Friday, May 17, 2019

Dashed Off IX

Unction makes one's illness a sign of Christ's Passion, first for oneself and then for others.

- to read Hume's Treatise as a background to his History, an account of how to write history

"Marriage is a Holy Mystery (Sacrament) in which by the grace of the Holy Spirit a man and a woman are united into one body and create a domestic church. The family union created by marriage is a community of persons which, according to God's plan, is an icon of the relationship of the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity." COP #471
-- note that while there is a sense in which marriage as a natural office is hieratic, only by the sacrament of marriage is it genuinely ecclesial

One can think of the traditionary argument as being almost Kantian: Reason provides the structure of meaning, but the material is necessary for language actually to exist. This linguistic material, however, must be given to us, and in human cases it must be given to us by teaching of the language. But all though must ultimately work by means of linguistic material. So far it is structurally analogous to Kant on intuition.

inherence, consequence, composition

Kant's combat arena metaphor for skeptical method A423/B451

the terroir of symbol systems

"Christ reveals himself not to untaught or completely unlearned souls, but he shines forth and appears to those souls who are already more prepared to want to learn and who, giving birth to the beginning of faith in simple words, hasten on toward the knowledge of the more perfect." (Cyril of Alexandria)

Every universal proposition implies a kind of possibility and impossibility.

"The intelligible species which are participated by our intellect are reduced, as to their first cause, to a first principle which is by its essence intelligible -- namely, God." ST 1.84.4ad1

The uncreative person's conception of creativity tends to be purely recombinatorial.

suppositional voluntarism

memorization and doxastic voluntarism

Marx's analysis of alienation applies even more forcefully to socialist regimes than it does to capitalist regimes, since socialist regimes, trying to go beyond capitalist ones, in fact aggravate the essential problems involved.

In the course of an inquiry, it not uncommonly happens that a question arises about a source of evidence, such that a monitum or vetitum has to be imposed with regard to it, until the question is answered.

registers of literal reading
(1) hyperhyperliteral: even etymological meanings taken as literal
(2) hyperliteral: even figurative speech taken as literal
(3) grammatical: includes tropes and explicit elements only
(4) historical/narrative: includes tropes, implicatures, implications, explicit and implicit allusion in the text itself.
(5) contextual: includes everything for the historical/narrative as well as emergent allusions, implicatures and implications in a broader context or corpus, interactions with genre conventions or reasonable juxtapositions with other texts

character arcs
involve learning how
(1) with respect to the good
---- (a) to handle good possessed
---- (b) to seek good not yet had
---- ---- (1) and in seeking to fail to achieve the good sought
---- ---- (2) and in seeking to achieve the good sought
(2) with respect to the bad
---- (a) to handle bad possessed
---- (b) to go about avoiding bad
---- ---- (1) and in the attempt to fail to avoid bad
---- ---- (2) and in the attempt to avoid the bad

Apology presupposes honor conventions.

the Epicurean clinamen as making a distinction between physical and ethical events

Act so that the maxim of your action is in accordance with what is sublime.

misvalues in axiology

"I can think of myself as immortal only insofar as I am myself the creation of an act of love." Marcel

Love imbues into things a goodness not reducible to reward, and it is such that participation in it is that whereby the goodness is imbued. This participation is made possible by love itself in a threefold way: vocation, satisfaction, election, each of which orients the participant. Such participation, for human beings, cannot but be by signs, by which this participation is intensified, expressed, handed over, and consummated.

Moral law is received from grace, as a means of grace.

"The duty to educate follows from the agreement to beget children; and the obligation to set up a common household follows from the common duty of education." Mendelssohn

The rights to admonish, to instruct, to fortify, and to comfort are ipso facto rights to the infrastructure and resources essential to these things.

One must dabble much to learn how to build well.

poetry as purifying passion into wonder

monarchy: principle of expansive household
aristocracy: principle of fealty
democracy: principle of voluntary association

Aquinas's reason for thinking that verecundia is not a virtue would be reason to think penitentia is not a virtue; but the latter is a virtue; therefore, etc.

Thomas Carleton Compton: As the sun among the planets, so dialectic among the seven liberal arts is the greatest in splendor (because it teaches truths).

In liberal arts, you learn how to make things with your mind.
Computer programming should be regarded as a liberal art.

five elements of a marital disposition: competence, discretion, openness to children, fidelity, indissolubility

the American citizen as conceptually armigerous

NB that the Maximian Life of the Virgin links the Presentation of the Virgin to Psalm 44. (Note also the allusion at the beginning of the discussion of the Dormition.)

