Habitude XXXIV

 To the fifth one proceeds thus. It seems that gifts are not connected. For the apostle says, I Cor. XII, To some is given through the Spirit, word of wisdom, to others word of knowledge according to the same Spirit. But wisdom and knowledge are enumerated among gifts of the Holy Spirit. Therefore gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to different ones, and are not connected with each other in the same one.

Further, Augustine says, in De Trin. XIV, that most of the faithful are not rich in knowledge, although they are rich with faith itself. But faith is accompanied by some of the gifts -- at least the gift of fear. Therefore it seems that gifts are not connected in one and the same.

Further, Gregory says, in Moral. I, that wisdom is less if it lacks intellection, and intellection is exceedinly useless if it does not subsist from wisdom. Counsel is base if it is missing the work of fortitude, and fortitude is destroyed unless supported by counsel. Knowledge is nothing if it does not have the usefulness of piety; piety is exceedingly useless if it lacks the judgment [discretione] of knowledge. Fear itself, as well, if it does not have these virtues, does not rise up for any work of good action. From which it seems that one gift can be had without having another. Therefore gifts of the Holy Spirit are not connected.

But contrariwise is what Gregory premises [praemittit], saying that in this banquet of sons, they in turn fed each other. Now by the sons of Job, of whom he speaks, are designated gifts of the Holy Spirit. Therefore gifts of the Holy Spirit are connected, in that they reinforce one another.

I reply that it must be said that the truth of this is easily able to be had from the premises [praemissis]. For it was said above that just as the striving impulses are disposed through moral virtues in relation to the governance of reason [regimen rationis], so all impulses of the soul are disposed through gifts in relation to the Holy Spirit changing them. But the Holy Spirit dwells in us through charity, according to Rom. V, The charity of God is diffused through our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who is given to us, just as our reason is completed through prudence. Wherefore, just as moral virtues are connected to each other in prudence, so gifts of the Holy Spirit are connected to each other in charity, so that whoever has charity has all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, none of which can be had without charity.

To the first therefore it must be said that wisdom and knowledge are able to be considered one way according as they are gratuitously given graces [gratiae gratis datae], to wit, insofar as someone abounds in cognition of divine and human things, so as to be able to instruct the faithful and confute adversaries. And so the apostle speaks there of wisdom and knowledge, whence mention is made expressly [signanter] of the word of wisdom and of knowledge. In another way they are able to be taken as they are gifts of the Holy Spirit. And thuswise wisdom and knowledge are nothing other than sorts of completions of the human mind according to which one is disposed toward following the instigation of the Holy Spirit in cognition of divine and human things. And thus it is obvious that gifts are in all those having charity.

To the second it must be said that Augustine speaks there of knowledge, expositing the aforesaid authority of the apostle, whence he speaks of knowledge taken in the aforesaid way, according as it is gratuitously given grace. This is obvious from what he adds, For it is one thing to know in such a way as a human being ought to believe in order to reach blessed, which is not other than eternal, life, but another to know in the sort of way to aid the pious and defend against the impious, which the apostle seems to name by word of knowledge.

To the third it must be said that, just as in one way the connection of cardinal virtues is from one's being completed somehow by another, as was said above, so Gregory in the same way wishes to prove the connection of the gifts, in that one is not able to be completed without another. Whence he premises [praemittit] by saying that each is exceedingly destitute if one virtue does not support [suffragetur] another. Therefore it is not given to be understand that one gift is able to be without another, but that intellection, if it were without wisdom, would not be gift, just as temperance, if it were without justice, would not be virtue.

[St. Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.68.5, my translation. The Dominican Fathers translation is here, the Latin is here.]

In article 4, which I didn't translate, the Gifts are enumerated: wisdom, intellection/understanding, knowledge, counsel, piety, fortitude, fear. Some significant points in this article, which gives us more information about how the Gifts work as habitudes, are:

(1) The analogy, given in the body and in the reply to objection 3, between the connexio, the connection or joining or meeting, of the cardinal virtues in prudence and the connexio of the Gifts in charity.

(2) The reason that the Gifts ultimately meet in charity rather than in one of the Gifts like (say) wisdom is that they are open specifically to the Holy Spirit working in us, and the Holy Spirit working in us is charity. Thus the Gifts arise from the Holy Spirit giving us the ability to respond and cooperate with the divine love that unifies us with God.

