J.-K. Huysmans, En Route

 Introduction

Opening Passage:

It was during the first week in November, the week inwhich the Octave of All Souls was celebrated. Durtal entered Saint Sulpice at eight o'clock in the evening. He would deliberately come to his church because there was a trained choir, and he could, away from the crowd, take stock of himself in peace. The ugliness of the nave, with its heavy barrel vaulting, would disappear at nightfall, the aisles were often deserted, and its few lamps shed little ligth; you could de-louse your soul here without being seen; you were at home. (p. 27)

Summary:  At the end of Là-bas, Durtal was finishing up his book on Gilles de Ries and Satanism, beginning to feel a bit tired and sick of the lying of the modern age. At the beginning of En Route, he is working on a book about a Blessed Lydwine, having recently become Catholic and not entirely sure why. He enjoys some of art and music -- much of the book is structured by reflection on plainchant -- but he, of course, is an author who runs in artistic circles and finds the modern Catholic taste in these to be atrocious. His research has led him to read widely in mystical theology; he likes some of the more impassioned mystical saints, although he finds much of it unappealing. The reading has led him to a spiritual director he likes, Abbé Gévresin, who also has an interest in mystical theology. Gévresin finds that Durtal is having difficulty bringing himself to take communion, and arranges for him to visit the monastery of La Trappe and spend a week or so among the Trappist monks. He explores the monastery, the grounds, the history, the spirituality, and then takes communion and returns to Paris.

This is very much a character-focused novel; in terms of external action, very little occurs. But it would be an error to say that there is no plot. The plot is instead all internal, and Durtal's mind throughout all this is very active indeed. He is in a state of perplexity, of wavering, of repeated temptations, which he must struggle to overcome. The novel has a clear plot-climax, in Part II, Chapter V, which is brilliantly handled; this climax is an entirely internal struggle, the last great temptation that Durtal must overcome. On the outside, very little happens; on the inside, a life is changed forever.

As a sidenote, it was somewhat amusing as a historical matter to see a Catholic work written in the very early days (the 1890s) of what later would become sarcastically known as the Liturgy Wars, with Durtal fuming about people trying to replace traditional plainchant with contemporary dance tunes and the parish priests who allow such atrocious bad taste and kitsch in their churches. One of the things he likes about La Trappe, in fact, is that they still do ordinary plainchant, completely unpretentiously, which ironically is far more appealing to his sophisticated and modern artistic tastes than the would-be modern material, which he finds grating and distracting. 

This was much more enjoyable to read than Là-bas. Part of this is that the material is a bit less off-putting, but part of it is that Huysmans really excels himself in some of the psychological and artistic description here. Parts of the book are just extraordinarily beautiful. The book caused a scandal when it came out, because of Durtal's sexual temptations, but I have to say (and it is a sign of our times) that, while frank, they were relatively tame compared to what would be even common fare today.

Favorite Passage:

The trees were rustling, trembling, in a whisper of prayer, as if bowing before Christ, who was no longer writing his painful arms in the mirror of the pool, but embracing these waters, laying them out before him, blessing them.

And the pool itself was different; its inky waters were filling with monastic visions, of white habits left there by the passing reflections of clouds, and the swan was splashing them amid the lapping sunlight, making great circles of oil ripple before it as it swam.

One might have said these waves were gilded by the oil of catechumens and the holy chrism the Church consecrates on the Saturday of Holy Week; and above them the heavenly sky opened its tabernacle of clouds, out of which came a bright sun like a monstrance of molten gold, like a Blessed Sacrament of flames.

It was a Benediction of nature, a genuflection of trees and flowers, singing in the wind, perfuming with their incense the sacred bread, which was gleaming on high in the blazing pyx of the star. (p. 303)

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

*************

J.-K. Huysmans, En Route, Brendan King, tr., Dedalus (Sawtry, UK: 2024).

Dashed Off XXIX

This ends the notebook that was completed toward the end of July 2024.

******

 The Creed is not a menu; the parts inter-relate.

According to legend, St Endelienta (daughter of King Brychan & sister of St. Nectan & St. Dilas) was King Arthur's goddaughter; while a hermit in Trentinney, she lived on the milk of a cow, which was killed by the Lord of Trentinney when the cow stryed onto his land. King Arthur, learning of this, sent his men to kill Lord Trentinney, but Endelienta restored him back to life.

Catholic doctrine gives new light even to self-evident truths.

"Equality, liberty, and fraternity are principles which mutually suppose each other, and are resolved one in the other, as the human, the political, and the domestic solidarities are dogmas which are resolved in and mutually suppose each other." Donoso Cortes

resemblance, contiguity, and causation as elements in precedent

Philosophical skepticisms are rarely as necessary as skeptics like to pretend.

the sense of soical order as a moral endowment

We only tie sets of actions to traffic lights because they are already conceptualized as traffic lights. Nobody stops on a red light that is not already recognized as the red of a traffic light.

No punishment can be ascribed to an action without a classification that makes the action discernible in a way relevant to the punishment.

The actions associated with institutional facts are not stable and predefined. We are sometimes incentivized to stop at borders and sometimes not, sometimes incentivized to use currency as legal tender and sometimes not, etc., through all the possible actions in myriad complicated ways.

What is defined as 'naturalistic' is often due more to cultural conventions in interpretations of natural things than to what is natural.

No human being is intelligent enough always to outsmart stupidity; stupidity is more constant than human intelligence can ever be.

The sacrament of reconciliation can vary in the ways that confession and satisfaction can.

"We cannot so abstract from Christianity its specific character, as to leave the general idea of religion behind." Nevin

Love is more perfect than duty.

We are none of us writers of our own story, which depends in great measure on an entire universe other than ourselves.

identity of indiscernibles as a principle of classification

Every human being is a germinal philosopher and every Christian a germinal theologian.

Revelation reverberates.

the categories as ways things can contribute to composition and mutability

The possibility of the Incarnation is implicit in the divine idea of humanity.

Sullivan (The Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia)
The Arian Syllogism:
(1) The Word is the subject of the human operations and passions of Christ.
(2) What is predicated of the Word must be predicated of him in his divine nature (kata physin).
Therefore (C) The human operations and passions of Christ are predicated of the divine nature (kata physin).
-- According to Sullivan, Athanasius and the Alexandrines rejected the minor (2); the Antiochenes rejected the major (1).

Phil 2:13: For God is the agent (energon) in you, both the willing and the acting (energein) according to purpose.

Acting for a reason is definitely distinguishable from doing what would make sense.

Every deontic logic can be given a design interpretation.

the intellect as agent intelligibility

Rational good is not unitary but a hierarchy.

Reason itself requires that we choose reason not only for reason's sake but for truth, goodness, beauty, etc.

General principles of classification
(1) contrastive identity: Everything is what it is and is not some other thing.
(2) indiscernibility of identicals: What is the same in what it is, is to that extent classifiable as the same.
(3) identity of indiscernibles: What is classifiable as the same is to that extent the same in what it is.
(4) sufficient reason: What is classifiable as the same or different is classifiable as such for a reason.

Citizenship implies powers of voluntary association.

Factional politics is a dangerous drug.

Conflict is part of how human beings organize.

The reality of the world cannot be bracketed off from the world itself without changing the phenomenon of the world. (Conrad-Martius)

Phenomenology can only get results relative to a reduction.

Wormelow Tump -- burial place according to legend of Arthur's son Amr.

Laws of nature explain as final causes.

Whether or not you can patch together different parts of possible worlds depends on teh possible worlds and the patches.
--> Lewis's argument form recombination is entirely in terms of objects; but possible worlds are not bare collections of objects but propositionally constructed. It is consistency of propositions, not objects of terms, that fundamentally matters.

Every civil society incorporates residues of previous societies.

Commentarial traditions are always a slow process of abstraction. Positions are analogized and then generalized, arguments put into a more general structure of objection and reply, ideas detached and used in new ways, distinctions made so that terms may be defined more precisely and in ways going beyond that which receives comment.

being as contrasted with
(a) not being
(b) being other
(c) appearing to be
(d) failing to be
(e) being like

Every fine art draws out aspects of every other fine art.

energy as mass & momentum with respect to field of effect

Memorialism tends to attribute to the Eucharist the effects of Gospel-reading and preaching.

We do not start with a distinction between natural and supernatural and find revelation appropriate to each; we start with revelation and find a distinction we crudely characterize by 'natural' vs 'supernatural'.

Imitating Christ is not being nice but giving one's body and pouring out one's blood.

Lawmaking is natural to human beings in much teh same way group-forming is.

Doubting does have some of the structure of Cartesianism; but other cognitive acts have other structures.

Creation is a foundational act in ontic, moral, jural, and sacral orders.

Civil society regulates the modalities of rights by customary law, by civil etiquette, by delegation, by negotiation, and by cooperative sanction.

incorporation of rights under due process vs under privileges or immunities (nnote that due process applies to persons and privilieges & immunities to citizens)

The Ninth Amendment direclty implies that there are rights of the people not dependent on the Constitution.

Gabriel as icon of the Incarnation

Christ's human intellect always had the light of glory, and in certain events -- Baptism, Transfiguration, Ascension -- the disciples were granted a foretaste, a slight glimpse, of what Christ always knew and what we shall always know in the order to come.

"But in a being that is absolutely without any plurality, there cannot be excellence, for there can be no such thing as consent or agreement." Jonathan Edwards

Reason inevitably asks how the doctrine of the Trinity can be true, but only fools think reason asks questions in order to avoid seeking answers.

Creation is a discursive space for glory.

Human practice by its very nature produces sufficient kinds or enough-kinds, e.g., straight enough, sufficiently like an animal, etc. What is more, this applies to scientific practice, as well -- frictionless enough, etc.

problems may be ill-posed
(a) as lacking what is required for any solution to be identified (indeterminacy)
(b) as having a surfeit of solutions
(c) as having a surplus of solutions

In popular sovereignty, the juridical person of the People is by legal fiction both lord and subject.

