Some things are intrinsically evil and some extrinsically or circumstantially so; it is a grave error to drop either branch.
All ideals will be carried out by flawed men in flawed ways.
Colonialism is a species of liberalism; it is the liberal form of empire. This is why, for instance, everything in colonialism is framed as liberation and education, and why colonialist ideas and practices expand in empires that are liberalizing.
Tradition is a practice of constant weaving.
Trying to have salvation without repentance is like trying to be healed by listening to medical lectures.
Palm Sunday is the state of most Christian politics; the Hosannas are sincere enough, but somehow Christ still ends up crucified as a criminal.
Those who never repent their sins are to be pitied, for they are wretched indeed.
The two never-ending temptations are to indulge like beasts and to know like angels; as we are human, we cannot succeed at either, but there is a constant temptation to each incoherence.
Values are values only within an order that they presuppose.
All political schemes and regimes are attempts to answer the question: "How can we mimic rule by the wise and just, given that we cannot guarantee rule by the wise and just?" Politics in this way is a technical art of virtue-mimicry, of creating something that gives something of what virtue would give, or else something close enough for muddling through.
Relativism favors force, not tolerance.
to be an idoloclast and an iconodoule
"In my experience, reaching an understanding with someone else is a thorny and delicate matter. For this reason one has to write books." Hugo Ball
Dada and "the innermost alchemy of the world"
"The word and the image are one. Painter and poet belong together. Christ is image and word. The word and the image are crucified."
"We have loaded the word with strengths and energies that helped us to rediscover the evangelical concept of the 'word' (logos) as a magical complex image."
Ball leaves Dada behind when he realizes that Dada's critique of modernity is merely another repeating of modernity. But this still left the problem of how to proceed.
Dada's critique of modernity failed as a critique because modernity, too, is Gnostic in the way Dada tried to be.
Sacralizing the contemporary convenient is always a perversion. Many people can recognize this, but they forget that perversion is always of something, and the question of importance is not, "What is perverse?" but "What is the non-perverse?"
signs as especially valuable for actions &c already with triadic structure
contracts as modulators/modifiers of rights-expressions (not of rights themselves)
ens realis vs ens rationis accounts of grace in the sacraments
The penitential, the sacramental, and the eleemosynary economies of the Church each reflect an aspect of Christ's Passion and Death.
matrimony as the primary sacrament of the eleemosynary economy of the Church
pragmatically verified beings of reason
Reality consists of many things that can only be recognized by reason.
the experience of divinelikeness
perimystical experience
Sapientia is more robust than philosophia and philosophia is much more extensive than scientia.
Anselm's 'ontological argument' as the structure of the certainty of faith
While we discard everything sensible and particular to reach being qua being, it is an error to hold that the latter is thus impoverished, because, properly understood, it must have the power, so to speak, for everything sensible and particular. It is implicitly superabundant; to reach it, we fold up everything into it. This is not to say, of course, that our grasp on it is easy or admits of easy proofs.
wonder : philosophy :: fear of the Lord : theology
"The motions of bodies included in a given space are the same among themselves whether that space is at rest, or moves uniformly forwards in a right line without any circular motion." Newton
-- this is the basis for the notion of inertial reference frames, although it has to be rethought for special releativity, due to the lack of absolute space and time
Being afraid of being wrong is a good way not to learn anything.
presence qua res, presence qua object
The senses do not experience the distinction between substance and accident. (Note that this is not the same as saying that they do not experience substance.)
relations
categorical real: double and half, father and son
transcendental real: knowledge and known, sensation and sense
categorical rational: left and right of x, genus and species
transcendental rational: categorical relation and subject
Why the sacramental character is not a formal sign: The sign relation requires a ground, the ground can't be the soul's essence, so the character must itself be the ground. It is a quality grounding to-ness, not a to-ness; it is relative secundum dici, not secundum esse.
Identity-talk is often a crude and clumsy attempt to talk about community while only talking about atomistic individuals.
In the best systems approach to laws of nature, laws cannot be assumed to be exceptionless.
