Habitude XVI

 To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that habitude is not distinguished according to good and bad, for good and bad are contraries. But the same habitude is of contraries, as was said above. Therefore habitude is not distinguished according to good and bad. 

Further, good is converted with being, and so, because it is common to all, it is not able to be taken as the differentia of some species, as is obvious from the Philosopher in Topic. IV. And likewise bad, because it is privation and not being, is not able to be the differentia of some being. Therefore habitude is not able to be distinguished in species according to good and bad.

Further, about the same there happen to be diverse bad habitudes, as intemperance and insensibility about concupiscence, and likewise for many good habitudes, such as human virtue and divine or heroic virtue, as is obvious from the Philosopher in Ethic. VII. Therefore habitude is not distinguished according to good and bad.

But contrariwise is that good habitude is contrary to bad habitude, as virtue to vice. But contraries are diverse according to species. Therefore habitude differs in species according to good and bad.

I reply that it must be said that, as was said, habitude is distinguished in species not only according to object and active principle, but also in ordering to nature. This can happen in two ways. In one way according to their fittingness to nature, or also to their unfittingness to it. And in this way good and bad habitudes are distinguished in species, since a habitude is called good that disposes to an act fitting to the nature of the agent, but a habitude is called bad that disposes to an act not fitting to the nature; as acts of virtues are fitting to human nature, in that they are according to reason, but acts of vices, because they are against reason, are discordant with human nature. 

In another way that habitude is distinguished according to nature, because one habitude disposes to an act that is fitting to an inferior nature, but another habitude disposes to an act that is fitting to a superior nature. And so human virtue, which disposes to an act appropriate to human nature, is distinguished from divine or heroic virtue, which disposes to an act fitting to a superior nature. 

To the first therefore it must be said that one habitude is able to be of contraries, inasmuch as the contraries converge into one notion. However, it never happens that contrary habitudes are of one species, for the contrariety of habitudes is according to the contrariety of notions. And thus habitudes are distinguished according to good and bad, namely, inasmuch as one habitude is good and another bad, but not from the fact that one is of good and the other of bad.

To the second it must be said that the good common to every human being is not the differentia constituting the species of some habitude, but rather a sort of determinate good, which is according to its fittingness to a determinate nature, namely, human. Likewise, the bad that is a differentia constitutive of habitude is not pure privation but is something repugnant to a determinate nature.

To the third it must be said that several good habitudes about the same species are distinguished according to fittingness to diverse natures, as was said. But several bad habitudes about the same action are distinguished according to diverse repugnances to that which is according to nature, as one virtue is contrary to diverse vices about the same matter.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.54.3, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here, both of which, however, seem to have some minor textual problems.]

This, of course, is a key article, since it is (as is clear from the examples used) the foundation of the entire theory of virtues and vices.

Links of Note

 * JSC, Did Julian of Norwich Write a Consolation?

* Tessa Carman, Light in 'Jane Austen's Darkness', at "Mere Orthodoxy"

* Kevin Fernandez, On Vincible and Invincible Ignorance (with St. Thomas Aquinas)

* Julia Minarik, Synthetic Disenchantment, at "Blog of the APA"

* Victoria, The running of the deer: celebrating Christmas in 1644, at "Horace & Friends"

* Ben Goldhaber, Unexpected Things that are People, at "Gold Takes"

* D. Luscinius, Every realm of nature is marvelous, at "Nelle Parole"

* Sami Pihlström, Putnam's transcendental arguments (PDF)

* Rob Alspaugh, The Point of ST I-II Q6 a1, at "Teaching Boys Badly"

* Brandon Carter, In Eodem Sensu: St. Vincent of Lerins and Development of Doctrine, at "Theophilosophizer"

* John Wright, Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman on Assent, at "John's Substack"

* Gregory B. Sadler, Thomas Aquinas’ Discussion of Law and the Sapiental Mediation of Reason and Revelation in the Summa Theologiae

