* MrsDarwin's review of the Whit Stillman movie, Love and Friendship
* Whewell's Gazette 2.43 for all those interested in the history of science
* Greg Restall on logical pluralism for 3AM
* Ali Minai has a fascinating discussion of the early history of Islam in light of its coins.
* At the SEP:
Julie Maybee, Hegel's Dialectics
Katerina Ierodiakonou, Theophrastus
* Adolfo Giuliani, Civilian Treatises on Presumptions, 1580-1620 (PDF)
* Amod Lele discusses the Garfield and Van Norden article on philosophical curricula.
* Ken Wharton and Huw Price on least action principles
* How Nigeria came to dominate Scrabble
* Gwen Bradford on the philosophical analysis of the concept of achievement.
* Rebecca Stark on Job 38:41
* Richard Beck on shape-note singing. I happen to have a copy of the Sacred Selections hymnal he mentions; the 1964 edition of it, I believe.
* There was some recent hubbub over the possible discovery of Aristotle's tomb in Stagira recently. (Strictly speaking, it was a hubbub over a paper that was delivered at the World Aristotle Congress suggesting that a tomb discovered several years ago might be Aristotle's.) David Meadows looks at the actual evidence for the claim.
* Adam Frank on Dogen
* Medieval dining
* An interesting page on the geometry of the Basilica of Sagrada Familia
* The Melkite Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo criticizes those who think that taking in refugees is actually solving any problem.
* David Mills on the allergy some Catholics have to the word 'mercy'
* First communion for Syriac Catholic refugees
Wednesday, June 08, 2016
Tuesday, June 07, 2016
A Quick Trip to Italy, Miscellanea VI
Rome: Forum
A bit of fresco:
More pictures of the Basilica Aemilia:
A little bit beyond:
The seagulls like the Forum area. Here is a Roman seagull crying out:
Another shot of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina:
Near the House of the Vestal Virgins:
The church of Santa Francesca Romana (also sometimes known as Santa Maria Nova):
I mentioned before that we were at the forum just after the ides of March. Just before that, though, on March 9, is the feast day of Saint Frances of Rome, and I'm told that on that day, the entire street up to the Colosseum crowds with cars. St. Frances, you see, is the patron saint of automobiles, so on her feast day, Romans go to her church in order to get their cars blessed. (A very rational thing to do if you drive in Rome.)
The Basilica of Constantine from a different angle:
The Arch of Titus, from the Colosseum side:
Additional shots of the Colosseum:
to be continued
A bit of fresco:
More pictures of the Basilica Aemilia:
A little bit beyond:
The seagulls like the Forum area. Here is a Roman seagull crying out:
Another shot of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina:
Near the House of the Vestal Virgins:
The church of Santa Francesca Romana (also sometimes known as Santa Maria Nova):
I mentioned before that we were at the forum just after the ides of March. Just before that, though, on March 9, is the feast day of Saint Frances of Rome, and I'm told that on that day, the entire street up to the Colosseum crowds with cars. St. Frances, you see, is the patron saint of automobiles, so on her feast day, Romans go to her church in order to get their cars blessed. (A very rational thing to do if you drive in Rome.)
The Basilica of Constantine from a different angle:
The Arch of Titus, from the Colosseum side:
Additional shots of the Colosseum:
to be continued
Fiercer Hunger than the Body's Need
The One Thing Needful
by Bram Stoker
In Martha's house the weary Master lay,
Spent with his faring through the burning day.
The busy hostess bustled through the room
On household cares intent, and at His feet
The gentle Mary took her wonted seat.
Soft came His words in music through the gloom.
Cumbered about much serving Martha wrought--
Her sister listening as the Master taught--
Till something fretful an appeal she made:
"Doth it not matter that on me doth fall
The burden; Mary helpeth not at all?
Master, command her that she give me aid."
"Ah, Martha, Martha! Thou are full of care,
And many things thy needless trouble share."
Thus with the love that chides the Master spake:
"One thing alone is needful. That good part
Hath Mary chosen from her loving heart;
And that part from her shall I never take."
****
One thing alone we lack. Our souls, indeed,
Have fiercer hunger than the body's need.
Ah, happy they that look in loving eyes.
The harsh world round them fades. The Master's Voice
In sweetest music bids their souls rejoice
And wakes an echo there that never dies.
Yes, it's that Bram Stoker.
Monday, June 06, 2016
Intuitions Aren't Bedrock
Some people have been discussing Dale Dorsey's recent post, Intuitive bedrock and the philosophical enterprise:
One of the things I have been pointing out on this blog since I was in graduate school is that 'intuitions' aren't unitary things, and I have always been baffled at any suggestion that they are somehow a ne plus ultra. If we compare what contemporary philosophers say about intuitions and look at approaches from other times that at least cover part of the same ground -- Aristotelian topics, the Nyaya account of pramanas, and Scottish Enlightenment accounts of common sense, for example, all of which are finer-grained than contemporary talk of 'intuitions' -- we see clearly enough that we could be, and should be, much more precise about what is going on when they come up. And when we do we may realize that different kinds of intuitions are involved, or that the intuitions are not all equally evident, or even that some of the intuitions are not even coherent.
Intuitions are beginnings, not bedrocks. Conflicts of intuitions are the kinds of thing reasonable people wonder about, and wondering is the beginning of philosophy. Philosophy doesn't bottom out on them; the rational person will precisely start to wonder about what goes into these intuitions that leads to the differences.
One of the great temptations for philosophers through the century is to confuse features of communication and features of reason -- we always present our philosophy in certain ways, and it can be tempting to assume that those formats are just the way reason works, as if reason could not work in some other way entirely. For instance, someone may do all their philosophy in debates, and if they did, they might be tempted to think of good reasoning as being entirely disputational, because that's the way they polish it up in their own context. It has been difficult over the past century to convince many academic philosophers that you could perfectly well do philosophy with poetry or fiction, despite the fact that it certainly has been done -- because these are not usually features of how academic philosophers in this day and age communicate. And there are other ways in which this can be manifested. I think we see one of them in this case of intuitions. Appeal to intuitions has spread fairly widely in academic texts, and I think a plausible reason why is that you can't fully develop the argument in the formats academic texts usually have. If you are writing a thirty page paper on some very complicated topic, there are going to be things that you just have to ask the reader to take for granted for the sake of the argument; and when an academic philosopher appeals to the intuitive, that's precisely what's happening -- he or she is summarizing a reason for thinking that it's reasonable to accept this. It's something inevitable in the nature of the format, and it's certainly better that it be flagged and insisted upon than that it slide by without comment.
But in real life, we are not wholly bounded by page limits and the fact that we are writing about topic A and can't also write about topic B.Faced with conflicts among these intuitive appeals, we don't have to just throw up our hands and say, "Irreconcilable difference!" Reasoning itself doesn't bottom out like that. We can perfectly well ask more questions, look into the matter more deeply, test for consistency, analyze into constituent parts, compare to other cases, and any of a very large variety of rational activities.
I am sympathetic to Dorsey's notion of an 'atlas-drawing' approach to philosophy; it is, I think, an important part of philosophy, more important than is sometimes realized. It's also the sort of thing I do as a historian of philosophy -- just map out the positions to determine what positions there are. But there is no "phenomenon of intuitive bedrock". There are merely points at which inquiry begins to form along different lines.
In so many areas of inquiry (though, perhaps, not all), philosophical argument ends up bottoming out in a mere clash of intuitions, of considered judgments. But what happens now? Because these considered judgments will help determine the content and structure of our philosophical theorizing, to determine (once and for all) what the good life is for a person (or whether we should be descriptivists or causal theorists of reference, or whether justified true belief counts as knowledge or not, or — if Lewis Carroll is to be believed — whether modus ponens is a valid rule of inference) we — or so it would appear — need to settle which of these intuitions are the right ones.
To put my cards on the table, this seems like an impossible task. Indeed, it’s a task that seems (almost by definition) outside the bounds of philosophical argument.
One of the things I have been pointing out on this blog since I was in graduate school is that 'intuitions' aren't unitary things, and I have always been baffled at any suggestion that they are somehow a ne plus ultra. If we compare what contemporary philosophers say about intuitions and look at approaches from other times that at least cover part of the same ground -- Aristotelian topics, the Nyaya account of pramanas, and Scottish Enlightenment accounts of common sense, for example, all of which are finer-grained than contemporary talk of 'intuitions' -- we see clearly enough that we could be, and should be, much more precise about what is going on when they come up. And when we do we may realize that different kinds of intuitions are involved, or that the intuitions are not all equally evident, or even that some of the intuitions are not even coherent.
Intuitions are beginnings, not bedrocks. Conflicts of intuitions are the kinds of thing reasonable people wonder about, and wondering is the beginning of philosophy. Philosophy doesn't bottom out on them; the rational person will precisely start to wonder about what goes into these intuitions that leads to the differences.
One of the great temptations for philosophers through the century is to confuse features of communication and features of reason -- we always present our philosophy in certain ways, and it can be tempting to assume that those formats are just the way reason works, as if reason could not work in some other way entirely. For instance, someone may do all their philosophy in debates, and if they did, they might be tempted to think of good reasoning as being entirely disputational, because that's the way they polish it up in their own context. It has been difficult over the past century to convince many academic philosophers that you could perfectly well do philosophy with poetry or fiction, despite the fact that it certainly has been done -- because these are not usually features of how academic philosophers in this day and age communicate. And there are other ways in which this can be manifested. I think we see one of them in this case of intuitions. Appeal to intuitions has spread fairly widely in academic texts, and I think a plausible reason why is that you can't fully develop the argument in the formats academic texts usually have. If you are writing a thirty page paper on some very complicated topic, there are going to be things that you just have to ask the reader to take for granted for the sake of the argument; and when an academic philosopher appeals to the intuitive, that's precisely what's happening -- he or she is summarizing a reason for thinking that it's reasonable to accept this. It's something inevitable in the nature of the format, and it's certainly better that it be flagged and insisted upon than that it slide by without comment.
But in real life, we are not wholly bounded by page limits and the fact that we are writing about topic A and can't also write about topic B.Faced with conflicts among these intuitive appeals, we don't have to just throw up our hands and say, "Irreconcilable difference!" Reasoning itself doesn't bottom out like that. We can perfectly well ask more questions, look into the matter more deeply, test for consistency, analyze into constituent parts, compare to other cases, and any of a very large variety of rational activities.
I am sympathetic to Dorsey's notion of an 'atlas-drawing' approach to philosophy; it is, I think, an important part of philosophy, more important than is sometimes realized. It's also the sort of thing I do as a historian of philosophy -- just map out the positions to determine what positions there are. But there is no "phenomenon of intuitive bedrock". There are merely points at which inquiry begins to form along different lines.
Sunday, June 05, 2016
Fortnightly Book, June 5
The recommendations are in, and it looks like there is a slight preference for either Prometheus or Ibsen, so I've decided to go with the double volume of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound and Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, and see if I can get Ibsen in later this year.
Greek tragedies come in threes with a satyr play to top them off. Prometheus Bound was the first of the Prometheia trilogy, and the only extant play in the trilogy. (The only extant trilogy by Aeschylus is the Oresteia, which will also eventually be a Fortnightly Book; there is no extant four-play set by Aeschylus, despite the fact that all the plays we have would have belonged to such a tetralogy.) We know the names of the other two tragedies in the trilogy: Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus Fire-bringer. We have fragments of the second, and know that it concerned the unbinding of Prometheus by Heracles. Of the third play in the trilogy we know practically nothing that is not speculative. We can reasonably guess that it would have reconciled Prometheus and Zeus and, possibly, provided an origin story for the torch relay the Athenians ran in honor of Prometheus.
