Holy Saturday

Great Saturday of the Light 

O Lord, we have battled!
We have fought to exhaustion;
we have borne long combat,
we have known the endless ordeal.
In the night we have watched;
we held at length the painful line;
we served Your covenant.
Have mercy on us, Most High God,
for you are rich in grace.
In compassion blot out our sins.
Wash us till we are clean;
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day. 

Your will we disobeyed;
we offended You with our sins.
Your judgment was righteous
on we who were born into sin.
But You love faithfulness,
and You have taught us Your wisdom,
planted truth in our hearts;
now sprinkle us with Your mercy,
cleanse us with hyssop wand,
that we may be made right and true,
washed more clean than pure snow.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day. 

How great is Christ's bright love!
Who can understand its vastness?
Its scope is truly great,
its width, its length, its height, its depth.
It was seen on the cross,
in His passion and death for us.
Love is the light of grace;
by it mysteries are unveiled,
without it none are known.
Christ loved to the bounds of all love:
He died for us, His friends.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day. 

We in hope await peace.
We are confident of glory,
confident in trouble,
knowing that pain proves endurance,
that endurance proves faith,
that proved faith is ground for sure hope.
Turn Your eyes from our sins,
blot out the record of our guilt!
Breathe new life into us
as we await resurrection.
Strengthen us in Your grace.
Do not forget us, Lord our God,
on the reckoning day.

Dashed Off XI

 (1) If nothing is actual, nothing is possible.
(2) It is impossible that nothing be possible.
(3) Therefore it is necessary that there is something actual.
(4) For it to be necessary that there is something actual, there must be at least one thing that is necessary.
(5) Therefore, etc.

doxastic necessity as licensing theoretical postulation

Kant's table of Nothing
Nothing as:
(1) empty concept without object -- ens rationis
(2) empty object of a concept -- nihil privatum
(3) empty intuition without object -- ens imaginarium
(4) empty object without concept -- nihil negativum
-- It's odd for two kinds of nothing to be being; 'nothing' is here really the opposite of 'real being'.
-- It's unclear how (1) and (4) are really being distinguished.
-- Placing it in a table suggests (1) corresponds to quantity; (2) to quality; (3) to relation; and (4) to modality. And Kant is attempting this. But it seems impossible to make this work. (1) as none, rather than all, many, or one, e.g., 'noumena'. This makes Kant's account of ens rationis very peculiar (it includes soul, world, God, freedom, because these are not given in intuition). (2) as opposed to reality as something (but what of negation and limitation? Thus, perhaps, privation -- privation as such is neither negation or limitation). (3) is mere form of intuition, the merely formal condition of an object "like pure space and pure time" -- thus no inherence, causality, or community. (This is perhaps the greatest stretch.) (4) is the object of a self-contradictory concept -- but note that this seems to give it the modality of impossibility, which makes it *not* nothing in that category. One really should have something not even impossible, providing no modality to judgment.
-- note (3)'s odd shift to intuition and the lack of an empty object without an intuition.

Much of Kant's philosophy is tied to taking 'object in general' rather than 'being' as the prime principle of metaphysics.

software as a description of a final cause

manipulating semiotic being to explore abstract being

paperwork pollution

opnions vs private-good beliefs vs common-good beliefs
(private-good and common-good here are neutral adjectives -- beliefs held as good for oneself or as part of shared good, regardless of whether it actually is)

Etiology is a subdiscipline of teleology.

Positive law is not reducible to nothing but positive law.

elements of incorruptibility of soul
(1) The human soul as such is not decomposable.
(2) The human soul does not wholly depend on what is decomposable.
(3) The human soul is not naturally subject to annihilation.

Kant's attempt to refute Mendelssohn on immortality requires that existence be a predicate; otherwise it does not admit of diminution, at least in any way that seems to make sense in Kantian philosophy.

Music is a shape for thinking in, while language is a frame for thinking through.

All human beings become disabled eventually; we are mortal beings.

NB that Feser argues that the disembodied soul is a whole reduced to a single proper part (i.e., weak supplementation does not apply).

To be a plant or an animal is to be a teleology.

Becoming good at doing something requires developing good taste with respect to its means.

We assess equivocation in arguments by assessing whether the propositions are co-supportable in a relevant context.

"No collection of experts will add up to a wise man." Josiah Royce
"When the philosopher wishes to know what will happen when this theory is proposed or that line of reasoning pursued, he does not have to speculate. He can delve into the history of philosophy and find recorded there the accumulated experiences of the human mind in dealing with these problems over the centuries."

self -> recognition of others -> recognition of self as relative to and other than other selves -> recognitino of self qua self in distinction of self qua other -> self-personation to others -> structured personas in the moral ambit of a person (in the form of one's honor, one's love, one's self-branding, etc.)

In modern advertising, the ads often present products and services as persona-tools.

