The Greatest Question

 Yesterday the greatest Question was decided, which ever was de­bated in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men. A Resolution was passed without one dissenting Colony “that these united Colonies, are, and of right ought to be free and independent States, and as such, they have, and of Right ought to have full Power to make War, conclude Peace, establish Commerce, and to do all the other Acts and Things, which other States may rightfully do.” You will see in a few days a Declaration setting forth the Causes, which have impell’d Us to this mighty Revolution, and the Reasons which will justify it, in the Sight of God and Man. A Plan of Confederation will be taken up in a few days.

[“John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-02-02-0015. (Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 2, June 1776 – March 1778, ed. L. H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 27–29.)]

First Principles and Skepticism

 If we wish to find some proof that human beings are of their nature persuaded of the first principles of reasoning, we need look no further than the history of scepticism. As we have seen, any scepticism which truly denied the principles of reasoning would destroy the possibility of thought and of reasoning. But there has never been a sceptic really prepared to abandon resoning for the sake of immersing himself in total mental and verbal silence. All sceptics have used reason to propagate their opinion. By this very fact they admit and use the first principles of reasoning without being conscious of what they are doing. Moreover, they do this naturally because the first principles cannot be denied. The very act of denial presupposes and requires them.

[Antonio Rosmini, Certainty, Cleary and Watson, tr., Rosmini House (Durham: 1991) pp. 76-77 (sect. 1144).]

The Town, the Churchyard, and the Setting Sun

On Visiting the Tomb of Burns
by John Keats 

The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun,
The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem,
Though beautiful, cold -- strange -- as in a dream
I dreamed long ago, now new begun.
The short-liv'd, paly summer is but won
From winter's ague for one hour's gleam;
Through sapphire warm their stars do never beam:
All is cold Beauty; pain is never done.
For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise,
The real of Beauty, free from that dead hue
Sickly imagination and sick pride
Cast wan upon it? Burns! with honour due
I oft have honour'd thee. Great shadow, hide
Thy face; I sin against thy native skies.

This was written in Dumfries, on July 1, 1818. Keats said that he wrote this sonnet in a 'strange mood, half asleep', and it's a good example of how the mood in which a poem is written can sometimes carry over into the poem. 

The Perpetual Pastors of the Church

 Today is the feast of St. Peter and Paul, Apostles. From Pope Leo XIV's homily for the day:

In this light, we can interpret the mission entrusted by the Lord to Peter and his Successors for the benefit of the entire holy People of God. It is a mission to listen, with his help, to the voice of each person; to discern inspirations; to guide the way; to correct errors; to instruct, encourage, exhort and accompany our brothers and sisters so that, docile to the action of the same Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 12:1–11), they may cooperate in the salvation of one another and of all humanity. Moreover, Peter’s example is an invitation to every Christian to become a builder of unity, placing God at the center of one’s life and drawing close to one’s brothers and sisters, attentive to their circumstances and needs (cf. Francis, Catechesis, 9 October 2024). In this way, we learn to live with one another in charity, so that the message might be fully proclaimed (cf. 2 Tim 4:17). 

 This is also the teaching of Paul, the other great apostle we celebrate today and the tireless herald of the Good News. He, too, has distinctive symbols: the book and the sword, which are closely linked to one another. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews explains this well when he writes that, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,” capable of penetrating “until it divides soul from spirit” and of discerning “the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).

From one of Pope St. Leo I's homilies for the feast:

The whole world, dearly-beloved, does indeed take part in all holy anniversaries, and loyalty to the one Faith demands that whatever is recorded as done for all men's salvation should be everywhere celebrated with common rejoicings. But, besides that reverence which today's festival has gained from all the world, it is to be honoured with special and peculiar exultation in our city, that there may be a predominance of gladness on the day of their martyrdom in the place where the chief of the Apostles met their glorious end. For these are the men, through whom the light of Christ's gospel shone on you, O Rome, and through whom you, who was the teacher of error, was made the disciple of Truth. These are your holy Fathers and true shepherds, who gave you claims to be numbered among the heavenly kingdoms, and built you under much better and happier auspices than they, by whose zeal the first foundations of your walls were laid: and of whom the one that gave you your name defiled you with his brother's blood. These are they who promoted you to such glory, that being made a holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal state, and the head of the world through the blessed Peter's holy See you attained a wider sway by the worship of God than by earthly government. For although you were increased by many victories, and extended your rule on land and sea, yet what your toils in war subdued is less than what the peace of Christ has conquered.

Evening Note for Sunday, June 28

 Thought for the Evening: Vicarious Intention

There are clearly situations in which people have vicarious intention, i.e., intention on behalf of another. An obvious example is parenting, which often involves intending on behalf of one's child; various kinds of representation and mediated agency are more complicated forms. This is not something for which we have any obvious theory. There are a few things that need to be considered, however.

(1) Vicarious intention is distinct from intention on one's own behalf with another in view. Most of our social intentions (including in situations that can involve vicarious intention) involve intending for ourselves while nonetheless taking others into account. Vicarious intention requires a tighter integration of the other into one's intention. 

(2) Vicarious intention is, or is typically, personative. The person vicariously intending for another is usually personating them, i.e., acting as part of their person, as their agent in personal action. This personative role has to involve a number of things:

(i) a personator
(ii) a personated
(iii) an end of personation
(iv) a deontic structure appropriate to that end
(v) a range of actions allowed by that structure that are relevant to actual situations

For instance, a parent (i) can make a decision on behalf of a child (ii) for the child's good (iii); the child's good involves a set of obligations and responsibilities that the parent must consider and that 'authorize' the parent to make and treat certain kinds of decision as if their child were the one making decision (iv). This constitues the whole panoply of power and action involved in parenting (v).

