Four Poem Drafts

 In Mice

The treatment works;
it works in mice
and I suppose
that that is nice.

The little mice,
an ingrate lot,
will never give it
any thought.

But we must wait
ere we begin
to start the tests
for treating men

and may it work!
Yet it might not,
and fail to be
the hope we sought.

Crow Terrace Poetry Trial

My poems are in disarray,
like ashes from fire,
sifted by prosaic minds
stumbling over words.
And what do they find?
What can find anything
who cannot travel the way?
I, a painter with thought
am now judged by the blind
for denouncing the Imperial car.
Can one disrespect the artisan
by noting defects in the tool?
That is support, not blame.
Cicadas buzz angrily at the gate;
how strange that they herald winter.

Maria Domina

Lady Mary, bright as stars,
the world around like fury's storm
beats against my heart and head.
Queen of heaven, give me heed
and pray for me and all of mine
that we be safe in heart and mind.

O Lady great, high wisdom's Seat,
most holy Ark among the saints,
I beg you pray that all be well,
that we be ardent in our will,
and that, O Mother of many ends,
our path be clear to sunrise-east.

A Chalice Raised High

a chalice raised high
like the early plum blossoms --
ah! lucid stillness

Like a Sly Minister of State

 Evil allows for no system. It asserts itself, and its connection with others is often little better than the haze from a fog. Thus the author of evil cannot act coherently. Like a sly minister of state, he employs every means, every strategy, to help himself escape embarrassment, even if he too had to contradict all that he just had said and done just one minute earlier.

[Johann Georg Hamann, The Complete London Writings, Kleinig, tr., Lexham Academic (Bellingham: 2025) p. 70. This is from the Biblical Meditations of a Christian on Leviticus 19:33.]

Music on My Mind

 

Blackmore's Night, "Darkness".

Fortnightly Book, February 22

Huysmans had published En Route in 1895, but the complicated history of his writing of that work had meant that many of the things he had intended to write did not make it into the final draft, and many of the things he had originally intended that book to be had not been achieved. Thus it is perhaps unsurprising that in 1897 he serialized a portion of a new book in the conservative periodical L'Écho de Paris and published the book itself in 1898 as La Cathédrale. It would become Huysmans most successful work, facilitating his retirement from the civil service, with which his increasingly public religious proclivities had left him increasingly estranged. The threads that combined to make it so successful were many and varied. The book focuses heavily on Chartres Cathedral, and discusses it in detail enough that tourists started using it as a sort of guidebook -- a function it still has today. The critics generally recognized that in style and beauty of writing, Huysmans had outdone himself, but they split on whether Huysmans had become a religious loon enslaved to Church dogma or whether he was a religious hypocrite faking a faith he did not have. On the other side, some priests tried to get the book put on the Index for at least material heresy. All of these kinds of controversies, under the general marketing rule of "No publicity is bad publicity", increased the sales of the book. But perhaps the greatest contributor to the success of the book was the Dreyfus Affair.

In 1894, a French artillery officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was convicted of treason for divulging French military secrets to the Germans; he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in a French Guiana penal colony. The espionage was blown up by the press into a national object of attention, fears were raised because of the ongoing possibility of war between France and Germany, and the whole thing was exacerbated by the fact that its connection to national security meant that significant parts of the entire process occurred out of the public view. In 1896, however, information came to light that suggested that Dreyfus was innocent and that the actual culprit was a major named Esterhazy. The French brass, however, refused to accept the evidence; it was suppressed and Esterhazy was acquitted before a military tribunal. In addition, some of those involved in the original Dreyfus investigation forged evidence of Dreyfus's guilt. Despite the attempts of the French military to keep it quiet, the dispute over Dreyfus's guilt or innocent became increasingly public and noisy. 

One of those who became convinced of Dreyfus's innocence was Émile Zola, the leader of the Naturalist movement, and in January of 1898, Zola published an open letter in a newspaper, L'Aurore, under the title of "J'Accuse...!" Zola accused the President and government of France of illegal activities motivated by antisemitism, as Dreyfus was Jewish. Zola was prosecuted for libel and convicted in February. He fled to England to avoid imprisonment, staying there until the next change of government, and the whole event began to split the entire French cultural establishment. It did not do so cleanly -- every class and rank of French society split over the matter in some way, and the break cut across the right/left divide of French politics in weird ways. What is more, at no point was any faction primarily arguing about Dreyfus; the pro-Dreyfus factions saw the event as symbolic of a broader corruption in the system, the anti-Dreyfus factions saw the ongoing attempts to defend him as mostly a byproduct of a broader attempt to overturn French customs and ways. The antisemitic character of much of the anti-Dreyfus side is widely recognized; the highly classist character of much of the pro-Dreyfus movement is much less widely recognized but was certainly not hiding (and is one reason why the socialists and communists were often reluctant to be pro-Dreyfus). The fractures were already there, and the Dreyfus Affair just opened them.

Huysmans's book had nothing to do with any of this -- except it was published two weeks after Zola's letter, and became popular among anti-Dreyfus conservatives as an argument for French traditions and French Catholicism. Purely by an accident of timing, Huysmans became a sort of anti-Zola.

In any case, The Cathedral will be the next fortnightly book; the translation will be Brendan King's revised and amended version of Clara Bell's translation, and the edition that I am using has a number of black-and-white photographs of statues at Chartres discussed in the book.

The Epic of Gilgamesh

 Introduction

Opening Passage:

I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh. This was the man to whom all things were known; this was the king who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning as he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole story.

When the gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body. Shamash the glorious sun endowed him with beauty, Adad the god of the storm endwed him with courage, the great gods made his beauty perfect, surpassing all others, terrifying like a great wil bull. Two thirds they made him god and one third man. (p. 61)

Summary: Gilgamesh was born of a mortal man and a goddess, and the gods have made him two-thirds divine and one-third mortal. Therein lies his greatness and his tragedy; the god Enlil has laid upon him the destiny that all his gifts should be for being king, and none for being immortal. When our story opens, Gilgamesh, having wandered the world, has become king of the city of Uruk, and he seems a little lost. He is overwhelming, and seems to have the listlessness of the bored because of it. The people of Uruk pray to be relieved of him, because he is brutal and lustful and does not act like a shepherd for his people. The gods hear the lament of the people of Uruk, and to the goddess Aruru is assigned the task of making his equal. The man she makes is Enkidu, who lives as a wildman in the wilds. A trapper, finding that Enkidu is defending the wild beasts and ruining his game, sends to Uruk to bring a harlot, who seduces Enkidu, who more than anything wants someone who could understand his heart. She convinces Enkidu to go to Uruk to overthrow Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh, who is prone to prophetic dreams, dreams that a meteor lands that is more attractive to him than anything else, and that it becomes his brother; he dreams again that he finds an axe that became more valuable to him than anything else. This, his mother tells him, is the wildman. Rumors of these dreams come to the harlot, and thus Enkidu comes to Uruk to challenge Gilgamesh. In strength they are perfectly matched, but Gilgamesh, perhaps because he has more experience than Enkidu, finally manages to throw him. The two have found what they wish more than anything else: a second self, someone who can understand their hearts. They become fast and loyal friends. 

