To think of the finite is nothing special; to think of the finite qua finite requires the idea of the infinite.
Every 'ontological argument' can be taken formally or finally.
the welfare state as inherently anti-Stoic (note that 'welfare state' is not the same as 'welfare programs/policies/projects'; a Stoic forming these things would not do so in a welfare-state form)
"There is not a single doctrine of natural religion which when it enters into the content of the Christian faith, remains what it was outside Christianity." John Caird
"Christianity, whilst it explains the latent significance of all that was true in the imperfect religions, at the same time transcends, and in transcending, transmutes and annuls or supersedes them."
Cantor's Actual Infinite as the mathematical as such; mathematics as an inconsistent multiplicity
"The power that represses infinite power cannot be itself less than infinite. The notion of the self-limitation of an omnipotent Being is one which dissolves in the very attempt to grasp it." John Caird
the corporate immortality of the Church
"The real and the useful are, for us, an incentive towards the True, the Beautiful and the Good." Boutroux
objects posited as divine (Paterson)
A. THINGS (sensible objects)
....(1) Inanimate: Fetishism, Nature-worship, (Religious) Materialism
........(a) Artificial
........(b) Natural
....(2) Animate: Plant/Animal Worship, Organic Pantheism
B. FORCES (invisible energies)
....(1) Sporadic: Mana, Natural Forces, NAturistic Polytheism, Dynamic Pantheism
....(2) Universal: Principle of the Universe, Spiritual Pantheism
C. SELVES
....(1) Human & Subhuman (souls, ghosts, demons): Animism, Polydaemonism
....(2) Superhuman (gods): Humanistic Polytheism, Dualism
....(3) Infinite (God): monotheism
D. MYSTERIES (The Unknown Deity): (Religious) Agnosticism
"The general position for which the consensus gentium may be claimed is that man is entitled to the defence and the furtherance of his highest interests, and that for this he is dependent on the favour and the protection of a Divine Being." Paterson
non-generic resemblance & the synthetic a priori
modes of reason: free play, social, suppositional, suppositional-social, limitative
'encrypted' evidence -- i.e., evidence that only becomes usable as such with a key -- an interesting question is whether all evidence is in fact 'encrypted', requiring some key to be recognized as evidence: either there is unencrypted evidence, or a key that is not evidence.
Renaissance sculpting and painting as the creation of a pictorial vulgata
imperation // assertion
Contractualism requires a prior moral reasonableness.
Human beings assess reasons in part as members of, and on behalf of, groups of which they are part, because reasons are assessed according to what is common.
All religious by nature require some living question-answering authority, and any religion with a sacred text requires a primary authority of such a kind, whether it be more like an imam or more like a Panth.
The problem of the external world is bound up with the problem of the origin of the idea of the potential.
Perception is intrinsically teleological in structure.
The fundamental error of American politics is its tendency to subordinate organic civil society to the state, as if the former were but the instrument of the latter in the pursuit of certain abstract ideals.
unary overlap, Oa: a is such as to be a thing tha toverlaps something, a is an overlapping thing
axioms as answers to fundamental questions
genius : talent : competence :: simple apprehension : judgment : ratiocination
Judgment of verisimilitude is synthetic a priori judgment.
"Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel." Chesterton
Trusting to merit alone never merited anything.
A people disarmed is a people easily placed under the boot of tyranny.
Personal views and personal political policies never entirely coincide; the latter are generally stabilized for ease of use, and simplified for ease of communication, and qualified to take into account expected disagreements, and adapted to what is thought to be more proximately feasible, and all of this is long before we get to anything like hypocrisy or inconsistency. Happy is the one whose private and public views are closely connected; stupid is the one who cannot distinguish them.
Intellectualism is more a matter of interest than talent; that's the ism of it.
Just as plants sometimes do better far from their native region, since they are not suppressed by pests and predators used to them, so too with ideas.
Human beings have to feel their way to justice.
When politicians are high-minded and idealistic, look for the people whose punishment they are trying to justify.
The human body is by nature a musical instrument.
dancing : puppetry :: singing : playing an instrument
Anne of Green Gables as an argument for the intrinsic value of the imagination
transcendentals can be qualified by causation (first), by eminence (most), by remotion (pure)
dancing and the difficult that is apparently effortless
material signs of common good (Declaration of Independence, Stone of Destiny, etc.)
The future is never a straight road.
One of Nietzsche's errors was not recognizing that ressentiment is a perpetual feature of extensive social interaction, regardless of details of ideology.
One's sense of another's state of mind is prior to any explicit belief about their state of mind.
fellow-feeling : magnetism of the good in human animality :: sense of rightness : magnetism of teh good in human rationality
Religious Controversy, considered as a field of thought, is one of the great achievements of the human race: massive numbers of ordinary people *reasoning through* deep ideas and fundamental questions. Yes, the arguments are sometimes crude (but they sometimes are not) and sometimes foolish (but one should not underestimate the plain good sense of ordinary people doing their best), but the overall effect is truly remarkable, and it is one of the important mechanisms for the diffusion of serious philosophical thought.
"If the Church is independent of the nation, she can protest and denounce freely; if she is knit closely to the nation, such rebuke is almost impossible." Benson
narrative meditation -> allusive meditation -> simple contemplation
the three aspects of conversion
(1) clarification of intellectual difficulties
(2) resolution of moral obstacles
(3) communal consolidation
A philosophical system is not closed; it involves resources for repair (in response to objections not yet encountered) and extension.
Box/Diamond for each kind of measurement: count (∀, ∃), order (time, location), intensity
archive as civilizational intermediary
Every proposition can be analyzed into at least one question and answer pair.
distributive vs commutative largesse
(1) In real life basic goods may be found in more and less pure forms.
(2) One must distinguish between an instance of a basic good being a terminal reason and the basic good itself being a terminal reason.
(3) While basic goods are incommensurable, they are not incomparable.
(4) The coextensive transcendentals are all basic goods in teh respect in which human life is oriented to them; thus goodness itself is a basic good.
(5) Human life is a basic good insofar as it is a capacity to be oriented to basic goods.
Pleasure and pain are not reasons in abstraction from what pleases and what pains.
guild as economic (trade union)
guild as juridical (licensing)
guild as social (fraternity)
guild as aesthetic (pageantry)
The sincere smile of a woman gives her a kind of timelessness.
universality as a moral postulate
immortalization
the life appropriate to immortal freedom under God (immortal freedom participating providence)
law of nature : providence :: end in itself : freedom and immortality :: kingdom of ends : messianic community
The diversity of views in liberal societies leads not (as Mill thought) to extensive engagement with the content of different views but to the attempt to find ways to dismiss views without regard for content.
"Since what is brought from nonbeing into being must also decay, whatever has a beginning will also have an end." St. Cyril of Alexandria
"Whatever falls short of being God by nature is surely originate, and whatever escapes the condition of being made is surely within the limits of divinity."
"The originate and created nature has no riches from its own resources. Whatever it does have is certainly from God who bestows both being and how each one ought to be."
To try to have love without faith and hope is to develop disordered loves.
Revelation is not something wholly external; it structures faith itself.
That from which one draws one's premises is as important to arguments as the premises themselves.
A just society, to exist, must be founded on truths and aimed toward goods.
The nature of insight is known by causation, remotion, and eminence.
People are reluctant to retract because others take retraction as evidence of a general flaw; when one retracts, one has to do so while showing that it was due to a local or nonstandard problem, or one's entire credibility receives a question mark.
the decency structures, the honor structures, and the interest structures of a society
philosophy as the cultivation of wisdom as virtue
philosophy as the honorable work of reason
philosophy as a career or an interest
