Doctor Evangelicus

Today is the feast of St. Anthony of Padua, Doctor of the Church. He was born Fernando Martins de Bulhões in Lisbon in about 1195, and died in Padua in 1231; he was canonized within a year of his death. He joined the Franciscan order, and soon became renowned as a homilist. His sermons, which are typically concerned with tracing concordantiae or parallels and analogies between different parts of Scripture, are the reason for his liturgical status as Doctor of the Church, but he is perhaps most famous for being the patron saint of lost articles, and the primary association of him with his preaching in the popular mind is the hagiographical legend of his preaching to the fish:

St Anthony being at one time at Rimini, where there were a great number of heretics, and wishing to lead them by the light of faith into the way of truth, preached to them for several days, and reasoned with them on the faith of Christ and on the Holy Scriptures. They not only resisted his words, but were hardened and obstinate, refusing to listen to him.

At last St Anthony, inspired by God, went down to the sea-shore, where the river runs into the sea, and having placed himself on a bank between the river and the sea, he began to speak to the fishes as if the Lord had sent him to preach to them, and said: "Listen to the word of God, O ye fishes of the sea and of the river, seeing that the faithless heretics refuse to do so."

No sooner had he spoken these words than suddenly so great a multitude of fishes, both small and great, approached the bank on which he stood, that never before had so many been seen in the sea or the river. All kept their heads out of the water, and seemed to be looking attentively on St Anthony's face; all were ranged in perfect order and most peacefully, the smaller ones in front near the bank, after them came those a little bigger, and last of all, were the water was deeper, the largest.

When they had placed themselves in this order, St Anthony began to preach to them most solemnly, saying: "My brothers the fishes, you are bound, as much as is in your power, to return thanks to your Creator, who has given you so noble an element for your dwelling; for you have at your choice both sweet water and salt; you have many places of refuge from the tempest; you have likewise a pure and transparent element for your nourishment. God, your bountiful and kind Creator, when he made you, ordered you to increase and multiply, and gave you his blessing. In the universal deluge, all other creatures perished; you alone did God preserve from all harm. He has given you fins to enable you to go where you will. To you was it granted, according to the commandment of God, to keep the prophet Jonas, and after three days to throw him safe and sound on dry land. You it was who gave the tribute-money to our Saviour Jesus Christ, when, through his poverty, he had not wherewith to pay. By a singular mystery you were the nourishment of the eternal King, Jesus Christ, before and after his resurrection. Because of all these things you are bound to praise and bless the Lord, who has given you blessings so many and so much greater than to other creatures."

At these words the fish began to open their mouths, and bow their heads, endeavouring as much as was in their power to express their reverence and show forth their praise. St Anthony, seeing the reverence of the fish towards their Creator, rejoiced greatly in spirit, and said with a loud voice: "Blessed be the eternal God; for the fishes of the sea honour him more than men without faith, and animals without reason listen to his word with greater attention than sinful heretics."

And whilst St Anthony was preaching, the number of fishes increased, and none of them left the place that he had chosen. And the people of the city hearing of the miracle, made haste to go and witness it. With them also came the heretics of whom we have spoken above, who, seeing so wonderful and manifest a miracle, were touched in their hearts; and threw themselves at the feet of St Anthony to hear his words. The saint then began to expound to them the Catholic faith. He preached so eloquently, that all those heretics were converted, and returned to the true faith of Christ; the faithful also were filled with joy, and greatly comforted, being strengthened in the faith. After this St Anthony sent away the fishes, with the blessing of God; and they all departed, rejoicing as they went, and the people returned to the city.

The Little Flowers of St. Francis, Part I, Chapter XL.

Because of the tale, Anthony is often pictured with fish: a reminder that the gospel must be proclaimed even if there is no one to hear but the fish.

Apostolorum Apostola

The feast of St. Mary Magdalene was recently raised from the status of Memorial to Feast proper, which usually belongs to Apostles and a few others. As some have noted, this actually is a restoration of sorts, since the Magdalene's feastday has historically been quite important, and has been surprisingly low-ranked for about half a century. Because it was mentioned in the letter accompanying the decree, the following passage from Aquinas's Commentary on the Gospel of John (c. 20, l. 3 [2519]) is noteworthy, and worth reading in full context:

Notice the three privileges given to Mary Magdalene. First, she had the privilege of being a prophet because she was worthy enough to see the angels, for a prophet is an intermediary between angels and the people. Secondly, she had the dignity or rank of an angel insofar as she looked upon Christ, on whom the angels desire to look. Thirdly, she has the office of an apostle; indeed she was an apostle to the apostles insofar as it was her task to announce our Lord's resurrection to the disciples. Thus, just as it was a woman who was the first to announce the words of death, so it was a woman who would be the first to announce the words of life.

