This ends the notebook that was completed in February 2021.
'checks & balances' among fields of inquiry in pursuit of truth
Christ's sitting at the right hand of God (Col 3:9) is associated with the things above, which are contrasted with the things on the earth (v. 3) -- but the things on the earth are said to be porneia, impurity, passion, desire for evil, and pleonexia, which is idolatry (v. 5). Thus the Session is Christ's exaltation with God in goodness and purity.
crimes of coercion, crimes of persuasion, crimes of maneuver
Elbridge Gerry is the only signer of the Declaration of Independence buried in Washington, DC (Congressional Cemetery).
music & the sense of design
The Angel of the Gate in the Purgatorio is emblem of the priest in confession.
the saints as diagrams of grace
"Nature fulfilled by grace is not less natural, but is supernaturally natural." Coventry Patmore
"Science is a line, art a superficies, and life, or the knowledge of God, a solid."
"The Catholic Church alone teaches as matters of faith those things which he thoroughly sincere person of every sect discovers, more or less obscurely, for himself, but does not believe, for want of external sanction."
"All the world is secretly maddened by the mystery of love, and continually seeks its solution everywhere but where it is to be found."
"Nations die of softening of the brain, which, for a long time, passes for softening of the heart."
"The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind." Emerson
metaphor & synthetic judgment
"A metaphor in a way adds to our knowledge of what is indicated on account of the similarity, for those who use metaphors always do so on account of some similarity." Aristotle Top. VI.2 140a8-11
virtue in beautiful mode, virtue in sublime mode
Hume is promiscuous in what he treats as report of miracles, but in reality for his argument to work as he claims, we must exclude: (1) wonder tales presented as wonder tales; (2) tales of wonders not in any way referred to religious matters; (3) tales in which wonders have no discernible object, even if the tales themselves are religiously tinged. Most people would also want to exclude (4) tales of wonders not linked to the divine in particular (e.g., those attributed to lesser powers), (5) tales of wonders with frivolous aims, (6) tales of wonders not part of a broader economy of wonders in light of which they might be understood.
"It has been observed that the discourses of Christ so constantly grow out of His Miracles, that we can hardly admit the former without admitting the latter also. But His discourses form His character, which is by no means an obvious or easy one to imagine, had it never existed." Newman
the charge of goeteia against Christians
acts of conscience
(1) witness
(2) bind or incite
(3) accuse, torment, or rebuke
Every human person is a tribunal by virtue of being a person.
conformity-vainglory vs manipulation-vainglory
Protests make for piecemeal politics.
The strength of the Industrial Revolution was less discovery than replication. Many had been the ingenious inventions that had not diffused through society, but with the Industrial Revolution, inventions and discoveries became much more likely to be copied.
The First Amendment presupposes the freedoms it protects; it does not define them.
the idea of morality implicit in the idea of the incorruptibility of the soul
The book of Revelation thinks in terms of scrolls even though Christians early on preferred codices.
Social demand creates a field of viable possible technological discovery.
doctors refusing to do what they do not have the technical ability to do // refusing to do what they do not have the legal ability to do // refusing to do what they do not have the moral ability to do
the external world & the *surprise* of resistance
the world as unplanned experience, as cause, as expressive field, as intersubjective medium, as divine manifestation
The artistic act
(1) the Muse
(2) creative imagination (productive intellect)
(3) technical skill
(4) associative imagination
(5) body
(6) material
(7) luck
Attacks against the Catholic Church are always inevitably adapted into attacks against Christianity; attacks against Christianity are always inevitably modified into attacks against religion in general.
It has to be possible to reason intelligibly about functions independently of objects, or we can't use functions.
