This ends the notebook that was completed August 2021.
"The first and fundamental division of participation is into *transcendental* and *predicamental*." Fabro, "Intensive Hermeneutics"
Necessarily there are contingent truths; therefore there is a necessary such that by virtue of it there are contingent truths.
similarity -> sameness -> the self-same
Human beings use signs as scaffolding for building participation-relations with others.
Law must provide some accommodation to the practices of the people.
Modern states are powerful organizers, but they are also often toxic in their byproducts and eventually degrade whatever they touch.
Herschel's non-eternity argument:
a number of exactly similar things -> they cannot all be eternal and self-existent -> they must have a cause (cf PD sect. 78)
James Clerk Maxwell ("Atom"): "Whether or not the conception of a multitude of beings existing from all eternity is in itself self-contradictory, the conception becomes palpably absurd when we attribute a relation of quantitative equality to all these beings. We are then forced to look beyond them to some common cause or common origin to explain why this singular relation of equality exists, rather than any one of the infinite number of possible relations of inequality."
The two things of primary value in bureaucracy are regularity and recourse.
philosophy as participating wisdom -> highest wisdom (wisdom as such)
By charity, God uses our plurality to transcend our plurality.
Self-labeling is a byproduct of self-love.
Epiphenomenalism involves a confused recognition that objective causation is not efficient causation.
Unseasonable bloom often does not bode well for an idea, whatever its good qualities.
Government bureaucracy works best when it has a lot of time and resources to fine-tune solutions.
independent inroad to position
1. experience
2. testimony
positional node
1. vocabulary/anaysis
2. problems
3. solutions in terms of analysis
network channels to other nodes
1. reduction A to B
2. reduction B to A
3. overlap
4. analogy
pattern languages for traditions
- theoretical-practical intermesh
- shared diverse archive
- multiple levels of access (elemetnary, intermediate, advanced, intensive study, etc.)
- plurality of distinct subtraditions (enclosure of traditions within traditions)
A tradition of uniform agreement and emphasis is dead.
boundaries and adaptables as constituting traditions
"The force that produces, the intellect that orders, the goodness that perfects all things, is the supreme being." Berkeley
Siris 330 gives the reason for the work (cp 350)
"In the administration of all things there is authority to establish, law to direct, and justice to execute." Berkeley
beautiful : sublime :: good : holy :: true : luminous :: one : simple
Arguments, not systems, are formalized.
Systems are interconnected arguments, and the kinds of interconnection are legion and (if the system is of any use) often going to be material rather than formal.
Human products are multiply exemplate.
Difficulty is not relevant to praise except in matters in which we are already inclined to praise.
The Election of Israel is rooted in the creation of the world.
Kant's notion of religion is fundamentally just acting on the idea of highest perfection.
-- Act only according to those maxims that may be regarded as commandments of a supremely holy will.
-- Act only according to those maxims that agree with the idea of a highest perfection.
Diderot associates eclecticism with thinking for oneself (in his article on it).
integrity : one :: debita proportio / consonantia : good :: claritas : true
Public opinion is never a democracy.
(1) Sameness is relative to genus.
(2) Sameness may be contingent or necessary.
(3) Sameness may be vague or indeterminate as well as strict.
It is human nature to protect things one enjoys.
intentional, preterintentional, and unintentional factors in experimentation
Hos 2:216 as a prophecy of the Incarnation
What we know is not primarily a set of true claims; rather we primarily know things truly.
No single set of propositions can adequately express any knowledge.
Not all truths are true in the same way.
To speak of 'all truths' is an indirect way of talking about 'truth' and what 'truth' means.
To be true is to participate in truth itself, which is God.
simple apprehension: being
judgment: X being Y
reasoning: not being both X and nonX
The first form of Marian veneration we find is an angel saying, "Hail Mary, full of grace."
Dt 28:4 -- Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb
Dt 28:11 -- the fruit of your womb
Ps 127:3 -- the fruit of the womb is his reward
Dt 7:13 -- he will bless the fruit of your womb
Lk 1:42 -- Blessed are you among women, and blessed the fruit of your womb.
Note that Lk 1:42 is explicitly said under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:41) -- Lk 1:45 links this to the Virgin's faith.
Psalm 1 and St. Joseph
We have divine revelation of the Virgin's blessing beyond other women; it is even doubly repeated, by angel (Lk 1:28) and by prophetess (Lk 1:42).
One reason to be cautious of appeals to efficiency is that efficiency is often the ground for eroding safeguards.
An ideal politics would be an alignment of appearances, benefits, great deeds, and wise actions.
Even malice always traces back to good gone wrong.
"The truly beautiful and noble puts its lover, as it were, at an infinite distance, while it attracts him more strongly than ever." Thoreau (Journals, 17 June 1853)
"Language is the parent of words." Edward Counsel
"An interchange of literature is the conversation of nations."