Prometheus Bound is famously a play without much plot -- it would not be far off to say that almost the only thing that happens in it is that Prometheus is bound. Most of the actual story has already happened when the play opens (leading to an occasionally rebellious minority of scholars to suggest every so often that it may have actually been the second in the play, with Prometheus Fire-bringer actually being the first). It is a tragedy of character, then, rather than a tragedy of plot. Prometheus comes off sympathetically, and Zeus badly; the play ends with Prometheus accusing Zeus of injustice, with nothing forthcoming in response. But there is much foreshadowing of what is to come.
Shelley's Prometheus Unbound was intended to be a new sequel to Aeschylus's play, and yet not just a sequel. He wrote it while touring Italy with Mary Shelley -- reflecting on it in Milan, beginning it in Rome, and finishing it in Florence. If Prometheus Bound ends with the injustice of Zeus, Prometheus Unbound ends with the victory of Prometheus.
The Heritage Press volume also contains Mary Shelley's "Notes on Prometheus Unbound". Her explanation for Shelley's choice of subject:
The volume is illustrated by John Farleigh, best known for his wood engravings, with sixteen full-page line-and-wash drawings. Aeschylus is translated by the classicist and novelist Rex Warner, who provides the introduction. It is typeset in Spectrum typeface by Hendrik Clewitts, a former assistant to Jan van Krimpen, who invented the font.
Greek tragedies come in threes with a satyr play to top them off. Prometheus Bound was the first of the Prometheia trilogy, and the only extant play in the trilogy. (The only extant trilogy by Aeschylus is the Oresteia, which will also eventually be a Fortnightly Book; there is no extant four-play set by Aeschylus, despite the fact that all the plays we have would have belonged to such a tetralogy.) We know the names of the other two tragedies in the trilogy: Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus Fire-bringer. We have fragments of the second, and know that it concerned the unbinding of Prometheus by Heracles. Of the third play in the trilogy we know practically nothing that is not speculative. We can reasonably guess that it would have reconciled Prometheus and Zeus and, possibly, provided an origin story for the torch relay the Athenians ran in honor of Prometheus.
Prometheus Bound is famously a play without much plot -- it would not be far off to say that almost the only thing that happens in it is that Prometheus is bound. Most of the actual story has already happened when the play opens (leading to an occasionally rebellious minority of scholars to suggest every so often that it may have actually been the second in the play, with Prometheus Fire-bringer actually being the first). It is a tragedy of character, then, rather than a tragedy of plot. Prometheus comes off sympathetically, and Zeus badly; the play ends with Prometheus accusing Zeus of injustice, with nothing forthcoming in response. But there is much foreshadowing of what is to come.
Shelley's Prometheus Unbound was intended to be a new sequel to Aeschylus's play, and yet not just a sequel. He wrote it while touring Italy with Mary Shelley -- reflecting on it in Milan, beginning it in Rome, and finishing it in Florence. If Prometheus Bound ends with the injustice of Zeus, Prometheus Unbound ends with the victory of Prometheus.
The Heritage Press volume also contains Mary Shelley's "Notes on Prometheus Unbound". Her explanation for Shelley's choice of subject:
The father of Greek tragedy does not possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and tenderness of Euripides; the interest on which he founds his dramas is often elevated above human vicissitudes into the mighty passions and throes of gods and demi-gods: such fascinated the abstract imagination of Shelley.
The volume is illustrated by John Farleigh, best known for his wood engravings, with sixteen full-page line-and-wash drawings. Aeschylus is translated by the classicist and novelist Rex Warner, who provides the introduction. It is typeset in Spectrum typeface by Hendrik Clewitts, a former assistant to Jan van Krimpen, who invented the font.
Maronite Year LII
Fourth Sunday of Pentecost
1 Corinthians 2:11-16; Luke 10:21-24
Only the Spirit of God knows the thoughts of God;
but we do not receive the spirit of the world,
but the Spirit from God, who comes to enlighten.
Who can know the mind of the Lord?
But we receive the mind of Christ.
Raise your eyes and look upon the sublime heavens.
Who made them and marshals the muster of their host?
Who calls the stars by name, missing none in their count?
Our Lord made the furthest limits;
He is wise beyond our thinking.
O glorious feast, exalting angels and men,
praised from the mountaintops with psalms and Sunday hymns,
blessed are they who celebrate you with the gospel,
proclaiming it with joyous song,
bright in the sunrise of the week.
Grant, O Lord, that our works may be a gift to You,
that our just action may be a pleasing fragrance,
that our sincere faith may rise as a pure incense,
that we may witness to Your grace,
like a temple shining with light.
May we be made worthy by the gifts you give us
to proclaim Your resurrection with the angels,
to announce Your holy rising with the women,
to take joy in Your victory,
with the apostles rejoicing.
Lift up our eyes to see the holy saints of God.
Who raised them and draws together so great a host?
Who calls those stars by name, giving them their number?
Our Lord made the furthest limits;
He is wise beyond our thinking.
1 Corinthians 2:11-16; Luke 10:21-24
Only the Spirit of God knows the thoughts of God;
but we do not receive the spirit of the world,
but the Spirit from God, who comes to enlighten.
Who can know the mind of the Lord?
But we receive the mind of Christ.
Raise your eyes and look upon the sublime heavens.
Who made them and marshals the muster of their host?
Who calls the stars by name, missing none in their count?
Our Lord made the furthest limits;
He is wise beyond our thinking.
O glorious feast, exalting angels and men,
praised from the mountaintops with psalms and Sunday hymns,
blessed are they who celebrate you with the gospel,
proclaiming it with joyous song,
bright in the sunrise of the week.
Grant, O Lord, that our works may be a gift to You,
that our just action may be a pleasing fragrance,
that our sincere faith may rise as a pure incense,
that we may witness to Your grace,
like a temple shining with light.
May we be made worthy by the gifts you give us
to proclaim Your resurrection with the angels,
to announce Your holy rising with the women,
to take joy in Your victory,
with the apostles rejoicing.
Lift up our eyes to see the holy saints of God.
Who raised them and draws together so great a host?
Who calls those stars by name, giving them their number?
Our Lord made the furthest limits;
He is wise beyond our thinking.
Saturday, June 04, 2016
Representation Eliminativism and Its Rivals
Robert Epstein recently stirred up some controversy in an Aeon essay arguing that the brain is not a computer -- indeed, that computationalist vocabulary applied to human beings is highly misleading. For instance, he argues, we do not store and retrieve information. Instead, our behaviors are refined under environmental pressures, and that is all there is to it. There is no representation of a song in your head; it's just that you've been conditioned by your prior actions and your environment to sing (or hum, or whistle) on certain kinds of occasions. To catch a ball, you don't have to do any elaborate representing of the situation; you just reach out and catch it, having built on your reflexes by whatever practice you've had.
This received criticism from a rather wide variety of different sources, arguing against particular arguments or the general position itself, insisting that we do, in fact, have representations. Much of this was not particularly interested; poorly conceived and often question-begging arguments, mostly. (Part of the problem is Epstein's attempt to put his argument in vague terms about computers, thus running afoul of the fact that theory of computation is very abstract and does not depend on a number of things he attributes to computers.) But what is more interesting is how similar many of the arguments on both sides are to arguments about free will.
Epstein is a representation eliminativist -- we have no representations in our brains, if we talk about 'representations in the brain' it is a loose way of speaking that doesn't actually explain anything, and a proper and complete account of our brains and behaviors would not require any such talk at all. It's just physics, and chemistry, and biology, and psychological conditioning, and nothing else is needed. This position is structurally analogous to hard determinism (free will is an illusion, etc.). Several of Epstein's arguments to this end have counterparts in arguments for hard determinism; to give just one example, the argument for the claim that all the information/representation talk is just "a story we tell to make sense of something we don’t actually understand" is easily recognizable as an analogue to arguments one finds for determinism. Likewise with the repeated insinuations that no one actually knows what these 'representations' really are. One also notes that Epstein's own position, based on conditioning and environmental determinations, could easily double as a determinist position without any significant change at all.
Many of Epstein's critics are representation compatibilists; they think it is all explained in terms of physics, etc., yes, but they think talk of representation, information, memory storage, or what have you is genuinely useful if not abused. The two do not exclude each other, and it's not wrong to use either. In both the representation and free will cases, the major arguments involve the idea that there is some important field that regularly requires appeal to these things in order to make sense of even basic behaviors. 'How else do you explain X?' is a common, if somewhat futile, tactic against the eliminativist, precisely because the eliminativist is usually concerned with eliminating a concept regarded as covering our ignorance -- he won't usually have an explanation, but it's often because he is denying anyone has an explanation in the sense demanded, and is criticizing people for trying to cover that up. But the other side -- that we seem perfectly well to explain things, at least to some extent, with this concept -- can have bite.
More rare on the ground, but also occasionally found in the comments boxes, are incompatibilists who accept the existence of representations -- i.e., they think representation, etc., is necessary because these things add something that physics, etc., can't get us. At least in this case, they tend to have sympathy with Epstein's incompatibilist arguments, but take representation and the like to be obvious on other grounds.
It's not surprising for the field to break up this way. A lot of philosophy of mind issues, and similar issues, naturally break along these lines -- not just representation and free will, but also beliefs, qualia, concepts, and, farther afield, design, all tend to raise analogous issues about explanation of how these things are constituted -- and approaches to explaining how things are constituted can be eliminativist, reductivist, or nonreductivist. What is more, representation and free will are closely linked; a number of historical arguments for free will are based on the kinds of representations we have or seem to have, and, as one can see from Epstein's own descriptions, the influence could easily go in the opposite direction, as well. What's mostly interesting in this case is finding it so clearly and cleanly delineated, in part because of Epstein's provocative way of putting it.
This received criticism from a rather wide variety of different sources, arguing against particular arguments or the general position itself, insisting that we do, in fact, have representations. Much of this was not particularly interested; poorly conceived and often question-begging arguments, mostly. (Part of the problem is Epstein's attempt to put his argument in vague terms about computers, thus running afoul of the fact that theory of computation is very abstract and does not depend on a number of things he attributes to computers.) But what is more interesting is how similar many of the arguments on both sides are to arguments about free will.
Epstein is a representation eliminativist -- we have no representations in our brains, if we talk about 'representations in the brain' it is a loose way of speaking that doesn't actually explain anything, and a proper and complete account of our brains and behaviors would not require any such talk at all. It's just physics, and chemistry, and biology, and psychological conditioning, and nothing else is needed. This position is structurally analogous to hard determinism (free will is an illusion, etc.). Several of Epstein's arguments to this end have counterparts in arguments for hard determinism; to give just one example, the argument for the claim that all the information/representation talk is just "a story we tell to make sense of something we don’t actually understand" is easily recognizable as an analogue to arguments one finds for determinism. Likewise with the repeated insinuations that no one actually knows what these 'representations' really are. One also notes that Epstein's own position, based on conditioning and environmental determinations, could easily double as a determinist position without any significant change at all.
Many of Epstein's critics are representation compatibilists; they think it is all explained in terms of physics, etc., yes, but they think talk of representation, information, memory storage, or what have you is genuinely useful if not abused. The two do not exclude each other, and it's not wrong to use either. In both the representation and free will cases, the major arguments involve the idea that there is some important field that regularly requires appeal to these things in order to make sense of even basic behaviors. 'How else do you explain X?' is a common, if somewhat futile, tactic against the eliminativist, precisely because the eliminativist is usually concerned with eliminating a concept regarded as covering our ignorance -- he won't usually have an explanation, but it's often because he is denying anyone has an explanation in the sense demanded, and is criticizing people for trying to cover that up. But the other side -- that we seem perfectly well to explain things, at least to some extent, with this concept -- can have bite.
