"If we do not know what we receive, we shall never wake into love." Teresa of Avila
Catholic citizens should be integralist about their own political power as citizens; it is another question whether this always requires, or is even always benefited by, this or that form of large-scale integralism.
Partisanship puts pressure on the mind to conflate ends and means.
Hope is a power of repair.
Note that Hume ends the History with the moral that the English constitution is not particularly rooted in ancient tradition, and that its excellence is in great measure happenstance.
The proud may be broken; the humble never.
already = not-still-not
reductio ad absurdum as a limit to doubt
"...humility has this excellent quality, that no work which is done in a humble state leaves any distaste in the soul." Teresa
The infused virtue of humility involves having a glimpse of how one looks from the divine perspective.
Liberalism, as generally practiced, trains people to see no higher goals in religion than emotional comfort and fulfillment of spirit. People too mired in its democratization lose their ability to make sense of people who see in religious practice absolute submission, or infinite compassion, or union with God, as someone used to thinking only in finites has difficulty making sense of the thought of those concerned with the infinite. This is a symptom of a broader problem with liberalism, its tendency to finitize all values.
NB that while Hume argues that the use of organs indicates mind-dependence of perceptions, Shepherd argues that it establishes the dependence of the perception on mind-independent objects.
taking subject-object to have primacy over act-potency leaves us with no real change, only differences (difference of object under difference of notice)
blasphemy laws based on offense vs blasphemy laws based on sublimity
-- Whatever one's view of the latter, the former is an abominable mongrel that consists of trivializing something while still being punitive about it, as if one made human dignity to be nothing more than a subjective preference while still putting people in jail for murder, treating murder as nothing but a violation of preferences. It turns solemn justice into petty malice.
Reproducibility is important for experiment because it allows one to move from talking about this physical event to an abstract object. Reproducible events can, qua reproducible, be treated abstractly as having a single structure and character across reproductions.
Rhetoric uses logical ideas under relative qualification.
People have no motivation or incentive to be active citizens if their power keeps being infringed. Other things can be relevant factors, but civic apathy or quietism is often linked to how unstable and uncertain people take their power to be.
The best pedagogy requires seeing things at once more abstractly and more concretely.
God as 'that true Virtue, from which all virtues spring'
How often the evidence is there before us and we do not even recognize it as evidence!
There can no more be a sharp separation between ethics and metaphysics than there can be one between practical and speculative understanding; whatever the distinction, there must be perichoresis.
while, when, and where as binary modal operators (symmetric)
squares of opposition for all of Llull's dignitates
the eclectic as intermediary between the occasional and the systematic
-- the occasional as our normal mode of philosophizing
popular consent as material ground of positive authority, reason as formal ground of authority, God as exemplar ground of authority
"Because God is the creator of the natural simplicities in minds and bodies, He has the simplicity which belongs to Him by nature as an activity." Palamas
quarantine rules // conflict of interest rules
A hypothesis: where (a) Box and Diamond are D-modalities; (b) the square of opposition is exhaustive in its order, such that its elements are disjunctively convertible with being; and (c) there is a dependency of some kind of Diamond on Box; then one may use Diamond to argue for the existence of God as the ground, principle, or prime of Box.
examples:
uncaused, opposing conditions existing, opposing conditions not existing, causable
necessary, impossible, possible, possible-not
intrinsic good, privation of good, admitting of good, admitting of privation of good
intrinsically true, intrinsically false, able to be true, able to be untrue
God as counter-skeptical guarantee // God as conserving cause
One may always move from an exclusive Diamond to an inclusive Diamond by disjunction with Box.
existence proofs: infinite regress, Diamond to Box, reduction to contradiction, accumulation of diagnostic marks
It seems that atheistic arguments from evil can only be ad hominem (in Locke's sense), never ad judicium. Are there exceptions? (An ad jud argument would need a way to ground knowledge of what God would do, even though the argued-for is that there is no God.)
All good we know in our everyday experience permits evil of some kind.
the problem of curial cliques
-- one element to this is that curial positions are basically spoils system (contrast with patriarchs and bishops), with both the advantages and disadvantages that follow from that.
-- this is perhaps intensified by the fact that cardinals, as electors, endure, thus giving a stable body of people competing, in a broad sense, for key positions and whose projects depend on position capture; this leads to networks and thus cliques.
An effect of separation of powers is sequester of faction (functional decentralization).
Conjecture and refutation is effective only to the extent one has relevant accessible invariances.
Increasingly I think any discussion of modal logic should begin with the principle of noncontradiction.
the illative and aspirative aspects of worship
"the Church prolongs the priestly mission of Jesus mainly by means of the sacred liturgy" (Mediator Dei)
Sexual shame is rooted in the fact that sex involves much more than reproduction. Stripping it away requires treating sex as nothing but the physical process of reproduction, whether one thinks of it under the label 'reproduction' or not.
One of the greatest mistakes you can make is to assume that the world's critique of Christianity is coherent to begin with.
perception of signs as precondition for inference
the involution of moral life
Practices and procedures in politics adapt to accommodate regular and widespread responses of shame, pity, and reverence, where these responses lead t, or threaten to lead to, focused protest.
By perception we have an evidential point of view on which we can draw; by inference we draw on possible points of view related in definite ways to our own; by testimony we draw on the points of view of other people.
"our Reason is akin to the Reason that governs the Universe; we must assume that or despair of finding out anything." Peirce EP2:502
NB Peirce criticizes Hegel for not properly recognizing the distinction between essence and existence, leading to a kind of nominalism -- while the project of a phenomenology is an important one, Hegel conflates what actually forces itself on the mind with all that can be available to consciousness.
Seven mental qualifications of a philosopher (C. S. Peirce, CP 1.521-39)
(1) The ability to discern what is before one's consciousness
(2) Inventive originality
(3) Generalizing power
(4) subtlety
(5) Critical severity and sense of fact
(6) Systematic procedure
(7) Energy, diligence, persistency, and exclusive devotion to philosophy
rootedness in experience, rigor, and organization as the three features of system; systems as characterized by the modes and manners of these three features
Sanctity in this life is always partly aspirational.
An important and too often forgotten aspect of music is its tactile character: vibrations through the body, bodily responses like jolts, etc.
All complete explanation is in terms of something not more limited.
Tribute and homage to others is an essential part of the actual aesthetics of life.
"In all the things that so great and wise a God has created, there must be many beneficial secrets, and those who understand them do benefit, although I believe that in each little thing created by God there is more than what is understood, even if it is a little ant." Teresa
Love is a prerequisite for genuine stillness of mind.
The practice of prayer is fundamentally a matter of putting one's mind on God and coming to see all other things in light of Him, so that this becomes the normal course of thought.
Moral progress is possible only relative to a tradition.
If all earthly things may be a glass to see heaven through, so too may the saints and saintesses; they are not less glass than trees and mountains.
"It is the mark of a noble nature to be more shocked with the unjust condemnation of a bad man than of a virtuous one." Coleridge
"The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind." Livy
What are called the 'gray areas' of consent are in fact just the cases in which consent is operating normally -- to get more than this, consent must be sharpened by special procedures.
Aristotle was more thoroughly empirical than many modern philosophers who consider themselves empirically minded; the latter often have endless tissues of assumptions they cannot empirically justify.
plain truth and figured truth and riddled truth
diffusion of powers of governance
humor as a means of denaturing wickedness
Liberal Christianity often seems like Cain, wishing to offer grains and fruits rather than a bloody lamb, and not always the best and finest.
miracle as divine riddle
Faith proposes to reason a richer principle, a greater happiness, and a more universal society than reason can see clearly on its own.
Human beings are a species much given to trophy-taking and trophy-giving.
Of all the gifts brought by faith, to be able to be free of the shackles of worldly politics, to be able to see outside its walls, is not a small one.
facts as beings of reason
introspection // organizational auditing
Descartes's 'primitive notions' are kinds of perceptible.
perception that X is like something previously experienced vs. perception that X is something previously experienced
each potential part of justice as grounding a distinct region of rights (although these regions are capable of overly due to interaction of virtues)
To say that Christ disclaimed all civil power is like saying the Emperor declines to take up the office of Headman of the Village; why would an Emperor insist on being a mayor?
The meaning of ritual is determined by its structure and the meaning of its constituents.
evidence as a reason for assigning a modal status
The course of government in the post-medieval era makes clear that there needs to be an eleemosynary branch of government, in check and balance with executive, legislative, and judicial branches. (Note, for instance, the tendency of republics to become dictatorships by way of executives pushing populist welfare expansions in exchange for increase of power, as in Venezuela and elsewhere.)
Friday, October 05, 2018
Poem Re-Draft and New Poem Draft
Ecclesiology
The human heart we know right well,
a bit of heaven, a bit of hell;
we are taught it in the psalter.
The Church must suffer death and lies
that Christian hearts may sympathize
with every sinner's falter.
They who pray by work and rest
find Church all places east and west,
the heart itself their altar.
A soul restored upon the Cross
must preach the truth, no thought of loss,
though heretics will palter.
The Church that lives by faith and love
is ruled by none but God above;
our law is not its halter.
Wilting Rose
I saw a wilting rose.
Its petals, almost closed, were curled,
half open and half furled,
and every petal pearled with dew --
and thus I thought of you,
whose trouble deep and true has formed
in weeping and in storm
a sadness still informed with grace.
The human heart we know right well,
a bit of heaven, a bit of hell;
we are taught it in the psalter.
The Church must suffer death and lies
that Christian hearts may sympathize
with every sinner's falter.