'Business is business', 'Rules are rules', etc., are classificatory statements, not bare identities, and their pragmatic implicatures arise from this classificatory aspect.

Bullying does not create dominance hierarchies; the former is a disruption of social order, the latter a structure of social order.

"The road to norms begins with pride (or with discontent, if something has gone wrong) in craftsmanship; caring about your work, perhaps partly for instrumental reasons, but importantly for intrinsic reasons as well." Sterelny

Hume's account of personal identity is in effect a juridical account of personal identity, and he explicitly puts aspects of it in juridical terms.

No autonomy rights can be inalienable because no one can guarantee taht they will never be in a situation in which they will need others to make decissinos for them -- as children, as elderly, as ill, in an emergency, etc.

Inference to the best explanation has the structure of defeasible disjunctive syllogism; the 'best' indicates that it has to be comparative, eliminating other explanations as (relatively) defective compared to what is concluded to be the best.

People do not lose their value just because they are dead.

Moral law requires a view of persons such that they can be of boundless worth (dignity) --> postulates of freedom, immortality, and God

Virtues determine by reason appropriate choices so as to avoid extremes arisign from the unpleasant and the pleasant.

qualia as residue of classification

rites as artificial habitudes

explanations of occurrences, existences, and endurances

What Goodman's Paradox shows is that every enumerative induction presupposes a classification, not merely incidentally, but in a load-bearing way.

Israel as corporate prophet of God (cp Torrance on mediation)

technobabble as magic (wizard-stuff for science fiction)

In salvation, participation is the ground of imputation.

"Christianity as the absolute religion, *must* in the nature of the case, take up into itself, and exhibit in a perfect form, the fragments and rudiments of truth contained in all relative religions. It is not a doctrine but a divine *fact*, into which all previous religious tendencies and developments are ultimately gathered as their proper end." Nevin

The fullness of justice requires a society adequate to it.

Shannon entropy & spread of probability distribution

Discreteness in QM is behavior like a harmonic oscillator.

A term is an organization of a field of meaning.

In moral matters, human beings have a temptation to dewll on fantasies rather than realities; prudence is necessary to prevent this from corrupting everything else.

Much of human creativity is founded on our ability to see ourselves and others as persons, or in light of persons.

The feeling of obligation is often an offshoot of the feeling of caring.

The amount of boredom in seems sometimes to expand to match the amount of entertainment.

"Social scientists follow their creator, because social science was created by capitalist society." George Grant
"When leisure is open to all, then education must be opened to all."

the five administrative offices of a lord: seneschal, chamberlain, butler, marshal, cupbearer

Consequences are not unified and simple things, but have many facets; the consequences of an action look different from the perspective of our sympathy and sense of compassion than they do from the perspective of our sense of responsibility to others, or our sense of honor and shame, or our sense of humor.

We can talk about finding our meaning in life because life as we know it is essentially probationary.

Four things drive toward civil governance: defect of lordship; religion; trade; discord among powerful families. (These all seem to do so by introducing or strengthening balanced division of powers.)

Arguments from evil are generally arguments from obscurity.

Because positive law is an artifact, it is essentially a part of a broader deontic framework just like every other artifact.

What Hart treats as 'contingent connnection' between law and morality is often merely the contingency of the particular laws themselves, not of their relation to morality as such.

Law is intrinsically a means and therefore ordered to fundamental ends; however, law cannot by its nature be ordered to just any arbitrary end.

Positive law is an externalization of rational principles into contingent circumstances.

All positive legislation has an active and a passive component, the active being contributed by lawmakers and the passive being those to whom it applies (officials, subjects, citizens); all positive legislation is thus a sort of co-legislation. The people are, so to speak, a silent partner.

All laws are put forward as reasons.

"Thus, then, we have three senses in which the expression 'This *is*' might be employed. First, it may imply identity secondly, it may imply that kind of representation which derives its force merely from the effect produced upon the spectator or receiver; thirdly, it may imply that kind of representation which is dependent only upon the intention of the author or giver." R. Wilberforce

All laws of nature have an implicit reference to totality of consistently interacting things.

Deontic seriality is the principle that no possible world is a deontic 'dead end' (Melissa Fusco) -- for any possible world, there is a deontically ideal world for it (which may be itself); no matter how non-ideal the world, a deontic world can be seen from it. (Shift reflexivity is that every deontically ideal world is deontically ideal for itself.)

People deny that there is a human nature in order to avoid responsibility for it.

The key issue in any simulation is relevant simplification, how to ignore things yet still have something relevant.

Presence is a kind of loose unity of being.

update as shifting reference state to another possible world

modus ponens as a product of classification relations (genus, species)

possibilities internal to a history (e.g., even in a deterministic history, if a light switch is sometimes on or sometimes off, both are possibilities for that switch in the history) & possibilities external to a history (if it takes more than one possible history to describe the light switch)
-- note that this is a generalization of diachronic vs synchronic

We often tame the unruliness of figurative language communally, by commonly using figurative expressions in particular ways that then serve as common reference points.

Faced with contradictions, we resolve the matter by rejection of one and acceptance of teh other so that the resolution is:
(a) wholly resolved, wholly secure: by proof
(b) wholly resolved, partly secure: by probable inference
(c) partly resolved, partly secure: by rhetorical persuasion
(d) partly resolved, insecure: by plausible representation.

history of philosophy -> strongly recurrent things -> 'perennial questions'

"There are two general ways of beginning the study of philosophy. One is by chance and the other is by following someone's advice." Ralph McInerny

Philosophical reasoning regularly draws on the testimony of the skilled.

Contradictions cannot be done, simpliciter -- they are not agibile. But God can do things we might think are contradictory because we did not see beforehand a subtle distinction.

Habitude VII

The next questions all depend crucially on two things that have been established about habitudes:

(1) They specify possible actions out of multiple possible actions.

(2) They belong to something only insofar as it is potential in some way.

 Can the intellect have habitudes?

It is clear that there are habitudes associated with the intellect, and this is assumed by St. Thomas's argument, but the question is whether the intellect itself has habitudes. A significant position that St. Thomas wants consistently to argue against is the position that held that we all have one intellect; if you hold this position, it's obvious that intellect-associated habitudes like knowledge vary from person to person, so they would have to be in the sensitive powers. To this Aquinas responds:

But this position, first of all, is against the intention of Aristotle, for it is manifest that sensitive powers are not rational by essence but only by participation, as is said in Ethic. I. And the Philosopher puts intellectual virtues, which are wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, in that which is rational by essence. Thus they are not in sensible powers but in the intellect itself. He also explicitly says, in De Anima III, that the possible intellect when it it made singular, that is, when it is reduced into the act of singulars by intelligible species, then comes to be according to act in the same way that a knower is said to be actual, which indeed happens when someone is able to work through himself, to wit, by considering; and even then it is in some way potential, but not as it was before learning and discovering. Therefore the possible intellect itself is that in which there is a habitude of knowledge by which it can consider even when it does not consider.

And second, this position is against the truth of the thing. For just as the power belongs to that which the working does, so too the habitude belongs to that which the working does. But to understand and to consider is an act proper to the intellect. Therefore the habitude by which one considers is properly in the intellect itself. (ST 2-1.50.4)

A few points are worth noting here.

(1) The first argument, from the mind of Aristotle, especially occurring immediately after the discussion on sensitive powers, indicates that Aquinas does not intend his position on habitudes in the sensitive powers to be a substantive change from Aristotle.

(2) Both arguments here also establish that the intellect is a free power; that is, in and of itself, it is capable of multiple possibilities, since this is a requirement for having a habitude non-derivatively and in the most proper sense.

(3) They both, of course, also imply that the human intellect, contrary to Aquinas's opponents, is not shared but individual.

(4) It follows from this position that habitudes belong to the potential intellect (because it can in some way be potential) and not the agent intellect.

Can the will have habitudes?

I reply that it must be said that every power that can be in diverse ways ordered to acting needs a habitude by which it can be well disposed to its act. But the will, since it is a rational power, can be in diverse ways ordered to acting. And thus it is fitting to put in the will some habitude by which it is well disposed to its act. It is also apparent from the very notion of habitude that it is principally ordered to the will, in that habitude is something one uses when one wills, as said above. (ST 2-1.50.5)

As St. Thomas notes in a reply to an objection (ad 2), this is because the will is more like the potential intellect than the agent intellect, in being both mover and moved. That is to say, the will, while not active, is not a purely active power, but involves a sort of potentiality by its nature.

Can angels have habitudes?

Angels, of course, differ from us in not being physical, so asking whether angels can have habitudes is not mere curiosity about angels, but a way of asking the question of whether having habitudes, even in the intellect and will, depends on the body, or on being physical or material in some way. Do we have habitudes only because we have bodies, so that habitudes are primarily concerned with bodily life? Aquinas holds that what matters for habitudes is not materiality but potentiality, and since angels are not pure act like God, they can have habitudes. From this, of course, it follows that not all habitudes are concerned with corporeal life.

However, with respect to this habitude, angelic intellect has itself differently from human intellect. For human intellect, because it is lowest in the intellectual order, is potential with respect to all intelligibles, just as prime matter with respect to all sensible forms, and therefore it needs some habitude to all understanding. But angelic intellect does not have itself as pure potential in the genus of intelligibles, but as a sort of act, although not as pure act (which is God's alone) but with mixture of some potential, and having less of potentiality the higher it is. (ST 2-1.50.6)

Of the kinds of habitude, the angels do not need habitudes with respect to nature, because they are not material, although it seems that they can have them, but they can have habitudes with respect to operation, and indeed need such habitudes to be united with God (a way of acting well), "by which they are conformed to God." (It follows from this, of course, that it is in principle possible for us also to have such godly habitudes, which will play a significant role in Aquinas's theology of grace.)

