law and sacrament as subprovidence
Ockham gives two reasons for why no act of human will is necessarily virtuous:
(1) No act is necessary, therefore no act is necessarily virtuous.
(2) Every act can be brought about by God alone, thus such an act is not within the will's power, so it is not virtuous.
Both of these are bad arguments; (1) makes a modal error and (2) is false -- if God brings about the act *in the will*, this is not necessarily not brought about 'by God alone' but also by the will.
Our abstractions may be more or less complete, clear, precise, etc.; we recognize, however, that they converge on the pure and perfect case.
the aesthetic persona of a natural scene (or an artificial one, for that matter)
Action must be determinate or indeterminate; it can be these in varying degrees. No action can be wholly indeterminate. Insofar as it is determinate it must be disposed a certain way.
If your politics has no abstract principles, it is merely a thirst for power.
In defending liberalism, political philosophers regularly make the mistake of trying to base it on totalitarian constraints on behavior rather than on liberalism's actual strengths, practicable procedures. It's not surprising that they avoid the piecemeal character of the latter, but the result is always something impractical, unenforceable, and structured like a dystopia.
The central issue between polytheism and Judaism is not counting but authority. That is, they are right who locate the difference in the point that our God is a jealous God, a Most High, and has called us to Himself. "You shall not *bow down to them or serve them* for I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (Ex 20:5); "For you shall *worship* no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God" (Ex 34:14); "For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God" (Dt 4:24); "God is jealous and the Lord revenges" (Nah 1:2).
position : entropy :: momentum : temperature
Men and women are laid down in layers by their lives.
Every change can be seen in terms of its truth or its goodness; interruption, deviation, and error are seen in the distance between the change qua true and the change qua good.
Yang Xiong
Book of Changes: heaven
Book of History: human affairs
Book of Rites: essentials
Book of Odes: sentiments
Annals of Spring and Autumn: principles
"The older the model, the fresher the imitation." Lu Chi
"Reason may appear in the choice of a single word."
"When the false beliefs have been isolated and rejected, true beliefs differentiate themselves and become established."
"Poetry is the mind of music and sound is its body."
"Beautiful language and clear ideas complement each other as the symbol and the symbolized."
Good writing has its source in the truth, its model in the wise, and its pattern in the classics.
Lu Liben associates (1) Qian, (2) Dui, and (3) Lu with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively. (4) Zhen indicates divine justice and wrath in the flood. (5) Xun represents the Virgin Mary and the Virgin Birth; (6) Kan, the Passion; (7) Gen, the Seven Last Words; and (8) Kun, the redemption of the world.
Confidence does not admit of linear measure.
a right as a personal share in just order
a right as a composite of particular title and general obligation
The right is the res, juridically considered.
Human nature is the title to natural human goods, which are natural juridical goods when considered in light of just order. (cp. Hervada)
subsidiarity as safeguard against totalitarianism (human dignity : person :: subsidiarity : social entity)
subsidiarity & social pluralism
natural rights as seeds of right (Albert: he takes them to be seminal reasons)
One of the most interesting aspects of modern scholarship is the centrality of self-annotation.
We don't usually come to know things by trying to justify beliefs. Indeed, history suggests that we are as likely to get confusion and skepticism by that route, even where we are sure for some reason that something like our belief must be true.
Meeting or interacting at a place and time is always at some level coincidental.
We diagnose reasoning in order to simplify and condense refutation; debunkers regularly err by assuming you can diagnose in order not to have to refute.
characters as ludic persons
the cogitative power and the intrinsically symbolic level of human sexuality
cogitative power and human facility with signs
conditions under which survival of retorsion-testing is itself a reason to think true (e.g., account is general and not particularized)
toxic empathies vs just empathy
Behind every actual thing we experience is infinite intelligibility.
Empathy is extremely dangerous for people who think they have no choices.
Polite expressions have a scope, e.g., saying 'Thank you' can cover a number of things (thanks to this action, to behavior in general, etc.).
virtues and vices as kinds of willed nature
the intellect as intermediating nature and will
taste as sensory perception of harmony in variety
Gottsched suggests that taste concerns clear and indistinct ideas.
Poetry and philosophy as two ways in which the soul is all things.
Gottsched is criticized for giving rules to poetry; but he doesn't think that poetry is done by rule, but that the philosopher/critic may distill the rules by which poetry works.
Art imitates nature
(1) in its producing (first and primarily)
(2) in its products
(3) in its order
We learn from nature making works of nature, the skill or art of making works of art.
Gottsched on fictional stories representing 'pieces of possible worlds'
analogues of reason in the passions and senses
Baumgarten defines aesthetics as the science of sensible cognition but also calls it:
the theory of liberal arts
the logic of lower cognitive capacities
gnoseologia inferior
the art of thinking beautifully
the art of the analagon rationis
Baumgarten's perfections of cognitions
(1) ubertas (wealth)
(2) magnitudo (vastness, greatness)
(3) veritas
(4) claritas
(5) certitudo
(6) vita (liveliness)
aesthetic dignity : aesthetic magnitude :: part : whole [Baumgarten]
The numinous by its nature evokes a sense of ritual obligation.
the glamorous as a power of appearance suggestive for desire
-- NB that 'suggestive may be but is not necessarily 'stimulative'
conjectural history vs fictional genealogy
Queloz: fictional (or pragmatic) genealogy as conceptual reverse-engineering -- it's really conceptual analysis told as a narrative, and thus a philosophical fiction rather than a history.
divinity as principle of absolute community (Fries)
language as the primary art (Tolkien)
The force and effect of teaching is strengthened by affinity, by urgency, and by authority.
