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.