The parts that are mutually disposed by angelic habitudes are not physical parts, of course, but intelligible objects and volitional ends.

More Mighty than the Hosts of Mortal Kings

 Beethoven
by Maurice Baring

More mighty than the hosts of mortal kings,
I hear the legions gathering to their goal;
The tramping millions drifting from one pole,
The march, the counter-march, the flank that swings.
I hear the beating of tremendous wings,
The shock of battle and the drums that roll;
And far away the solemn belfries toll,
And in the field the careless shepherd sings. 

There is an end unto the longest day.
The echoes of the fighting die away.
The evening breathes a benediction mild.
The sunset fades. There is no need to weep,
For night has come, and with the night is sleep,
And now the fiercest foes are reconciled.

Habitude VI

 Habitude is qualitative ordering of the nature of some subject either well or badly to some act out of several possibles, through mutually disposing several things. As a quality, it requires a subject, and therefore Aquinas considers a number of questions concerned with the kind of subject for which habitude is an appropriate quality; since accidents are defined in relation to the substances that can have them, doing this clarifies several aspects of the definition. Rather than translate the whole question, as I did for the defining questions, I will make some comments with a few translations of select passages.

Can bodies have habitudes?

Aquinas argues that it depends. Habitudes dispose either to form or to operation. Habitudes always need to distinguish out some act out of several possibilities; bodies on their own are only determined to one operation, so bodies on their own develop no habitudes toward operations. However, habitudes to operation in the soul can be in a body secondarily, "inasmuch as the body is disposed and enabled to devote itself readily to the workings of the soul" (ST 2-1.50.1).

If, however, we speak of the disposition of the subject to form, then habitual disposition can be in body. And in this way health and beauty, and suchlike, are called habitual dispositions. But they do not completely have the notion of habitudes, because their causes are by their nature easily transformable.

In the reply to the second objection he further clarifies this by suggesting that health and beauty are habitudes comparatively -- they are 'difficult to change' relative to most things we consider dispositions -- but habitudes in the soul, like knowledge and virtue, are 'difficult to change' simply. I take it that the point is that bodily habitudes have a greater measure of dependency on things other than themselves than habitudes of the soul; that is, the difficult-to-change and the easy-to-change is a measure of relative independence.

In what way do souls have habitudes?

The soul does not naturally have a habitude to nature, because that would require something to which it is further disposed; this contrasts with the body, which has a habitude-to-nature with respect to the soul.  However, importantly, this also means that under the right conditions, the soul can have a habitude to a higher nature than itself; this can occur by divine grace, for instance, which gives us a habitude to the divine nature. In this way, the habitude takes as its subject the essence of the soul.

The usual way the soul has habitudes is by having habitudes to operations, which are themselves based on powers or capabilities. In this way, the habitude takes as its subject the powers of the soul.

Whether nutritive or sensitive powers of the soul can have habitudes?

Nutritive and sensitive powers are not in and of themselves capable of multiple possibilities because they "work from natural stimulation" (ST 2-1.50.3), ex instinctu naturae. Therefore, simply considered in themselves they do not have habitudes. However, rational powers are capable of multiple possibilities, so we can have habitudes in other powers of the soul insofar as they "work from command of reason".

On the basis of this, Aquinas concludes (ST 2-1.50.3 ad 1) that nutritive powers, which do not obey the command of reason, have no habitudes, but sensitive powers can obey the command of reason, and therefore can have habitudes. This is certainly true of human senstive powers, which are ordered naturally to rational powers; but what about the sensitive powers of animals other than human beings?

To the second it must be said that sensitive powers in brute animals do not work from the command of reason, but if brute animals are left to themselves, they work from natural stimulation, and thus in brute animals there are not any habitudes ordered to workings. There are nevertheless some dispositions in them ordered to nature, such as health and beauty. But because brute animals are through a sort of custom disposed by human reason to some working or another, in this way in brute animals habitude can in a certain way be put; thus Augustine says in the book of eighty-three questions, that we see the most savage beasts being restrained from that in which they have the greatest pleasures by fear of pain, and when this turns into custom for them, we call them tamed and gentled. However, the notion of habitude is incomplete as to voluntary use, because they do not have lordship of using or non-using, which it seems pertains to the notion of habitude. And therefore, properly speaking, in them there cannot be habitudes. (ST 2-1.50.3 ad 2)

'Use' is a technical term for St. Thomas; it is a particular act of will, the application of a thing to an operation; we are doing it when we apply a horse to riding or a stick to hitting by deliberately selecting this end for it. In doing this, our will is acting as a prime mover. In ST 2-1.16.2, he had concluded (also in agreement with Augustine in the Eighty-Three Questions) that it is an act exclusive to rational animals. At no point so far has he actually connected habitude and volitional acts of use; it comes out of left field here, but I think his idea is that properly speaking the brute animal gets the quasi-habitude, or habitude in a loose sense, that we call 'tameness', through use by a human will, and therefore the selection out of multiple possibilities is actually extrinsic to the disposition here.

This is a point on which St. Thomas seems very much to be deviating from Aristotle; but, Aristotle's remarks being somewhat scattered, it's difficult to say how far. I think one can argue that he is not so much differing as to substance as making a terminological adjustment, so that habitude in a strict sense is more closely connected to intellect and will; trained animals have habitudes in an extended sense by their connection to intellect and will, which in their case is outside the actual disposition. This raises a few questions that are not an issue in Aristotle's somewhat looser terminology, such as those with tool-use in other animals. I suspect St. Thomas would give the same answer to such questions that he gave in 2-1.16.2 about beasts using their members, that they do this from natural stimulation (or instinct; the Latin instinctus is not as narrow as the English 'instinct'), and thus not from use in the proper sense. It is very clear that we need to distinguish rational habitudes from other kinds; rational habitudes on every point of the definition of habitude fit the definition more 'tightly' than other habitudes do. But it's at least arguable that we should see Aristotle's looser sense of habitude as a sort of genus, in which they can differ in precisely how the multiple possibilities are involved, and Aquinas as concerned with the primary species of that genus, those that have volitional use as part of how we understand the multiple possibilities. 

While Aquinas flatly denies habitude in nutritive powers, the allowance of a habitude-in-a-broad-sense in the case of tame animals also raises the question of whether there might not be possible something similar in nutritive powers in plants (through horticulture) or in animals (through veterinary medicine).

These sorts of questions arise, I think, from the fact that St. Thomas does not give extensive explanations for some of his reasons, so there are unstated gaps. My guess is also that St. Thomas that, since in context he is building up to a discussion of virtues, the most proper habitudes, that he is really just thinking about virtue in these discussions, and thus not fully following through on the lesser questions of how this relates to the various roles dispositional qualities take in explaining animal behavior.

Intellect and will are in any case the primary and most proper subjects for habitudes, and thus should be kept for their own discussions.

A New Poem Draft

 Holy

the womb
and the tomb
is holy

and holy
the battle-field
of sorrow

the one alone
on the throne
is holy

and holy
rising sun
in the morrow

our deepest fear
drawing near
is holy

and holy
is the hope
beyond merit

the church-light
at midnight
is holy

and holy
the heaven
we inherit

Links of Note

 * Matt Whiteley, His Reason is Love, on Julian of Norwich, at "This Isle is Full of Noises"

* Daniel D. De Haan, Freeing the Will from Neurophilosophy: Voluntary Action in Thomas Aquians and Libet-Style Experiments (PDF)

* The Medieval Purse, at "Medieval Histories"

* Dean Zimmerman, The Metaphysics of Divine Presence and the Appropriateness of Worship (PDF)

* Kitten, College kids can't do math, either, at "Adorable and Harmless"

* Aaron Wells, Arguments for the Continuity of Matter in Kant and Du Chatelet (PDF)

* Amelia McKee, Albert the Great in a Gothic Painting: Teacher, Preacher, and Saint, at "Art for the Liturgical Year"

* Jordan MacKenzie, Just humour me: humour, humourlessness, and mutual recognition (PDF)

* Flame & Light, Speech Acts and Fictions II: The Fictive Use of Language, on Richard Gale's speech act theory of fiction

* Giulia Piredda, What is an affective artifact? A further development in situated affectivity (PDF)

* Gregory B. Sadler, Five States of Nature in Hobbes' Leviathan

* Miguel Garcia-Godinez, Easy Social Ontology (PDF)

Morning and Evening

 Now the commemoration of the passion that takes place daily on the altar in the offering of this sacrifice is signified by the perpetual sacrifice that was made at morning and evening. In the morning for the grace of strength, since in this life we require it in the morning that we may merit, but in the evening in dangerous weakness, since then we need the sacrament for viaticum. Both of these are spoken of in Psalm 141.2, "Let my prayer be directed as" -- supply "morning" -- "incense in your sight; the lifting up of my hand" -- supply "in the commendation of [my] soul" -- "as the evening sacrifice." [Eccl 11.6] "In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening let not your hand cease; for you know not which may rather spring up, this or that: and if both together, it shall be better."

[Albert the Great, On the Body of the Lord, Surmanski, tr., The Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC: 2017.]

Habitude V

 To the fourth one proceeds thus.  It seems that it is not necessary that there be habitudes. For habitude is that by which something is disposed well or badly to something, as was said. But something is disposed well or badly by its form, for something is good according to its form, as also being. Therefore it is not a necessity that there is habitude.

Further, habitude involves order to act. But power sufficiently involves principle of act, for even natural powers without habitudes are principles for act. Therefore it is not necessary that there be habitude.

Further, just as power has itself toward good and bad, so also habitude, and just as power does not always act, so neither does habitude. Powers existing, therefore, it is superfluous that there be habitude.

