Planet-Blinding Sprays

 Even in Slumber
by Clark Ashton Smith

This separation cleaveth to the core. . . .
Even in slumber I am fated
To seek thee in vast throngs and dreamlands desolated---
And find thee nevermore. 

Bewildering phantoms rise between, and ways
Where demons claim their olden debt;
The rote of sullen streets and streams; the spume and fret
Of planet-blinding sprays.

Juan José Urráburu on Vestment

Last year I did a few posts on the tenth predicament (ninth accident), habitus, i.e., habit in the sense of vestment, which is roughly the category in which one substance is predicated as an accident for another. I looked at a number of different people and what they said about this -- Jeremy Bentham, Robert Sanderson, James Beattie, Thomas Aquinas, John of St. Thomas. I was recently playing around with various automatic translation programs, and decided to test them with a passage from Juan José Urráburu's Institutiones Philosophicae on the same category. Urráburu (1844-1904) is a case of an extremely important figure in the history of philosophy whose name is rarely known. He was a Spanish Jesuit whose eight-volume Institutiones Philosophicae, begun about 1890 and finished in 1900, and five-volume Compendium version of the same work, was of overwhelming significance and importance for the early twentieth-century Neo-Scholastic movement; in effect, it became the primary reference for most of it, and shaped its structure and approach. Unlike in the previous posts, where I translated, the following translation is basically that of Google Translate (which has become quite good at translating Latin, even though it is still very occasionally odd in particular translation preferences and occasionally gets phrases the wrong way around), although I have checked it briefly for any very obvious errors and have also regularized its clothing terms to use 'vestment' and 'vested' for the similar vest- terms in the original. It is from volume 2 of the Institutiones, Ontologia, disputation 6, chapter 4, article 3 (section 378).

This category (*habitus*) expresses the meaning according to which something is said to be clothed or adorned by something adjacent to the body—such as vestments or protective armor (e.g., a breastplate, helmet, etc.); it is thus defined by Gilbert in terms of bodies and the things adjacent to them. Consequently, the primary subject of the determinations belonging to this category is man alone, since he is the only animal that uses vestment out of necessity and natural instinct. Nevertheless, animals can secondarily be the subjects of such denominations insofar as they are clothed or armored through human ingenuity—for example, a horse or a monkey—as can statues vested in human fashion, and temples or houses adorned with tapestries and hangings. Also included here are terms like "gilded," "whitewashed," "red-hot," and similar ones, which arise from one substance being accidentally superimposed upon another in the manner of an ornament. 

This follows St. Thomas, but in a very specific later reading that (as I have said elsewhere) St. Thomas may not have actually meant. I am a bit baffled by the last sentence, which at first seems to contradict everything else in this paragraph; but I suppose Urráburu probably means that these are figurative cases.

Now, the denomination belonging to this category can be stated in two ways: first, as "having vestment," and second, as "being vested." In the first sense, the denominating form is the act of having or wearing the vestment—or the actual state of wearing it and the union, as it were, of the vestment with the body; it is in this sense that Aristotle could write that *habitus* is an intermediary between the one who has the vestment and the vestment that is possessed. In the second sense, the form is the vestment itself, which—acting like an extrinsic form and through its adjacency to the body (a kind of union)—denominates the body as "vested." Similarly, when a body is denominated as "having a soul," the denominating form is the state of possession or union; but when it is called "animated," the form is the soul itself. Furthermore, the very habition, or adjacency of vestment is nothing other than a twofold contiguous ubication—one of the vestment, the other of the body; while this falls under the category of *Ubi* insofar as it involves the office of locating, it belongs to the category of *Habitus* insofar as it involves the office of clothing or uniting the vestment to the body. The Eximious Doctor explains all this at length and excellently, and one may also consult him regarding the species of *Habitus*. 

