also Scènes de la vie parisienne, Scenes of Parisian Life; Scènes de la vie politique, Scenes of Political Life; Scènes de la vie militaire, Scenes of Military Life; and Scènes de la vie de campagne, Scenes of Country Life. By the end of his life at age fifty-one, La Comédie humaine consisted of about 91 complete works and forty-six incomplete or projected works. In the works as we have them characters number in the thousands. And it is worth keeping in mind that he had a short life: the entire super-opus as we have it was written in the space of about twenty years. We talk about world-building today, but authors who can really be said to do it in a serious way are few; Balzac is one of them. Incidentally, not all of Balzac's work are in La Comédie humaine; he has several plays that are not, and one of his most famous (and most banned) works, Droll Stories, is also separate.

Being a remarkably prolific author should have set Balzac up for life, but he had a tendency to spend money as quickly as he got it. He lived and ate well, spent money on mistresses, and engaged in reckless-to-the-point-of-crazy business ventures at every turn. At one point he had to flee his creditors and he died more or less penniless. It's hard to think of the author of the Human Comedy as a human tragedy, though; perhaps he was more of a human farce.

The fortnightly book is Eugénie Grandet. It was the first of the Scènes de la vie de province, published in 1834 when only the first bare outlines of the super-opus were in view, and is usually regarded as one of Balzac's greatest novels, and the first of his novels to be not merely good but great. It is said to be one of his more serious and restrained novels, looking at the interaction of life and money. This will be my first time reading it. I haven't really read any of Balzac's novels before, although I've read quite a few of his short stories, including all of the very-much-not-for-children-and-sometimes-not-for-adults Droll Stories, which is the other Balzac book I have on my shelf.

I'll be reading it in a nice Heritage Press (New York) edition with reproduced wash-and-line drawings by René de Sussan. It uses 14-point Bembo type on nice paper. The binding is especially nice; I quote from the Sandglass:

The three-piece cloth binding, assembled into one piece by the Russell-Rutter company in New York, follows the style devised by Meynell for our great French Romances series. The backstrap is a forest-green buckram of the highest, most expensive grade, with the script title stamped in genuine gold leaf, and the linen sides are printed in dark green with an overall pattern reproducing the classic French fleur-de-lis. As with our Great French Romances, this design has deliberately been handled to give the tapestry a faded effect.

Nothing like reading a Heritage Press edition, with its perfect balance of practicality, inexpensiveness, and artistry; these things really do affect how one reads.