Inspiring the Love of Reading

Wherein Gerdil shows himself to have a better understanding of how children learn than many do:

It is a charming speculation to pretend to lead children through the whole course of their studies by always amusing them. The most necessary studies require hard work and self-denial. We may partially mitigate the coercive quality of study, but we cannot entirely remove it, and still hope to make solid progress. And therefore it is not by means of these kinds of studies that we will inspire children with a love for reading. But we will succeed with reading that is amusing and instructive, so long as we take care not to propose it as part of their studies, -- for the very word will ruin everything, -- but rather as a reward for applying themselves to their studies.

[H. S. Gerdil, The Anti-Emile, Frank, tr. St. Augustine's Press (South Bend, IN: 2011) p. 111.]

Lent XV

Then Jesus said to those Jews, who believed him: If you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free...." (John 8:31-32)

Three things are required to be a disciple. The first is understanding, to grasp the words of the teacher: "Are you also still without understanding?" (Mt 15:16). But it is only Christ who can open the ears of the understanding: "Then he opened their minds so that they could understand the Scriptures" (Lk 24:45); "The Lord opened my ears" (Is 50:5).

Secondly, a disciple needs to assent, so as to believe the doctrine of his teacher, for "The disciple is not above his teacher" (Lk 6:40), and thus he should not contradict him: "do not speak against the truth in any way" (Sir 4:30). And Isaiah continues in the same verse, "I do not resist."

Thirdly, a disciple needs to be stable, in order to persevere. As we read above: "From this time on, many of his disciples turned back, and no longer walked with him" (6:67); and Isaiah adds: "I did not turn back" (Is 50:5).

But it is a greater thing to know the truth, since this is the end of the disciple.

[St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 6-12, Larcher, tr., CUA Press (Washington DC: 2010), p.124.]

Evening Note for Thursday, March 16

Thought for the Evening: Of Just Protest

Both in class discussions with students, and in various other situations outside of class, I've noticed a tendency not to think very critically about political protests. This occurs on two different levels -- one, there is a sort of cargo-cultism about protesting, in which people go through the motions without any real understanding of what they are doing; and two, there is a tendency not to recognize that protesting is the kind of thing that must be done according to ethical standards, beyond (what is often the only significant ethical issue to be considered) distinguishing between protest and riot. The first I set aside here, although I think it ends up being a severe problem; it will come up in passing in discussing the second, which I think is the more serious one.

There are a number of reasons why the ethical standards for protesting are actually fairly high, but the most essential of these arises from the nature of a protest in and of itself. A protest is by its very nature:

(a) a complaint, which must meet the kind of standard of reasonableness a complaint must meet; and
(b) a rebuke, and thus something that can be a punishment, which must meet standards of justice;

and therefore must meet ethical standards relevant to both.

Reasonable complaint requires moral standing to complain, which involves at least the following basic elements:

(1) A reasonable candidate for an injustice has been identified.
(2) The real cause of the injustice, to the extent possible, has been identified.
(3) The injustice must actually admit of an identifiable remedy.
(4) These three components must be properly integrated in the complaint, so that the protest is addressing the real cause of the injustice in such a way as to contribute to reaching the remedy.

(1) is sometimes the most vehemently debated, but it's arguably a fairly easy standard to reach, in part because even made-up reasons to protest (like those used by dictatorial regimes) may sometimes be only made-up in specifics. Generic injustices are easy to find. (2) is often an issue; one saw this with the Chik-fil-a protests a few years back, which were utterly ineffective because they were done without any understanding of how franchises work, so that the targets were all wrong. But I think this tends to be most commonly a problem with spontaneous protests in particular. I think the most common weakness with protests generally is with (3) and (4) -- one might think that this is a fairly obvious thing, but it is remarkable how often you can flummox people simply by asking them either "What, specifically, can and should be done to solve the problem?" or "What, specifically, is this protest supposed to do to help the problem get solved?" This ties in, I think, with the cargo-cultism I previously noted: people treat protests as if the point of them were to have a protest, when in reality protests are social means for achieving practical ends. And the position that people most often fall back to in answering the second question, that the protest is to "raise awareness", is a useless one -- protests are extraordinarily poor means for raising any kind of awareness at all. Raising awareness is what you do in order to get people to pay attention to your protest, and to pay attention to it in the right way; protesting in order to raise awareness is starting at the back end. The effectiveness of a protest depends on how aware people already are of the actual issues; a protest on its own cannot be interpreted properly without an already existing context in place; and raising awareness, on its own, doesn't actually do much, since such awareness, if not focused by something, is temporary and results in no practical action. If you are protesting only to raise awareness, you are wasting time that could be better spent on means that would actually address the problem.

Besides moral standing, there are additional conditions required for a rebuke to be fully just. For instance, it must be necessary -- that is, less drastic measures have been tried -- and it must be proportional to the problem -- overkill turns a rebuke into an unjust punishment. The protest must be legible, i.e., it must be set up in such a way that people can figure out why it's happening in the first place. And one must do it in such a way as is appropriate to common good -- that is, the way one does it must be focused on rendering benefit to everyone, even those against whom one is protesting. This is, I think, the most difficult of the standards to meet, and it is often not met; movements that have done unusually well at meeting it, like Gandhi in India, or many of the protests of the Civil Rights Movement, did not find it easy, and did as well as they did only because they put a lot of time and effort into trying.

