Dashed Off VI

This starts the notebook that was begun December 2018.

Philo's pancratist as a model for the true politics

criminal confessions as gap-filling evidence sources (their primary value is filling gaps from other evidential sources)

case-building vs truth-discovering evidence

the gradival aspect of confirmational character

baptism : Greek (mystery religion) :: confirmation : Latin (Roman soldier) :: ordination : Hebrew (priesthood)

Mathematical excellence requires more than technical ability; it also requires contextualizing ability.

deciphering as a causal inference from effect to final cause (pattern of effect to why that pattern is the pattern)

Through law and through grace we may possess by anticipation what we do not have in actual possession.

Forensic accounts of justification assume that title by grace works very much like title by law.

Baptism on the human side always involves water, blood, intention, Spirit, but sometimes one is more obvious.
(1) water, proper intention: adult sacramental baptism
(2) water, vicarious intention: infant sacramental baptism
(3) blood, proper intention: martyrs
(4) blood, vicarious intention: Holy Innocents
(5) desire, proper intention: St. Dismas
(6) desire, vicarious intention: infants intended to be baptized
-- Note that this explains why the Holy Innocents are poss. unique -- only God could be the source of vicarious intention in cases of baptism of blood.
-- On the divine side is Spirit. Perhaps one could distinguish two cases, baptism-relevant, in a way exemplar and preconditional, for baptism:
(7) Spirit, proper intention: Christ's Baptism
(8) Spirit, vicarious intention: Immaculate Conception

"The essence of sportive hunting is not raising the animal to the level of man, but something much more spiritual than that: a conscious and almost religious humbling of man which limits his superiority and lowers him toward the animal." Ortega y Gassett

Every freedom has a kallipolitical, a timocratic, an oligarchic, and a democratic interpretation.

forms of superpower in superheroes
(1) natural talent: Superman, Wonder Woman
(2) artificial/acquired talent: Spider-Man, Daredevil, Flash, Fantastic Four, Black Panther
(3) honed skill: Green Arrow, The Shadow
(4) suit/vestment: Iron Man, Ant Man, Ralph Hinkley
(5) tool: Green Lantern, Michael Knight
--perhaps patronage should be on this list as well

MacIntyre & virtue aesthetics: While looser than things like sports, arts and crafts are coherent and complex forms of human activity, etc.

If probability is tied to frequency, it makes sense to measure it between 0 and 1 (by fractions); if it is tied to subjective assessment of some kind, however, there is good reason to think that there can be surplus in either direction.

-- an interpretation of Sartre's Being and Nothingness as about the phenomena of reading, writing, being read

two means of storytelling: re-enacting performance, narration

Esther obtains by title of grace salvation for her people that goes beyond title by law.

Boole takes = for secondary propositions to be synchrony.

x(1-x)=0
(1) It is impossible that there be a class of members who have a quality and do not have it at the same time.
(2) It is impossible for a proposition to be at the same time true and false.
(3) It is impossible for an argument to be both sound and unsound at the same time.

co-soundness of arguments
A is co-sound with B, B is co-sound with C, therefore A is co-sound with C.
(A=B), (B=C), therefore (A=C)

"Piety and love of man are related virtues." Philo
"The lives of those who have earnestly followed virtue may be called unwritten laws."

modalities as characterizing ways of being the same

titles of right to govern (Rosmini)
(1) Arising from prior right of ownership and dominion
---- (a) title of absolute being
---- (b) title of fatherhood
---- (c) title of seigniory (lordship)
---- (d) title of ownership
(2) Not arising so
---- (a) arising from unilateral action
-------- (i) peaceful occupancy
-------- (ii) forced occupancy
------------ (a) out of just self-defense
------------ (b) out of just defense of others
---- (b) arising from combined act

Russell gives an other minds account of external world in ABC of Relativity ch. 2.

baptism : Word as Son :: confirmation : Word as Christ :: ordination : Word as Savior

rights following directly from the adoptive aspect of baptism in itself: right to express thanks to God, right to give first honor and submission to God in all things without exception, right to acts of piety

A difference in measurement is due to a difference in either the measured, or the means of measuring, or the act of measuring.

difference-difference principles

Poisson takes 'probability' to mean the reason we have for thinking an event has taken place; this is measured by the standard ratio.

"As the realms of day and night are not strictly conterminous, but are separated by a crepuscular zone, through which the light of the one fades gradually off into the darkness of the other, so it may be said that every region of positive knowledge lies surrounded by a debateable and speculative territory, over which it in some degree extends its influence and its light." Boole

materiality as travel-resistance

While there is a conventional aspect to coordinates, the theory of tensors as used in physics establishes that they involve using a convention to describe real facts, even if only in a limited or relative way.

"When the most important subjects are investigated by insignificant men, they typically make these men important." Augustine

"Pro veris probare falsa turpissima est." Cicero

Every human person is a sublime catastrophe.

due process as a moral notion and detraction, calumny

knowledge as that cognition such that error is ruled out and it does not vacillate under rational opposition

Augustine's recommendations among Platonists (De Civ 8.12): Plotinus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, Apuleius

"various saints in various ways excel one another in applications of the various virtues." Aquinas (Sent 3d36q1a2ad1)

To search for the truth is already to have a first glimmering participation in the truth, even if that truth is far distant.

Promises and gifts overlap; one may give by promising.

Vows are simultaneously moral and ceremonial.

academic prose and anodyne tone -- much academic prose is concerned with dampening the ability to dispute points (nonprovocation in presenting the disputable, to minimize dispute except along certain channels)

principle, beginning, origin, source, font, spring, cause, author

elements of a political stance in democratic politics
(1) badge of superiority (marks Us off from Them)
(2) disaster to avoid (associated with Them)
(3) enemy (Them)
(4) consumption practices (how We buy and support as Good People)
(5) propaganda practices (how We communicate the Truth)
(6) slogan content (the Truth We communicate, which only They fail to see as obvious)

We only respect teachable doubt; unteachable doubt, doubt involving a refusal to learn, is an object of annoyance, contempt, and dismissal.

ekas demos, remote from the people
Augustine plays on this for the Akademeia; cp. Diogenes Laertius, who holds that the original name was Ekademia in Lives 3.7-8.

followable claims [ plausible claims [ probable claims

A shadow is a form of causation (hence the need for an obtruder).
shadow-casting & light-blocking

puzzlement stance and empty question
-- one sees this with self-standing ? in comics etc.

the difference in comics between ?, !, and ...

'authors to whom the laws of words are attributed by the consent of all'

Grammatical rules arise not directly out of the language but out of how language is used to talk about itself.

We speak for the sake of teaching or bringing to mind.
"The use of words should itself already be preferred to words: words exist so that we may use them. Furthermore, we use them in order to teach." Augustine

The use/mention distinction is a distinction between two kinds of use.

words as signs, as instruments, as expressions

While relevant evidence can make the plausible probable, relevant evidence can make the implausible probable, as well. Does this still involve a significant distinction (of kind of relevant evidence, of kind of probability)?

the value of a jury as being a nonmonolithic perspective

No form of inquiry considers all evidence promiscuously; part of the structure of inquiry is its admissibility conditions for evidence, for the kind of inquiry it is.

evidence // diagram in geometry
admissibility of evidence // postulates (admissibility of diagrams)

propositional force as a form of usability in reasoning

One of the difficulties that faced logical positivism in general is the sheer volume of things that had to be assumed even to get it off the ground, because it is in fact not based on a few select shared principles but on a general impression (of how science works) for which principles were sought.

