The point of communicating is not to change the behavior of others but to have something in common with them, at which one aims for a wide variety of reasons (one of which may be influencing behavior).
Knowledge of being is itself an expression of being; knowing is an implicit possibility of being.
As Hume notes, honor is a powerful check on individual, not concerted, action.
the book of Job as about the problem of argument
Prolific and productive are not the same thing.
cresme (chrism) -> cream
biddan (to pray) -> bead
the sacraments as civic participation in the Kingdom of God
the productive idea of the artisan as pre-representative
Through sacramentals we catch the world in a net of grace.
John the Baptist as a symbol of minor sacraments (sacramentals), making ready the way
-- the heraldic character of sacramentalia
Utile, lex, humile, res ignorata, necesse,
Haec quinque solvunt anathema, ne possit obesse.
-- the traditional list of things that excuse from interaction with excommunicates
(1) utile -- humanitarian advice or assistance, either spiritual or temporal, in either direction
(2) lex -- marital interactions
(3) humile -- subjection as pupil, ward, servant, employee, or subject
(4) res ignorata -- being unaware of the excommunication
(5) necesse -- unavoidable
-- a distinction grew up between tolerati (no obligation to avoid) and vitandi (obligation in force, usually for serious cases due to notoriety of fact, in which the excommunication was nominal, i.e., by name or other clear identifier, and by public denunciation in accordance with canon law)
Everyone's knowledge of ritual is impressionistic.
It has always been the case, and because of original sin, will always be the case, that some portion of most people's pursuit of justice will include some kind of injustice.
Gn 19:24 -- 'The Lord rained down fire from the Lord in heaven'
Ps 109:1 -- 'The Lord said to my Lord'
willing suspension of disbelief as playing an important role in our interactions with other people
Aristotle thinks that there are natural slaves because he takes it to be obvious that there are people who cannot participate fully as citizens (in making decisions and holding office), contributing to civil society rationally as a society based on reason, and thus who can only contribute physical good, not rational good, to the city as such. It is easy to find people rejecting the name of the doctrine of natural slavery, but more difficult to find people accepting that every healthy person without exception is capable of fully fulfilling responsibilities like holding public office in a rational civil society.
Pr 31:10 // Rth 3:11
Obligations get their force and applicability within a hierarchy.
necessity of participating in humanitarian traditions -> right to legal, medical, and spiritual counsel
Intentional act flows into intentional act.
Much of the world repeats other parts of the world, so one experience under good conditions gets you much further than merely what you experience.
consensus gentium explanations
(1) traditionary
(2) innatist
(3) convergentist
"The methods applied in extreme democracies are thus all to be found in tyrannies." Aristotle
Aristotle on the aim of tyrants (1314a)
(1) break the spirit of subjects
(2) breed mutual distrust
(3) make subjects incapable of action
"There are two causes which are most responsible for attacks on tyrannies: hatred and contempt. Of these, hatred is something all tyrants are bound to arouse, but contempt is often the cause by which tyrannies are actually overthrown." Aristotle
A great deal of success in society is knowing when and under what conditions cheating is accepted or tolerated.
There is Passion, Death, and Resurrection in all of the sacraments, but in different ways.
artificial design -> art/skill -> divine art
To hear the voice of reason requires recognizing that it is not merely your own voice.
thinking the actual through the lens of the possible and the necessary through the lens of the actual
the expressionward elements of a scene -- these are part of the picturesque
the brain as an instrument of prayer
Seeking a good more and greater than common good, we ruin even our private good.
the modern age as the age of running away from oneself
-- the largest known black hole is TON 618; it has 66 billion solar masses, making it more massive than the entire Milky Way, and has a Schwarzschild radius of 1300 AU (Sun to Pluto is about 39 AU). It is about 18.2 billion ly from Earth, in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is believed to be the nucleus of a galaxy, but as a hyperluminous quasar, it outshines the whole galaxy, making the latter impossible to see -- it is one of the brightest objects in the known universe.
True peace takes a valor that is harder to see than the valor of war.
hieratic fictions ('fiction' as in legal fiction) -- often happens in matters of sacred time and sacred space, as well as with ascetic practices -- distinct from canon-legal fiction; hieratic fictions arise specifically for ritual and liturgical purposes, e.g., counting a given time as if it were another time for ritual purposes
Pleasure alone does not suffice for friendship even in a friendship of pleasure.
the homeless as domestic refugees
The artisan's idea is more properly that in which than that through which the work is done.
progress as that transcendence that is also involution
"Those who have worshipped their own kings as gods have deserved as their penalty to lose all knowledge of deity." Salutius
A well-designed legal code will tend toward specifying common sense.
Christ is the wisdom of God to us
(1) as justice: meritorious cause of salvation
(2) as purification: efficient cause of salvation
(3) as ransom: moral cause of salvation
The atonement is simultaneously moral, jural, and sacral.
atonement < adunamentum = reconciliatio
adversarial collaboration projects as essential to the health of republics
The natural tendency of people is to define by synonymy, i.e., to locate a word in a constellation of similar words.
the three acts of teaching
(1) correcting error
(2) assisting the student's own thinking
(3) supplying the missing pieces
Chrysippus' df of fate: "Fate is a sempiternal and immutable series and chain of things, rolling and unravelling itself through eternal sequences of cause and effect, of which it is composed and compounded." (Aulus Gellius 7.2.1)
It is not impossible for there to be something that both is non-evident and yet appears, as in subtle appearances, dim appearances, brief and flickering appearances, and peripheral appearances.
Between the non-evident and the self-evident is the evident.
Zeno's argument for rational cosmos:
The rational is better than the nonrational; nothing is better than the cosmos; therefore the cosmos is rational. (He gives the same argument for intellectual and animate.)
Alexinus's response:
The poetic, grammatical, etc., is better than non-, therefore &c, which is absurd.
Stoic response:
'Better' here is in an absolute sense, not relative; e.g., poetic Archilocus is not better than nonpoetic Socrates, etc.
[see Sextus Emp., Adv MAth 9:109ff; cp also On God, 138]
(1) We have independent reason tot think that virtue requires something at least like religio.
(2) Religio bears the marks of a virtue.
(3) If there is nothing divine, religio should be neither required by virtue in general nor bear the marks of virtue.
(4) Therefore there is something divine.
Free will is reason expressed outward into behavior.
Human beings can trade without shared language, but it is difficult to handle trade disputes without shared language.
Drawing and painting seem to arise as a sort of visual storytelling.
