Our discourse on rights would be far superior if we stopped talking about each particular in the most vague terms. What we need to know: (a) what is owed; (b) to whom; (3) by whom; and (d) for what reason deriving from common good. Instead we usually talk vaguely about loosely defined rights-bundles that are never given their complete context.
Infused virtues enrich acquired virtues by making them signs of higher things.
1700-1740 Rising Scottish Enlightenment
1740-1780 High Scottish Enlightenment
1780-1820 Consolidating Scottish Enlightenment
cheerworthiness/clapworthiness as aesthetic concepts
ordo partum ad partes: iustitia commutativa
ordo totius ad partes: iustitia distributiva
ordo partium ad totum: iustitia legalis/generalis
commutative : formal structure :: distributive : end :: legal : formal structure applied as means to end
The office of a judge is to uphold common good in disputes.
"Holy Scripture must be understood in light of what Christ and the saints have actually practiced." Aquinas (In Jn. 18, lect 4)
To praise or blame omission makes no sense without alternative possibilities, for only thereby can we distinguish omission from inability.
On Kant's account, the obligatoriness of moral law is intrinsic to itself, but moral law lays on us to seek the highest good, which could be possible in harmony with a cause that makes the world an ultimately morality-friendly world, on which ground God's existence may be postulated; postulating this in this context is to postulate that the moral law is not merely obligatory but a divine command for the formation of the ethical community suitable to achieving the highest good in a morality-friendly world; without this postulate and the consequent considering of moral law as commanded (i.e., ultimately sanctioned so as to work in a society) we cannot conceive of a genuine ethical commonwealth, at least as something of which we can be part.
loe loet (tacky) as aesthetic concept
Most of the work of justice consists of doing things that you can't point to as showing that you are just. They are not flashy, or showy, or even impressive. They don't make you just -- they merely need to be done, so a just person will do them.
Logstrup: The ethical demand is unfulfillable in that when it becomes demand, it has already not been fulfilled.
-- This can't be universal though, although he sometimes seems to treat it as such, because some things in morality are such that they should not be, or are best not, done spontaneously.
-- the ethical demand in prior authority vs in struggle of temptation
To understand hell requires a sense of the apocalyptic.
"Superior wisdom or penetration of understanding, were all convinced of it, cannot give a right to rule, since it may be employed by a selfish corrupt temper to the worst purposes, even the general misery of the community." Hutcheson
Note Hutcheson's argument that while meat-eating is justifiable, it does not sit easily with the human tendency to compassion (System 2.6.iv).
Promises are protected by (a) veracity; (b) reciprocity; and (c) sanction.
In order to explain why it proved advantageous to form judgments about the presence of the dangerous, the unhealthy, or the disruptive, it is necessary to posit in one's best explanation that there were indeed such things, which it was useful to be aware of, lest they destroy one or one's social group.
The refusal to give people some room to joke even about serious matters almost inevitably poisons serious thought about such matters.
Individuals can be governed by appeal to nobility; masses need constraints with sanctions.
the three requirements of political legitimacy: natural law, mos maiorum, popular support
Eucharist and unction are both pledges of future glory, but in different ways.
eucharist : full sacrifice :: penance : internal sacrifice (contrite heart Ps 51:17)
Reconciliation externalizes the being-for-God of contrition, and thus extends sacramentally the between-God-and-self of the latter, in the form of the seal of the confessional.
indulgences as meriting-together-with-Christ
Petrine Primacy
The passage about the Rock concerns either (1) Christ alone or (2) Christ giving something to Peter distinctively.
If (2), this could only be either (2a) merely personal primacy or (2b) heritable primacy.
If (2b), either this ultimately passes down (2b1) to Rome alone or (2b2) Patriarchates participating Roman primacy.
Kinds of name imposed in Scripture (Passaglia & Tiele)
(1) commemorative -- record for posterity (e.g., of most of the patriarchs)
(2) significative -- special distinction (e.g., Jacob, Edom, Boanerges)
(3) prophetic
-- (3a) of events (Shear-jashub, Lu-ruhamah, Mahershalalhashbaz)
-- (3b) of office (Abraham, Israel, Jesus)
the Call of Abraham // the Call of Peter
"Architecture glorifies something (because it endures). It glorifies its purpose." Wittgenstein
Jn 5:5-9 // Acts 3:2-8
Do causes regress infinitely?
(1) No -- Then there is a First Cause (prima causa).*
(2) Yes. Then are they self-causing?
-- (2a) No. Then are they sustained by another cause?
-- -- (2a1) No. There there is somehow a mere series with no explanation.
-- -- (2a2) Yes. Then there is a Higher Sustaining Cause.*
-- (2b) Yes. Then there is a Self-Cause (causa sui).*
* = the sort of thing people call 'God'.
Spinoza's argument against finite substances is an argument from evil applied to 'metaphysical evil'. (Short Treatise 1.2)
Pornography leads men to misanticipate what women want, and women to miscommunicate what they want.