More rare on the ground, but also occasionally found in the comments boxes, are incompatibilists who accept the existence of representations -- i.e., they think representation, etc., is necessary because these things add something that physics, etc., can't get us. At least in this case, they tend to have sympathy with Epstein's incompatibilist arguments, but take representation and the like to be obvious on other grounds.
It's not surprising for the field to break up this way. A lot of philosophy of mind issues, and similar issues, naturally break along these lines -- not just representation and free will, but also beliefs, qualia, concepts, and, farther afield, design, all tend to raise analogous issues about explanation of how these things are constituted -- and approaches to explaining how things are constituted can be eliminativist, reductivist, or nonreductivist. What is more, representation and free will are closely linked; a number of historical arguments for free will are based on the kinds of representations we have or seem to have, and, as one can see from Epstein's own descriptions, the influence could easily go in the opposite direction, as well. What's mostly interesting in this case is finding it so clearly and cleanly delineated, in part because of Epstein's provocative way of putting it.
Contagious like the Measles
Politics
by Werner Eggerth
Contagious like the measles,
Inflaming like the mumps,
Is ever-ready Politics,
When it upon us jumps.
Its hydra-heads, don't touch them,
For fear they should increase
In numbers and in arguments,
And thus disturb your peace.
In building up of platforms,
It is a true expert,
And if a plank don't fit one way,
'Tis easy to invert.
Oft planks spiked down are rotten,
Fit only as pretense,
Yet jugglers walk them without dread
Nor fear the consequence.
In Politics, the dollar
Has weight, and doth convince,
And he who has the most of 'em
Needs not his words to mince.
They influence the voter,
As light the gnats doth charm,
Who, in their suicidal ways,
Into the fire swarm.
Friday, June 03, 2016
Dashed Off XI
natural law & the educative theory of punishment
educative vs. defensive theories of punishment
"nothing but truth can preserve consistency" (Paley)
'death of the author' as consumerist
laws as always implying accounts of happiness (i.e., what is good for human beings)
All true mercy begins with truth.
In ecclesial matters, it is always better to assume that you are preparing for some serious downturn, sooner or later.
(1) Law is not purely conventional. (cp Plato's Laws; Minos)
(2) Law and morality overlap. (Confucius, Aquinas, Plato, Aristotle)
(3) Law has a priority to human society. (Leo XIII, Cicero)
press, religious bodies, voluntary associations, and the whole body of citizens interacting as check & balance on government power
"The prophet only knows what he says; he does not understand if it is true." Epinomis 975c
Awe at the sublimity of the stars is the closest the pagan Platonists ever came to fear of the Lord.
All fine arts are concerned with intrinsic suitabilities.
Temperance is a virtue because it is possible to identify objective excess and defect.
That persuasion may be a product is one of the most corrosive ideas ever conceived.
three major axes of sexual life: piety relations between parent and child, friendship between partners, restraint and reason in sexual act and desire itself
Symbolic thinking arises naturally out of causal thinking.
mercy as a sign by which God is known
mercy as expressing the image of God
ascetic discipline in the cell of self-knowledge
Forms of skepticism that are irrational often arise from failure to think things through in a rational order.
genre as setting default ends and means for a work
the hagiographer as teaching assistant
A major part of mercy is simply having good will toward people doing good things, even if they are not the best things, or even if they are not wholly good enough for the circumstances.
In the saints we see that every character flaw -- obstinacy, tendency to anger, proneness to scheming, slipperiness, phlegmatic sluggishness, or what have you -- has some nondefective counterpart consistent with splendid character.
empiricism in the mode of autobiographical sincerity vs empiricism in the mode of ethnographical fidelity
the felt endeavor of matter qua object of senses
To measure presupposes causal forces, especially cohesion.
translocative identity
identity across doxastic and epistemic situations
contemplation of the prayers of others as a form of prayer
an argument against Bentham's attack on asceticism based on the idea that we should deny ourselves pleasure to avoid harming another even if our pleasure 'outweighs' their harm
beatitude as full participation in divine providence
(nature, reason, grace, and glory as levels of participation in divine providence)
dragons, unicorns, and the in-principle possibility of sublime animals (pace Kant)
- Kant, of course, would protest about confusing sublimity and monstrosity (das Ungeheure) in the case of dragons, and confusing sublimity and beauty with unicorns
the sublimity of mercy
Almost all, and perhaps all, consensus in physics reduces to:
(1) The mathematics at hand works in mathematical terms.
(2) It is relevant to the real world.
(3) Whatever its relevance, that relevance is constrained by such-and-such kind of evidence.
When there is dispute, it is almost all at the level of (3), although (2) sometimes pops up, and (1) is not unheard of in new fields of inquiry.
resistance to being ignored as a mark of truth.
(A) A sign is what represents another to a cognitive power.
(B) An instrument is what acts through the power of another.
(C) An occasion is that on account of which another may act.
(1) A sacrament may be an occasion of our sanctification (minor sacrament or sacramental) or an instrument of our sanctification (major sacrament).
(2) Every instrument of sanctification may also be an occasion of sanctification.
(3) Minor sacraments are occasions of sanctification, certified as such by God or the Church, that are not also in themselves instruments of sanctification.
(4) Minor sacraments are as infinite as the prayers and means of prayer available to the Church, and as multifaceted.
(5) 'Major sacrament' may be taken in a comprehensive sense to include all sacraments together, in which case there is one sacrament, which is formally Christ and materially the Church as His Mystical Body.
(6) 'Major sacrament' may be taken in the specific and most proper sense, in which case there are seven acts of the Church that involve in themselves instrumental causes of our sanctification and sensible signs of it: illumination, coronation, chrismation, ordination, reconciliation, consolation, and communion.
(7) Three of the major sacraments, those involving illumination, chrismation, and ordination, in themselves make the recipients themselves perpetual signs of Christ and who are thereby made capable of being themselves instruments of Christ; these are sacraments of character.
the Burial of Christ and the sacrament of unction
substance, cause, and system have to be understood in such a way that they can overlap
the nine choirs of angels and nine layers of sacrament (the common link is providence)
the juridical character of love for one's children
The ends of an art, craft, or skill are never set solely by the artist or artisan or technician.
character-building as micro-plotting
Platonic Forms as a postulate of rational discourse
Measuring devices measure only under a description.
transcendental affinity and signs of providence (cp. Berkeley)
Moral life is possible: freedom
Moral law has priority: God
Moral life may approach moral law: Immortality
external mind and the heirlooms of tradition
The historical pictorial ideas of St. Birgitta are richer and more fruitful than the abstractions of Hegel.
polytheism as incomplete pantheism
"God is the brave man's hope, not the coward's excuse." Plutarch
"The atheist believes there are no gods; the superstitious would have none, but is a believer against his will, and would be an infidel if he durst." Plutarch
vague identity of measurements
the importance of seeing the world hierarchically for scientific progress
Secrets kept too long can become diseases.
per se and per accidens progress in philosophy (and any intellectual field)
conjecture and refutation as presupposing appropriate classification
If the measure of translation is not constant (different), there is a cause of its inconstancy (difference).
We have a perpetual need to be brilliant in ways for which we ourselves, on our own, do not suffice.
the transintelligible: that known by other intelligibles working as signs
When physicists talk causally, what they usually mean are modal tense operators with respect to coordinate systems.
faith, hope, and love as liturgical virtues
It is love that provides the guarantee to hope.
the modern alienation of love-of-wisdom
Every doctrine in natural theology can be taken per modum cognitionis or per modum inclinationis.
the Dionysian's transfiguration of Platonism and Aquinas's transfiguration of Aristotle as culminating lines of development through the gifts of the Holy Spirit
anticipating the Beatific Vision through sacrament
vagueness as like particular quantity or Diamond
Whenever people say something is purely epistemic, ask why it is not the case that at least some other modalities work the same way.
'a is indeterminately identical to b' vs. 'it is indeterminate that a is identical to b'
vague identity vs vaguely-applying identity statements
To consider: Every contingency operator implies a particular kind of vagueness. And if this be so, would the reverse be true as well?
sublimity as a source of inquiry
regulative ideals as final causes
Natural necessities are linked to real definitions.
certain hope as like a memory of things to come
All articles of faith are also articles of hope, when taken as articulating that to which we are to be united.
marriage as a wealth-generating institution for society
Scientists achieve consensus in part by depreciating things on which consensus does not seem forthcoming.
the endless epicycles of naturalism
the cardinal virtues as porters to the palace of wisdom
Being is truth in the knower and goodness in the lover.
Grace grows by diffusion.
No great evil can properly be understood unless it is seen that the evil itself is already hell. Nor does it require revelation to figure this out; Plato recognizes something very much like this.
Almost every justification of punishment gives a potential ground for a doctrine of hell: deterrence, incapacitation, desert & equality. Even rehabilitation and education, while not grounding it, come in forms consistent with it.
Most denials of the doctrine of hell seem to be driven by an assumption that there is no divine positive law. Think about this.
Merely stipulated premises yield merely conditional conclusions.
quietism as interfering with complete homage to God
the problem of glibness in consequentialist reasoning
A government with a public education system cannot coherently be neutral on moral questions.
The gifts of the Holy Spirit are the lights by which to read and expound Scripture.
WE can only measure subjective change by reference to change in the external world; our sense of ourselves in time depends on our ability to take ourselves to be causally connected with what is not ourselves.
the Incarnation and the representation of moral law as both sublime and lovable
The perfection of moral law requires a moral providence.
It is clear that we have some power to distribute reward in proportion to virtue, some of the time.
Moral life is structured by the kind of trust found in hope.
There are some moral judgments a human being is not well-placed to make.
"in everything worth having, even in every pleasure, there is a point of pain or tedium that must be survived, so that the pleasure may revive and endure." Chesterton
contingent laws of nature as effects
contingency in actuality as requiring reference to final causes
the long-term convergence of canonic and logic
The Eucharist is that to which all Catholic life tends, but presented only under sacramental sign.
analogy as essential to classification
artificial and natural analogy
burial of the dead as an act of hope
Tobit as an analysis of eleemosyne
Susannah and silent prayer
Susannah as type of Christ
Susannah and divine foreknowledge
Ritual requires setting things aside for a purpose.
To recite the Creed is to refresh oneself at the spring of one's baptism.
"If life is in us, then so is evidence of God." John Calvin
"Faith by itself cannot please Him, since without love of neighbor there is no faith." Calvin
"The greatest victory of God took place when Christ, having overcome sin, conquered death, and put Satan to flight, was lifted up to heaven in majesty, that he might reign gloriously over the Church." Calvin
Hume's account of equality is an account of measurement.
What counts as sufficient reason varies according to domain.
The truth of necessary and contingency propositions all together finds its sufficient reason in what is.
Physicalism, if true, would be a claim about accounts of the world, and only indirectly about the world at all.
Nonreductive naturalisms based on first-person perspective inevitably have the same general structure as idealism.
the PSR is based on the convertibility of being and intelligibility
reasons as intelligible actualities
"All revolutions began by being abstract." Chesterton
"The great human dogma, then, is that the wind moves the trees. The great human heresy is that the trees move the wind." Chesterton
Roses of Blue Coral
The Absence of the Muse
by Clark Ashton Smith
O Muse, where loiterest thou? In any land
Of Saturn, lit with moons and nenuphars?
Or in what high metropolis of Mars—
Hearing the gongs of dire, occult command,
And bugles blown from strand to unknown strand
Of continents embattled in old wars
That primal kings began? Or on the bars
Of ebbing seas in Venus, from the sand
Of shattered nacre with a thousand hues,
Dost pluck the blossoms of the purple wrack
And roses of blue coral for thy hair?
