From Him, and through Him, and for Him

 All things that are beneath God have an efficient, an exemplary, and a final cause. For from Him, and through Him, and for Him, are all things. If then we consider things as constituted by the efficient causality of God, we call them beings (entia), since it is because of this efficiency that they participate in being (esse). If we consider them as conforming to and according with the Divine exemplars which we call Ideas, and according to which God has created them, namely, being, unity, truth, goodness, something, thing -- the two last due to the disciples of Avicenna --, we call them true. The true picture of Hercules is, for example, said to be that which conforms to the true Hercules himself. If, again, we consider things as tending to God as their last end, we call them good. And finally, if each thing is considered absolutely, according to itself, we call it one. Now, the order is such that each thing must first be conceived under the idea of being, since every thing, whatever it be, must be produced by an efficient agent before being anything particular in itself, lest that which it is do not depend in its totality from the efficient cause. Thus it happens that a thing which comes after God cannot be conceived without being immediately thought of as a dependent being: finite being is being by participation. To being succeeds unity. Third comes truth, since it is only when a thing exists as such that one can inquire if it corresponds to the exemplar according to which it has been formed. If it resembles that exemplar, it has only to turn towards it by its attribute of goodness, in virtue of a sort of affinity or relationship.

[Pico della Mirandola, On Being and One, Chapter VIII.]

Dashed Off XXIV

 There is nothing wrong, as such, with having an opinion because it is convenient; the vast majority of our opinions are had because they are convenient. We get problems when we treat such opinions as more than opinions.

the bodily kinship of animal to animal (including human to nonhuman animal and human to human) as allowing a communication; given the generic commonality, we do something to make a specific commonality

We apprehend things precisely as apt for classifying.

Attention is inherently reduplicative.

the as-structure of an experiment

Functions are ends (teloi) of things as parts of interactive systems.

We are more capable of fully incorporating other animals into our life-system than other animals are capable of fully incoprorating us into theirs. This is precisely what it is for us to be superior to, and more noble than, other animals.

Following the law arises from our occupying 'the justice' for that part of society that is our life.

use and possession within the peace

Bureaucracies are dilatant, hardening against sudden change.

For a wide range of technologies, optimal use of the technology requires skill to do the thing without the technology. People who are capable of mental mathematics are better calculator users than those who are not, etc.

Preferences have no consistent inertia.

Many forms of moral anti-realism would apply in dreaming life as in waking, in fiction as in reality.

What is rightfully yours is yours up to the heights of heaven and down to the depths of hell.

A poem is not just about something but of and for it, as well.

We never really stop being willful children; we just become much more selective about it.

The 'greatest happiness' is indefinitely expandable.

'Bodily autonomy' requires that one be a person and also that the personhood of others be recognized.

Unreasoned change of law is always immensely dangerous to common good.

It is reasonable to hope that there will always be a reasonable hope.

Our natality begins before we are born, and continues afterward.

The Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic in origin, in structure, in doctrine, in sacrament, and in end.

the poem and architectural 'surprise'

Wisdom is not something human beings reach on their own, although there are many different ways others can contribute to the pursuit.

The Apostles who most appear by name in the Gospels are Simon Peter (about 40 passages), John (about 21 passages), James (about 18 passages), Judas Iscariot (about 13 passages), Andrew (about 7 passages), Matthew (about 4 passages). The others appear no more than 3 times (i.e., in the disciples lists).

Many things that are fine when said in limited contexts as figures of speech are heretical if taken literally or outside those contexts. This is true even of things that are known to be impeccably orthodox when understood correctly.

Martyrdom reconciles all saints.

All effects are indexical signs of their causes; some (e.g., impress in wax) are iconic signs of their causes; and others (e.g., design of machine) are symbolic signs of their causes.

A theory is always a way of considering something, and no theory as such rules out other ways of considering it.

People evaluate moral systems by personifying them, thinking of a pure practitioner.

the body as standing objective correlate

The many are often right for reasons of convenience rather than substance, which leads sophists to draw the false conclusion that there are no reasons of substance for it.

