Farya Faraji, "Staffan Var En Stalledräng"

 

Farya Faraji, "Staffan Var En Stalledräng"

The PNC Christmas Price Index for 2025

 The PNC Christmas Price Index for this year:

Total Christmas Price Index (CPI) 

Even with its small basket of goods and services, the PNC Christmas Price Index is not immune to the rising costs in the broader U.S. economy, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index. 

$51,476.12 (+4.5%)

*****

True Cost of Christmas in Song 

$218,542.98 (+4.4%) 

 This represents the total cost of all the gifts bestowed by True Love when you count each repetition of the song, totaling 364 presents. Spreading cheer throughout the year in 2025 costs 4.4% more than in 2024.

****

"Core" Index (Excluding Swans) 

$38,351.12 (+6.1%) 

 This version of the CPI removes the most volatile gift from the index - the Swans-a-Swimming.

The most expensive gift in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is the Ten Lords A-Leaping, at $16,836.14. The sharpest rise in cost this year, percentagewise, was the Five Golden Rings, at a ringing 32.5%. 

Since 1984, the U. S. Consumer Price Index has increased 223%, while the PNC Christmas Price Index has increased 157%. The two have tended to rise together, more or less, but, of course, the Christmas Price Index is weighted very heavily toward entertainment services, and also birds.

Clamavi De Profundis, "See Amid the Winter's Snow"

 

Clamavi De Profundis, "See Amid the Winter's Snow".

Epephane he Charis tou Theou

 For the grace of God has manifested, salvific for all human beings, training us that, having disavowed irreverence and worldly cravings, we should live temperately and justly and reverently in the current eon, being ready for the happy expectation and manifestation of the great God and our Savior, Christ Jesus, who offered himself for us that he might ransom us from all lawlessness and might purify for himself a prized people eager for splendid deeds.

Tell these things, and exhort and reprove with full authoritativeness; let no one discount you.

[Titus 2:11-15, my rough translation. 'Wordly' is 'cosmic', i.e., 'of this world-order', and may connect with the 'current eon', an aeon being the world-epoch, a perpetuity, an age that has a unified structure and character, the world as a historical entity. 

This passage seems clearly to refer to the cardinal virtues -- temperance and justice are explicitly mentioned, and eusebeia, reverence, has often substituted for or been associated with prudence in the list of cardinal virtues; so perhaps we should see the 'being ready for', which can also mean 'awaiting', 'abiding', or 'enduring', as a reference to fortitude. 

Laon periousion, here translated as 'prized people', is used in several places in the Septuagint: Exodus 19:5 ('out of all nations, you will be my treasured possession'), Deuteronomy 7:6 ('The Lord God has chosen you out of all peoples on the earth to be his people, his treasured possession'), Deuteronomy 14:2, Deuteronomy 26:18. It has historically been translated as a 'peculiar people' because the Latin peculium means 'personal possession or funds'. Laon could also mean 'tribe', 'nation', or 'ethnicity'; it indicates a community with a common heritage. 'Eager for splendid deeds' is often translated as 'zealous for good works', but kalon means good in the sense of  'fine/splendid/noble' -- it's the kind of good associated with heroes and outstanding or exemplary people.]

Merry Christmas!

 Merry Christmas to everyone!

Christmas-Greetings
by Lewis Carroll 

 Lady dear, if Fairies may
For a moment lay aside
Cunning tricks and elfish play,
'Tis at happy Christmas-tide.

 We have heard the children say  --
Gentle children, whom we love --
Long ago, on Christmas Day,
Came a message from above.

 Still, as Christmas-tide comes round,
They remember it again --
Echo still the joyful sound
'Peace on earth, good-will to men!'

 Yet the hearts must childlike be
Where such heavenly guests abide:
Unto children, in their glee,
All the year is Christmas-tide!

 Thus, forgetting tricks and play
For a moment, Lady dear,
We would wish you, if we may,
Merry Christmas, glad New Year!

Lacey Brown, "Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella"

 

Lacey Brown, "Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella".

Home Free, "O Come All Ye Faithful"

 

Home Free, "O Come All Ye Faithful".

Life in 3D, "Angels We Have Heard on High"

 

Life in 3D, "Angels We Have Heard on High".

Links of Note

 * Rob Norton, Hymns of the Early Syriac Christians, on the Odes of Solomon, at "Discovering Early Christianity"

* Patrick Flynn, Is Aquinas's God an "Intelligible Blank"?, at "The Journal of Absolute Truth"

* Allan Arkush, In Memory of Judah Maccabee, at "Jewish Review of Books"

* Kevin Blake, The Penicillin Myth, at "Asimov Press", on the puzzles in Fleming's account of his discovery. In fact, I think Hare's proposed account is probably close to being the right one; I disagree with Blake about Root-Bernstein's being simpler and less improbable. 

* Miguel Garcia-Godinez, Making the state responsible: A proxy account of legal organizations and private agents acting for the state (PDF)

* Sally Thomas, Today's Poem: The Burning Babe, on St. Robert Southwell, at "Poems Ancient and Modern"

* Victoria, How to write a Christmas poem in early modern England, at "Horace & Friends"

* A tribute to the novelist Michael Flynn, at "Prometheus Blog" (hat-tip)

* Flame & Light, The Holy, on Otto's Idea of the Holy

* Yoon H. Choi & Alix Cohen, Feeling and Life in Kant's Account of the Beautiful and the Sublime (PDF)

* Lu'Ella D'Amico, Till This Moment, I Never Knew Myself:  Reading Austen's Pride and Prejudice During Advent, at "Church Life Journal"

* Lincoln Michel interviews Brandon Taylor on his recent novel, Minor Black Figures, at "Counter Craft"; I thought that this was a much more interesting author's interview than most author's interviews are.

* Travis McKenna, Laws of Nature and their Supporting Casts (PDF) -- this was a very nicely developed argument about how 'laws of nature' function in scientific explanation.

* Brad Skow, The first on the scene, at "Mostly Aesthetics", on the grounds of parental duty

* Amod Sandhya Lee, Who were the Magi?, at "Love of All Wisdom"

* Harald Høffding & Hans Halvorson, Høffding on Subject and Object (PDF)

Skillet, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel"

 

Skillet, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel".

Knowing Canisius

As today is not only the Fourth Sunday of Advent but the feast of St. Peter Canisius, here is a re-post from 2023. 

 Today is the feast of St. Pieter Kanis, better known in English as Peter Canisius, Doctor of the Church. A major figure in the Catholic response to the Reformation, he is a major reason why a number of German-speaking regions stayed Catholic, for which reason he is sometimes called the Second Apostle to Germany. One of his major principles in discussions with Protestants was that attacks on them, especially personal attacks, were ultimately self-defeating; as he is said to have put it, by such attacks you are not curing anyone, just making them incurable, and therefore the best path was generally just to give an honest explanation to address any honest perplexities. He is most famous for his catechisms; 'knowing Canisius' is an old expression for having a solid catechetical education. From his Parvus catechismus (1558): 

 What does the first article of the Creed mean, "I believe in God the Father"? It shows first in the Godhead a person, namely the heavenly and eternal Father, for whom nothing is impossible or difficult to do, who produced heaven and earth, visible things together with all invisible things from nothing and even conserves and governs everything he has produced, with supreme goodness and wisdom. What does the second article of the Creed mean, "And in Jesus Christ his Son"? It reveals the second person in the Godhead, Jesus Christ, obviously his only begotten from eternity and consubstantial with the Father, our Lord and redeemer, as the one who has freed us from perdition. What is the third article, "Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit"? The third article proposes the mystery of the Lord's Incarnation: because the same Son of God, descending from heaven, assumed a human nature, but in an absolutely unique way, as he was conceived without a father, from the power of the Holy Spirit, born from the Virgin Mary who remained a virgin afterwards.

 [Peter Canisius, A Small Catechism for Catholics, Grant, tr., Mediatrix Press (2014) pp. 12-13.]

True Sun

 Tomorrow at about 10 am (Eastern Standard Time) is the Winter Solstice, so I have been thinking of this:

The Egyptians adored the sun and inappropriately referred to it as the visible son of the invisible God. But Jesus is the true sun who looks upon us with the rays of his light, who blesses us with his countenance and who rules us by his movements. He is the sun we should always behold and adore. Jesus is truly the only begotten Son of God and neither the sun nor any other created thing, whether in heaven or on earth, is his equal. Jesus is the only begotten Son and the visible Son of the invisible Father....Let us say for now that he is not the sun of the Egyptians, who were deceived by their myths, but the Sun of the Christians, who have been instructed in the school of truth, in the light of this sun, who is the light of the supernatural world. He is a sun who chose to depict and represent himself by the natural sun, which is only his shadow and symbol.

[ Pierre de Bérulle, Discourse on the State and Grandeurs of Jesus in Bérulle and the French School, Thompson, ed. Glendon, tr. Paulist (New York: 1989), 115.]

Dashed Off XXII

 Every ugliness posits a beauty with respect to which it is ugly.