All terms in any actual scientific theory seem to be both theoretical and observational (as Whewell had suggested to begin with). 'Empirical laws' like PV=rT require a lot of prior theory; 'theoretical laws' require a lot of empirical grounding.

Formalizing should always be for a specific purpose.

the Rocky movies and 'chin' as a moral quality

the allegorizability of sports as an important part of their character

"To give them as much credit as possible, words have force only to the extent that they remind us to look for things; they don't display them for us to know." Augustine

sense : reference :: intellect : will

Ambiguity is not something that wanders into expressions; it is something squeezed out of them.

William of Sherwood's rule for supposition of subject: The subjects are such as the predicates have allowed.

The meaning of a statement lies in its interrelation of signs as terms, not in its 'expression of a state of affairs'.

There is no single 'simplest sentence form' in which a word can occur. If we take Carnap's 'stone' example, we get not only 'x is a stone' but 'a stone is F', 'Use a stone', 'Stone!', 'That is a stone' (which is different from 'x is a stone'), 'A stone exists', 'What is a stone?' and endless others.

Suppose that someone invents in an artificial language the new word 'x', a word of the class 'variable', and proposes a sentence, 'Everything is x or not x'. How would you trace the meaning of 'x' to observations. Its meaning is based on what you want to do with it, not on observation. And no, do not be so stupid as to tell me that variables in artificial languages are not words.

Artificial languages primarily express attitudes, and only secondarily describe anything, a feature that they derive from the combination of natural language within which they are constructed and the specific task to which they are put.

Let us grant to metaphysicians the freedom to use any form of expression that seems useful to them; the work in the field will sooner or later lead to the elimination of those forms for which people have no real use. Let us be cautious in making metaphysical assertions and critical in examining them, but tolerant in permitting linguistic forms.

'There is an n such that n is a number' does not follow from 'Five is a number' unless there is understood 'There is a five and five is a number'.

Truth in fiction is a sign of truth in understanding of things.

There is no particular reason to think that the set of 'observation sentences' (in Hempel's sense) that pass a given empirical test would be consistent.

Carnapian explication and the synthetic a priori

The empiricist criterion of meaning does not provide a reasonably close analysis of the commonly accepted meaning of 'intelligible assertion' or 'sentence that makes an intelligible assertion', nor does it provide a consistent and precise restatement and systemization fo the contexts in which 'intelligible assertion' is actually used.

Good Friday

The Battle

God came to me, rebuked me for my life of sin
and showed to me a way in which we both could win;
I heard His offer out, but in the summit of my pride
I chose to win alone. God I crucified.

I hanged Him on the tree, and on the tree He died.

But God does not just die; He must rise to live again,
and soon returns, rebuking me for my life of sin.
Frustrated with His returning, that He does not simply die,
I choose myself again, and Him I crucify.

I hang Him on the tree again; on the tree He dies.

He returns and comes again, each time so vital, bold,
that I can only crucify by growing yet more cold.
Where our ending finds us is where we did begin;
we either taste of glory's grace or we crucify with sin,
crucify forever or someday just give in.

We Rush with a Speed that Is Lightning Indeed

To the Shadowy Land
by Thomas Sarsfield Carter

To the shadowy land--to the shadowy land,
We nearer, nearer go;
Like a gallant barque thro' the midnight dark,
O'er the ocean's billowy flow.

O'er the surging tide of stormy life,
'Fore the hurricane breath of Fate,
We rush with a speed that is lightning indeed,
To Eternity's ebony gate.

By the breath of Prosperity wafted serene,
From billow to billow we wing;
Till shooting afar like the meteor-star,
To the realms of ether we spring.

Or lashed by Adversity's arrowy wind,
We draggle athro' the fierce surge;
Till weary and worn, grief-laden, forlorn,
We sink on Eternity's verge.

To the shadowy land--to the shadowy land,
Be the day brightly flashing or dark,
We are hurrying on, with no harbour but one
To shelter the storm-shattered barque!

I know practically nothing about Carter, but in preface of the Hours of Illness (1870), in which this poem is found, he notes that the poems in the book were all written around the age of seventeen or so when he was confined to "the rather unpoetic and dreary atmosphere of a sick-chamber"; he was trying the relieve the monotony of an incurable illness.

Lent XXXVIII

Since then Christ's Ascension is our uplifting, and the hope of the Body is raised, whither the glory of the Head has gone before, let us exult, dearly-beloved, with worthy joy and delight in the loyal paying of thanks. For today not only are we confirmed as possessors of paradise, but have also in Christ penetrated the heights of heaven, and have gained still greater things through Christ's unspeakable grace than we had lost through the devil's malice. For us, whom our virulent enemy had driven out from the bliss of our first abode, the Son of God has made members of Himself and placed at the right hand of the Father, with Whom He lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

Leo, Sermon 73.

Examples of Analogical Predication

This is mostly for my own use: some common examples used in discussing analogical predication, with locations. Some of the examples are from Domenic D'Ettore's Analogy after Aquinas; he notes that the examples used sometimes matter for conclusions drawn -- there was an active dispute post-Thomas, for instance, between those who held that analogical predication primarily worked like the health example and those who held that it primarily worked like the principle example.

Predicate	said of	found in (e.g.)
wise	God and man	ST 1.13.5
healthy	medicine, urine, body, food	ST 1.13.5; SCG 1.34
being	substance and accident	ST 1.13.10, SCG 1.34
God	God and idol	ST 1.13.10
animal	animal and painted animal	ST 1.13.10ad4
seeing/vision	act of eye and act of intellect	DV 2.11; Defensiones 1.35 (Capreolus)
military	sword and soldier	In Eth 1.7
body	terrestrial and celestial body	I Sent. 19.5.2ad1
Hercules	Hercules and statue of Hercules	Defensiones 1.2.1.1 (Capreolus)
principle/source	unit, point, heart, axiom	Quaestiones de div. praed. 18 (James of Viterbo)
principle/source	heart, river	Quaestiones Ordinariae 33 ad 5 (Thomas Sutton)
mover	God and creatures	Quaestiones Ordinariae 33 ad 24 (Thomas Sutton)

Lent XXXVII

It was necessary for Christ to rise again, for five reasons.

First of all, for the commendation of divine justice, to which belongs exaltation of those who humble themselves for God's sake, according to Luke 1: "He deposes potentates from their seats and exalts the humble." Therefore because Christ, according to charity and obedience to God, humbled himself even to death on the cross, it was needful that he be exalted by God even to glorious resurrection, as it is said in His Person in the Psalm (138:2) as the Gloss expounds it, "You have known," that is, approved, "my sitting down," that is, humility and passion, "and my rising up," that is, glorification in resurrection.

