The strength of obligation in an ethical system is linked to the extent of responsible action it assumes to be possible for human beings.
the conditions for correct application of licet corrigere defectus naturae
bodily integrity // conjugal integrity
healthy & unhealthy biological functioning as establishing a range of 'at least prima facie reasonable use of the body' and a bound of 'at least prima facie unreasonable use of the body'
No representative government can be designed that distributes representation solely by person or by citizen; they all must distribute it by some kind of (political) location and (political) time as well. Some boundaries of this kind are ineliminable from representation itself. It is always of people at places at times.
Albert: the Body is true food because maxime habet rationem ciborum; thereis nothing in it that does not contribute to its function as food. Similarly with the Blood, which is true drink.
priestly and royal authority as both kinds of deeming authority
Note Malebranche's claims that the act of sacramental absolution changes the momentary act of love of Order into a habit of love of Order, and that this is required by Trent, and that this is why the sacrament is required beyond mere contrition.
the community-constituting aspect of virtue (very clear in Aristotle)
Ironically, Mill's harm principle would work best in a society with largely shared views (and thus widespread agreement on what is harmful). The more diverse the views, the greater an issue the democratic flaw recognized by Plato would be.
privately deemed, socially deemed, legally deemed, sacrally deemed, divinely deemed
"...the body expresses the person." Wojtyla
The Church as the Body of Christ expresses the Person of Christ as the sign of His presence in the world.
Hume's argument that promise has no particular act of mind is eliminative: to promise is not to resolve, nor to desire, nor to will an action, because none of these obligate; and it cannot be a willing of the obligation, because obligation depends on sentiment, over which we have no control.
-- This overlooks the possibility that there is a pre-obligatory form of promising (e.g., arising out of the context of sympathy) such that obligation involves this act (which makes the promise intelligible) plus additional consideration (like with property justice).
-- It also overlooks the possibility that promise can be an act of specific-obligation construction that presupposes a more general obligation, i.e., that there is no new obligation, properly speaking, but only new specifics arising from how we choose to fulfill the general obligation.
-- Note that Hume assumes through that we would have no inclination to observe promises except from taking them to be obligatory. This is certainly false. Though there were no obligation to keep a promise, we would still often be uncomfortable with not keeping it, and sympathize with any irritation of others at our failing to do so.
The evidence that there is a 'peculiar act of mind annext to promises' is that we promise, and this act is not reducible to resolution, desire, mere willing to do something, or a mere communication of words. We recognize a promissory intent, e.g., in being able to identify by signs people who lack it. This intent is part of the structure of our actions, an initiatory element that sets a standard of failure or success distinct from other actions.
Men being naturally social, even where there is only a restricted generosity, they often perform actions for the interests of others without regard for reciprocal advantage. We see this in the behavior of children who, despite displaying extraordinary selfishness, often act generously in this way.
Both stability of property and transference of property depend on promise.
Hume's account of the development of promises is not bad if read as an account of the development of promise guarantees. (One sees the need for its being the latter when one sees that Hume's account requires the absurdity that promising is alien to friendship, one of the most common contexts for promising -- but a context not generally requiring special security.) Thus, as I've noted before, Hume is really talking about contract.
Even children recognize that the fact they said they will do something is a reason to do it, however defeasible or nondefinitive they may treat it.
"...married people are not only the symbols, but also the natural ministers of Jesus Christ and the Church. God has not joined them together only to prefigure his great design, but also to serve it." Malebranche
The sacraments of Torah go beyond those of natural law by being derived not from vow but from covenant.
sacraments of natural law: point :: sacraments of Torah : line :: sacraments of New Covenant : square :: Purgatory : cube :: Beatific Vision : tesseract
purgatory and the dark night of the soul (the latter as a sort of anticipation, in its effects, of the latter)
To be a more agent is to be both cause and author of meaning.
A promise is like a law in that it is a dictate of reason, by an authority, for good, promulgated.
"Three things are essential to a vow: the first is deliberation, the second is a purpose of will, and the third is a promise, wherein is completed the nature of a vow....Sometimes, however, two other things are added as a sort of confirmation of the vow, namely, pronouncement by word of mouth...and the witnessing of others." Aquinas (ST 2-2.88.1)
Hobbes gives the sovereign a role in promises that historically was only given to the gods or to God.
promise by simple assurance
promise with material assurance
promise with formal assurance
promise with formal assurance and external assurance
the parallels between gift and promise
An 'intuition' can hint at more than we definitely grasp in it, because intuiting is not always the same (as we see if we compare it in context of awareness to that in context of drifting off to sleep, which is not in the same mode, nor in the same fullness). We can have moments, even flickers, of greater than normal acuteness that go beyond our normal acuteness, that are difficult to treat as definitive because they are flickers, so that they only give us what *may be*. Thus the intuition hints at what it does not show to us with any definiteness.