Nonetheless, it is hard being the most gifted men in the world, and they soon begin to turn their thoughts to what might be a task adequate to their greatness. It is the same problem: immortality is denied them, so what deed can possibly be adequate to their divine greatness? Gilgamesh comes up with an idea: they will the Country of the Living, the vast forest of cedars, and slay its guardian, the giant Humbaba, so that the timber of the forest may become available to the people of Uruk. Enkidu, however, knows something of Humbaba; he has been gifted by the gods with seven splendors so that no man may defeat him. But, reluctant as even Enkidu is to face him, Gilgamesh convinces Enkidu to go. If they succeed, it is a great deed. If they die, what better way to die?

Partly by catching Humbaba by surprise, before he can fully arm himself with all seven splendors, they defeat them. Humbaba begs for mercy, and Gilgamesh is inclined to give it, but Enkidu will hear nothing of it, and he kills Humbaba. This infuriates the god Enlil, who takes back Humbaba's seven splendors and curses Gilgamesh and Enkidu. 

By now, Gilgamesh has begun to be a glorious king, and catches the attention of the goddess Ishtar, who proposes that he become her lover. He knows, however, how fickle her loves are. Gilgamesh, remember, wants someone who will understand him, and Ishtar will simply use him and throw him aside. Ishtar is infuriated, and decides that Gilgamesh must be destroyed. She convinces Anu, the father of the gods, to give her the Bull of Heaven, and sends the Bull against Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The plan fails, because Gilgamesh and Enkidu, by working together, defeat the Bull of Heaven, and Ishtar curses Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The gods decide that one of the two must die. This, of course, is not an arbitrary thing. One like Gilgamesh was a handful; Gilgamesh and Enkidu working together as allies are an overwhelming force. Gilgamesh alone could not have defeated Humbaba; Gilgamesh alone probably could not have defeated the Bull of Heaven. But the two friends together are beyond anything else in the world, and they have twice done things that overturned the plans of even the gods. One must go.

So Enkidu is cursed with sickness and dies. Gilgamesh, of course, is devastated, and takes it into his heart to find the secret of immortality. To this end, he sets out to find Utnapishtim, who survived the flood that the gods sent to destroy humanity, and who lives in the sunrise-lands of Dilmun as the only man who has received the divine secret of immortality. It is a long and difficult journey, but he eventually finds Urshanabi, the ferryman of Utnapishtim, and, seizing him, convinces him to ferry Gilgamesh to Dilmun to meet Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim is willing to talk to Gilgamesh, What he says is not encouraging, however:

Utnapishtim said, 'There is no permanence. Do we build a house to stand forever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time? Do brothers divide an inheritance to keep for ever, does the flood-time of rivers endure? It is only the nymph of the dragon-fly who sheds her larva and sees the sun in his glory. From the days of old there is no permanence....(pp. 106-107)

But Gilgamesh insists that he wishes to know how Utnapishtim received the gift of immortality, so Utnapishtim tells him the story of the Great Flood. The god Enlil wished to destroy all of humanity, and convinced the gods to go along with it, but the god Ea, who of all the gods is greatest of counsel and foresight, warned Utnapishtim to tear down his house and build a boat to save his family and the beasts of the field. When the Flood comes, it is so devastating that even the gods are terrified, but in the boat Utnapishtim and those with him survive. When the Flood recedes, Ishtar convinces the gods to accept the sacrifices of Utnapishtim. Enlil is infuriated that the gods have connived to let some mortals escape his wrath, but Ea convinces him not to pursue the matter further. Instead, Enlil does what might be interpreted as saving face in the court of the gods: he accepts that Utnapishtim can live, but only by removing him from the human race. Utnapishtim and his wife are made immortal and required to live forever in the sunrise-lands.

The point, of course, is that Utnapishtim's exception was a one-time thing, a by-product of the machinations of the gods, and not something that can ever be achieved by a mortal. Utnapisthim challenges Gilgamesh to a trial: if Gilgamesh wants to defeat death, let him see if he can defeat sleep, which is like death but lesser, for six days and seven nights. Gilgamesh fails, and begins to accept that his goal is out of reach. But Utnapishtim has one more lesson to teach. He tells Gilgamesh of a magical plant that grows under the water; its stem is thorny, and therefore will wound the hands, but if he perseveres and takes it, it has the power to restore youth. So Gilgamesh ties heavy stones to his feet so he can walk under water to retrieve the plant, saying that he will bring the plant back to Uruk so that the old men might become young again, and then, when the old men have eaten, he will partake as well and restore his youth. He gets the plant, but as he journeys back (with Urshanabi, who has been fired as ferryman), the plant is stolen by a serpent, who disappears into the waters. And thus Gilgamesh comes to accept, finally, his destiny: that his greatness is to be king and not to be immortal.

He comes back to Uruk with Urshanabi, appreciative of the glories of Uruk, built like no other city out of extraordinarily crafted brick and filled with gardens and fields and palaces. He engraves his story in stone, lives as a king, and dies. The people of Uruk raise up sacrifices for him, and his praise is forever.

Much of what makes this story work so well is that we see Gilgamesh grow as king. He is practically a wildman himself at the beginning, king of a city, but hardly civilized. The people of Uruk regard him as a tyrant. Meeting Enkidu changes him utterly; he becomes a better king almost immediately, for the first time in his life truly considering not merely himself but another. His great project with Enkidu is to do something that they primarily do for their own greatness, but which will also greatly benefit the city. But it is only with the death of Enkidu that Gilgamesh begins to face the great obstacle to being a truly great king: he really does not regard his own impermanence. Yet, although this self-centered streak has still remained in him, we find that when he seeks the plant of youth, he does it first and foremost to benefit his city. It is only when he accepts that his own immortality is impossible, however, that he fully becomes king. And thus we find in the Epic of Gilgamesh a complete rendering of one of the most important truths of human life: We are not gods, and therefore our potential for greatness can only be achieved in the context of friendship and civil society.

