Three Orders of Good Taste

Taste seems to comprize three orders or degrees in its universal comprehension.

The first is composed of those objects which immediately relate to the divinity, among which man claims the preeminence, when viewed in his highest character: witness the inexpressible charm which the natural virtuous affections of the soul inspire, when moved by some strong impulse, such as parental tenderness, filial piety, friendship, &c. &c. Do they not unite the moral sentiment to the divine?

The second is the immediate external effects of true taste, or moral virtue, in the social sphere; the order, beauty, and honour, which every object derives from its influence; and, of course, its sentiment must be intimately related to moral excellence.

The third and last degree is general ornament and honour, appearing in fashions, arts of decoration, &c. &c. objects which seeming not immediately to effect the interests of humanity, the taste they exhibit in this sphere appears as an uncertain light, sometimes bright and sometimes obscured ; or rather as refracted rays of taste, broken by the general love of novelty and superfluity; two principles which, though they are, to a certain degree, essential to exterior ornament, and the sentiment of true taste, are those in which taste always begins to corrupt....

Frances Reynolds, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty, &c., p. 39. Reynolds, whom I have briefly discussed before, takes beauty to be very closely related to moral good -- in fact, to be some appearance or suggestion of moral good perceived in a sensible object. An artist, of course, could make a beautiful object without being moral himself, but this would be because he was doing it by rules and guidelines gathered from other cases, and nobody can recognize it as beautiful if they cannot see any suggestion of the moral qualities of a mind in it. Good taste is a particular form of the love of virtue. This is a very strong view, of course; that aesthetics is related to ethics is certain enough, but Reynolds goes the next step and argues that the former is a particular expression of the latter.

Liguori

Today is the feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church. A child prodigy, he got his degree in law four years earlier than was normal (he had to get a special dispensation because he was under the legal minimum for it); it's said that he looked a little kid in his doctor's gown when receiving it, so that everyone laughed at him. He practiced law for about ten years. Then one day he was in the courtroom, counsel for one side of a lawsuit; he opened brilliantly, with a very clever argument, and sat down, certain that he was going to win the case. But instead of any sign of admiration from the rest of the courtroom, there was a pause of baffled silence -- crickets, as we say. Then the opposing counsel said, "All of what you've said is wasted breath; your argument is inconsistent with one of the documents in evidence." Alphonsus demanded to know which document, and it was handed to him. He knew the document. He had read it many times. And every single time until that moment he had read it incorrectly. Seeing it now, he was crushed, absolutely mortified. It was such an absurd mistake that he didn't see how anyone else could attribute it to anything except dishonesty or incompetence. Everyone -- including, it is said, the opposing counsel and the judge -- tried to console the young man, but it was no good. When he left the courtroom that day, he never returned to law. In fact, he became so depressed he stopped eating for several days. But eventually he came to see what had happened as God showing him his lack of humility, and as a result he became an Oratorian. He would go on to found the society that would eventually become known as the Redemptorists and become one of the greatest experts on canon law and moral theology in the history of the Church. It happened almost incidentally; his writings are vast, but very few of them were written before the age of fifty. It was also a very rocky road. Due to the politics of the day, St. Alphonsus died betrayed by almost every supporter he had, cut off by the Pope from his own order, deaf and nearly blind. He was ninety-one.

Jottings on Aristotelianism and the Labor Theory of Value

There is no single 'labor theory of value'; labor theories of value can be quite different depending on what aspect of labor they consider relevant. But labor theories in general will hold that in some sense the price of something is equivalent (by some measure) to the work required to have it (by some measure). More precise versions distinguish value in use and value in exchange; in Adam Smith's famous example, few things have greater value in use than water, which is one of the most useful and one of the most necessary things we know, but water has in most situations almost no value in exchange; it's not particularly useful for buying and selling. The conclusion can then be drawn that the correct measurement for value in exchange is quantity of labor (whatever the measure of quantity might be). It is a common view that the labor theory of value goes back to Aristotle, and that it is a standard position in Aristotelianism, but this is not, in fact, true. A few gestures toward the reason why.

