Boethius on Logic

 ...The careful system of discourse has two parts, one of discovery and the other of judgment -- sometimes judgment of the discovery itself, sometimes judgment of the deduction of the discovery, which is the form of an argumentation. The part that teaches about discovery supplies in abundance certain tools for discoveries and is called 'Topics'....The part that has to do with judgment proffers certain rules making determinations and is called 'Analytics'. If it makes observations about the junctures of propositions, it is named 'Prior Analytics'. But if it deals with the discoveries themselves, then the part that discusses the determining of necessary arguments is named 'Posterior Analytics', and the part that discusses false and tricky (that is, sophistical) arguments is named 'Refutations'. The judgment of verismilar argumentations is apparently not dealt with because the nature of judgment concerning the middle is clear and uncomplicated when one is acquainted with the extremes. For if one knows how to judge discerningly what is necessary and is also able to judge false arguments, it is no trouble for him to determine verisimilar arguments, which are in the middle.

[Boethius, Boethius's In Ciceronis Topica, Stump, tr. Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY: 1988) pp. 27-28.]

This is a very interesting passage. Later medieval scholastics will often take Topics to cover verisimilar (i.e., probable) arguments. Thomas Aquinas agrees with this, but also agrees with Boethius in assigning Topics to the logic of discovery (logica inventiva); then, partly following the Islamic commentators, he also assigns Rhetoric and Poetics to it, taking Topics to be the logica inventiva that concerns belief (which is appropriate to probable argument), Rhetoric to be the logical inventiva that concerns suspicion (as in 'suspecting to be true'), and Poetics to be the logica inventiva that concerns 'estimation according to some representation'.

So Secret that the Very Sky Seems Small

 A Ballade of Suicide
by G. K. Chesterton 

The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall;
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours -- on the wall --
Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"
The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day. 

To-morrow is the time I get my pay --
My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall --
I see a little cloud all pink and grey --
Perhaps the rector's mother will not call --
I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way --
I never read the works of Juvenal --
I think I will not hang myself to-day. 

The world will have another washing-day;
The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,
And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall,
Rationalists are growing rational --
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray
So secret that the very sky seems small --
I think I will not hang myself to-day. 

 ENVOI
 Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
Even to-day your royal head may fall,
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

Orcs

 People have been talking about this news story from The Telegraph about a 2024 course at the University of Nottingham on the topic of "Decolonising Tolkien" (a summary by a Fox News reporter here, if you can't access the article itself). It is the sort of thing that one would expect. But I was caught short by this (using the Fox News summary):

According to The Telegraph, the course includes texts that accuse Tolkien’s work of "ethnic chauvinism" against orcs and other dark-skinned characters. 

 "It adds that Tolkien’s treatment of the fictional races shares in a tradition of ‘anti-African antipathy,’ in which people from Africa are painted as ‘the natural enemy of the white man,’" 

The Telegraph reported. Nubia has reportedly argued "that eastern races in the fictional realm of Middle Earth are depicted as evil while fairer-skinned peoples of the West are shown as virtuous."

So here's the thing. Tolkien's orcs, with a few exceptions of uncertain status, are not dark-skinned. In the LOTR movies and in the Rings of Power television show, orcs are often depicted as having some form of a dark muddy greenish-bluish-black color of skin. But Tolkien's orcs are generally sallow-skinned. They are usually a sort of sickly yellowish-brown color. (The representation of the goblins in the Hobbit movies are probably closer to what Tolkien actually had in mind for most orcs. Occasional references to 'black Uruks' are referring not to skin-color but to their being the branch of Orcs most closely associated with the Dark Lord in Mordor, the Black Land, black meaning enshadowed.) There is a reason for that related to the comment by the professor in the last paragraph above -- Tolkien's descriptions of orcs are heavily influenced by fantastical literary descriptions of Huns and Mongols, who, of course, invaded with fire and flame from the East. When asked to describe the orcs by a reader once, he explicitly says that they look somewhat like short, unusually ugly Mongols.