Second, for our instruction in faith. Because through his resurrection our faith about Christ's divinity is confirmed, because, as is said at the end of II Corinthians, "Although he was crucified from our infirmity, he lives from God's power." And likewise, it is said in I Corinthians 15, "If Christ did not rise, our preaching is empty, and our faith is empty." And in the Psalm (29:10), "What profit is in my blood," that is, in the shedding of my blood, "while I descend," as it were through various grades of evil, "into corruption?" As though He were to answer, "None, If therefore I do not rise again at once, an my body be decayed, I shall bring news to no one, I shall profit no one," as the Gloss expounds.

Third, for the uplifting of our hope. Because, while we see Christ, who is our Head, rise again, we also hope in our own resurrection. Wherefore it is said in I Corinthians 15, "If Christ is preached that He rises from the dead, how is it said among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?" And in Job 19 it is said, "I know," that is, through the certainty of faith, "that my redeemer," that is, Christ, "lives," having risen from the dead, and therefore "in the last day, I shall rise out of the earth; this my hope is stored in my bosom."

Fourth, for the structuring (informationem) of the lives of the faithful, according to which [it is said in] Romans 6, "As Christ is risen from the dead through the glory of the Father, even so may we walk in newness of life." And further down, "Christ, rising from the dead, therefore no longer dies; so also recognize that you are dead to sin, but living to God.

Fifth, for the completion of our salvation. Because just as for this reason he endured evil things in dying so that he might liberate us from evil, so he is glorified in rising again so that he might promote us to good, according to Romans 4, "He was delivered for our sins, and he rose for our justification."

Thomas Aquinas, ST 3.53.1, my translation.

Satispassion Guaranteed

I've long been interested in the notion of satispassio (satispassion; we could also translate it, and I think it would sometimes be more intuitive to translate it, as satispatience). It is an idea that is remarkably difficult to find a good explanation for, although there is also good reason to take it seriously.

Satispassion is contrasted with satisfaction. Satisfaction in this sense is, as Aquinas says, "medicine curing past sins and preserving from future sins". It compensates for lapses and uproots the causes of wrongdoing. The debt is paid, the balance restored. And it is very much a doing; that's in the name itself, doing-enough. By it we deliberately take on a penalty for common good. The most eminent example of this is martyrdom.

Purgatory is also a medicine curing past sins and preserving from future sins; it also compensates for lapses and uproots the causes of wrongdoing; the debt is paid, the balance restored. So it seems natural to talk about it in terms of satisfaction. But in the strict sense, it has always been the doctrine of the Church that the patient souls of Purgatory engage in no satisfaction. And the issue is that what is done in purgatory is not really something done by the soul that undergoes it. It is not a doing; it is an undergoing. Hence the name: enduring-enough. They endure the penalty of waiting until the waiting is enough.

I think this is a little difficult for us to grasp, particularly when it is combined with a crucial additional point, which is that souls in Purgatory are in a higher spiritual state than souls on earth generally are. Church Patient is a higher manifestation of the Church than Church Militant. And this is linked to another difficulty with which people often have difficulty, namely, that we can merit divine reward but the souls in purgatory cannot because they are better than we are. I don't think most people actually manage to reconcile with this; when Catholics talk about souls in Purgatory, they constantly talk as if souls in purgatory were poor cousins in dire need of our intercession and largesse. But by the nature of the case, this is backwards. Unlike us, they have absolute guarantee of Heaven. They are not worse off than we are; they are infinitely better off. They have a wealth in store for which we can only hope. They don't need our help. Praying for them is the sort of thing that could very well be seen as a bit of presumption on our part, except that we are allowed it. We are allowed to help them by prayer as a privilege graciously granted to us.

I think a possible way forward in understanding this is by recognizing that the contrast with satisfaction, although right, is also potentially misleading. It makes it sound as if there were satisfaction and then satispassion, and the two were simply separate things never coming together. But this is not, I think right. We too have satispassion; it's just that for us, we can only have it by its being a subordinate part of satisfaction. In a sense this is what is going on when we 'give it up to God'; one of the general grants of (partial) indulgence is for those who, carrying out their duties and enduring the hardships of life, raise their minds in trusting prayer to God with a pious invocation. This is effectively taking the enduring of difficulty and, as part of satisfaction, making it an act of prayer to God. That is satispassion, and is the sort of thing attributed to the souls in purgatory. But there is a key difference here. The souls in Purgatory are already united to Christ's passion in an intimate way; the attitude of humble trust in the enduring of penalty as part of this union with Christ's Passion is what they do by being souls in Purgatory. Their enduring is already itself trusting prayer to God, a penitential exercise for the purpose of becoming more closely united to Him. We, on the other hand, wavering and faulty, have to make our enduring an act of union with Christ's Passion. Our patience becomes satispatience only in the context of our satisfaction. Theirs is guaranteed. We must deliberately act in order to endure in a way that makes us one with Christ; but the patient souls in Purgatory simply endure and are one with Him.

Ultimately, satispassion, like satisfaction, is rooted in Christ's Passion; for the purposes of Heaven, a satispassion not so rooted, like a satisfaction not so rooted, is not relevant. The Cross is the only bridge to Heaven. But satispassion is the higher part, not the lower; it is like the prayer of quiet compared to verbal prayer, like the mature soul enduring aridity to the beginner in an ebullience of consolations. It is something toward which we must reach. But the patient souls of Purgatory are satispatient; they need not reach, but simply wait, being one with Christ who suffered for our sins. And as no one receives Heaven without learning how to receive, so no one reaches Heaven save by being one with Christ on the Cross, enduring until the enduring is enough.

This is all approximation and extrapolation. It is something about which we know little enough that it is almost impudent to babble on about it as I have. But I am put in mind of it by current events. As Lent draws to its close and Good Friday draws near, a great many Catholics are in a desert of sacraments, perhaps locked inside their houses due to conditions whose end is as yet unknown. That is patience of a sort. On its own it is not a medicine curing past sins nor preserving from future sins. But we may make it so by prayer and penitence. When we do, we are in our crude way approximating a higher state. And in that crude approximation we may know a little better the life of Purgatory.

Lent XXXVI

The fact, therefore, that at the time appointed, according to the purpose of His will, Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and buried was not the doom necessary to His own condition, but the method of redeeming us from captivity. For "the Word became flesh" in order that from the Virgin's womb He might take our suffering nature, and that what could not be inflicted on the Son of God might be inflicted on the Son of Man. For although at His very birth the signs of Godhead shone forth in Him, and the whole course of His bodily growth was full of wonders, yet had He truly assumed our weaknesses, and without share in sin had spared Himself no human frailty, that He might impart what was His to us and heal what was ours in Himself. For He, the Almighty Physician, had prepared a two-fold remedy for us in our misery, of which the one part consists of mystery and the other of example, that by the one Divine powers may be bestowed, by the other human weaknesses driven out. Because as God is the Author of our justification, so man is a debtor to pay Him devotion.

Leo, Sermon 67, on the Passion.