Or, flown beyond the roaring Zodiac,
Translatest thou the tale of earthly news
And earthly songs to singers of Altair?
Thursday, June 02, 2016
Maronite Year LI
Sacred Heart is, of course, a Latin devotion. The devotion is quite old, going back at least to the twelfth century, but the feast itself first began to be celebrated in the seventeenth century, due to the popularity of the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and the active work of St. John Eudes. Bl. Pius IX established it as a universal feast on the Latin calendar in 1856, after it had been allowed on local calendars in for several centuries. The origin of the Maronite feast occurs within this period, as it was made a holy day of obligation for the Maronite church in the late eighteenth century by Patriarch Joseph IV Estephan. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus had spread from the Latin Church to the Maronite Church in small trickles, but these trickles became a flood through the rise of a very controversial figure in modern Maronite history, Hindiyya al-'Ujaimi, a nun who had visions. She became widely regarded in Lebanon, and actively pushed for the Sacred Heart devotion. A divisive figure, she was supported (or at times at least not opposed) by much of the Maronite hierarchy, including several Patriarchs, but eventually condemned by Rome. But the devotion she had spread so widely did not cease to exist. The feast is no longer a holy day of obligation, and is not marked out with any special liturgical fanfare, but it is still celebrated, and it is not difficult to find Sacred Heart devotion in Maronite parishes.
Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Galatians 1:11-17; Matthew 11:25-30
The gospel comes from the heart of Christ,
which is the heart of the holy Church.
The Father trusts all in the hands of His Son;
no one knows the Son save the Father,
and no one the Father save the Son
and those who come to know Him in and through the Son,
sharing as one the heart of the Son.
Our Lord, in Your love hear our prayers.
We, Your servants, beg You for mercy,
we who through Your grace have been raised to friendship,
for when we had fallen, You raised us,
and though we had been lost, You saved us,
for though we had wandered, we knocked at Your door,
and You answered in lovingkindness.
Not according to our stubbornness,
nor our disobedience, O Lord,
but according to our repentance view us,
that our turning might be a model,
shining to others, a sign of hope.
We, O Christ, have been sealed with Your holy Name,
stamped on our hearts with water and oil.
Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Galatians 1:11-17; Matthew 11:25-30
The gospel comes from the heart of Christ,
which is the heart of the holy Church.
The Father trusts all in the hands of His Son;
no one knows the Son save the Father,
and no one the Father save the Son
and those who come to know Him in and through the Son,
sharing as one the heart of the Son.
Our Lord, in Your love hear our prayers.
We, Your servants, beg You for mercy,
we who through Your grace have been raised to friendship,
for when we had fallen, You raised us,
and though we had been lost, You saved us,
for though we had wandered, we knocked at Your door,
and You answered in lovingkindness.
Not according to our stubbornness,
nor our disobedience, O Lord,
but according to our repentance view us,
that our turning might be a model,
shining to others, a sign of hope.
We, O Christ, have been sealed with Your holy Name,
stamped on our hearts with water and oil.
Wednesday, June 01, 2016
Justin Martyr
Today is the feast of St. Justin Martyr, who could be considered a kind of patron saint for this weblog. Over the years, I've noted about his Middle Platonism, his quotation of Plato's Timaeus, his account of philosophical disagreements, the irony of his martyrdom under Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosopher, by accusations from Crescens, the Cynic philosopher. But it might perhaps be worthwhile to consider martyrdom itself. Justin's Second Apology can be read as a discussion of martyrdom and its rationality.
The Stoics and Cynics, you might recall, seem to have taken the Christians to be zealots eager to die because they had excited their imaginations with fantastic stories. It's perhaps unsurprising, then, that Justin responds by emphasizing the ways in which both Stoic philosophers and their philosophical heroes insisted on dying when the matter was forced upon them:
Contrary to the Cynic accusation, he argues, Christians do not rush toward their deaths; but death is a debt every human being must pay, and Christians, understanding the true nature of the world, give thanks when they pay that debt. This fearlessness in the face of death shows forth the true value of virtue, and, Justin notes, led to his own conversion:
Who does not have the faith of the martyrs, does not have the faith.
The Stoics and Cynics, you might recall, seem to have taken the Christians to be zealots eager to die because they had excited their imaginations with fantastic stories. It's perhaps unsurprising, then, that Justin responds by emphasizing the ways in which both Stoic philosophers and their philosophical heroes insisted on dying when the matter was forced upon them:
And those of the Stoic school--since, so far as their moral teaching went, they were admirable, as were also the poets in some particulars, on account of the seed of reason [the Logos] implanted in every race of men-- were, we know, hated and put to death,--Heraclitus for instance, and, among those of our own time, Musonius and others. For, as we intimated, the devils have always effected, that all those who anyhow live a reasonable and earnest life and shun vice, be hated.
Contrary to the Cynic accusation, he argues, Christians do not rush toward their deaths; but death is a debt every human being must pay, and Christians, understanding the true nature of the world, give thanks when they pay that debt. This fearlessness in the face of death shows forth the true value of virtue, and, Justin notes, led to his own conversion:
For I myself, too, when I was delighting in the doctrines of Plato, and heard the Christians slandered, and saw them fearless of death, and of all other things which are counted fearful, perceived that it was impossible that they could be living in wickedness and pleasure. For what sensual or intemperate man, or who that counts it good to feast on human flesh, could welcome death that he might be deprived of his enjoyments, and would not rather continue always the present life, and attempt to escape the observation of the rulers; and much less would he denounce himself when the consequence would be death?...For I myself, when I discovered the wicked disguise which the evil spirits had thrown around the divine doctrines of the Christians, to turn aside others from joining them, laughed both at those who framed these falsehoods, and at the disguise itself, and at popular opinion; and I confess that I both boast and with all my strength strive to be found a Christian; not because the teachings of Plato are different from those of Christ, but because they are not in all respects similar, as neither are those of the others, Stoics, and poets, and historians.
Who does not have the faith of the martyrs, does not have the faith.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
A Quick Trip to Italy, Miscellanea V
Rome: Forum
More pictures of Trajan's Forum:
The Forum Augustum, as seen from across the street:
Looking down into and over Caesar's Forum:
And looking out at the archeological area:
And looking over at the Coliseum:
to be continued
More pictures of Trajan's Forum:
The Forum Augustum, as seen from across the street:
Looking down into and over Caesar's Forum:
And looking out at the archeological area:
And looking over at the Coliseum:
to be continued
Monday, May 30, 2016
Duty of Moral Culture
It is very important for us to teach that we can possess virtues, only by being virtuous; and that to have been virtuous is not necessarily to be so:—-—that Virtue in general, and every virtue in particular, is a living thing, which is only while it grows :---that the current of Duty must flow from a perennial spring of right thoughts and affections and desires, of which no words can reach the bottom. And since we can act, not only upon external things, and upon other persons, but also upon ourselves, we have here, too, a sphere of duty. We have it for our business to form within ourselves these springs of duty; or at least, if it is not ours to form them, we have to draw them forth, to encourage their flow, to carry their clearness further and further into the depths of our minds and hearts. We have to cultivate Virtues, as well as to perform Duties :—-—to become, and to be, as well as to do. It is this recognition of the Duty of Moral Culture, which will prevent our Virtue from being stagnant. We are not only to try to be benevolent and just and true and pure; but always to be more benevolent, more just, more true, more pure; to carry these qualities deeper and deeper into our hearts, so that they may more and more give their colour to our intentions, desires and affections. Thus only can we save our Morality from being of that rigid and contracted kind, which the expanding heart of man cannot bear ;-—of that stationary and finite extent, which the progressive soul of man soon leaves behind.
William Whewell, Lectures on Systematic Morality, Lecture V
1964 Heritage Press Book Ballot
I've decided to postpone the next Fortnightly Book until next weekend, since this is the beginning of what looks like might be a fairly busy summer term. But in one of the books that I was considering, George du Maurier's Peter Ibbetson, I found tucked away a book ballot dated 15 January 1964. The Heritage Club issued one book a month, with each series beginning in June. The series that began in 1964, for instance, was the 29th. To do that, of course, the Directors had to select twelve books several months beforehand; and to guarantee that the books were popular choices, they would send out a set of ballots to some of their subscribed members. In the first ballot, members would nominate works; on the basis of those nominations, the Directors would create a second ballot (eliminating works still in copyright or repeats and adding their own), and send those out to a different set of members. What was tucked away in Peter Ibbetson was the second ballot, sent to my grandfather and never filled out. There are 48 works on the list. I include them below. The Heritage Press works I have are bolded.
ALMAYER'S FOLLY by Joseph Conrad
THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
THE ANABASIS; THE MARCH OF THE TEN THOUSAND by Xenophon
THE POLITICS AND THE POETICS by Aristotle
BHAGAVAD GITA: THE SONG CELESTIAL by Sir Edwin Arnold
BILLY BUDD AND OTHER STORIES by Herman Melville
THE BOOK OF PROVERBS
CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA and THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE by George Bernard Shaw
DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA by Alexis de Tocqueville
THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce
THE DISCOURSES OF EPICTETUS
DR. FAUSTUS by Christopher Marlowe
DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes
DROLL STORIES by Honoré de Balzac
EMMA by Jane Austen
A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
FLAUBERT: THREE TALES
THE FORSYTE SAGA: THE MAN OF PROPERTY by John Galsworthy
THE GILGAMESH EPIC OF BABYLONIA
THE GLORIOUS ADVENTURES OF TYL UGENSPIEL by Charles de Coster
GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE HAPPY PRINCE AND OTHER TALES by Oscar Wilde
HARD TIMES by Charles Dickens
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST by Thomas à Kempis
THE JUNGLE by Upton Sinclair
THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS by Suetonius
THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK by Alexandre Dumas
THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE by Robert Louis Stevenson
THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE by Thomas Hardy
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS by George Eliot
THE PATHFINDERS by James Fenimore Cooper
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD by John M. Synge
PLAYS OF HENRIK IBSEN
THE POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS
THE POEMS OF JOHN KEATS
POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK by Benjamin Franklin
THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER by Mark Twain
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA by Anthony Hope
PROMETHEUS BOUND by Aeschylus and PROMETHEUS UNBOUND by Shelley
SHORT STORIES by O. Henry
SONS AND LOVERS by D. H. Lawrence
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA by Friedrich Nietzsche
VOLPONE, OR THE FOX by Ben Jonson
WALDEN, OR LIFE IN THE WOODS by Henry David Thoreau
WILHELM MEISTER'S APPRENTICESHIP by Goethe
THE WOMAN IN WHITE by Wilkie Collins
All Heritage Press books on my shelf will eventually be Fortnightly Books; so far about one in every four has been Heritage Press. Of the bolded ones above, I have already done the Stevenson (Introduction, Review), the Shaw (Introduction, Review), and the Goethe (Introduction, Review).
In the spirit of ballots, I thought I would ask if anyone has a preference among the above for the next Fortnightly Book? That is out of the bolded above, minus the three already done but adding Peter Ibbetson, are there any preferences? If there's a clear favorite, I'll do that one next. If there's a spread, I'll pick one from the recommendations, and it might be possible to get a couple of others in during the next few months. I intend this summer to do Tristram Shandy, at least one Umberto Eco novel, and Volume 3 of the Arabian Nights, which is probably most of the summer, but I could always reserve a few for early fall term.
The deadline for recommendations is Saturday the fourth.