But contrariwise is that habitudes are sorts of completions, as is said in Phys. VII, but completion is maximally necessary for a thing, because it has the notion of an end. Therefore it is necessary that there be habitude.

I reply that it must be said that, just as it was said above, that habitude involves a sort of disposition in order to the nature of a thing, and to its operation or end, according to which something is disposed well or badly to it. But to this, that something needs to be disposed to another, three things are required. 

(1) First, that what is disposed be other than that to which it is disposed, and thus that it have itself to it as potential to actual. Thus if there is something whose nature is not composed of potential and actual, and whose substance is its working, so that it is for itself, then habitude or disposition has no place, as is clear with God. 

(2) Second, it is required that what is potential to another is determined in many ways and to diverse things. Thus if something is potential to another, but in such a way that it is not potential except to the same thing, then disposition and habitude have no place, because such subject from its nature has due having [habitudinem] to such act. Thus if heavenly body is composed from matter and form, then because that matter is not potential to another form, as was said in the first place, then disposition or habitude to form, or even to working, has no place there, because the nature of heavenly body is not potential except to one determinate change. 

(3) Third, it is required that several things, which are able to be commensurated in diverse ways, concur to disposing the subject to one of the things to which it is disposed, so that it is disposed well or badly to form or to working. Thus the simple qualities of the elements, which concur [conveniunt] in one determinate way to the natures of the elements, we do not call dispositions or habitudes, but simple qualities; but we call dispositions or habitudes health, or beauty, or suchlike, which involve a sort of commensuration of several things that can be commensurated in diverse ways. Because of this, the Philosopher says in Metaphys. V, that habitude is disposition, and disposition is order of what has parts either according to place or according to power or according to species; as was said above. 

Therefore because there are many beings to whose natures and workings it is necessary for several things to concur that can be commensurated in diverse ways, it is therefore necessary that there be habitudes.

Therefore to the first it must be said that the nature of a thing is completed by form, but it is necessary that in order to the form the subject be disposed by some disposition. But the form itself is further ordered to working, which is either an end or a way to an end. And if a form has only one determinate such working, no other disposition is required for the working, beyond the form itself. But if it is a form of such kind that it can work in diverse ways, as is a soul, it must be disposed to its workings by some habitudes.

To the second it must be said that power sometimes has itself toward many things, and then it must be determined by something other; but if there is some power that does not have itself toward many things, it does not need a determining habitude, as was said. And because of this natural forces do not enact their workings by way of some habitudes, because according to themselves they are determinate to one.

To the third it must be said that it is not the same habitude that has itself toward good and bad, as will be clear below, but the same power has itself toward good and bad. And therefore habitudes are necessary so that the powers may be determined to good.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.49.4, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

Thus the definition of habitude that we have at this point is something like, Habitude is an acquired quality ordering the nature of some subject (either directly or by way of some power) either well or badly to some specific act (either form or operation) by mutually disposing several things to one out of several possibilities. In this definition, accidental quality involving order to act, seems to be the primarily formal cause; the act seems the final cause; the quasi-material cause seems to be the several things disposed; and the quasi-efficient cause the subject (as the principle of the accidental quality). But there are several ambiguities and thus parts that are still unclear. Note for instance, that this argument tells us that the following things don't need habitudes:

(a) simple things, like God
(b) things determinate to one action, like celestial bodies
(c) things where action does not arise from several mutually adjustable things, like natural forces or simple elemental qualities

But it's not clear that this is exhaustive, and there are several other questions Aquinas will have to answer to clarify the matter. Angels, for instance, are simple, but are they simple enough? (Aquinas will argue that they are not; angels also require habitudes, although in a different way than we do.) Beasts and plants can be classed as 'determinate to one' or not 'determinate to one', depending on how strictly we take that. Do they have habitudes? (This is a more complicated question; very briefly, Aquinas will say that plants don't, and beasts only incompletely sometimes, if we are talking about habitude in strict sense.) And what about cases, like the intellect, the will, or, for that matter, angels again, in which we don't have parts in the ordinary sense? (Aquinas will argue that integral parts are not necessary; potential parts are sufficient.)

Albertus Magnus

 Today is the feast of St. Albert the Great, Doctor of the Church. From the De domini corpori, on the Eucharist:

That it is nothing but grace is shown by the name, because it is and is named the Eucharist, which means "good grace". Although we receive grace in all the sacraments, there is in this sacrament the whole of grace, which we see, touch, and taste. Thus Zechariah 4.7 says about this sacrament, "And he will give equal grace to its grace." Whatever graces are scattered to be gathered in all the [other] sacraments and virtues, the whole is found here together in one grace. This is signified by the omer, which was the measure of the manna, which was sufficient for each one. [Exodus 16.16-17] 

 For the measure which is sufficient for man's salvation can only be that which contains the grace in which the whole Christ is contained.... 

 [Albert the Great, On the Body of the Lord, Surmanski, OP, tr., CUA Press (Washington, DC: 2017) pp. 31-32.]

Beautiful Words

  The rhetorician ornaments [his speech] with the vox significativa, as when he says “April” and “May”, which are more beautiful words than when one says “October” and “November”, because they signify flowers and leaves, and the song of birds, and seasonal renewal and regeneration, whereas this is not true of “October” and “November”.

[Ramon Llull, from the Ars generalis ultima, quoted in Anthony Bonner, The Art and Logic of Ramon Llull, Brill (Boston: 2007) p. 200.]

Dashed Off XXVIII

 The spirituality and immortality of the soul establish that the state cannot be the source or fount of the most fundamental rights, and that it is illegitimate to subordinate the person entirely to the ends of the state.

natural rights of man -> God
inalienable rights of man -> God
sacred rights of man -> God

People do not just want a pleasant life, they want a pleasant life that they in some way deserve.

Dicey effectively makes parliamentary sovereignty to be the total subordination of every tribunal to Parliament when the latter acts formally as such.

No legal system in existence has a single well-defined 'rule of recognition'; recognition may not be regular or explicit; where there is any rule of recognition, it is more like a family of rules in complicated and loose relationships; there is never completely unified agreement about them; senior officials are usually operating in ways that suggest analogy and overlap rather than shared agreement.

A legal system, like a living thing, will eventually expel any purported law that has insufficient analogy or means of integration with the rest of itself.

Citizens are the primary enforcers of law, enforcing them on themselves and to a lesser extent on those around them.

Volitional differences are never overcome by the clash of opinions or any similar kind of friction.

our body as physically existing, as continually sensed, as attentively sensed, as continually imagined, as attentively imagined

our body as memory device -- we don't have to continually recollect our body's posture and position (e.g.) but often use these to remind ourselves of what we are doing -- if I get distracted, I can come back and say, "OK, why did I pick up this pen?"

Schaff on the Petrine Confession (HAC pp. 350-355) is quite good. What he chiefly misses from a Catholic perspective is that Christ's promise indicates that 'foundation' is not a temporal origin (indeed, as we would also gather from the most reasonable interpretation of the word itself, and thepermanent title given to Peter, so that Simon becomes Simon Rock just as Jesus is Jesus Anointed).
He is also good on Peter in Rome (HAC pp. 362-377), a topic on which he attempts to develop an evidence-guided position between extreme Protestant and extreme Catholic views; it is an imperfect solution, but an excellent attempt.

"A work of art has to be seen in many different lights and to test itself against many different kinds of capacity and experience before it finds its level." C. S. Lewis

Interpreting Mk 13:32 as a flat claim of ignorance doesn't make much sense in context, particularly of the man on a journey analogy to which it is directly tied.

Augustine in various places compares Mk 13:32 to places in the OT apparently implicating nonknowledge of God (Gn 22:12, Dn 13:3).

The piety of a society is often associated with a willingness to maintain the institutions that unify the society.

poetry as "the universal symbolical art" (Schlegel)

Designs are constructed from material constraints, functions, and values, which when organized constitute solutions to problems.

no intrinsic limitations as to being: simplicity, immutability
no extrinsic limitations as to being: aseity, infinity, immateriality
no intrinsic limitations as to ontic presence: immensity, eternity
no extrinsic limitations as to ontic presence
--- --- (1) as to measure of presence itself: alocality, atemporality
--- --- (2) as to measure of that to which it is present: omnipresence, omnitemporality
no intrinsic limitations as to moral and jural presence: sublimity, sovereignty
no intrinsic limitations as to sacral presence: glory
no extrinsic limitations as to moral, jural, and sacral presence: sanctity

"If the government of the Church could be defined, it might be called an immense aristocracy, directed by an oligarchical power placed in the hands of an absolute king, whose duty is to perpetually offer himself in holocaust for the salvation of the people." Donoso Cortes
"The Church is love and will burn the world in love."
"The supernatural is above us, without us, and within us. The supernatural surrounds the natural, and permeates through all its parts."
"When we say of one being that it has understanding and will, and of another that it is free, we say the same thing of both, but expressed in two different ways."

"The world demands as its ground a God who need not have made it." E. L. Mascall

One may by mercy uphold justice, as when one pays for another what is due.

God as that whose presence makes all other presences possible

We only think of time having a forward and backward because counting numbers do.

Time as such has order and not direction, properly speaking; we use direction to symbolize order when we analogize temporal measurements to lines and include caused, especially deliberately imposed, incipits and desinits.

Free will is the personal power of attaining to contingent good.

 People regularly use equality as a justification for not helping others; the same is true of liberty.

One Welsh Triad says that Cadoc, Illtyd, and Peredur became Keepers of the Grail.

Causation is implicit in being.

Being is open to being, truth is seed of truth, goodness sparks goodness. These are imitations and reflections of divine creation.

The analogy between sin and dying is worth more consideration than it is usually given.

