Hume on juries: "an institution, admirable in itself, and the best calculated for the preservation of liberty and the administration of justice, that ever was devised by the wit of man" (History, on Alfred)
Burke on bail: "the most certain fence against the abuses of power"
the Australian 'Dreamtime' in reality means somehting like 'god-seeing' or 'seeing of the timeless'
- a 'dreaming' is an inherited story/symbol system; it is quasi-property, or perhaps more analogous to a title deed to a tribal status. (how far could this be regarded as quasi-heraldic? Much of the property interpretation, while no doubt founded, raises suspicions that it is actually an assimiliation to English-Australian concepts of property)
- songline/dreaming track is a path included in traditional songs and stories about the divine makings; by following the creation story one can navigate the land
The thing that makes Renaissance art better than much else is a sort of transfiguration-quality: their paintings look real, their marble sculptures look alive, their buildings look like something the world itself copies rather than vice versa; and yet everything has the double meaningfulness of *symbolic* realism. Their techniques need not be the only way to achieve something like this; but Renaissance artists achieved it on a scale few others can match.
Intemperate minds cannot be free.
(1) No tax should be laid without notifying the person taxed of the amount. (i.e., no hidden taxes)
(2) No tax should be laid in cases in which it cannot be justified by risk, loss, or service relevant to common good.
Civil rights are specified by institutions used to protect them.
childhood as mimesis of adulthood
"Where there is passion, there is confusion of ideas." Rosmini
Data collection presupposes some abstract notion under which the data is collected. You can't coherently collect data at random.
Baptists come close to having a religion of pure word: church service centered wholly on word; rites as ordinances, i.e., words acted on; grace that works first by imputation, that is, like words; proselytization by word.
Establish churches have a tendency toward religion of pure ceremony.
Research contributes to inquiry in two ways: in incomplete research, suggestion to the imagination; and clarification in complete research.
Rosmini's first principle of human rights: Do harm to no one.
- This, given the way what belongs to a person is united to the person, to take what belongs to them can harm them, so their right to it must be respected.
- It would follow from this that there is a kind of sliding scale.
The right to another's obedience is founded not on force nor on the past but on reason. (cp. Rosmini's right to impose respect for natural law)
"The rational law is divine light indeed, like the form of truth itself, but human beings need something more to conceive an infinite, supreme, real being -- he who sees the light does not always see the sun." Rosmini
"When the human race presumptuously exalted itself, it did two things: it put itself in place of 1. the rational law, and 2. God. Both kinds of self-exaltation resulted in undue, illegitimate subjection."
The preciousness of freedom arises from its link with truth.
the potential, virtual, and actual existence of arguments as parts in reasoning
When you start a study of a new thinker or system, you are merely moving X's and Y's around based on their apparent contextual use -- you have no internal understanding of the terms, so you are guesstimating based on what you've seen, so far, about how this term 'works'. As you progress further, you integrate further evidence and develop an understanding of the function of those terms in the larger context -- why these terms are used here, and not merely that they are, and why ultimately they are *needed* for what is being attempted. And as this functional understanding with functional understandings of other things, you get a sense of how these terms are expressive of the whole system or approach. This, however, is a very difficult point to reach.
Rosmini's peaceful means for the governed to defend their rights
(1) the moral goodness of the governed
(2) formation of uniformity of thought about rights
(3) religious influence where faith is shared
(4) persuasive influence on governing power
(5) passive resistance
(6) speaking the truth
(7) remonstrance and petition
(8) forma pact with the governing power
(9) emigration
sophistry as a usury of authority
Prisons are too often schools of vice.
motives of credibility
that suggest suitability to human belief as human
that suggest authority
that suggest general truth
that suggest specific truth
Rosmini's account of the soul seems to tie it too much to consciousness. (There is a strongly dualist tinge to his entire discussion.)
What is written in water requires no erasure.
positive interpersonal contact encouragement as a key element in the development of a coherent and just society (in particular, one needs self-sustaining institutions regularly serving this function)
the people as militia and independence of survival, defense, and emergency response
"The human mind, impatient and desirous of reaching immediate conclusions, always prefers to guess about nature rather than observe it." Rosmini
A great deal of guessing is jumping to the general principle most similar to that to which one attends. Good guessing involves attending well and using the most appropriate similarity.
self-preservation instincts -> habit of living -> vested interest in living
(suicidal tendency involves the breakdown of this process: loss of vested interest makes erosion of habit of living possible, the difficulty of living arising therefrom in spurts can sometimes overpower tendency to self-preservation)
The Stone of Destiny was originally not just a focus of coronation but of affirmation of the rights of the Church.