ALMAYER'S FOLLY by Joseph Conrad
THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
THE ANABASIS; THE MARCH OF THE TEN THOUSAND by Xenophon
THE POLITICS AND THE POETICS by Aristotle
BHAGAVAD GITA: THE SONG CELESTIAL by Sir Edwin Arnold
BILLY BUDD AND OTHER STORIES by Herman Melville
THE BOOK OF PROVERBS
CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA and THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE by George Bernard Shaw
DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA by Alexis de Tocqueville
THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce
THE DISCOURSES OF EPICTETUS
DR. FAUSTUS by Christopher Marlowe
DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes
DROLL STORIES by Honoré de Balzac
EMMA by Jane Austen
A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
FLAUBERT: THREE TALES
THE FORSYTE SAGA: THE MAN OF PROPERTY by John Galsworthy
THE GILGAMESH EPIC OF BABYLONIA
THE GLORIOUS ADVENTURES OF TYL UGENSPIEL by Charles de Coster
GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE HAPPY PRINCE AND OTHER TALES by Oscar Wilde
HARD TIMES by Charles Dickens
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST by Thomas à Kempis
THE JUNGLE by Upton Sinclair
THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS by Suetonius
THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK by Alexandre Dumas
THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE by Robert Louis Stevenson
THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE by Thomas Hardy
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS by George Eliot
THE PATHFINDERS by James Fenimore Cooper
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD by John M. Synge
PLAYS OF HENRIK IBSEN
THE POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS
THE POEMS OF JOHN KEATS
POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK by Benjamin Franklin
THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER by Mark Twain
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA by Anthony Hope
PROMETHEUS BOUND by Aeschylus and PROMETHEUS UNBOUND by Shelley
SHORT STORIES by O. Henry
SONS AND LOVERS by D. H. Lawrence
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA by Friedrich Nietzsche
VOLPONE, OR THE FOX by Ben Jonson
WALDEN, OR LIFE IN THE WOODS by Henry David Thoreau
WILHELM MEISTER'S APPRENTICESHIP by Goethe
THE WOMAN IN WHITE by Wilkie Collins
All Heritage Press books on my shelf will eventually be Fortnightly Books; so far about one in every four has been Heritage Press. Of the bolded ones above, I have already done the Stevenson (Introduction, Review), the Shaw (Introduction, Review), and the Goethe (Introduction, Review).
In the spirit of ballots, I thought I would ask if anyone has a preference among the above for the next Fortnightly Book? That is out of the bolded above, minus the three already done but adding Peter Ibbetson, are there any preferences? If there's a clear favorite, I'll do that one next. If there's a spread, I'll pick one from the recommendations, and it might be possible to get a couple of others in during the next few months. I intend this summer to do Tristram Shandy, at least one Umberto Eco novel, and Volume 3 of the Arabian Nights, which is probably most of the summer, but I could always reserve a few for early fall term.
The deadline for recommendations is Saturday the fourth.
Sunday, May 29, 2016
Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed
Introduction
Opening Passage:
Summary: The Betrothed takes place in the Duchy of Milan (and parts in the Republic of Venice) in 1628 and the following years. It is a time of war as the great powers of Europe use northern Italy as a chessboard in their power struggles. It is also a time of thuggery, as local nobles hired bravi to be guards, enforcers, and assassins. Amidst it all, Renzo and Lucia are two young people intending on marriage; but their parish priest, Don Abbondio, a timid man, has been threatened by Don Rodrigo's bravi if he marries them. Don Rodrigo has set his eye on Lucia. They eventually have to flee.
Lucia and her mother Agnese end up arranging to hide Lucia in the convent under the protection of Gertrude; since Gertrude is a princess from an important family, even if Don Rodrigo discovered Lucia's location, it would make him hesitate to move against her. Renzo ends up in Milan at exactly the wrong time; the city is undergoing bread riots due to price controls. (One of the interesting things about the book is how much it is about economics, and, in particular, the ills caused by centralized economic planning.) He ends up in the middle of one of the riots and by naivete manages to get blamed for the whole thing. He is forced to flee to his cousin in Bergamo, in Venetian territory.
Don Rodrigo in the meantime makes an appeal to a local warlord, referred to in the text only as l'Innominato, the Unnamed. Through the latter's intervention, Gertrude is blackmailed and Lucia is kidnapped. Despite the way it seems, this ends up being the beginning of the reversal of the misfortunes of Renzo and Lucia. There are still more troubles ahead, but the arrival of Federigo Borromeo, the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, in the village nearby will begin the chain of events that eventually leads to the triumph of Lucia and Renzo.
This is very much a character-focused book. The plot is deliberately episodic in the style of (say) Sir Walter Scott, in which events meander here and there but we learn a lot about our main characters. The book also has quite a few digressions in which we learn about minor characters. I don't think there's any named character for whom we do not get at least some background. Because of this, the characters are all very vivid and distinctive. As with any Scott-style narrative, events move quickly, and despite the digressions don't ever bog you down.
The sheer variety of means and devices that Manzoni uses to tell his story, and uses well, is extraordinary. The most famous passage of the book, for instance, is the Addio ai monti at the end of Chapter 8, which opens:
Or in the Italian:
Most of the book is not in this high-toned poetic prose, but its place here, at this moment in the story, takes an already excellent bit of writing and gives it great power. Manzoni uses many other devices to tell his story. The novel has a framing device -- the narrator claims to be modernizing an old chronicle -- and comments on it throughout the work. There are historical discursions and footnotes. There are ironic comments about human nature and earnest sermons. There are close, intense descriptions and descriptions that are purely suggestive. There are characters that are treated in idealized terms and characters that are comic relief. There are many interwoven themes. The prose swoops high and then low again. This is a virtuoso work, in terms of the techniques of writing.
To make your day even more awesome, here is the Italian group Oblivion giving their comic performance of "I Promessi Sposi in Dieci Minuti" (The Betrothed in Ten Minutes):
Some of the events represented:
0:20 The opening of the book
0:57 Don Rodrigo's bravi intimidate Don Abbondio
2:32 Renzo arrives to finish up the arrangements for the marriage
3:36 Renzo and Lucia discuss what to do
6:16 Renzo gets involved in the Milanese riots
6:45 Gertrude's story
7:11 Lucia is kidnapped
7:32 Lucia vows to give up marriage if the Virgin will save her
7:34 Lucia meets the Unnamed
8:06 Federico Borromeo enters the story
8:29 The plague begins
9:20 Renzo and Lucia meet up again
Favorite Passage:
Recommendation: Highly Recommended; this is an excellent book.
-------------
Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed, Colquhoun, tr., Everyman's Library (New York: 2013).
Opening Passage:
That branch of the lake of Como which extends southwards between two unbroken chains of mountains, and is all gulfs and bays as the mountains advance and recede, narrows down at one point, between a promontory on one side and a wide shore on the other, into the form of a river; and the bridge which lines the two banks seems to emphasize this transformation even more, and to mark the point at which the lake ends and the Adda begins, only to become a lake once more where the banks draw farther apart again, letting the water broaden out and expand into new creeks and bays. (p. 7)
Summary: The Betrothed takes place in the Duchy of Milan (and parts in the Republic of Venice) in 1628 and the following years. It is a time of war as the great powers of Europe use northern Italy as a chessboard in their power struggles. It is also a time of thuggery, as local nobles hired bravi to be guards, enforcers, and assassins. Amidst it all, Renzo and Lucia are two young people intending on marriage; but their parish priest, Don Abbondio, a timid man, has been threatened by Don Rodrigo's bravi if he marries them. Don Rodrigo has set his eye on Lucia. They eventually have to flee.
Lucia and her mother Agnese end up arranging to hide Lucia in the convent under the protection of Gertrude; since Gertrude is a princess from an important family, even if Don Rodrigo discovered Lucia's location, it would make him hesitate to move against her. Renzo ends up in Milan at exactly the wrong time; the city is undergoing bread riots due to price controls. (One of the interesting things about the book is how much it is about economics, and, in particular, the ills caused by centralized economic planning.) He ends up in the middle of one of the riots and by naivete manages to get blamed for the whole thing. He is forced to flee to his cousin in Bergamo, in Venetian territory.
Don Rodrigo in the meantime makes an appeal to a local warlord, referred to in the text only as l'Innominato, the Unnamed. Through the latter's intervention, Gertrude is blackmailed and Lucia is kidnapped. Despite the way it seems, this ends up being the beginning of the reversal of the misfortunes of Renzo and Lucia. There are still more troubles ahead, but the arrival of Federigo Borromeo, the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, in the village nearby will begin the chain of events that eventually leads to the triumph of Lucia and Renzo.
This is very much a character-focused book. The plot is deliberately episodic in the style of (say) Sir Walter Scott, in which events meander here and there but we learn a lot about our main characters. The book also has quite a few digressions in which we learn about minor characters. I don't think there's any named character for whom we do not get at least some background. Because of this, the characters are all very vivid and distinctive. As with any Scott-style narrative, events move quickly, and despite the digressions don't ever bog you down.
The sheer variety of means and devices that Manzoni uses to tell his story, and uses well, is extraordinary. The most famous passage of the book, for instance, is the Addio ai monti at the end of Chapter 8, which opens:
Farewell, mountains springing from waters and rising to the sky; rugged peaks, failiar to any man who has grown up in your midst, and impressed upon his mind as clearly as the features of his nearest and dearest; torrents whose varying tones he can pick out as easily as the voices of his family; villages scattered white over the slopes, like herds of grazing sheep; farewell! How sadly steps he who was reared among you, as he draws away!...
Or in the Italian:
Addio, monti sorgenti dall'acque, ed elevati al cielo cime inuguali, note a chi è cresciuto tra voi, e impresse nella sua mente, non meno che l'aspetto de' suoi più familiari; torrenti, de' quali distingue lo scroscio, come il suono delle voci domestiche; ville sparse e biancheggianti sul pendìo, come branchi di pecore pascenti; addio! Quanto è tristo il passo di chi, cresciuto tra voi, se ne allontana!...
Most of the book is not in this high-toned poetic prose, but its place here, at this moment in the story, takes an already excellent bit of writing and gives it great power. Manzoni uses many other devices to tell his story. The novel has a framing device -- the narrator claims to be modernizing an old chronicle -- and comments on it throughout the work. There are historical discursions and footnotes. There are ironic comments about human nature and earnest sermons. There are close, intense descriptions and descriptions that are purely suggestive. There are characters that are treated in idealized terms and characters that are comic relief. There are many interwoven themes. The prose swoops high and then low again. This is a virtuoso work, in terms of the techniques of writing.
To make your day even more awesome, here is the Italian group Oblivion giving their comic performance of "I Promessi Sposi in Dieci Minuti" (The Betrothed in Ten Minutes):
Some of the events represented:
0:20 The opening of the book
0:57 Don Rodrigo's bravi intimidate Don Abbondio
2:32 Renzo arrives to finish up the arrangements for the marriage
3:36 Renzo and Lucia discuss what to do
6:16 Renzo gets involved in the Milanese riots
6:45 Gertrude's story
7:11 Lucia is kidnapped
7:32 Lucia vows to give up marriage if the Virgin will save her
7:34 Lucia meets the Unnamed
8:06 Federico Borromeo enters the story
8:29 The plague begins
9:20 Renzo and Lucia meet up again
Favorite Passage:
As soon as she was alone with her mother she told her all about it; but Agnese, with her greater experience, solved all her doubts, and cleared up the whole mystery in a few words.
'Don't be surprised,' said she. 'When you've known the world as long as I have, you'll realize these things aren't to be wondered at. All the gentry are a bit crazy. The best thing to do is to let 'em talk as they want, particularly if one needs them. Just look as if you're listening to them seriously, as if they were talking sense. You heard how she shouted at me, as if I'd said something silly? I didn't let it bother me. They're all like that....' (p. 170)
Recommendation: Highly Recommended; this is an excellent book.