Declaration of Arbroath

Today is the 700th anniversary of the Declaratio Arbroathis, also known as the Tiomnadh Bhruis, the Declaration o Aiberbrothock, and, of course, the Declaration of Arbroath. Pope John XXII had recognized the claim of Edward I of England over Scotland. Robert the Bruce had been excommunicated due to killing a rival in a church (the circumstances under which this happened are extremely unclear and we do not know exactly what led to that happening), and, when the excommunication was lifted, he was warned that he must make peace with England or be excommunicated again. War, however, was pretty much unavoidable at that point, and due to the fact that it continued, Robert the Bruce was excommunicated again in 1320. In response, Robert and the Scottish barons wrote a letter to the pope defending their independence from England, their right to self-defense, and the legitimacy of Robert's rule. This is the Declaration.

From these countless evils, with His help who afterwards soothes and heals wounds, we are freed by our tireless leader, king, and master, Lord Robert, who like another Maccabaeus or Joshua, underwent toil and tiredness, hunger and danger with a light spirit in order to free the people and his inheritance from the hands of his enemies. And now, the divine Will, our just laws and customs, which we will defend to the death, the right of succession and the due consent and assent of all of us have made him our leader and our king. To this man, inasmuch as he saved our people, and for upholding our freedom, we are bound by right as much as by his merits, and choose to follow him in all that he does.

But if he should cease from these beginnings, wishing to give us or our kingdom to the English or the king of the English, we would immediately take steps to drive him out as the enemy and the subverter of his own rights and ours, and install another King who would make good our defence. Because, while a hundred of us remain alive, we will not submit in the slightest measure, to the domination of the English. We do not fight for honour, riches, or glory, but solely for freedom which no true man gives up but with his life.

(It has been noted by historians that the conception of government found in the document is heavily influenced by Sallust's Conspiracy of Cataline.) The Declaration was sent to the Pope, who wrote Edward asking him to do more to make peace with the Scots, but otherwise did not much in his position. Scottish independence was only recognized by England in the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328, after which the excommunication was lifted. The Declaration itself fell largely out of sight until republication in the seventeenth century, but has since been regarded as one of the central documents of Scottish heritage.

Lent XXXV

And now, my soul, consider how the One who is, over all things, God blessed forever, is submerged in a flood of suffering from the sole of the foot unto the top of the head. He permits the waters of affliction to flow even unto His soul, in order to save you from all such afflictions. He is crowned with thorns; He is forced to stoop under the load of the cross, bearing the instrument of His own disgrace; He is led to the place of execution and stripped of His clothes, so that the scourge-inflicted bruises and wounds exposed on the back and the sides of His body, make Him appear like a leper. Then, He is transfixed with the nails. All to show that He is your Beloved, martyred wound by wound for the sake of your healing.

Bonaventure, The Tree of Life II.26.

[Bonaventure, The Works of Bonaventure I: Mystical Opuscula, José de Vinck, tr., Martino Publishing (Mansfield Centre, CT: 2016), p. 123-124.]

I just realized that I dropped an X a while ago; I went from XVIII to IX and then kept counting from IX instead of XIX as I should have. In fairness, there has been a lot going on.

A Little Bit of Cribbin' from the Works of Edward Gibbon

Jack Butler has a very odd review of Asimov's Foundation series:

Though Asimov wrote more Foundation novels, the first three books won a Hugo Award (an Academy Award equivalent for sci-fi and fantasy) in 1966 for best all-time series. But more than 50 years later, it’s hard to see why (especially when it was up against The Lord of the Rings). The novels do not rise above their serialized origins, with the individual parts of each book so distinct from one another as to seem like separate works crudely collated. They burn through a succession of stock characters, only a few of whom register in any meaningful way, and who are easily forgotten once they serve their purpose in advancing the narrative. Ultimately helpless in the face of psychohistory’s plan, most of them are rendered passive and interchangeable actors, mostly mere witnesses to the Foundation’s triumphs. As Seldon states in one of his pre-recorded messages, he has engineered their fates such that they “will be forced along one, and only one, path.”

This is odd because the things being criticized are standard science fiction patterns. Many important science fiction works have a serialistic structure -- e.g., A Canticle for Leibowitz, arguably the greatest science fiction novel of all time, is serialistic in structure. Asimov's characters are lightly sketched, but none of them are "stock" -- a stock character is a character structured as a literary stereotype who doesn't rise above a stereotype, but most of the characters in the first three Foundation novels are fairly distinctive if you compare them with characters in other texts. And science fiction is not typically character-focused. I think it may have been C. S. Lewis who noted that science fiction stories often suffer from excessive character-work. This is not to say, of course, that there aren't great characterizations in science fiction -- Miller's Canticle or Stapledon's Sirius come to mind as novels that do well in this regard -- but in the Aristotelian elements of story, science fiction is primarily distinguished by Thought, not Character, and there are major science fiction works, like Stapledon's Starmaker, that can only be said to have characters at all in the very broadest sense. And, of course, the early Foundation novels by their very topic necessarily share more with sweeping-history science fiction like Starmaker than with character tales. It was conceived as a science-fictional Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, after all.

Likewise, it's odd to criticize the characters as passive when this is the point -- it is in fact explicitly the point of the first part of Foundation and Empire, in which the characters are quite active trying to subvert the Empire, all of which is entirely irrelevant, because they fail to understand until it's too late that the Empire's weakness is the combination of economic deterioration and unavoidable civil-military instability. Asimov's stories are very often puzzle-stories of one kind or another, and that was precisely the solution to the puzzle presented by Bel Riose: How do you stop the Empire's most talented and incorruptible generals from invading you? You don't have to do anything, because the Empire will stop him the moment he begins to look too successful; from the perspective of an Empire in decline, a successful general is always a more obvious danger to the Empire than barbarians beyond the borders. It all reminds me a bit of when some feminists attacked Ursula K. LeGuin's works for having female characters who were too passive -- LeGuin was, in broad terms, a Taoist, so the whole point of the stories that were being attacked was that being too eager to act and achieve was a poisonous temptation that often leads to self-destruction. The characters -- even characters like Bel Riose who are fairly well rounded for the brief time they are on the stage -- are not the point of the story.

Butler likes The Mule best of the characters in the original trilogy; that's a defensible taste, although my preference would be for Preem Palver. But he claims that he gets the fullest backstory of any character in the trilogy, which is again odd, since we get only a very sketchy backstory about him. Ducem Barr probably has the "fullest motivation and backstory of any character in the Foundation series", at least if we are talking about the original trilogy. (Of course, if you had the prequels, Seldon gets the fullest motivation and backstory.)

Fortnightly Book, April 5

Robert Seymour was perhaps the greatest illustrator of his day. He was skillful in almost every form of book illustration and his sporting caricatures were immensely popular. This led him to make the fateful decision to suggest to his publisher a series of comic sporting illustrations with some sort of descriptive text to unify them as a series -- little anecdotes to add a little extra fun to the humorous depictions. Since the illustrations would be of things going wrong, he suggested that it could be packaged as the misfortunes of a 'Nimrod Club'. Seymour had recently done very well publishing a work, Sketches by Seymour, that had these kinds of illustrations, so the publisher was definitely interested. The kind of writing work that this required was what was known as 'hack' work. ('Hack' was a shortened form of 'hackney', i.e., a riding horse.) It was a routine kind of gig but required a certain kind of short-writing skill, like writing ad copy in our day. The publisher, apparently busy with other projects, decided to hire an outside hack, and eventually hired (according, later, to Seymour's wife, due to her own recommendation) a young writer who had made a modest name for himself in short-writing through a series called Sketches by Boz. Boz (long o), of course, was his pen-name. Boz, while in need of the money, noted that as he was not a sporting person, he was probably not the best person to do anecdotes for sporting illustrations. He proposed instead that he should write humorous literary sketches that Seymour could then illustrate; they would be about a club, but one Boz could write about. The publisher liked the idea, and Seymour found himself second fiddle on his own creative project, and not on very good terms, either, because he was never paid for the idea and was only commissioned for a limited number of illustrations per magazine edition. And when it was being published, it came out under the title, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club – containing a faithful record of the perambulations, perils, travels, adventures and Sporting Transactions of the corresponding members. Edited by 'Boz'. With Illustrations. 'With Illustrations'! That's it. Seymour was not even given a byline.

