official standards -> working standards -> derivative standards
Satispassional compatience is a more profound unity than satisfactional compatience.
the we-are-all-in-this-together experience
All interpretation of Scripture and Church documents should take the Notes of the Church as its guiding lights.
allusion & the continually self-building character of language
comeuppance tales as 'duals' of mystery tales
"A democracy where public life is made up of strife between political parties is incapable of preventing the formation of a party whose avowed aims is the overthrow of that democracy." Weil
purgatory : prayer of quiet :: heaven : spiritual marriage
geek show magic & the ambiguity between stunt and illusion
though reason is the nature of the man,
corruption is the nature of the beast
The laity can earn many indulgences enduring the follies of bishops.
To make any sense of human experience, experience must be in some way an action shared between mind and world.
measurement as a form of communication (making-in-common)
We can recognize that something is such as to please on being seen even if under the circumstances we are not in fact pleased in seeing it.
convergence vs. sublimation accounts of progress
All creatures are part mendicant.
Transubstantiation is the only account of the Eucharist that does justice to the unity of the Church.
Memorialist interpretations of communion make the Church only approximately one (by resemblance).
(1) Human reason requires an ambience of rationality.
(2) Rationality is shot through with a concern for ends.
(3) The natural goal of each agent is objective good.
(4) The rule of law springs from natural law and the objective common good.
Papias on 'the living and abiding voice'
- cp. to Galen's use of 'living voice' in Compositoin of Drugs Bk VI (for medicine) and to Quintilian Inst Or. 2.2.8 (for oratory)
A way of stating the Modern Error: attempting to accomplish by mechanism what requires asceticism.
A considerable portion of what we think of as our knowledge of ourselves is in fact purely aspirational.
law of nature realism
--(1) positivistic (//divine command)
--(2) naturalistic
------ Platonic
------ Immanent
------ Exemplarist (Platonic + Immanent)
The contemplation of prayer does not remain in the icons but in icons the one who prays contemplates the purity of intelligible truths.
sense of fitness & sense of oddness in assessment of evidence
"Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to everyone of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where that rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man." Locke
"Love transforms the beloved into the one loving through a peculiar union." John of St. Thomas
Love strengthens solicitude.
"From one miracle and mystery is gleaned an explanation for another." John of St. Thomas
An error theory can only grow in the situation in which a discourse posits what is excluded by the world. A common mistake is to propose an error theory where exclusion has not been established; in such cases no sense can be made of the 'error' as error -- one cannot in such cases rule out that the discourse is metaphorical, or approximate, or from a particular perspective, rather than a genuine error.
All sacraments are implicitly apotropaic; this may be made more or less explicit in the prayers.
experiments that solve problems (e.g., particle discovery) vs. experiments that establish the promise of a line of inquiry (e.g., Miller-Urey)
vague terms as having an aspect devoted to construction-in-use
Always beware the substitute for sanctity, whatever name it takes.
One of the fundamental principles of a large stable polity is the confidence of the provinces; it is a fundamental bulwark against tyranny.
structural frame obligations & protective belt obligations
Fictional characters exist as artifacts of reason and rational entities as much as proofs and proposed contracts do.
The actual world cannot be completely and adequately described by any set of propositions.
hyperanalogization & adaptive cooption
hypercombinatorialization & adaptive cobbling-together
the drifting of ideas into contexts with new evidential pressures
The invention of the wheel is really the invention of the wheel-and-plane. Laying down hard, flat routes is in its own way as remarkable a part of the invention as the roller.
The arguments that are popular in any given political dispute are ones that are adapted to ancestral political environments. That is, there is an adaptive lag.
islands of stability in the dialectical hyperspace
Because of discovery of new evidence (which takes time to assimilate), forgetting of old evidence (which leaves conclusions with uncertain support), and evidential reassessment (which is an extended process), as well as the inertia of belief, everyone is likely often violating Clifford's dictum.
Dogma is a seed of thought.
Christian penance is a work of Christian hope; all repentance depends on hope of some kind.