So, no, nothing whatsoever to do with Africa. The "eastern races" comment is less wrong, although, again, the dynamics here are based on the Huns and the Mongols, and the East invading the West, so that the harshness of the description is because the ultimate root of it is literary legends about (you guessed it) the terrifying invading armies of the Huns and the Mongols. The only connection to "colonialism" is that the European writers who wrote these legends absolutely did not want to be colonized by Attila's armies or, later, the Golden Horde. (Of course, in Middle Earth, the eastern human races are also not depicted as 'evil', but oppressed and enslaved, and forced under duress to fight as a result of their enslavement. They are demanded tribute from conquered countries, and Sauron and the Witch-King use them as auxiliaries and, to use the later term, cannon fodder.The eastern societies may well be often evil, because in the story they are under the direct influence and part of the loose, widespread empire of Sauron, but we only know of them very indirectly. It's also the case that the Western people are not particularly virtuous, and, in fact, when Tolkien tried to write a sequel story about what happened to Gondor after the death of Aragorn, he eventually gave it up because the only story he could write was a depressing one about how corrupt and evil and orc-like they became.)

So not only is part of the line of thought based on a poorly thought-out account of the subject matter, it is not about any kind of real "decolonising" at all -- the whole point of 'decolonizing' is people recovering their heritage after having been subjugated by colonial empires; anything else is a cheapening of the concept, and a mere rhetorical abuse. And, of course, it's philistine in its core. The story is as it is; it is a work of art that needs to be assessed on its own terms. The relation of Orcs to any human race is entirely missing in the story -- famously, Tolkien never could decide how they fit in with Elves and Men, and at one point or other rejected all the possible options -- and if you imagine them to be non-white human races, this is, as they say, a 'you problem', rather than a Tolkien problem, because that's just not there in the story. If you think the tale is corrupting or detrimental to society, you are not talking literature anymore, you are talking ethics, and you need to give actual philosophical arguments appropriate to ethics, not vague insinuation or analogy.

Links of Note

 * Daniel D. De Haan, Perception and the Vis Cogitativa: A Thomistic Analysis of Aspectual, Actional, and Affectual Percepts (PDF)

* Anthony Skelton, Sidgwick's Philosophical Intuitions (PDF)

* Lawrence Pasternack & Courtney Fugate, Kant's Philosophy of Religion, at the SEP; this is a very good summary of an extremely complicated topic.

* Edward Feser, How Not to Limit Free Speech, at "The Catholic World Report"

* Jennifer Frey and Anastasia Berg discuss the question, Can the Humanities Be Saved?, at "The Point"

* Elaine Scarry, Plato and the Poets, at "Boston Review"

* Taylor W. Cyr & Parker Gilley, No Easy Compatibilism (PDF)

* Xiao Qi, Re-evaluating the Principle of Virtuous Motives: Abilities, Justice, and Natural Virtues (PDF), on Hume's approach to virtue ethics.

For Lands Not Yet Laid Down in Any Chart

Possibilities
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Where are the Poets, unto whom belong
 The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent
 Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent,
 But with the utmost tension of the thong?
Where are the stately argosies of song,
 Whose rushing keels made music as they went
 Sailing in search of some new continent,
 With all sail set, and steady winds and strong?
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
 In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
 Who shall become a master of the art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
 Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet
 For lands not yet laid down in any chart.

Three Poem Drafts

 I Laud the Holy Spirit

I laud the Holy Spirit, the minister of sacrifice,
God who brings God hither,
the anointing and consecration,
God breathing out our prayer,
God breathing in our prayer,
He to whom our prayers are instruments,
He of whom our prayers are imitations,
the Life-giver worthy to be praised by the living.
Enliven us, O living God!

Every sacrifice He encompasses like fire
is that upon which God descends;
every sacrifice He encompasses like fire
is enflamed, and to God ascends.
Encompass us, O Holy One, like fire!