The first edition came out and was immensely popular. In April of 1836, as part of work on the second edition, Seymour met up with Boz for drinks to discuss artwork for one of the stories. They argued vehemently over something (we do not know what), then Seymour went home and at some point afterward took his sporting rifle out into his garden and shot himself.

An emergency illustrator was commissioned to finish the second installment, Robert William Buss, a highly talented artist; but Buss was not familiar with the particular process, and didn't yet have a knack for knowing what would look good or bad with etched steel printing. His illustrations were lackluster and rushed by his own admission, and he was fired -- Buss took it in good humor and held no grudges. The unlucky commission passed to Hablot Knight Browne who did his illustrations first under the name 'Nemo' and then, to go better with 'Boz', under the name 'Phiz'. Boz and Phiz happened to get along quite well with each other, and Phiz became the go-to illustrator for Boz's works. Although, of course, by then Boz was no longer writing under the pen name 'Boz' but under his real name, Charles Dickens.

The Pickwick Papers was published in book form in 1837, becoming one of the bestselling books of the nineteenth century and making Dickens's name as one of the greatest authors of the day. And, of course, it is the next fortnightly book.

Looking around, it looks like an adaptation was made by Orson Welles for Mercury Theater on the Air, so I will try to find time to listen to that, as well. In addition, a while back I picked up at the Dollar Store a book called Death and Mr. Pickwick: A Novel by Stephen Jarvis. It's a highly fictionalized account of the issues between Dickens and Seymour in the publication of the work. It's a big book to put on top of a big book, so I don't know if I'll be able to fit it in, but I will be reading it as well.


Robert William Buss, Dickens' Dream. A painting that Buss started working on after Dickens's death; he died before he could finish it, but somehow the unfinished character works well for it.

Pandemic Notes

1. It's remarkable how a large-scale catastrophe unites us all in the firm commitment to being right at any cost, and in the equally firm belief that everyone who disagrees with us is literally killing people by disagreeing with us.

2. I think it's important to be honest about what we are facing here. We have no plan. Without a vaccine in hand, all we are doing is trying to slow things down so that the medical system only has to deal with the deaths over a long period of time rather than a short one. And that's all we can do. We have going for us that trying to find an effective vaccine is a truly global project. But it's not the sort of thing for which we can guarantee any timetables. We are all improvising. Every proposal, every single one, is gambling on the truth of assumptions that cannot be guaranteed. There's no avoiding that. But it's important to recognize that every confident proposal for how to go forward is an overconfident proposal. We don't know how we are going to get past the epidemic; we are experimenting with ways to do that on a global scale. We don't know how we are going to recover from the economic problems that it will inevitably cause; we are in the middle of the largest economic experiment that we have ever done, trying things out as we go. We'll just have to see.

Similarly, one should be fairly generous about recognizing that there are lots of different ways to go about responding to the epidemic, and that it may turn out well in the long run that we are not putting all of our eggs in one basket, but instead trying different approaches in different places. We don't know what will save more lives in the long run; some things have better odds than others, but we are all gambling.

4. I've been impressed at the number of people who attack other people for not doing such-and-such thing that they themselves were doing just a few days earlier. The whiplash is going to trip us all up eventually, as we have to somersault over our own heads to adjust to new information. A little tolerance for people who are somersaulting more slowly is in order.

5. Most people are worried about the potential breakdown of medical services; something we unfortunately need also to worry about, but which people seem often to ignore, is potential breakdown of distribution networks. Truckers and the like are on the front line here, suddenly finding themselves in the position of, day after day, being emergency personnel. Transportation is an industry that's hard on people in normal times; it's important not to forget it now.

6. Despite rumors of 'panic buying' or 'hoarding', I've seen very little of it (and when you look at specific cases to which people apply these labels, they very rarely turn out to be accurate). What is happening is that people are reasonably buying more than they usually do, and when everybody is doing that, shelves start emptying out no matter what people are doing. (Although I confess I really don't understand the overbuying of toilet paper; I'd've thought that this was the sort of thing we all keep in large quantities already. I'm a little low and I still have enough in the bathroom cabinet to last half a year. I suppose one of the temptations is that it's something you know you'll use anyway, and perhaps people are sometimes not wanting to rely on their remembering correctly how much they actually have.)

7. Once I would have thought that no government agency could possibly be as despised by Americans as the IRS; after all, everybody hates the taxman. But then the TSA came along and proved that the IRS can have stiff competition in that unenviable category. If there's one thing that seems increasingly to be uniting Americans in these times it is a steadily rising river of loathing for the FDA, which I honestly would not have expected. Unfortunately, they seem very much to deserve it; they both have bungled things for which they should have been prepared and have repeatedly impeded honest attempts to solve particular unexpected problems until the pressure of events has forced them to change. We only started learning, even as late as we did, how bad things were in Seattle, for instance, because doctors became so worried that they started violating FDA regulations governing tests. And it's not become much better since.

But this seems to be the real problem. The people at large have been improvising on a rather impressive scale. But too many of those in charge seem to think it is just business as usual, with slightly more urgency. Both political parties and bureaucracies inevitably grow rigid as they get into the habit of mechanically putting everything into the same categories over and over again, but we have seen in clear light of day how utterly sclerotic it's all become. The interesting question is whether we will learn anything from it.

8. Transition to online teaching has not been smooth, but it's not been especially difficult, either, at least in my experience so far. But that too is all improvising in response to a continually changing situation. On the plus side, I am saving an immense amount of time by not losing any from commuting or having to be on campus. But it all seems a little unreal. I tell myself that that's fine, given the circumstances, but I worry a bit about whether it will affect my ability to get things done that need to be done. Nonetheless, this term looks like it will be quite manageable despite everything. But I have no idea what will happen for summer term, or even for fall. I had the bad luck of deciding that for my summer class I would try a new book and different format, and now I simply don't know what I'll be doing. On the plus side, if you can call it that, the class might not even make; there's no guarantee that any summer class will make at this point. We'll just have to see.

******

ADDED LATER: An interesting discussion by Stephen Pimentel:

Many Westerners may resist the insight, but competence rests not so much on well-planned systems as on virtue, beginning with phronesis (φρόνησῐς), or practical wisdom acting in the world. Government planning in Western nations too often rests on an overextension of episteme (ἐπιστήμη), or rationally grounded knowledge, to areas of human life and organization in which it serves poorly. The future, more often than we wish to admit, is unknown and unknowable, and the effort that we might expend preparing for it is better spent preparing ourselves.