[St Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 13-21, Larcher and Weisheipl, trs. CUA Press (Washington, DC: 2010) p. 266]

The Latin, for those who are interested:

Ubi notandum est triplex privilegium, quod Magdalenae est collatum. Primo quidem propheticum, per hoc quod meruit Angelos videre: propheta enim est medius inter Angelos et populum. Secundo Angelorum fastigium, per hoc quod vidit Christum, in quem desiderant Angeli prospicere. Tertio officium apostolicum, immo facta est apostolorum apostola, per hoc quod ei committitur ut resurrectionem dominicam discipulis annuntiet: ut sicut mulier viro primo nuntiavit verba mortis, ita et mulier primo nuntiaret verba vitae.

Maronite Year LIII

Fifth Sunday of Pentecost
Philippians 3:7-14; Matthew 10:1-7

Our praise falls short of Your mercy, O Lord;
You are above all praise.
With Your resurrection You did great deeds,
beyond what we can say.
Truly, this is the day the Lord has made;
with David we rejoice,
with voices glad and strong.
This is the unequaled day, crown of feasts.

Twelve disciples You did call to Yourself,
with great authority:
power against evil You gave to them.
Simon Peter was first, and Andrew, too,
James and his brother John,
Philip and Bartholomew and Thomas,
Matthew and James, the son of Alphaeus,
Thaddeus and Simon,
and the traitor (may we not be like him!).

Through every land the zealous apostles
made disciples for Christ,
enduring hardship to preach to far realms,
like bright lamps enlightening all the world.
Their love burned ardently,
lighting the candles in Your holy Church,
which passed the flame of truth that they received
until our souls were lit
and we received the apostolic fire.

We count as loss even our greatest gains
compared to love of Christ,
for You, O Lord, we wish to our credit,
and You, O Lord, are He in whom we are.
By Your resurrection,
by participation in Your Passion,
we are formed to the pattern of Your death,
burning with Your bright love,
pressing forward for the prize through Your grace.

We praise You who formed us to Your image;
You brought us salvation
and from Your mercy You came to bring hope.
We give thanks for Your gifts,
for You became man and fell into death
that we might live again,
that death itself might die,
and we will always proclaim that wonder.

Dashed Off XII

Ethics is necessarily a conversation; not a negotiation, at least not always, but certainly discussion and social interaction.

classification, observation, and manipulation as the three moments of scientific thought
- these are, in fact, moments of experience in general, scientific inquiry being reflected-upon systematic experience

Theoretical truth is practical constraint.

Scientific inquiry is itself a social context.

To say that something is true by definition implies that it ought to be taken as given in some relevant system of thought.

The conventional, under appropriate rational conditions, converges on the natural.

A natural classification is that to which artificial classifications ought to tend.

In the Eucharist we (1) are transformed into what we consume; (2) are made sharers of Christ's divine nature; (3) are prepared for external gifts; (4) celebrate in sign that which will one day be perfected in us in truth.

Compatibilism in its more popular forms involves a confusion between determinateness and determination.

We should only appear at the banquet of the Lamb in the wedding garment of repentance.

locative affinity

classification as structuring inductions

the implicit ampliative character of truth itself

the deontic structure of induction

Calvin's commentary on Malachi is a criticism of Catholic conceptions of priesthood.

Simple enumeration, merely as such, does not reach a proper universal.

Representative samples are built by systematicity, not randomization; the latter is merely one thing that can rule out some biases that may interfere with systematicity. The link between representative sample and systematic sampling follows from the notion of representativeness itself.

probability as possibility plus degree of relevance

Probabilities, being measurements, are relative to the method of measurement used.

Endeavoring peace requires hope.

pacifism // passive obedience

A species has, beyond its members, its history and capacity to project itself forward.

Perversions of views of marriage have backed and germinated heresy for literally the entire history of the Church.