The Sapience of the priest
beyond the priest's own sapience,
the Holiness of the sacrifice
beyond the sacrifice's holiness,
the Meaning of the prayer
beyond the prayer's meaning,
dispeller of night,
destroyer of the impure,
Fire beyond all fire,
from which all fire comes,
bringer of all reverence, sublime,
abundance beyond all wealth,
in Your radiance make us radiant
and glowing with God!

Newly Waking Moments

Faith is born in hallow,
the last rite of the time,
the promise-field fallow,
shining in morn sublime;

when all hopes are blooming
sunny fields are alight --
cast out your dark dooming
and rise to morning bright.

My Love Is the Sun

My love is the sun,
a great blazing ball,
massive in size
and burning withal;

in the East she will rise,
fall down in the West,
and when she has set,
I finally rest.

Dear Physician

 Whereas many have set their hand to organize a narration about the deeds accomplished among us, as handed down to us from the beginning by those who had been eyewitnesses and underoarsmen of the word, it occurred also to me, having closely followed it all from the beginning, to write it exactly in order to you, honorable Theophilos, that you may recognize the sureness of the accounts concerning which you were taught.

*****

So the first account I composed about everything, O Theophilos, that Jesus began to do and to teach, up to that day when, having commanded through Holy Spirit the apostles he had selected, he was raised up; and to them he exhibited himself alive after his suffering, with many signs, being seen by them for forty days, and speaking about the realm of God.

[Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1-3; both my rough translations.]

Today is the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist. 'Lucas' was not a common name, but it seems to have been a nickname, a shortened form of 'Lucanus'; several people associated with St. Paul have shortened-form versions of Greek names, so it may well have been a Pauline quirk to give people nicknames. In Colossians 4:14, he is called ho iatros ho agapetos, the dear/beloved healer; this could mean any number of things, but traditionally it has been interpreted literally, as meaning that Luke was a physician, and very possibly the official or semi-official physician attached to St. Paul's missionary group. He is also mentioned in Philemon 1:24, as a fellow-worker of St. Paul, and in 2 Timothy 4:11 as the only one of the group still with Paul while Paul was in prison. He has sometimes been identified with the "brother famous among all the churches for proclaiming the gospel" in 2 Corinthians 8:18, although this also sometimes thought to have been Barnabas.

According to a longstanding tradition, he was one of the seventy-two disciples sent by Jesus on missionary journeys, as mentioned in Luke 10, which is why he could say, as he does at the beginning of the Gospel, that he had closely followed everything from the beginning. He is traditionally considered to have been a Gentile from Antioch; one reason for the thinking that the Gentile tradition is right is that the mention in Colossians explicitly names Aristarchus, Mark, and Justus as the only Jewish co-workers with Paul at the time. It is still possible, however, that Paul specifically means Judeans, and that Luke was ethnically a Jew, of Hellenistic, rather than Judean, family. (This would make his being a member of the Seventy more probable.) And of course he is the traditional author of both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, which constitute a little over one-quarter of the entire New Testament.. Famously, the Greek of both works is quite good -- not fancy, but clearly the work of someone who was very familiar with the language not just as spoken but as written. It's easy in our relatively literate age to forget that in most ages for most languages the spoken language and the written language can diverge quite a bit; several of the New Testament authors seem to have had a mostly spoken grasp of Greek, the author of the Gospel and Acts was clearly familiar with both. He effortlessly, and quite smoothly, alludes to a wide selection of the more widely accessible Greek literature. Insofar as we get a sense of him from his writings, he tends to be quite accurate, even meticulous, about things like cities and official titles; urbane and urbanite, I suppose.

The tradition suggests that he died of old age near Thebes, somewhere after about AD 84. It's unclear whether he was martyred; stories that say he was, say he was hanged, but other stories seem to depict him as dying of old age. He is a patron saint of historians, of course, but also patron saint of painters; there is an old legend that he painted a picture of the Virgin Mary. In any case, it is true that the Gospel of Luke has been perhaps the most favored source for paintings of the Life of Christ, so there is more than one reason to associate him with painting.