Favorite Passage:

Gilgamesh said, 'I dreamed again. We stood in a deep gorge of the mountain, and beside it we two were like the smallest of swamp flies; and suddenly the mountain fell, it struck me and caught my feet from under me. Then came an intolerable light blazing out, and in it was one whose grace and whose beauty was greater than the beauty of this world. He pulled me out from under the mountain, he gave me water to drink and my heart was comforted, and he set my feet on the ground.' (p. 78)

Recommendation: Highly Recommended. Every version of the Epic is a bit different, because there are many versions, and whichever you treat as dominant, you will have to reconstruct part of it from other sources. N. K. Sandars does a good job of making a coherent story out of disparate pieces and sources, and her translation is a very good one.

****

The Epic of Gilgamesh, N. K. Sandars, tr. and ed., Penguin Books (New York: 1972)

Dashed Off VI

 Whether a body can be two places at once depends on its relation to the boundary of the place.

-- Olivi tries to reduce quantity to situs and positio of parts.

Scotus seems to give a somewhat different account of transubstantiation every time he discusses it. Consider this further.

"A philosophy of the Beautiful lies by implication within a speculative system, when it is not explicitly announced." William Knight

satisfying contemplations and the intellectual life

Nobody can be saved outside the Church because it is in the Church that Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice. (Cf. IV Lateran)

Aesthetic judgment depends heavily on aesthetic classification.

'a loving, simple, and permanent attentiveness of the mind to divine things'

pride as a false imitation of truth, goodness, and beauty

"Every office, both spiritual and temporal, requires more than moral goodness to perform it well." Aquinas

respect for office // veneration of icons

Torah as a divine social ontology

Christ's Passion in itself is offered for everyone; Christ's Passion in the Mass is offered for specific people (the congregation and those for whom it is explicitly offered).

"Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating." Donald Norman
"To understand how to use things, we need conceptual models of how they work."

Even a very average human adult can immediately recognize tool capabilities for tens of thousands of things.

To say that we use tools or are tool-users is nto merely to say that we can occasionally exercise instrumental causality, which all living things sometimes can do; it is to say that we can use as tools entire systems of tools. Similar things can be said of our use of signs.

affordances, constraints, and mappings

design model -> system image -> user's model

One of the major functions of tragedy, important for its effect on moral and civil life, is reconciling us to the existence of the tragic in a way that  is neither cold nor maudlin.

workflow as an abstract practical instrument for organizing use of multiple tools to regular result

that whose existence is absolute
that whose existence is partly relative
that whose existence is wholly relative

Order is the root of splendor; the latter is a manifestation of integral order.

the easy intelligibility that delights

Cognition is accomplished by likening.

It takes a very great mind to see all of the beauty of things. Human experiences of beauty are generally very incomplete and limited.

Kant tends to blur finis qui, finis cui, and finis quo.

Artisans love their own work as part of their own being.

the recta ratio factibilium with respect to making and the recta ratio factibilium proper (with respect to the made)

will : using :: intellect : accounting for

The poet creates resemblances, contiguities, and regularities.

The beautified presupposes the beautiful in itself.

When we talk of the image in poetry, this is a figure of speech; the image is an intelligible object also capable of being an object of sensible experience, with the relevant intelligible and imaginative associations.

When an idea is introduced in physics, it takes decades and sometimes centuries to understand properly.

-- current is symbolzed by I because its original name in Frence was intensité du courant; the symbol comes from Ampère.

We measure the 'information' of event with probability p by -log p entirely because this is the way to convert p into a number that easily adds and still lets you associate the less probable with the more 'informative'.

The wealth of a nation needs to be more than an immense accumulation of commodities.

Common ground must be constructed, not merely assumed.

Holy orders is most properly and fully episcopal, and the priestly and diaconal are imperfect and instrumental participations in the episcopal power of order, which is the unifying center of the sacrament.

Episcopal and presbyteral powers of consecration of teh Body and Blood are the same as to object, but as to act of consecrating, the presbyteral power is instrumental to episcopal power. (The episcopal power is itself in turn instrumental to the apostolic, although in a different way.)

"Just as the perfections of all natural things pre-exist in God as their exemplar, so was Christ the exemplar of all ecclesiastical offices." Aquinas

deputamur ad cultum Dei secundum ritum Christianae religionis

"Totus autem ritus Christianae religionis derivatur a sacerdoto Christi." Aquinas

We praise people not only for the perfection of virtue but also for the beginnings of virtue and for the broadly virtue-like.

1 Tim 3:5 -- the bishop's task is to take care (epimeleomai) of the ecclesia of God
-- 'take care' is elsewhere found in Luke 10 -- the Good Samaritan takes care of the traveler, and then tells the host to take care of him.
1 Tim 3:6-7 -- the bishop is in danger of the devil both internally (through pride) and externally (through poor witness)

The obedience of a citizen derives from governance by citizens.

Bentham explicitly says taht the end of the Panopticon and all punishment is deterrence by terror of example.

Romans 13:7 gives the Greek terms for the two kinds of tax in Roman Law: tributum and vectigalia. Tributum (phoros): property tax, tax of conquered territory, ground rent, poll tax. Vectigalia: imposts on transported goods, tax on slaves, inheritance tax.

The principle of sufficient reason depends on assumptions like 'Everything is simple or composite' and 'Everything is necessary or contingent'.

the rhetorical aspect of philosophy: a great deal of philosophy is devoted to formulating things well (intelligibly, accurately, and nonmisleadingly)

instruments of salvation according to the ordinary counsels of providence

Our conception of the external world is layered; things are not merely external but varying degrees and forms of external.

'Per evangelica dicta deleantur nostra delicta' ('Through the evangelical words may our crimes be blotted out')

Apprehension of divine things does not float free from images and signs.

The value of satsifying any preferences depends on the reasons behind them.

"If the transition is too abrupt there is no feeling of arrival." Christopher Alexander

Memory is the root of mythology.

All avant garde has an affinity to the grotesque, arising from extraordinary freedom of imagination.