(3) The vicarious intention is the intention of both the principal intender and the one on whose behalf the principal intender intends. Given such a personative role, then the actual decision on behalf of the child is an action done with vicarious intention. Note that we should distinguish decisions on behalf of the child from decisions for the child; the latter need not be vicarious at all, and can simply be an imposition of authority. When acting in a personative role, the parent is standing in the child's place, making the child's decision.

(4) One of the contexts in which vicarious intention is found is in infant baptism. As St. Thomas puts it, the infant "can be said to intend, not by their own act of intention, since at times they struggle and cry; but by the act of those who bring them to be baptized" (ST 3.68.9 ad 1). This has all of the features noted above. Obviously we have personator (i) and personated (ii); the end of personation (iii) is the spiritual care for the child, which requires and authorizes (iv) relevant adults to take steps toward the child's salvation and spiritual health (v).  The full rite makes the personator cooperative here -- it is not just the parents/sponsors but the whole Church with them that is intending on behalf of the child. However, the latter introduces an aspect to this kind of vicarious intention that is not common to all forms of vicarious intention, namely, charitable communion; as Aquinas also says, the Holy Spirit "unites the whole Church together, and communicates the goods of one member to another" (ST 3.68.9 ad 2). One of the effects of this is that much more can be vicariously intended than could usually be done.

The closest analogue to this in non-grace contexts seems to be political representation. While it doesn't have the communion made possible by the virtue of charity, it does have a community, and a common good. But more than that, I think the particular aspects of common good that create the deontic structure authorizing vicarious intention are fixed by human nature. In particular, they are due to humans being political animals and therefore requiring civil society for their complete development. It is thus natural for us to form into a moral person, the civil society, and this requires that there be decision-makers making the moral person's intention, on behalf of all of the members relevantly concerned. This is rather different from that which the Church exercises specifically as a sacramental body of Christ (although the Church also has this kind), but it also, within the range of actions allowed by the end and deontic structure, allows much more to be vicariously intended than could usually be intended.

It is worth noting that infant baptism is an unusually complicated case, because the vicarious intention is layered: the parent as member of the Church, the Church as a political community, the Church as a sacramental communion.  The result is that baptism of a child is an act within a family (part of the parent's educative work on behalf of the child), an act of initiation into the society of the Church, and an act of faith, hope, and love exercised on behalf of the child in the order of grace.

In any case, this is all quite rough, but one must begin somewhere.

Various Links of Note

* Matthew Minerd, Christocentrism in the French School: Revisiting Charles-Louis Gay, at "To Be a Thomist"

* Johan E. Gustafsson, A Godelian Ontological Proof with More Plausible Axiological Principles (PDF)

* Miriam Ellis discusses a previously unknown letter by J. R. R. Tolkien.

* The Vesuvius Challenge, which is scanning the burned papyri from Herculaneum, has reached a milestone: they have fully deciphered the first scroll, PHerc 1667, and have a preprint paper on it. Since the scroll was itself in not-very-good-shape, what they have is fragmentary, but enough to know that it probably discussed Stoic ideas. (They suggest that it was a Stoic work, but it could also be an Epicurean work discussing and criticizing Stoicism, or the Stoic part of a doxographical account about several philosophical schools.) And, of course, even given its fragmentary nature, its always possible we may find another partial copy of the same thing, either here or somewhere else, or that future scholarship may discover that some reference already extant may be an allusion to this work.

* David Horan's translation of the Platonic dialogues at the Foundation for Platonic Studies.

Currently Reading

Michael Flynn, Eifelheim
Antonio Rosmini, Certainty
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale

In Audiobook

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Tombs of Atuan
Ursula K. LeGuin, Worlds of Exile and Illusion
Jim Butcher, Small Favor

Eirenaios

 Today is the feast of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Doctor of the Church. From Adversus Haereses, Book III, Chapter 19:

But again, those who assert that He was simply a mere man, begotten by Joseph, remaining in the bondage of the old disobedience, are in a state of death having been not as yet joined to the Word of God the Father, nor receiving liberty through the Son, as He does Himself declare: If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. But, being ignorant of Him who from the Virgin is Emmanuel, they are deprived of His gift, which is eternal life; and not receiving the incorruptible Word, they remain in mortal flesh, and are debtors to death, not obtaining the antidote of life. To whom the Word says, mentioning His own gift of grace: I said, You are all the sons of the Highest, and gods; but you shall die like men. He speaks undoubtedly these words to those who have not received the gift of adoption, but who despise the incarnation of the pure generation of the Word of God, defraud human nature of promotion into God, and prove themselves ungrateful to the Word of God, who became flesh for them. For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God. For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality, unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that we might receive the adoption of sons?

Seal of All the Fathers

 Today is the feast of St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria and Doctor of the Church. From his Commentary on Hosea, chapter 2:

We are therefore saved when God has mercy and compassion on us; we have been made righteous, "not because of any works of righteousness that we have done, but according to the abundance of his mercy," as Scripture says. We were also sumoned to the spiritual relationship through faith, and by being thus summoned we come to know the one who is God by nature. Consequently, he says, I shall betroth you to myself in faith, and you will know the Lord. Faith made its entrance in advance, therefore, and we were enriched also in this way by knowing Christ -- and this, in my view, is the meaning of what is said to some: "If you will not believe, neither will you understand." Now, the fact that the clear understanding of the mystery of Christ achieves a share in eternal life for those worthy of it the Son himself confirms in speaking to God the Father in heaven: "Now, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God,a nd Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

[St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, Volume 1, Robert C. Hill, tr., The Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC: 2007) p. 90.]