Omniscience and omnipresence are Box attributes, but omnipotence is a Diamond attribute, being based on possibility. (But sovereignty over all is a Box attribute.)
ways of handling vice in literature
(1) negative/critical
(2) positive but palinodic
(3) antiheroic
(4) realistic/'neutral'
(5) ironic
(6) bombastic/comic
Truth like a berry
sweet on the tongue
was tasted by Mary
as ages have sung.
Alone in a stable
near ox and near ass,
alone was thus able
to bear God, the lass.
They say in the story
a new star was born
splendid in glory
like dawning of morn.
Existence itself being good, there can be no on-balance-bad world.
It is remarkable how routinely philosophers discussing the problem of evil underestimate the ingenuity of omniscience.
If 'gratuitous evil' is defined as 'evil that God could not allow', this is equivalent to defining it as being a form of 'evil not consistent with what is required for being possible' and thus as a kind of 'evil that is impossible'. The argument requires an independent account and yet somehow a non-question-begging way to make it exclusive of what God could allow.
'Impossible worlds' have a use in analysis because what counts as possibility is not one thing; possibility is said in many ways. And one of the ways to distinguish these different possibilities is to look at what they exclude.
Intentional acts of mind may instrumentally involve linguistic, pictorial, or other sensible materials as representations.
'Ora et labora' is the nature of progress in everything that matters.
Kant: Virtue is "the moral strength of a human being's will in fulfilling his duty" (MM 6:405).
-- Note that this is virtue generally (good character); virtues would be steadfast adherences to particular moral requirements.
probabilities as intensities; intension and remission of probability
probability as density of (overall) possibilities
the close-packedness of possiblities given particular actualities
- people tend to assume that the possibility-scape is 'smooth' and even, but even if this is true, actual happenings 'pinch' it at various locations, constraining what possibilities can occur with respect to them
- causes do not result in evenness of possibilities
self-locating uncertainty with respect to mere possiblities
Only what is actual tests.
Local situations can only be on-balance-bad for something or someone.
I read about a ritual and then participate in it. What is the increase in my knowledge from the one to the other?
(1) the distinctive participation-character
(2) something of the know-how (the description alone will inevitably not include everything relevant to the skill required to participate well)
(3) certain ways of thinking about the ritual
(4) indexical position
(5) self-knowledge relative to the ritual
There are two other things relevant here: authority to speak (or judge) and radication of knowledge.
Our prayers are as it were parts of the prayers of Mary as Mother of the Church.
Sacrifice legitimates, consecrates, and symbolizes.
the intertwining of sensory impression with sensory impression
the exessive, essive, translative, and prolative aspects of memory
Disjunction Addition gets its plausibility from the more basic inference, "p, therefore at least p".
the problem in action movies of merely borrowed daring
action movies vs action-spectacle movies
What is right about Hegel's dialectic, with respect to the history of philosophy, is
(1) positions at least suggest opposing positions
(2) opposition of positions leads to the development of new positions
Suppose the world has always existed. This is so by the nature of the world, or else not. If not, this requires a cause. Such a cause, all men call God. If by nature, such a nature is either caused or not. If caused, such a a cause all men call God. If not, the world is a necessary being not deriving its necessity from another. This results in pantheism.
Suppose the world began to exist. Either this is due to a prior cause or not. If due to a prior cause, there is an infinite regress, or else there is not. If not, there is a first uncaused cause; such a cause all men call God. If an infinite regress, this infinite regress is itself either sustained by a cause or it is not. If a cause, such a cause all men call God. If not, it involves either a regress that includes self-causes or it does not. If self-causing, such a self-causing cause all men would call God. If not, the infinite regress is of greater and greater causes or not. If of greater and greater causes, the causes at some point seem to be such that men call them gods, and this yields a kind of polytheism. If not, the infinite regress seems unprovable by its nature. If the world's beginning to exist is not due to a prior cause at all, it seems to be inexplicable, and inappropriately called a 'beginning to exist' rather than a necessary existence.
Progress in knowledge is not additive.
The criterion of 'embarrassment' applied to Socrates in Plato and Xenophon seems to have some value because both Plato and Xenophon are partly writing defenses.
Note that Lateran IV explicitly links transubstantiation to the mystery of unity: that we may receive of Him what He has received of us.
Liberalism, as a political ideology, is terrified of zeal.
Mathematical inference requires not just assertions (p is true) but also imperatives (let p be true) and questions (is p true?) and diagrams.
dark humor as tragedy-distancing
People can vary on a position simply from chance difference in how they approach it.
Human acts are doubly measured, with respect to reason and with respect to God, who is Good Itself.
Hope gives to all other virtues a wayfaring character.
Common good is a more noble and sublime good than merely individual good; it has a sort of aesthetic superiority (among other things).