People tend to assume, I think, that you've done your duty if you've avoided rioting, but finding out how to uphold the common good while protesting is not a trivial problem to solve. People also tend to assume that if your goals are just enough, you are done; but here, as everywhere else in ethics, your means must be appropriate and just. Both of these assumptions are very dangerous, ethically speaking, and seem to be tied to a tendency (which sometimes seems to be on the rise) to give oneself a free pass to attack your fellow citizens and human beings when you feel like it, without any consideration for them as citizens and human beings.

There are, in any case, various complications that arise that I haven't gone into here-- protests are often planned, but sometimes arise spontaneously in the face of egregious injustices, and the former arguably involves a rather stricter set of standards than the latter, for instance -- but the above all arise from general principles. You can't be a just person in any endeavor and not consider some analogue of these. There is no end run around them.

Various Links of Note

* John Irons translates the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, A Leaf from Heaven.

* Richard Marshall interviews Roman Altshuler on time and action.

* I recently gave a link to a translation of part of St. Francis Borgia's litany through the topics of Aquinas's Summa; for those who are interested, here is the full thing in Latin, all twenty-two dual-columned pages of it.

* Joseph Trabbic defends Plato's Republic.

Currently Reading

Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to be King
Christ - Our Pascha: Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church
Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
Hyacinthe Sigismond Gerdil, The Anti-Emile
Michael Flynn, In the Country of the Blind

Music on My Mind

Peter Hollens ft. Tim Foust, "The Sound of Silence".

Lent XIV

And he said to man: Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom: and to depart from evil, is understanding. (Job 28:27)

So, then, since The fear of the Lord itself is wisdom and to withdraw from evil, understanding, it follows that just men who fear God and withdraw from evil have wisdom and understanding, which are preferred to all the earthly goods which evil men possess. And so it is manifest that the rationale of divine providence is upheld in the fact that spiritual goods are given to the just as the better goods, whereas temporal goods are given to the evil as precarious goods.

[St. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, Damico, tr. Scholars Press (Atlanta, GA: 1989) p. 339.]

Lent XIII

It is written in the prophets: And they shall all be taught of God. Every one that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to me. (John 6:45)

He comes in three ways: through a knowledge of the truth; through the affection of love; and through imitative action. And in each day it is necessary that one hear and learn. The one who comes through a knowledge of the truth must hear, when God speaks within: "I will hear what the Lord God will speak within me" (Psalm 84:9); and he must learn, through affection, as was said. The one who comes through love and desire -- "If any one thirsts, let him come to me and drink" (below 7:37) -- must hear the word of the Father and grasp it, in order to learn and be moved in his affections. For that person learns the word who grasps it according to the meaning of the speaker But the Word of the Father breathes forth love....One comes to Christ through imitative action, according to: "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you" (Mt 11:28). And whoever learns even in this way comes to Christ: for as the conclusion is to things knowable, so is action to things performable.

[St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 6-12, Larcher & Weisheipl, trs. CUA Press (Washington, D.C.: 2010) p. 37.]

Three Poem Re-Drafts

The Speed of Thought

The speed of thought, they say, is swift,
but this, I think, is mostly false.
As giving only ends in gift,
so thinking only ends in all.
Through epochs, eons, ages slow,
unfinished yet our thought has been,
an ice-sea glacier's icy flow;
and unforeseen is thinking's end,
for every mind by love begot
has moved but centimeter's pace --
and incomplete is every thought,
remaindered to some future days.
The circles filled with stars are vast,
their orbits slowly turn in place;
and over ages thought must last
and time itself in circles chase.
And when completed is our run,
we leave our thinking incomplete,
a task continued, never done,
like turtles racing swifter feet.

Rust and Fire

One in kind are rust and fire.

Ruin is combustion slow;
flaming quickly is desire.

Flame will have the brighter glow,
spread the fiercer, fairer light;
wood must rust with aching speed,
give but transient delight.

Death is from consuming need,
craving turns to cinder each,
eating deep down through the heart,
universal in its reach,
dark, corrosive, part by part.

Decadence with more control
will corrosion spread abroad;
iron burns in part and whole
from air and malice of the gods.

Decay is merely slow desire:
one in kind are rust and fire.

Discourse of St. Symeon

Who stands upon the ocean-shore
and looks out to horizon's end
may in its vastness somewhat share
though still be bound upon the sand;
such see in truth the boundless sea
and yet the sea extends beyond;
unbounded sea they truly saw
and yet their seeing had a bound.
Yet, not content that they but see,
are others who will splash and wade,
and what shall we of these folk say
who feel the waves roll strong and wet?
They too the endless ocean share
and thus are conscious and made full,
far more than any on the shore,
of fullness, depth, and overflow.
But will not those who wade out lose
their vision as the water weaves
a wall through which their eyes see less
of anything but wave on wave?
And to the one who simply swims
all but the ocean then will fade;
to such a soul the world then seems
to be but currents that enfold.
And so it is with glory bright!
And thus and so will be the lot
of those who by God's grace are brought
to God Himself, the Sea of Light.