They who pray by work and rest
find Church all places east and west,
the heart itself their altar.
A soul restored upon the Cross
must preach the truth, no thought of loss,
though heretics will palter.
The Church that lives by faith and love
is ruled by none but God above;
our law is not its halter.
Wilting Rose
I saw a wilting rose.
Its petals, almost closed, were curled,
half open and half furled,
and every petal pearled with dew --
and thus I thought of you,
whose trouble deep and true has formed
in weeping and in storm
a sadness still informed with grace.
Thursday, October 04, 2018
Jottings on Evaluating Philosophical Systems and Schools
Philosophers usually spend their time evaluating arguments, but arguments link up to other arguments to form systems, and systems themselves come in families of systems ('schools' we could call them, without too much abuse of a term that is already used for something loosely like what is meant here) and it's an interesting question of how one can evaluate an entire philosophical system, and beyond that, an entire school of systems. One would, of course, want to avoid the temptation into which people often fall of assuming there is one line of evaluation ('Thomism is better than Scotism'; 'Analytic philosophy is better than continental philosophy'; or whatever else, for which the obvious next question is, 'For what sense of 'better', as measured by what standard?').
It's difficult to do this in more than a rough way, but it seems reasonable to identify both internal and external standards of evaluation.
Internal standards of evaluation are about how arguments and positions in the system relate to each other, and there seem to be two key issues here: consistency and tightness. Consistency is obvious, of course, but tightness of system seems often to be admired. Very few people are Spinozists, for instance, but many people admire how each part is linked to every other part by clear and definite steps -- there aren't parts that are there by mere speculation or guesswork or rough analogy. This contrasts with something like Romanticism, whose very nature guarantees that it is loose -- unsystematic, we might even say, although one can detect some rather elaborate system-building even in the most aphoristic Romantic. The Romantics are system-builders, undeniably, but one part relates to another part often only by analogy or by speculation; we are left with a bunch of fragments that clearly have connection to each other, but the connection is often loose and sometimes rather uncertain. Another example is comparing phenomenology and Thomism. When St. Edith Stein, who had studied under Husserl, started her study of Thomism, she found that it took quite a bit of adjustment, because in phenomenology one uses, over and over, the same method for everything, whereas St. Thomas just uses whatever method will make progress with the problem he's looking at. Because of its unity of method, phenomenology is tighter than Thomism.
People tend to assume, I think, that consistency and tightness go together, but this does not particularly seem to be true. Logical positivism is much tighter than ordinary language philosophy, but has consistency problems that the latter does not have. Locke is tighter than Novalis, but Novalis has a consistency of his own. Spinoza is much tighter than Leibniz, but arguably not more consistent; trying to catch Leibniz out in a contradiction is bold and likely to fail, and even if you succeeded it probably wouldn't much affect Leibniz's overall approach. Tightness of system makes consistency more shiningly clear; but it can also propagate inconsistency through the system. Most people are inconsistent sometimes; in a very tight system, inconsistency sometimes easily turns into inconsistency all the time. Looseness of connection isolates failures of consistency.
External standards can be of various kinds, but pragmatic value is one that comes up often -- how useful is it for some other field or area of human life? Obviously, the question of importance is 'useful for what', but if you ask these questions, you often get interesting results. For instance, most philosophers of mind today would probably, in the abstract, take usefulness to neuroscience to be a sign of quality for an account of mind. But if we ask what school in philosophy of mind has contributed most, and contributed the most important things, to neuroscience, there is no doubt whatsoever: the answer is substance dualism. Tell a materialist philosopher of mind that and he will think you are joking, so you have to grab them by the neck and drag them through the actual historical evidence, but there's no real room for doubt. Hylomorphists contributed a few things, particularly early on; materialists have supplemented, particularly in recent decades; but modern neuroscience owes its existence primarily to substance dualists from Descartes and Steno to Sherrington and Eccles. It was they who did the major early work on the structure of the brain, it was they who did most of the foundational work on nerves, neurons, and synapses. And it is not difficult to see why -- if you are a substance dualist, you take brain events to be related to mental events, but since you don't identify them, you are not under any pressure to interpret this brain event as that mental event, and can just follow the neural evidence wherever it goes. It allows the inquiry to have full importance while minimizing the temptation to pre-impose interpretations on the evidence. Substance dualism is structured in a nearly ideal way for the study of the brain, as Platonism is structured in a nearly ideal way for the study of mathematical structures, as Romanticism is structured in a nearly ideal way for thinking about artists. Depending on what you were doing, you could probably find a school that would be more useful for this or that particular purpose; but it would be hard to find one that was more flexibly useful for a wide variety of related purposes.
One reason all of this is interesting to consider is that it touches directly on the question of what one builds philosophical systems for -- what kinds of systematicity in philosophy are desirable, and why?
It's difficult to do this in more than a rough way, but it seems reasonable to identify both internal and external standards of evaluation.
Internal standards of evaluation are about how arguments and positions in the system relate to each other, and there seem to be two key issues here: consistency and tightness. Consistency is obvious, of course, but tightness of system seems often to be admired. Very few people are Spinozists, for instance, but many people admire how each part is linked to every other part by clear and definite steps -- there aren't parts that are there by mere speculation or guesswork or rough analogy. This contrasts with something like Romanticism, whose very nature guarantees that it is loose -- unsystematic, we might even say, although one can detect some rather elaborate system-building even in the most aphoristic Romantic. The Romantics are system-builders, undeniably, but one part relates to another part often only by analogy or by speculation; we are left with a bunch of fragments that clearly have connection to each other, but the connection is often loose and sometimes rather uncertain. Another example is comparing phenomenology and Thomism. When St. Edith Stein, who had studied under Husserl, started her study of Thomism, she found that it took quite a bit of adjustment, because in phenomenology one uses, over and over, the same method for everything, whereas St. Thomas just uses whatever method will make progress with the problem he's looking at. Because of its unity of method, phenomenology is tighter than Thomism.
People tend to assume, I think, that consistency and tightness go together, but this does not particularly seem to be true. Logical positivism is much tighter than ordinary language philosophy, but has consistency problems that the latter does not have. Locke is tighter than Novalis, but Novalis has a consistency of his own. Spinoza is much tighter than Leibniz, but arguably not more consistent; trying to catch Leibniz out in a contradiction is bold and likely to fail, and even if you succeeded it probably wouldn't much affect Leibniz's overall approach. Tightness of system makes consistency more shiningly clear; but it can also propagate inconsistency through the system. Most people are inconsistent sometimes; in a very tight system, inconsistency sometimes easily turns into inconsistency all the time. Looseness of connection isolates failures of consistency.
External standards can be of various kinds, but pragmatic value is one that comes up often -- how useful is it for some other field or area of human life? Obviously, the question of importance is 'useful for what', but if you ask these questions, you often get interesting results. For instance, most philosophers of mind today would probably, in the abstract, take usefulness to neuroscience to be a sign of quality for an account of mind. But if we ask what school in philosophy of mind has contributed most, and contributed the most important things, to neuroscience, there is no doubt whatsoever: the answer is substance dualism. Tell a materialist philosopher of mind that and he will think you are joking, so you have to grab them by the neck and drag them through the actual historical evidence, but there's no real room for doubt. Hylomorphists contributed a few things, particularly early on; materialists have supplemented, particularly in recent decades; but modern neuroscience owes its existence primarily to substance dualists from Descartes and Steno to Sherrington and Eccles. It was they who did the major early work on the structure of the brain, it was they who did most of the foundational work on nerves, neurons, and synapses. And it is not difficult to see why -- if you are a substance dualist, you take brain events to be related to mental events, but since you don't identify them, you are not under any pressure to interpret this brain event as that mental event, and can just follow the neural evidence wherever it goes. It allows the inquiry to have full importance while minimizing the temptation to pre-impose interpretations on the evidence. Substance dualism is structured in a nearly ideal way for the study of the brain, as Platonism is structured in a nearly ideal way for the study of mathematical structures, as Romanticism is structured in a nearly ideal way for thinking about artists. Depending on what you were doing, you could probably find a school that would be more useful for this or that particular purpose; but it would be hard to find one that was more flexibly useful for a wide variety of related purposes.
One reason all of this is interesting to consider is that it touches directly on the question of what one builds philosophical systems for -- what kinds of systematicity in philosophy are desirable, and why?
Wednesday, October 03, 2018
Voyages Extraordinaires #5: Les Enfants du capitaine Grant
On the 26th of July, 1864, a magnificent yacht was steaming along the North Channel at full speed, with a strong breeze blowing from the N. E. The Union Jack was flying at the mizzen-mast, and a blue standard bearing the initials E. G., embroidered in gold, and surmounted by a ducal coronet, floated from the topgallant head of the main-mast. The name of the yacht was the DUNCAN, and the owner was Lord Glenarvan, one of the sixteen Scotch peers who sit in the Upper House, and the most distinguished member of the Royal Thames Yacht Club, so famous throughout the United Kingdom.
Lord Edward Glenarvan was on board with his young wife, Lady Helena, and one of his cousins, Major McNabbs.
The DUNCAN was newly built, and had been making a trial trip a few miles outside the Firth of Clyde. She was returning to Glasgow, and the Isle of Arran already loomed in the distance, when the sailor on watch caught sight of an enormous fish sporting in the wake of the ship. Lord Edward, who was immediately apprised of the fact, came up on the poop a few minutes after with his cousin, and asked John Mangles, the captain, what sort of an animal he thought it was.