A great deal of political power resides in being the option already there, and more yet in there being no obvious alternative.
counsel, petition, adjuration, command
"The mind is not the sum of its works, though it includes them all." Sayers
the spatial and temporal peripheries of empire
Aquinas's eucharistic hymn as "a virtual transubstantiation of language" (Hugh Kenner)
Genuinely rational discussion grows from love, whether of a person, or of truth, or of something similar.
memory disk (floppy)
1971 IBM 23FD (Minnow) [8-in read only]
IBM 33FD (Igor)
1972 Memorex 650 [read-write capability]
1976 IBM 43FD [dual head read-write]
IBM 53FD [double density dual head]
Shugart SA-400 [5.25-in]
1980 Sony [3.5-in]
aesthetic, juridical, and moral extension of terms
"People are never more sincere than when they assume their own moral superiority." Thomas Sowell
term -> juridical operationalization -> juridical extension
"...we correctly call nothing false except it possesses some imitation of a true thing..." Augustine
Alienation is always with respect to the needs of human nature.
"If we found sick people, we wouldn't make ourselves sick so that we should be equal, but we would try to heal them to our ability." Maimonides (Responsa 263)
deontologies (ethics based on fundamental obligations)
I. positivist: fundamental obligation is made
-- -- by God (divine command)
-- -- by society (social)
-- -- by individual (egoistic
II. naturalist: fundamental obligation is revealed
-- -- by God (revelatory)
-- -- by reason (rational)
-- -- by instinct (biological)
sage rationalism vs general rationalism (cp consensus sapientorum vs consensus gentium)
form as exemplar-potential, potential exemplarity
supernatural : instrumental motion :: natural : natural motion :: preternatural : neutral motion :: counternatural : violent motion
"...he appointed certain of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord, to invoke, to thank, and to praise the Lord, the God of Israel." I Chr 16:4
Ps 111 and the Church in divine liturgy
Acts 28:22 -- "with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against"
"Christian marriage is above the strength of human nature in our present fallen state, and needs Christian grace." Brownson
"Christian marriage proceeds on the assumption that man, with the grace of God, is free to love, and can love, and faithfully perform, if he chooses, all that is implied in the marriage contract."
"On Protestant principles, orthodoxy is *my* doxy, heterodoxy is *your* doxy."
"I am as good as you, does very well, but, you are as good as I, is quite another affair, and few will accept it, who have not the supernatural virtue of Christian charity."
"The real obstacle in many minds to the acceptance of Christian faith, is the want of belief in the freedom of God."
"Motives of credibility as methods of proof should be adapted to the peculiar character and wants of the age, or class of persons addressed."
"The secret of convincing is not to put error out of the mind, but truth into it."
"Communion between God and man is possible, although only like communes with like, because man has in his own nature a likeness to God. Human reason is the likeness in man of the Divine reason, and hence, nothing hinders intercommunion between the reason of God and the reason of man."
(1) the need for religious sentiments and incentives
(2) the need for religious organizations and institutions
(3) the need for religious ministry as a tradition
the Divine Word as first precondition of testimony
to reflect, to understand, and to aspire
Zhongyang 16: the extraordinary authority of spirits is seen in that, not being sensed, they nonetheless draw the behavior of others after them.
"When I turn to being, as it is in itself, it reveals two faces: being and non-being." Edith Stein
"From a purely ontic viewpoint, we cannot think of momentary actual being as existing all by itself -- just as we cannot think of a point outside the line, nor of the moment itself without duration in time."
"My present being is at once actual and potential being; and insofar as it is actual, it is the actualization of a potency that already existed earlier."
Mara bar Serapion on the "wise king of the Jews"
literary problems, perplexities, and arguments (problems are solved, perplexities navigated, and arguments successfully concluded)
thinking, interthinking, cothinking
thiking to a person, thinking with a person
regularly entertaining vs believing
"...the pattern of the creative mind -- an eternal Idea, manifested in material form by an unresting Energy, with an outpouring of Power that at once inspires, judges, and communicates the work, all these three being on e and the same in the mind and one and the same in the work." Sayers
knowledge of how vs know-how (these are Steven Jensen's "materially practical knowledge" and "virtually practical knowledge")
All non-ought propositions may be reformulated as ought-propositions for thinkers and doers in contexts to which the non-ought propositions are relevant.
preterliterary vs counterliterary authorial disruptions of narrative
democracy as the irregularly oscillating rule of the contradictory
tribal rites as converging loosely and approximately on ends of natural religion
X counts as Y
-- properly (because it is Y)
-- by quantitative measure
-- by appearance
-- 'for practical purposes'
-- -- -- operationally/technically
-- -- -- juridically
-- -- -- morally
"Every inclination of anything, whether natural or voluntary, is nothing other than a certain impression from the prime mover, just as the inclination of an arrow to the target is nothing other htan a certain impression from the archer." Aquinas
I think; therefore there is an act directed toward the good of thought.
three marks of final cause: 1) term of change 2) first in disposition 3) per se object of inclination
"The intellect first apprehends being; second it apprehends that being is understood; and third, it apprehends that being is sought." Aquinas
If anything were predicated univocally of God and creature, the creature would have to be God, which is contradictory, or God would have to be a creature, which would be contradictory.