The consistent error of Western modernity is thinking that everything can be done by method, that if you just have your methods right, everything is guaranteed. But method is not as important as being able to assess the situation and work out what is appropriate for it, which is precisely the function of phronesis. Methods and procedures have their place, of course; but that, too, is determined by prudence.

Lent XXIV

Three things were done to Christ. First, he was seized; for he says, the band of soldiers and their captain and the officers of the Jews seized Jesus, who is not apprehensible: "great in counsel, incomprehensible in thought" (Jer 32:19). Perhaps they were thinking of the Psalm (70:11): "God has forsaken him; pursue and seize him, for there is none to deliver him." Again, "The breath of our mouth, Christ the Lord, is taken in our sins," that is, on account of our sins, in order to free us. "Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken" (Is 49:25).

Secondly, Christ was bound, and bound him, who came to untie their bonds and break their chains: "You have loosed my bonds" (Ps 115:7).

Thirdly, he was led away, they led him to Annas, so that they might destroy him who came to lead all to the way of salvation: "You have led me, because you became my hope" (Ps 60:4).

Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapter 18, Lecture 3.


[St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 13-21, Larcher and Weisheipl, tr. The Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC: 2010) pp. 205-206.]

Ethics and Reasoning VII (Aquinas)

St. Tomasso d'Aquino, or Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), was born as a younger son to a powerful family in the Kingdom of Sicily. As he pursued his studies at the recently founded university in Naples, however, he became intrigued by the Order of Preachers, better known as the Dominicans, and eventually joined them. He went on to study at the University of Paris, which is probably where he met St. Albert, the Order's most important teacher and a major figure in the surging field of commentary on Aristotle. When Albert was given the mission of teaching at a newly founded university in Cologne, Thomas went with him. He eventually returned for a degree in theology, and from then on he taught in a number of places, becoming the Order's second most important teacher after Albert. In the course of his work he taught and commented on a number of Aristotle's works. Besides being a significant Christian theologian, he is also considered one of the major figures in the history of Aristotelian philosophy, and is very likely the most important Aristotelian virtue ethicist after Aristotle himself.

As an Aristotelian virtue ethicist, Thomas accepts the essential outlines of Aristotle's ethics: eudaimonia, the doctrine of the mean, friendship. However, as a Christian writing many centuries after Aristotle, he has to relate Aristotle's work to the large body of ethical thought that had grown up since (deriving from Cicero, Seneca, Augustine, just to mention major influences on his ethical work) and also faces the problem that Aristotle's ethics in some ways seems inadequate to expounding Christian moral teaching. This will require him to step back and try to fit the whole framework of Aristotelian ethics into a larger framework that can make sense of its relationship with these other ethical strands. This will lead to a number of important modifications.

From Christian theology, Aquinas inherits a new definition of virtue, which he discusses in Summa Theologiae 2-1.55.4. According to this definition, virtue is

(1) a good quality of mind
(2) by which we live rightly
(3) which none can use badly
(4) which God works in us without us.

Thomas will accept this definition, although he thinks it needs to be understood a certain way. The bona qualitas mentis should be understood as a habit, the kind of second nature we saw in Aristotle's definition, and in particular as a rational habit. As with Aristotle, Aquinas takes virtue to be a habit concerned with acting, habitus operativus, and, of course, it has to be distinguished from vice (by it we live rightly) and from other habits besides vice (this is a habit none can use badly). Thus far, Thomas's interpretation of the definition treats this definition as covering the same ground, from a different direction, as Aristotle's definition of virtue, but the last element, which God works in us without us, is a new one, and Aquinas will handle it by holding that there is actually a distinction between two kinds of virtue. One, known to Aristotle, is acquired virtue or virtue that we gain by a process of habituation. The other, recognized only in Christian moral theology, is infused virtue or, in other words, a kind of virtue directly given by God (hence God works it in us) rather than by this natural process of habituation (hence God's giving it to us is 'without us'). The habit is given in a new and different way. In the Summa Theologiae, a work of theology, the virtues with which Aquinas is primarily concerned are infused virtues, to which this new definition applies. If we wanted to talk about all virtues whatsoever (acquired and infused), we would just focus on the first three elements.

The notion of infused virtues is ultimately rooted in the idea that faith, hope, and love, which are said to be given in Christian baptism, are virtues in a true and proper sense. These are called the theological virtues (Aquinas notes that they could also be called superhuman or divine virtues). A significant question, though, is whether there are any other infused virtues. Some Christian theologians (like John Duns Scotus) have held that there are no others. Thomas, however, has a very different view, and argues that Christian baptism confers not just the three theological virtues but also infused moral virtues. These infused moral virtues are necessary, he thinks, because the three theological virtues add a higher direction to human life than reason alone gives; that is to say, they contribute to the Christian's participation not just in human society (like ordinary acquired virtues) but in a supernatural society with God. Our acquired virtues, essential as they may be to good human society, are not adequate for this higher end that goes beyond our natural capacities, a higher happiness that Aquinas calls beatitude, and thus we need a new set of virtues. As he says in Summa Theologiae 2-1.63.4, drawing on Aristotle,

... the Philosopher says (Polit. iii, 3) that citizens have diverse virtues according as they are well directed to diverse forms of government. In the same way, too, those infused moral virtues, whereby men behave well in respect of their being "fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God" (Ephesians 2:19), differ from the acquired virtues, whereby man behaves well in respect of human affairs.

Despite this difference, acquired moral virtues and infused moral virtues will tend to mirror each other, and thus what you learn about one can be used to understand the other, as long as you make allowance for their different ends and the different societies to which they contribute. Thus Thomas in his discussion of the infused virtues will draw heavily from philosophical discussions of acquired virtues.

This conception of the two societies will also make it possible for Aquinas to use Aristotle's discussions of friendship in an innovative way to understand the Christian virtue of charity. Thomas takes the theological virtues to establish a basis for friendship with God; the virtue of love or charity (caritas) is in fact nothing other than friendship with God. Friendship for Aristotle is not a virtue because it requires two people (although Thomas himself thinks Aristotle is a bit more ambiguous about this than he is often thought to be). You can have a virtue of friendliness, but this friendliness does not actually guarantee that the people to whom you are friendly are friends. However, charity as friendship with God is infused by God; therefore this no longer poses a problem. Thus charity is both a special kind of friendship and a virtue. Friendship therefore plays an even more important role in Thomas's approach than it does in Aristotle's, having all of the importance it has for Aristotle but one form of it also being the highest of all virtues.