The gift of counsel guides us to spiritual directors and teachers.
devotion to the saints as an expression of the gift of counsel on the scale of the Church
An important aspect of sublimity that any account of it must explain is that extensive sublimity and intensive sublimity can affect us in the same way.
2 kinds of talent
(1) aptitude for easy development & furtherance of skill
(2) aptitude for easy development and furtherance of virtue
justifications for narrative choices
(1) internal truth
(2) greater good
(3) beauty-making
(4) greater art
Much cultural variation in moral matters can be seen as adaptive mutual modulation of moral principles in light of diverse circumstances -- e.g., in harsh environments the manner of expression of other principles is more closely controlled by the principles concerned with survival of individuals and communities than in more genial environments.
Mathematical reasoning is formal, but the form in question is the ideal form to which things tend, not the form of actual things. That is, it is the form of the final causes of operations and constructions.
"..." & empty quotation
Armand de Belvezer: transcendens = trans omne ens / transiens omne ens; occurs through
(1) nobilitas entitatis (e.g., God)
(2) communicatas praedicationis formalis (e.g., the six)
(3) communitas praedeterminativa (e.g., second intentions)
transcendentals as what encompasses/encircles/circuits every genus
-- Francis de Meyronnes rightly notes that this implies that the transcendental is found in all categories & he suggests instead a negative conception as 'what abstracts from every categorial notion so as not to be in a determinate genus'
Hierarchy with respect to 'transcendentals':
SUPERPREDICAMENTALS
-- Divine Being as Hyperousia
-- Being as Transcendental
-- Properties of Being as Transcendental, Negative or Positive (e.g., one, true)
-- Higher Transcendental Distinctions/Disjunctions (e.g., actual/potential, cause/caused)
-- Category-Limited Transcendentals (e.g., 'accident') -- Transcategoricals
PREDICAMENTALS (Categories/First Genera)
SUBPREDICAMENTALS (Genera & Species)
"Every nature is both from God and directed towards God in such a way that the perfection of natures consists more in return or reversion to God than in emergence or in exit from God." Matthew of Aquasparta
Verum est indivisio esse et ejus quod est. (Philip the Chancellor)
the three levels of religion
(1) acquired virtue of religion: devotion to God as Creator
(2) infused virtue of religion: devotion to God as Savior
(3) gift of piety: devotion to God for His own sake
The error of quietism is in part to treat the gift of piety as if it annihilated the virtues of religion and of hope.
adoption -> gift of piety
The virtue of fortitude withstands death; but the gift of fortitude withstands not only death but the powers of hell.
The gift of fear goes beyond the virtue of humility by conferring not merely subordination but a sort of transparency to divine things, an openness beyond submission to divine majesty.
All the gifts of the Spirit are concerned primarily with good; thus, for instance, the gift of fortitude is not primarily a resistance to evil, but is primarily a sort of divine strength and stability of good, which by being itself also resists evil.
Romans 11:33-36
Keter: O depths of riches
Hochmah: both of the wisdom
Binah: and knowledge
Gevurah: unsearchable judgments
Hesed: untraceable ways
Tiferet: who hath known the mind of the Lord
Netzach: who gave to Him
Hod: and recompensed
Yesod: of Him, through Him, and to Him
Malchut: to whom be glory forever
-- Yours, O Lord, the greatness (gedullah), power (gevurah), beauty (tiferet), victory (netzach), majesty (hod); yours is the kingdom (malchut). I Chronicles 29:11
-- The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding established the heavens; by his knowledge the deeps broke open and the clouds drop down dew. Pr. 3:19-20
Street's basic evolutionary principle (Natural selection played a significant role in shaping our evaluative tendencies) is really just a more specific form of 'We have evaluative tendencies that are natural'.
The eye and visual system did not evolve to see this tree here; the eye evolved as a light receiver, and the visual system to identify features of light. It is the light that shows us the tree.
With arguments that 'prove too much', one must be careful, because they might be fixable with additional qualifications.
Modern man is a primitive thinker acquainted with a lot of things that other people established as true.