Captain Harry Grant, with his ship Britannia, has vanished, but a message in a bottle has been recovered. The message is heavily water-damaged, but Captain Grant's family and friends decide to do whatever they can to find him. It is an adventure that will take them, and the hapless geographer, Jacques Paganel, to South America, then to Australia, then to New Zealand, in a desperate attempt to decipher the message correctly and find Captain Grant before it is too late.
In English, The Children of Captain Grant is often title In Search of the Castaways, but is also often called Voyage Round the World. As is often the case with Verne, translations are a bit hit and miss, often being abridgements and modifications as well as translations. The best translation online is the three-volume George Routledge and Sons Voyage Round the World; Alexander Pruss has hunted down the three volumes and given the links here.
Tuesday, October 02, 2018
Evening Note for Tuesday, October 2
Thought for the Evening: Cockburn on Space
The early modern period saw a great interest in trying to give an explanation of space. Probably the most famous are those of Descartes (a continuum of physical extension or body), of Newton (presentation in the immobile divine sensorium), and of Leibniz (a system of relations between substances), and of partisans on different sides of the dispute, but there are quite a few attempts to look at the topic in a different way. One interesting one that has not been looked at in any detail is that Catharine Trotter Cockburn, who is unusual in that she is a rationalist with a strong Lockean influence.
Cockburn's suggestion for understanding space starts with Locke in a place that you might not expect. In the Essay (Book III, Chapter VI, Section 12), Locke has an argument for angels: "in all the visible corporeal world, we see no chasms or gaps" so that "we shall find everywhere that the several species are linked together, and differ but in almost insensible degrees", so we have reason to think there are probably numerous kinds of minds more perfect than our own:
Cockburn takes the underlying idea of a "great chain of beings" (her phrase) and adapts it in a different direction. We have reason to think there are bodies, i.e., material substances, and minds, i.e., immaterial substances, and there are obvious obstacles (as noted by Descartes and others) to reducing one to the other. But this is quite a sharp division -- there appears to be a chasm between senseless material substance and intelligent immaterial substance, and if we do not find chasms in nature, then we would expect some spectrum of gradation between them -- which would have to be something like each. This is Cockburn's suggestion for the nature of space: "an immaterial unintelligent substance, the place of bodies, and of spirits, having some of the properties of both" (p. 97). However, as with Locke's gradation argument, Cockburn's gradation argument on its own gets us something for which we don't have a clear idea.
Obviously a major concern with understanding this proposal is what Cockburn means by 'substance' and, unsurprisingly given the rest of her argument, what she has in mind is a Lockean notion of substance as an unknown something to which qualities may be attributed; as Locke says (Essay Book II, Chapter XXIII, Section 2):
This is, Locke says, an "obscure and relative" idea; we know that there has to be something to which we are attributing the qualities, but as we only know of this something indirectly, by knowing that we can attribute these qualities to it but can't just be the qualities themselves, it is a we-know-not-what. It's this that Cockburn has in mind. That might seem very weak, but in fact one of her concerns is to deny the view that space is nothing at all, or else just something in the mind; on the contrary, she argues, space is real and has qualities attributable to it. We don't know much more about it than this, but the qualities it does have would make it fit right into the gap between mind and body, as a real thing that is not material (and thus not a body) and yet not intelligent (and thus not a mind).
To argue this she needs more than just the argument from gradation, because a very common position historically is that any immaterial substance would ipso facto be an intelligent substance. (Of course, historically, most of the people who held this had a much more robust conception of substance than Locke does.) Cockburn thinks that the standard (broadly Cartesian) arguments that all thinking substances are immaterial are probably right, although like Locke she holds that we can't rule out that God could create thinking matter, but she denies that immateriality implies thinking. This makes sense given the Lockean conception of substance: immateriality just tells you the kind of qualities not attributable to the unknown something that is mind (it's not a shape, it has no length, it has no resistance, etc.); nothing requires that this implies that the only qualities that can be attributed to an immaterial substance are cogitative.
On the basis of this, Cockburn is inclined to be skeptical of the common view at the time that space is infinite -- the only infinity that could be relevant is a negative infinity of having no bounds, and this seems to be the sort of thing that only applies to things that are abstract (number, mathematical extension, etc.), not something that can be attributed to a "real actual complete existence" (p. 105). What leads people to call space infinite, Cockburn thinks, is that it is indefinite -- we don't know what could be setting bounds to space itself. But this is a claim about what we can conceive, not about space:
Thus, since there may be things that can bound space, and negative infinity seems only to apply to abstract objects like number, not real particular existences, she thinks we have no reason to call space infinite. She notes, though, with some amusement, how much out of our depth we are in discussing it, given that some people have claimed that space is nothing, others that it is infinite, and yet others that it is divine; it is certainly a remarkable thing that some have argued that it is not real and others that it is supremely so!
[Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Philosophical Writings, Sheridan, ed. Broadview (Peterborough, ON: 2006).]
Various Links of Interest
* Sabine Hossenfielder, Hawking temperature of black holes measured in fluid analogue, explains an interesting example of experiment-through-analogy.
* Edward Conze: A Study in Contradiction, at "Jayarava's Raves"
* Catarina Dutilh Novaes has an interview on the radio program, "The Philosopher's Zone", on mathematical proof and beauty.
* James V. Schall, Understanding Law with Thomas Aquinas
* Dan Hitchens, Ex-FBI agents to help investigate Cardinals on abuse and corruption. Something like this is certainly necessary; it has to be done properly, but something like it is needed. There were some people claiming that this would be in violation of article 80 of Universi Dominici Gregis; but this is obviously absurd -- the relevant section only addresses people involved in papal elections, and only prevents them from actions that suggest that civil authorities have the right to exercise some kind of veto in papal elections, so it is not even remotely relevant. Nor, contrary to some reporting elsewhere, does the explicitly stated plan seem to be to try to influence papal elections to begin with: the planned report is supposed to be on voting members of the College in general. But if this does manage to get off the ground, I suppose we can expect some bishops trying to claim it is a canonical violation. I would prefer something with more oversight than this seems likely to have, though.
* David Oderberg, Opting Out: Conscience and Cooperation in a Pluralistic Society
Currently Reading
Jules Verne, Family without a Name
Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given
Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Philosophical Writings
Lloyd Humberstone, Philosophical Applications of Modal Logic
Jules Verne, In Search of the Castaways
The early modern period saw a great interest in trying to give an explanation of space. Probably the most famous are those of Descartes (a continuum of physical extension or body), of Newton (presentation in the immobile divine sensorium), and of Leibniz (a system of relations between substances), and of partisans on different sides of the dispute, but there are quite a few attempts to look at the topic in a different way. One interesting one that has not been looked at in any detail is that Catharine Trotter Cockburn, who is unusual in that she is a rationalist with a strong Lockean influence.
Cockburn's suggestion for understanding space starts with Locke in a place that you might not expect. In the Essay (Book III, Chapter VI, Section 12), Locke has an argument for angels: "in all the visible corporeal world, we see no chasms or gaps" so that "we shall find everywhere that the several species are linked together, and differ but in almost insensible degrees", so we have reason to think there are probably numerous kinds of minds more perfect than our own:
And when we consider the infinite power and wisdom of the Maker, we have reason to think that it is suitable to the magnificent harmony of the universe, and the great design and infinite goodness of the Architect, that the species of creatures should also, by gentle degrees, ascend upward from us toward his infinite perfection, as we see they gradually descend from us downwards: which if it be probable, we have reason then to be persuaded that there are far more species of creatures above us than there are beneath; we being, in degrees of perfection, much more remote from the infinite being of GOD than we are from the lowest state of being, and that which approaches nearest to nothing. And yet of all those distinct species, for the reasons above said, we have no clear distinct ideas.
Cockburn takes the underlying idea of a "great chain of beings" (her phrase) and adapts it in a different direction. We have reason to think there are bodies, i.e., material substances, and minds, i.e., immaterial substances, and there are obvious obstacles (as noted by Descartes and others) to reducing one to the other. But this is quite a sharp division -- there appears to be a chasm between senseless material substance and intelligent immaterial substance, and if we do not find chasms in nature, then we would expect some spectrum of gradation between them -- which would have to be something like each. This is Cockburn's suggestion for the nature of space: "an immaterial unintelligent substance, the place of bodies, and of spirits, having some of the properties of both" (p. 97). However, as with Locke's gradation argument, Cockburn's gradation argument on its own gets us something for which we don't have a clear idea.
Obviously a major concern with understanding this proposal is what Cockburn means by 'substance' and, unsurprisingly given the rest of her argument, what she has in mind is a Lockean notion of substance as an unknown something to which qualities may be attributed; as Locke says (Essay Book II, Chapter XXIII, Section 2):
The idea then we have, to which we give the general name substance, being nothing but the supposed, but unknown, support of those qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist sine re substante, without something to support them, we call that support substantia; which, according to the true import of the word, is, in plain English, standing under or upholding.
This is, Locke says, an "obscure and relative" idea; we know that there has to be something to which we are attributing the qualities, but as we only know of this something indirectly, by knowing that we can attribute these qualities to it but can't just be the qualities themselves, it is a we-know-not-what. It's this that Cockburn has in mind. That might seem very weak, but in fact one of her concerns is to deny the view that space is nothing at all, or else just something in the mind; on the contrary, she argues, space is real and has qualities attributable to it. We don't know much more about it than this, but the qualities it does have would make it fit right into the gap between mind and body, as a real thing that is not material (and thus not a body) and yet not intelligent (and thus not a mind).