Bodies are experienced as acting.

the refinement of the feeling that something is wrong (or 'looks wrong' or 'sounds wrong')

the Prayer of Azariah as a template of Eucharistic devotion

the world as illuminant (making known)

Political parties kill themselves by pique.

Testining in education should be used simply to indicate thresholds.

The entire Catholic Church owes the humility of Pope Gregory XII a debt beyond all repayment.

II Constantinople gives the orthodox exegesis of "one incarnate nature of the Word".

Note that Hume sees pride and humility as having a causal structure (they require both a causative idea and an object = self).

T->◊B as a bridge principle between alethic and doxastic

demonstration as uniting epistemic Box and alethic Box

the three aspects of episcopal authority: ordinarial, synodal, collegial

The beginning of ECHU takes its origin from Hume's letter to Hutcheson 17 Sept 1739.

The effectiveness of a pope tends to lie more in the accumulation of small things than in major projects.

The measure of a day is what is learned in it.

"The ceremonial law itself is a kind of living script, rousing the mind and heart, full of meaning, never ceasing to inspire contemplation and to provide the occasion and opportunity for instruction." Mendelssohn

the first Chrysippean argument: (1) The cause of what human reason cannot achieve would be superior to man. (2) The heavens are what human reason cannot achieve. (3) The cause thereof all men call God.
the second Chrysippean argument: (1) If there are no gods, nothing is better than man. (2) It is arrogant for man to believe that nothing is superior to man. (3) Therefore it is arrogant to believe there are no gods.

Whether we see a need is partly dependent on our willingness to help, independently of seeing it.

precedent + aleatory variation, through rational selection inspired by the Muse, applied against material resistance

amplique and ciselante phases in the history of philosophical systems

Secrets tend to be much alike.

Kitsch tells us that for which receivers of art thirst, and avant-gardism that for which artists itch.

There is always an element of chance in factional politics, because factions will emphasize what has turned out to succeed, even if only by chance, rather than what a deliberate and coherent plan would have anticipated. Thus, for instance, American conservatives emphasize at present low taxes, pro-life issues, and gun rights, because these are the only popular organizing successes they have had in recent memory. American progressives backed off free speech, once a core issue, when it became clear that it impeded other, more recently popular and successful, progressive issues, like gay rights; and so forth.

Note that the argument of the Lysis implies that virtue is required for love of wisdom: only the virtuous can love wisdom, or, rather, the pursuit of virtue is integral with the love of wisdom.

God as Proton Philon

"To the goods of the mind answers authority; to the goods of fortune, power or empire." Harrington

The first and fundamental condition for good classificatory terminology is distinction useful for inquiry.

FCS Schiller: science, philosophy, and religion all have an animist origin, i.e., they first arise form the notion that all things are analogous to man, and from this form the concept of physical causation on the model of volitional causation.
-- animism in light of uniformity of nature -> polytheism; polytheism in light of uniformity of nature -> monotheism (if personal agency continues) or pantheism (if the sense of causation obscures the notion of personal agency to the point it seems impossible)
-- "Animism is also the origin of philosophy, for the volitional theory of causation does duty also as a theory of the ultimate truth about the world."

"Known essences are simply that activity of at hing which is comprehended in the idea of the thing." Rosmini

"The religion of the Roman people in general has two separate aspects, its ritual and the auspices, to which a third element is added when, as a result of portents and prodigies, the interpreters of the Sibyl or the diviners offer prophetic advice." Cicero (Cotta in NatD 2.5)

All materialism ultimately collapses into speculations about appearances.

A people is
(1) a community of families
(2) a market
(3) a militia
(4) a moral unit of cultus
(5) a system of customary law

Lorentz transofrmation as rotation in 4 dimensions (Poincare)

Protests often seem to fail because of the way they put on display the incoherences of the movement.

"Liberation that cries out against others is not true liberation." Romero

Taxation must be linked to service, risk protection, or restoration of what is lost.

Part of the hieratic function of the natural office of marriage is curation of the family memories -- preserving the traditions, holidays, commemorations and celebrations, etc.

separation of the legislative, executive, eleemosynary, and judicial powers of government
the eleemosynary function of government: pardon, patronage, pension, provision, and subsidy

There is a false kind of social justice that is very good at repenting of other people's sins.