* Henry Oliver, Why we love Jane Austen more than ever after 250 years, at "The Common Reader"

* Brad Skow, Free Indirect Style: A Theory, at "Mostly Aesthetics"

* Matthew Minerd, An Introduction to Dialectical Logic: The Recovery of Probable Certainty as the Labor of the Human Intellect, at "To Be a Thomist"

* Aaron Pidel, SJ, Vatican II, at the Encyclopedia of Catholic Theology

* Lucas Thorpe & Zübeyde Karadağ Thorpe, Kant on the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God: Why Conceivability Does Not Entail Real Possibility (PDF)

* Jane Austen was born December 16, 1775, which is why there has been a slow uptick in Austen-related posts online, as people do something for the 250th anniversary. 

O Hours! More Worth than Gold

 December Morning, 1782.
by Anna Seward 

 I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light,
Winter's pale dawn; and as warm fires illume
And cheerful tapers shine around the room,
Through misty windows bend thy musing sight,
Where round the dusky lawn, the mansions white,
With shutters clos'd, peer faintly through the gloom,
That slow recedes; while yon grey spires assume,
Rising from their dark pile, an added height
By indistinctness given. Then to decree
The grateful thoughts to God, ere they unfold
To Friendship or the Muse, or seek with glee
Wisdom's rich page: O hours! more worth than gold,
By whose blest use we lengthen life, and free
From drear decays of age, outlive the old!

Two Poem Drafts

Glories

God is glorious by nature,
we by fortune;
His is necessary,
ours can know failure.

Our splendor is a vine,
needing rain and sun;

it is devoured by violence
and starved by its soil.

God's light, unmoved star;
our light, pale moon,
secondary in shine,
unsteadily it moves.

A Cento of Blooms

Cheerful shall be the pasture,
exultant shall be the waste;
the desert shall bloom like meadow-saffron.
Blossoming, it shall bloom and exult,
exultantly shouting.

The weight of the Lord is found in it,
who made sky and land and sea,
who made all within them,
who perpetually guards faithfulness,
who bestows return on the defrauded,
who gives bread to the famished.

Rise to the challenge, then, brothers,
until the Lord's appearing;
regard the farmer who waits
on the fine fruits of the earth,
rising to its challenge until it brings forth;
to the challenge rise, and fortify your hearts.

Go, then, and tell what you see;
having gone, relate what you hear:
the smoke-eyed look upward,
the limping walk around,
the scaly are purified,

the ear-blunted now listen,
the corpses are awakened,
the cringing are well-taught,
and fulfilled is the one never stumbling.

Stand fast, dread not, God will avenge;
God will come to free you:
your blinded eyes will be opened,
your deafened ears will be made open,
your limping legs like stags shall leap,
your muted tongue shall sing,

for the pasture shall bloom with waters,
and rivers burst forth in the wasteland,
and the droughted dust shall form pools,
and fountains dwell in the thirsty land.

Habitude XV

 To the second one proceeds thus. It seems that habitudes are not distinguished according to objects. For contraries differ in species, but the same habitude of knowledge is of contraries, as medicine of the healthy and the sick. Therefore it is not according to objects differing in species that habitudes are distinguished.

Further, diverse kinds of knowledge are diverse habitudes. But the same knowable pertains to diverse kinds of knowledge, just as both the physicist and the astronomer demonstrate that the earth is round, as is said in Phys. II. Therefore habitudes are not distinguished according to objects.

Further, to the same act is the same object. But the same act can pertain to diverse habitudes of virtue, if it is referred to diverse ends, as giving money to someone, if it is for the sake of God, pertains to charity; but if it is for the sake of paying a debt, it pertains to justice. Therefore the same object is able to pertain to diverse habitudes. Therefore there is no diversity of habitudes according to diversity of objects.

But contrariwise, acts differ in species according to diversity of objects, as was said above. But habitudes are sorts of dispositions to acts. Therefore habitudes are also distinguished according to diverse objects.