(1) Aristotle does not have a labor theory of value because he has no specific theory of value of the relevant sort. He does have a sketched-out theory of commercial exchange; this theory recognizes that exchanges originally are based on mutually recognized value in use. Because direct exchange is often not practical (due to things like transportation, storage, timing), we move from direct exchange of particular useful thing for particular useful thing to indirect exchange, where we exchange indirectly using something that has general usefulness. Metals are durable and relatively easy to transport and exhange, and even if you yourself have no particular use for it, lots of other people do, so you can use it in further exchanges. This indirect exchange requires all sorts of measurements, protections, and guarantees, and out of this comes our system of using money. With the advent of coinage as a standardized form of something generally useful that is specifically devoted to serving as something generally useful in exchange, we begin to get the notion of money-accumulation. In this context we have household management (Aristotle's word will later give us the word 'economics', which literally means household management; Aristotle himself would regard what we call 'economics' as politics), if we keep money-making tied to real usefulness, and money-exchange, if we treat the two as separate.

(2) It follows from this that the labor theory of value does not actually make much sense in an Aristotelian context; value is established by ends, and so will vary as ends vary. Aristotle's criticism of money-exchange has no direct relation to questions of labor; rather, the criticism is that good money-making makes money for definite ends, but money-exchange does not. Money-exchange treats money as an end in itself, and thus is unnatural. The only real connection to labor to which Aristotle appeals is that good money-making is something that he sees arising not out of labor as such but out of skill. I suppose you could argue on this basis that Aristotle has a skill theory of value, but even this would not really be accurate -- skill comes up simply because skills are a central part of human life that by their very nature involve ends.

(3) Marx often comes up in attributing the labor theory of value to Aristotle, because Marx builds his own labor theory of value on Aristotle. But I think close attention to the relevant texts shows that Marx himself did not think Aristotle had a labor theory of value; he thinks Aristotle laid some of the groundwork for it, but that he failed to solve a particular problem, how to have equal exchange of unlike things, and Marx proposes the labor theory of value as a solution to this problem that Aristotle did not solve -- in effect, we are actually exchanging A and B in terms of their labor, so the exchange is made in terms of something that can be directly compared on each side. If I read Marx correctly, I think he takes it to be the case that Aristotle couldn't have had a labor theory of value because the existence of slavery in Greek society would have made arguing for it at best very complicated and perhaps impossible. And if this is so, I think he is right here -- Aristotle can't really say that labor admits of equal comparison by quantity because he thinks some labor is better than other labor by its very nature. Some labor is slavish, some labor is noble; some labor is suitable for a free person, some labor is not. In Marx's history of economics, the labor theory of value is the child of capitalism.

(4) If you wanted to find an Aristotelian labor theory of value, St. Thomas would probably be a better candidate than Aristotle himself. St. Thomas does explicitly at times link the value of something in exchange to labor. He also in a number of places uses examples explicitly based on labor -- for instance, he explains the proportional equality of justice in wages in terms of paying twice as much for twice as much time spent in labor. But St. Thomas is not a labor theorist, either, because he also thinks that share in the distribution of benefits is a matter of justice in exchange, and explicitly thinks that workmen should receive according to the quantity and quality of what they produce (which is not the same as the quantity of labor itself). And his account of why labor is relevant is that we price things according to the need we have to use them -- the farmer wouldn't trade a bushel of wheat for a sandal in general because the amount of labor that goes into a bushel of wheat is immense in comparison to that which goes into a pair of shoes, and if he were always laboring greatly to exchange very important things (like food, which is needed to live) for things that can be produced comparatively easily and are less important, he would not be meeting his needs in a reasonable way.

Poem Draft and Two Poem Re-Drafts

Holy Simurgh

Holy Simurgh, rainbow-splendid,
on the Tree of Life you dwell,
never-ending, God-defended
from assault of death and hell.
All the birds of all the nations
make your feathers bright with song,
larks in splendid exaltations,
nightingales in choral throng,
mockingbirds all notes returning,
swallow, sparrow, scornful jay;
phoenix cries in passion burning,
thunderbirds with lightning pray.
Hear the parrot, discourse speaking,
crows and ravens caw in time,
harmony that each was seeking
melding now in tune sublime.
Thirtyfold your feathered wonder,
more than peacock, more than hawk,
beating wings resound like thunder,
vast in wingspan like the roc.
Everywhere is your dominion,
souls you rescue from the grave;
by the gift of magic pinion
lives from devil-lands you save.

Ayesha in the Fire

Life beyond life no life can now bear,
nor fair beyond fair and yet still more fair,
for fire and light beyond all desire
will quicken the heart to nothing but fire.
We are not gods, nor burning with grace,
we apes of the gods, the whole mortal race,
and though we ascend, as we think, to high throne,
yet still in the darkness we end all alone.