To argue this she needs more than just the argument from gradation, because a very common position historically is that any immaterial substance would ipso facto be an intelligent substance. (Of course, historically, most of the people who held this had a much more robust conception of substance than Locke does.) Cockburn thinks that the standard (broadly Cartesian) arguments that all thinking substances are immaterial are probably right, although like Locke she holds that we can't rule out that God could create thinking matter, but she denies that immateriality implies thinking. This makes sense given the Lockean conception of substance: immateriality just tells you the kind of qualities not attributable to the unknown something that is mind (it's not a shape, it has no length, it has no resistance, etc.); nothing requires that this implies that the only qualities that can be attributed to an immaterial substance are cogitative.
On the basis of this, Cockburn is inclined to be skeptical of the common view at the time that space is infinite -- the only infinity that could be relevant is a negative infinity of having no bounds, and this seems to be the sort of thing that only applies to things that are abstract (number, mathematical extension, etc.), not something that can be attributed to a "real actual complete existence" (p. 105). What leads people to call space infinite, Cockburn thinks, is that it is indefinite -- we don't know what could be setting bounds to space itself. But this is a claim about what we can conceive, not about space:
As I cannot conclude space to be nothing, because we know not what it is, neither can I conclude it to be infinite, because we are ignorant what can set bounds to it. May there not be many ways of setting bounds to space, that we know nothing of? It may be bounded by its own nature, or by the will of God, or by some kind of beings, that we are not acquainted with. (p. 105)
Thus, since there may be things that can bound space, and negative infinity seems only to apply to abstract objects like number, not real particular existences, she thinks we have no reason to call space infinite. She notes, though, with some amusement, how much out of our depth we are in discussing it, given that some people have claimed that space is nothing, others that it is infinite, and yet others that it is divine; it is certainly a remarkable thing that some have argued that it is not real and others that it is supremely so!
[Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Philosophical Writings, Sheridan, ed. Broadview (Peterborough, ON: 2006).]
Various Links of Interest
* Sabine Hossenfielder, Hawking temperature of black holes measured in fluid analogue, explains an interesting example of experiment-through-analogy.
* Edward Conze: A Study in Contradiction, at "Jayarava's Raves"
* Catarina Dutilh Novaes has an interview on the radio program, "The Philosopher's Zone", on mathematical proof and beauty.
* James V. Schall, Understanding Law with Thomas Aquinas
* Dan Hitchens, Ex-FBI agents to help investigate Cardinals on abuse and corruption. Something like this is certainly necessary; it has to be done properly, but something like it is needed. There were some people claiming that this would be in violation of article 80 of Universi Dominici Gregis; but this is obviously absurd -- the relevant section only addresses people involved in papal elections, and only prevents them from actions that suggest that civil authorities have the right to exercise some kind of veto in papal elections, so it is not even remotely relevant. Nor, contrary to some reporting elsewhere, does the explicitly stated plan seem to be to try to influence papal elections to begin with: the planned report is supposed to be on voting members of the College in general. But if this does manage to get off the ground, I suppose we can expect some bishops trying to claim it is a canonical violation. I would prefer something with more oversight than this seems likely to have, though.
* David Oderberg, Opting Out: Conscience and Cooperation in a Pluralistic Society
Currently Reading
Jules Verne, Family without a Name
Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given
Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Philosophical Writings
Lloyd Humberstone, Philosophical Applications of Modal Logic
Jules Verne, In Search of the Castaways
Monday, October 01, 2018
Sensible, Rational, Social
Let man be allowed as a sensible being, to choose natural or sensible good, and even to be under a moral obligation of so doing; but let him likewise be allowed in his other capacities to have other views, and to be under other obligations. A rational being ought to act suitably to the reason and nature of things: a social being ought to promote the good of others: an approbation of these ends is unavoidable, a regard to them implied in the very nature of such beings, which must therefore bring on them the strongest moral obligations. To ask, why a rational being should choose to act according to reason, or why a social being should desire the good of others, is full as absurd, as to ask why a sensible being should choose pleasure rather than pain.
Catharine Trotter Cockburn, "Remarks upon an Essay on Moral Obligation", Philosophical Writings, Sheridan, ed. Broadview (Peterborough, ON: 2006) p. 119
Little Flower
(Reposted from 2017.)
Today is the memorial of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, also known as The Little Flower. She was the youngest daughter of Ss. Louis Martin and Zélie Guérin, born in 1873. She had something of a troubled childhood; her mother died when she was 4, she was heavily bullied at school, she was often sick. However, she improved greatly as she grew older and eventually entered the Carmelite order in 1888. She died at the age of 24, on September 30, 1897, and was canonized by Pius XI in 1925. I find it a somewhat amusing irony that her feast follows immediately after St. Jerome's; they are personality-wise direct opposites in many ways. But they are both Doctors of the Church, and have more in common than one might think.
From a letter to her sister Céline:
Today is the memorial of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, also known as The Little Flower. She was the youngest daughter of Ss. Louis Martin and Zélie Guérin, born in 1873. She had something of a troubled childhood; her mother died when she was 4, she was heavily bullied at school, she was often sick. However, she improved greatly as she grew older and eventually entered the Carmelite order in 1888. She died at the age of 24, on September 30, 1897, and was canonized by Pius XI in 1925. I find it a somewhat amusing irony that her feast follows immediately after St. Jerome's; they are personality-wise direct opposites in many ways. But they are both Doctors of the Church, and have more in common than one might think.
From a letter to her sister Céline:
October 20, 1888.
MY DEAREST SISTER,—Do not let your weakness make you unhappy. When, in the morning, we feel no courage or strength for the practice of virtue, it is really a grace: it is the time to "lay the axe to the root of the tree," relying upon Jesus alone. If we fall, an act of love will set all right, and Jesus smiles. He helps us without seeming to do so; and the tears which sinners cause Him to shed are wiped away by our poor weak love. Love can do all things. The most impossible tasks seem to it easy and sweet. You know well that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them. What, then, have we to fear?
You wish to become a Saint, and you ask me if this is not attempting too much. Céline, I will not tell you to aim at the seraphic holiness of the most privileged souls, but rather to be "perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect." You see that your dream—that our dreams and our desires—are not fancies, since Jesus Himself has laid their realisation upon us as a commandment.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus
(Reposted from 2017.)
Today is the feast of St. Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, better known as St. Jerome, Doctor of the Church. An ascetic who apparently only became a priest because he was forced to by his bishop, Paulinus II of Antioch, he spent time in Constantinople with St. Gregory of Nazianzen before going with Paulinus to a synod in Rome under Pope St. Damasus I. His brilliance was recognized immediately, and Damasus arranged for him to stay at Rome. There he got along quite well with women and no one else; as he encouraged women to become ascetics, the Romans became quite hostile to him. It doubtless did not help that he was frank, caustic, and abrasive. He was eventually forced to return to Antioch, at which point he went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Egypt. He spent the last, long phase of his life in a cave near Bethlehem, a small community of ascetics gathering around him, and died September 30, 420.
From his famous Helmeted Introduction to the Book of Kings:
Dion, "The Thunderer". The lyrics are from a poem by Phyllis McGinley. Jerome was indeed no "plaster sort of saint", but he gave people's minds a "godly leaven", and by his very existence shows that "it takes all kinds to make a Heaven."
Today is the feast of St. Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, better known as St. Jerome, Doctor of the Church. An ascetic who apparently only became a priest because he was forced to by his bishop, Paulinus II of Antioch, he spent time in Constantinople with St. Gregory of Nazianzen before going with Paulinus to a synod in Rome under Pope St. Damasus I. His brilliance was recognized immediately, and Damasus arranged for him to stay at Rome. There he got along quite well with women and no one else; as he encouraged women to become ascetics, the Romans became quite hostile to him. It doubtless did not help that he was frank, caustic, and abrasive. He was eventually forced to return to Antioch, at which point he went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Egypt. He spent the last, long phase of his life in a cave near Bethlehem, a small community of ascetics gathering around him, and died September 30, 420.
From his famous Helmeted Introduction to the Book of Kings:
While these things may be so, I implore you, reader, that you might not consider my work a rebuke of the ancients. Each one offers to the Tabernacle of God what he is able. Some offer gold and silver and precious stones; others, linen and purple, scarlet and blue. It will go well with us, if we offer the skins and hair of goats. For the Apostle still judges our more contemptible parts more necessary. From which both the whole of the beauty of the Tabernacle and each individual kind, a distinction of the present and future Church, is covered with skins and goat-hair coverings, and the heat of the sun and the harmful rain are kept off by those things which are of lesser value. Therefore, first read my Samuel and Kings; mine, I say, mine. For whatever we have learned and know by often translating and carefully correcting is ours. And when you come to understand what you did not know before, either consider me a translator, if you are grateful, or a paraphraser, if ungrateful, although I am truly not at all aware of anything of the Hebrew to have been changed by me....
But I also ask you, handmaidens of Christ, who have anointed the head of your reclining Lord with the most precious myrrh of faith, who have in no way sought the Savior in the tomb, for whom Christ has now ascended to the Father, that you might oppose the shields of your prayers against the barking dogs which rage against me with rabid mouth and go around the city, and in it they are considered educated if slandering others. I, knowing my humility, will always remember these sentences: "I will guard my ways, so I will not offend with my tongue; I have placed a guard on my mouth, while the sinner stands against me; I was mute, and humiliated, and silent because of good things."
Dion, "The Thunderer". The lyrics are from a poem by Phyllis McGinley. Jerome was indeed no "plaster sort of saint", but he gave people's minds a "godly leaven", and by his very existence shows that "it takes all kinds to make a Heaven."