"Everything purely human Christianity attracts, develops, and perfects." Schaff

diakonia
of the word: Acts 6:4
of the Spirit: 2 Cor 3:8
of justice: 2 Cor 3:9
of restoration: 2 Cor 5:18

In understanding the Eucharist as commemoration, one must recognize that in the Old Testament, certain forms of prayer are treated as a kind of shared or public memory.

The priest by sacramental character represents Christ as Priest, the bishop by sacramental characer represents Christ as High Priest and Head.

Matthew, Hebrews, James, and Jude make a pretty good representation of the spectrum of fourth-century Judaism.

There is a tension in the first two sentences of Hume's Treatise, which tells us that all perceptions of the mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, and the difference between the two is a matter of degree. Hume does admit this oddity, but claims that they are "in general very different" so that it is still makes sense to rank them as distinct. This however does not suffice to address the scruple, particularly given how Hume relates the two in the copy principle.

The Eucharist is not an 'encounter' but a union.

Christ deliberately made apostolic testimony essential to knowing Him, an apostolic testimony not merely direct but also for us indirect and mediated through others. It is a grave error to think one can leap over it.

Democratic societies turn everything into aesthetics.

Hypocrites will be found whenever there is an appearance of the divine.

The book of Revelation is an unveiling in vision of what is behind history.

'Worldbuilding' is an exploration of the preconditions and possibilities for narrative (which is distinct from the preconditions and possibilities *of* narrative).

All human beings have a protective resistance to wholehearted relationships.

Nothing about divine love requires that God love us one way rather than another; indeed, as divine love is wholly free, the ways God can love us surpass all human conceiving.

We improve common sense by increasing experience and improving classifications in light of experience and practice.

"Not even a deterministic (nonstochastic) law statement describes only what is actually the case: *every law statement describes possibles* -- without of course the help of modal operators." Bunge
(he links this to the fact that laws identify possible behavior depending on initial conditions)

There is a weirdly schizophrenic character to everything Bunge writes; he will develop an interesting formal system and give it an interpretation on the most vague and inadequate grounds; at times he will discuss scientific practice in an interesting way and then refer it to a formal system whose adequacy in describing that practice is nowhere established.

Bunge's definition of the cell (Def 3.2) seems to require us to say that biological cells are not Bungian cells, due to mitochondria being both components and biosystems. Indeed, this seems to highlight the flaw in Bunge's entire approach to the sciences; however Bunge's definitions may fit a given state of inquiry, eventually many of the things defined become fixed ostensively, not by abstract definitions. The cell is the cell, whether it lacks components that are biosystems or not.

As probability is abstraction from finite frequences (coins, marbles, etc.), a serious interpretation of probability should simply be / reduce to the frequency itnerpretation in such cases, which are the anchoring cases of the theory.

Huntington's df of the point: a sphere such that it includes no other sphere

Introspection includes environmental factors in its object; we do nto have introspection of every thought but introspection of, e.g., thinking of a dog. Thus the object of introspection is not identical to the object of brain examination, although the two can be correlated in various ways. Thus far, at least, the dualist is right.

Contiguity is inferred, not directly experienced, and is inferred on causal grounds. If I see two things, I must distinguish apparent contiguity (e.g., due to perspective) from real contiguity by means of causes.

What we call reciprocal action or interaction is the cooperative production of an effect.

All scientific explanation grows in a soil of everyday, common-sense explanation.

The history of science shows that scientific methods diversify about as fast as they unify, and that fields multiply about as fast as they jump together in consilience.

Animal learning involves many subsystems of the organism, including digestion and muscle development.

The external world is that which continues to exist independently of an contrastively to our minds, but each of these three admits of different kinds and variations.

Physical laws are not propositions but systems.

"...every physical theory presupposes the *philosophical hypotheses* that there are physical objects (mind-independent things), that most of them are imperceptible (Hertz 1894), and that some of them are available if only in part (Thomson 1963). Should these hypotheses be dropped we would turn to introspection and mysticism." Bunge
"The effective approach to problems is both creative and critical."

causes as productive vs causes as historical ingredients

Much great art involves bringing out the glory of the simple.

Teaching is a poetical art, using analogy, metaphor, and example to convey the universal.

Most scientific theories have a 'pictorial' element, namely, abstract representation of concrete experiments to which things outside of the experiment are analogous or assimilated.

Hypothetico-deductive structure is a format into which scientific theories are forced, not the natural form of scientific theories.

Most metaphorical statements are no more ambiguous than most literal statements.

Pr 9:1 literally says, "Wisdoms [hakhemot] has built her house"; the plural perhaps indicates the highest sort of wisdom.

the serpent's question: Why did God allow there to be wrong?

surreal numbers as the nodes of the complete infinite binary tree

free will as a capacity for graciously receiving grace, of choosing aspects of one's relation to God

The analogy between art and nature is essential to the development of many arts.

(1) Human reason requires testimony.
(2) Human independence requires assistance.
(3) Human autarchy requires providence.

The 'tone' or 'coloring' of a term is often what relates it to its context in such a way that its sense and reference can be properly determined.

Interactions are overlaps of changes, where part of one change is also part of another change.

forces as negative potential energy gradients

You should never try to steal from physicists what you have not earned in philosophy of physics; physicalists regularly violate this principle.

Habitude IV

 To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that habitude does not involve order to act. For anything acts according as it is actual. But the Philosopher says, in De Anima III, that when someone becomes knowing according to habitude, then he is so still potentially, but in another way than before learning. Therefore 'habitude' does not involve habitude as principle to act.

Further, what is put in the definition of something, pertains to it per se. But to be a principle of action is put in the definition of power, as is clear in Metaphys. V. Therefore to be principle of act is appropriate per se to power. But what is per se is first in any genus. If therefore habitude is also principle of act, it is posterior to power. And so habitude or disposition will not be the first species of quality.

Further, health is sometimes habitude, and likewise slimness and beauty. But these are not said through order to act. Therefore it does not belong to the notion of habitude that it be principle of act.

But contrariwise is what Augustine says, in the book on the good of marriage, that habitude is that by which something is enacted when there is need. And the Commentator says, on De Anima III, that habitude is that by which one enacts something when one wills.

I reply that it must be said that order to act can converge [competere] with habitude both according to the notion of habitude and according to the notion of the subject in which it is a habitude. Indeed, according to the notion of habitude, it is appropriate for every habitude to have, in some way, order to act. For it is in the notion of habitude that it involves a certain habitude ordered to the nature of the thing according to what is appropriate or inappropriate. But the nature of the thing, which is the end of generation, is further ordered to another end, which is either working or some work to which one comes by working. Thus habitude not only involves order to the very nature of the thing, but also consequently to working inasmuch as it is an end of nature, or leading to the end. And thus in Metaphys. V it is said in the definition of habitude that it is disposition according to which the disposed is disposed well or badly, either according to itself, that is, according to its nature, or to another, that is, in order to an end. 

But there are certain habitudes that also, first and principally, involve order to act on the part of the subject in which they are, because, as was said, habitude involves, first and per se, habitude to the nature of the thing. If, therefore, the nature of the thing in which it is a habitude consists in some order to act, it follows that the habitude principally involves order to act. And it is clear that the nature and notion of power is to be principle of act; thus every habitude that has some power as its subject principally involves some order to act.

Therefore to the first it must be said that habitude is a sort of act inasmuch as it is quality, and accordingly can be a principle of working, but it is potential with respect to working. Thus habitude is called first act and working second act, as is clear in De Anima II.

To the second it must be said that it is not in the notion of habitude that it is related to power, but that it is related to nature. And because nature precedes action, to which power is related, habitude is placed as a species of quality before power.

To the third it must be said that health is called a habitude or habitual disposition in order to nature, as was said. However, inasmuch as nature is a principle of act, it consequently involves order to act. Thus the Philosopher says in De Historia Animal. X that man, or some member, is called healthy when it can do the work of someone healthy. And likewise for the others.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.49.3, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

This article may seem somewhat dry and abstract, but it is the root of some puzzles in the Thomistic account of habitude.

The lesser puzzle is how and in what way health and beauty are habitudes. For Aristotle, health and beauty are paradigmatically habitudes; he constantly goes to them for examples. Aquinas in a number of places seems to accept this, but he also in a number of places pulls back from it, and this particular article's conclusion, that habitude involves ordering to act, seems to be one of the reasons. How health and beauty are active in this way is not immediately obvious. The key seems to be the point that Aquinas makes to the third objection, that health is a "habitude or habitual disposition" to the extent and in the way that it is concerned with healthy operation. Merely to be healthy by happenstance is not a habitude; it is health-as-habitude when you as-if-naturally carry yourself and behave in ways that are healthy ways of acting. Many people at any given moment happen to be healthy, but we can recognize that some people live in something like an anti-hypochondriac way; health for them is an active possession, as their attitudes, the actions and appetites to which they tend, their responses to things, all tend toward health. They are healthy-livers, not in the sense that they pursue health fads or the like, but in the sense that health is not just something that they happen to have but an expression of their way of living. Something similar can be said of beauty; some people happen to be beautiful because of youth or a chance combination of factors, but some people are beautiful in a way that expresses their life -- part of their beauty is how they carry themselves, the kinds of behaviors they tend toward, and the like. They make themselves beautiful, but it's not as if they are trying to force it; making themselves beautiful is just what they have come to tend to do, so that it's part of what living is for them.

A more complicated puzzle is the relation between habitude and will. This requires some further pieces in place, so can't but fully handled here, but this article plays a role in the puzzle, so it's necessary to say a few things here before the knot becomes too tangled. A later objection will refer back to this habitude in terms that seem to suggest that this article should be read as establishing that will is essential to habitude, and Aquinas doesn't seem to deny it. This would complicate the health and beauty examples even further, and would constitute a massive change from Aristotle, who (first) does not have an account of will at all, despite saying things relevant to willing, and (second) pretty clearly holds that developing habitudes is something found across the animal world, and, indeed, given what Aristotle says about habitude, it would make sense for him to extend it to plants, as well. Unlike a number of commentators, I don't think we are actually committed by the evidence to Aquinas deviating so completely from Aristotle, but obviously how this article is interpreted is of some relevance to this.