-------------
Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed, Colquhoun, tr., Everyman's Library (New York: 2013).
Maronite Year L
In the Season of Pentecost under the current Maronite calendar, there are two alternating weeks A and B; every week A has the same liturgy and every week B has the same liturgy, with only the readings changing. (Of course, in the Maronite Qurbono, the anaphora also changes, since they have so many, but this is according to the preferences of the priest.) Week A is organized thematically:
Sunday: Resurrection
Monday: Angels
Tuesday: Righteous and Just, and Confessors
Wednesday: Virgin Mary
Thursday: Twelve Apostles
Friday: Martyrs
Saturday: Faithful Departed
These serve as the liturgies for commemorations throughout the year, so that, for instance, if a priest celebrates the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, he uses the Thursday of Week A of the Season of Pentecost. The Season of Pentecost, in other words, diffuses throughout the year.
The readings of the Season of Pentecost all emphasize the Holy Spirit and the mission of the Church. It used to be the case that they heavily emphasized the book of Revelation as a book about the Church, but the currently used cycle of readings draws heavily from Paul's letters to the Corinthians.
Third Sunday of Pentecost
1 Corinthians 2:1-10; John 14:21-27
Through the blessings of Your resurrection,
through this day, O Lord,
grant us times of peace,
grant us periods of tranquility.
May we praise Your name
with heavenly hosts,
giving You glory now and forever!
Not mere rhetoric but Christ crucified;
not philosophy,
but Christ crucified;
not brash confidence, but distrust of self,
not persuasive words
born of human minds,
but only God's power and God's wisdom.
Jesus is the Truth, the Way, and the Life;
none reach the Father
except through the Son;
who has seen the Son has seen the Father.
Who has faith in God
must have faith in Him,
and by sacraments they will do great things.
No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor heart thought
the things He has done;
praise the Lord of Lords,
for His lovingkindness endures always.
He has done wonders,
His love does not die,
and His great mercy endures forever.
To You, Christ, is glory due this Sunday,
and all of our lives,
for You descended,
and by Your descent You saved us from death.
By resurrection
You brought boundless joy,
enlightening all with Your salvation.
Sunday: Resurrection
Monday: Angels
Tuesday: Righteous and Just, and Confessors
Wednesday: Virgin Mary
Thursday: Twelve Apostles
Friday: Martyrs
Saturday: Faithful Departed
These serve as the liturgies for commemorations throughout the year, so that, for instance, if a priest celebrates the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, he uses the Thursday of Week A of the Season of Pentecost. The Season of Pentecost, in other words, diffuses throughout the year.
The readings of the Season of Pentecost all emphasize the Holy Spirit and the mission of the Church. It used to be the case that they heavily emphasized the book of Revelation as a book about the Church, but the currently used cycle of readings draws heavily from Paul's letters to the Corinthians.
Third Sunday of Pentecost
1 Corinthians 2:1-10; John 14:21-27
Through the blessings of Your resurrection,
through this day, O Lord,
grant us times of peace,
grant us periods of tranquility.
May we praise Your name
with heavenly hosts,
giving You glory now and forever!
Not mere rhetoric but Christ crucified;
not philosophy,
but Christ crucified;
not brash confidence, but distrust of self,
not persuasive words
born of human minds,
but only God's power and God's wisdom.
Jesus is the Truth, the Way, and the Life;
none reach the Father
except through the Son;
who has seen the Son has seen the Father.
Who has faith in God
must have faith in Him,
and by sacraments they will do great things.
No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor heart thought
the things He has done;
praise the Lord of Lords,
for His lovingkindness endures always.
He has done wonders,
His love does not die,
and His great mercy endures forever.
To You, Christ, is glory due this Sunday,
and all of our lives,
for You descended,
and by Your descent You saved us from death.
By resurrection
You brought boundless joy,
enlightening all with Your salvation.
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Love and Friendship
Novels and irony go together, in the sense that many of the literary techniques that work best with novels involve some kind of irony, namely, laying down a limit while also transcending it. This always creates some difficulty in adapting a novel to cinema, because cinema does not do irony very well. It's not that you can't have ironic cinema, but there are fewer ways to express it, because the irony of novels arises from suggesting; but in film, suggesting is easily lost in showing.
This problem is intensified when it comes to adapting an epistolary novel, because epistolary novels are even more suggestive in character than ordinary novels. In addition, an epistolary novel by its very structure is related to a dialogue, and dialogues do not easily translate into the spectacle required by cinema.
Thus an adaptation of Austen's epistolary Lady Susan, as Whit Stillman's Love and Friendship is, faces a very large number of problems at the outset. All in all, they are masterfully handled, though. One of the things Stillman certainly did right was to keep the pace fairly swift; the movie is only 91 minutes long. Stillman also makes excellent use of the snippet, that is, the brief scene letting us know something is happening without spending a lot of time dwelling on it, just allowing the snippets to interact by juxtaposition and contrast. Since much of the action of Lady Susan is either suggested or briefly described, this is almost certainly the best way to handle the problem.
Humor is more difficult. Austen's humor is very ironic and sometimes very dry and subtle, as well; there's no way to represent it adequately on the screen, which is why Austen adaptations always run the risk of being too serious. Stillman mostly cuts the Gordian knot with this problem; despite the fact that Stillman manages to be relatively faithful, a lot of the humor in the movie is Stillman's rather than Austen's, and it is inevitably less subtle, since we at times are simply told the punchline, which is then flagged by all the arts of cinema. (Cinema inevitably has more ways of directing our attention to something than any book could possibly have.) This is most obvious at the end of the movie. Austen can simply leave open a spectrum of possibilities; the movie has to show us something definite.
But the humor largely works as well. The Fourth/Fifth Commandment joke running throughout works surprisingly well, and does double duty as an example both of Lady Susan's manipulativeness and as a proof of her power to affect people. Sir James Martin's simpleness is almost absurdly exaggerated, but since everyone else mostly plays the humor straight, it's nice to have a contrast. A goof gets the laugh going, and that gives people a running start on chuckling at the witticisms. In essence, Austen's humor is being blended with British sketch comedy. And the result is, I think, the funniest Austen adaptation ever made.
The chief difficulty with adapting Lady Susan is that Lady Susan is actually quite malicious, and we can see it because we are getting her candid comments along with the reactions of other people. But this is easily lost, and inevitably much of it is lost here, because film, again, cannot so easily build a wall to hide something and then just give us clues about what's on the other side. We need Lady Susan's perspective here -- but we only get it on screen through pretty Kate Beckinsale sweetly saying things that we know would be shocking but which mostly come across as charming and funny -- as indeed they would have to, if Lady Susan actually said them.
But perhaps this works well in its own way; Lady Susan is a liar and manipulator, a villainess to the core, and yet in some fashion she shows up here as better -- certainly more competent and charming -- than many of the heroes and heroines Hollywood throws at us and somehow expects us to admire.
This problem is intensified when it comes to adapting an epistolary novel, because epistolary novels are even more suggestive in character than ordinary novels. In addition, an epistolary novel by its very structure is related to a dialogue, and dialogues do not easily translate into the spectacle required by cinema.
Thus an adaptation of Austen's epistolary Lady Susan, as Whit Stillman's Love and Friendship is, faces a very large number of problems at the outset. All in all, they are masterfully handled, though. One of the things Stillman certainly did right was to keep the pace fairly swift; the movie is only 91 minutes long. Stillman also makes excellent use of the snippet, that is, the brief scene letting us know something is happening without spending a lot of time dwelling on it, just allowing the snippets to interact by juxtaposition and contrast. Since much of the action of Lady Susan is either suggested or briefly described, this is almost certainly the best way to handle the problem.
Humor is more difficult. Austen's humor is very ironic and sometimes very dry and subtle, as well; there's no way to represent it adequately on the screen, which is why Austen adaptations always run the risk of being too serious. Stillman mostly cuts the Gordian knot with this problem; despite the fact that Stillman manages to be relatively faithful, a lot of the humor in the movie is Stillman's rather than Austen's, and it is inevitably less subtle, since we at times are simply told the punchline, which is then flagged by all the arts of cinema. (Cinema inevitably has more ways of directing our attention to something than any book could possibly have.) This is most obvious at the end of the movie. Austen can simply leave open a spectrum of possibilities; the movie has to show us something definite.
But the humor largely works as well. The Fourth/Fifth Commandment joke running throughout works surprisingly well, and does double duty as an example both of Lady Susan's manipulativeness and as a proof of her power to affect people. Sir James Martin's simpleness is almost absurdly exaggerated, but since everyone else mostly plays the humor straight, it's nice to have a contrast. A goof gets the laugh going, and that gives people a running start on chuckling at the witticisms. In essence, Austen's humor is being blended with British sketch comedy. And the result is, I think, the funniest Austen adaptation ever made.
The chief difficulty with adapting Lady Susan is that Lady Susan is actually quite malicious, and we can see it because we are getting her candid comments along with the reactions of other people. But this is easily lost, and inevitably much of it is lost here, because film, again, cannot so easily build a wall to hide something and then just give us clues about what's on the other side. We need Lady Susan's perspective here -- but we only get it on screen through pretty Kate Beckinsale sweetly saying things that we know would be shocking but which mostly come across as charming and funny -- as indeed they would have to, if Lady Susan actually said them.
But perhaps this works well in its own way; Lady Susan is a liar and manipulator, a villainess to the core, and yet in some fashion she shows up here as better -- certainly more competent and charming -- than many of the heroes and heroines Hollywood throws at us and somehow expects us to admire.
Friday, May 27, 2016
Tolstoy on Baumgarten's Trinity
So I saw Love and Friendship today, which was good; more on it at some point. But one of the minor scenes that Stillman adds is one of Frederica talking to the local curate. During the conversation, the curate mentions "the divine Baumgarten", which caught my ear. It's a curious twist in the conversation, which is about the commandment to honor one's parents. The curate summarizes Baumgarten's position as a trinity, and, he explains (more or less), "Beauty is the Perfect recognized through the senses; Truth is the Perfect perceived through reason; Goodness is the Perfect reached by moral will."
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten is in many ways the founder of modern aesthetics; it was he who first used the word 'aesthetica' to describe matters concerned with beauty (the word actually means 'matters concerned with the senses'). Baumgarten took aesthetics to be the art of thinking beautifully. The curate, however, is ahead of his time; he is actually closely paraphrasing Tolstoy writing some ninety years later in What is Art?. Tolstoy arguably doesn't get Baumgarten quite right; the idea that beauty is sensible apprehension of perfection is Wolffian, and Baumgarten, it can be argued, actually switches this up a bit, holding that beauty is the perfection of the apprehension itself (which may, of course, partly depend on perfection in the object). But Tolstoy also has an axe to grind; in great measure What is Art? is an attack on any high-flying metaphysics of beauty (he thinks that people talk a lot about beauty but give the terms they use no serious content). It is in this context that Tolstoy specifically talks about the "Trinity" of Baumgarten:
Tolstoy is not an admirer of the Classical and, unlike the curate, not an admirer of Baumgarten.