We should be very cautious with respect to our inclination to moralize our certainties.

The Magna Carta is sui generis, but has the rough form of a feudal title because it is a negotiated settlement concerning feudal allegiance, whose historical value consists in part in the legal fiction -- not falsehood, but artificial construction after the fact -- that it was a gift of the barons to the whole people, the barons claiming the rights, liberties, and concessions for everyone. This latter occurs by stretching the phrase "all freemen of my kingdom and their heirs forever" from its technical sense (feudal vassals officially recognized as having freehold) to a later colloquial sense (including villein and burgess classes), and incorporation of all the rest under this semantic change, with the result that even indirect benefit to the lower classes was treated as if it were intended benefit. But by this, the Magna Carta became, and genuinely became in customary law, much larger than it was in original settlement.

(1) Ethical knowledge and value requires an idea of self in which it participates something larger than itself.
(2) Choice presupposes vision.
(3) Our contingency and weakness must be faced squarely.

The author is a final cause
who gives the story stable laws
to which the things of story tend
utnil they find their proper end.

Liberties are particular forms of commonality among human beings, ways of being the same for the same reason.

"A person is a person because of other persons." Ifeanyi Menkiti
"I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am."

It is always easier to improve the aesthetics of a course than its pedagogy.

'the aim of a thoroughly interconnected experience' (Kant 5:184)

(1) Organisms are purposive systems,
(2) which suggests that the whole of nature is a purposive system
(3) which, because human persons have moral ends,
(4) can only be if the whole of nature in some way is able to incorporate moral ends.

We often treat as X what is a fitting sign of X.

the intellectual vocation of the human senses

causality proper
causality involving temporal succession
causality involving spatial containment
causality involving both

We have regular experience of moral choices not being wholly a matter of internal and external sanctions, in temptation, in weakness of will, and resistance to sanction.

We use acquired dispositions, rites, and institutions to fill out our moral, jural, and sacral personhood.

Reasoning and deliberation, know-how and counsel, and the like can be shared among persons, communicated, and thus, to the extent that the communication can be regimented into rule or pattern, can be implemented in external practice or product.

one being as standing for another vs one benig as the guise of another

The roots of all service are debt, penalty, or exchange.

The Christian owes God service by debt, as creature; by penalty, as fallen; by debt again, as saved; and by exchange, as in covenant with God.

delegation of authority as creation of an alienable right

anosiurgotropos: skilled in works of impiety

In poetry as in drawing, one must copy a lot to create a lot.

Ritual as we know it presupposes grammatically articulated language.

Language builds on the mimetic skills to which human beings naturally tend.

'to be able to see some of the qualitative consequences of the equations by some method other than solving them in detail' (Feynman's description of understanding physical equations)

"If *Adonai* had ever been a God-hypothesis there would be no Jews." Fackenheim
"Judaism, like Christianity, embraced the belief in a hereafter the moment it focused on the individual, as well as collective human destiny."
"The Torah manifests love in the very act of manifesting commandment, for in commanding humans rather than angels, it accepts these humans in their humanity. Hence in accepting the Torah, man can at the same time accept himself as accepted by God in his humanity."

The first word of the Decalogue is 'I'.

The balance of reasons is a whirling and changing thing.

Philosophia finds its proper home in the philia of the wise.

Friendships of virtue give greater use and pleasure and to virtue.

Cassian on charity as friendship (Conferences XVI)

three acts of friendship: concordia, benevolentia, beneficentia

Our loves are the flowerings of faiths and hopes that led to them, and show their origins.

formal benefit: beneficent will
instrumental benefit: good given

Friends will and nill alike because they take each other into account in the willing and nilling.

Pride destroys the conditions for concord of wills.

Charity posits that others have good hidden from us, and as this is always true, charity is needed for right estimate of persons.

In everyone is the image of God; no human mind has plumbed its depths.

We must not confuse lack fo zeal for justice with compassion or mercy.

gift of faith --> sincere, generous, and merciful action

'that what it celebrates in mystery it may accomplish in power'

OM as a symbol of the Divine Word
the Divine Word as Shabda Brahman

"Om is the agreement with a hymn. Likewise is tatha [so be it] with a gatha. But Om is something divine and tatha is something human." Aitareya Brahmana 7.18.13
"Om is the bow, the arrow is the Self, Brahman the mark; by the undistracted man is it to be penetrated, one should become one in it, as the arrow becomes one with the mark." Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.4

A: Father
U: Son
M: Spirit
Note Sikh divine epithet, Ik Onkar, i.e., 'One Om'

the analytical, dialectical, and narrative modes of each philosophical position and argument

The qualia debate seems to be based on a garbled attempt to capture the difference between presential knowledge and objective knowledge. This becomes clear when one looks at the kinds of position proposed in it, which themselves seem garbled versions of accounts of that distinction, or at least something similar.

Most forms of modern paganism are just more distal kinds of Christian heresy; but thi sis also true of most forms of modern atheism.

'understanding approximately up to a certain degree of culture'
-- narrating history, appealing to examples, explaining examples

to be amen to Christ the Amen

To have less than paradise often rankles even the virtuous.

moral authority, sovereignty, sanctity

It is not being defeated by one's own flaws and failings that is the source of human greatness.

The world is full of endless numbers of tiny, beautiful things.

NB Gorgias 475d in light of Gorgias's claim that the rhetor is better equipped to get the patient to submit to teh doctor than the doctor is.

Organs have functions but this can only be if there is an overall functionality or function of the whole with respect to which they have these functions.

immediate inferences based on
(1) reorganization
(2) weakening
(3) translation

Every function posits classifications relevant to it.
--- input classification
--- --- trigger/nontrigger
--- --- appropriate/inappropriate
--- output classifications
Every classification posits possible functions to which it might be relevant.

existing being --> informational being

three aspects of fate: spinning, measuring, unturningness

Philosophical systems are limited by the limits of their accessible and usable archive.

natural law precept to act according to virtue -->
(1) defeasible moral right to act in ways appropriate to that virtue
(2) strict moral right to act in the only way appropriate to that virtue, when there is only one;
(3) where the precept to justice also applies: jural right
(4) where the precept to religion also applies: sacral right

Human beings seek dwellings that are kind to them.

arguments as knots in the endless thread of reason

Habitude XVII

 To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that one habitude is constituted from several habitudes. For that whose generation is completed all at once, but successively, seems to be constituted from several parts. But generation of a habitude is not all at once, but successively from several acts, as was said above. Therefore one habitude is constituted from several habitudes.

Further, a whole is constituted from parts. But to one habitude is assigned many parts, as when Tully posits many parts of fortitude, temperance, and other virtues. Therefore one habitude is constituted from several.

Further, from one conclusion alone is able to be had a kind of knowledge both actually and habitually. But many conclusions pertain to one whole kind of knowledge, as with arithmetic or geometry. Therefore one habitude is constituted from many.

But contrariwise, habitude, because it is a sort of quality, is a simple form. But nothing simple is constituted from several. Therefore one habitude is not constituted from several habitudes.

I reply that it must be said that a habitude ordered to working, which we are now principally intending, is a sort of completion of power. Now every completion is proportionate to its completable. Thus just as power, because it is one, extends itself to many according as they converge on some one thing, that is, in a sort of generic notion of object, so also habitude extends itself to many according as they have ordering to some one thing, such as to one specific notion of object, or one nature, or one principle, as is obvious from what has been said above. If therefore we consider habitude inasmuch as it extends itself to such things, we shall then find in it a sort of multiplicity. But because that multiplicity is ordered to some one thing, to which the habitude is principally related, what follows is that habitude is a simple quality, not constituted from many habitudes, even if it extends itself to many things. For one habitude does not extend itself to many things, save in ordering to one thing, from which it has unity.

To the first it therefore must be said that succession in the generation of a habitude does not happen from the fact that part is generated after part, but from the fact that the subject does not directly acquire firm and hard-to-move disposition and from the fact that it first begins to be incompletely in the subject and is bit-by-bit completed -- as is also the case with other qualities.

To the second it must be said that parts that are assigned to each single cardinal virtue are not integral parts, from which the whole is constituted but subjective or potential parts, as will be obvious below.

To the third it must be said that he who in some kind of knowledge acquires by demonstration knowledge of one conclusion indeed has the habitude by incompletely. But when he acquires by some demonstration knowledge of some other conclusion, another habitude is not generated in him, but the habitude that was previously in him becomes more complete, since it extends itself to several things; because conclusions and demonstrations of one kind of knowledge are ordered, and one is derived from another.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.54.4, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

It's very tempting to think of habitudes as being the sort of thing that could 'congeal' together to form new habitudes; St. Thomas shuts this down here, on the basis that this is not how qualities in general work. Habitudes grow by intension, not aggregation; they decline by remission, not by subtraction.