Notably, the only place in the article in which 'will' even shows up explicitly is in the sed contra, with the reference to Averroes (the Commentator). The reference here is a summary paraphrase, not a translation. Aquinas, in Summa Contra Gentiles 2.78.6 (on the agent intellect), gives a more direct translation:

“For the essence of habit,” as the Commentator, Averroes, says on this very text, “consists in this, that its possessor understands by means of that which is proper to him -- understands by himself and whenever he wills, with no need of anything extrinsic”; since Averroes explicitly likens to a habit, not the effect itself, but “the intellect by which we make all things.”

Thus the summary paraphrase is generalizing from Averroes's original point, which is specifically about the intellect understanding. Voluerit occurs in both the original and the summary paraphrase, but it seems clear that generalizing affects how we have to understand it -- it, too, needs to be generalized, and therefore we seem to have to allow that it may be used metaphorically or merely representatively here.

A Poem Draft

 Hard to Be Inspired

It is hard to be inspired,
blinded by the light,
your brain in visions fired,
wandering in the night,
a traveler in unknown lands,
homeward never your way,
in a higher power's hands,
driven each hour of day.

It is hard to have great gift,
talent that blazes high,
gazing across a rift
at everyone until you die,
gadfly-infested in brain,
driven by unseen prod,
again and again re-slain
by command of a merciless god.

And at the end of endless pains,
what have you then to show?
The whole world takes your gains
and your candle burns too low.

The Worst Argument in the World

 The novelist claims to be a realist; and he has as much right to defend realism as other novelists had to defend romanticism. But he is out by a thousand miles if he supposes that there has been a general progress from romanticism to realism; or, indeed, from anything to anything else. The great history of the great English novelists would alone be enough to show that the story was never a pure story of progress; but of rebellions and reactions; revolutions and counter-revolutions. When England began to escape from a Puritanism which forbade all romances, the great Richardson rejoiced in being able to pour out floods of tears and tenderness about the most delicate forms of love. When he had done it, the great Fielding rejoiced even more to pour out floods of derision, believing that his coarse candour and common sense was a part of enlightenment and liberty; though often concerned with less delicate forms of love.

 A generation later, the great Jane Austen confessed herself disgusted by the coarseness even of Addison, and created a restrained comedy of which half the humour is its deliberate decorum. Then we went on to Dickens and Thackeray, the latter especially dismissing as barbarism what Swift and Smollett had regarded as realism, and even as liberalism. Nothing is now important about these great English novelists except that they were all great. Nobody discusses whether they were all novel; yet each in turn believed himself to be novel. Any one who goes by dates may find himself defending brutality against Richardson or prudery against Fielding. The worst argument in the world is a date. For it is actually taking as fixed the one thing that we really know is fugitive and staking all upon to-day at the moment when it is turning into yesterday. The clock-worshipper has a heavy creed of predestination; and it is only as the tavern closes that its priest cries aloud upon his god; saying, like all the sad modern sages: “Time, gentlemen, time!”

G. K. Chesterton, "About Change" from As I Was Saying.

Habitude III

 To the second one proceeds thus. It seems that habitude is not a determinate species of quality, because, as was said, habitude, insofar as it is quality, is called the disposition according to which the disposed is disposed well or badly. But this happens according to any quality, for both according to figure something can happen to be well or badly disposed, and similarly according to hot and cold, and according to all suchlike things. Therefore habitude is not a determinate species of quality.

Further, the Philosopher in the Categories says that heat and coldness are dispositions or habitudes, just like illness and health. But hot and cold are in the third species of quality. Thus habitudes or disposition are not distinguished from other species of quality.

Further, being able to be changed with difficulty [difficile mobile] is not a differentia pertaining to the genus of quality, but pertains more to change or undergoings [passionem]. But no genus is determined to a species through the differentia of another genus; rather, differentiae must come to a genus through itself, as the Philosopher says in Metaph. VII. Therefore, because habitude is said to be the quality of the difficult to be changed [difficile mobile], it seems that it is not a determinate species of quality.

But contrariwise is what the Philosopher says in the Categories, that one species of quality is habitude and disposition.

I respond that it must be said that the Philosopher in the Categories puts disposition and habitude among the four species of quality. Simplicius in his Commentary on the Categories assigns the differentiae of these species in this way, saying that some qualities are natural, which according to nature are within and always, but some are adventitious, which are effected from outside and can be lost. And those which are adventitious are habitudes and dispositions, differing according to being able to be lost with ease or with difficulty [facile et difficile amissibile]. But some of the natural qualities are according to that which something is potentially, and such are the second species of quality. Some, on the other hand, are according to what something is actually, and this either deeply or superficially. If deeply, such is the third species of quality; superficially, on the other hand, is the fourth species of quality, such as figure and the form that is the figure of what is animate. But this distinction of the species of quality seems inappropriate, for there are many figures and passible qualities that are not natural but adventitious, and many dispositions that are not adventitious but natural, such as health and beauty and suchlike. And, further, this is not appropriate to the order of the species, for always what is natural is prior. 

And therefore in another way this distinction of habitude and disposition from other qualities must be taken. For quality properly involves mode of substance. Now mode is, as Augustine says, Super Gen. ad Litt., is what measure prefixes; wherefore it involves a certain determination according to some measure. And therefore just as that which according to material potential is determined according to substantial being is called substantial quality, so also that which according to subject's potential is determined according to accidental being is called accidental quality, which is also a certain differentia, as is clear from the Aristotle in Metaph. V. Now mode, or the determination of the subject according to accidental being, is able to be taken either in an order to the very nature of the subject or according to action and passion, which follow from the principles of nature, which are matter and form, or according to quantity. But if mode or determination of subject is taken according to quantity, such is the fourth species of quality. And because quantity, according to its notion, is without change and without the notion of good and bad, it therefore does not pertain to the fourth species of quality that something is done well or badly, passing swiftly or slowly. But the mode or determination of subject according to action and passion is found in the second and third species of quality. And therefore in both it is considered that something is done with ease or with difficulty, or that it is passing swiftly or enduring; but there is not considered something pertaining to the notion of good or bad, because change and undergoings do not have the notion of an end, but good and bad are said with respect to the end. 

But the mode and determination of a subject in the order to the nature of a thing pertains to the first species of quality, which is habitude and disposition, as the Philosopher says in Phys. VII, saying of the habitudes of soul and body that they are a sort of disposition of the complete to the best; but I call the complete what is disposed according to nature. And because the same form and nature is end and cause for which something is done, as is said in Phys. II, in the first species good and bad are considered, and also what is able to be changed with easy or with difficulty [facile et difficile mobile], according as some nature is an end of generation and change. Wherefore in Metaph. V the Philosopher defines habitude as the disposition according to which something is disposed well or badly, and in Ethic. II he says that habitudes are that according to which we have ourselves well or badly toward passions; for when a mode is appropriate to the nature of a thing, then it has the the notion of good, and when it is not appropriate, then it has the notion of bad. And because nature is that which is first considered in a thing, habitude is put in the first species of quality.

To the first, therefore, it must be said that disposition involves a certain order, as was said; wherefore something is not said said to be disposed by quality, except in an order to something. And if well or badly is added, which pertains to the notion of a habitude, we must pay attention to the order to the nature which is the end. Thus according to figure, or according to hot and cold, someone is not said to be disposed well or badly, except according to an order to the nature of the thing, according to what is appropriate or inappropriate. Wherefore both figures themselves and passible qualities, according as they are considered appropriate or inappropriate to the nature of the thing, belong to habitudes or dispositions, for figure, insofar as it is appropriate to the nature of the thing, and color pertain to beauty, but hot and cold, according as they are appropriate to the nature of the thing, pertain to health. And in this way heat and coldness are put by the Philosopher in the first species of quality.

Wherefore the solution to the second is clear, although some solve it otherwise, as Simplicius says in the Commentary on the Categories.

To the third it must be said that this differentia, able to be changed with difficulty [difficile mobile], does not make habitude different from other species of quality, but from disposition.  For disposition is taken in two ways: in one way, according as it is a genus for habitude, for in Metaph. V disposition is put into the definition of habitude; in another way, according as it is something divided from habitude. And the disposition that is properly said to be condivisible from habitude can be understood in two ways: in one way, as complete and incomplete in the same species, as it is called disposition, retaining the common name, when it is incompletely in something so as to be easily lost, but habitude when it is completely in something and is not easily lost. And thus disposition is habitude just like boy is man. In another way, they can be distinguished as different species subalternate to one genus, so that dispositions are said to be those qualities of the first species to which it is appropriate according to their notion to be easy to be lost, because they have transformable [transmutabile] causes, such as illness and health, but habitudes are said to be those qualities that according to their nature have what is not easy to transform, because they have unchangeable causes, like kinds of knowledge and virtues. And according to this, disposition is not habitude. And this seems to harmonize more with Aristotle's intention; wherefore, to prove this distinction, he draws upon [inducit] the common convention for speaking, according to which qualities that according to their notion are able to be changed with ease [facile mobiles] are, if by some accident are rendered able to be changed with difficulty [difficile moblies], are said to be habitudes, and conversely with qualities that by their notion able to changed with difficulty; for if someone has knowledge incompletely, so that he is easily able to lose it, he is said to be disposed to knowledge rather than to have knowledge. For which it is clear that the word 'habitude' involves a certain durability, but not the word 'disposition'. Nor does this stand in the way of 'being able to be changed with ease' or 'with difficulty' [facile et difficile mobile] being specific differentiae on the ground that these pertain to undergoing and change and not the genus of quality. For these differentiae, although they seem to have themselves accidentally toward quality, nonetheless designate the proper and per se differentiae of qualities, just as in the genus of substance accidental differentiae are often taken in place of substantial ones, inasmuch as essential principles are designated by them.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.49.2. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation here.]