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten is in many ways the founder of modern aesthetics; it was he who first used the word 'aesthetica' to describe matters concerned with beauty (the word actually means 'matters concerned with the senses'). Baumgarten took aesthetics to be the art of thinking beautifully. The curate, however, is ahead of his time; he is actually closely paraphrasing Tolstoy writing some ninety years later in What is Art?. Tolstoy arguably doesn't get Baumgarten quite right; the idea that beauty is sensible apprehension of perfection is Wolffian, and Baumgarten, it can be argued, actually switches this up a bit, holding that beauty is the perfection of the apprehension itself (which may, of course, partly depend on perfection in the object). But Tolstoy also has an axe to grind; in great measure What is Art? is an attack on any high-flying metaphysics of beauty (he thinks that people talk a lot about beauty but give the terms they use no serious content). It is in this context that Tolstoy specifically talks about the "Trinity" of Baumgarten:
If a theory justifies the false position in which a certain part of a society is living, then, however unfounded or even obviously false the theory may be, it is accepted, and becomes an article of faith to that section of society....However unfounded such theories are, however contrary to all that is known and confessed by humanity, and however obviously immoral they may be, they are accepted with credulity, pass uncriticized, and are preached, perchance for centuries, until the conditions are destroyed which they served to justify, or until their absurdity has become too evident. To this class belongs this astonishing theory of the Baumgartenian Trinity, — Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, — according to which it appears that the very best that can be done by the art of nations after 1900 years of Christian teaching, is to choose as the ideal of their life the ideal that was held by a small, semi-savage, slave-holding people who lived 2000 years ago, who imitated the nude human body extremely well, and erected buildings pleasant to look at.
Tolstoy is not an admirer of the Classical and, unlike the curate, not an admirer of Baumgarten.
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Rough Timeline of Northern Italy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
1494 First Italian War (1494-1498) begins as France under Charles VIII invades Italy at the urging of Ludovico Sforza of Milan
1495 Leonardo da Vinci's plans for the Gran Cavallo statue come to an end as the bronze instead is used to make Milanese weapons
1499 Second Italian War (1499-1504) begins as France under Louis XII seizes Milan
1503 Pope Julius II succeeds Pius III as Pope
1508 Pope Julius II forms the League of Cambrai (including the Papal States, France, Spain, and the Duchy of Ferrara) against the Republic of Venice, and the War of the League of Cambrai begins
1509 Battle of Agnadello: the Venetians receive a crushing defeat and only extricate themselves by intense diplomatic work
1510 Due to a quarrel with Louis XII, Pope Julius II changes sides in the War of the League of Cambrai and negotiates a deal with the Swiss cantons for military assistance
1511 Facing the prospect of defeat by France, Pope Julius II forms the Holy League
1512 Massimiliano Sforza becomes Duke of Milan; Fifth Lateran Council opens
1513 Due to a quarrel over division of loot, Venice switches sides in the War of the League of Cambrai and joins forces with France; Pope Julius II dies in February, leaving the Holy League without a clear leader, although it will later go on to win victories against France at Guinegate, Scotland at Flodden Field, and Venice at La Motta; Leo X becomes Pope; Macchiavelli publishes The Prince
1516 Leonardo da Vinci happens to meet Francis I of France after the Battle of Marignano and goes back with him to France, taking the Mona Lisa
1517 Fifth Lateran Council closes
1521 The Italian War of 1521 (1521-1526) begins, and Francesco Maria Sforza becomes Duke of Milan with the help of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor
1522 Adrian VI becomes Pope
1523 Clement VII becomes Pope
1525 Battle of Pavia: Charles V defeats the French and seizes control of northern Italy
1526 Pope Clement VII forms the League of Cognac (with England, Milan, Venice, Florence, and France) against the Holy Roman Empire, and the War of the League of Cognac begins
1527 Charles V sacks Rome
1529 The Treaty of Cambrai ends the War of the League of Cognac
1534 Paul III becomes Pope
1536 The death of Francesco Sforza without any clear inheritors sparks the Italian War of 1536 (1536-1538) between Spain (and the Holy Roman Empire) and France as each attempts to consolidate control over Milan
1537 An ecumenical council decreed by Pope Paul III to take place at Mantua has to be moved to Vicenza due to the Italian War; the Third Ottoman-Venetian War (1537-1540) begins
1538 St. Carlo Borromeo is born; the Truce of Nice, negotiated with difficulty by Pope Paul III, ends the Italian War
1539 Due to an inability to get sufficient participation, the ecumenical council at Vicenza is suspended indefinitely
1542 France and the Ottoman Empire begin the Italian War of 1542 (1542-1546) against the Holy Roman Empire in order to re-establish French influence over Milan
1545 Council of Trent opens at Trento
1547 The Council of Trent is transferred to Bologna; however, in fact, it is never opened there
1551 Henry II of France begins the Italian War of 1551 (1551-1559) against the Holy Roman Empire; Pope Julius III reopens the Council of Trent at Trento, but it will be suspended again the next year due to the political situation
1555 Paul IV becomes Pope
1558 Construction of the Lazzaretto of Milan begins
1559 Giovanni Angelo Medici, uncle of St. Carlo Borromeo, becomes Pope Pius IV; the Peace of Cateau Cambresis ends the Italian War
1561 St. Carlo Borromeo founds the Almo Collegio Borromeo in Pavia
1562 Pope Pius IV reopens the Council of Trent
1563 The Council of Trent closes
1564 St. Carlo Borromeo is appointed Archbishop of Milan by Pope Pius IV; Federico Borromeo, his cousin, is born
1566 Pope Pius IV dies; St. Pius V becomes Pope
1570 After years of raids and small conquests, the Ottoman Empire invades the Republic of Venice and the Fourth Ottoman-Venetian War (1570-1573) begins
1571 Pope St. Pius V organizes the Holy League, which defeats the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto
1575 Venice is struck by the plague
1576 Crop failures lead to famine in Milan; St. Carlo Borromeo goes into debt feeding thousands of starving Milanese
1577 Andrea Palladio begins building the church of Santissimo Redentore in Venice as a votive offering for deliverance from the plague
1584 St. Carlo Borromeo dies
1585 Sixtus V becomes Pope
1590 Urban VII becomes Pope and dies twelve days later; Gregory XIV becomes Pope
1591 Innocent IX becomes Pope and dies two months later
1592 Clement VIII becomes Pope
1595 Pope Clement VIII appoints Federico Borromeo Archbishop of Milan
1605 Leo XI becomes Pope and dies three weeks later; Paul V becomes Pope
1609 Federico Borromeo founds the Ambrosian Library in Milan
1610 Pope Paul V canonizes Carlo Borromeo; Galileo Galilei publishes the Sidereus Nuncius
1618 The Thirty Years' War begins
1621 Gregory XV becomes Pope
1623 Urban VIII becomes Pope
1627 A Milanese edict is passed that makes it illegal for priests to refuse to perform marriages where no legal impediment exists -- it is discovering this edict that will inspire the story of The Betrothed
1628 The events of The Betrothed begin; the War of the Mantuan Succession begins as rival claimants receive support from the opposing sides in the Thirty Years' War
1629 The Great Plague begins first in Mantua (due to foreign armies) but spreading to Milan by October; it is initially kept in check, but not eliminated, by careful procedures
1630 The Great Plague flares up in March, and spreads to Venice, where it will kill nearly a third of the population
1631 The Great Plague flares up yet again in Milan; the Venetians begin building the church of Santa Maria della Salute as a votive offering for deliverance from the plague; the Treaty of Cherasco ends the War of the Mantuan Succession; Federico Borromeo dies
1642 Galileo Galilei dies
1644 Innocent X becomes Pope
1645 The Fifth Ottoman-Venetian War (1645-1669) begins
1655 Alexander VII becomes Pope
1656 The Great Plague reaches Genoa and Naples
1667 Clement IX becomes Pope
1669 Clement X becomes Pope
1676 Bl. Innocent XI becomes Pope and begins an intensive reform of the Papal Curia
1684 Siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Empire; Pope Bl. Innocent XI organizes the Holy League against the Ottoman Empire, thus beginning the Great Turkish War, also known as the Sixth Ottoman-Venetian War (1684-1699), which will free Hungary from Ottoman rule
1685 Milan erects a statue of Federico Borromeo by the Ambrosian Library
1687 Il Sancarlone, a giant statue commemorating St. Carlo Borromeo, is erected in Arona, Italy
1689 Alexander VIII becomes Pope
1691 Innocent XII becomes Pope
1699 The Great Turkish War ends
Vigilance
A General, after gaining a great victory, was encamping with his army for the night. He ordered sentinels to be stationed all round the camp as usual. One of the sentinels, as he went to his station, grumbled to himself, and said, "Why could not the General let us have a quiet night's rest for once, after beating the enemy? I'm sure there's nothing to be afraid of."
The man then went to his station, and stood for some time looking about him. It was a bright summer's night, with a harvest moon, but he could see nothing anywhere: so he said, "I am terribly tired. I shall sleep for just five minutes, out of the moonlight, under the shadow of this tree." So he lay down.
Presently he started up, dreaming that some one had pushed a lantern before his eyes, and he found that the moon was shining brightly down on him through a hole in the branches of the tree above him. The next minute an arrow whizzed past his ear, and the whole field before him seemed alive with soldiers in darkgreen coats, who sprang up from the ground where they had been silently creeping onward, and rushed towards him.
Fortunately the arrow had missed him; so he shouted aloud to give the alarm, and ran back to some other sentinels. The army was thus saved; and the soldier said, "I shall never forget, as long as I live, that when one is at war one must watch."
Edwin Abbott Abbott, Parables for Children.
Maronite Year XLIX
Thursday of the Body of Christ
1 Corinthians 10:14-21; John 6:47-53
May your Body and blood, O Lord, sanctify,
making holy both the body and the soul,
cleansing all our thoughts, purifying our hearts,
preparing us for new life in Your kingdom.
Before Your life-giving passion, You took bread,
blessed it, sanctified it, broke it, and gave it,
as You were blessed, sanctified, broken, given,
for forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
You truly are the living bread from heaven
that those who believe may have eternal life,
Your flesh a manna that gives life forever,
for those who eat are made part of Your Body.
You blessed the cup of wine mixed with the water,
sanctified and gave it to your disciples,
as the blood shed and handed over for us,
for forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
You are our pleasing oblation, offered up,
the forgiving sacrifice to the Father;
unless we eat of Your flesh and drink Your blood,
no life do we have, for life comes from Your grace.
Our humanity with Your divinity,
Your divinity with our humanity,
are united, for You assumed our nature;
thus through You we have salvation for our souls.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Pentad
The Express Moral Principles of which I have spoken, as the basis of Duties, are those which express, in an imperative form, the five Cardinal Virtues: namely, the Principle of Humanity, that Man is to be loved as Man : the Principle of Justice, that Each Man is to have his own: the Principle of Truth, that We must conform to the universal Understanding which the use of Language among men implies: the Principle of Purity, that the Lower Parts of our nature are to be governed by the Higher: and the Principle of Order, that We must obey positive Laws as the necessary conditions of Morality. I have, in a former Lecture, spoken of the degree and kind of the evidence of the first of these Express Principles; and the like remarks might be made upon the others. They commend themselves to our assent, in proportion as our moral nature is cultivated and educed: they become evident to us when we think and feel as really moral creatures. The perception of them may be obscured by the influence of the ferine part of our nature ;—by savage rudeness, passion, partiality: but in proportion as the ferine element is subdued, and the human element brought out in its proper force, these Principles are accepted. When man judges as man and for man, he is enabled to see their full meaning; and with their meaning, their truth.
William Whewell, Lectures on Systematic Morality, Lecture V.
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Music on My Mind
The Nicole Ensing Band, "The Mystery".
It is, of course, an adaptation of a poem by Chesterton. The original:
The Mystery
by G. K. Chesterton
If sunset clouds could grow on trees
It would but match the May in flower;
And skies be underneath the seas
No topsyturvier than a shower.