The ugly suggests a beauty that might be.

erotetic inference from presuppositions: question -> presuppositions -> inference
erotetic inference from implicatures
erotetic inference from sign or classification: e.g., Is X Y? -> Y is a diagnostic mark of Z -> Is X Z? Is X Y? -> Y is a species of Z -> Is X Z?

kapar (atonement) as sealing
Gn 6:14 seal it within and without
Gn 32:20 sea him with a present
Pr 16:6 By mercy and truth iniquity is sealed off
Ps 79:9 Seal away our sins
Jer 18:23 Do nto seal their sin from your sight
Lv 16:18 And he shall go out to the altar before the Lord and seal it, taking the bullock's blood and the goat's blood and putting it round about the altar horns.

sovereign dignity vs sovereign functionality

No human razor is sharp enough to separate all of a man's good opinions from his bad opinions; they ahve always or almost always grown up together.

Bayes' Theorem has no time component, and neither does Bayesian update; it works equally well forward and backward. This is obscured by the (purely verbal) use of 'prior' and 'posterior' and by the (interpretive) assumption that updating is concerned with chronologically new evidence in a forward-directed inquiry.

Bayes' Theoreme as a probabilistic version of contraposition

What Hume calls association is really classification.

In an ordered series of authorizations, the principal authority authorizes more fully than the derived authorities; but God is first and universal authority.

"When something is well orered in view of the general order of things, there is no reason why its contrary cannot be well ordered for a special reason." Aquinas 

One researches in order to interpret, and interprets to fulfill research.

Daringly stupid is surprisingly stupid.

In argumentative situations, people are mostly convinced by the failure of their ingenuity in finding reasons not to be convinced.

Praise and blame are always a matter of classification.

(1) What has the power to exist always does not exist at one time and not another.
:: When it does not exist, it does not have the power to exist for that time.
(2) What begins to exist, exists at one time and not at another.
(3) Therefore, what is generable does not itself have the power to exist always.
(4) Therefore, what is generable is corruptible.

benevolence : ready reserve :: beneficence : actual implementation

first principles as images of First Truth

the poet as student of potable light, i.e., sensible intelligibility

The sensible in general is the symbol of the intelligible, but the sensed triangle is not merely symbolic of the intelligible triangle; it is not merely vicarious but participant.

sovereignty as a kind of juridical integrity grounding rights with respect to that integrity that give it authority over law

-- if one uses possible world semantics to describe perspectives, one needs to allow a pw to carry false information about another, or distinguish pw's as real and apparent

Everything is intelligible in itself or as explained by another.

genres as concept-tradition complexes

Matter only bears a mereologized relationship to substance if form does.

What we actually work with in experience and observation is 'having measurable effect'; all the fundamental concepts of physics, all its conservation laws, are concerned with adequacy (in change) of the cause for the measurable effect, and are a sort of bookkeeping for this.

Election politics is liable to mudslinging because people vote based on classifications.

By imagination we can sometimes learn from our mistakes before we make them.

Testimony is reason communicated.

The nostalgia trip is one of the blessings of each generation as it ages out.

contract by
(1) done deed
(2) symbolic transfer
(3) promissory means

To Starve Thy Sin, Not Bin

To Keep a True Lent
by Robert Herrick 

 Is this a fast, to keep
The larder lean?
And clean
From fat of veals and sheep? 

 Is it to quit the dish
Of flesh, yet still
To fill
The platter high with fish? 

 Is it to fast an hour,
Or ragg’d to go,
Or show
A downcast look and sour? 

 No; 'tis a fast to dole
Thy sheaf of wheat,
And meat,
Unto the hungry soul. 

 It is to fast from strife,
From old debate
And hate;
To circumcise thy life. 

 To show a heart grief-rent;
To starve thy sin,
Not bin;
And that’s to keep thy Lent.

Habitude XXVI

 To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that every virtue is moral. For moral virtue is named from 'mos', that is, custom. But we are able to become accustomed to the acts of every virtue. Therefore every virtue is moral virtue.

Further, the Philosopher says in Ethic. II that virtue is a choosing habitude consisting in the rational mean. But every virtue seems to be a choosing habitude, because we are able to do the acts of whatever virtue from choosing. Every virtue also consists in some way in the rational mean, as will be obvious below. Therefore every virtue is moral.

Further, Tully says in his Rhetoric that virtue is habitude in the mode of nature in accordance with reason. But since every human virtue is ordered to human good, it must be in accordance with reason, for human good is to be according to reason, as Dionysius says. Therefore every virtue is moral.

But contrariwise is what the Philosopher says in Ethic. I: Speaking of morals, we do not say that one is wise or intelligent, but that one is gentle or sober. So, therefore, wisdom and intellection are not moral. They are, however, virtues, as was said above. Therefore not every virtue is moral.

I reply that it must be said that, toward this being clear, one must consider what 'mos' is, for in this way we will be able to know what moral virtue is. And 'mos' signifies two things. For sometimes it signifies custom, as is said in Acts XV, Unless you are circumcised according to the 'mos' of Moses, you are not able to be saved. Sometimes it means a sort of natural or quasi-natural inclination to enact something, from which some things of brute animals are called 'mores', as is said in 2 Maccab. XI, that rushing on the enemy in the 'mos' of lions, they leveled them. And so 'mos' is taken in Psalm LXVII, where it is said, who makes to dwell those of one 'mos' in a house. And these two significations are in no way distinguished as to word in Latin. But in Greek they are distinguished, for 'ethos', which among us signifies 'mos', sometimes has a long first part, and is written with the Greek letter eta, but sometimes it has a short first part, and is written with epsilon. 

Now moral virtue is named from 'mos' according as 'mos' signifies natural or quasi-natural inclination to enact something. And the other signification, which significes custom, is near to this signification, for custom is in a way turned into nature and makes an inclination like the natural. But it is manifest that inclination to act properly agrees with [convenit] striving virtue [appetitivae virtuti], to which it belongs to move all the powers to act, as is obvious from what was said above. And therefore not every virtue is called moral, but only that which is in the striving impulse [vi appetitiva].

To the first it therefore must be said that the objection proceeds from 'mos' inasmuch as it signifies custom.

To the second it must be said that every act of virtue is able to be enacted from choosing, but only virtue that is in the striving part of the soul is able to act with right choosing, for it was said above that to choose is an act of the striving part. Wherefore choosing habitude, which is a source of choosing, is the only one that completes the striving impulse, although the acts of other habitudes are able to fall under choosing.