Every partisan political position, when not bound by prudence, leads to a counterfeit justice.

Every culture in every age is inured to unwise things.

Both progressivism and conservatism have a tendency to argue by proxies.

Realpolitik has always been a form of liberalism, the kind that chooses to emphasize that in liberalism which is most easily linked to effectual power.

Much of our practical moral reasoning has to be such as to be something that can be learned by children.

Most moral anti-realists are metaethical realists.

Defining probability spaces first requires being able to reason with undefined probability systems.

harmonies of higher-order attitudes (attitudes toward attitudes)

All human jurisdiction arises from a legitimate deputation by mission.

The light of rational sun is reflected in imaginative moon.

We learn what is by being guided by what ought to be.

Stress in English is the relatively greater working of the mouth.

Every profession has its mysteries, the things with which one must simply become familiar.

Events may be linked narratively or episodically. This is relevant to discussions of 'event causation'.

Lawyers and judges tend to make the mistake of thinking that the rule of law is rule by lawyers.

By the Incarnation and the founding of the Church, God maximizes His extrinsic glory by forming glorifiers who are divine and divinized, God giving extrinsic as well as intrinsic glory to God.

means-making causation

Every right creates an etiquette around itself.

potential, disposition, function, intention

The key question of philosophical cosmology: What is the actual necessity that makes the universe possible?

Every meaningful journey outside is also a journey inside.

the haiku-esque

the jural ubiquity of the crown

advice and assistance as latent functions of friendship

jural : occupation :: sacral : consecration

Sometimes by meaning we mean availability for use for communication as such, sometimes the actual use, sometimes the valuation of the use.

Laws of nature can only be a version of one of the following:
(1) immaterial agents or prior ideas of immaterial agents
(2) universals or relations between universals
(3) ends of action
(4) positive summaries of actual behavior.

Both individual right and social right are imitations of God.

"...a *single* subject lives at the same time in several acts of different content." Edith Stein

generic epistemic box : memory :: generic deontic box : anticipation

To apply the laws of nature to a scenario, we must also take into account the structure and organization of the scenario, which is entirely distinct from the laws of nature themselves. (It is false that we only need initial conditions unless we are including structure, which is often not the case.)

enjoying another's enjoying of a thing vs. enjoying a thing in another's enjoyment of it

As time goes on, differences in language inevitably create differences in spiritual practice.

the death of Moses as a type of the baptism of desire

How strange to have a Christianity only as wide as one's own mind working alone; how strange that people are so often tempted toward this.

scientific statements used purely expressively in social discourse

Friendships seed networks of advice and assistance.

priesthood
(1) as natural office
(2) as spiritiual fraternity
(3) as convenantal ordered ordering
(4) as sacramental participation

Love begins with not trying arbitrarily to select whom we love.

How loose and impressionistic a metaphor is depends on the metaphor.

Human beings experience being forced or manipulated to do good as a kind of humiliation.

"Every act of nilling presupposes some act of willing." Scotus

The more virtuous, the more free.

We train our empathy by stretching it and by precisifying it.

the final causality account of laws of nature

In making rules for a game, we make a right and wrong and in so doing also make something to count as cheating.

We could equally call Langauge 'Narrativity' or 'Story'.

contrition as baptism of tears

fine-tuning as sign of contingency vs fine-tuning as sign of teleology

counterfactuals of power vs counterfactuals of attribution

All of human knowledge is compatible with ignorance about many closely associated things.

No institution, however well designed or built, can survive perpetual vice.

If there is no human teleology, there is no human fulfillment.

You prove that there are proofs by proving things; likewise, you establish that things can be reliable by successful inductions.

The nation-state is a mish-mash of familial, feudal, civil, and ecclesial powers, which is why it is so congenial to dictatorship.

Virtues integrate with each other in such a way as to suggest even further unities of virtue, and the limit of this ever-increasing unity of virtue is divine, which is why ever-more integral character seems ever more divine.