Faith is a being-appropriated by revelation.
The operation manifests the power, which manifests the essences; thus the power to give grace and unite with Christ requires a being with the power to give grace and unite with Christ; this being must either be appearing as bread and wine, or using bread and wine as occasions or instruments for operation. The same may be said of baptismal water.
"The oath is what holds democracy together." Lycurgus
The ancients recognized chance as a causal explanation, but never fully grasped the power of cumulative chance. The latter is one of the genuine improvements of post-medieval thought.
'pedological' vs 'edaphological' accounts of the external world
the electron and virtual location
Sometimes Church teaching gives necessary paths; sometimes it gives safe paths; sometimes it gives generally ideal paths.
"In mores fortuna jus non habet." Seneca
forms of anti-realism about evil
(1) error theory: there is no evil
(2) nonobjectivism: evil is just an artifact of thinking a certain way
(3) noncognitivism: evil is just unpleasantness of some kind
(4) contrastivism: evil is just the less good
"Templum intras, templum exis, templum in domo tua manes, templum surgis." Augustine
Patriotism tends easily to kitsch because it involves sentimental celebration, which is made widely accessible by kitsch.
Damascene's meadow-delighting-the-eyes analogy for icons
icon : contemplation :: meadow : delight
"things that mutually illustrate each other undoubtedly possess each other's message." Nicaea II
"the honor paid an image traverses it, reaching the model."
Note that Nicaea II treats the book of the gospels, the sign of the cross, the icons of Christ and angels and saints, and the relics of martyrs as things entrusted to the Church; this entrustment is itself the tradition.
images that faintly suggest the Trinity (Damascene)
sun, light, burning rays
mind, speech, spirit within
rose tree, sprouting flower, sweet fragrance
"...the ark represents the image of Our Lady, Mother of God; so does the staff and the earthen jar." Damascene
When people unleash the principalities and powers on their enemies, they rarely think through how to return them to leash.
God as the given par excellence (Marion)
The given par excellence can only be giver and giving and gift.
The icon is made to please on being seen, but in particular to please those who have faith when it is seen in the context of prayer.
The sense of the faithful works much like presential self-knowledge -- it identifies the general 'that' more easily than the specifics of 'what'.
The Body of Christ as a whole is constituted as a Body by baptism, is transfigured in the Holy Spirit by confirmation, and is uplifted to God by holy orders.
society as compersonhood, the social as the compersonal
Person is microcosm by being directly ordered to God, as the macrocosm is.
No account of personhood can be right if it does not make some sense of the completion of personhood in union with God in the Beatific Vision.
immanent vs transcendent common good
exemplate vs exemplar common good
principal vs instrumental/secondary common good
"...the person requires membership in a society in virtue both of its dignity and its needs." Maritain
"The common good is common because it is received in persons, each one of whom is as a mirror of the whole."
diversitas sexus est ad perfectionem humanae naturae
The human experience of passion is of something that has both an aptitude to reason and a resistance to it.
There can be a Christian philosophy just as there can be a glorified body.
the redundantia of theology into philosophy
the saturation of philosophy by faith
God as Being : creation :: God as Love : recreation
Creation as gift anticipates grace.
The gift-quietism that takes all gift to be wholly without reciprocity is false to every kind of gift-giving.
Gift-giving is first and foremost symbolic in nature.
A state cannot arbitrarily make up punishments; every penal power it has must derive from something adequate to justifying the punishment.
While it is not in itself definitive, there is a genuine argument to be made that capital punishment requires delegation from God (like Gn 9:6 or Lev. 24:17) and that any state not acknowledging such delegation in some form cannot justly exercise the death penalty, since it does not acknowledge any source adequate to that penal power.
Every possibility is a sign or signifying of something else. The possibility of my going to the museum tomorrow is a sign of the actual contextual conditions of my mobile ability, the museum, and correlation of schedule, all of whose causes must be actual for there to be any sense in 'the possibility of my going to the museum tomorrow'.
The possibility of experience is a sign of something beyond experience.
ritual scheme : concept :: means of signifying : intuition
Sensory experiences have intrinsic 'pushes' and 'pulls' (sometimes quite complicated) by which we recognize their motive and final causality.
The meadow delights by both 'pushing' and 'pulling' at the same time in a way that gently exercises the mind.
Much of what has come to be called 'social justice' stands to social justice as kitsch to art.
In all of the sacraments, we human beings are transignified.