Politics is structured by the relation between the more local community (ultimately the household) and the more general community (ultimately humanity).

*Surprised by Joy* as a study of how a thoughtful man changes his mind on a fundamental matter

Tradition is a training in the good, and the quality of the tradition is related to both the quality of the training and the quality of the good.

invoking forms and banishing forms of symbols

summarizing arguments using other arguments (the argument-summarizing function of arguments is not sufficiently studied, and has not progressed much beyond Aristotle's recognition of the enthymeme)
argumetns constructed to be paradigmatic types in a family of arguments
simplified approximations of arguments
leading-idea-and-conclusion summaries of arguments

property law and the justly acquired

Lk 22:35-38 and the temporal power of the Church (money purse, food pouch, defensive sword as teh gear for journeying in dangerous environments)

immediate vs mediate acquisition

ministerial causation and the deontic

design argument + impssibility of infinite regress in designers (having design as such does not exclude infinity in this way, so the latter has to be based on making causes, i.e., being made to have design)

Things are imagined under appearances and the same thing may be imagined under very different appearances.

intention overlap, intention underlap, intention convergence

(1) The President is an office established by the Constitution;
(2) George Washington is not an office established by the Constitution;
(3) George Washington is the President.

Much of fantasy works by literalizing the overplus of metaphorical achievement over literal achievement. The literal difference between a competent but average graduate and Albert Einstein in physics is impressive, but less than one might expect; however, Einstein's achievements metaphorically expressed massively outstrip anything the graduate student might expect to achieve; they are semi-divine, world-shaking, caught glimpses of the mind of God, as physicists themselves cannot help saying. In a science fantasy tale, however, one might have a physicist who literally catches a glimpse of something like the mind of God.

3 modes of participating in a game: play, spectation, reflection

Society runs on a ritual infrastructure.

Declarations of rights establish a shared vocabulary of assessment and justification.

Artemis II

 NASA's Artemis II mission launched at 6:35 pm EDT, and just recently finished its perigee raise maneuver, which completes its first phase. The mission is intended to loop around the moon as the first manned mission beyond low earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, and is planned to be back on April 10. Godspeed!

All Forms of Art She Uses at Her Need

Beauty
by Constance Naden 

Eternal Beauty, Truth’s interpreter,
Is bound by no austere æsthetic creed;
All forms of art she uses at her need,
And e’en unlovely things are slaves to her:
And we, whose hearts her lightest breath can stir,
Must prize her flowers, whoe’er has sown the seed,
And love each noble picture, song, or deed,
Whose soul is true, although the form should err. 

 She is God’s servant, but the queen of man,
Who fondly dreams she lives for him alone,
And while her power is felt through time and space,
Proclaims her priestess of some petty clan,
Catching but transient glimpses of a face
Veiled in rich vestures, loved but still unknown.

Unpardoning

 Dennis Lytton has an article at "Liberal Currents" arguing for what he calls a 'reform' of the presidential pardon power. This is a grotesquely bad idea. A few points.

(1) When people, right or left, make arguments like this, it is always important to make clear what their actual argument is, however they may dress it up. They want to be able to be more vindictive to political opponents. Lytton does everything but admit this outright; all of his argument is a complaint that people to whom he is politically opposed are not being punished hard enough because they are getting pardons and reprieves. He wants to end this, and be able to punish them more harshly. Indeed, he goes farther; he doesn't just want to end the pardoning and reprieving of people he doesn't like, he wants to revoke their pardons and reprieves. He wants to undo any mercy extended to them. But he is not advocating a general consensus view; it is a very explicitly partisan one.

There are proposals to reform the pardon power that are worth taking seriously. Some states have a pardon-board process that, if done properly (it is not always done properly), can make it easier for people to get pardons and reprieves for recognized categories of cases, which supplements or organizes the governor's pardon power. There are some arguments that can be made for something like this. But one of the reasons why the head of the executive branch generally gets the pardon power is that the pardon power is something that requires definite decision (not compromise and legislative horse-trading) but also requires the capacity to make discretionary decisions that take into account the overall political situation by someone who is beholden ultimately to the people and not to political appointment. Lytton, of course, is objecting precisely to cases that involve the latter, and wants to eliminate it entirely. This is effectively trying to find a way to break people under the law even if large portions of American society are sympathetic to them. That is, at minimum, placing an immense amount of trust in Congress to pass only moderate and reasonable laws, and prosecutors to exercise their own inevitable discretion in enforcement of the law in moderate and apolitical ways.

(2) What is worse, Lytton does not actually propose a reform of the pardon power. The proposed amendment does give Congress the power to establish by joint resolution an independent body to grant pardons and reprieves and the power to grant by joint resolution pardons and reprieves. (Joint resolutions, except those involving proposals to amend the Constitution, usually require the Presidential signature or a veto override, because they usually just work like laws; Lytton's very defective amendment does not say which is relevant here, although presumably he wants Congress to be able to pardon and reprieve without the President vetoing it -- but maybe not, who knows?) This, first of all, gives Congress the power to make arbitrary exceptions to its own laws, but, second, notably does not require that Congress do either of these things. 