Though shade be deferred by an imminent light,
yet stunted are those who flee from the night;
though long eons stretch, we snap and we die,
and dimness will fall on the brightest of eye,
as darkness will drag us to ash and to dust:
this fate, and none other, can mortal men trust.
In ash you will end, with nothing but name,
both quickened and slain by one glorious flame.

Semé

The breezes breathe upon my cheek,
the sylphan zephyrs sigh;
the heat of day now falls away
beneath the black of sky.
The flame of sun is beaten back,
the heart in uplift sings;
the track I travel through the night
beneath my footstep rings,
and soon the moon will rise and gleam
with light no shadow mars
amid a field a-bloom with dreams,
the sky semé with stars.

Golden of Word

Today is the feast of St. Peter Chrysologus, Doctor of the Church; he is sometimes known as the 'Doctor of Homilies'. He was bishop of Ravenna at the time when Ravenna was effectively the Imperial city; he is said to have received the epithet Chrysologos from the Empress Galla Placidia, who was ruling the western Roman empire as regent at the time he was appointed.

Whoever is free from captivity to this mammon, and is no longer weighed down under the cruel burden of money, stands securely with his vantage point in heaven, and from there looks down over the mammon which is holding sway over the world and the worldly with a tyrant's fury.

It holds sway over nations, it gives orders to kingdoms, it wages wars, it equips warriors, it traffics in blood, it transacts death, it threatens homelands, it destroys cities, it conquers peoples, it attacks fortresses, it puts citizens in an uproar, it presides over the marketplace, it wipes out justice, it confuses right and wrong, and by aiming directly at morality it assails one's integrity, it violates truth, it eviscerates one's reputation, it wreaks havoc on one's honor, it dissolves affections, it removes innocence, it keeps compassion buried, it severs relationships, it does not permit friendship. And why should I say more? This is mammon: the master of injustice, since it is unjust in the power it wields over human bodies and minds.

[Sermon 126, section 5, from St. Peter Chrysologus, Selected Sermons, Volume 2, William Palardy, tr. Catholic University of America (Washington, DC: 2004).]

Oligopsychia

In my Ethics class today, I will be talking, among other things, of magnanimity and pusillanimity, so I was looking around for examples I might used, and (somewhat to my surprise, I must confess) came across a brief discussion of it by Pope Francis in a general audience from last June. (And one, moreover, that I actually largely agree with, which I confess surprised me almost as much.) The English translation of the original text, however, is not very good. It has Pope Francis saying,

Some think that it would be better to extinguish this impulse — the impulse to live — because it is dangerous. I would like to say, especially to young people: our worst enemy is not practical problems, no matter how serious and dramatic: life’s greatest danger is a poor spirit of adaptation which is neither meekness nor humility, but mediocrity, cowardice. Is a mediocre young person a youth with a future or not? No! He or she remains there, will not grow, will not have success. Mediocrity or cowardice. Those young people who are afraid of everything: ‘No, this is how I am...’. These young people will not move forward. Meekness, strength, and not cowardice, not mediocrity.

And the English for the explanatory footnote says:

The Fathers speak of cowardice (oligopsychìa). Saint John Damascene defines it as “the fear of completing an action” (Exact exposition of the Orthodox faith, ii, 15) and Saint John Climacus adds that “cowardice is a childish disposition, in an old, vainglorious soul” (Ladder of Divine Ascent, xxi, 2).

The Italian that keeps being translated as 'cowardice' is, of course, pusillanimità, pusillanimity, small-souledness. And that is what one would expect from the parenthetical oligopsychia, which means not 'cowardice' but smallness of soul and whose exact Latin counterpart is pusillanimitas.

Opus Dei has an infinitely superior translation.

(As a side note, it's somewhat interesting that, despite the existence of relevant Western discussions, almost all of the theologians referred to in the footnotes are Eastern, with St. Ignatius being the one exception.)

The Rose and Purple Evening Dreams Away

A Summer Evening
by Archibald Lampman

The clouds grow clear, the pine-wood glooms and stills
With brown reflections in the silent bay,
And far beyond the pale blue-misted hills
The rose and purple evening dreams away.
The thrush, the veery, from mysterious dales
Rings his last round; and outward like a sea
The shining, shadowy heart of heaven unveils—
The starry legend of eternity.
The day's long troubles lose their sting and pass.
Peaceful the world, and peaceful grows my heart.
The gossip cricket from the friendly grass
Talks of old joys and takes the dreamer's part.
Then night, the healer, with unnoticed breath,
And sleep, dark sleep, so near, so like to death.