The second-to-last sentence I had to restructure, because Google's translation was very loose (one of its weaknesses is that it tends at times to translate technical terms colloquially, which is sometimes nicely clear but sometimes makes a complete hash of things). The 'Eximious Doctor' is Suarez. While it is true that the category of vestment presupposes the category of 'where' (or 'place', as it is often called), this is, I think, because it presupposes all of the categories. As usually conceived by the scholastics, there is basically an ordering in the categories; we have the fundamental first four (substance, quantity, quality, relation), and then the next six, sometimes called the sex principia, which all presuppose the fundamental four: action, passion, when, where, posture (situs), vestment (habitus). But even within the sex principia, it is very obvious that when and where presuppose action and passion, and that situs presupposes all four of those, and then habitus presupposes all of them. Thus I think it is very misleading to say that habition, i.e., the act pertaining to habitus, is 'nothing other' than being reciprocally in the category of 'where'; for one thing, habitus presupposes situs almost as much as it does ubi, and second, reciprocal contiguous placement would not usually be habition at all. (Indeed, on Urráburu's own acceptance of the traditional idea that the category of vestment only applies to human beings, it could not possibly be so.) Thus there must be something distinctive about vestment. The obvious thing, of course, is that in reciprocal contiguous placement, the reciprocity is precisely not enough to get you vestment; vestment involves something like a dependence, and thus involves an asymmetry. You literally wear your clothes; your clothes do not literally wear you. Indeed, even figuratively saying that your clothes wear you indicates that something has gone very wrong.

 As for the properties of this category, it possesses almost none that are peculiar to it. However, certain accidents seem to pertain to it in a special way—specifically color and shape; for just as these two contribute greatly to beauty, so too do they contribute to the nature of ornamentation. Gilbert and the author of the *Summa of Aristotle's Entire Logic* also assign a twofold property to this category: that it has no contrary and that it admits of degrees (more and less). Yet this latter property is not to be understood as the admission of degrees through intrinsic intensification. "For since *Habitus* is a kind of substance, it cannot admit of more and less any more than substance itself can; just as, for the same reason, it lacks a contrary. Rather, it is said to admit of more and less through a certain kind of addition—not merely an extensive addition regarding the subject (which is common to other accidents), but through the multiplication of vestments around the same part of the body; in the same way that a person wearing two tunics is said to be 'more clothed' than one wearing only a single tunic. Hence, it is also a distinctive feature of this category that one of its forms can be placed over another—either quasi-accidentally through human choice (as when garments are of the same type) or essentially through the very nature of the attire (as when a toga is placed over other vestments)—even though the denomination always refers immediately to the person himself; for it is the man who is denominated 'wearing a toga.' And even if it happened that he lacked inner vestments and wore only the toga, he would still be denominated in that way. It is also, in a sense, proper to this category that its forms are distinguished according to the organic parts of the human body, yet they denominate the man absolutely; for although shoes or a hat are located only on the feet or the head, the man is said absolutely to be 'hatted' or 'shod.' And one point rightly follows from the other; for when a form is not naturally suited to apply to the whole except by reason of a specific part, then—existing in that part alone—it denominates the whole, just as a man is called 'curly-haired' solely because of his hair. Thus, since a shoe is an extrinsic form belonging only to the foot, it denominates the whole while existing in that part; and the same applies to other instances. Conversely, when a denomination naturally pertains to the whole, it is not derived simply from forms of this kind; and therefore, a man is not said absolutely [to be defined by them], even if he is wearing shoes or a hat, etc." 

The long quotation starting with "For since Habitus" is from Suarez (from Metaphysics, disputation 53). I find myself of two minds with regard to Suarez's rejection of the idea that vestment admits of more and less in a proper sense (which, as he says here, would involve intensity). It is true that we usually say someone is 'more clothed' when they have (quantatively) more clothes on them. Nonetheless, I wonder if there's a sense, not often discussed but nonetheless real, in which vestments admit of degrees in how much they clothe you. That is to say, not as a matter of having more clothes, but of having clothes that clothe you more. In particular, vestment involves a relation between two substances, usually called adjunction or adjacency, that seems like it might admit of degrees, or something very like it. We perhaps talk about this very indirectly when we talk about 'fit'. But I don't know; it's something I hadn't really thought about before. Suarez (and with him Urráburu) rejects the idea that vestment admits of degrees because vestments are substances, which does not admit of degrees; but vestments are substances adjoined to substances in the manner of accidents, and the adjunction itself is not something he is taking into account.

However, I very much like two points in the Suarez quotation. The first is the recognition that vestments can 'nest', and that this is related to the fact that they function as extrinsic forms, in particular, as extrinsic forms for parts, although the vestment is attributed absolutely to the whole person. These are, I think, more important than has usually been recognized. Nonethless, Urráburu does not do anything with them, although I find it interesting that he thought it important enough to quote the whole thing.

In any case, another entry in my quixotic quest to become the World's Foremost Expert on the category of habitus, if only because no one else can be bothered.