Any large ideology or -ism begins to take on features similar to those of religion.
sign of absence of thing
sign suggestive of possible thing
sign indicative of absence of thing
sign that is full proxy for thing
sign with presence of thing
sigh that is one with thing
"...rational international Right is easily deduced by applying the principles of individual Right to the collective persons of nations and state." Rosmini
-- i.e., it is individual right modified to take into account that the subject is actually a collective person
rights as ius with respect to particular titles
three grave errors in modern political philosophy
(1) conflating individual and household
(2) conflating government and lordship
(3) treating civil society as total society
"right is work adjusted to another person according to some kind of equality" Aquinas
the myth of the lawman (knight, sheriff, marshal, Mountie, Texas Ranger, etc.) as part of the enforcement of law
alienation of self through public identity
Artificial and socially constructed are not the same; some artificial concepts are not socially constructed and some socially constructed concepts are natural.
It is pointless to try to 'be physically fit'; what succeeds is being physically fit *for something*. The same is true for being educated.
Marriage is inherently anti-totalitarian because by it you form a society distinct from and capable of acting independently from civil society.
"The mind is a sort of universe in which we walk in exile from the word yet spoken nowhere within it." Chastek
PS 51 as alluding to sacraments (Cat Hodge)
-- this seems right and necessary in that it is only within the context of the sacraments that soul or Church can get a full and complete answer to Psalm 51 as a prayer
The intellect is truth-apt, as Buridan says, but one must also remember that the being that it knows is also truth-apt.
Better to play your own game than the Devil's.
measure-or-measured as transcendental
negotiating using interests vs negotiating using concessions vs negotiating on the basis of similarities (which suggest possibilities of shared interests)
Quantity and quality as such are concerned with a comparison to the subject itself (by measure and disposition respectively); relation is concerned with comparison to what is other than the subject.
-- Note St. Thomas ST 1.28.2: relations qua relative are assistant (adjunct) and not intrinsically affixed, but relations qua accidents inhere. Quantity and quality are intrinsic both qua quant/qual and qua accident.
There are exemplates, thus there are exemplars. Exemplars may be exemplates, but insofar as exemplates are dependent on exemplars, there cannot be an infinite regress.
Dependent exemplars are exemplates of the first exemplar cause in the very point of being exemplars.
Predicamental relations inhere in substances by means of other categories.
love qua leap, qua support, qua rest
photographs as pictures of ways of looking at things
to exist, to operate, to communicate
the photo op as a crude imitation of, a crude attempt to achieve in a controlled way, the political picturesque
inform, misinform, disinform
interpret, misinterpret, disinterpret
represent, misrepresent, disrepresent
communicate, miscommunicate, discommunicate
"Such is the inexhaustible copiousness of the Holy Scriptures, that not only the words are significative of things, but even the things, which are first signified by the words, do likewise represent other things, which they were appointed to prefigure long before they happened." Herman Witsius
In evangelism, when the nets catch no fish, put them on the other side of the boat.
the rain shadow effect of major ideas in light of prevailing cultural concerns
the human possession, i.e., the world insofar as it comes to belong to the human race as a unified society
beings of reason related to each intellectual virtue
We experience the world as patterns of apparent safety and danger quite as much as we experience it as patterns of color, sound, etc.
bishops as instrumental moral causes in teaching and preaching
Scripture as moral cause of grace
Scripture as a clearing, a meeting place of God and man
Christ's humanity causes grace in us both by merit and by efficacy.
Gifts received do not all obligate in the same way, because any obligation does not arise form the gift or the giving as such.
quality (virtue) + relation (role) -> officia (duties)
real vs rational instrumentality
Vestment is as it were an artificial self-extension.
the coordination of justice with respect to individuals, the majority subcommunity, the whole community
martyrdom pleasing to God + blood as pledge of forgivenes -> relics and memory as protection of people (Hoosoyo for Friday A in Pentecost)
Eden as a type of Mary
elements of Christ's Ascension (Hoosoyo for Ascension)
(1) ended stay on earth
(2) completed plan of salvation
(3) returned to the Father to prepare a place for us
cognitio devotionis (Peter of Poitiers)
cognitio cum sapore (Alexander of Hales)
cognitio quasi experimentalis (Thomas Aquinas) [Dedek: 'experimentalis' indicates conjectural from signs, 'quasi' because it is properly intellectual/affective rather than a sensible cognition]
In the category of habitus, the having and co-having are both signified, so it cannot reduce to actio or passio. (Simplicius)