(3) The Gifts should not be confused with gifts of grace in the sense of 'gratuitously given graces'. While it's not entirely clear from the brief comments in the replies to the objection, elsewhere it is explained more fully that the Gifts of the Holy Spirit are for us to be moved by the Holy Spirit, but gratuitously given graces are for us to aid others. Another way to put it is that the Gifts make us one with Christ (indeed, they are literally the Messianic graces, which Christ has properly and which he extends to us as part of our participation in Him); gratuitously given graces help lead others to Christ.

Dashed XV

 The modern age is an age of trying to replace the internal with the external.

A goal in writing a book is to say what should be said but in a way that seems, however long it may be, like it ends too soon.

the just city considered mythologically (Timaeus), legendarily (Critias), and actually (Hermocrates)

the enjoyment of things being legally and juridically square

the consolidation of poetic inferences by convergence (e.g., Samir is moon, therefore bright; Samir is star, therefore bright; Samir is intelligent, therefore bright; Samir is smiling, therefore bright; thus Samir is bright)

Part of what makes Golan Trevize irritating as a character is that he argues every little thing, but is this related to his intuition and 'knack for rightness'? i.e., his mind surveys many paths at once and filters by stability in argument.

The scientific honors system is possible and to some extent practically necessary because scientific communication and scientific reference archiving requires that so  many things be distinctly named.

Everything ontological can also be represented logologically.

The power of petition is a legislative power of the People.

Our remedies for corruption almost always assume that corruption is occasional, not institutional or systemic, even when people claim they are addressing institutional or systemic corruption.

worldbuilding as character support vs worldbuilding as spectacle

what is inferrable about a fictional character in a story vs what is inferrable about a fictional character from a story or set of stories vs what is positable about a fictional character from what is stated or inferrable

When we have stories about the same character that conflict, we posit the characters as being 'farther' from the storytelling, creating space for treating the stories as distinct 'traditional' or 'testimonial' lines to the character.

languages as supplementary reservoirs for languages (this is common with classical languages, like Latin and Greek for scientific terms in English, and dominant market languages, like English for business terms in other languages, but it happens sporadically in a spontaneous way with any two languages in close contact)

Convention is loose enough that it creates ghost-convention, things that aren't actually conventional but taken as such, and if taken as such enough, solidify into real conventions.

The saints become perpetual memorials of divine victory.

Necessities and preferabilities of necessary and preferable roles sometimes approximate rights.

Something seeming wise is a sign of exemplar causality.

Around every important truth one eventually finds deceptive imitations.

complex number amplitudes as representing actively accessible possibilities

We can make no sense of actions except in terms of primary beings relating them to other actions, passions, and dispositions.

"While every human being possesses the seed of metaphysics, not all possess the soil in which it can grow." Dewan

(1) God is at least ens rationis.
(2) God cannot be merely ens rationis.

That we have concepts we know by their presence; what they are must be discovered through reflection and inference.

What ought to be and what is are the same in the necessary.

ram-stam: impetuous, headstrong, or reckless
bellycheer: gluttonous feasting and self-indulgence in food

The more perfect the love, the fewer demands can be placed on it, because it is adequate in itself, and nothing beyond itself is needed. We place expectations on imperfect lvoes because there are standards beyond it that it must meet in order not to be defective.

The more perfect the love, the more it exceeds what consciousness can take in, and the more it appears a kind of being.

The Lord of the Rings is structured heavily by ironies: the least does the greatest deed, strength turns against itself, the unexpected brings about the inevitable, and so forth.

God as that on which self-evident principles converge

Love cannot be held to a consequentialist standard.

Most of virtue, like most of anything, can be imitated, even flawlessly, but that last little bit is a gap no mere imitation can ever overleap.

Kooks and loons play a definite role in the cognitive ecology, provoking arguments and reducing complacency, forcing retread of conclusions that can consolidate understanding and re-route inquiry around minor obstacles and push the repair of minor flaws. We see these things happen. A society of kooks and loons is obviously undesirable, but a society without them may well (1) be impossible for human beings and (2) have coutnerbalancing negative effects if it did turn out possible for us.

Repeition alone is always enough to persuade some people of some thing, which ones depending on personal backgrounds.