To treat workers with dignity requires treating them as more than workers.
(1) What exists in itself may also exist for another, and thus appear as phenomena of some kind.
(2) The forms of mind by which we cognize the world cannot be said to be merely subjective.
(3) Our representations of the world presuppose the world as cause.
"The given subject of every kind of philosophy is the real word, both the external and the internal." Solovyov
two kinds of theories of cognition
world : form :: mind : material
world : material :: mind : form
'It is possible that there are contingent things' is a necessary truth; contingent things are only possible relative to some power. Therefore there is or are some non-contingent, i.e., necessarily existing power or powers.
Suppose per impossibile that the good and bad are just boo and yay. It is still the case that
(1) Your boo and yay can be inconsistent.
(2) Boo and yay can be more or less inclusive of other boos or yays.
(3) Boos and yays are not all of equal importance or urgency or spontaneity.
(4) We may boo and yay booing or yaying.
"many things are required for the necessities of human life that cannot be managed by one alone" Aquinas
Not all disordered uses directly impede human good.
fantasy in the negative sense as concerned with reward without work or merit
Courts and tribunals merely imitate externally what every person is with respect to himself or herself.
Values vary according to ends.
The gap between heaven and hell is the vastness of the human spirit.
The essential idea of mathematical physics is analyzable quantitative invariance, captured in the equation to zero. The limits of its inquiry are at the unanalyzable, the simply unquantitative, and the unpatternedly variable.
status-rights, role-rights, contract-rights
magic trick as visual and auditory puzzle
(1) Everything new is an act of a potential, in which the effect is.
(2) Every act of a potential is also an act of an actual.
(3) The potential and the actual are not the same.
(4) Everything new is the act of something other than that in which it is.
(5) What is new begins to exist.
(6) What begins to exist is the act of something other than that in which it is.
(7) To be the act of something other than that in which one is, is to be cause by another.
(8) Therefore what begins to exist is caused by another.
"One may transmit evil to a human being by flattering him or giving him comforts and pleasures; but most often men transmit evil to other men by doing them harm." Weil
Labor rights depend on free exchange, reciprocity, and merit.
In death, resurrection, and ascension, Christ in His physical body foreshadows the destiny of His sacramental body.
"The promulgation of natural law is from this, that God has place din the human mind the natural knowing of it." Aquinas
moral sentiment as natural desire
"Practical rationality has the status of a kind of master virtue." Philippa Foot
Medical research is a scientific study of a particular kind of good-for and bad-for.
Explicit attention to what is known, within a practical context, motivates.
a readiness of preference for thoughtfully rational balance
Concepts are the smae for all in much the same way things are.
"The continuity of life maintaining itself throughout constant change is an analogue of the unchanging divine life." Edith Stein
The state is created to provide guarantee of three things of importance to common good: the coherence, the unity, and the organization of civil society.
theistic arguments in domain of (1) being (2) order of being (3) intellect (4) will (5) appearance in experience (6) society
"As man sinned against the infinite, so also he must suffer a penalty of infinite intensity, he must suffer one of infinite duration." Bonaventure
Bonaventure holds that our sins call for a triple endlessness of punishment:
(1) as we appointed no end in our sin, there is no natural suspension of penalty
(2) as we sinned against the infinite, there is infinite duration
(3) as it is not repented, the penalty is not reversed.
Explicit psychological continuity of consciousness is not smooth but made of interwoven, interpenetrating, and overlapping recollections and anticipations.
God as the pre-self of the self
each humanitarian tradition as a way to God
the authority of the idea of being (Rosmini)