While spiritual sense is not the source of demonstration, interpretation of the literal sense that is not confirmed by the spiritual sense is at least incomplete.

We recognize the actual by contrast to what is not but could be.

A running problem with how analytic philosophy is often taught is that it leads people massively to underestimate the amount of work required to build proper regimented-premise arguments, with the result of a lot of unnecessary sloppiness right at the beginning.

The truly vulnerable can only ultimately be protected by their neighbors, i.e., the people actually associated with them in an ongoing way.

The capacity to have moral stances is a stance-independent moral property.

An outcome is good insofar as it can be a good means to a good end.

Global moral anti-realism requires anti-realism about friendship.

"The will is free, so that freedom is both the substance of right and its goal, while the system of right is the realm of freedom made actual, the world of mind brought forth out of itself like a second nature." Hegel

Liberalism has tended to confuse inchoate initial freedom and consummate or perfected freedom.

producing signs by ostension: example, sample, replica, charade
producing signs by stylization
producing signs by stipulation

Everything Eco attributes to convention seems to presuppose signs and to be done by means of signs.

It is within friendship that we learn the attitudes that are moral.

We are in the image of God not just individually but also socially.

In storytelling, people often confuse the main character of the story and the object that the story is about, which can be a character. These functions can be united (but it is difficult); they are not the same.

The consistent actions of the good are inherently exemplary; regular solutions by virutous people create models that we copy; regular methods of prudence establish precedent; etc.

One of the signs of a bad political system is that it doesn't benefit its true believers, but uses them to benefit its cynical opportunists.

The power to hold multiple points of view with regard to the same thing -- this is a stick and a staff and a weapon -- is one of humanity's major survival powers.

The great things of human life never have only one value.

We should always use means consistent with necessary ends.

the natural fit of attitude and facts
-- Some situations easily give rise to some attitudes and make it difficult for other attitudes to be maintained.
-- Some attitudes are overreactions to events and some are underreactions.

It is easier to be sad when the skies are gray.

We are never reasoning without oughts.

The Sun-Burnt Hours

 Sonnet to the Month of August
by Charles Leftley 

August, I welcome thee and all thy hours,
The sun-burnt hours, that dance about thy car,
Thy genial breezes, and refreshing showers,
Thy morning pageantry, and evening star.
Bright are thy smiles, and blithe thy votaries are,
For thou dost bring them harvests, fruits, and flowers,
Enlivening gifts, and more enlivening far,
The laughing vine to glad their clustering bowers.
Yet, August, though these various gifts be dear,
'Tis not for these I time my thankful strain;
No; but for Phyllis! (fye, why drops this tear?)
Whom thou hast sent o'er my fond heart to reign;
Oh! may she live to pleasure many a year,
Although she live to give her minstrel pain.

In Him and Through Him

 Man is likewise, and this adds infinitely to his dignity, this sets him in his perfect light, man is the image of God. He is descended from him, is his offspring, and bears the visible traces of his derivation from heaven, and his communion with the Supreme Existence. His understanding is a ray of divine intelligence; his power an efflux from that of the deity; his activity something similar to that of God; his capacity of becoming constantly more perfect, is a capacity of approaching nearer to the divine nature; his immortality is a similitude of the interminable duration of the Sovereign Being, and the means of an everlasting communion with him. As often as he thinks of truth; as often as he is inclined to goodness, and brings it to effect; as often as he perceives, admires, and promotes order and harmony; as often as he spreads love, and joy, and happiness around him; so often does he think, and will, and perform, and feel, and act in a godlike manner; so often does he pursue the work of his creator and father; so often does he promote the designs of the Sovereign Being; so often does he obtain a taste of pure divine felicity; and the more he does so, the oftener he acts in this manner, the greater is his similitude with God, the brighter does the image of God shine in him, the less are we able to mistake his high descent, and to overlook the dignity of his nature. It is then that God visibly acts, as it were in him and through him ; by him he gives testimony of the truth; he instructs and reveals himself to mankind by him; by him he maintains the cause of virtue; by him he speaks comfort to the afflicted; by him he pours balm into the wounded heart; by him affords help and support to the wretched, distributes bread to the hungry, and gives strength to the weak; his world is improved by him; and through him he spreads life and joy more diffusively around. And to be such an instrument in the hand of God; to have such a similitude with him, the most perfect, the most glorious being; to approach so near to the divinity, and, in a manner, to stand in his place upon the earth; must not this confer a great, or rather the greatest dignity on man?

