Links of Note

 * Karen Stohr, Aristotelian Friendship and Ignatian Companionship (PDF)

* Fatema Amijee, Du Chatelet's Causal Idealism (PDF)

* Bennett Gilbert, All that we are, at "Aeon", on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s personalism

* Céline Henne, Frameworks, at "Aeon"

* Timothy Burns, Phenomenology Without Egology: Edith Stein as an Original Phenomenological Thinker (PDF)

* Xuanpu Zhuang, Moral Testimony: Another Defense (PDF)

* Helen De Cruz, That Sudden Surprise of the Soul: How Wonder Fuels Modern Philosophy, at "Church Life Journal"

* Ben Koan, America: A Great Idea for a Nation, at "The Thousand-Year View"

* Sukaina Hirji, How Virtuous Acts are a Means to Contemplation (PDF)

* Nancy Cartwright & Rosa Runhardt, Measurement (PDF)

* Cory Stockwell reviews Damian Ference's Understanding the Hillbilly Thomist, on Flannery O'Connor. at "Front Porch Republic"

Sonnet Variations X

 Shakespearean Variation: Sonnet 4

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
on lesser things your splendid legacy?
The empty purse comes soon, and few will lend
to thriftless spendthrift whose purse is so free.
A treasure is not given for abuse;
to merit and desert it is to give,
to wise prudence and beneficial use,
to projects that help virtue's knights to live.
Yes, even beauty must soon die alone,
and scams on every side wait to deceive,
but let us use well what soon must be gone,
with wisdom before it must take its leave.
-- But it is pointless to argue with thee;
the lovely must overgenerous be.

Dashed Off XVIII

 rational relations as relations qua objects

Abusive behavior is generally a perversion of deontic relations: someone you owe using the debt to harm you.

To say that the Church is eucharistic is to say that it is Christian; the claim is just transposed to another key. Likewise, to say that the Eucharistic sacrifice is the fount and apex of the whole Christian life is just to say that Christ is, using the terminology of sacramental theology.

The bishop is related to the Eucharist in a higher way than the priest not in having a greater power directly to consecrate, but in having a power to consecrate indirectly , by ordaining priests who then consecrate in union with the bishop. Thus the priest celebrates for and with the bishop. (Cp. Ignatius, Smyrn. 8)

the episcopacy is an order as a ministerial office, as a state of perfection, as a dignity

The laity have a moral and religious responsibility to respect, and to show respect to the priestly and episcopal offices, but the manner of this is a matter for the laity to determine, according to reason and their own custom; the priest or bishop only has a say in the form of a sort of veto power on anything inconsistent with faith or morals.

To say that the priest celebrates for and with the bishop, or the bishop through and with the priest, is not to say that in each Mass there are two acts, the presbyteral and the episcopal, but that there is one act, performed by the priest as proximate secondary cause and by the bishop as remote principal cause. The one celebration is imputable to the priest as priest and to the bishop as bishop.

The characters of baptism, confirmation, and order are of the same object considered in different mode; those of deacon, priest, and bishop are different grades but have the same object considered in the same mode.

Trinitarian procession as direction consubstantiality

From love may flow never-ending poetry and conversation, but love itself lives in a silence beyond words.

You can't defeat Mammon with Mammon or Moloch with Moloch or Astarte with Astarte. This is obvious but nobody ever remembers it.

All meaningful choices lead to obligations we did not directly choose.

"Grace is the perfection of nature not only in as far as it equips nature but also in as far as it both reforms and elevates it. But in reforming and elevating it, grace does not destroy nature itself nor any part thereof, but only the defects surrounding the nature." Bonaventure

baptism : robe of the justice from God :: confirmation : diadem of the glory of the everlasting

While people often choose pleasure over pain, they also sometimes choose pain over numbness.

aspects of human resilience: good humor, consideration for others, productive work, reasonable expectation, refusal to dwell on the negative

legal doublets as allowing two terms to reflect on each other (they also often mark the terms as specifically legal in force, not colloquial or casual)

'State capacity' is not a unified thing because state agency is not a unified thing.

Use has a particular normativity to it that mention lacks.

'must do...in order to...' as a mark of the normative

Truth is normative for inference.

All imperatives by their nature are consequent to something; it is inherent in their being imperatives at all.