I think and I know with the shadow of light
that the beginning of day is found in the night.

Trauma itself is never drama.

A landscape is a traversable environment experienced as a unity by a person within a visual perspective.

In the universe as a whole, we find something that is almost, but only almost, a fit interlocutory for the human mind.

Make-believe is a possible response to fiction, but this is distinct from our response to the fiction as such. We often do not make-believe in response to fiction.

Bias is not merely systematic deviation from a standard of correctness, pace Thomas Kelly, unless you are just meaning a statistical tendency to one side; it involves a disproportionate inclination prior to the relevant judgments. It is the latter, merely pulling a bit to the side of a perfect bull's eye, that is relevant to belief and knowledge in a robust sense.

US Code Title 36 as a Congressional honors system

"Totalitarianism's idolatrous course can only be arrested by coming up against a genuinely spiritual way of life." Weil

the phenomeon of 'just going with it'

abstract type of the philosophical argument --ingression--> actual occasion of philosophical argument in mind
actual occasion --is prehended by (along with other aspects of the world related to it)--> actual occasion

objective theories, illusion theories, and pretense theories of landscape expressiveness

The plural of majesty for pronouns always implies a plurality in unity, e.g., the people represented in the king.

the cosmos as God's right

Plurals can indicate: count, extension, composition, intensity, abstraction, excellence/majesty.

baptism : illumination :: confirmation : communion of operation :: ordination : divine fire
baptism : supplication :: confirmation : intercession :: ordination : sacrifice

Christianic Romanity

Putnam's 'minimal principle of contradiction': Not every statement is both true and false.

the Son of God as the one through whom all history is made (Hb 1:2)

For every statemetn to which a truth value is assigned, there must be a reason why that truth value is assigned to it.

A significant reason why we believe there are other minds is that we need there to be other minds.

congruence of life and value

factual statements as value statements concerned with truth

Harsanyi's distinctions between personal and impersonal preferences and between actual and hypothetical preferences are sound, but he errs in thinking the distinctions are the same. In reality, we have both actual and hypothetical versions of both personal and impersonal preferences.

Interpersonal utiltiy comparisons are only possible under specific and narrow circumstances.

Pace Harsanyi, moral hypothetical imperatives are as likely to be demands as advices, and may be causal as well as constitutive or formal.

Whether it is rational to take a bet depends first and foremost on the trustworthiness of the betting system and prayers. Assuming that those who bet can and will pay is a good way to get scammed.

New evidence often requires reassessing all evidence.

Our prayers begin before we pray.

Prudence is necessary because venture is part of the moral life.

Scripture was first lived, then written, then proclaimed, then lived within. All of these have divine purpose.

Kant on exemplary necessity

That tools 'withdraw' on good use does not mean that they stop being experienced; they are always already there in the experience of using them.

Every being manifests being's anteriority to manifestation.

Academic scholarship creates many good things; it also creates a lot of pollution of inquiry in doing so.

Hartmann takes values to be Platonic ideas of a sort.

The human voice does not hit notes but encompasses them, dances with them, flows througha nd above or below them.

"First comes knowledge, then a view, then reasoning, and then belief." Newman

thysia: sacrifices to the Olympian gods
enagisma: sacrifices ot heroes and the dead
sphage: sacrifices before battle
-- only in thysia was sacrifice divided and then shared and consumed; thysia is for major public festivals, important family events
-- enagisma as term is mostly used in the Roman period

Some pleasures are associated with more of what happiness can be, some with less.

In the Garden Blind

The Mystery
by G. K. Chesterton 

If sunset clouds could grow on trees
It would but match the May in flower;
And skies be underneath the seas
No topsyturvier than a shower. 

If mountains rose on wings to wander
They were no wilder than a cloud;
Yet all my praise is mean as slander,
Mean as these mean words spoken aloud. 

And never more than now I know
That man's first heaven is far behind;
Unless the blazing seraph's blow
Has left him in the garden blind. 

Witness, O Sun that blinds our eyes,
Unthinkable and unthankable King,
That though all other wonder dies
I wonder at not wondering.