[Georg Joachim Zollikofer, Sermons on the Dignity of Man and the Value of the Objects Principally Relating to Human Happiness, William Tooke, tr., Thomas & Sturtevant (1807), Sermon I (p. 10). Zollikofer (1730-1788) was a Swiss-German Reformed theologian whose sermons were highly influential on Enlightenment theology and philosophy, and thus on the common moral notion of human dignity today.]

Noble Image

 Canova and anyone who delighted in scratching and drilling holes in his most accomplished statues would not both be called sculptors; Raphael and a desecrator of his painting would not both be called artists. It would never occur to anyone that such a contorted use of words could be justified by claiming that both Canova and the person who destroyed his statues, or Raphael and his assailant used the same implements. 

 What is the system of truth but a kind of majestic statue or noble image of God himself, of much greater worth than anything produced by human hands. It is, after all, impressed upon immortal souls by the living image of eternal wisdom.

[Antonio Rosmini, About the Author's Studies, Murphy, tr., Rosmini House (Durham: 2004) p. 94.]

Fortnightly Book, August 9

 I did a Georgette Heyer novel about a decade ago, A Civil Contract, usually considered her most Austen-ish work; I have since wanted at some point to do her novel, An Infamous Army, which was one of her own favorites and which is sometimes regarded as the most historically accurate historical romance of all time. This seems as good a time as any. The book was published in 1937. It depicts British aristocracy vacationing in Brussels in 1815, around the time of Napoleon's return to power, and famously has an extremely well-researched depiction of the Battle of Waterloo that year. Her working title for it was Forgive, Brave Dead, a line from a poem by Sir Walter Scott, but the title on which she eventually decided, An Infamous Army, comes from a comment by the Duke of Wellington about the British troops under his command. The novel did OK, but was considerably less popular than many of her other historical romances, but time has been kind to it, particularly as we live in an era that is much more favorable to works with closely researched world-building of all kinds than the first half of the twentieth century was.

The Song of the Cid

 Introduction

Opening Passage:  We are actually missing the original beginning of the work. The beginning we have is as follows (providing both the Castilian and the English for comparison):

De los sos ojos tan fuertemientre llorando,
tornava la cabeça e estávolos catando;
vio puertas abiertas e uços sin cañados,
alcándaras vazías sin pielles e sin mantos
e sin falcones e sin adtores mudados.
Sospiró Mio Cid ca mucho avié grandes cuidados;
fabló Mio Cid bien e tan mesurado;
"¡Grado a ti, Señor, Padre que estás en alto!
Esto me an buelto mios enemigos malos."

***

Tears were flowing from his eyes, then flowing faster
As he turned and looked back, just standing,
He saw the doors, swung open, padlocks gone,
Wall pegs empty,  no furs, no gowns
or cloaks, no falcons or molting hawks.
My Cid sighed, his burdens weighing him down.
My Cid spoke, in measured, well-controlled tones:
"I thank you, my Father, my Lord on high!
This is the vulture trap my evil enemies sent me." (pp. 2-3)

Summary: El Cid Campeador has fallen out of favor with the king (accused of embezzlement and disloyalty) and has been exiled from Castile. He and his men have to leave in haste, and there is immediately a problem of what to do about funds, particularly since it is now illegal for anyone directly to aid him. With the help of one of his right-hand men, Martín Antolínez, he hatches a plan; lots of people think he has embezzled taxes, so he uses chests purportedly filled with these taxes as collateral on a loan from Jewish moneylenders, on the pretext that they have a need liquid cash rather than gold treasure. In reality the chests are filled with sand, and by some quick-talking El Cid and his men come away with six hundred golden marks. As he leaves the territory, El Cid has a dream in which the Archangel Gabriel tells him that all will be well.