"Truth is the best advantage."
"Maxims come from any moment."
the phenomenon of the advertisement that is trying to sell you something on grounds that the thing is generally thought to lack (spin ads)
2 Chr 7:12-16 and the Church
No matter how abstract the argument, the language in which we formulate it is historically developed.
Pentecost: the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord
the modern world & pelagianism without God
Defining a problem continues until it is solved.
A good rule of thumb for inquiry is to assume that Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, and Mencius are all at least approximately right most of the time, and when they are not, the reasons for their mistakes are reasonable.
Every right as a liberty-aspect, an equality-aspect, and a fraternity-aspect.
Photorealism misses the true strength of painting, which is to make vivid by suggestion.
Like the sower going out to sow, reason casts broadly many suggestive ideas, but only some land in the right soil.
decadence as a valorization of failures
Particular arguments are always strong or weak within a dialectical context.
Formal registers of a language are required where immediate interactive correction of error or adaptation to particular circumstances is not available.
Grammatical prescriptivism follows from language being used as an artifact for particular purposes.
There is a form of authoritarian statism associated with every form of profession that directly deals with people themselves. The reason for this is that authoritarian statism typically draws its excuses for usurpation from professionals.
Democratic appeal to the people has a natural tendency to recede from appeal to the people in general to appeal to the portion of the people who can be most easily moved or manipulated by others. But the people who can be most easily moved or manipulated by others are very often wounded and broken people.
Change presupposes classifiability.
The more devout you are, the more you recognize the flawed and gappy nature of your devotion.
Change in tendency requires change in end.
Coordination presupposes subordination to something shared.
Evolutionary debunking arguments regularly conflate unreliable with anti-reliable. If my sight is unreliable, I still see, and indeed see real things, just confusedly or sporadically or waveringly, in a way that reason will have to sort out.
Christian culture as an expression of the liturgical commonwealth
Church proper || Church qua liturgical commonwealth
tradition || culture
membership || allegiance
domestic church || Christian household
sacramentality as form || sacramentality as end
solemnity || festival
Sacra doctrina is not "sectarian-based cenoscopic analysis" any more than political philosophy is "partisan-based cenoscopic analysis".
the acquired habit of philosophy vs the infused habit of philosophy
(these both are understood not in terms of doctrines but in terms of actual love of wisdom)
free verse as mosaic-work
Hope is a precondition for widespread hospitableness.
"Like all human activities, the revolution draws all its vigor from a tradition." Weil
Liberalism and consumerism are only consistent with each other up to a point.
Hegel is right that Thalesian water, Democritea atoms, and the matter of early modern philosophy function as "thoughts, universals, ideal entities, not things as they immediately present themselves to us, that is, in their sensuous singularity".
Whether anything is a waste of time is always relative to an end.
errors as fractured intelligibilities
narrative explanations as ways of integrating causal explanations
'Laws of nature' do for modern physics what 'world soul' did for ancient physics.
classification-relative transcendentals
intellect & will as the ways one thing can be everything without ceasing to be itself
Some errors are shortcuts to truths.
It is not possible for any human being to anticipate all possible objections to a proposed demonstration, but most possible objections are irrational.
Being-one-true-good is the progression in causal action. All efficient causation is from actuality expressing itself in a unified way by conformity to an end, in the action itself.
In the Eucharist, Christ practices government (zheng) by moral authority (de), and while remaining in His place, all the multitude of saints turn toward Him, the North Star around which all stars turn. Without shifting about, He brings about transformation; without speaking out, He proves trustworthy; and without compelling, He brings to completion. Holding to simplicity, He manages troubles. Dwelling in silence, He governs activity. Present to a few, He serves all.
wu as 'not' in the sense of 'beyond' or 'surpassing' (like the hyper- or super- of Neoplatonism)
wuji: beyond limit
taiji: utter limit
Zhu Xi: "It is not that there is a wuji outside of taiji."
"The principle of all things in Heaven and Earth is taiji; taiji is just the actualized principle that runs through them and unifies them."
"Calling it wuji correctly indicates its lack of form. It is prior to things, but at not time is it not established after things are. It is outside yin and yang, but at no time does it not act in things. It penetrates and connects the whole; there is nothing which it is not."
"Taiji is formless Dao; yin and yang are formed implements."
Taiji is:
jizhi (utmost), zhigao (highest), zhimiao (most mysterious), zhijing (most essential), zhishen (most spiritual)
the see of Rome as "icon of universal Christianity" (Soloviev)
"Theories of truth" are usually really theories of the purpose of propositions.
All of Kant's modalities, despite the names, are just kinds of possibilities.
freedom as nobilitative transcendental
Normativity is a form of tendency; and this is found even in the way we often speak of it.
Gen. 1 treats creation and division as closely linked.