Extension is a measure of activity.
Rosmini on visual language (OT 918-920)
OS Curry's seven universal moral rules: love your family, help your group, return favors, be brave, defer to authority, be fair, respect the property of others
It is hard to read Condorcet's Sketch, written while in hiding and with a warrount out for his arrest as a traitor, and not see it as wishful thinking.
Factional politics is an endless tale of people missing the big picture.
"In the order of discoveries, man can look for only three things: a fact, a cause, or an essence. Are the waters of all seas salty? This is a fact. Why is sea water salty? This is a cause. What is salt? This is an essence." Maistre
"the syllogism is the man" Maistre
Human beings only achieve fullness of self in the context of the divine, both as such (God) and as veiled (truth, goodness, beauty).
the dangers of the pedagogical state
nominal Catholics as a kind of integument or membrane for the Church -- Despite their nominality, there is something to be said for their serving a real role in the Church, as a buffer zone between the Church and the world. This is not to say that they do this with the highest efficiency, or that they are the only possible buffers, but the Catholic-but-only-in-name nonetheless does play a role as buffer matter for the Body. (And, of course, they are not merely a protective layer but a sort of field of evangelization which can often be more easily drawn in than anything beyond it.)
the life of the Church as unceasing production of spiritual acts originating from within
In preaching as in nutrition or medicine, the immediate effect is not that at which one primarily aims.
hypercompetent (technical) genius vs eustochic (inspired) genius
methods of genius imitation
(1) hypercombinatorial with filter
(2) hyperanalogical with filter
(3) hyperdialogical
- really the difference is in where the teleology is found. (1) and (2) give explosion of possibilities, then narrow accord to ends; (3) gives the possibilities according to ends and narrows according to fit-to-end.
"The body expresses existence at every moment." Merleau Ponty
"One of the neglected laws of sound, philosophical method states: 'Take care not to deny to your opponent what you yourself need in order to prove your supposition." Rosmini
affective, appreciative, and evaluative regard
All of Anselm's theology is rooted in Benedictine vocabulary and reflection.
institutions for creating interest alignments
Human rights do not ordinarily impose onerous or elaborate obligations, but easy and simple ones. Only in extraordinary circumstances do the obligations become onerous or elaborate; they get the burden or the complexity from the circumstances, not the rights themselves.
For a social and rational animal, the end of reproduction can never be bare procreation.
One of the major intellectual difficulties in religion is taking a universal point of view without losing everything in a pile of abstractions.
distinction between just & unjust punishment requires natural merit or demerit, which requires natural law
the Church as permeant
We often seek not only the pleasant but the easy even distinct from its pleasantness.
religious material culture as quasi-sensorium for the Church
A great many things called 'rights' in the modern world should in fact be called 'claims' in something like the sense that people claim a throne, because they are claims of a position of authority.
conceptual anti-skepticism arguments
(1) You have the concept X.
(2) No thinker in this skeptical scenario could have the concept X.
(3) Therefore you are not a thinker in this skeptical scenario.
- for (2), causal-constraint defenses vs thinker-inadequacy defenses
arguments that a skeptical argument is linguistically self-defeating: if the conclusion were true, the argument could not be formulated/communicated/expressed.
a possibility: ontological arguments should be seen as different kinds of blockers for different kinds of skeptical arguments in theistic contexts
- note Rosmini on the phrase 'external world' AAMS 497
noncommensurability of values -> freedom of choice
Freedom of indifference primarily concerns possible goods; choice between good and evil requires something added to freedom of indifference, namely, temptation.
By concupiscence we carry temptation around with us.
abstract ideas in intellect // habits in will (Rosmini)
honesty as mind's chastity (Augustine)
to treat gift as gift: gratitude
to treat communicative reason as communicative reason: truthfulness
to treat divine gift as divine gift: religion
creation as that title than which no greater title can be thought
-other titles reflect it either directly or (where the title is remedial) in result. Accession, long possession, etc. are each in their own way like creation.
genius & Peirce's Musement
humility as chastity of will
the poison metaphor for lying (lying poisons speech/communication/social relations)
honesty as a precondition for peace
All evidence, even statistical, is anecdotal until it reaches a certain level of abstraction.
anecdotal reasoning // precedential reasoning
Half of security is discretion.