I reply that it must be said that habitude both is a sort of form and also habitude. Therefore distinction of habitudes according to species is able to be considered either according to the common way by which forms are distinguished in species or according to the proper way of distinguishing habitudes. Forms are indeed distinguished from each other according to diverse active principles, since every agent makes what is like according to species. Now habitude implies ordering to something. But everything that is said according to ordering to something, is distinguished according to the distinction of those to which it is said. And habitude is a sort of disposition ordered to two things, that is to nature and to working according to nature. Thus according to the three, habitudes are distinguished in species: In one way, according to the active principles of such dispositions; in another way, according to nature;  but in a third way, according to specifically differing objects; as will be explained in the following.

To the first therefore it must be said that in distinction of powers or even habitudes, the object itself is not to be considered materially, but the notion of the objects differing in species or even in genus. But although contraries differ in species in the diversity of things, yet the same notion is for cognizing both, because one is cognized through the other. And therefore inasmuch as they converge in one cognizable notion, they pertain to one cognitive habitude.

To the second it must be said that the physicist demonstrates that the earth is round through some middle term, and the astronomer through another, for the astronomer demonstrates this through mathematical middle terms, as by the shapes of eclipses, but the physicist demonstrates it through natural middle terms, as by change of the heavy toward the middle, or somesuch. But the whole impulse of demonstration, which is deduction [syllogismus] making to know, as was said in Poster. I, hangs on the middle term. And thus middle terms are like diverse active principles according to which habitudes of kinds of knowledge are diversified.

To the third it must be said that, as the Philosopher says in Physic. II and in Ethic. VII, the end is in workables as the principle is in demonstratives. And so the diversity of ends diversifies virtues just like the diversity of active principles. And the ends themselves are objects of interior acts, which pertains most of all to virtues, as is obvious from what was said above.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.54.2, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

Antigone and Practical Reason

 The Antigone is a play about practical reason and the ways in which practical reason orders or sees the world. It is unusually full of words for deliberation, reasoning, knowledge, and vision. It begins with the question, 'Do you know?' (2), asked about a practical crisis, and with a claim about the correct way of viewing its demands. It ends with the assertion that practical wisdom (to phronein) is the most important constituent of human good living (eudaimonia, 1348-9). It is also a play about teaching and learning, about changing one's vision of the world, about losing one's grip on what looked like secure truth and learning a more elusive kind of wisdom. From a confident claim about what is, in a complicated case, known, it moves to, 'I have no idea where I should look, which way I should lean', and, finally, to the suggestion that a less confident wisdom has, in fact, been learned (1353).

[Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Updated Edition, Cambridge University Press (New York: 2009), pp. 51-52.]

Dashed Off XXXI

 In organizing themselves instrumentally as states, civil societies incorporate elements derived from their history and heritage, including various kinds of particular powers and restrictions.

All societies have to deal with people inimical and corrosive to them, and the decisions about how to do so are always difficult.

Social contract theory grows out of thinking that civil society membership is a form of servitude; servitude of adults outside of the family is either penal or contractual. (Cp. Rosmini)

"It is necessary to test experience not in one way but according to all circumstances, that it be truly and correctly a principle of acting." Albert (Ethica VI tr 2 c25)

One should not merely read but read and compare to experience. It is this kind of reading whereby (eg) the novels of Austen or Dickens or Eliot help to improve us morally.

energy, momentum, etc. as having dispositional being (esse intentionale) in things, as if transferred through a medium

'so bad it's good' in art as arising from harmless but extreme incongruity

The existence of final causes is what makes physics possible.

"The definition of an organic body is that it is a body, every part of which is there for the sake of the other (recirpocally as end and, at the same time, means)." Kant OP 21:210 (cp OP 21:181, 22:548)

We experience some systems of moving things in such a way that to unify our experience requires positing the being of reason, 'empty space'. Thus empty space is an object of possible *experience*, namely, by perceiving privation of medium through the model of being. This is in the same way that a hole can be the object of possible experience, and a constant one even if the repletive medium for it is changed or even taken away entirely.