This article, of course, establishes a key principle of St. Thomas's influential taxonomy of virtues in terms of 'parts'. A potential puzzle with regard to the reply to the second objection is that St. Thomas does in fact assign to cardinal virtues not just subjective parts (i.e., specific versions of a virtue) and potential virtues (i.e., associated subordinate virtues directed to secondary matters), but "quasi-integral parts", which he sometimes just calls integral parts. These are not literally integral parts (i.e., parts in our ordinary sense of components making up a whole), but things that are associated with a virtue in the sense that the principal virtue needs them in order to exercise its act fully.

The reply to the third objection is a useful reminder that extension of knowledge works primarily by intension or intensification, not by addition or aggregation, as one might think if one looked only at the accumulation of conclusions that one can list as known. To take a set of principles and recognize more conclusions as proven by them is to know the principles and their consequence more intensively. To know is an act of the intellect as a power to know; knowing more is the intellect literally knowing more powerfully. This has a number of incidental ramifications worth thinking about -- e.g., knowledge cannot be assumed to be adequately characterized by a list of propositions known, and one may know the same thing to different degrees at times, in the sense that how powerfully or 'securely' it falls within one's knowledge, how 'central' it is to the things one knows, can vary as one's power to know that general kind of thing is built up by proofs. In this sense, we should think of knowing as like a light that, when more intense, reveals more.

Music on My Mind

 

Clamavi De Profundis, "What Child Is This".

A Sorting or Discriminatory Power

 Aristotle's accounts of the so-called 'practical syllogism', similarly, ascribe to the desires a sorting or discriminatory power: our of the man things presented to the agent by thought and perception, desire will single out some and not others to be foundations of action. Sometimes this selecting role is played by rational desire or 'wish'; but the appetitive forms of desire, too, 'speak', informing the whole creature of its needs and responding directly to the presence of what will satisfy those needs.... None of the appetites, not even the appetite for food, which Plato seems to hold throughout his life in unmitigated contempt, lacks, properly trained, its cognitive function. A well-formed character is a unity of thought and desire, in which choice has so blended these two elements, desire being attentive to thought and thought responsive to desire, that either one can guide and their guidance will be one and the same.

[Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Updated Edition, Cambridge University Press (New York: 2009) p. 308.]

The Day Returns Again, My Natal Day

As today is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, it seems fitting to post one of her few poems, and her only non-comic poem. 

 To the Memory of Mrs. Lefroy who died Dec:r 16 — my Birthday.
by Jane Austen 

 The day returns again, my natal day;
What mix’d emotions with the Thought arise!
Beloved friend, four years have pass’d away
Since thou wert snatch’d forever from our eyes.--

The day, commemorative of my birth
Bestowing Life and Light and Hope on me,
Brings back the hour which was thy last on Earth.
Oh! bitter pang of torturing Memory!--

Angelic Woman! past my power to praise
In Language meet, thy Talents, Temper, mind.
Thy solid Worth, thy captivating Grace!--
Thou friend and ornament of Humankind!--

At Johnson’s death by Hamilton t’was said,
‘Seek we a substitute–Ah! vain the plan,
No second best remains to Johnson dead--
None can remind us even of the Man.’

 So we of thee -- unequall’d in thy race
Unequall’d thou, as he the first of Men.
Vainly we search around the vacant place,
We ne’er may look upon thy like again.

 Come then fond Fancy, thou indulgant Power,--
--Hope is desponding, chill, severe to thee!--
Bless thou, this little portion of an hour,
Let me behold her as she used to be.

 I see her here, with all her smiles benign,
Her looks of eager Love, her accents sweet.
That voice and Countenance almost divine!--
Expression, Harmony, alike complete.--

I listen -- ’tis not sound alone -- ’tis sense,
‘Tis Genius, Taste and Tenderness of Soul.
‘Tis genuine warmth of heart without pretence
And purity of Mind that crowns the whole.

 She speaks; ’tis Eloquence -- that grace of Tongue
So rare, so lovely! -- Never misapplied
By her to palliate Vice, or deck a Wrong,
She speaks and reasons but on Virtue’s side.

 Her’s is the Energy of Soul sincere.
Her Christian Spirit ignorant to feign,
Seeks but to comfort, heal, enlighten, chear,
Confer a pleasure, or prevent a pain.--

Can ought enhance such Goodness?--
Yes, to me, Her partial favour from my earliest years
Consummates all.– -- Ah! Give me yet to see
Her smile of Love. -- the Vision diappears.

‘Tis past and gone -- We meet no more below.
Short is the Cheat of Fancy o’er the Tomb.
Oh! might I hope to equal Bliss to go!
To meet thee Angel! in thy future home!--

Fain would I feel an union in thy fate,
Fain would I seek to draw an Omen fair
From this connection in our Earthly date.
Indulge the harmless weakness -- Reason, spare.--

Habitude XVI

 To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that habitude is not distinguished according to good and bad, for good and bad are contraries. But the same habitude is of contraries, as was said above. Therefore habitude is not distinguished according to good and bad. 

Further, good is converted with being, and so, because it is common to all, it is not able to be taken as the differentia of some species, as is obvious from the Philosopher in Topic. IV. And likewise bad, because it is privation and not being, is not able to be the differentia of some being. Therefore habitude is not able to be distinguished in species according to good and bad.

Further, about the same there happen to be diverse bad habitudes, as intemperance and insensibility about concupiscence, and likewise for many good habitudes, such as human virtue and divine or heroic virtue, as is obvious from the Philosopher in Ethic. VII. Therefore habitude is not distinguished according to good and bad.

But contrariwise is that good habitude is contrary to bad habitude, as virtue to vice. But contraries are diverse according to species. Therefore habitude differs in species according to good and bad.

I reply that it must be said that, as was said, habitude is distinguished in species not only according to object and active principle, but also in ordering to nature. This can happen in two ways. In one way according to their fittingness to nature, or also to their unfittingness to it. And in this way good and bad habitudes are distinguished in species, since a habitude is called good that disposes to an act fitting to the nature of the agent, but a habitude is called bad that disposes to an act not fitting to the nature; as acts of virtues are fitting to human nature, in that they are according to reason, but acts of vices, because they are against reason, are discordant with human nature. 

In another way that habitude is distinguished according to nature, because one habitude disposes to an act that is fitting to an inferior nature, but another habitude disposes to an act that is fitting to a superior nature. And so human virtue, which disposes to an act appropriate to human nature, is distinguished from divine or heroic virtue, which disposes to an act fitting to a superior nature. 

To the first therefore it must be said that one habitude is able to be of contraries, inasmuch as the contraries converge into one notion. However, it never happens that contrary habitudes are of one species, for the contrariety of habitudes is according to the contrariety of notions. And thus habitudes are distinguished according to good and bad, namely, inasmuch as one habitude is good and another bad, but not from the fact that one is of good and the other of bad.

To the second it must be said that the good common to every human being is not the differentia constituting the species of some habitude, but rather a sort of determinate good, which is according to its fittingness to a determinate nature, namely, human. Likewise, the bad that is a differentia constitutive of habitude is not pure privation but is something repugnant to a determinate nature.

To the third it must be said that several good habitudes about the same species are distinguished according to fittingness to diverse natures, as was said. But several bad habitudes about the same action are distinguished according to diverse repugnances to that which is according to nature, as one virtue is contrary to diverse vices about the same matter.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.54.3, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here, both of which, however, seem to have some minor textual problems.]

This, of course, is a key article, since it is (as is clear from the examples used) the foundation of the entire theory of virtues and vices.

Links of Note

 * JSC, Did Julian of Norwich Write a Consolation?

* Tessa Carman, Light in 'Jane Austen's Darkness', at "Mere Orthodoxy"

* Kevin Fernandez, On Vincible and Invincible Ignorance (with St. Thomas Aquinas)

* Julia Minarik, Synthetic Disenchantment, at "Blog of the APA"

* Victoria, The running of the deer: celebrating Christmas in 1644, at "Horace & Friends"

* Ben Goldhaber, Unexpected Things that are People, at "Gold Takes"

* D. Luscinius, Every realm of nature is marvelous, at "Nelle Parole"

* Sami Pihlström, Putnam's transcendental arguments (PDF)

* Rob Alspaugh, The Point of ST I-II Q6 a1, at "Teaching Boys Badly"

* Brandon Carter, In Eodem Sensu: St. Vincent of Lerins and Development of Doctrine, at "Theophilosophizer"

* John Wright, Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman on Assent, at "John's Substack"

* Gregory B. Sadler, Thomas Aquinas’ Discussion of Law and the Sapiental Mediation of Reason and Revelation in the Summa Theologiae

* Henry Oliver, Why we love Jane Austen more than ever after 250 years, at "The Common Reader"

* Brad Skow, Free Indirect Style: A Theory, at "Mostly Aesthetics"

* Matthew Minerd, An Introduction to Dialectical Logic: The Recovery of Probable Certainty as the Labor of the Human Intellect, at "To Be a Thomist"

* Aaron Pidel, SJ, Vatican II, at the Encyclopedia of Catholic Theology

* Lucas Thorpe & Zübeyde Karadağ Thorpe, Kant on the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God: Why Conceivability Does Not Entail Real Possibility (PDF)

* Jane Austen was born December 16, 1775, which is why there has been a slow uptick in Austen-related posts online, as people do something for the 250th anniversary. 