In order to organize his discussion of the moral virtues, Thomas draws on the traditional list of the cardinal virtues. This is an old list -- a version of it is found in Plato, for instance -- but the name 'cardinal virtues' is fairly late, being due to St. Ambrose of Milan. The four cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. However, because of the age of the list, it has been used a number of different ways, so Thomas has to sort this out. One way we could take the list is as a description of the general conditions for virtue. In this sense, each one is like dimensions of the other virtues.

      prudence: virtues insofar as they accomplish rational good.
      justice: virtues insofar as they accomplish the good that is due and right in action
      fortitude: virtues insofar as they strengthen the mind against the passions
      temperance: virtues insofar as they restrain and suppress the passions

But more properly we could take the list to be a list of specific virtues of special importance. A way to think of this is that different virtues manifest the general conditions of virtue in more obvious or less obvious ways. So all virtues in some sense have a rational aspect, but some virtues are more obviously rational than others; and of these the virtue that is most important is that which actually concerns rational decision itself. Then we get:

      prudence: the virtue of actual decision or command
      justice: the virtue that concerns actions owed between equals
      fortitude: the virtue that strengthens against fear of death
      temperance: the virtue that represses the craving for physical pleasure

Of course, it's also the case that sometimes we speak more loosely, so that we use the word 'prudence' for any virtue that has an obvious rational component, etc. In this sense we are applying the term to a family of virtues.

Because of this messiness from long use, Thomas needs a way to sort out how different lists of virtues are related to the cardinal virtues. The way he does this, the method of parts, is remarkably comprehensive and flexible. The Latin word for 'part' could mean three different things: integral parts, subjective parts, and potential parts. By analogy these can be extended to virtue. As he says in Summa Theologiae 2-2.48.1:

Parts are of three kinds, namely, "integral," as wall, roof, and foundations are parts of a house; "subjective," as ox and lion are parts of animal; and "potential," as the nutritive and sensitive powers are parts of the soul. Accordingly, parts can be assigned to a virtue in three ways. First, in likeness to integral parts, so that the things which need to concur for the perfect act of a virtue, are called the parts of that virtue.... The subjective parts of a virtue are its various species.... The potential parts of a virtue are the virtues connected with it, which are directed to certain secondary acts or matters, not having, as it were, the whole power of the principal virtue.

Strictly speaking, virtues don't have integral parts, i.e., parts in our usual English sense of the word; virtues are unified things. However, the complete act of the virtue sometimes depends on other things, and these can be regarded as quasi-integral parts. So, for instance, prudence requires caution, understanding, willingness to learn, etc. Sometimes we give different names to one and the same virtue operating under different conditions. Thus chastity and sobriety are both temperance but with respect to different physical pleasures. They are subjective parts: you can 'divide' the virtue of temperance into these two parts, but each part is still fully the virtue of temperance.

Potential parts of a virtue are in many ways the most interesting. Some virtues are very like other virtues, but deviate from them in particular ways so that they are related but less central in some way; they are thus ancillary or annexed or secondary virtues associated with a principal virtue. Thus justice has a number of potential parts: virtues that are justice-like, that might even sometimes be called 'justice', but are more like satellite virtues in the justice family of virtues. For instance, justice is paying what you strictly owe to achieve an appropriate equality between equals; filial piety (pietas) is like justice in that it involves rendering to your parents what is due, but the debt is not a debt that can be paid so that you are now 'even' with your parents, who gave you life and raised you, while friendliness is like justice in that it concerns how you relate to another person, and could even be expressed in terms of rendering what you owe other people, but the 'owing' here is not a strict, definite debt that you really pay back, but more like an obligation to human beings generally. These are justice-like enough that you can talk about them in the same terms, and they are enough alike that you can see how, e.g., filial piety, while definitely a different virtue from justice, may facilitate being just.

By means of this classification, Aquinas is able to relate a wide variety of different discussions of virtues to each other in a consistent and unified way. If you find a virtue in a list, it is either a principal virtue or is related to a principal virtue in some way, either as a quasi-integral part, or as a subjective part, or as a potential part.

It is also useful to have a way of classifying vices. One could classify them according to the virtues they oppose, of course, but the result, while useful for understanding virtues, is unwieldy for the practice that would most benefit from a classification of vices, namely, self-examination. Vices, however, are difficult to put into a neat and tidy list, because they are legion -- the doctrine of the mean establishes that there are at least two for every acquired virtue -- and disunified -- unlike virtues, which are unified, vices oppose other vices. The traditional way around this is to take an indirect approach. Instead of trying to capture all the vices in a simple way, as with the cardinal virtues, focus on the thing that is most relevant for practice, which is the fact that some vices prepare the way for other vices, and make your list based on that. Some vices are 'gateway vices'; they mess with your head in such a way that if you get them, you have already started developing other vices. The usual metaphor for this, going back to St. Gregory the Great, is that of a queen vice and her seven generals, each coming at the head of the army. This metaphor is the source of the name of the list: the seven capital vices, from the Latin word 'caput', meaning 'chief' or 'head'. Pride, of course, is the queen, and the vices at the head of her seven armies are vainglory, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. The vices in their armies are called daughter vices; they don't have to originate in a capital vice, but they often do.

It's important to grasp that a vice is not on the list because it is among the worst vices. There are vices worse than any on the list of capital vices. For instance, the vice of odium (hatefulness/hatred) is a very terrible vice that is not a capital vice. Thomas calls it a terminal vice, because it's a vice so bad you can usually only get it in its complete form if you have a lot of other vices. It usually already requires a certain sort of wickedness to be able to do the actions that solidify into it. Capital vices, on the other hand, are initial vices. They all (1) are easy to get because they arise from common temptations and (2) make it so easy to get their associated daughter vices that if you are developing the capital vice you are probably also developing some of the daughter vices. And of course, the daughter vices often lead to other vices, even if not as virulently, in a cascade of moral deterioration, unless one deliberately works against them. Once a general breaches your wall, you have to fight the army that comes behind.

The list of the seven capital vices grew up over time from practical use in the practice of self-examination. However, Thomas thinks that the list can be justified more theoretically, as well. All moral temptation, and all moral error, branches off into two kinds: to treat bad as if it were good because it is associated with something that seems good and to treat good as if it were bad because it is associated with something that seems bad. The big categories of things that immediately seem good are those that pertain to soul, to body, and to human life insofar as it uses the external environment around it; and our assessment of what seems bad to us depends in great measure on how the goods involved are related to us. This helps us build an explanation for each of the seven capital vices based on the most powerful motivators in these areas.

Vices that treat bad as good
      (1) due to association with the most strongly motivating good of the soul, our own excellence: vainglory
      (2) due to association with the most strongly motivating goods of the body, physical pleasures
            (a) connected to individual survival, i.e., food and drink: gluttony
            (b) connected to survival of the human race, i.e., sex: lust
      (3) due to association with the most strongly motivating external good, i.e., possession of what is useful for self-sufficiency: avarice
Vices that treat good as bad
      (1) because of the most strongly deterring badness associated with ourselves, physical difficulty: sloth
      (2) because of the most strongly deterring apparent badnesses associated with other people
            (a) that their good seems to hurt us: wrath
            (b) that their good makes us seem less excellent: envy

Together these vices capture the most common paths by which temptation arises for human beings in general. Individuals may be tempted in other directions, but these identify recurrent, widespread, powerful temptations. When we fall to temptations, we sin, that is to say, engage in an act associated with vice. Many sins build up to a vice. These sins can be of all sorts, but some sins are more typical of vices than others. For instance, you might kill someone out of greed, but this is not the usual kind of greed-associated action people are tempted to, and killing out of greed itself depends and is a sort of extension of one of these more typical actions (which is why we recognize as it as killing out of greed rather than something else). These more typical actions of the vices generally concern desires and the like that directly affect our choices; and these typical actions for the vices have come commonly to be known as the seven deadly sins. It is important to grasp that both vices and virtues can serve as the root for a very wide variety of actions; they are not confined to individual occurrences of typical acts but are capable of organizing entire areas of human life.