Important in Themselves

 Only he who understands that there exist things "important in themselves," that there are things which are beautiful and good in themselves, only the man who grasps the sublime demand of values, their call, and the duty to turn toward them and to let oneself be formed by their law, is capable of personally realizing moral values. Only the man who can see beyond his subjective horizon and who, free from pride and concupiscence, does not always ask, "what is satisfying for me?", but who leaving behind him all narrowness, abandons himself to that which is important in itself---the beautiful, the good---and subordinates himself to it, only he can become the bearer of moral values.

[Dietrich von Hildebrand, Fundamental Moral Attitudes, Part 1: Reverence]

Read the Last Word, My Cultured Kid

 Ballade of Moderns
by G. K. Chesterton 

On deserts red and deserts grey
The temples into sand have slid;
Go search that splendour of decay
To find the final secret hid
In mummies' painted coffin-lid
In hieroglyphs of hunt and play.
Read the last word, my cultured kid,
They all were moderns in their day. 

Yes, it was just as bold and gay
To do what Astoreth forbad.
Yes, it was smart to carve in clay
And chic to build a pyramid.
Yes, Babylonian boys were chid
For reading hieroglyphs risqué.
We do but as our fathers did --
They all were moderns in their day. 

There are progressives who passed away
And prigs of whom the world is rid,
And there are men in hell today
As silly as old Ben Kidd;
And Webb (whose uncle calls him Sid),
God made him with the flowers of May,
And the blind stones he walked amid.
They all were moderns in their day. 

L'Envoi 

Prince, still the soul stands virgin;
"quid Times"; we tear some rags away
But shall we grasp her; God forbid.
They all were moderns in their day.

Dashed Off XXX

 Every society that takes its faults seriously enough to criticize and work on stamping them out eventually becomes identified with those faults. We know of Roman decadence because of Roman critique of decadence, of hypocrisy in various Christian societies because of Christian critique of hypocrisy, liberal bigotries because of liberal critique of bigotry.

The cosmos by nature is poetically suggestive of the divine.

Half of survival is reminding oneself of simple, needful things.

God is the cause of common being's being common.

The sign of Babylon is that it deserves its own destruction, its own sins leading to the destruction of its future (Ps 137).

The problem of moral evil is not why God would make evil; it is why God would make us.

God requires no trade-offs, but we do.

Whether or not something qualifies as overfitting depends entirely on what you are trying to do.

When we reason inductively, we do not presuppose that the future will resemble the past but that not everything in what we know is accidental.

"The Master said, Study as though you will not catch up to it, as though you fear even losing sight of it.' Analects 8.17

Analects 9.8 and Socratic ignorance

The effectiveness of punishments always depends on the broader culture.

Justice is impossible without inquiring into the point of things.

The value of life depends on what is valued more than life.

sins gravely opposed to sacraments, either literally or in spirit

Sir Gawain & the Green Knight as a reflection on penance
Pearl as a reflection on infant baptism

Our bodies are signs of ourselves to ourselves.

the Divine Courtesy, the Court of Saints, and the liturgical commonwealth

We learn how to will by following examples.

The domestic church must be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. It must be so constitutively (by sacrament, union with the rest of the Church, etc.) but in a way to be symbolic of these notes in the whole Church.

'Hooray! stealing' is neither true or false as an interjection, but it is irrational as an expression of a serious practical attitude, because the articulation of the attitude is something like 'Stealing is a hooray-type object for practically reasonable attitudes' and this is false as a characterization. 'Stealing and hooray-attitudes are a mis-match' is generally true.

Propositions generally articulate things that are not necessarily propositions.

Compassion for the wicked involves wanting them to repent.

When society recognizes and rewards the virtue of penitence/repentance, hypocrisy will imitate and strive to outdo in appearance penitence. When it recognizes and rewards the virtue of compassion, hyporcisy will imtate and strive to outdo in appearance compassion. and so forth through all the virtues. We all know this, and we all forget this.

'Murder is wrong' cannot be merely an expression of a disapproval of murder, because murder itself is a moral term; but in any case, we can prove that something is not murder and therefore not wrong, but cannot prove in the same way that it is not disapproved.

Pleasures do not naturally aggregate; they need to be integrated meaningfully. They do not merely fall together; they have to be actively related to each other.