To the third it must be said that nature is a source of change, as is said in Physic. II. But to move to act is properly in the striving part. And thus to be likened to nature in rational consenting is proper to virtues that are in the striving impulse.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 1.58.1, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

Ash Wednesday

 From the Hoosoyo (Prayer of Forgiveness) of the Maronite liturgy for the First Weekday Cycle of Lent (and thus celebrated on Ash Monday and, when liturgies are celebrated on Ash Wednesday in Maronite Churches, for Ash Wednesday as well): 

 O Christ, Lover of all people, you gave the Church the holy season of Lent as a shield of protection and a healing remedy. Your fasting and sacrifices taught us to fast, and to understand the purpose and essence of life, the meaning of the world and its existence, and the greatness of your love and compassion. Shower your mercy on all people that they may repent, and soften their hearts that they may return to you, know you, and love you.

'Physical' and 'Moral' Causality in Sacraments

 There has long been a dispute in Catholic sacramentology over whether the efficacy of the sacraments is 'physical' or 'moral'. The terms don't mean here what they usually mean; 'physical' means here only that the causality is by some quality, capacity, capability, impulse, or force provided to the sacrament (or sacramental effect, depending on the exact version) itself. 'Moral' means that the sacrament causes specifically by being a reason for God to cause an effect. In these senses, grace itself always works by physical causality, while petitionary prayer always works by moral causality, and so the question is whether the sacraments themselves are more like the former or the latter. Everybody recognizes that God acts in the sacraments as a 'physical' cause.

One of the things that has plagued this discussion is rampant equivocation. For instance, the Sacrae Theologiae Summae VI (which is all-in on moral causality) gives the following argument (tr. 1 ch. 3. art. 4 th. 10 sect. 89):

A sacrament is a moral composite, consisting of physical parts somewhat separated in time among themselves. Therefore the physical power of acting cannot be attributed to the composite as such, because it is not a physical entity. Therefore, to what should it be attributed? to the matter? to the form? to which part of the form? (p. 74)

But this equivocates on both 'moral' and 'physical'. Sacraments, which are artifacts, are indeed moral composites -- that means that they are put together by will rather than naturally being composed the way they are -- but this is irrelevant to the question of whether they are moral causes, which is about whether they cause grace instrumentally by being provided, by God, a capability qua instrument through which he acts, or whether they cause grace instrumentally by providing God a reason to cause grace because of them. The claim that a physical power of acting cannot be attributed to a moral composite is simply wrong, when we use the term 'physical' in the correct way; if this were true, a hammer (which is a moral composite) could not be given the force to hit a nail, and a series of dominos (which is also a moral composite, and one with physical parts somewhat separated in time among themselves) could not be set to induce a falling motion in each other that achieves some result at the end.

Since none of the sacraments seem to work exactly the same way, it is perhaps not surprising that which sacrament we are considering changes considerably the arguments we have to use to argue this question. Matrimony and Reconciliation both have features that put the moral causality view on very strong ground -- Matrimony is a covenant and Reconciliation a tribunal, which are both things we at least sometimes already associate with moral causality (in the sacramental sense, not necessarily other senses): contracts and courts often effect things by providing agents reasons for doing something. On the other hand, the Church Fathers talk about Baptism and Confirmation and Eucharist in terms that make it difficult to see how one could give a moral-causality interpretation of what they say (and, in fact, it's not uncommon for moral-causality theorists to make a special exception for the Eucharist due to the doctrine of Real Presence). It seems that the easiest path here is to be pluralist: take Matrimony and Reconciliation to work by moral causality and the rest to work by physical causality. This loses a nice unified account, but it would make some sense for the sacramental causality to work by both moral causality and physical causality.

Nonetheless, while it's certain that each sacrament has a moral causality (they can all be seen as a kind of prayer, for one thing. and beyond whatever they do themselves they each may also be offered up in prayer for further grace), I think physical-causality theorists should hold the line, and hold that all the seven sacraments properly work by physical causality. This does raise some questions, that have never adequately been answered, about Matrimony and Reconciliation/Penance. (Perhaps relatedly, Thomas Aquinas, who does very well in the Summa Theologiae in expounding a plausible version of what later came to be called the physical causality view, never completed his discussion of Penance and never got to Matrimony. What he does say about Penance suggests that he was thinking of the human beings involved as the sensible instruments, and thus God working inwardly in them gives the physical causality for grace to them. As far as I know, no one has ever really developed this.) 

There are some very solid reasons for being a physical-causality theorist. The Tridentine formula for sacramental causality is that the sacraments contain and confer grace, and while moral causality theorists give us at least a roundabout sense of 'confer', they tend to go quite squishy and difficult to pin down when they talk about the 'contain'. Melchior Cano claims that the sacraments contain grace 'morally' -- which seems to equivocate on 'morally' again -- in the way that a purse filled with gold contains the price of a ransom. It's very difficult to figure out what this means, although this is not wholly Cano's fault -- he seems to have the idea that grace is contained in the sacrament by way of a sort of designated status of some kind (a purse holds the price of a ransom purely because the gold inside is designated to fulfill an already existing function of paying a ransom), and social ontology is a philosophically tangled field. But in the purse example, the price of ransom is contained in the purse only because the gold designated for the price is already, and independently, literally contained in the purse; there isn't obviously anything like this in Matrimony or Confirmation. (Cano claims that the thing contained is the blood of Christ, which is unilluminating when you want to know how.) Louis Billot tried a different route, holding that a sacrament is a title for the right to grace; but it's equally unclear what it means to say a title 'contains' that to which it gives right, since we don't normally talk about (say) the deed of a house 'containing' the house, and if we did it would almost certainly be a metaphor for something else. Moral causality externalizes the actual causal work of the sacraments, since moral causes only induce a physical cause to act, which makes it hard for moral causality theorists to say how the grace could possibly be said to be contained in the sacrament, since it is in some sense caused outside of the sacrament. Physical-causality theorists have no problems with this at all. And nothing prevents a physical-causality theorist from also recognizing that the sacraments have a designated status and are capable of being juridical titles within the broader covenantal framework, beyond their causality for their proper effects.

Inside and Outside

 The dual existence of form is the heart and core of Thomistic noetics; it is another vitally important application of the real distinction between essence and existence. The same form exists in knowledge, and it simultaneously exists outside of knowledge. In its existence in knowledge it is called specieslikeness, similitude of the thing. In its existence outside of knowledge it is called form, inner cause of determination, perfection. Because of the fundamental dualism of existence, the same form can be immanent and transcendent, in thought and outside of thought. The act of knowing can take place in the innermost depths of the intellect and nevertheless attain things which are outside of thought, fo rthat which determines the thing determines the thought of the thing.