O Hours! More Worth than Gold

 December Morning, 1782.
by Anna Seward 

 I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light,
Winter's pale dawn; and as warm fires illume
And cheerful tapers shine around the room,
Through misty windows bend thy musing sight,
Where round the dusky lawn, the mansions white,
With shutters clos'd, peer faintly through the gloom,
That slow recedes; while yon grey spires assume,
Rising from their dark pile, an added height
By indistinctness given. Then to decree
The grateful thoughts to God, ere they unfold
To Friendship or the Muse, or seek with glee
Wisdom's rich page: O hours! more worth than gold,
By whose blest use we lengthen life, and free
From drear decays of age, outlive the old!

Two Poem Drafts

Glories

God is glorious by nature,
we by fortune;
His is necessary,
ours can know failure.

Our splendor is a vine,
needing rain and sun;

it is devoured by violence
and starved by its soil.

God's light, unmoved star;
our light, pale moon,
secondary in shine,
unsteadily it moves.

A Cento of Blooms

Cheerful shall be the pasture,
exultant shall be the waste;
the desert shall bloom like meadow-saffron.
Blossoming, it shall bloom and exult,
exultantly shouting.

The weight of the Lord is found in it,
who made sky and land and sea,
who made all within them,
who perpetually guards faithfulness,
who bestows return on the defrauded,
who gives bread to the famished.

Rise to the challenge, then, brothers,
until the Lord's appearing;
regard the farmer who waits
on the fine fruits of the earth,
rising to its challenge until it brings forth;
to the challenge rise, and fortify your hearts.

Go, then, and tell what you see;
having gone, relate what you hear:
the smoke-eyed look upward,
the limping walk around,
the scaly are purified,

the ear-blunted now listen,
the corpses are awakened,
the cringing are well-taught,
and fulfilled is the one never stumbling.

Stand fast, dread not, God will avenge;
God will come to free you:
your blinded eyes will be opened,
your deafened ears will be made open,
your limping legs like stags shall leap,
your muted tongue shall sing,

for the pasture shall bloom with waters,
and rivers burst forth in the wasteland,
and the droughted dust shall form pools,
and fountains dwell in the thirsty land.

Habitude XV

 To the second one proceeds thus. It seems that habitudes are not distinguished according to objects. For contraries differ in species, but the same habitude of knowledge is of contraries, as medicine of the healthy and the sick. Therefore it is not according to objects differing in species that habitudes are distinguished.

Further, diverse kinds of knowledge are diverse habitudes. But the same knowable pertains to diverse kinds of knowledge, just as both the physicist and the astronomer demonstrate that the earth is round, as is said in Phys. II. Therefore habitudes are not distinguished according to objects.

Further, to the same act is the same object. But the same act can pertain to diverse habitudes of virtue, if it is referred to diverse ends, as giving money to someone, if it is for the sake of God, pertains to charity; but if it is for the sake of paying a debt, it pertains to justice. Therefore the same object is able to pertain to diverse habitudes. Therefore there is no diversity of habitudes according to diversity of objects.

But contrariwise, acts differ in species according to diversity of objects, as was said above. But habitudes are sorts of dispositions to acts. Therefore habitudes are also distinguished according to diverse objects.

I reply that it must be said that habitude both is a sort of form and also habitude. Therefore distinction of habitudes according to species is able to be considered either according to the common way by which forms are distinguished in species or according to the proper way of distinguishing habitudes. Forms are indeed distinguished from each other according to diverse active principles, since every agent makes what is like according to species. Now habitude implies ordering to something. But everything that is said according to ordering to something, is distinguished according to the distinction of those to which it is said. And habitude is a sort of disposition ordered to two things, that is to nature and to working according to nature. Thus according to the three, habitudes are distinguished in species: In one way, according to the active principles of such dispositions; in another way, according to nature;  but in a third way, according to specifically differing objects; as will be explained in the following.

To the first therefore it must be said that in distinction of powers or even habitudes, the object itself is not to be considered materially, but the notion of the objects differing in species or even in genus. But although contraries differ in species in the diversity of things, yet the same notion is for cognizing both, because one is cognized through the other. And therefore inasmuch as they converge in one cognizable notion, they pertain to one cognitive habitude.

To the second it must be said that the physicist demonstrates that the earth is round through some middle term, and the astronomer through another, for the astronomer demonstrates this through mathematical middle terms, as by the shapes of eclipses, but the physicist demonstrates it through natural middle terms, as by change of the heavy toward the middle, or somesuch. But the whole impulse of demonstration, which is deduction [syllogismus] making to know, as was said in Poster. I, hangs on the middle term. And thus middle terms are like diverse active principles according to which habitudes of kinds of knowledge are diversified.

To the third it must be said that, as the Philosopher says in Physic. II and in Ethic. VII, the end is in workables as the principle is in demonstratives. And so the diversity of ends diversifies virtues just like the diversity of active principles. And the ends themselves are objects of interior acts, which pertains most of all to virtues, as is obvious from what was said above.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.54.2, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

Antigone and Practical Reason

 The Antigone is a play about practical reason and the ways in which practical reason orders or sees the world. It is unusually full of words for deliberation, reasoning, knowledge, and vision. It begins with the question, 'Do you know?' (2), asked about a practical crisis, and with a claim about the correct way of viewing its demands. It ends with the assertion that practical wisdom (to phronein) is the most important constituent of human good living (eudaimonia, 1348-9). It is also a play about teaching and learning, about changing one's vision of the world, about losing one's grip on what looked like secure truth and learning a more elusive kind of wisdom. From a confident claim about what is, in a complicated case, known, it moves to, 'I have no idea where I should look, which way I should lean', and, finally, to the suggestion that a less confident wisdom has, in fact, been learned (1353).

[Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Updated Edition, Cambridge University Press (New York: 2009), pp. 51-52.]

Dashed Off XXXI

 In organizing themselves instrumentally as states, civil societies incorporate elements derived from their history and heritage, including various kinds of particular powers and restrictions.

All societies have to deal with people inimical and corrosive to them, and the decisions about how to do so are always difficult.

Social contract theory grows out of thinking that civil society membership is a form of servitude; servitude of adults outside of the family is either penal or contractual. (Cp. Rosmini)

"It is necessary to test experience not in one way but according to all circumstances, that it be truly and correctly a principle of acting." Albert (Ethica VI tr 2 c25)

One should not merely read but read and compare to experience. It is this kind of reading whereby (eg) the novels of Austen or Dickens or Eliot help to improve us morally.

energy, momentum, etc. as having dispositional being (esse intentionale) in things, as if transferred through a medium

'so bad it's good' in art as arising from harmless but extreme incongruity

The existence of final causes is what makes physics possible.

"The definition of an organic body is that it is a body, every part of which is there for the sake of the other (recirpocally as end and, at the same time, means)." Kant OP 21:210 (cp OP 21:181, 22:548)

We experience some systems of moving things in such a way that to unify our experience requires positing the being of reason, 'empty space'. Thus empty space is an object of possible *experience*, namely, by perceiving privation of medium through the model of being. This is in the same way that a hole can be the object of possible experience, and a constant one even if the repletive medium for it is changed or even taken away entirely.

Freedom gets its value from truth.

the internal almsgiving of the Church

If I say, 'X appears to be Y', I can mean:
(1) As appearing, X is Y.
(2) X is Y-like enough that one could confuse them under relevant conditions.
(3) X, despite being not very Y-like, under the circumstances could be mistaken as having Y-like features.
(4) No distinguishing features of X as opposed to Y appear.

We are already on the threshold of hell; it is a proof of, and way to, heaven that we need.

It's dangerous to have no conception of excellence except comparative.

To be human is to have potential for roles in deontic frameworks.

artificial vs natural federalism

Much of paleontology consists of translating fossil contexts into abstract representations -- maps of fossil locations, timelines, diagrams of fossils, records in archives for the use of other researchers, etc. It is this that makes the material evidence useful for scientific purposes.

The mystery is not why spirits and the resurrected live with their choices. The ystery is why we do not necessarily have to do so. We have a power of probationary repentance; it is tied to our mortality. In salvation, then, God uses our mortality to save us from everlasting death.

Kant's practical postulates are concerned with the gap between human will and holy will.

the external world as arena for moral action, as a practical postulate

"The experience of community is the presupposition of understanding." Dilthey

The only real critique of system is a more powerful system.

the categorical imperative & not treating conditional goods as unconditional

possibilities -> structure of possibilities -> change in structure of possibilities -> moving and efficient causes

In the long run in a democratic politics, people do not vote for the most reliable instrument but for the blade most dangerous to those they see as opposing them.

ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments for the external world

doubt: subject-object
experience: act-potency
hope: agent-patient? agent-field of action?

externality/outness as a kind of systematically differentiated readiness to appear

the integration of anomaly into nomality/nomicity

externality as a limited form of nomality/nomicity

external world as
(1) instrumental power
(2) immediate object
(3) mediated object
(4) arena for action
(5) standing reserve
(6) intersubjective medium
(7) system of harm/benefit, safety/danger

Most social evils are the daughters of pride and fashion.

Punna, often translated as 'merit', should be translated as 'happy act' -- it indicates not desert but beneficial karmic fruitfulness, auspiciousness with respect to karma, fortunateness with respect to becoming pure. Thus the Sangha is the 'field of punna', the most fruitful place to plant a gift. Punna is a treasure that cannot be lost. There are three major kinds: almsgiving (dana), virtue (sila), and meditative self-cultivation (bhavana); btu there are arguably many others, like teaching and learning Dharma or showing respect to the good or empathizing with another's good deed (anything, in fact, that can affect karma positively).

doing good on another's behalf or in another's name

ariya-sacca ('Noble Truth')
sacca: truth, reality, genuine existent
ariya: noble, ennobled, socially superior
thus sometimes understood as 'true reality for those who are ennobled'
perhaps: reality for (or as seen by) those with superior achievement, i.e., for those who are enlightened.
Thus: reality is fudnamentally dukkha, tanha, nirodha, magga -- pain/suffering, thirst/craving, nirvana/cessation, path.
"This, monks, for the noble, is the painful (dukkha) reality (ariya-sacca)."

In democracies, people become more crass in order to fake being democratic; in aristocracies, people become more hoity-toity in order to fake being aristocratic.

Cause and effect are one and not the same, distinct but not separate, because each thing has reference to another in causation.

"Jesus Buddha, who is the most powerful and compassionate person in the world, forgives my sins." -- from the "Praise Jesus Text" in the Xiabuzan (British Library S.2659), a Chinese Manichean hymn scroll from the Tang dynasty (perhaps somewhere between 8th and 11th century)

Much of what is seen as genius by others is in fact simply successful confidence.

asymmetric cooperations in which A is cooperating with B, although not vice versa
(1) anticipatory cooperation
(2) qualified coopeation with the resistant or uncooperative

reason as objective cause of motivation

Hume's account of causation is so broad that reason must have influence on acting and affection if anything does.

'Something is to be done' as self-evident practical truth

the external world here and now vs the external world in a general point of view

It is more obvious that there is safety and danger in the world than that there are planets or atoms; and such safety and danger can continue to exist independently of, and distinctly from, the mind's perception of them.

'Metaphysics of race' is just philosophy of classification with race as an example.

Everything is a normative standard to some kind of judgment.

energy as a measure of instrumentability

the vicarious and the objective aspects of the sign

"Since you cannot act without reasons and your humaity is the source of your reasons, you must value your own humanity if you are to act at all." Korsgaard
"Obligation is the reflective rejection of a threat to your identity. Pain is the *unreflective* rejection of a threat to your identity. So pain is the *perception* of a reason, and that is why it seems normative."

We do not pursue pleasure for its sake, but for our sake. (cp. Balguy)

intimations of free will in the products of artistic skill

the Incarnation as the election of Israel within the election of Israel
Out of the nations, He calls Israel; out of Israel, He calls the nations.

kitschy vs non-kitschy uses of kitsch

Hohfeldian incidents as relations between persons and jural goods

Every person has a right to law; that is, law is itself a jural good.

All legal systems have moral, judicial, and ceremonial aspects.

puzzles, debts, challenges, enticements

All virtues in the justice family call forth rites for their communication, coordination, facilitation, and protection.

deferential responsibilities -> ceremonies and rituals and formal procedures

All rights a person may have are participations in eternal right, that is to say, divine sovereignty over creation.

To have a right to X posits others having an obligation to you with respect to X, which requires that they have a power relevant to that obligation.

The order in which good law contributes to making men virtuous is different from the order in which (eg) self-discipline does; law prioritizes duties, especially more obvious duties, especially more obvious duties concerning harms in social interactions.

There is no such thing as a 'total body of evidence' except with respect to this or that end.

pricing as a general theory of proportioning mesurable means to measurable ends in the context of exchanges

profit as an ability of one exchange to make possible other exchanges

"The only appropriate way to love God is as a good infinitely shareable." McInerny

Moral action can only be conceived as a sort of cooperation with the world at large.

"To have an emotion is to stand *in the presence* of a normative fact: to feel fear is to stand in teh presence of the dangerousness of danger, to feel grief is to stand in the presence of the infinite loss of death." Korsgaard

Every civil freedom presupposes a right.

All of creation is a juridical good for God, for all of it is due to Him. In creation, God posits the created world not only ontically (as being and metaphysical goodness) but also juridically and liturgically. The created world is good and very good.

the eye glinting with glances

To love a person is to know them as bigger than death.

Common possession is limited by the limits of the friendship it presupposes.

Totalitarianism arises from trying to have without friendship what comes only from civil friendship.

organisms as making themselves normative for themselves

Blameworthiness gets its importance from its limitations, and especially from forgiveness.

concrete crime scene -> abstract crime scene -> interrelations of abstract crime scene as effects -> causal context

the 'word' as a pedagogical unit
-- We first learn words as words in being taught segments of language as children.

The underlying principles of the Turing Test are the same as those of many design arguments.

Reason, being social, requires communication with other reason, and therefore testimony.

scenic aesthetic // problem-focused approach to philosophy

generative mediation -- e.g., time-lapse photography allows perception (generates perception) of what could not be perceived without that mediation

natural law, natural title: human right
natural law, conventional title: moral right
positive law, natural title: social right
positive law, positive title: privilege

The way we attribute vice and virtue always implies (1) that there is more of character than is found in the attribution, since the attributions are indirectly grounded, through signs, and (2) that such attributions can be wrong, even if made collectively, for the same reason.

What is, sometimes expresses what ought to be, and sometimes does not. This is different from the two being separate.

modal operators as diagram construction instructions

The Power of Discovery in Science

 The power of discovery in science is the ability to distinguish new dimensions in things, new dimensions that can become correlated into functional relationships, idealized into an internal measurement system, and captured in the formulas of a theory. The power of discovery is the ability to articulate wholes into new kinds of parts and new kinds of relationships among parts: to articulate a moving body into mass, acceleration and the force that it undergoes, or to distinguish "heat" into the two factors of "quantity of heat" and "temperature." When such parts are articulated, the thing in question itself becomes seen as a new kind of whole. And progress occurs by zigs and zags: the new theory suggests new measurements and instrumentation, and these in turn suggest new wholes and parts and new theories.

[Robert Sokolowski, Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology, University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, IN: 1992) p. 150.]

Apples

In various places online, they are talking about apples, in part because of the Apple Rankings website, whose weird and quirky rankings have earned it the enmity of cidermakers and apple lovers worldwide. I am certainly not an apple expert in anything like the way that a cidermaker would be, but I have eaten a lot of apples in my lifetime. I don't eat as many as I used to, but I have had all sorts of apples. So I thought I'd say a few things about apples.

(1) When it comes to cultivation, apples are immensely weird. The apple is an unstably reproducing fruit-bearing tree. If you take a variety of apple and plant it in your yard so that it grows into a tree, you will virtually never get apples of the same variety. In order to grow a variety of apples, you have to take apple branches of that variety and graft them into a new tree. Then every apple of that variety is ultimately from one tree whose branches were grafted into other tree, and then other branches from those branches and so forth. This also means that actual apple varieties that come from just growing trees are mind-bogglingly diverse. Virtually every natural-grown apple tree has a different variety.

(2) Almost everyone's sense of what apple varieties taste good is distorted. Most of the apples that most of us buy most of the time have been sitting around in cold storage for months. In order to store them for months, they are usually picked too early so that they will ripen off the tree. This a huge issue, because there is an immense difference, for any variety, between a ripe apple just off the tree and an apple picked early and stored.

(2) An excellent example of this is the much-maligned Red Delicious. Discovered by accident, coming into prominence in the 1890s, in the 1940s it became the apple, the favorite of all favorites. The Red Delicious became popular because it was -- in fact, still is -- one of the best sweet-tasting apples. It has a nice aroma, a balanced flavor that involves a nice sweetness without being crazy-sweet or very tart, and at the right time, it is very nicely crisp. It doesn't hurt that it's on the large side and that it spoils relatively slowly. It was the first really good sweet apple that you could transport all over the country and put in grocery stores everywhere. Why, then, is it so despised today? Well, roughly, it's because even it has limits. A Red Delicious apple at its peak is an extraordinarily good apple. But it doesn't stay at its peak long; it relatively quickly becomes merely OK, and then goes into a long, slow decline. So as grocery stores relied more and more on apples stored for a long time before they even reached the shelves, Red Delicious dominated, but at the same time the Red Delicious apples most people were eating were farther and farther down the decline slope. Eventually it was overtaken by Gala and Fuji and Braeburn apples, and then it was all over. You can barely find them anymore.