Fortnightly Book, September 30
In the early nineteenth century, trouble was brewing in Quebec, as Francophones increasingly protested the Anglophone-heavy representation of the colonial government. The upper echelons were appointed by the Crown, but as there was no native nobility, the inevitable result was the capture of most of the government by wealthy trade-oligarchs. When a major economic downturn occurred in 1836, the underlying resentments against the colonial government began to heat up, and when a number of reform proposals were shot down, the leader of the reformers (known as Patriotes), Louis-Joseph Papineau, began organizing a paramilitary resistance. Revolution began in earnest in 1837. The Patriote militias were soon crushed by the British army, but the events would have a formative influence on the character of Quebec.
The next fortnightly book is Edward Baxter's 1982 translation of Jules Verne's Family Without a Name, Voyages Extraordinaires #33, published in 1889. A summary from the cover:
As Baxter notes in the introduction, Verne never visited Canada except briefly on a visit to Niagara Falls, and everything in the work is based on impressions Verne got from reading books and the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. As a result, this is a work of historical fiction that is much more fiction than historical, with very little more drawn from the history than the historical frame and some of the geography (with which Verne also takes liberties). But Verne was very interested in independence movements, and especially in those movements that involved heroic self-sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds, and there is no question that La Guerre des patriotes had plenty of that.
The next fortnightly book is Edward Baxter's 1982 translation of Jules Verne's Family Without a Name, Voyages Extraordinaires #33, published in 1889. A summary from the cover:
Even amongst his closest friends, only a few known that the man they call, simply, "Jean" is really the elusive and charismatic Jean-sans-nom, the Patriote leader with a price on his head. Only two people -- his mother and his brother -- know the terrible secret of his true identity and why it must go with him to the grave. And the woman he loves must never learn that the money he uses to buy weapons for the underground Patriote cells is bloodmoney.
As Baxter notes in the introduction, Verne never visited Canada except briefly on a visit to Niagara Falls, and everything in the work is based on impressions Verne got from reading books and the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. As a result, this is a work of historical fiction that is much more fiction than historical, with very little more drawn from the history than the historical frame and some of the geography (with which Verne also takes liberties). But Verne was very interested in independence movements, and especially in those movements that involved heroic self-sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds, and there is no question that La Guerre des patriotes had plenty of that.
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Introduction
Opening Passage:
Summary: Uncle Tom's Cabin is intended to show slavery "in a living dramatic reality", on the principle that there are many who would be more likely to oppose slavery, or to oppose it more vehemently, if they could somehow see the real character of it. Because of this, Stowe is very careful not to load the deck in her favor; her people are each of a type, and she tries to show that kind of person in the best light that she can -- even, it should be noted, the wicked Simon Legree, with his lost daughter and the obvious fact that some of his cruelty is obviously his attempting to counterbalance a conscience that, though not guilty, is quite clearly unsettled. Legree is evil, but humanly so, hard as it sometimes is to read what he does. Most of the rest are often decent and at worst selfish or vulgar. And this is, I think, effective for Stowe's purposes, since it makes vivid the running theme of the work: that slavery runs against every impulse of nature and grace. It tears mother from child, husband from wife, sibling from sibling; it leaves rational beings uneducated and gives human beings corrupting power; defenses of it are purely abstract rationalizations that require reason to be divorced from human sympathy; it treats physical matters as more important than matters of virtue; it sits poorly with a vivid recognition that Christ died for all alike; it is clear and obvious that it sometimes puts the holy entirely in the power of the wicked; it batters faith and leaves souls unsaved.
There is another running theme of the work, I think, and one closely associated with Stowe's desire to present slavery "in a living dramatic reality": that the overcoming of slavery is something that can only happen by the influence of person on person. There are many decent people in the book who do nothing, or who are actively complicit, not because they see nothing wrong but because they see themselves essentially as powerless. They don't know what to do, or they don't see how they could survive the sacrifice it would take to do something, or they rationalize that their complicity is itself a kind of sacrifice for a greater good, or they (like Miss Ophelia, and, indeed, like many of Stowe's readers) know but don't realize what is going on. What is necessary for those people is good example that shows that they are not, in fact, so powerless; the Quakers, or Eva, or Uncle Tom do good not just in their own right but by example, showing what can be done. To be sure, not everyone can be moved to good by example; some are too locked in their own patterns of thought to see it, and some, like Legree, are outraged by it.
Moral luck is a concept much discussed in recent philosophical work, and it's a matter of interest to Stowe, as well. Much of the stability of slavery is due to the inertia of custom and education in the South; the people of New England are not inherently better -- they have better ideas, but they don't have better temperaments and often not even better characters. People who would never have to worry much about complicity in slavery elsewhere can hardly avoid it in the South -- but they were born and raised in the South, and so have been entangled in it all their lives, while people elsewhere never had that problem. It seems very much a matter of luck -- luck of birth, luck of education, luck of whom they have met in their lives. But this does not make the moral judgment against slavery vanish; it involves things that are wrong in themselves, whatever explains one's being involved in it, and whatever one's precise level of complicity and culpability. And we are responsible regardless. As Tom says to Cassy, "If I get to be as hard-hearted as that ar’ Sambo, and as wicked, it won’t make much odds to me how I come so; it’s the bein’ so,—that ar’s what I’m a dreadin’." Moral luck tends to be a puzzle if we are only talking about one's personal guilt; but guilt is not the primary issue in moral responsibility -- right and wrong are.
I'm always struck, reading this work, by how reminiscent of Platonic ideas are its general themes. It might be a little strong to apply the Platonic notion that nothing bad happens to the just person here, but in fact Uncle Tom's victory is precisely that while Legree can harm his body, his soul is entirely out of reach because it is virtuous, and Tom who, like the Neoplatonists said of Socrates, has the victory of an unjust death, is not lessened by it. And when he pities the wicked people around him, it is not a sign of weakness but the ultimate defiance, in exactly the way a Platonist would say: the wicked are more to be pitied than the oppressed, because the former have the life that is objectively worse. Any other view of the situation in the end concedes that might makes right. It is, I think, a line of reasoning that people do not like to hear today; but this does not make the Platonic arguments less cogent, nor does it make the literary depiction of it "in living dramatic reality" a less powerful and magnetic example.
Favorite Passage:
Recommendation: Highly Recommended.
Opening Passage:
Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P——, in Kentucky. There were no servants present, and the gentlemen, with chairs closely approaching, seemed to be discussing some subject with great earnestness.
For convenience sake, we have said, hitherto, two gentlemen. One of the parties, however, when critically examined, did not seem, strictly speaking, to come under the species. He was a short, thick-set man, with coarse, commonplace features, and that swaggering air of pretension which marks a low man who is trying to elbow his way upward in the world. He was much over-dressed, in a gaudy vest of many colors, a blue neckerchief, bedropped gayly with yellow spots, and arranged with a flaunting tie, quite in keeping with the general air of the man. His hands, large and coarse, were plentifully bedecked with rings; and he wore a heavy gold watch-chain, with a bundle of seals of portentous size, and a great variety of colors, attached to it,—which, in the ardor of conversation, he was in the habit of flourishing and jingling with evident satisfaction. His conversation was in free and easy defiance of Murray’s Grammar, and was garnished at convenient intervals with various profane expressions, which not even the desire to be graphic in our account shall induce us to transcribe.
Summary: Uncle Tom's Cabin is intended to show slavery "in a living dramatic reality", on the principle that there are many who would be more likely to oppose slavery, or to oppose it more vehemently, if they could somehow see the real character of it. Because of this, Stowe is very careful not to load the deck in her favor; her people are each of a type, and she tries to show that kind of person in the best light that she can -- even, it should be noted, the wicked Simon Legree, with his lost daughter and the obvious fact that some of his cruelty is obviously his attempting to counterbalance a conscience that, though not guilty, is quite clearly unsettled. Legree is evil, but humanly so, hard as it sometimes is to read what he does. Most of the rest are often decent and at worst selfish or vulgar. And this is, I think, effective for Stowe's purposes, since it makes vivid the running theme of the work: that slavery runs against every impulse of nature and grace. It tears mother from child, husband from wife, sibling from sibling; it leaves rational beings uneducated and gives human beings corrupting power; defenses of it are purely abstract rationalizations that require reason to be divorced from human sympathy; it treats physical matters as more important than matters of virtue; it sits poorly with a vivid recognition that Christ died for all alike; it is clear and obvious that it sometimes puts the holy entirely in the power of the wicked; it batters faith and leaves souls unsaved.
There is another running theme of the work, I think, and one closely associated with Stowe's desire to present slavery "in a living dramatic reality": that the overcoming of slavery is something that can only happen by the influence of person on person. There are many decent people in the book who do nothing, or who are actively complicit, not because they see nothing wrong but because they see themselves essentially as powerless. They don't know what to do, or they don't see how they could survive the sacrifice it would take to do something, or they rationalize that their complicity is itself a kind of sacrifice for a greater good, or they (like Miss Ophelia, and, indeed, like many of Stowe's readers) know but don't realize what is going on. What is necessary for those people is good example that shows that they are not, in fact, so powerless; the Quakers, or Eva, or Uncle Tom do good not just in their own right but by example, showing what can be done. To be sure, not everyone can be moved to good by example; some are too locked in their own patterns of thought to see it, and some, like Legree, are outraged by it.