That is to say, Lytton is not 'reforming' the pardon power; he is making it massively harder for anyone to get pardons and reprieves. Congress of course doesn't have to establish an independent body to grant pardons and reprieves; it doesn't have to give any pardons itself, and giving pardons itself requires exactly the same political negotiation and horsetrading it takes to pass a law. But Congress (unlike the President) does not have much incentive for making it easy to get pardons to the laws passed by Congress. Every pardon suggests a possible defect in a law; and Lytton is giving it entirely to either the legislators themselves or people who are definitely subordinate to the legislators.

But under our current regime, for every one of the news-grabbing dubious pardons, there are literally dozens of pardons and reprieves for entirely reasonable circumstances. And even so, there are many cases that arguably should be heard. In a serious pardon reform, pardons should be easier for ordinary people to get, not harder. Lytton's proposal provides no mechanism that gives any reasonable guarantee of a better system. We're all at the mercy of whether Congress comes up with a reasonable set of procedures. This is not a reform but a degradation of a key power mitigating the sledgehammer of the laws.

(3) The proposed change for the pardon power itself is bad. But his proposal for a process to revoke pardons and reprieves is morally atrocious. It applies to any pardon or reprieve given under Presidential power at any time, and pardons or reprieves are explicitly defined as "pardons, conditional pardons, commutations of sentence, conditional commutations of sentence, remissions of fines and forfeitures, respites, and amnesties." People who were restored the right to vote in their state because their felony status was pardoned could have it stripped away again. Immigrants given amnesties and pardons for irregularities in documentation could suddenly be deported. People whose fines were forgiven could be re-fined. People trusting the explicit word of their government that their punishment was over, backed by the presumed rock-solid status of the Constitution itself, could find themselves suddenly punished. And all of this can be done arbitrarily. This is not just unmerciful, it is unjust and dishonorable.

(4) And why are we to rip up by its roots an entire clemency system? All to hurt a few very specific people who got pardons and reprieves. This is an abusive way to think about government.

The Ailing Soul

 The Redeemer presents himself to the world as a charitable physician, and the sicknesses of the body belong to the ultimate purpose of his redemption because they are parables for the operation of the ailing soul. Among the many troubles by which the dominion of Satan was evident in our Savior's times, three especially are noted here: demon-possessed people, whose soul was perhaps less fettered and whose body Satan therefore regarded as his own, so that it was nothing better than stage for the slavery of souls; lunatics, people whose conceptions and acts did not depend on the will of their souls but on external impressions, people who were therefore not in a self-conscious state...; cripples with a paralysis of limbs that makes us unable to use them. Taken together, all three show the corruption, the misery, that our sin has inflicted on us.

[Johann Georg Hamann, The Complete London Writings, Kleinig, tr., Lexham Academic (Bellingham: 2025) p. 256. This comment is on Matthew 4:24.]

Links of Note

 * John A. Goldsmith, With charisma to spare, on Franz Brentano, at "Aeon"

* Paul Lodge, Leibniz's Philosophical Dream of Rational and Intuitive Enlightenment (PDF)

* Hamish Russell, Balancing, Shielding, Filtering: Three Models of Role Morality (PDF)

* Ioannes Chountes de Fabbri, Jürgen Habermas’ lost world: the coffee-house and the public sphere, at "Engelsberg Ideas"

* Karen Crowther, Dumb Holes: Universality or Analogy? What Makes an Analogue Experiment an Analogue Experiment? (PDF)

* Oliver Traldi, Jane Austen's Virtuous Liberalism, at "Fusion"

* James Chastek, Talk at Benedictine College, on the sublime, at "Just Thomism"

* Doug Campbell, Plato's myth of Atlantis, at "Plato's Fish-Trap"

* Bernard Sleigh's Anciente Mappe of Fairyland, at "Public Domain Review"

* Edward Feser, The Epistemology of Microphysics

* Joseph Heath, The Two Nightmares of Jürgen Habermas, at "Persuasion"

* Ella Frances, The Sublime in Action: Kant, Awe, and Creative Power

* D'Artagnans remains may have been found; d'Artagnan, of course, is the historical Musketeer on whom the d'Artagnan of Dumas's The Three Musketeers is based.

* Fr. Justin Hewlett, A Proper Approach to Polytheism, at "Geek Orthodox"

* Michael Pakaluk, The Meaning of "Pursuit of Happiness"

* James DiFrisco & Steven Hecht Orzack, Biology Needs Philosophy, But What Philosophy?

* Amod Lele, Habermas and a road not taken, at "Love of All Wisdom"