[John Frederick Peifer, The Concept of Thomism, Chrzastek, ed. Cluny Press (Providence, RI: 2026), p. 199.]

Links of Note

 * David W. Wood, The 'Mathematical' Wissenschaftslehre: On a Late Fichtean Reflection of Novalis (PDF)

* Gregory B. Sadler, Virtue Epistemology and the Moral Conditions of Knowledge: Contributions from Phenomenology

* Owen Cyclops has illustrated the Summa Theologia

* Andrew Higgins, Exploring Invented Languages, discusses Virgilius Maro, at "Elvish Musings"

* Disintegration Sensation, at the Lyceum Institute

* Jonathan Bate, Aristotle and the so-called Tragic Flaw, at "Jonathan Bate's Literary Remains"

* Joanna Chavez, A Day in the Life of Mr. Bennet

* Bernard Mees, The first Scottish mention of King Arthur, at "The Age of Arthur"

* Marco Costantini, Changes in Kant's Moral Thought Between 1762 and 1763 (PDF)

* Kevin Dorst, Bayesians Commit the Gambler's Fallacy, at "Stranger Apologies"

* What It's Like to Be a Worm, at "Asimov Press"

* Tiago Faleiro, Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals

* Ramya Yandava, Stop adapting only half of Wuthering Heights, at "Soul-Making"

Music on My Mind

 

Rich Mullins, "Sometimes by Step".

Habitude XXV

 To the fourth one proceeds thus. It seems that prudence is not another virtue from craft, for craft is right reason for some works. But different kinds of works do not make it so that something lacks the notion of craft, since there are different crafts about works that are widely different. Since prudence therefore is also a sort of right reason for works, it seems that it too ought to be called craft.

Further, prudence converges more with craft than reflective habitudes, for they are both about contingents having themselves [se habere] otherwise, as is said in Ethic. VI. But some reflective habitudes are called crafts. therefore much more prudence ought to be called craft.

Further, it pertains to prudence to take counsel well, as is said in Ethic. VI. But it also happens that one takes counsel in some crafts, as is said in Ethic. III, as in the military, governing, and medicinal crafts. Therefore prudence is not distinguished from craft.

But contrariwise the Philosopher distinguishes prudence from craft in Ethic. VI.

I reply that it must be said that, where a different notion of virtue is found, there virtues should be distinguished. And it was said above that some habitudes have the notion of virtue from making an aptness [facultatem] for good work, while others from making not only the aptness for good work, but also the use. Now craft makes only the aptness for good work, because it does not regard striving [appetitum]. But prudence not only makes the aptness for good work, but also the use, for it regards striving, as presupposing rightness of striving. The reason for which is that craft is right reason for makeables, but prudence is right reason for doables. But to make and to do differ because, as is said in Metaphys. IX, making is act passing into external material, such as building, cutting, and the like, but acting is act enduring in the doer, as seeing, willing, and the like. 

So therefore in this way prudence has itself toward such human acts, which are uses of powers and habitudes, just as craft has itself toward external makings, because both are complete reason with respect to that to which they are compared. But completeness and rightness of reason in reflective matters [speculativi] depend on sources from which reason deduces, as it was said that knowledge depends on and presupposes intellection, which is habitude of sources. But human acts have themselves to ends, as sources in reflective matters, as is said in Ethic. VII. And therefore for prudence, which is right reason for doables, it is required that the human being be well disposed about ends, which is through right striving, and therefore for prudence, moral virtue is required, through which striving is made right. But good for the crafted is not good for human striving, but good for the crafted works themselves, and therefore craft does not presuppose right striving. And thus it is that a craftsman is more praised who fails [peccat] willingly than who fails unwillingly, but it is more contrary to prudence to fail willingly than to fail unwillingly, because rightness of will belongs to the notion of prudence, but not to the notion of craft. So therefore it is obvious that prudence is a virtue distinct from craft.

To the first it therefore must be said that all different kinds of crafted things are outside the human being, and so the notion of virtue is not differentiated. But prudence is right reason of human acts themselves. Wherefore it differentiates the notion of virtue, as was said.

To the second it must be said that prudence converges more with craft than with reflective habitudes in subject and material, for they are both in the opinionative part of the soul, and about contingents having themselves otherwise. But craft converges more with reflective habitude than with prudence in the notion of virtue, as is obvious from what was said.

To the third it must be said that prudence is taking counsel well about what pertains to the whole of human life and to the ultimate end of human life. But in some crafts there is counsel taken that pertains to the ends proper to that craft. Wherefore some, insofar as they are taking counsel well in matters of warfare or seamanship, are said to be prudent generals or navigators, but not simply prudent, for this is only those who take counsel well about what refers to the whole of life.

[St. Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.57.4, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here. The word for 'fail' here, of course, also means to sin: to sin, to fail, to miss, to err, are all correct translations of it.]

Cognition as Coordination of Relations

 We have a tendency to think of understanding or knowing as involving a single binary relation to something, but there are others of thinking, In a well-known passage in De Potentia 8, Aquinas argues that in understanding a person is involved in four distinct relations:

(1) We are related to the thing understood (res intellecta). 

(2) We are related to the intelligible species.

(3) We are related to our own intellectual action.

(4) We are related to our intellectual conception.

All of these have to be distinct. The res intellecta cannot, as such, be the other three, because unlike them it is sometimes (interdum) outside the intellect. The intelligible species, which is how things experienced and imagined and remembered appear to the intellect, activates the intellect, and therefore is the beginning of the intellectual action, distinguishing it from the conception, which is the end-result. The intelligible species can't be the intellectual action itself because it has to pre-exist it; we receive the intelligible species simply by experiencing things as intellectual beings, and therefore our intellectual actions presuppose it. Since the conception is the result of the intellectual action, and formed by it for intellectual ends, the action and the conception are not the same.

In reality, of course, this is simplified, because, at least for human beings, between the thing understood and the intelligible species we find relations of sensation and sensory processing, and in being related to the intelligible species, intellectual action, and intellectual conception, the intellect has to be related to the phantasm and the thing sensed or imagined. Moreover, if we consider what happens beyond the intellectual conception, we find that it does not stop -- we link, distinguish, compare, contrast, modify intellectual conceptions in light of other intellectual conceptions, and thus judge and reason, both of which we do in part so that we might understand more.