(3) Lots of people enjoy a good Honeycrisp, to the extent that people often say it is the best apple. It is not, and they are very, very wrong. But it was an apple that was specifically chosen to be marketed for its juiciness; it has larger cells than most apples do.  The relatively recent Cosmic Crisp (a cross between Honeycrisp and Enterprise) is probably the easiest to obtain improvement on it; essentially, it's a Honeycrisp that stays at its peak longer and declines in quality more slowly. It's also much less temperamental than Honeycrisp, which is why it's so easy to obtain -- as a decently sweet apple that lasts well and is easy to grow, the entire apple industry has reasons to market it as widely as possible.

(4) The Gala is the apple that toppled the Red Delicious, and while it's not the tastiest apple, I like it quite a bit, because it's a very good all-around apple. It doesn't excel at anything, but it does moderately well at everything: decent for eating raw, decent for baking, decent for sauce.

(5) The apple that has been near the top of the heap for the longest period of time is the Granny Smith. It was first discovered in the 1860s, and was the first of the great apple varieties, for the same reasons that led to the dominance of Red Delicious much later. Its great advantage is that was tart enough to be a decent baking apple, but unlike many cooking apples, it was sweet enough to eat raw. It's also crisp and has an unusually long shelf-life and -- a not inconsiderable point -- it's extremely easy to tell whether it's ripe. When it's good it's the healthy Granny Smith green; as it proceeds it becomes increasingly yellow. It is the Swiss Army knife of apples; it excels at almost everything you could want an apple to do, and is in many ways my personal favorite. There are other apples in its league -- Esopus Spitzenburg is a good one -- but in general they are all harder to get, precisely because very few apples are able to stay good as long as a Granny Smith.

(6) The Fuji is another popular variety; it makes a decent applesauce, although I don't favor it for much else. I've heard it described as the apple variety for people who like pears, and that seems probably about right.

(7) Apple fashions are unpredictable, but an apple that may be on its way to popularity is the Arkansas Black; a bit on the tart side, but also long-lasting, it was a popular roadside stand apple whose popularity spread by word of mouth before it started becoming available in supermarkets. In a way it's a lot like the once very popular Winesap variety.

(8) I always see Rome apples in the grocery store. Rome is not a very flavorful apple at all; the reason it stays around seems to be that it cooks very well, keeping a nice texture, and cooking brings out more of its apple flavor.

(9) Wickson apples are mostly used for cider, but they have an interesting taste -- they are very tart and very sweet at the same time, so that if you eat a good one raw, it's almost like eating sour apple candy. They are rarely in grocery stores, but cidermakers love them. I know very little about cider apples, really, but it's a cider apple that I would bet is among the very best. The long-enduring champion among cider apple varieties is the Dabinett, which is still popular after over a century, and a lot of ciders are made with it.

(10) I eat a lot of Cripps Pinks these days; they are easy to get, and I like the taste quite a bit. They are almost never sold under their variety name, but under the trademarked name, Pink Lady. It was a cross between Golden Delicious and Lady Williams, and is basically a better version of Golden Delicious, although it doesn't look much like one. It's popular in supermarkets in part because it has a crazily late harvesting season.

What is your favorite apple variety?

Habitude XIV

 Next we must consider the distinction of habitudes, and about this four things are asked. Further, whether many habitudes can be in one power. Second, whether habitudes are distinguished according to objects. Third, whether habitudes are distinguished according to good and bad. Fourth, whether one habitude is constituted from many habitudes.

To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that there are not able to be many habitudes in one power. For with those that are distinguished according to the same thing, one being multiplied, the other is also multiplied. But powers and habitudes are distinguished according to the same thing, namely according to acts and objects. Therefore they are multiplied in similar ways. Therefore there are not able to be many habitudes in one power.

Further, power is a sort of simple impulse [virtus]. But in one simple subject there is not able to be diversity of accidents, because the subject is cause of the accidents, but from one simple thing nothing seems to proceed except one thing. Therefore in one power there is not able to be many habitudes.

Further, just as body is formed through shape, so power is formed through habitude. But one body is not able to be formed all at once by diverse shapes. Therefore neither is one power able to be formed all at once by diverse habitudes. Therefore several habitudes are not able to be all at once in one power.

But contrariwise is that the intellect is a power, in which nonetheless there are habitudes of diverse kinds of knowledge.

I reply that it must be said that, as was said above, habitudes are sorts of dispositions of something existing potentially to something, whether toward nature or to the operation and end of nature. And of those habitudes that are dispositions to nature, it is clearly that there are able to be several in one subject, because the parts of one subject can be taken in diverse ways, according to whose disposition habitudes are named, as, if we take the humors of the parts of the human body, in the way they are disposed according to human nature, there is a habitude or disposition of health, but if we take like parts such as nerves and bones and flesh, in their disposition in ordering to nature, there is strength or weakness, but if we take members such as hands and feet and suchlike, in their disposition of fitness to nature, there is beauty. And thus there are several habitudes or dispositions in the same thing.

But if we speak of habitudes that are dispositions to works, which properly pertain to powers, then there are also can happen to be several habitudes or dispositions in the same thing. The reason for this is that the subject of a habitude is passive power, for active power alone is not subject to any habitude, as is obvious from what is said above. But passive power is compared to the determinate act of one species as matter to form, in that, as matter is determined to one form through one agent, so also passive power by reason of one active object is determined to one act according to species. Thus, just as severalobjects can move one passive power, so one passive power is able to be the subject of diverse acts or completions according to species. But habitudes are sorts of qualities or forms inherent in powers by which power is inclined to determinate acts according to species. Thus to one power several habitudes are able to pertain, just like several acts of different species.

To the first it must therefore be said that, as in natural things diversity of species is according to form, but diversity of genus according to matter, as is said in Metaphys. V, for they are different in genus whose matter is different, so also the diversity of objects according to genus makes for distinction of powers; thus the Philosopher says in Ethic. VI that for things of another genus there are also other compartments of soul. But diversity of objects according to species makes for diversity of acts according to species, and consequently habitudes. Whatever is diverse in genus is also diverse in species, but not vice versa. So too of diverse powers there are diverse species of acts, and diverse habitudes, but it is not needful that diverse habitudes be of diverse powers, but there are able to be several in one. And just as there are genera of genera and species of species, so it can also happen that there are diverse species of habitudes and powers.

To the second it must be said that power, although it is indeed simple according to essence, is nonetheless multiple in impulse [virtute], according as it extends to many acts that differ in species. And thus nothing prohibits there being in one power many habitudes of different species.

To the third it must be said that body is formed through shape as through its proper termination, but habitude is not a termination of power, but is disposition to act as ultimate term. And so there is not able to be several acts all at once in one power, save insofar as one is comprehended under another, just as there cannot be several shapes in one body, save according as one is in the other, like the triangle in the square. For the intellect is not able to understand by many acts all at once. But it can know many things all at once by habitude.

[Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2-1.54.1, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.

Links of Note

 * Gregory B. Sadler, Reading Recommendations About Alasdair MacIntyre's Works

* Pierre Aubenque, Cameron F. Coates, & Khafiz Kermov, The Cosmology of Prudence (PDF)

* Ronald Purser, AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself, at "Current Affairs"

* Aldo Filomeno, Humeans Should Suspend Judgment on the Humean Account of Laws (PDF)

* Henry Oliver, Jane Austen's first biographer, at "The Common Reader"

* Daniel D. De Haan, The Power to Perform Experiments (PDF)

* Tara Isabella Burton, Believe for Your Own Sake, Not for "the West", at "Wisdom of Crowds"; 'memetic Christianity' is a potentially useful term.

* Miguel Garcia Godinez, Institutional Proxy Agency: A We-Mode Approach (PDF)

* Klaus Corcilius, Aristotle's De Motu Animalium, at the SEP

St. Ambrose

Today was the feast of St. Ambrose of Milan, Doctor of the Church. From his work On the Holy Spirit (Book I, Chapter 16, section 184).  

If you seek Jesus, forsake the broken cisterns, for Christ was wont to sit not by a pool but by a well. There that Samaritan woman found Him, she who believed, she who wished to draw water. Although you ought to have come in early morning, nevertheless if you come later, even at the sixth hour, you will find Jesus wearied with His journey. He is weary, but it is through you, because He has long sought you, your unbelief has long wearied Him. Yet He is not offended if you only come, He asks to drink Who is about to give. But He drinks not the water of a stream flowing by, but your salvation; He drinks your good dispositions, He drinks the cup, that is, the Passion which atoned for your sins, that you drinking of His sacred blood might quench the thirst of this world. 

The Achievement of Letting Things Appear

 When we move from the darkness into the light, it becomes possible for us to let many things appear that could not appear in the dark. The presence of light lets us see things like trees and tables, which we can touch but not see when there is no light, and it lets us see things like colors and pictures, which cannot be present at all while we remain in darkness. We are all familiar with light as that which lets such things appear to us. However, there is something besides light, something we can call, metaphorically, another kind of illumination, that is also at work when things appear to us; this is the achievement of letting things appear. It comes about in us, and if it did not take place, going from darkness into light would not do us much good. Only because we are engaged in the achievement of letting things appear do we normally prefer light to darkness, and there are also times when we achieve manifestation better in darkness than in the light.