Moral luck is a concept much discussed in recent philosophical work, and it's a matter of interest to Stowe, as well. Much of the stability of slavery is due to the inertia of custom and education in the South; the people of New England are not inherently better -- they have better ideas, but they don't have better temperaments and often not even better characters. People who would never have to worry much about complicity in slavery elsewhere can hardly avoid it in the South -- but they were born and raised in the South, and so have been entangled in it all their lives, while people elsewhere never had that problem. It seems very much a matter of luck -- luck of birth, luck of education, luck of whom they have met in their lives. But this does not make the moral judgment against slavery vanish; it involves things that are wrong in themselves, whatever explains one's being involved in it, and whatever one's precise level of complicity and culpability. And we are responsible regardless. As Tom says to Cassy, "If I get to be as hard-hearted as that ar’ Sambo, and as wicked, it won’t make much odds to me how I come so; it’s the bein’ so,—that ar’s what I’m a dreadin’." Moral luck tends to be a puzzle if we are only talking about one's personal guilt; but guilt is not the primary issue in moral responsibility -- right and wrong are.
I'm always struck, reading this work, by how reminiscent of Platonic ideas are its general themes. It might be a little strong to apply the Platonic notion that nothing bad happens to the just person here, but in fact Uncle Tom's victory is precisely that while Legree can harm his body, his soul is entirely out of reach because it is virtuous, and Tom who, like the Neoplatonists said of Socrates, has the victory of an unjust death, is not lessened by it. And when he pities the wicked people around him, it is not a sign of weakness but the ultimate defiance, in exactly the way a Platonist would say: the wicked are more to be pitied than the oppressed, because the former have the life that is objectively worse. Any other view of the situation in the end concedes that might makes right. It is, I think, a line of reasoning that people do not like to hear today; but this does not make the Platonic arguments less cogent, nor does it make the literary depiction of it "in living dramatic reality" a less powerful and magnetic example.
Favorite Passage:
Tom’s Methodist hymn-book, which, in his hurry, he had forgotten, he now held up and turned over.
"Humph! pious, to be sure. So, what’s yer name,—you belong to the church, eh?”
“Yes, Mas’r,” said Tom, firmly.
“Well, I’ll soon have that out of you. I have none o’ yer bawling, praying, singing niggers on my place; so remember. Now, mind yourself,” he said, with a stamp and a fierce glance of his gray eye, directed at Tom, “I’m your church now! You understand,—you’ve got to be as I say.”
Something within the silent black man answered No! and, as if repeated by an invisible voice, came the words of an old prophetic scroll, as Eva had often read them to him,—“Fear not! for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by name. Thou art MINE!”
Recommendation: Highly Recommended.
Friday, September 28, 2018
Poem a Day XX
As this is the last weekday in September, this ends this weekday-only version of Poem a Day.
Out of Ideas
When the flickering flame
has gone as it came,
I can say without shame
that no one's to blame
if the words are now lame;
it's the end of the game.
Out of Ideas
When the flickering flame
has gone as it came,
I can say without shame
that no one's to blame
if the words are now lame;
it's the end of the game.
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Music on My Mind
Weezer (ft. Weird Al Yankovic), "Africa". It's an interesting musical-humor mix; it's a straight cover, but the video is a light parody of some of the videos for Weezer's best known songs ("Buddy Holly" and "The Sweater Song" are the obvious ones).
Poem a Day XIX
Reason and Grace
Nothing I am
and nothing I'll be;
my footsteps are washed
by the sands of the sea.
The waves rolling in
will cover all trace
and nothing remain
but reason and grace.
Shout out my name;
the echo will die,
lost on the wind
in the silence of sigh.
My name in the air
cannot hold me in place;
nothing's forever
but reason and grace.
Conquer the world;
the borders all break,
bursting like bubbles
or dreams when we wake;
put up the bronze
of the kings of the race;
it all will fall down
except reason and grace.
My tales will be finished,
the course will be run,
and darkness will fall
with the dousing of sun;
not a bit does it matter,
though tears touch my face:
there is nothing enduring
save reason and grace.
Nothing I am
and nothing I'll be;
my footsteps are washed
by the sands of the sea.
The waves rolling in
will cover all trace
and nothing remain
but reason and grace.
Shout out my name;
the echo will die,
lost on the wind
in the silence of sigh.
My name in the air
cannot hold me in place;
nothing's forever
but reason and grace.
Conquer the world;
the borders all break,
bursting like bubbles
or dreams when we wake;
put up the bronze
of the kings of the race;
it all will fall down
except reason and grace.
My tales will be finished,
the course will be run,
and darkness will fall
with the dousing of sun;
not a bit does it matter,
though tears touch my face:
there is nothing enduring
save reason and grace.
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Jottings on the Game of Favourites
Like favourites
Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
I am certain of very little in this post.
We all know of the danger of nepotism; accusing someone of nepotism is for us a way of accusing them of corruption. But if you look at the history of appointing family to political position, you notice that there is a very long stretch of time during which a lot of people are trying to get princes to be nepotists. And there is a reason for that. For instance, there was a position in the papal curia called Cardinal-Nephew (cardinalis nepos), which is where we get the name 'nepotism'; it was literally a position for relatives of the Pope. But it was an anti-corruption position. The reason people pushed for nepotism was because they were trying to avoid something they saw as much worse: favoritism or favouritism. They were intensely aware of the corruption that came with favouritism, princes letting their favourites do what they pleased.
With most corruption, you don't really have to worry that much about the prince himself. Princes can be corrupt, but what matters is how the prince's decisions are actually put into effect, which is almost always through other people, and it's there that corruption becomes very worrisome. The most corrupt people are often not the princes themselves but the people who can do whatever they please because they have effective power and are protected by the prince. But while there are always exceptions, people tend not to pick their favourites from family, because your family is probably not excessively inclined to flatter you and pander to your wants. You don't really get to pick your family; and chances are, you are very aware of the failings of members of your family. You know not to trust Uncle Joe with money; you know that Cousin Mary is trustworthy except when she's been drinking. And your family has obligations to you, at least indirectly; this is very obvious in a society, like that of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, when it's often the case that the real political power is not that of the individual but of the family house. Favourites are a matter of pleasure, and thus of temptation; family is a matter of obligation, and thus governing by way of family is more complicated and restrictive than governing by way of favourites. You don't need everybody to be family, but family can be leveraged against favourites, and family is less dangerous than favourites. Nobody thought it was a perfect system (everyone knows people in their family who can't be trusted with power), but it is very definitely not an anything-goes system. St. Pius V tried to get out of it, and his cardinals and the Spanish empire kept demanding that he appoint a Cardinal-Nephew. And that's exactly why: they wanted to avoid at all costs a favouritist system. And it worked beautifully! St. Pius V gave in, and had to give his grandnephew a position, and then actively kept him on a short leash because he didn't trust him with very much power.
In any case, there was one kind of situation that would inevitably bring the whole notion of a Cardinal-Nephew down. And it wasn't the really awful family politicking of the Renaissance; that was certainly awful and not at all a recommendation of a nepotistic system, but in fact the politicking was as severe inside as between families, so nepotism usually meant at least some kind of checks and balances. But while people don't usually pick favourites from family, sometimes they do. And it doesn't matter if the Pope is generally good and decent; if he is overly indulgent to his Cardinal-Nephews, to family in effective power, you have an extremely dangerous situation. Then you get il cardinale padrone, the Boss Cardinal -- and you are back in all the corruption of the favouritist system, and with no way to counter it, because indulged family is in some ways more secure than indulged favourites. And it was the increasing tendency of this to happen that led to reactions against it. Pope Innocent XI actively campaigned against nepotism, only accepted the papacy on condition that he could get rid of it, and then tried -- and failed -- three times to end it. It was finally done away with in 1692 by Pope Innocent XII.
Now nepotism didn't eliminate favouritism, it just often countered it. And fortunately Innocent XII and the popes immediately after him were intelligent enough to see that you could not replace nepotism with the arbitrariness of favouritism, so a mode of governance eventually got put together to counter the latter. There's no standard name for it; it is very bureaucracy-focused, so we could call it proceduralism, or maybe careerism. There had been career bureaucrats in the hierarchy for a very long time before that, so it could build on what was already there. I've no doubt it seemed a godsend in comparison with the worst excesses of nepotism: instead of family politics, pre-established procedures; instead of arbitrarily chosen favourites, people chosen because of their experience. Obviously favourites still existed, but they were held in check by the impersonal power of the bureaucracy itself. Two problems became obvious. The first, which is perhaps not particularly important from the perspective of avoiding corruption, was that it was seen as bureaucracy is always seen, and sometimes justifiedly: red tape and pointless procedures and policies that are there to preserve the bureaucracy rather than accomplish anything important. The second, and more serious problem, was that it does not seem to be sustainable. It was a bit of a lottery whether family members could be favourites. But favourites can quite easily be picked among a large group of career ecclesial bureaucrats -- and they can capture the bureaucracy. And then how do you get out of it? When senior bureaucrats in a highly bureaucratic system are favourites, it can get even worse than when the Cardinal-Nephew is cardinale padrone.
All of this, of course, is quite crude. But I think if we look at Church politics, we are indeed dealing with the results of a favouritist system. I think there were several steps that resulted in this. It used to be the case that there were always powerful cardinals whose power was not wholly dependent on the Pope; the Pope needed cardinals from France or Austria, say, just for political reasons, and they needed to be people with political connections in France and Austria, and their usefulness in this way was also part of their power. There are obvious problems -- it inevitably means that secular politics is meddling with ecclesial politics. In a very proceduralist system, this not necessarily fatal; Cardinals can have their own agendas as much as they please but they still have to fulfill their roles in the bureaucratic machine. Since we have excellent reason not to want secular governments to meddle in Church government, however, there was increasing reaction against this. But as we have solved that problem, the cost has been that Cardinals have become more and more creatures of the Popes. It didn't happen overnight, because there is a lot of inertia in Church politics. But more and more the choice of Cardinals has been completely arbitrary, and the whole thing starts looking less proceduralist and more like just a really complicated favouritist system.