Scripture is the instrumental cause of sacred doctrine.

accessibility relations as forms of overlap

gifts as instruments

the grace of marriage as a tending to right representation

Mary as co-predestined with Christ
Christ predestined as | Mary predestined as
Incarnate Son | Mater Dei
fullness of grace appropriate to Incarnate Son | fullness of grace appropriate to Mother of God
meriting our grace de condigno | meriting our grace de congruo

A theory of sacrament is a theory of sacrifice.

clarity, coherence, necessity
clarity/splendor, integrity, proportion

layering of kinds of analogy as increasing probability of inference

bias removal as practical reasoning about structure of inquiry

three moments of angelic life: creation, merit/demerit, beatitude/reprobation

inquiry as dawning, knowledge as noon

the need for a symbolic economy appropriate to moral life

It is clear that God must be:
(1) first principle of our free will as a power
(2) first principle of the actuality of our free choice
(3) first principle of all goodness in the power and the act
and that He must be original, sustaining, and final cause in each case.

creativity in mathematics: a sense of the territory (to reduce wrong steps & establish priorities) + obsessiveness in rigor (to rule tihngs out or in definitively) + rapid thought (to avoid being bogged down or stuck too long exploring dead end routes)

Providence works both superordinately and coordinately with creatures.

"If God moved bodies by particular volitions, it would be a crime to avoid by flight the ruin of a collapsing building; for one cannot, without injustice, refuse to return to God the life He has given us, if He demands it." Malebranche
- Thus Malebranche holds that God's work through general laws allows us to correct nature without correcting God, to resist nature without resisting God, etc.

Doubt by its nature posits an end or satisfaction of doubt.
Doubt presupposes the possibility of knowledge. There is reason to think the reverse is not.

That something could be false is not the same as its being possible that it is false.

We come to understand the principle of noncontradiction by actually reasoning.

Any question of reliability is a teleological question.

Confidence does not come with percentages.

The post-medieval world is an age of theft: nations rise by plundering the Church and other nations, positions rise by plundering the cultural heritage of others, money is made by plundering time and effort. To plunder occurs always; making it the center of everything, however, is another thing entirely. It's the brazenness of it that is remarkable.

Mendelssohn's definition of 'church' -- 'public institution for the cultivation of man, concerning his relations with God' -- includes much more than what we usually think of as a church.

"civilisation is founded on abstractions" Chesterton

unfitness and the horror genre

Note that Vatican I explicitly says that following are acts of definition in which the Pope exercises infallible teaching authority: summoning an ecumenical council to define a doctrine, consulting the opinion of churches throughout the world to define a doctrine, calling a special synod to define a doctrine. (There is also the miscellaneous category, 'taking advantage of other useful means afforded by divine providence'.)
Papal teaching authority is exercised with and for the Church.

Marriage cannot exist in a way that is inconsistent as a general condition with rational and virtuous family life, for it is itself and by nature familial.

natural classification
(1) affinities determined by whole
(2) arrangements are of greatest degree of relation
(3) the imperfectly known may be determined from the known

the importance of there being a romantic love that is not sexual in its goals

quantification as scope of inquiry

systematic vs nonsystematic intellectual inquiry

"We know with much greater clarity that our will is free than that everything that happens must have a cause." Lichtenberg

(1) The will is not necessitated in its choices by any prior cause.
(2) Our choices are attributable to us and are not beyond our control.
(3) We have a will naturally not determined to one.

'Life' admits of more and less.

Necessary regulative principles of empirical inquiry imply general constitutive theses about sensible nature and sensible phenomena. So also with the intelligible, mutatis mutandis.

What is always and necessarily *as if* is certainly *so*.

sublimity as a background for friendship

In marriage, love of self, love of neighbor, and love of God begin to overlap in sometimes obvious ways.

Loving is to goodness as dwelling or resting is to beauty.

prudence as the structure of good parenting

The sensible is always explained by the intelligible.

To defeat demons requires setting aside all pretense at being wholly in control.

We learn restraint by precept and example.

Prediction and retrodiction are the standard modes of exegetical confirmation.

(1) What is intelligible is not in itself sensible; therefore what knows the intelligible is not in itself sensible.
(2) What knows has the intelligible form of something, but not in the way the material thing has it; therefore what knows is not, as such, material.

The problem of evil requires that the moral principles used be precisely defined and either self-evident or demonstrable.

"The devil has his contemplatives even as God has his." Cloud of Unknowing XLV

(1) There is nonsensible but intelligible agency.
(2) Sensible phenomena are explained by intelligible agency.