The temptation in epistemology is to treat 'knowledge' or 'cognition' as a single monolithic thing. But one of the most obvious facts of our experience as sensers and imaginers and knowers and understanders is the coordination of distinct relations into a unified harmony. We coordinate sight and hearing, we coordinate sensing and imagining, we coordinate imagining and understanding, and in each of these we are relating ourselves to more than one thing. We cannot have a good account of thought of any kind without considering the variety of relations we are integrating into a whole whenever we do any kind of thinking at all.

Dashed Off V

 triple end of music: diagoge, paideia, catharsis

poetic existimation

Of all the arts, music has the most analogies with angelic speech.

"We are the end of all artificial things, for all such things are for the use of man." Aquinas

Mystery is made credible by sign.

the Church as a 'great and perpetual motive of credibility'

Garrigou-Lagrange's division of motives of credibility
I. External to the consciousness of the inquirer
--- --- A. Extrinsic to revealed religion
--- --- --- --- 1. Miracles
--- --- --- --- 2. Prophecies
--- --- B. Intrinsic to revealed religion
--- --- --- --- 1. Sublimity of Doctrine
--- --- --- --- 2. Miraculous Life of the Church
II. Internal to the consciousness of the inquirer
--- --- A. Universal
--- --- --- --- 1. Miraculous fulfillment of humanity's aspirations
--- --- B. Individual
--- --- --- --- 2. Individual experience of profound peace which the world cannot give

People have neither wish nor need to work only interchangeable jobs, and in fact have wish and need for the opposite; from which inequalities unavoidably arise, of reputation, of network connection, of income, of satisfaction.

A legal system inevitably rules in application of a rough picture of natural inclination and normal duty, which serves to guide the default assumptions in how the laws are to be applied.

Everyone decides to believe whether they will follow this or that plan for the day.

the phenomenon of wishful thinking (and our capacity to avoid it) --> doxastic voluntarism

We regularly believe p regardless of whether p is true, just not where the truth of p is obvious.

We often believe where the connection between the belief and its truth is that (1) its truth is not ruled out and (2) we wish to find evidence for its truth.

Our experience of beliefs shows that beliefs become entrenched, not that they intrinsically are.

We can recognize some of our believings as being willed by us during the time we believe them; the experiences of clinging to a belief or holding onto a belief in the face of doubt or wanting to reject evidence against a belief are all common.

Some of the evidence doxastic involuntarists point to, ironically can be interpreted as cases in which we easily believe voluntarily and then cannot voluntarily disbelieve while we are easily voluntarily believing. In this sense, the 'involuntariness' is like trying to get out of a warm, comfortable bed to do something dull or unpleasant on a bitter cold morning.

We find many cases in life in which we can voluntarily do something but only if we work ourselves up and prepare ourselves first.

Every human being in practice takes the question of whether a belief is good to have to have some bearing, even if only loose and uncertain, on the question of whether it is true.

erotetic voluntarism
inquisitive voluntarism
self-critical voluntarism
-- all three of these imply that we have quite broad at least indirect doxastic control

Conspiracy theories are a byproduct of people thinking for themselves in much the same way that scams are a byproduct of people making their own financial decisions; it is however an error, in both cases, to assume that this is the only way they arise, or that removing the autonomy would make people less vulnerable.

Psalm 119 is a psalm not merely of obeying but of studying: to delight in the law of the Lord is to take joy in earning from the key instrument of discipleship to God.

category mistakes as use of wrong kind of classification

Bodily agency presupposes bodily integrity and bodily self-respect, the body not as a mere thing to use but as an object of personal responsibility and care.

the body as a received part of the gift of self

Natural law being natural to us, our consistent and coherent self-interest requires upholding it.

That something is in our self-interest does not imply that it is easy for us.

As we are civilizational beings, our self-interest always involves the interest of a civilization and society of which we can be a part.

The fundamental divide in theories of human rights is among
(1) theories grounding human rights in human nature, or in what is connatural to it
(2) theories grounding human rights in human will
(3) theories grounding human rights in what is neither human nature nor human will

"If the necessity of science arises per se from perseity, perseity itself arises from the immateriality of intellect which alone causes openness to being as such." Chastek

Christ and the Apostles did not merely initiate the Church as a social body; they created a social ontology for it.

examples as illustrations vs examples as argument foci/lenses

GNS theory of role-playing games
-- three forms of player engagement: Gamism, Narrativism, Simulation
three forms of task resolution: drama/destiny (participants decide), fortune/chance (chance mechanism decides), karma/fate (fixed value decides)
-- five elements of role-playing: character, color/atmosphere, setting, situation, system
-- four decision stances: actor (what character would want), author (what player wants, with rationalization), director (what environment.gamemaster decides), pawn (what player wants, no rationalization)

system, story, challenge

Radoff's player motivations: immersion, cooperation, achievement, competition

"The moral law is holy (inviolable). A human being is indeed unholy enough but the humanity in his person must be holy to him." Kant

Kant sometimes gets plausibility only by equivocating between genus and species.

'For all S knows, p' vs 'given what S knows, p is not impossible'
-- the first is actually a statement of what S does not know

A useful fiction is not an error.

culture (language, mythology, fashion, ritual, etc.) as a shared reserve of signs for intellectual and volitional use

Moral life is a field in which the composite integrates to become noncomposite; this latter is called integrity. Likewise, in moral life the mutable grows immutable; we call this latter constancy or steadfastness. The two together make for what we call the principled life.

-- the implicit criticism fo utilitarianism in Oliver Twist and Hard Times

We shape experiences only by shaping signs.

principal exemplars (productive -- e.g., idea in artisan's mind) vs. ministerial exemplars (objective -- e.g., blueprint or recipe)

sketching: scaffolding marks, test marks, confirmed marks, correction marks

maintenance of anything as a system of cycles

practical intellect : goodness of being :: speculative intellect : goodness of truth

generosity as creating a mutual gain

"The intellect -- much more than the imagination -- can form the natures of things that have never come before the senses." Aquinas

Close reading is the skill of good readers; literary critics doe not have proprietary claim to it, nor is there usually evidence of literary critics being better at it than other readers. Kramnick claims that close reading is not reading but writing, but in fact this is no better; writing is the skill of good writers, and there is no evidence that literary critics are as such better at it than other reader-writers. It's just a basic form of liberal art, not something specific to literary critics. We should perhaps not dismiss the idea that literary critics in fact are liberal artisans specializing in an elementary -- but important -- set of tools that are not distinctive to them; this is perhaps not what many literary critics think, but there is much more evidence of this.