If we take this as our hypothesis, a lot of Church politics for the past hundred years makes sense. Pius XII was arguably as strong a pope as he was because he was pope during a transition period, in which proceduralism was still the background norm but favouritism allowed him to bypass proceduralist roadblocks when he wanted to do so. His curia was definitely filled with favourites; but they were favourites who still had to play by some of the proceduralist rules. I suspect this is why poor Cardinal Ottaviani became so hated despite the fact that his career was so unexceptionable: he was a die-hard proceduralist and was consistently in the way of Church bureaucrats who wanted to be able to break out of the proceduralist rules and rule their little curial fiefdoms as they pleased. Paul VI and Benedict XVI were exceptionally weak popes because they inherited from prior popes an entire thriving system of favourites that they could not easily revise, which they also had personal incentive not to revise -- they had both been favourites themselves and both wanted to identify themselves with the prior regime rather than make a sharp break from it. Benedict XVI seems in particular to have had the odd idea that he had a special moral obligation not to cause unrest in the Curia, with the inevitable result that he had almost no effective authority.
Pope Francis is a different story; he was not a favourite in the court of St. John Paul II. But John Paul II seems to have had the idea that he needed to be evenhanded as a rule; when he really wanted something done, he'd work through favourites, but mostly he just tried to make sure that things were balanced. This meant that the workings of the favouritist system were often not as obvious as they might otherwise have been, and also meant that non-favourites had a lot of room for making alliances, and thus it was possible for a non-favourite to become Pope without some obvious traumatic crisis to force it. But Pope Francis is the most explicitly anti-proceduralist pope in a very long time; he thinks that things should be done as much as possible through personal connections, and doesn't like purely impersonal modes of governance. And given that the system was already favouritist to begin with, it inevitably becomes more obviously so. It's gasoline to the flame. None of Francis's reforms have even remotely reined in the favouritist tendencies of the system; several of them have clearly aggravated it. And we have all the room for corruption that a favouritist system allows. To be sure, favouritism is not automatically corruption; but corrupt favouritism is very, very hard to reform.
And this is where we seem to be: for the past half-century, we've had a lot of people who could get away with almost anything as long as they made the right symbolic procedural gestures, and now that people really want something done about it, there is no way to force them even to make the gestures. Nepotism is not coming back (we don't have the family-focused societies it requires), and a bunch of favourites are not going to accept merely procedural constraints on their fiefdom-omnipotence.
It's difficult to see any route that does not drag us through a century at least of highly erratic policy and continuing corruption. Favouritism is with us always, but how do you get something to check it if the favourites can block any restriction of their power? I keep thinking about this, over and over again, and I can't see any reform except one that would actually address the problem, and I cannot see any path by which it could come about. The reform is breaking the power of the Cardinals. I don't know that the College of Cardinals needs to be dissolved, but if there were some explicit check and balance to them that is filled by something other than purely arbitrary choice (my own thought is a Council of Patriarchs and Major Archbishops), maybe, maybe, maybe, we could avoid the danger of a self-perpetuating oligarchy of favourites. But maybe not. And in any case, how could any such thing be put into place? Perhaps we peasant-farmers are just stuck with the Ancien Régime until some terrible crisis comes and it all falls down.
Poem a Day XVIII
Gray Day
The sky is gray; the clouds
are sorrowful and proud, with rain
that weeps, a sign of pain
of lovers lost and slain; the air
is throb of heart laid bare;
the world is bent with care; and yet--
though all is shower-wet,
it still is hard to fret or sigh
when rain brings flowers nigh.
The sky is gray; the clouds
are sorrowful and proud, with rain
that weeps, a sign of pain
of lovers lost and slain; the air
is throb of heart laid bare;
the world is bent with care; and yet--
though all is shower-wet,
it still is hard to fret or sigh
when rain brings flowers nigh.
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Evening Note for Tuesday, September 25
Thought for the Evening: 'Classical Theism'
'Classical theism' is a term invented by the process philosopher Charles Hartshorne to describe that in opposition of which his 'neoclassical' or 'dipolar' theism was developed. It essentially refers to positions that take God to be simple and immutable, although in Omnipotence and Other Mistakes he gives a more extended characterization of it as involving six elements:
(1) God is perfect/absolute.
(2) God is omnipotent in the sense that every other thing depends on Him.
(3) God is omniscient in the sense that He has eternal foreknowledge.
(4) God is immutable and impassible.
(5) Human beings are subjectively immortal.
(6) Infallible revelation is possible.
Regardless of whether one takes it in the narrower or the more extended sense, 'classical theism' necessarily covers a family of related positions, not a single position. And while it encompasses a significant bulk of historical Jewish, Muslim, and Christian theological views, it's worth noting that it does not cover all of them. Likewise, although Hartshorne (rightly) thinks that these positions tend to be attractive to Platonists and Aristotelians, one may legitimately be either Platonist or Aristotelian without being paradigmatically a classical theist -- arguably, for instance, a lot of Aristotelians historically don't strictly accept (3) in the above list in the sense that Hartshorne means. The theological motivation for being a classical theist is the doctrine of creation; if God creates ex nihilo, it is fairly easy to prove that something like (1)-(4) must be true. It's certainly the case that, while it's not mentioned in the above lists, Hartshorne's own view is inconsistent with the doctrine. Precisely one of the principles of process philosophy is that God and World are necessarily complementary; you can't have one without the other. But that is precisely what the doctrine of creation ex nihilo denies.
The preliminary argument for creation ex nihilo is nicely summed up by the great Saadia Gaon in the ninth century: as the world is finite, composite, mutable, and temporal, there is nothing that we can find in it that could possibly give us reason to think it eternal, so it must be created; but nothing can create itself; therefore there must be something uncreated that creates the world, and to be uncreated it must be infinite, noncomposite (simple), immutable, and eternal. I say 'preliminary' because one can throw up any number of arbitrary suppositions to complicate the argument, and because it's not just a matter of a positive philosophical case but involves a negative case, as well, refuting opposing positions, and a purely theological one as well. But the summation of Saadia makes clear the link between creation ex nihilo and what Hartshorne calls 'classical theism'.
Ages ago, when I was an undergraduate and first started arguing these matters with people, the fashionable view in many theological circles was still that God was passible -- that He could suffer, and not in a metaphorical sense. I spent uncountable hours on mailing lists and the like slowly tearing apart arguments that if God were immutable, He could not create, that if God were impassible, He could not love, that if God were not temporal, He could not interact with temporal creation. Refuting the same arguments over and over and over again. Endless quantities of my life that cannot be restored. But even then there was already a reaction brewing, and now, outside of a few places (there are always a few to maintain the reputation of theologians as those people than whom no more stubborn can be thought), it's fairly rare for people to argue directly for divine passibility, in the sense of arguing that divine passibility is some essential precondition for theology. In philosophy, you no longer find many people who will argue for it at all. And while you still occasionally get people raising the same old conundrums about immutability and eternity, they are fewer and fewer.
Ironically, I think Hartshorne is partly responsible for it all. He sometimes called his view 'neoclassical' because, despite thinking that it made some significant mistakes, he actually had a fair amount of respect for the classical theism he was opposing, and thought that some of it needed to be given a clear exposition so that it could be reclaimed in a 'neoclassical' analogue. (Thus, for instance, the thing he is most famous for is making Anselm's argument in the Proslogion a major philosophical topic and no longer something that would be brought up to be dismissed without much analysis.) It was slow going, but he was a cause in making it more acceptable to take the older arguments seriously. And he also took the opposing mutabilist, passibilist view and made it something precise rather than just vague claims about love requiring the ability to suffer. For the first time 'classical theists' had something to argue against, not just a feeling or a bit of question-begging. (In part, he made this possible not just by himself, but by giving other talented process theists, like the Whiteheadian Lewis Ford, a richer set of materials to work with.) He wasn't the only factor, by any means, but I think it can be argued quite directly that he was a contributor.
In any case, because people in analytic philosophy of religion occasionally read Hartshorne, the term 'classical theism' passed from him to them, and became quite common somewhere around the late eighties or early nineties. I think a potential problem with it is that, as I noted above, it's actually a diverse family of theistic views, not a single position, and I think this is sometimes getting lost in discussions today. Perhaps someday it will have to be shed in favor of something less vague. Until then, it's a handy enough term.
Various Links of Interest
* Skholiast interviews R. Kevin Hill on a wide range of topics concerned with Nietzsche.
* Rawad El Skaf, What notion of possibility should we use in assessing scientific thought experiments?
* Adrian Currie and Arnon Levy, Why Experiments Matter
* DarwinCatholic, Scandal and Truth
* Tommy Wiseau as the Joker in The Dark Knight:
It's surprisingly good; his highly erratic acting kinda works here.