If we have some understanding of virtues and of vices, we still want to know what kinds of actions are appropriate to developing and maintaining virtues, and reducing or avoiding vices, in our own particular lives. All moral action, however, is situated action. You cannot adequately determine what is appropriate for you to do simply by looking at a general characterization of virtue and vice; that may give guidance, but you are not living life in general but a very particular life with very particular conditions. We live and act under different morally relevant conditions, and this has to be considered. Some of the conditions under which we labor are quite passing, and these are simply handled by prudence on a case-by-case basis. But some of our morally relevant conditions are fairly stable, and the most important of these are those that are most closely related to us as persons, that is to say, those that affect our general degree of freedom to act on our own or, on the other side, that involve serving others. This kind of condition St. Thomas calls a state of life (status vitae). It is your moral station, the position from which you act virtuously or not. Through experience with a given state of life, we come to recognize certain offices (officia) or duties that have to be performed on a regular basis in order to act virtuously in that state. Both states and offices differ from grade (gradus) or rank, which is something that, while sometimes morally relevant, we have only indirectly relative to the whole of society, rather than something pertaining to us ourselves. Likewise, we have to distinguish (because failing to do so is a common modern error) all of these from class, i.e., whether you are rich or poor; your station in life is not a matter of your relation to external possessions but of your situation insofar as you are a person capable of acting and serving.

Thomas, concerned primarily with infused virtues, naturally focuses on states of life pertaining to the broader supernatural society to which humans are introduced by the Church. He identifies several kinds of state, which are pretty clearly not intended to be exhaustive but just particularly important for life in the Church, e.g.,

(1) (what calls for) beginning, progressing, or completeness in virtue
(2) the episcopal state or prelature
(3) the religious state, such as with monks, nuns, and the like, and the secular state, such as parish priests and deacons

Moral stations in the Church all fall into two general categories, those devoted to the contemplative life and those devoted to the active life, and, of course, we can be in multiple states of life at once.

Even adding states and offices to our consideration, we do not have everything we need in order to live the moral life, because these are things pertaining to yourself alone, and Thomas Aquinas does not think human beings can be moral entirely on their own. We need assistance from outside ourselves, of which the two primary kinds are law and grace, to which we will turn in the next post.

Lent XXIII

And hence, Judas, you are proved more criminal and unhappier than all; for when repentance should have called you back to the Lord, despair dragged you to the halter. You should have awaited the completion of your crime, and have put off your ghastly death by hanging, until Christ's Blood was shed for all sinners. And among the many miracles and gifts of the Lord's which might have aroused your conscience, those holy mysteries, at least, might have rescued you from your headlong fall, which at the Paschal supper you had received, being even then detected in your treachery by the sign of Divine knowledge. Why do you distrust the goodness of Him, Who did not repel you from the communion of His body and blood, Who did not deny you the kiss of peace when you came with crowds and a band of armed men to seize Him. But O man that nothing could convert, O "spirit going and not returning ," you followed your heart's rage, and, the devil standing at your right hand, turned the wickedness, which you had prepared against the life of all the saints, to your own destruction, so that, because your crime had exceeded all measure of punishment, your wickedness might make you your own judge, your punishment allow you to be your own hangman.

Leo I, Sermon 54, On the Passion.

Anscombe at OUP

G. E. M. Anscombe is Oxford University Press's philosopher of the month for April. They have a number of pieces of interest, including a very interesting chapter from John Schwenkler's Anscombe's Intention: A Guide on practical knowledge, and an article by Anscombe herself on intention.

Lent XXII

Jesus, therefore, knowing all that was to come upon Him in accordance with the secret dispositions of the Most High, led His apostles in the recitation of a hymn and went out to Mount Olivet. there he prayed to His Father, as was His custom; but at this particular moment, with the agony of death approaching, with the flock which the gentle Shepherd had so tenderly nurtured about to be scattered and left without leader, the vision of death became so frightening to Christ's sensible nature that He cried out: "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from Me!"...

It was to strengthen us in faith by the knowledge that You did truly share our mortal nature; to lift us up in hope when we ourselves must endure hardships; and to give us greater incentives to love You--it was for these reasons that You showed the natural weakness of the flesh by such evident signs; making us understand how truly You have carried our sorrows, how really Your senses suffered from the bitterness of Your passion.

[Bonaventure, The Works of Bonaventure I: Mystical Opuscula, José de Vinck, tr., Martino Publishing (Mansfield Centre, CT: 2016), p. 117.]

Acting in Uncertain Times

Two notable things on reasoning on the basis of uncertainty in matters like a pandemic. First, from Philippe Lemoine:

...The most important point I want to make is that we don’t need complicated mathematical models of dubious epistemic status to prepare for the worst. The economic consequences of locking down everyone are very serious, but if we don’t do it and the worst comes to pass, the consequences will be even more severe, including for the economy. I’m not American, but I think there are enough reasons at this point to fear that something really bad is going to happen unless you take strong measures to prevent it. At the end of a two-week lockdown, you can reevaluate in light of what scientists will have learned by then....

Second, from Liam Kofi Bright and Richard Bradley:

We are going to have to respond to COVID19 in absence of the sort of knowledge we should ideally prefer when making rational decisions of great social import. In the UK the current hope, if it may be called that, is that we can at least keep the death toll below 20,000. If even this is to be achieved we must decide responsibly and fairly about how to bear various burdens, especially when one remembers Sartre’s point that sometimes to make no choice is itself a morally weighty choice. Clear thinking about the principles that might underlie rational decision making in extreme uncertainty is thus important to us at this moment.

There's no mathematical solution to tragedy, nor an analysis that saves us the responsibility of hard choices. Whatever we do there will be terrible loss. May our decisions be guided by a reason that knows its limits, and a compassion that knows none.

Lent XXI

But Peter, in the ardour of his zeal, made profession of steadfastness and endurance to the last extremity, saying that he would manfully resist the terrors of death, and count nothing of bonds; but in so doing he erred from what was right. For he ought not, when the Saviour told him that he would prove weak to have contradicted Him, loudly protesting the contrary; for the Truth could not lie: but rather he ought to have asked strength of Him, that either he might not suffer this, or be rescued immediately from harm. But, as I have already said, being fervent in spirit, and warm in his love towards Christ, and of unrestrainable zeal in rightly performing those duties which become a disciple in his attendance upon his Master, he declares that he will endure to the last extremity: but he was rebuked for foolishly speaking against what was foreknown, and for his unreasonable haste in contradicting the Saviour's words. For this reason He says, "Verily I tell you, that the cock shall not crow to-night, until you have thrice denied Me." And this proved true. Let us not therefore think highly of ourselves, even if we see ourselves greatly distinguished for our virtues: rather let us offer up the praises of our thanksgivings to Christ Who redeems us, and Who also it is that grants us even the desire to be able to act rightly: by Whom and with Whom to God the Father be praise and dominion, with the Holy Spirit, for over and ever, Amen.

Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, Sermon CXLIV.