Arguments from evil are fundamentally arguments that evil is part of the fundamental nature of reality. They obviously presuppose that there is evil. (Attempting to run them ad hom runs into the problem that the people don't in fact usually think God and evil inconsistent or understand in ways that require them to be so. In any case, they are only very rarely run ad hom.) Suppose, then, that God does not exist. Then the occurrence of evil would just be a natural happening, a way the world works. Suppose God exists but could not create a world without evil; then the same thing: the world with evil is not created but fundamental. If, however, evil is not just a part or result of the way the world naturally is, so that evil is not part of fundamental reality, the argument dissipates: God can create the world, but evil occurs beyond that, as an intrusion or failure or distortion, not a natural part of fundamental reality, and the (philosophical) problem is resolved.

vague preference-satisfactions vs articulable preference-satisfactions

A difficulty all fictionalisms have to face is that the most obvious explanation for any fiction is artificial imitation of the natural.

(1) Philosophical inquiry tends to philosophical system.
(2) This tendency is not merely apparent.
(3) Real tendencies require final causes exercising causation by nature or by will.
(4) The final cause of the tendency to philosophical system is the infinite intelligible.
(5) Therefore there is an infinite intelligible as an end of philosophical inquiry.
(6) This all call God.

The sign of genuine development of doctrine is that it makes you more appreciative of the teaching of those who came before, not less.

The young tend toward kitschy ethics.

Politicians are more like scavengers than hunters, whatever their particular aim.

"Knowledge ought to raise itself up to fortitude, to be strengthened by it, lest it slip into foolishness." Hildegard von Bingen

Most of what is pleasant and painful is hidden to public view.

the principle of utility read distributively vs read collectively

prohairetic modalities

(quasi-)reactive attitudes to nature as personified

cognitive function, appeal function, expressive function

verismilitude values for propositions

"Reaching understanding is the inherent telos of human speech." Habermas

the lifeworld, the world made alive in the person, the always already familiar

individual situation, success-aimed action: instrumental
individual situation, consensus-aimed action: natural-resonant (acting in and with role)
social situation, success-aimed action: strategic
social situation, consensus-aimed action: communicative

No discourse is structured so that any and all assertions can be questioned, nor so that any and all assertions can be introduced, nor that every attitude, desire, or need can be expressed.

human beings as utility monsters relative to other animals

Privacy and publicity come in various orders that may be nested in various ways.

Every society protects rights with conventions and concessions that are not the rights themselves, although they may sometimes be confused with them due to the association.

the formal cause as the internal ritual or liturgy of the thing

The bishop ministers to the Person of Christ both sacramentally and socially.

the facets of prudence
(1) the humane
(2) the correct
(3) the courteous
(4) the discriminating
(5) the integral

upbuilding vs downpouring grace

resemblance qua subject vs resemblance qua object
contiguity qua subject vs contiguity qua object

formal resemblance vs instrumental resemblance
formal contiguity vs instrumental contiguity

wisdom that manifests, wisdom that reflects, wisdom that adequates, wisdom that observes, wisdom that acts

Hegemony is always a nested structure, or a system of overlaps.

The hegemon holds the greatest power-underlap of many overlapping power structures.

Marriage makes strange bedfellows.

Usury is wrong not because it is lending but because it is perversion of lending.

Most people have very few strong, stable preferences.

experience as given (evident) vs experience as evidence

contrast of retention and protention in experience (incipti and desinit)

the experience of the co-functioning of the body, of the functioning of one's body with the functioning of another
-- this being quite early, before birth and continues with mother and infant
-- as we grow, we develop a sense of functioning outside this co-functioning

intimation: something in experience as what can be possible, given what is directly perceivable, thought not itself directly perceived, or required by what is directly perceived, or required to be probable by what is directly perceived

"We could not be persons for others if a common surrounding world did not stand there for us in a community, in an intentional linkage of our lives." Husserl

Our direct experience of apparent intelligibility is what lets us identify things as evidence.

Evidence is always evidence for a possible inquiry.

Confidence is not required for bleife, but for acting on its resolutely.

Responsibility for oneself always involves some responsibility for others in some matters relating to oneself.

The difficulty with spiritual warfare is that you are always already betrayed; indeed, you may be your own betrayer.

Effectiveness of protest depends on clarity of signal.

"Culture is a system of communication." Scruton
"The truth is that repair, like every other serious social activity, has its ethos, and when that ethos is lost, no amount of slap-dash labour can make up for it. The person who repairs must love the broken object, and must love also the process of repair and all that pertains to it."
"Responsibility stems from the habit of viewing our own actions from a point of view outside ourselves. Such a habit is engendered by authoritative institutions, whose edicts and expectations we lear to internalise as we mature."
"Travel narrows the mind, providing a surfeit of impressions and a dearth of interpretations. Sometimes, however, a meaning emerges, and sometimes this meaning is the aim."
"Institutions are not things but persons: they have a life, a will and a responsibility of their own."