Aristotle divides the category of quality into four species:

(1) habitude and disposition
(2) natural capabilities and incapabilities
(3) passible qualities
(4) figure

His discussion strongly suggests that this is some immediate division of the category, but notoriously nobody knows quite what underlies the division. St. Thomas's (educated) guess is that the order is actually important, and this is a significant move, much more than it might seem. It's an important implication of this that there is a sense in which habitude and disposition is the kind of quality that has the strongest connection to what is natural to a thing. Virtue, knowledge, health, and beauty are all examples Aristotle uses of the first species of quality, and it's noteworthy that they can all be considered a sort of 'second nature' or a natural outgrowth of our original nature. It's also probably relevant, given the next two species (if, like Aquinas, we take the order to be significant), that habitude and disposition are easily the most active of the qualities; as we go down the list, it seems that we deal with things that depend more and more on the activity of something other than the quality, or for that matter the thing that has it, itself. 

It's perhaps a little unexpected to find habitude regarded as more natural than natural capability, but by the latter Aristotle means the sense in which someone might be a 'natural wrestler' or naturally healthy, and it does seem that this is at least more attenuated than actual skill or actual health. Passible qualities are things like sweetness and color; by figure Aristotle seems originally to mean something like the quality of a quantity, e.g., a mathematical object being three-dimensional or circular or square-ish, or a number being cubic or prime. Most commentators have, I think, taken it a little more physically than that; perhaps 'jagged' or 'smooth' would be good examples in English.

Links of Note

 * Elliot Polsky, Aquinas the Boethian: Interpreting Quod Est and Esse in Aquinas in Light of His Sources (PDF) -- an interesting argument that Aquinas is less Avicennian on the matter than usually thought; usually William of Auvergne is thought to be the closest predecessor to Aquinas on composition of essence and actual being, but Polsky argues that he's reacting against this line of thought and going back to Boethius.

* John Carlos Baez, The Inverse Cube Force Law, at "Azimuth"

* John Walsh, Kant on the Supposed Incapacity to Transgress the Moral Law Freely (PDF)

* Ben Burgis, What Marx's Comments on Aristotle and John Stuart Mill Reveal About His Critique of Political Economy, at "Philosophy for the People"

* Ruth Boeker & Evie Filea, Catharine Trotter Cockburn's and Anne Hepburn Arbuthnot's contributions to Scottish philosophy (PDF)

* Jody Azzouni, Use and mention with respect to "know", "believe", "evidence", "justification", "hypothesis", and so on: A hot mess (PDF)

* Speech Acts and Fictions I: Fiction as Pretended Illocution, at "Flame & Light", on John Searle's account of fiction.

* Mikel Aickin, The Failed Experiment that Failed to Fail (PDF), on the Michelson-Morley experiment

* Aravindh Rajan and Ian McKay, There has to be a better way to make titanium, at "Orca Notes"

* Vanessa A. Seifert, The many laws in the periodic table (PDF)

* Catharine Saint-Croix, Tabletop Philosophy, at "Blog of the APA"

* Marius Stan, Kant's third law of mechanics: The long shadow of Leibniz (PDF)

* James Chastek, Disputed question on created substance, at "Just Thomism"

* Jason Turner, Ultrafilters as Propositional Theories (PDF)

Habitude II

 After actions and passions, the principles of human acts must be considered, and first, intrinsic principles, second, extrinsic principles. Now, intrinsic principles are powers and habitudes, but because powers were discussed in the first part, now it remains to consider habitudes. And first, of course, in general, and second, virtues and vices and other habitudes of this sort, which are principles of human acts. Concerning the habitudes in general, four things are to be considered: first, the substance of the habitudes; second, their subject; third, the cause of their generation, growth, and corruption; fourth, their distinction. Regarding the first, there are four things to investigate: first, whether habitude is quality; second, whether it is a determinate species of quality; third, whether habitude involves order to act; fourth, the necessity of habitude.

The first is approached in this way. It seems that habitude is not quality, for Augustine says (LXXXIII Quaest. 73) that this name, habitude, is derived from the verb habere (to have). But to have does not pertain only to quality, but also to other genera, for we are said to have quantity, and money, and other things of this sort. Therefore habitude is not quality.

Further, habitude is placed in one category, as is clear from the book of Categories. But one category is not contained under another. Therefore habitude is not quality.

Further, every habitude is a disposition, as is said in the Categories. But disposition is an order of what has parts, as is said in Metaph. V.  But this pertains to the category of posture [situs]. Therefore habitude is not quality.

But contrariwise is what the Philosopher says in the Categories, that habitude is a quality of the difficult to change.

I respond that it must be said that this name, 'habitude' is taken from having, from which the name of habitude derives in two ways: [A] in one way, according as a man or some other thing is having something; [B] in another way, according as some thing is having itself in some way to itself or to something else. 

[A] But about the first, it must be considered that having, according as it is said to with respect to whatever is had, is common to different genera; thus the Philosopher puts it in the postpredicaments, which are, to wit, those following on different genera of things, just as are opposites, and prior and posterior, and such like things. But between things that are had, there seems to be this distinction, that (A1) there are some in which there is nothing mediating between haver and what is had, just as there is nothing mediating between subject and quantity or quality. (A2) Then there are those in which something mediates between them, but only a relativity, just as someone is said to have an associate or friend. (A3) And further there are some in which something mediates, not quite as action or passion, but something by way of action and passion, as, for instance, in one adorning and covering and another adorned and covered, and therefore these constitute a special genus of things, namely, the category of habit; thus the Philosopher says in Metaph. V that between having clothing and the clothing that is had is the mediation of habit.

[B] But if we take having in the way something is said to have itself in some way to itself or to something else, because this way of having itself is according to some quality, in this way habitude is a certain quality, of which the Philosopher says in Metaph. V that habitude is said to be a disposition according to which what is disposed is disposed well or badly, and either according to itself or to another, as health is a certain habitude. And thus is the habitude of which we speak now. Wherefore it is to be said that habitude is quality.

To the first therefore it must be said that that objection proceeds from having taken in general, so therefore it is common to many genera, as was said.

To the second it must be said that that reason proceeds from habit insofar as it is understood to be something mediating between having and what is had, so it is therefore a kind of category, as was said.

To the third it must be said that disposition always involves order of something having parts, but this happens three ways, as the Philosopher immediately adds, to wit, either according to place, or according to power, or according to species. In which, as Simplicius says in his Commentary on the Categories, he includes all dispositions, such as corporeal ones, in what he says according to place, and to this pertains the category of posture [situs], which is order of parts in place; but what he says according to power includes those dispositions that are preparatory and not perfectly suitable, such as inchoate knowledge and virtue; but what he says according to species includes perfect dispositions, which are called habitudes, such as complete knowledge and virtue.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.49.1, my translation. The Latin is here; the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

Habitude I

 Introductory Note: By a very long tradition, philosophy is said to involve three things: physics (i.e., the philosophical study of natural order), logic (i.e., the philosophical study of rational order), and ethics (i.e., the philosophical study of human order). Each of these aspects of philosophy has a unifying principle or 'springboard', a concept that serves as a platform from which you can reach anything else. For physics, the springboard is change, for logic the springboard is sign, and for ethics the springboard is habitude. Habitude (Gk. hexis, Lat. habitus, often transliterated into Eng. as 'habit') is arguably understudied, so I thought I would here and there translate some texts of Aquinas on the topic.

Therefore he [Aristotle] says, first, that for investigating what is virtue, one must assume three things in the soul, namely, passions, powers, and habitudes, one of which it is necessary for virtue to be. Thus he said above that virtue is a principle of certain works in the soul; but nothing is in the soul as a principle of working unless it is one of these three. For it seems that man sometimes acts from passion, such as anger, sometimes from habitude, such as when he works from productive skill, sometimes from bare power, as when he first begins to work. And it is clear that under this division is not comprehended absolutely everything that is in the soul, because the essence of the soul is not any of these, nor is even intelligible working; rather, only those things are touched on that are principles of some action.

Then when he says, "But I call passions" &c., he explains [manifestat] the members of the previous division. And first he explains those that are passions, second those that are powers, at "And powers" &c., and third those that are habitudes, at "Habitudes according to which" &c....

Then, at "Habitudes according to which" &c., he explains those that are habitudes. And this is not done in general, but in moral matters through comparison to the passions. And he says that habitudes are called such according as we have passions well or badly. For a habitude is a kind of disposition determining a power through comparison to something, which determination, if it is appropriate to the nature of the thing, will be a good habitude disposing one to doing something well, and otherwise it will be a bad habitude so that according to it something will be done badly. And he gives the example [exemplificat] that according to some habitude we have it in us to be angry either badly, when this is done either vehemently or lackingly, that is according to excess or defect, or well, when this is done in the manner of the mean.

[Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, lecture 5, sections 290, 291, & 298, my translation. Even at the cost of some occasional awkwardness, I have attempted to clearly distinguish opere words for action from agere words for action, by using 'work'-related words for the former.]

Dashed Off XXVII

 mind as intelligibilizing intelligibility

"A perfect language would be like a garment of light, unfolding with clear transparency the life it was formed to invest and represent." John Williamson Nevin

While the sensible may be evident, it is always a mediated evidentness.

Faith proceeds from Christ through Christ to Christ.