Freedom gets its value from truth.

the internal almsgiving of the Church

If I say, 'X appears to be Y', I can mean:
(1) As appearing, X is Y.
(2) X is Y-like enough that one could confuse them under relevant conditions.
(3) X, despite being not very Y-like, under the circumstances could be mistaken as having Y-like features.
(4) No distinguishing features of X as opposed to Y appear.

We are already on the threshold of hell; it is a proof of, and way to, heaven that we need.

It's dangerous to have no conception of excellence except comparative.

To be human is to have potential for roles in deontic frameworks.

artificial vs natural federalism

Much of paleontology consists of translating fossil contexts into abstract representations -- maps of fossil locations, timelines, diagrams of fossils, records in archives for the use of other researchers, etc. It is this that makes the material evidence useful for scientific purposes.

The mystery is not why spirits and the resurrected live with their choices. The ystery is why we do not necessarily have to do so. We have a power of probationary repentance; it is tied to our mortality. In salvation, then, God uses our mortality to save us from everlasting death.

Kant's practical postulates are concerned with the gap between human will and holy will.

the external world as arena for moral action, as a practical postulate

"The experience of community is the presupposition of understanding." Dilthey

The only real critique of system is a more powerful system.

the categorical imperative & not treating conditional goods as unconditional

possibilities -> structure of possibilities -> change in structure of possibilities -> moving and efficient causes

In the long run in a democratic politics, people do not vote for the most reliable instrument but for the blade most dangerous to those they see as opposing them.

ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments for the external world

doubt: subject-object
experience: act-potency
hope: agent-patient? agent-field of action?

externality/outness as a kind of systematically differentiated readiness to appear

the integration of anomaly into nomality/nomicity

externality as a limited form of nomality/nomicity

external world as
(1) instrumental power
(2) immediate object
(3) mediated object
(4) arena for action
(5) standing reserve
(6) intersubjective medium
(7) system of harm/benefit, safety/danger

Most social evils are the daughters of pride and fashion.

Punna, often translated as 'merit', should be translated as 'happy act' -- it indicates not desert but beneficial karmic fruitfulness, auspiciousness with respect to karma, fortunateness with respect to becoming pure. Thus the Sangha is the 'field of punna', the most fruitful place to plant a gift. Punna is a treasure that cannot be lost. There are three major kinds: almsgiving (dana), virtue (sila), and meditative self-cultivation (bhavana); btu there are arguably many others, like teaching and learning Dharma or showing respect to the good or empathizing with another's good deed (anything, in fact, that can affect karma positively).

doing good on another's behalf or in another's name

ariya-sacca ('Noble Truth')
sacca: truth, reality, genuine existent
ariya: noble, ennobled, socially superior
thus sometimes understood as 'true reality for those who are ennobled'
perhaps: reality for (or as seen by) those with superior achievement, i.e., for those who are enlightened.
Thus: reality is fudnamentally dukkha, tanha, nirodha, magga -- pain/suffering, thirst/craving, nirvana/cessation, path.
"This, monks, for the noble, is the painful (dukkha) reality (ariya-sacca)."

In democracies, people become more crass in order to fake being democratic; in aristocracies, people become more hoity-toity in order to fake being aristocratic.

Cause and effect are one and not the same, distinct but not separate, because each thing has reference to another in causation.

"Jesus Buddha, who is the most powerful and compassionate person in the world, forgives my sins." -- from the "Praise Jesus Text" in the Xiabuzan (British Library S.2659), a Chinese Manichean hymn scroll from the Tang dynasty (perhaps somewhere between 8th and 11th century)

Much of what is seen as genius by others is in fact simply successful confidence.

asymmetric cooperations in which A is cooperating with B, although not vice versa
(1) anticipatory cooperation
(2) qualified coopeation with the resistant or uncooperative

reason as objective cause of motivation

Hume's account of causation is so broad that reason must have influence on acting and affection if anything does.