If "If X, Y" constructions in English, X is pretty much always an assertion (the only exceptions seem deliberately nonstandard), but Y may be an assertion, command, or question.

"The topic of philosophy is normativity in all its guises, and inference in all its forms." Brandom

In the long run, centralization always has the advantage of convenience and only has the disadvantage of strangling to death whatever is centralized.

The object-language/meta-language distinction is constructed to address particular problems, and idealizes rather than directly captures certain interactions of language with itself. Natural languages do not fragment this way; it's just that they can involve object-functionalities and meta-functionalities in a way that allows artificial modeling with this distinction.

Common consent requires a cause as common as it is.

There are always currents of madness flowing through a democracy, just by the nature of democracy.

"The Person has in his very nature all the constituents of Law; He is subsisting Law, and the essence of Law." Rosmini

human final end --> human dignity

Possible worlds do not explain possibility but model it. Possibility is explained by actuality.

Power, wisdom, and goodness all converge at the limit.

rhyme as "the symmetrical repetition of similarity" (Schlegel)

"Beautiful is what is at once charming and sublime." Schlegel
"A classification is a definition that contains a system of definitions."
"...genius is actually a system of talents."
"Caricature is a passive conjunction of the naive and the grotesque."
"Only in relation to the infintie is there meaning and purpose; whatever lacks such a relation is absolutely meaningless and pointless."
"The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossome and fruit."
"Virtue is reason transformed into energy."
"The symmetry and organization of history teach us that mankind, for as long as it existed and developed, as really always been and has always become an individual, a person. In the great person of mankind, God became man." 
"Honor is the mysticism of justice."

Searle's five puzzles of institutional fact: self-referential, linguistic, performative, systematic, anchored by the physical

Final causes ground norms, not vice versa.

final causes, collective intentionality, classification

Human beings are both natural and artificial.

teleologically cohesive collections considered as a whole & probabilistic co-action of parts

copied kinds (Crawford Elder)
(1) characterized by a particular qualitative 'shape' (i.e., shape or reproduced behavior)
(2) characterized by proper function
(3) characterized by historically proper placement

the abstract etiology or physiology of artifactual function

function in a population-system vs function in a body-system

domesticated animals as biological artifacts (Sperber)

Cork trees clearly do have the function of producing bark for stoppers -- in an economic system in which stoppers are made and sold. Rain does have the function of helping crops grow -- in an agricultural system.

function as telos in a system

'Physical stance', 'design stance', and 'intentional stance' all have overlaps, and they all are capable of serving as analogies for each other.

Poetry shows that language is not purely semiotic, but is also artifactual, and has an element of free play, as well.

'waste' as a function-relative classification

fallacies of diagrammatic reasoning
-- appeal to accidental feature
-- -- -- ignoratio elenchi
-- -- -- smuggled assumption
-- inconsistent interpretation
-- incomplete diagram

Aristotelian syllogistic is simultaneously verbal and diagrammatic.

Diagrams are especially useful in eliminative reasoning.

Peirce's existential graphs (graph rule correspondence to inference rule)
(1) double cut -- double negation
(2) erasure -- strengthening antecedent
(3) insertion -- weakening consequent
(4) iteration -- (A --> B) --> (A --> (A&B))
(5) deiteration -- (A -->  (A & B)) --> (A --> B)

Often when consent is brought into moral questions there is an ambiguity between initial consent and ongoing consent; there is also often a confusion between consent and assent.

Ancient Hebrew poetry's idea-parallelism makes it unusually effective for didactic purposes.

several subjects acting as
(1) separate subjects
(2) cooperating subjects
(3) quasi-one (simulating single subject)
(4) unified subject

Some features of Kant's account of sublimity depend crucially on his assumption that all experience is sensory.

We have a moral obligation to regard ourselves as continuing through time,a s we see with promises and obligations requiring work.

one event being *about* another event as an important element in historical studies

"A mechanism is an arrangement of parts taht produces a more complex set of effects in a whole system in a regular way." Godfrey-Smith

"The totality of the gifts of the Spirit is only in the totality of believers." Moehler

"A Church that would stifle law would not become the Church of Charity but a church of capriciousness." Boyer

the Church as moral Incarnation extending Christ's ontic Incarnation

Rhetoric, like tailoring and drawing, achieves its effects by layering.