[Robert Sokolowsi, Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology, University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, IN: 1992) p. 3.]

Music on My Mind

 

Alex Williams (with Gigi Perez), "Eternity".

Habitude XIII

 Intension and remission of habitude plays an important role in the theory of virtue, so it's worthwhile to jump over to some of St. Thomas's discussions of intension and remission of virtue.

Intension of Virtues Generally

In considering whether virtues are all equal, he notes that virtues can be greater than other kinds of virtue by being more closely tied to reason, so that prudence, for instance, is the highest moral virtue. However, he goes on to say, we can also find virtues being greater than other virtues when dealing with the same species of virtue:

And so, according to what was said above, when considering the intensions of habitudes, virtue can be greater and lesser in two ways: in one way, according to itself, in another way, on the part of the participating subject.  Therefore, if it is considered according to itself, its greatness and smallness is directed according to that to which it extends. But whoever has some virtue, such as temperance, has it inasmuch as it extends to all that to which temperance extends. This does not happen with knowledge or productive skill, for not everyone who is grammatical knows all that pertains to the grammatical. And according to this, the Stoics said well, as Simplicius says in the commentary on the categories, that virtue does not admit of more and less, just like knowledge and productive skill, because the nature of virtue consists in a maximum.

But if virtue is considered on the part of the participating subject, virtue can happen to be greater or lesser, either according to diverse times in the same person, or in diverse human beings. Because in reaching the mean of virtue, which is according to right reason, one is better disposed than another, either because of accustomedness, or because of better disposition of nature, or because of more perspicacious judgment of reason, or even because of greater gift of grace.... [ST 2-1.66.1]

 

Intension of the Virtue of Charity

Union with God is by virtue of the infused virtue of charity, so as one 'draws nigh' to God, one's charity must increase in intensity. This cannot be by addition, because then it would be a matter of adding new charities on top of distinct old charities; rather, it increases in essence (i.e., being): the person with the virtue of charity participates charity more and more fully.

The spiritual growth of charity is in a way similar to the growth of the body. But bodily growth in animals and plants is not continuous change, that is, such that if something grows so much in so much time, it is necessary that it change proportionally in each temporal part, as happens in place-change, but through some time nature works by disposing to growth and not actually growing anything, and afterwards produces in effect that to which it had been disposed, actually growing the animal or the part. So also not every act of charity actually grows charity, but every act of charity disposes to the growth of charity, inasmuch as from one act of charity a human being is rendered more prompt to act again according to charity, and, ability increasing, the human being breaks out into more fervent act of love, by which he endeavors to advance in charity, and then charity actually grows. [ST 2-2.24.6]

Charity, however, since it is directed to God has no limit; that is, in itself it can grow indefinitely without ever reaching a maximum, and as it grows it gives us the ability to endure even greater charity.

A New Poem Draft

 O Antiphons

O Wisdom, who from out the mouth Most High
from end to utter end dost wholly reach,
as strongly, sweetly, thou all order ply,
come, ways of prudence to our hearts now teach.

O Lord and war-chief of the Israelites,
who through the fiery bush to Moses seemed
and gave him law on Sinai's holy heights,
come, that by outstreched arm we be redeemed.

O Root of Jesse, of all the people sign,
the kings before thee cease to speak their say;
the Gentiles to thee prayerwise will incline;
come free us now and make no more delay.

O Key of David, Israel's scepter bright,
who opes all locks and shuts what none may ope;
for those who sit in darkness of death's night
come, lead them out from prison unto hope.

O Dawn and brightness of the righteous sun,
who shinest with a clear eternity,
enlighten with thy glory everyone
and those in shade of death now swiftly free.

O King of Gentiles, whom all nations crave,
foundation making Jew and Gentile one,
come, and mortal man from shadow save,
who was formed from clay to be God's blessed son.

O Emmanuel, the bearer of all law,
from whom the Gentiles seek the living word,
their Savior and their King held high in awe,
come save your people, God, O holy Lord.

The Damascene

 Today was the feast of St. Yuhana ibn Sarjun, Doctor of the Church; he is most often known in English as St. John Damascene. He was Syrian (although he may have also had Arabic background) and lived in the Umayyad Caliphate; his family were Christian civil servants serving under the Muslim governorship. He himself became a monk, and in Greek is sometimes called Chrysorrhoas (stream of gold) as a compliment to the quality of his writings. From his Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, chapter 13:

God Who is good and altogether good and more than good, Who is goodness throughout, by reason of the exceeding riches of His goodness did not suffer Himself, that is His nature, only to be good, with no other to participate therein, but because of this He made first the spiritual and heavenly powers: next the visible and sensible universe: next man with his spiritual and sentient nature. All things, therefore, which he made, share in His goodness in respect of their existence. For He Himself is existence to all, since all things that are, are in Him, not only because it was He that brought them out of nothing into being, but because His energy preserves and maintains all that He made: and in special the living creatures. For both in that they exist and in that they enjoy life they share in His goodness. But in truth those of them that have reason have a still greater share in that, both because of what has been already said and also because of the very reason which they possess. For they are somehow more dearly akin to Him, even though He is incomparably higher than they. 

 Man, however, being endowed with reason and free will, received the power of continuous union with God through his own choice, if indeed he should abide in goodness, that is in obedience to his Maker. Since, however, he transgressed the command of his Creator and became liable to death and corruption, the Creator and Maker of our race, because of His bowels of compassion, took on our likeness, becoming man in all things but without sin, and was united to our nature.For since He b estowed on us His own image and His own spirit and we did not keep them safe, He took Himself a share in our poor and weak nature, in order that He might cleanse us and make us incorruptible, and establish us once more as partakers of His divinity.

Habitude XII

 After he discusses the causes of habitudes, St. Thomas goes into the important question of the intension and remission of habitude. The importance of this question cannot be overestimated. In working out intension and remission of habitudes, scholastics tried to clarify the matter by expanding their view to the intension and remission of dispositions generally, and it is out of this that the late medieval scholastics discovered the Mean Speed Theorem, the Calculatores first began applying crude geometrical tools to explore how acceleration works, and the first tentative shifts away from Aristotelian physics began to pick up steam so that the early modern experimental revolution should begin to happen. The topic that particularly precipitated all of this, however, was originally not a physical one but an extremely important one for spiritual life: the increase and decrease of the virtue of charity. Thus it is quite important. It also leads to some relatively technical discussions. So I've decided to do here what I did with the topic of the subject of habitudes: I'll mix commentary and selective translation.

Increase and Decrease of Habitude

The first question that has to be asked, of course, is whether habitude admits of intension and remission. Intension is a kind of increase, and remission a kind of decrease, and we mostly associate increase and decrease with quantity. However, says Aquinas, we transfer the idea to capture that is true about quality: that just as there is a kind of distinguishable completeness that is tracked by quantitative increase, so there is a kind of distinguishable completeness for quality. We can recognize greatness not just of (say) size, but also goodness. The quantitative analogue is exactly that, only an analogue, but the analogy can sometimes be quite tight. This is a point that distinguishes both quality and quantity from substance, for instance. Not all qualities have this feature, however; it is a feature of quality that arises from how the quality relates to other things. As St. Thomas says:

If any form, or anything whatsoever, gets the notion of the species from itself or from something of itself, it has a determinate notion, which is able neither to exceed by more nor to fail by less, and such are hotness and whiteness, and other suchlike qualities, which are not said by ordering to another, and even more so substance, which is being per se. But those which receive their species from something to which they are ordered can be diversified in themselves by more or by less, and nonetheless be the same species, according to the unity of that to which they are ordered, from which they receive their species. [ST 2-1.52.1]

Health, for instance, varies according to more and less, because it is a disposition that concerns something other than itself, and can be related to it in various ways (generally by various excesses and deficiencies) while still being health. If we only called health what was completely healthy, then there would be no increase or decrease of health, by definition; but 'health' would then be the maximum, or the most perfect balance, of something that did admit of more and less. 

This, however, is only one of the ways a disposition can increase or decrease, namely, by the very nature of its form as related to other things. Dispositions can also vary by how their subjects participate that form. If a form consitutes the very species of a thing, then that thing does not have a participation that admits of more and less; this is the case with substantial forms. This is also with quantitative forms or qualitative forms like shapes that are derive very closely from substances and quantities, because they are not just divisible in a way that admits of more and less. Actions that are more associated with actions and passions, however, are 'farther away' from substance and quantity; their subjects may participate them to a greater or lesser degree.

Thus habitudes may increase or decrease (1) in themselves or (2) according to participation by subject.