'Something is to be done' as self-evident practical truth

the external world here and now vs the external world in a general point of view

It is more obvious that there is safety and danger in the world than that there are planets or atoms; and such safety and danger can continue to exist independently of, and distinctly from, the mind's perception of them.

'Metaphysics of race' is just philosophy of classification with race as an example.

Everything is a normative standard to some kind of judgment.

energy as a measure of instrumentability

the vicarious and the objective aspects of the sign

"Since you cannot act without reasons and your humaity is the source of your reasons, you must value your own humanity if you are to act at all." Korsgaard
"Obligation is the reflective rejection of a threat to your identity. Pain is the *unreflective* rejection of a threat to your identity. So pain is the *perception* of a reason, and that is why it seems normative."

We do not pursue pleasure for its sake, but for our sake. (cp. Balguy)

intimations of free will in the products of artistic skill

the Incarnation as the election of Israel within the election of Israel
Out of the nations, He calls Israel; out of Israel, He calls the nations.

kitschy vs non-kitschy uses of kitsch

Hohfeldian incidents as relations between persons and jural goods

Every person has a right to law; that is, law is itself a jural good.

All legal systems have moral, judicial, and ceremonial aspects.

puzzles, debts, challenges, enticements

All virtues in the justice family call forth rites for their communication, coordination, facilitation, and protection.

deferential responsibilities -> ceremonies and rituals and formal procedures

All rights a person may have are participations in eternal right, that is to say, divine sovereignty over creation.

To have a right to X posits others having an obligation to you with respect to X, which requires that they have a power relevant to that obligation.

The order in which good law contributes to making men virtuous is different from the order in which (eg) self-discipline does; law prioritizes duties, especially more obvious duties, especially more obvious duties concerning harms in social interactions.

There is no such thing as a 'total body of evidence' except with respect to this or that end.

pricing as a general theory of proportioning mesurable means to measurable ends in the context of exchanges

profit as an ability of one exchange to make possible other exchanges

"The only appropriate way to love God is as a good infinitely shareable." McInerny

Moral action can only be conceived as a sort of cooperation with the world at large.

"To have an emotion is to stand *in the presence* of a normative fact: to feel fear is to stand in teh presence of the dangerousness of danger, to feel grief is to stand in the presence of the infinite loss of death." Korsgaard

Every civil freedom presupposes a right.

All of creation is a juridical good for God, for all of it is due to Him. In creation, God posits the created world not only ontically (as being and metaphysical goodness) but also juridically and liturgically. The created world is good and very good.

the eye glinting with glances

To love a person is to know them as bigger than death.

Common possession is limited by the limits of the friendship it presupposes.

Totalitarianism arises from trying to have without friendship what comes only from civil friendship.

organisms as making themselves normative for themselves

Blameworthiness gets its importance from its limitations, and especially from forgiveness.

concrete crime scene -> abstract crime scene -> interrelations of abstract crime scene as effects -> causal context

the 'word' as a pedagogical unit
-- We first learn words as words in being taught segments of language as children.

The underlying principles of the Turing Test are the same as those of many design arguments.

Reason, being social, requires communication with other reason, and therefore testimony.

scenic aesthetic // problem-focused approach to philosophy

generative mediation -- e.g., time-lapse photography allows perception (generates perception) of what could not be perceived without that mediation

natural law, natural title: human right
natural law, conventional title: moral right
positive law, natural title: social right
positive law, positive title: privilege

The way we attribute vice and virtue always implies (1) that there is more of character than is found in the attribution, since the attributions are indirectly grounded, through signs, and (2) that such attributions can be wrong, even if made collectively, for the same reason.

What is, sometimes expresses what ought to be, and sometimes does not. This is different from the two being separate.

modal operators as diagram construction instructions