Human dignity is an inherently semiotic dignity; it is referential of things higher and things yet to come.

human dignity as both reflection of and disposition for God

General education does not reduce irrationality in society; it makes a society's irrationalities more wordy.

erotic love & the feeling of representing the whole human race

"Any true republic is an can only be a system of representing the people in order to protect its rights in its name, by all the citizens acting through their delegates." Kant

'ability' and 'aptitude' as value names

the library as symbol of the importance of ideas
the library as an instrumental reserve for entertainment and learning

ren, spring, east, wood
yi, autum, west, metal
li, summer, south, fire
shi, winter, north, water
xin, all together, earth

moral authority (te) as the power to achieve (te)

Selectivity is as important for understanding the mind as intentionality.

(1) Possibility has structure.
(2) It has this structure relative to actualities.

Sonnet Variations IX

 Sonnet Variation: Anna Seward's Sonnet 92

Behold that tree, in Autum's dim decay!
With yellow, brown, and red it greets the wind
and underneath its boughs the eye may find
a tuft or two of bloom in final spray.
The year is rushing emerald away;
so also all the days of humankind,
who having lost the light by God designed
now slowly autumnize by hour and day.
Yet never give the gold-red season scorn;
decay may come to each and death appall,
but bright autumnal beauty crowns each morn
and through the rustling leaves the winds still call;
the summer may be gone, but not forlorn
am I; there's poetry enough in fall.

Music on My Mind

 

Mary Fahl, "The Dawning of the Day".

Sonnet Variations VIII

 Sonnet Variation: Anna Seward's "On the Poppy"

While summer roses all their glory yield
to give the eye an ecstasy of joy,
I yet, like summer breeze let out a sigh
while viewing sunlit grass in dusty field.
Above the sky is blue, no cloud to shield
the earth below from flame that glows on high;
it beats upon my overheated head.
The rose not only blooms, but also maid
who stands on road, her hair in dancing wind;
upon her cheeks are tears more cold than rain.
Her eyes look fair and farther still her mind,
like stars when light is mingled with some pain.
I watch the roses bloom, and then proceed
through field of grass and humble, dusty weed.

Sonnet Variations VII

 Shakespearean Variation: Sonnet 73

When days of life I mentally behold
as they upon the hooks of mem'ry hang,
not many feel unkind or bitter cold.
In some I danced, in others gladly sang,
and thus they shine with warming light of day
until they go to slip in evening west;
at times the hours were pouring all away;
at times they seemed to come to gentle rest.
When campers in the woods sit 'round a fire,
it bursts to heated bloom where branches lie,
then roars, then fading flames in ash expire,
then ash is scattered windward by and by.
--This is thy task, and worthy of the strong,
to love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Links of Note

 * Samantha Rose Hill, Beyond authenticity, on Hannah Arendt, at "Aeon"

* Claudia Dumitru, Francis Bacon and the Aristotelian Tradition on the Nature of Sound (PDF)

* Thomas Brett, Notes on Virtual Instruments, at "brettworks"

* Dennis J. Wieboldt III, Natural Law Appeals as Method of American-Catholic Reconciliation: Catholic Legal Thought and the Red Mass in Boston, 1941-1944 (PDF)

* Yascha Mounk, Luxury Beliefs are Real

* Tim O'Keefe, Socrates' Ethical Argument for His Eschatology in the Gorgias (PDF)

* Katrina Gulliver, From Folkway to Art: The Transformation of Quilts, at "JSTOR Daily"

* Emanuel Viebahn, The poet affirmeth (PDF)

* Jennifer Frey, The Liberality of Liberal Education, at "Fusion"

* Fatema Amijee, Du Châtelet’s Rejection of Leibniz’s World Apart Doctrine (PDF)

* Joseph Vukov, The Experience Machine Thought Experiment Expanded, at "Church Life Journal"

* Elliot Samuel Paul, The Rational Force of Clarity: Descartes's Rejection of Psychologism (PDF)

* Pope Francis, On the Role of Literature in Formation

* Indrek Reiland, Austin vs. Searle on Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts (PDF)

As No Fuller on Earth Could Bleach Them

 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.” 