The Manner of the Increase and Decrease

This increase and decrease, however, that we find in intension and remission of qualities, cannot be by addition (which would effectively make it reducible to quantity. If something is more intensely Q, this is not the same as having more of Q. As Aquinas likes to put it, more and less white is not the same as larger and smaller white. If we consider intension and remission of the quality in itself, any addition or subtraction would actually change the kind of thing we are talking about; we would have a new thing that was not the previous quality. This doesn't rule out there being a kind of addition or subtraction for quality. You can for instance, know more or fewer things just as you can know them more or less well. But this is not guaranteed either; Aquinas points out that bodily habitudes like health, while admitting greater and lesser degree, do not themselves admit of larger and smaller amounts, at least if we're not just using a metaphor.

We've seen, however, that habitudes can be caused by multiplication of acts, and so we can ask if they are increased in some kind of one-to-one way with those acts. Aquinas's answer is interesting:

Because the use of habitudes consists in human willing, as is obvious from what was said above, then as one who has the habitude might not use it, or even act contrarily to it, so also can it happen that the habitude is used according to an act not proportionally corresponding to the intensity of the habitude. Thus if the intension of the act is proportionally equated to the intension of the habitude, or even exceeds it, then each act either increases the habitude or disposes to its increase, so that we may speak of the increase of the habitudes on a similarity to animal increase. For not all food taken in actually increases the animal, as not every drop hollows out a stone, but food being multiplied eventually makes an increase. So also, with multiplication of acts, the habitude grows. But if the intension of the act proportionally falls short of the intension of the habitude, such an act does not dispose to the increase of the habitude, but rather to its decrease. [ST 2-1.52.3]

'Intension' could also be translated as 'intensity'. Thus, for instance, if we have a virtue, let's say generosity, that is of such-and-such intensity, acts of generosity that are less intense than that will eventually reduce the intensity of the generosity. To increase in virtue, or knowledge, or such, the intensity of the acts matters. And much the same is true of remission or decrease, mutatis mutandis.

Corruption of Habitude

Forms perish, or are corrupted, either by their contraries or the corruption of their subjects. Your health can break down either by a sickness being introduced or you dying. In an incorruptible subject, of course, the latter sort of loss of form cannot occur. What this means is that whether or not a habitude can be lost simply depends, in the case of corruption by subject, on the corruptibility of their subject; habitudes depend for their existence on the existence of their subjects.

Corruption by contrary is a somewhat more complicated matter. It of course depends first and foremost on whether the habitude has a contrary. Intelligible species in the agent or potential intellect do not have a contrary, so any intelligible species caused in the latter by the former is incorruptible. Examples of this are first principles, both of the theoretical and of the practical intellect, "which by no oblivion or deception are able to be corrupted" (ST 2-1.53.1). However, habitudes concerned with conclusions do admit of contraries, either because they depend on assumptions that are not necessarily known, or because false reasoning can lead to a different conclusion. So habitudes like knowledge or opinion are corruptible and can be lost. Moral virtues likewise can be lost, as we know all too well, because they presuppose the movement of reason, and so they can be erased, whether through ignorance or the influence of the passions or deliberate choices; fortunately, moral vices can also be lost, for essentially the same reason.

In some cases habitudes can be lost not merely by acts themselves that are contrary, but simply through the cessation of some sustaining act. This occurs when the action is removing some impediment to the habitude, and therefore removing the action results in an external contrary being imposed. This is especially true in the case of both moral virtues and intellectual virtues, which begin to erode if you stop using them. You eventually stop knowing things that you don't actively know; you eventually lose opinions just from not doing anything with them; you eventually stop being honest by no longer doing honest things. How quickly this happens, of course, depends on the opposing forces and the extent of one's exposure to them.

Witching Softness, and Eye-Soothing Sheen

December's Moonlight
by Anne Garton 

Sure it was not remembered, placid moonlight,
When dread December darkly flitted past,
The gloomy fancy -- nought save the stormy night,
With its chill breath and wildly howling blast!
Now on the gaze fair sights are opening fast;
So purely calm, it seems almost a scene
Bestowed from Paradise! The shining queen,
Smiling on courtly stars around her cast,
In stateliest silence moves -- a golden zone
Circling her silver vest. The blue demesne
Is sweetly decked with fabrics, not of stone,
But witching softness, and eye-soothing sheen.
 Its influence lights on dreary plains below,
 For Autumn's parted spells I will not languish now.

Links of Note

 * Daniel D. De Haan, Thomist Classical Theism: Divine Simplicity within Aquinas' Triplex Via Theology (PDF)

* Henry Oliver, The triumph of logical English, at "Works in Progress"

* Daniel Klugman, Cracked Foundations: Pascal's Internal Critique of Descartes's Theory of Knowledge (PDF)

* Miles Hentrup, Hegel's Theory of Rational Proof (PDF)

* Bradley J. Birzer discusses Stephen Lawhead.

* Miguel Garcia Godinez, The Ontology of Social Practices (PDF)

* Nicholas Hune-Brown, Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism's AI Era, at "The Local", on a rising worry about journalistic scams.

* Michael Deigan, Questions Should Have Answers (PDF)

* Flame & Light, Word-Sculpture

* Alex Ding Zhang, Hugo Grotius on the Loose Obligation of Natural Law (PDF)

A Poem Draft and a Poem Re-Draft

 The Engineer

I walk the world with weary blade
that cuts the knots that have no name;
unconquered kingdoms I have saved;
I've sought, though never grasped, the grail.
To know the word that worlds will kill
yet never wield it, is my whim,
of box of trouble, loose the lid,
but never open, thus to win;
and should those problems prison fly
I hunt each one both day and night
in quest that is all front, no side,
with little deeds until I die.
At end no marble marks my grave
save massive monuments I've made
that line the ever-widening ways
of palaces where children play.

Aiming for Love Enduring 

 Even the overwhelming sun shall die,
but not my love; it shall, I swear, endure,
and remain in youth while stars flare out in sigh;
my love shall last, for it is holy, pure.
You scoff? My friend, you see the slightest part;
your equations cannot be stretched so far;
you have no experiments in the ways of the heart,
have never measured love against a star.
Your scoffing is just that, mere scoffing,
bare assertion that no evidence has known,
but if you are right, then at your death-coughing
you will have had a scoff, but be all alone.
But if I am wrong, I yet will live more sane,
and if I am right, I have truly soared above;
for if I am right, my love shall ever remain,
and if I am wrong, I shall have ventured in love.

Tabulated Syllogisms

 We can represent each categorical proposition in a tabular way, as follows:

	X	Y
All X is Y	-1	1
No X is Y	-1	-1
Some X is Y	1	1
Some X is not y	1	-1

Given this, we can represent syllogisms in a similar way.

BARBARA	S	M	P
All M is P	0	-1	1
All S is M	-1	1	0
All S is P	-1	0	1

Notice that the premises add to the conclusion, All S is P. We can do the same for the other First Figure syllogisms:

CELARENT	S	M	P
No M is P	0	-1	-1
All S is M	-1	1	0
All S is P	-1	0	-1

DARII	S	M	P
All M is P	0	-1	1
Some S is M	1	1	0
Some S is P	1	0	1

FERIO	S	M	P
No M is P	0	-1	-1
Some S is M	1	1	0
Some S is not P	1	0	-1

If we look at Second, Third, and Fourth Figure, we find that the C's all have the same pattern as Celarent, showing that they can be directly converted to Celarent in the First Figure. The D's and F's reduce to Darii and Ferio, for the most part; in fact, the only exceptions to this general pattern in the traditional figures are Bramantip/Baralipton/Bamalip (Fourth Figure), Darapti (Third Figure), Felapton (Third Figure), and Fesapo (Fourth Figure). These all have to involve subalternation in some way so as to get particular conclusions from universal premises. If we tabulate the the way we tabulated the First Figure, we find that the premises do not directly add to the conclusion. For instance, this is Bramantip:

BRAMANTIP	S	M	P
All P is M	0	1	-1
All M is S	1	-1	0
Some S is P	1	0	1

The P's do not add. But this is because there is a subalternation step. In Bramantip, this subalternation step is 'Some P is P', which gives us a double-dose of P. Thus:

BRAMANTIP	S	M	P
All P is M	0	1	-1
All M is S	1	-1	0
Some P is P	0	0	2
Some S is P	1	0	1

Bramantip, using 'Some P is P', is the weirdest of the valid syllogisms; Darapti, Felapton, and Fesapo use 'Some M is M' , because they all have -1 for both the M places in the premise, and therefore need something that can cancel out a -2 for M.  The same method will work for subalternated moods that take ordinary syllogisms with universal conclusions that are then subalternated (Barbari, Celaront, Cesaro, etc.), except that in those cases the subalternation can be handled extramodally -- i.e., one way to do them is to reach the conclusion using the standard mood and figure and then add the subalternation premise to the conclusion to get the particular conclusion (for these, the subalternation premise is always 'Some S is S').

The premises adding to the conclusion is a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for validity of syllogism; the tables don't actually track figure (which requires considering order, not just value), so they only identify syllogisms that are invalid purely because of mood. For validity, syllogisms also need to be regular, i.e., universal conclusions have to come from all universal premises, and particular conclusions have to come from premises that have one and only one particular proposition (which may be the subalternation premise).