Out of the kingdom, El Cid needs another means of leverage, and in this case it is his military prowess. They seize a town in the territory of Toledo, but since the area has ties to and is under the protection of King Alfonso, they sell back the town to the Moors who own it and move on.  Eventually, El Cid and his men seize the key strategic town of Alcocer; this alarms the realm of Valencia, which lays seige to the town, but by a surprise attack, El Cid wins a decisive victory. However, he realizes that the geopolitical situation is a more complicated than he had hoped, so he again sells back the town to the Moors. At this point he is incredibly wealthy from all of his victories and from selling towns back to the people from whom he took them, so he sends a gift to King Alfonso in hopes that it starts paving the path for his return. 

So things go, but the key turning point comes when El Cid begins conquering the territory of Valencia, a grueling process lasting several years and resulting finally in the conquest of Valenica itself. This gives El Cid a stable enough position that he is able to reunite with his wife and daughters. The Kingdom of Morocco assaults Valencia with an impressive army, but despite being outnumbered, El Cid again outmaneuvers his enemy.

King Alfonso decides to heal the breach, and does so by pressing El Cid to give his daughters, Elvira and Sol, to the sons of the dauphins of Carrión. El Cid is not particularly thrilled at the marriages, but practically he doesn't have many other options, so he agrees to them. Everything seems good for a while. Cracks begin to develop, however, when a lion escapes its cage. El Cid handles himself well, and in fact simply leads the lion back to its cage, but not before his sons-in-law show themselves to be made of less courageous material, a cowardice that increasingly becomes obvious. The dauphins leave Valencia, claiming they wish to show their wives their own lands, but along the way they mistreat them and abandon them to die. Elvira and Sol luck out when a cousin comes across them. As King Alfonso had pressed the marriages on El Cid, this forces his hand, and he has to hold a formal court in Toledoto determine what should be done. This inevitably ends badly for the dauphins, but as it happens princes from Navarre and Aragon had come to the court proposing marriage, which means that both Elvira and Sol end up with far superior husbands, in both character and influence. And with this we more or less end, with El Cid effectively at the summit of what could possibly be achieved by a knight.

El cantar de mio Cid is interesting in that it is an epic that regards warfare as an entirely secondary matter. Obviously, since one of El Cid's advantages is his extraordinary military prowess, it comes up at regular intervals, but the author has no interest in battles and wars as such, and at several points simply ignores very famous military conflicts of which he seems, from other things, to be clearly aware. What really interests the author is not El Cid's military prowess but his sociopolitical prowess, and the successes at which he most marvels are not battles won against incredible odds (although there are several of those) but the fact that El Cid is basically thrown out of society, with no resources except the loyalty of his men, and not only survives but thrives. Indeed, if anything, his exile ultimately makes El Cid massively more powerful, and the poem ends with El Cid more or less at the top of the social world. Stripped of everything, El Cid almost immediately manages (if only by fraud) to get all that he needs for immediate expenses and then (if only by conquest) to achieve a massive quantity of wealth and rulership of a relatively powerful city. All of the military achievements are as nothing compared to the man having endured one of the worst punishments in his society and come out on top despite, and even because of it. That is the marvel that the author clearly finds remarkable.

Favorite Passage:

Muño Gustioz stood up:
"Shut up, traitor, evil and dangerous!
You eat before you've said a single prayer,
Your greeting kiss stinks like your breath.
You don't speak truth to friends or lords;
You lie to everyone, and mostly to God.
I have no interest in friendship with you:
I'll make you admit you are what I say you are!"
King Alfonso declared: "This matter is closed.
We must proceed to combat, in the name of God!" (p. 227)

Recommendation: Highly Recommended, although I did not always like Burton Raffel's translations.

****

The Song of the Cid, Burton Raffel, tr., Penguin (New York: 2009).