Unction makes the mortality of the body a preparation for glory. It is like a pre-baptismal anointing for something even greater than baptism.
the asceticism of respect for human dignity, the asceticism of respect for divine dignity
Belief would be more accurately modeled as a disjunction of probability assessments than as a single probability assessment.
Opposition to the death penalty is often linked to the expansion of state carceral authority -- the state gets more direct power from incarceration, which subjugates people, than from execution, which removes them.
the swearing etiquette of a language
Photios on the manner of signification of icons (Amphilochia q 210): "The dissimilitude which is observed among images does not void the nature and truth of the image. For the thing depicted is not expressed only by the figure of the body and the form of the colors, but also by its disposition, its harmonious action, its emphasis of passions, its dedication in holy places, the explanation of its inscriptions, and in other more prominent symbols which should not at all, or at least for the most part, be absent in the images of the faithful."
The state is not a supreme authority but a complete authority with respect to a specific end.
Act externally in such a way that the free use of your will is compatible with the freedom that is divine providence, which alone can reconcile all according to universal law.
The natural law that one must live peaceably as far as one can with those with whom one mus tlive is the foundation of every system of positive law.
intrinsically evil actions vs intrinsically morally unsafe actions
intrinsically evil actions vs universally extrinsically evil actions
Intrinsically morally unsafe actions require the defense of some kind of necessity.
Sins related to property are only rarely intrinsically immoral.
'verus philosophus est amator Dei'
That something is somehwere requires that there be something making possible an 'everywhere' within which it can be somewhere.
That something is at some times requires that there be something make possible an 'always' within which it can be sometime.
hnoro as "social witness" to human dignity (CCC)
The household is more natural than the city, and the city than the empire.
A problem with the personalist principle is that naive use does not provide any means for making the distinction between requirements and desiderata -- i.e., between things one is obliged to do and things that are best to do.
Satisfaction is an act of justice rendering to another, by acceptance of a penalty, what is due from a prior offense, for the purpose of restoring friendship broadly construed.
The actual practice of science involves so much compensation for error and variation that it provides no justification for strict determinism. All the evidence is always consistent with such inexactness, randomness, approximation, etc., being an objective part of the world: "Those observations which are generally adduced in favor of mechanical causation simply prove that there is an element of regularity in nature, and have no bearing whatever upon the question of whether such regularity is exact and universal, or not. Nay, in regard to this exactitude, all observation is directly opposed to it, and the most that can be said is that a good deal of this observation can be explained away." (Peirce)
"The movement of love is circular, at one and the same impulse projecting creations into independency and drawing them into harmony." (Peirce)
"...unless we love the truth, we shall never recognize it." Pascal
Those who have no community with which to think and to share their thought are much to be pitied.
In HoP, community tends to be conflated with influence, but it should probably be treated distinctly as a different kind of dynamic. Aristotle was influenced by Plato through his works, but being in the Academy was a very different thing.
We use bread and wine rather than wheat and grape because bread and wine are intrinsically ordered to shared meal, existing for that very purpose, and are extrinsically ordered as part of a particular custom of sharing meal that underlies the Last Supper.
spiritual being as subject from itself intending objects
The Eucharist has ceremonial rights as King and High Priest.
Human friendship proceeds out fo the past by shared memory and protends into the future by promise and shared obligation.
The notion of common law as 'court-made law' is a twentieth-century aberration, a form of active revisionism, and not a plausible account of most actual common law, in which customary law and shared rational principles are applied by courts, whose applications get their authority from the community rather than the courts. The statist character of the twentieth-century corruption is in fact toxic to a common law system.
We can perfectly well make sense of 'crime' independently of criminal law (most people do); 'crime' in criminal law is a simulation of this independent notion in the legal sign-system.
The purpose of criminal law is for the state to be and to show itself accountable to the people for and in protecting common good.
It is notable that both the decadents of the ancien regime and the Communists and Socialists tended to treat marriage as a bourgeois concept. This is not because it was, in fact, particularly bourgeois, but because the bourgeois had a pressing social need to treat marriage as more than an economic convenience. Thus both decadent aristocrats and Communists, out of contempt for the bourgeois, had incentive for degrading marriage, namely, to degrade the bourgeois.
Magisterial authority is an attribute of magisterial office, and can only be understood in light of the latter.
elegance as cultivated and partly artificial gracefulness
offense against human dignity
offense against concomitants of human dignity
offense against witnesses of human dignity
offense creating inappropriate context for human dignity
When one looks closely at the French Revolution, it is seen to be one long orgy of people renouncing other people's privileges.
aporia and title for inquiry