Genesis 1 : natural headship of Adam :: Genesis 2 : federal headship of Adam

"According to the view we have of Christ, in the end, will be and must be our view also of the Church. We come to the true conception of the Church through a true and sound Christology (as in the Creed) and in no other way." Nevin

'make disciples' and ordination

cosmos: God creates the world, giving it active and passive powers (seminal reasons) that develop on their own, as permanent instrumental causes, toward an end (cosmic order) whose principles we articulate as 'laws of nature'; this natural order is itself a component and instrument of a larger rational/intelligible order.

"...exact prose abstracts from reality, symbol presents it." Farrer

There are perhaps more kinds of good reasoning possible than have ever been canvased.

Leibniz notes (NEHU) that unlike the second and third figures, the fourth figure cannot be derived from the first figure with only the principle of noncontradiction; it is the only one that *requires* conversion (or else the second & third figures).

Narrative theme has a teleology or bias tending toward what we might usually call the spiritual or mystical; this tendency might be called Chestertonian, being something that can be found if one begins to emphasize the thematic elements of even simple stories about trains running on time or pubs serving good beer.

In the modern world, we share civil interests only in the sense we share religious interests, i.e., rational interest in the socially good and true. Get much more specific than that, we already begin to diverge.

Liberalism always exaggerates how much is shared in an attempt to *make* a particular set of things shared.

There are no all-purpose means for the effective use of liberties; our means for effective use of liberties are a patchwork of locally useful things.

Good-willed, reasonable, and rational people will converge on principles of justice, over time, but only to the extent & in the way they are good-willed reasonable, and rational; but what is more, they will actively seek to find agreement with each other.

Liberalism is not based on what we all share; it makes things that it then tries to make to be shared.

To endorse rules and practices as just is not like adopting a set of attitudes; it may or may not be associated with any particular attitude; it may or may not be associated with sanctions or demand for enforcement; it may or may not involve any regard for costs and benefits, and indeed costs or benefits may not even be relevant.

'Public reason liberalism' is always gerrymandered-reason liberalism. This is because actual liberal societies do not descend from unified principle but are built out of many different solutions to many different problems, which arise out of applying many different principles with many different judgments. In building such societies, people use any reasons they have at hand that seem to be relevant for the purpose at hand.

Society as such does not need moral justification; it is just an integral part of human life, and forms its own subdomains of moral justification.

"An entire mythology is stored within our language." Wittgenstein

major doctrine (Scripture, liturgical prayer, conciliar definition, formal catechesis) & minor doctrine (homily, devotional, sacraments and sacramentals as pedagogical, &c.)

We argue from all the finite effects to the infinite cause.

civilization as a system of friendships

the aspirational communion of human nature
the sympathetic communion of human nature

The best teaching always involves a significant indirect element; this is not always easy to see, and thus is often difficult to imitate.

I wish I knew the path to take;
I cannot find the way;
and all the errors that I make
grow graver by the day.

"For the human mind takes in a great deal at a glance, and we hobble it when we try to make it halt at every step it takes and express everything that it is thinking." Leibniz

The spiritual presence that Reformed theologians ascribe to the Lord's Supper is in fact always available to the Church in faith; but it is true that the Eucharist is pledge and seal of this presence, and that while this particular & ecclesial spiritual presence is not contained in the Eucharist, it is exhibited in it.  The Church is always nourished spiritually by His body and blood, and the Eucharist shows this continual vivificity. But this ecclesial ubiquity is not an adequate account of the specifically Eucharistic presence of Christ, and the spiritual presence to faith is not sporadic and occasional.

Disrespect for the Creed is poisonous to Protestantism, for it implies the position that even the most well trod and rationally and prayerfully defended understanding of Scripture, enduring in faith and love and prayer for however long, may be overturned by any fool of a reader who may come along. If the Creed may be dismissed, Scripture may mean anything, and no one can ever be sure of having read it well.

Papal infallibility is not a power except insofar as it is a structure of service.

A philosopher must allow himself a little madness or he will never get far.

Free will is the capability for civilization.

God as the ultimate limit of context

general kinds of theistic arguments
(1) incoherence or God
(2) skepticism or God
(3) insoluble puzzle or God
(4) pointlessness or God

"The creation or non-creation of the world, and the end of creation, are God's absolute choice because they are prior to the world." Rosmini

self-sustaining rhetorical cycles

Probation precedes exaltation.

Any descriptive proposition may be used in the right context to express an attitude.

"A thing is said to be virtually contained in another when the thing can naturally terminate with its action in the other." Rosmini
"The human mind is as unlimited and universal as undetermined being, but undetermined being is not unlimited and universal in the sense that it manifests an infinite actuality. It is virtually unlimited and universal in so far as it admits unlimited, infinite terms and generally reveals its infinite capacity."

"...since these necessary truths are prior to the existence of contingent beings, they must be grounded in the existence of a necessary substance." Leibniz

Axioms connect regions of knowledge.

We are always loved more than we feel; the greatest loves cannot be felt.

Democratic politics is a politics of rumors, gossip, and guesses.

"The intuiting human being embraces all being, which informs him and communicates its own dignity to him as if he were stamped by a seal impressing itself on him and repeating itself in him." Rosmini

A juridically single border may be physically noncontiguous.

"God's presence makes a place frightening because he has power over life and death." Chrysostom

primary spectacle (integral to plot) and secondary spectacle (just for spectacle)

Fine art always occurs within a broader context of art.

rhetoric & 'ghost' reasoning (i.e., reasoning merely suggested by the manner of discourse)

Most conclusions of scientific inquiry are known by mediated knowing.

Being that is most perfectly being is intellectual being.

The divine ideas are acts of the free divine intellect, in which God reflects on God as able to cause.

"The Platonists posited ideas, saying that all things were made by their participation in an idea, for example, a human being or any other species. However, in place of these ideas, we have one thing, that is, the Son, the Word of God." Aquinas (In Col. 1.4)

Oppressors often force inclusions on the oppressed; it is a way to keep them under control.

Something is a part. Whatever is a part is a part of a whole. This whole can itself be part of a whole, and that whole a part of another whole. But this cannot proceed infinitely. Therefore there is a whole that is not part of another whole.

Christ calls us to go to all peoples and make them students; he doesn't say that we are to make them students except in politics, or except in philosophy, or except in social interaction.

the argument from stories to ethical categories

"A *cause* in the realm of things corresponds to a *reason* in the realm of truths, which is why causes themselves -- and especially final causes -- are often called 'reasons'." Leibniz

argumentum ad vertaginem (Leibniz): If this is not accepted, we have no way to attain certainty about the matter in question.

For any good, however good, you will find that men are often lax in pursuing it.

Sovereignty is not an unlimited right but a legal authority that covers what is needed for a complete society.

Rights are the source and font of the state, by which and for which and limited by which it exists.

the natural social ontology

What is changed is changed by another?
(1) Yes
---- (a) with respect to a first other
---- (b) without respect to any first other
---- ---- (1) finitely per accidens
---- ---- (2) infinite regress
(2) No
---- (a) because there is no change (change is not coherent)
---- (b) because some things strictly change themselves

Part of the expressiveness of music is its appropriateness for specific kinds of dance.

Yurei moji (ghost kanji) typically arise from misreadings, but a few may just be rare real kanji whose meanings aren't remembered and have survived purely by accident.

God as the sufficient reason for the principle of sufficient reason

In John 14, Jesus characterizes the Ascension as to the Father, he prepares a topon, a place, with the Father, and He Himself is the way to it.

A complicated knot of related errors has been built into the fabric of all modern nation-states: confusion of citizenship with subjecthood, of participation with allegiance, of the State and the Sovereign.

That there is a prior implies that there is a standard for something's being prior. In most situations we identify as that standard a beginning, so that to be prior is to be closer to an initial or original. In other situations, not knowing the beginning, we posit one and fine our posit confirmed. In yet others, not knowing the beginning, nor yet knowing a confirmation of the posit, we still posit it and use it to reason about the rest.

I think in doubting, therefore I am such that I have the potential to do so; therefore at least some things have potential. 

Given a choice between their dignity and their will, people often choose their will.

"The church is not to be viewed as a thing at once finished and perfect, but as a historical fact, as a human society, subject to the laws of history, to genesis, growth, development. Only the dead is done and stagnant." Philip Schaff

When we say that Christ's kingdom is not of this world, we do not mean that Caesar can overrule Him in this world.

What is 'of Caesar' is not anything in creation that Caesar wants but things like currency, that are themselves made directly or indirectly by Caesar's authority. Creation is God's, not Caesar's. Human life is God's, not Caesar's.

Political institutions are juridical entities that require some sort of system of rights for their setting.

No state has ever had an even in principle monopoly on the use of coercive force, except totalitarian states, and even these have always recognized some non-state force, for their own convenience (or, more properly, have connived at such use by those in powerful office).

Even very well developed civil societies have pre-civil aspects.

human rights that belong to humankind as a community (e.g., the right to exist)

disruption of another's rights
(1) rights pertaining to what is external to the ambit of a person
(2) rights pertaining to the ambit of a person
--- --- (a) disruption in contractual specifications with another person
--- --- (b) disruption not itself concerned with contract with the other person
--- --- --- --- (1) through failure to do what is reasonable to expect
--- --- --- --- (2) through doing what is reasonable not to expect
--- --- --- --- --- --- (a) so that it constitutes a standing threat of disruption
--- --- --- --- --- --- (b) so that it has actually disrupted

Truth, goodness, and beauty are the three unifiers of civil society.

erotetic evocation: beginning from nonquestions, can infer questions
erotetic implication: from a beginning with at least one question, can infer question
--> a difficulty in almost all discussions of both is a failure to recognize that these must be rototed in gaps of starting-points rather than starting-points themselves -- from a nonselection of a definite disjunct, we draw the question of which disjunct.

In the Ring, Sauron has treated himself as a mere means and a tool to use, alienating something as himself in order to gain greater mastery over his own person.

The understanding one has of liberty is always commensurate with one's understanding of goodness.