* Christopher Jacobs, The Cajun Navy Heads to Help with Hurricane Florence
* Chicken Fried Bacon
Currently Reading
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Philosophical Writings
Giambattista Vico, Keys to the New Science
Michael G. Sirilla, The Ideal Bishop: Aquinas's Commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles
Lloyd Humberstone, Philosophical Applications of Modal Logic
Jules Verne, In Search of the Castaways
'Classical theism' is a term invented by the process philosopher Charles Hartshorne to describe that in opposition of which his 'neoclassical' or 'dipolar' theism was developed. It essentially refers to positions that take God to be simple and immutable, although in Omnipotence and Other Mistakes he gives a more extended characterization of it as involving six elements:
(1) God is perfect/absolute.
(2) God is omnipotent in the sense that every other thing depends on Him.
(3) God is omniscient in the sense that He has eternal foreknowledge.
(4) God is immutable and impassible.
(5) Human beings are subjectively immortal.
(6) Infallible revelation is possible.
Regardless of whether one takes it in the narrower or the more extended sense, 'classical theism' necessarily covers a family of related positions, not a single position. And while it encompasses a significant bulk of historical Jewish, Muslim, and Christian theological views, it's worth noting that it does not cover all of them. Likewise, although Hartshorne (rightly) thinks that these positions tend to be attractive to Platonists and Aristotelians, one may legitimately be either Platonist or Aristotelian without being paradigmatically a classical theist -- arguably, for instance, a lot of Aristotelians historically don't strictly accept (3) in the above list in the sense that Hartshorne means. The theological motivation for being a classical theist is the doctrine of creation; if God creates ex nihilo, it is fairly easy to prove that something like (1)-(4) must be true. It's certainly the case that, while it's not mentioned in the above lists, Hartshorne's own view is inconsistent with the doctrine. Precisely one of the principles of process philosophy is that God and World are necessarily complementary; you can't have one without the other. But that is precisely what the doctrine of creation ex nihilo denies.
The preliminary argument for creation ex nihilo is nicely summed up by the great Saadia Gaon in the ninth century: as the world is finite, composite, mutable, and temporal, there is nothing that we can find in it that could possibly give us reason to think it eternal, so it must be created; but nothing can create itself; therefore there must be something uncreated that creates the world, and to be uncreated it must be infinite, noncomposite (simple), immutable, and eternal. I say 'preliminary' because one can throw up any number of arbitrary suppositions to complicate the argument, and because it's not just a matter of a positive philosophical case but involves a negative case, as well, refuting opposing positions, and a purely theological one as well. But the summation of Saadia makes clear the link between creation ex nihilo and what Hartshorne calls 'classical theism'.
Ages ago, when I was an undergraduate and first started arguing these matters with people, the fashionable view in many theological circles was still that God was passible -- that He could suffer, and not in a metaphorical sense. I spent uncountable hours on mailing lists and the like slowly tearing apart arguments that if God were immutable, He could not create, that if God were impassible, He could not love, that if God were not temporal, He could not interact with temporal creation. Refuting the same arguments over and over and over again. Endless quantities of my life that cannot be restored. But even then there was already a reaction brewing, and now, outside of a few places (there are always a few to maintain the reputation of theologians as those people than whom no more stubborn can be thought), it's fairly rare for people to argue directly for divine passibility, in the sense of arguing that divine passibility is some essential precondition for theology. In philosophy, you no longer find many people who will argue for it at all. And while you still occasionally get people raising the same old conundrums about immutability and eternity, they are fewer and fewer.
Ironically, I think Hartshorne is partly responsible for it all. He sometimes called his view 'neoclassical' because, despite thinking that it made some significant mistakes, he actually had a fair amount of respect for the classical theism he was opposing, and thought that some of it needed to be given a clear exposition so that it could be reclaimed in a 'neoclassical' analogue. (Thus, for instance, the thing he is most famous for is making Anselm's argument in the Proslogion a major philosophical topic and no longer something that would be brought up to be dismissed without much analysis.) It was slow going, but he was a cause in making it more acceptable to take the older arguments seriously. And he also took the opposing mutabilist, passibilist view and made it something precise rather than just vague claims about love requiring the ability to suffer. For the first time 'classical theists' had something to argue against, not just a feeling or a bit of question-begging. (In part, he made this possible not just by himself, but by giving other talented process theists, like the Whiteheadian Lewis Ford, a richer set of materials to work with.) He wasn't the only factor, by any means, but I think it can be argued quite directly that he was a contributor.
In any case, because people in analytic philosophy of religion occasionally read Hartshorne, the term 'classical theism' passed from him to them, and became quite common somewhere around the late eighties or early nineties. I think a potential problem with it is that, as I noted above, it's actually a diverse family of theistic views, not a single position, and I think this is sometimes getting lost in discussions today. Perhaps someday it will have to be shed in favor of something less vague. Until then, it's a handy enough term.
Various Links of Interest
* Skholiast interviews R. Kevin Hill on a wide range of topics concerned with Nietzsche.
* Rawad El Skaf, What notion of possibility should we use in assessing scientific thought experiments?
* Adrian Currie and Arnon Levy, Why Experiments Matter
* DarwinCatholic, Scandal and Truth
* Tommy Wiseau as the Joker in The Dark Knight:
It's surprisingly good; his highly erratic acting kinda works here.
* Christopher Jacobs, The Cajun Navy Heads to Help with Hurricane Florence
* Chicken Fried Bacon
Currently Reading
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Philosophical Writings
Giambattista Vico, Keys to the New Science
Michael G. Sirilla, The Ideal Bishop: Aquinas's Commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles
Lloyd Humberstone, Philosophical Applications of Modal Logic
Jules Verne, In Search of the Castaways
Music on My Mind
Al Matthews, "Fool". Al Mathews recently died. Matthews is best known for his role as Sergeant Al Apone in Aliens, which has often been considered one of the great movie portrayals of a US Marine (Matthews himself had been one, and put a lot of working into making sure the characters were handled in a way that made them believable as Marines). But the multitalented man did quite a few other things. Above is what he would be best known for if he weren't known for his role in Aliens.
Poem a Day XVII
Thunderstorm
The thunder is thick in the air;
the static leaps up through the hair;
the flame of the gods pierces darkest night,
sheds light through the park;
the tears are falling from the byssal sky,
with sigh like recalled kiss
on the breezes that mourn their loss
where leaves of trees in anguish toss.
The thunder is thick in the air;
the static leaps up through the hair;
the flame of the gods pierces darkest night,
sheds light through the park;
the tears are falling from the byssal sky,
with sigh like recalled kiss
on the breezes that mourn their loss
where leaves of trees in anguish toss.
Monday, September 24, 2018
Poem a Day XVI
Mind
Like to sun,
shine-bursting,
fire-throwing, pure,
is mind,
light-pouring and encompassing all,
in the brilliance that it casts
and the world on which it falls;
like to water,
cascading,
ever-pouring rush,
like to air,
all-touching,
always restless in its roam,
like to silk in its shimmer,
supplely falling in its drape,
like to wide country vista,
like to roads,
like to home,
like to cars in their speeding,
their direction and their roar,
like to lamps on the streetposts
casting circles on the street,
like to one single word,
like to speeches by the ton,
like to bird,
quick on wing,
quick to soar,
swift and fleet,
like to mountains made of granite
in endurance and in might,
like to pillows soft and gentle,
consolation for the day,
like to apples, peaches, grapes,
in the sweetness of their taste,
like to hello and farewell
as you journey on your way,
so is mind,
hard and soft,
fast, slow,
thick, clean,
subtle in its movement,
unchanging and yet moved,
so swift it is already,
always somewhere else,
bright, dark, far, near,
unproven and yet proved,
here, there,
this, that,
I, other, and the same,
easy-found, yet hard to find,
like every object in its likeness--
but mostly like to mind.
Like to sun,
shine-bursting,
fire-throwing, pure,
is mind,
light-pouring and encompassing all,
in the brilliance that it casts
and the world on which it falls;
like to water,
cascading,
ever-pouring rush,
like to air,
all-touching,
always restless in its roam,
like to silk in its shimmer,
supplely falling in its drape,
like to wide country vista,
like to roads,
like to home,
like to cars in their speeding,
their direction and their roar,
like to lamps on the streetposts
casting circles on the street,
like to one single word,
like to speeches by the ton,
like to bird,
quick on wing,
quick to soar,
swift and fleet,
like to mountains made of granite
in endurance and in might,
like to pillows soft and gentle,
consolation for the day,
like to apples, peaches, grapes,
in the sweetness of their taste,
like to hello and farewell
as you journey on your way,
so is mind,
hard and soft,
fast, slow,
thick, clean,
subtle in its movement,
unchanging and yet moved,
so swift it is already,
always somewhere else,
bright, dark, far, near,
unproven and yet proved,
here, there,
this, that,
I, other, and the same,
easy-found, yet hard to find,
like every object in its likeness--
but mostly like to mind.
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Law of Their Nature
Mankind is a system of creatures, that continually need one another's assistance, without which they could not long subsist. It is therefore necessary, that everyone, according to his capacity and station, should contribute his part towards the good and preservation of the whole, and avoid whatever may be detrimental to it. For this end they are made capable of acquiring social or benevolent affections, (probably have the seeds of them implanted in their nature) with a moral sense or conscience, that approves of virtuous actions, and disapproves the contrary. This plainly shows them, that virtue is the law of their nature, and that it must be their duty to observe it, from whence arises moral obligation, tho' the sanctions of that law are unknown; for the consideration of what the event of an action may be to the agent, alters not at all the rule of his duty, which is fixed in the nature of things.
Catharine Trotter Cockburn, "Remarks upon some Writers in the Controversy concerning the Foundation of Moral Virtue and Moral Obligation", Philosophical Writings, Sheridan, ed. Broadview (Peterborough, ON: 2006) p. 114.
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