Ontologies and epistemologies mutually suggest each other.

nonextrinsic similarity as suggesting shared causal history

tendency to end, intrinsic order, limitation, form of persistence
(four ways of thinking of natures)

When we assert, we often do so on another person's authority.
assertion-for-the-nonce, assertion-from-a-perspective

Truth sometimes sets us free by killing us.

reasonable hope as the key to double effect

coherence : truth :: integrity : good :: harmony : beauty

Truly to know that one has sinned against love is painful, and it is a pain that endures even if one fails to repents of the sin itself.

implicature of behavior in the virtue of temperance (substance, quality, quantity, relation) -- quality is the tricky one
the appearance of condoning
our behavior as communicating values
the casuistry of temperance-related implicature
what one's actions communicate to oneself
integritas, claritas, and proportionalitas in temperance

We should tend to avoid actions that could be confused with serious evils, if they became known.
We should tend to avoid actions that could be seen as condoning serious evils, if they became known.
We should tend to avoid actions that are very similar to serious evils.
We should tend toward actions that would communicate respect for persons, if the actions were known.
We should tend toward actions that would communicate the importance of virtuous disciplines if the actions were known.

postulates of communicative reason

infrastructural tracks for intellectual alliances

felicity conditions for sacraments

the authorities of the Holy See
(1) intrinsic
(2) by long possession
(3) by (non-intrinsic) succession
(4) by positive law
(5) by interest of the Church

evaluation of argument in terms of
(1) appropriateness to rational ends
(2) rigor and requirement
(3) durability in the face of objection-candidates
(4) simplicity and elegance

Genuine inquiry requires standards that do not create unworkable argumentative costs.

Ayn Rand's theory of measurement omission underestimates the difficulty of measuring in the first place.

tradition and the parable of the talents

classification and helpful adjacency in research

Royce's paradox of revelation & human nature as itself a revelation or (at least) preparatory thereto

reasoning at others vs reasoning with others

the intrinsic curatorial authority of the Church

When the very wealthy lends to the very poor, steps must be taken to guarantee that they enter the contract as equals and can both expect genuine benefit from it.

imitation of saints 1 Thess 1:5-10

the Ascension as promise of deliverance

In Purgatory, souls finally bear the weight of the martyrs' faith.

The nature of a rational creature being oriented to virtue, the true orientation of any human sexuality is to temperate action.

Measurements are of signs, by signs.

layers of marriage: sacrament, virtue, honor, profit, pleasure

sense organs as interpretants
classifiers as interpretants

contingent identity in the structure of desire (the object of desire)

testimony as vicarious experience

Marriage by nature has reference to common good.

natural light as inner affinity to truth

Every proposition is a seminal inference.

Confidence is not organized in univocal units, but functionally.

the felicity conditions of jargon

Forgiveness is a pillar of genuine civilization; this necessarily requires that repentance be one, too.

Human persons are such great goods that even the risk of there being a hell is not sufficient reason not to create them.

the Manichaean character of anti-natalism

"There is no marriage where motherhood is not in view." Augustine

Nothing can be thwarted in doing X expect in that sense in which it has the potential for X.

cognitive identity as contingent identity

that there are needs of human life more important than pleasure that do not reduce to preferences

Little pains may more naturally stimulate or incite curiosity than fear or avoidance, given otherwise comfortable circumstances.

man as the called animal

Anyone? Anyone?

Paramount released Ferris Bueller's Day Off on June 11, 1986. A little known fact: Ben Stein's monotonous lecture about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and supply-side economics was not in the script; he had been amusing the cast with mock lecturing, and they liked it so much that John Hughes had him improvise a lecture for the camera.



The movie wears surprisingly well, partly because the weaker humor isn't front and center. I find I have much more sympathy with Mr. Rooney these days than I did in decades ago; but it is as true as ever that "Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it!"

Ignatius Shoukrallah Maloyan

Today is the memorial of Blessed Ignatius Shoukrallah Maloyan (1869-1915). He was an Armenian Catholic belonging to the Patriarchal Order of Bzommar. He spent much of his career as a parish priest in Egypt, but in 1911 was made Archbishop of Mardin. The appointment would lead to his death.

In 1915, Mehmed Reshid, governor of the Ottoman province of Diyarbekir, having become convinced that Christian communities were a significant cause of the economic problems of the Empire and that they were conspiring with its enemies during World War I, began the systematic extermination of Armenian and Assyrian Christians throughout his province, and the Armenian Genocide came to Mardin. In June, the leaders of the Armenian Catholic community of Mardin were taken to court. During the trial, Bl. Ignatius was asked if he would convert. When he refused, he was beaten, and he and a large crowd of Armenian Christians were driven by forced march into the desert and killed, one by one. Bl. Ignatius was shot after he refused again to convert. He was beatified in 2001.

Knowing and Loving

In fact it is knowing that causes love and gives birth to it. It is not possible to attain love of anything that is beautiful without first learning how beautiful it is. Since this knowledge is sometimes very ample and complete and at other times imperfect, it follows that the philtre of love has a corresponding effect. Some things that are beautiful and good are perfectly known and perfectly loved as befits so great beauty. Others are not clearly evident to those who love them, and love of them is thus more feeble.

Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, DeCatanzaro, tr. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press (Crestwood, NY: 1974) p. 89.

Three Poem Re-Drafts

Kolob

A star there is, they said, so near to God's own throne
it rules both near and far and governs as its own
the lights both great and small that shine in heaven's heights,
those children, one and all, that beam in endless night.
Its every day, they said, lasts for a thousand years
in which God's children play with smiles and no tears;
and every journal's thought exceeds in wisdom's reach
all things our scribes have taught, all things our lives can teach.
And from that place, perhaps, one sees the host of hosts
that sprinkle endless space, the sea without a coast --
and there the forests old spread endless and unmarred;
their trunks are trunks of gold, and every leaf -- a star.

But standing here, I said, I know a greater thing
than any extant sphere around which worlds can ring:
the One that prays with tears while facing endless loss
but overcomes all fears to stretch forth on a cross,
and rises up once more, a lamb upon a throne,
the way, the sheepfold's door, the knower and the known;
he is the branching vine and we the grafted stems
that praise with cheerful wine the endlessness of him.

River

The force of love to rush,
to flood,
is force of love to river be,
not pool or puddle on the plain:
it moves with end and not in vain,
to flow through vale to violet sea,
to find a home in unbound good.

Yet every water must be bound,
or, formless,
it will forceless move,
creep and seep,
devoid of rush,
like words that waver into hush,
enslaved by furrow and by groove.
That way the sea is never found.

Love in every way may veer,
may fall away,
may fail.
As rivers overflow we err --
the border burdens by being there --
and waves will war,
fight and flail,
for bounds are death:
death we fear.

All-Father's Knowledge

Weird is the wyrd of man,
and wild,
writ on stars with sacred stile,
carved on ash of ages blessed,
carved on leaves.
The bracts confess truth to those who hang for nine --
nine days,
nine nights,
in death sublime.
Eye then opens --
source of awe --
wise becomes the Hanging God:
wise with lore of ancient runes,
wise in ways of birth and doom.
Draughts,
fresh-drawn from prophet's well
(poets there will drink their fill,
the scops who,
with their eddas,
dream of things to come and things unseen),
will wake from slumber sleeping thoughts --
wise becomes the prophet-God,
who gives an eye to be made wise,
who on the ash of ages dies.
Ravens soar from rainbow-bridge
with piercing eye for all things hid,
go back and forth through all the lands --
of death,
of elf,
of god,
of man;
through all ages restless roam from root to crown to Father's throne,
thought and memory turned to wing,
seeking out all truths unseen.

And this he sees in town and wild:
a stranger is the human child.

Harp of the Spirit

Today is the feast of St. Ephrem of Syria, Doctor of the Church:

Good is He, for lo! He labours in these two things—He wills not to constrain our freedom— nor again does He suffer us to abuse it.— For had he constrained it, He had taken away its power—and had He let it go, He had deprived it of help.

He knows that if He constrains He deprives us—He knows that if He casts off He destroys us—He knows that if He teaches He wins us.— He has not constrained and He has not cast off, as the Evil One does:— He has taught, chastened, and won us, as being the good God.

He knows that His treasuries abound:— the keys of His treasuries He has put into our hands.— He has made the Cross our treasurer— to open for us the gates of Paradise,— as Adam opened the gate of Gehenna.

(Hymns for Epiphany, 10.14-16)

A Very Strange Presidential Election

So the presumptive nominees of the major parties for President are, on the one hand, a billionaire who is universally recognized to be self-aggrandizing, and, on the other, a dynastic politician no one trusts who is under investigation by the FBI for violating national security law. I don't vote major party in presidential elections, so I don't have anything more to say about that except:

At this point, to be sure, it really wouldn't be surprising if we got to the voting booth and turned out to be rickrolled.

I once had an idea for a story in which the American President, President Beltrane, is a fantastically popular supervillain who vacations in his volcano lair, has a vice president who is an inarticulate Frankenstein-monster named Henchman, and whose campaign promises and policies consist of a mix of supervillain schemes and taking real political slogans to an insane limit. For instance, as a tax-cutting measure he holds Ireland for ransom in order to pay for government paperclips, and he advocates forcing everyone to undergo weekly physical examinations at the doctor's office because it's not universal health care if there are people not receiving it. But looking at this election, I find that there are just infinitely many ways in which I am not imaginative enough.

Links for Thinking

* 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

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

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.

Intuitions Aren't Bedrock

Some people have been discussing Dale Dorsey's recent post, Intuitive bedrock and the philosophical enterprise:

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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:

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.

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

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.

Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed

Introduction

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.