The Food of Angels

 Today is the feast of St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church. From a letter to her niece, Sister Eugenia:

Dearest daughter in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to thee in His precious Blood, with desire to see thee taste the food of angels, since thou art made for no other end; and that thou mightest taste it, God bought thee with the Blood of His Only-Begotten Son. But reflect, dearest daughter, that this food is not taken upon earth, but on high, and therefore the Son of God chose to be lifted up upon the wood of the Most Holy Cross, in order that we might receive this food upon this table on high. But thou wilt say to me: What is this food of angels? I reply to thee: it is the desire of God, which draws to itself the desire that is in the depths of the soul, and they make one thing together.

 This is a food which while we are pilgrims in this life, draws to itself the fragrance of true and sincere virtues, which are prepared by the fire of divine charity, and received upon the table of the cross. That is, virtue is won by pain and weariness, casting down one's own fleshly nature;—the kingdom of one's soul which is called Heaven (cielo) because it hides (cela) God within it by patience, is seized with force and violence. This is the food that makes the soul angelic, and therefore it is called the food of angels; and also because the soul, separated from the body, tastes God in His essential Being. He satisfies the soul in such wise that she longs for no other thing nor can desire aught but what may help her more perfectly to keep and increase this food, so that she holds in hate what is contrary to it. Therefore, like a prudent person, she looks with the light of most holy faith, which is in the eye of the mind, and beholds what is harmful and what is useful to her. And as she has seen, so she loves and condemns—holding, I say, her own fleshly nature and all the vices which proceed from it, bound beneath the feet of her affections....

Misplaced Morality Rots in the Roots Unconscious

The Modern Manichee
by G. K. Chesterton

He sayeth there is no sin, and all his sin
Swells round him into a world made merciless;
The midnight of his universe of shame
Is the vast shadow of his shamelessness.
He blames all that begat him, gods or brutes,
And sires not sons he chides as with a rod.
The sins of the children visited on the fathers
Through all generations, back to a jealous God.

The fields that heal the humble, the happy forests
That sing to men confessed and men consoled,
To him are jungles only, greedy and groping,
Heartlessly new, unvenerably old.
Beyond the pride of his own cold compassion
Is only cruelty and imputed pain:
Matched with that mood, a boy's sport in the forest
Makes comrades of the slayer and the slain.

The innocent lust of the unfallen creatures
Moves him to hidden horror but no mirth;
Misplaced morality rots in the roots unconscious,
His stifled conscience stinks through the green earth.
The green things thrust like horrible huge snails,
Horns green and gross, each lifting a leering eye
He scarce can call a flower; it lolls obscene,
Its organs gaping to the sneering sky.

Dark with that dusk the old red god of gardens
Still pagan but not merry any more,
Stirs up the dull adulteries of the dust,
Blind, frustrate, hopeless, hollow at the core;
The plants are brutes tied with green rope and roaring
Their terrible dark loves from tree to tree:
He shrinks as from a shaft, if by him singing,
A gilded pimp and pandar, goes the bee.

He sayeth, 'I have no sin; I cast the stone',
And throws his little pebble at the shrine,
Casts sin and stone away against the house
Whose health has turned earth's waters into wine.
The venom of that repudiated guilt
Poisons the sea and every natural flood
As once a wavering tyrant washed his hands,
And touching, turned the water black with blood.

Links of Note

 * Ryan Miller, A Metaphysics of the Common Good (PDF)

* Tuomas Tahko, Natural Kind Fundamentalism (PDF)

* James Lennox & Mariska Leunissen, Aristotle's Biology, at the SEP

* Edward Feser, Does Just War Doctrine Require Moral Certainty? at "First Things"

* Flame & Light, Hume's Sign Argument and Attributed Character

* Robert McNamara, Aquinas vs Camus, at "Dumb Oxen"

Fields that Tingle with New Birth

April Night
by Archibald Lampman

How deep the April night is in its noon,
The hopeful, solemn, many-murmured night!
The earth lies hushed with expectation; bright
Above the world's dark border burns the moon,
Yellow and large; from forest floorways, strewn
With flowers, and fields that tingle with new birth,
The moist smell of the unimprisoned earth
Comes up, a sigh, a haunting promise. Soon,
Ah, soon, the teeming triumph! At my feet
The river with its stately sweep and wheel
Moves on slow-motioned, luminous, grey like steel.
From fields far off whose watery hollows gleam,
Aye with blown throats that make the long hours sweet,
The sleepless toads are murmuring in their dream.