 And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves; and he was transfigured before them, and his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses; and they were talking to Jesus. And Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” For he did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly afraid. And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” And suddenly looking around they no longer saw any one with them but Jesus only.

 And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of man should have risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what the rising from the dead meant.

[Mark 9:1-10 RSVCE]

Sonnet Variations VI

 Sonnet Variation: Edna St. Vincent Millay's Sonnet XXVII

I know I am but summer to your heart;
the spring, alas, too early in the year
took flight, and so I never had a part
in sprouting days and gentle sunrise dear.
If I could like an angel buy and sell
in heaven's market strange and wondrous thing,
a treasury of stars I would do well
to trade and buy a pastward place in spring.
But summer do I have, and ere it goes,
when autum rains will pound the evening drums,
I must to you endow a summer's rose
that you may know its scent ere autum comes.

Sonnet Variations V

 Shakespearean Variation: Sonnet 15

When I consider everything that grows,
and how life lives in each passing moment,
I think it like a mirror, in which shows
a truth with roots far deeper than comment;
for actions that build, that give good increase,
are puffs of air and not unending sky,
and acts of making-less, that good decrease,
are scarcely done than they are memory.
The good we do is done and does not stay;
the bad we bring already falls from sight,
so next is but inheritance of decay,
as moment follows moment, day does night.
-- So time is passing swiftly now for you,
and I must love again each moment new.

Incongruity and Laughter

 Kieran Setiya has an interesting post, What's So Funny About That?, on the incongruity theory of humor. In James Beattie's famous summary:

Laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one complex object or assemblage, or as acquiring a sort of mutual relation from the peculiar manner in which the mind takes notice of them.

It's worth noting, though, that the incongruity theory as we find it in Beattie is in a sense not a theory of humor as such, but really something more like a theory of the disposition to laughter. While humorous situations are perhaps the situations in which we are most likely to be laughing, and are perhaps even the central and paradigmatic situations, the disposition to laughter is relevant to a lot of other situations, some of which are not humorous, and some of which may not even involve actual laughter.

A good example of how this makes a difference is the argument, found in different versions both in Beattie and Alexander Gerard, that even where there are incongruities, if the incongruities also trigger strong reactions from some other sense, internal or external sense, this strong reaction might prevent or override anything relevant to the ridiculous or ludicrous. The obvious example is extreme evil clearly presented -- extreme evil always involves extraordinary incongruities, but clear presentations of extreme evil are not funny, because of the shock to our moral sense. Likewise, very painful incongruities are not funny, precisely because they are very painful, things that spark strong feelings of pity are not funny because of the strong feelings of pity, and so forth.

And this arguably fits the phenomena, because there is a spread in risibility. You have humorous laughter arising from incongruities and absurdities alone, uneasy and uncomfortable laughter arising from the first basic interaction with unpleasant feelings, bitter laughter when the latter are much greater. Then you have situations where you don't laugh because something distracts you or has a greater impact on you at the time, even though you might have laughed under different circumstances. From my own case, I think this is often true of cases in which we are extremely exasperated -- only slightly exasperated, and we might still laugh in exasperation, but there's a point beyond which we are just exasperated. All of these are things that we find in cases of actual comedy and jokes; some comedians even like to see how far they can push the boundaries and still get a laugh.

 And then you have situations where you have incongruities, but they come with such severely unpleasant feelings that you are not inclined to laugh at all, even while seeing the incongruity; perhaps in such cases the incongruity, insofar as it has a role, just adds force to the unpleasantness of the feeling instead of resulting in laughter, through the squelching of the disposition to laugh. And I think we find this, too; there are such things as humorless jokes, and one of their common uses in rhetoric is to intensify anger, hatred, or other negative reactions.

Sonnet Variations IV

 Sonnet Variation: Longfellow's "The Cross of Snow"

In the long, sleepless watches of the night
I wandered with the phantoms of the dead
through mazes wondrous, through my dreaming head,
illumined by the moon's all-maddening light.
The world was ink and paper, black and white,
and through the halls my sleeping steps were led
past rows and shelves of dusty books not read
in monasteries never benedight.
Yet as the moon was setting in the West,
the walls like cliffs in deep and dark ravines
rose up like mountains on each darkened side.
A fear was stirred within my pounding breast
and life itself passed by in flickered scenes;
with sigh I fell away and gently died.