There are far more good things that can be done than are our duties.

iron laws of nature (no exceptions) vs oaken laws of nature (no exceptions as long as interfering factors are absent) -- this terminology is from Armstrong

Because logical positivists conflated logic and language, they are often remarkably cavalier about the notion of 'decisions' in logic.

the process of getting approximate answers by identifying paradigms and analogizing (this is common in ethics and politics)

The awareness of the aesthetic content of a work of art is not uniquely determined through what is perceived by the senses.

"Calculi without calculations seem to be gratuitous algebra." Ryle

Confirmation is not a series of repetitions, which as such may simply repeat errors. It requires error reduction by division and elimination.

'Analysis' in practice often just means 'whatever has to be done to let a method cross domains'.

Time is a formal condition of *coming to appear*, not of appearance as such.

Ayer-like attempts to make the principle of verification a 'proposal' are pointless; a proposal must be such that it can be successfully implemented or not, and therefore has a success description; but the success description for the proposal of verification runs into the same problems.

cosmos as the first and primordial sign

St. Therese

Today is the feast of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Doctor of the Church. From Story of a Soul, Chapter VIII:

The Science of Love! How sweetly do these words echo in my soul! That science alone do I desire. Having given all my substance for it, like the Spouse in the Canticles, "I think that I have given nothing." After so many graces, may I not sing with the Psalmist that "the Lord is good, that His Mercy endureth for ever"?

It seems to me that if everyone were to receive such favours God would be feared by none, but loved to excess; that no one would ever commit the least wilful fault—and this through love, not fear. 

Yet all souls cannot be alike. It is necessary that they should differ from one another in order that each Divine Perfection may receive its special honour. To me, He has given His Infinite Mercy, and it is in this ineffable mirror that I contemplate his other attributes. Therein all appear to me radiant with Love. His Justice, even more perhaps than the rest, seems to me to be clothed with Love. What joy to think that Our Lord is just, that is to say, that He takes our weakness into account, that He knows perfectly the frailty of our nature! Of what, then, need I be afraid? 

Will not the God of Infinite Justice, Who deigns so lovingly to pardon the sins of the Prodigal Son, be also just to me "who am always with Him"?

St. Jerome

 Today is the feast of St. Jerome, Doctor of the Church. Jerome has a (deserved) reputation for being a bit of a testy curmudgeon, but, as sometimes happens with curmudgeons, he also got along very well with women, with several of whom he kept a close correspondence. The following is from a letter to Eustochium, the son of Paula, one of Jerome's closest friends, shortly after her death:

Be not fearful, Eustochium: you are endowed with a splendid heritage. The Lord is your portion; and, to increase your joy, your mother has now after a long martyrdom won her crown. It is not only the shedding of blood that is accounted a confession: the spotless service of a devout mind is itself a daily martyrdom. Both alike are crowned; with roses and violets in the one case, with lilies in the other. Thus in the Song of Songs it is written: my beloved is white and ruddy; for, whether the victory be won in peace or in war, God gives the same reward to those who win it. Like Abraham your mother heard the words: get out of your country, and from your kindred, unto a land that I will show you; and not only that but the Lord's command given through Jeremiah: flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul. To the day of her death she never returned to Chaldæa, or regretted the fleshpots of Egypt or its strong-smelling meats. Accompanied by her virgin bands she became a fellow-citizen of the Saviour; and now that she has ascended from her little Bethlehem to the heavenly realms she can say to the true Naomi: your people shall be my people and your God my God. 

I have spent the labour of two nights in dictating for you this treatise; and in doing so I have felt a grief as deep as your own. I say in 'dictating' for I have not been able to write it myself. As often as I have taken up my pen and have tried to fulfil my promise; my fingers have stiffened, my hand has fallen, and my power over it has vanished. The rudeness of the diction, devoid as it is of all elegance or charm, bears witness to the feeling of the writer. 

And now, Paula, farewell, and aid with your prayers the old age of your votary. Your faith and your works unite you to Christ; thus standing in His presence you will the more readily gain what you ask. In this letter I have built to your memory a monument more lasting than bronze, which no lapse of time will be able to destroy....