If mountains rose on wings to wander
They were no wilder than a cloud;
Yet all my praise is mean as slander,
Mean as these mean words spoken aloud.
And never more than now I know
That man's first heaven is far behind;
Unless the blazing seraph's blow
Has left him in the garden blind.
Witness, O Sun that blinds our eyes,
Unthinkable and unthankable King,
That though all other wonder dies
I wonder at not wondering.
Tender & Liberal Spirit
If I am vain of anything, it is of my eloquence. Consideration & Esteem as surely follow command of Language, as Admiration waits on Beauty. And here I have opportunity enough for the exercise of my Talent, as the cheif of my time is spent in Conversation. Reginald is never easy unless we are by ourselves, & when the weather is tolerable, we pace the shrubbery for hours together. I like him on the whole very well; he is clever & has a good deal to say, but he is sometimes impertinent & troublesome. There is a sort of ridiculous delicacy about him which requires the fullest explanation of whatever he may have heard to my disadvantage, & is never satisfied till he thinks he has ascertained the beginning & end of everything.
This is one sort of Love, but I confess it does not particularly recommend itself to me. I infinitely prefer the tender & liberal spirit of Manwaring, which, impressed with the deepest conviction of my merit, is satisfied that whatever I do must be right; & look with a degree of contempt on the inquisitive & doubtful Fancies of that Heart which seems always debating on the reasonableness of its Emotions.
Jane Austen, Lady Susan, Letter 16. It's not surprising, of course, that Lady Susan prefers it to be assumed that whatever she does is right; nor that reasonable restraint of the passions is the chief impediment to being manipulated by someone who tells a good story. I have mentioned before that Lady Susan reminds me of Milton's Satan or Tolkien's Saruman, with their treatment of language as a means of power rather than a service of truth; this is one of the letters in which the parallels become very clear on this point.
Monday, May 23, 2016
Saadia Gaon on Christology
An interesting passage from Saadia Gaon's Book of Beliefs and Opinions:
It's unclear whether and to what extent this is supposed to be a somewhat idealized classification -- the chronological remark in the first sentence suggests that it is intended to identify real groups, but the cleanness of the classification suggests that he might be partly just considering the logical possibilities. The second position seems to be Apollinarianism. I'm fairly sure that the third group is the Christology of the Church of the East -- it admits of both orthodox and Nestorian interpretation.
I don't know who would fall into the first and fourth groups, although the first position could be the kind of statement of Monophysitism that one might find in its critics. What is interesting about the fourth position is the comment that it is recent. Rosenblatt claims that Saadia means Muslims by the fourth group, which would account for the position. But Saadia clearly says he is talking about advocates of the doctrine of the Trinity (and reaffirms it at the end of the chapter), and it is impossible to imagine that Saadia, of all people, born in Egypt and writing in Baghdad in the tenth century, could possibly be ignorant of the Muslim rejection of the Trinity. Since Saadia is Jewish (albeit the greatest Jewish mind of the tenth century), one can allow for a bit of an outsider's perspective, so perhaps he is just approximating Christian positions he has only heard about. On the other hand, a look at the whole section in which Saadia criticizes Christian theology shows a clear familiarity with actual Christian arguments.
Saadia rejects the fourth position on the basis of arguments that Torah admits of no abrogation and that Christians have a false account of Messianic prophecy. (The latter is another reason to take him not to be discussing Muslims here.) Both of these arguments would apply to all the groups of Christians, of course. The first he argues against on the basis of the fact that a creature cannot be a portion or natural emanation of the Creator. With regard to the third, he argues that creatures cannot become God merely by association with the divine. And all of these arguments would apply against the second group.
One of the interesting things is the analogy he attributes later in the chapter to the third group (the fact that he is so much more precise about the third group is another reason to think that he explicitly has in mind the Church of the East): "They cite as an analogy the descent of the glory of God on Mount Sinai and its appearance in the Burning Bush and the Tent of Meeting." It's unlikely that the Assyrian Christians were actually arguing for the Incarnation on the basis of such an analogy (although Saadia does seem to take them to be doing so), but it's possible that it was brought up in arguments for clarification purposes, or may be the kind of imagery associated with the Incarnation in the liturgy and devotional life of Assyrian Christians in Saadia's day.
Now these advocates of the doctrine of the trinity, may God have mercy on thee, are divided into four sects, three of which are the older while the fourth appeared only recently. The first of these is of the opinion that the body, as well as the spirit of their Messiah, is derived from the Creator, exalted be He. The second holds the view that his body was created, his spirit alone having emanated from the Creator. The third, again, believes that both his body and his spirit were created, but that he also possessed another spirit that was derived from the Creator. As for the fourth group, it assigns to him the position of the prophets only, interpreting the sonship of which they make mention when they speak of him just as we interpret the Biblical expression: Israel is My first-born son (Exod. 4:22), which is merely an expression of esteem and high regard, or, as others interpret the meaning of the phrase: "Abraham, the friend of God."[Saadia Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, Rosenblatt, tr. Yale University Press (New Haven: 1976) p. 109]
It's unclear whether and to what extent this is supposed to be a somewhat idealized classification -- the chronological remark in the first sentence suggests that it is intended to identify real groups, but the cleanness of the classification suggests that he might be partly just considering the logical possibilities. The second position seems to be Apollinarianism. I'm fairly sure that the third group is the Christology of the Church of the East -- it admits of both orthodox and Nestorian interpretation.
I don't know who would fall into the first and fourth groups, although the first position could be the kind of statement of Monophysitism that one might find in its critics. What is interesting about the fourth position is the comment that it is recent. Rosenblatt claims that Saadia means Muslims by the fourth group, which would account for the position. But Saadia clearly says he is talking about advocates of the doctrine of the Trinity (and reaffirms it at the end of the chapter), and it is impossible to imagine that Saadia, of all people, born in Egypt and writing in Baghdad in the tenth century, could possibly be ignorant of the Muslim rejection of the Trinity. Since Saadia is Jewish (albeit the greatest Jewish mind of the tenth century), one can allow for a bit of an outsider's perspective, so perhaps he is just approximating Christian positions he has only heard about. On the other hand, a look at the whole section in which Saadia criticizes Christian theology shows a clear familiarity with actual Christian arguments.
Saadia rejects the fourth position on the basis of arguments that Torah admits of no abrogation and that Christians have a false account of Messianic prophecy. (The latter is another reason to take him not to be discussing Muslims here.) Both of these arguments would apply to all the groups of Christians, of course. The first he argues against on the basis of the fact that a creature cannot be a portion or natural emanation of the Creator. With regard to the third, he argues that creatures cannot become God merely by association with the divine. And all of these arguments would apply against the second group.
One of the interesting things is the analogy he attributes later in the chapter to the third group (the fact that he is so much more precise about the third group is another reason to think that he explicitly has in mind the Church of the East): "They cite as an analogy the descent of the glory of God on Mount Sinai and its appearance in the Burning Bush and the Tent of Meeting." It's unlikely that the Assyrian Christians were actually arguing for the Incarnation on the basis of such an analogy (although Saadia does seem to take them to be doing so), but it's possible that it was brought up in arguments for clarification purposes, or may be the kind of imagery associated with the Incarnation in the liturgy and devotional life of Assyrian Christians in Saadia's day.
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Radio Greats: The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway (X Minus One)
The 1950s in radio saw a slow, cautious exploration of the genre of science fiction. One thread of the genre that tended to work especially well with radio was comic science fiction. Science fiction, of course, has always been recognized as having some satirical potential, but this can be quite dry or acidic; what worked especially well on radio was the use of science fiction for genuinely humorous twists. X Minus One, the most important and impressive science fiction series ever to air on radio, had a number of classics of this kind -- "Skulking Permit" and "Bad Medicine" (both by Robert Sheckley, the latter satirizing psychoanalysis) are obvious examples. Another great example of comic science fiction at its best is "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway", which aired in April of 1957.
As is always the case with X Minus One, it is based on a short story of the same name from Galaxy magazine; that story, by William Tenn, was published in 1955. William Tenn (the pen name of Philip Klass) is often considered the greatest writer of science fiction satire in the Golden Age of science fiction, a period in which a great deal of science fiction satire was done. He has a knack for skewering on more levels than one, and not just skewering but stimulating thought in new direction. "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway", which satirizes the art world, is an excellent example of this, raising fascinating questions about creativity and evaluation of art.
You can listen to "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway" at Old Time Radio Downloads or at The Theatre of the Mind on YouTube or at Relic Radio or at the Internet Archive (episode 95). You can read the radio script at Generic Radio Workshop.
If you prefer to read the original, you can read it here.
As is always the case with X Minus One, it is based on a short story of the same name from Galaxy magazine; that story, by William Tenn, was published in 1955. William Tenn (the pen name of Philip Klass) is often considered the greatest writer of science fiction satire in the Golden Age of science fiction, a period in which a great deal of science fiction satire was done. He has a knack for skewering on more levels than one, and not just skewering but stimulating thought in new direction. "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway", which satirizes the art world, is an excellent example of this, raising fascinating questions about creativity and evaluation of art.
You can listen to "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway" at Old Time Radio Downloads or at The Theatre of the Mind on YouTube or at Relic Radio or at the Internet Archive (episode 95). You can read the radio script at Generic Radio Workshop.
If you prefer to read the original, you can read it here.
Maronite Year XLVIII
The Season of Pentecost is the longest season of the Maronite liturgical year; depending on the rest of the year, it can last up to eighteen weeks. As with the Latin liturgical year, the first Sunday after Pentecost is Trinity Sunday.
Sunday of the Most Holy Trinity
Romans 11:25-36; Matthew 28:16-20
Inscrutable Father, infinite Son,
ineffable Holy Spirit, Three and One,
begetting, begotten, proceeding,
glory and thanks and exaltation to You!
As word comes from mind, and voice comes from both,
three names are given where there is but one will,
known by faith undivided of the Church,
which is taught by angels in hymns of glory:
Holy, Holy, Holy is the one Lord.
Can any comprehend God as Trinity?
A truth it is no study can exhaust.
The Father before all time begot the Son;
the Word took flesh from holy Virgin's womb;
the Spirit was sent to strengthen and perfect.
Thus from Him, through Him, and for Him is all,
with perfection, purity, and sanctity.
This is the faith of the Church and her saints:
Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord our God.
O God of Love and Peace, one only God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Three and One,
we take refuge and find comfort in You,
undivided and inapprehensible,
who shows mercy to the guilty and lost,
who purifies sinners and perfects the just,
who is known by the faith of the one Church,
which is taught by angels in hymns of glory:
Holy, Holy, Holy is the one Lord.
Sunday of the Most Holy Trinity
Romans 11:25-36; Matthew 28:16-20
Inscrutable Father, infinite Son,
ineffable Holy Spirit, Three and One,
begetting, begotten, proceeding,
glory and thanks and exaltation to You!
As word comes from mind, and voice comes from both,
three names are given where there is but one will,
known by faith undivided of the Church,
which is taught by angels in hymns of glory:
Holy, Holy, Holy is the one Lord.
Can any comprehend God as Trinity?
A truth it is no study can exhaust.
The Father before all time begot the Son;
the Word took flesh from holy Virgin's womb;
the Spirit was sent to strengthen and perfect.
Thus from Him, through Him, and for Him is all,
with perfection, purity, and sanctity.
This is the faith of the Church and her saints:
Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord our God.
O God of Love and Peace, one only God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Three and One,
we take refuge and find comfort in You,
undivided and inapprehensible,
who shows mercy to the guilty and lost,
who purifies sinners and perfects the just,
who is known by the faith of the one Church,
which is taught by angels in hymns of glory:
Holy, Holy, Holy is the one Lord.
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