Only very few literary critics produce literary works of note in writing literary criticism.

the co-suggestivity of signs

The Gospels make clear that fishers of men will have very few fish in their nets until Christ gives them more fish than they can manage.

the coloring or nuancing of one sign by another

undesigned coincidences (in multiple testimonies)
(1) noncontradictorily differing details as to event
(2) mutually confirming different details as to event
(3) detail in one confirming the other as to acount/authority
(4) convergent accounts as to event
-- the 'undesigned' requires reason to reject collusion or copying

Evil by its nature is something endured by good.

Loanwords and Calques

 Languages are dynamic and permeable, and they need to be for their functions as language. The notion of a language in which every word is exactly definable and used in exactly the same way all the time quickly breaks down in the face of real world problems. Mercantile markets are forced to create pidgin-versions, institutions create jargonized versions, scientific inquiry and communication requires regularized naming-extension practices suitable to the inquiry. And, of course, human beings are inveterate figurators; we analogize, make metaphors, speak obliquely, in almost everything we do.

One of the ways we keep language flexible enough to be practically useful is by making use of other languages. One way we do this is by using other languages as a neologistic reserve; this is commonly done with classical languages, and English primarily uses Latin and Greek for this. In this use we borrow words with some regard for their meaning in the original language, but loosely for our own purposes. But sometimes we just borrow them directly. Two common ways of doing this are calques and loanwords.

A calque is a loan-translation. Given a word in another language, we just translate it into ours and use it in the same sense. When computers began to be common, Spanish calqued the English word 'mouse', to indicate the device, by translating it as the word for 'mouse' in Spanish, ratón, and this has happened in multiple other languages. This happens very often with easily identifiable compound words. The English word 'skyscraper' has been calqued into literally dozens of languages, each of which translates it by translating 'sky' and 'scraper'. 

A loanword is a direct borrowing. Déjà-vu is in English a loanword from French. When the word is borrowed, it is often done in a very specific way, so sometimes the words will only carry over part of their original spread of meaning. This is very common with food terms. 

These two methods of borrowing have led to an amusing bit, which is actually why I've been thinking about this. 'Calque' is a loanword from French, not a calque. 'Loanword' is a calque from German (the original word was Lehnwort), not a loanword.

In any case, I've often thought that these points of dynamism in language should be taken more seriously by philosophers of language than they usually are. Philosophers of language have tended to focus on the relatively static features of language, but it's these dynamic features that arguably show how language actually works.

Habitude XXIV

 To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that craft is not intellectual virtue. For Augustine says, in De Libero Arbitrio, that no one uses virtue badly. But some use craft badly. For a craftsman is able to work badly according to the knowledge of his craft. Therefore craft is not virtue.

Further, there is no virtue of virtue, but there is some virtue of craft, as is said in Ethic. VI. Therefore craft is not virtue.

Further, crafts of the free person [artes liberales] are more excellent than crafts of the engineer [artes mechanicae]. But as crafts of the engineer are practical, so crafts of the free person are reflective [speculativa]. Therefore if craft were intellectual virtue, it would have to be enumerated as reflective virtue.

But contrariwise is that the Philosopher, in Ethic. VI, posits craft to be virtue, yet he does not number it with speculative virtues, which he places in the knowing part of the soul.

 I reply that it must be said that craft is nothing other than right reason for making some works. However, the good of these things does not consist in that human striving [appetitus] has itself [se habet] in some way but in that the work itself that is done is in itself good. For it does not pertain to the praise of the craftsman inasmuch as he is a craftsman, that he willingly does the work but what kind of work he does. Therefore craft, properly speaking, is working habitude. And yet in some ways it converges on [convenit cum] reflective habitudes because it also pertains to reflective habitudes how they have themselves to the things they consider, but not how human striving has itself to them. For provided that the the geometer demonstrates the true, it does not matter how he has himself in his striving part, whether he is glad or angry, just as it does not matter in the craftsman, as was said. And so in this way craft has the notion of virtue in the same way as reflective habitudes, inasmuch as neither craft nor reflective habitude produce good work with respect to use, which is proper to virtue completing striving, but only with respect to the faculty of acting well.

To the first therefore it must be said that when someone who has craft works bad craftsmanship, this is not a work of craft but is contrary to craft, just as when someone who knows the true lies, what is said is not according to knowledge but contrary to knowledge. Thus, just as knowledge always has itself to good, as was said, so also craft, and in this respect it is called virtue. In this, however, it is lacking the complete notion of virtue, because it does not do the good use itself, but something else is required for it, although good use without craft is not able to be.

To the second it must be said that because good will, which is completed by moral virtue, is required for a human being to make good use of craft, therefore the Philosopher says that craft is virtue, namely moral, inasmuch as some moral virtue is required for its good use. For it is manifest that the craftsman is inclined by justice, which makes the will right, to make the work faithfully. 

To the third it must be said that even in reflective matters there is something by way of a sort of work, such as construction of a deduction or a suitable sentence or the work of counting and measuring. And thus whatever habitudes are ordered to such works of reflective reason, are called by a kind of likeness crafts, but for the free person, in distinction from those crafts which are ordered to works exercised through the body, which are in a way for slaves, inasmuch as the body is subject slavishly to the soul, and man is free according to soul. But those kinds of knowledge which are not ordered to any such work, are simply called kinds of knowledge, not crafts. Nor is it needful, if crafts of the free person are more noble, that the notion of craft be more suitable to them.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.57.3, my translation. The Dominican Fathers translation is here, the Latin is here.]

Here Twilight Is and Coolness

 Inscription for a Fount
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 This Sycamore, oft musical with bees,--
Such tents the Patriarchs loved! O long unharmed
May all its agéd boughs o'er-canopy
The small round basin, which this jutting stone
Keeps pure from falling leaves! Long may the Spring,
Quietly as a sleeping infant's breath,
Send up cold waters to the traveller
With soft and even pulse! Nor ever cease
Yon tiny cone of sand its soundless dance,
Which at the bottom, like a Fairy's Page,
As merry and no taller, dances still,
Nor wrinkles the smooth surface of the Fount.
Here Twilight is and Coolness: here is moss,
A soft seat, and a deep and ample shade.
Thou may'st toil far and find no second tree.
Drink, Pilgrim, here; Here rest! and if thy heart
Be innocent, here too shalt thou refresh
Thy spirit, listening to some gentle sound,
Or passing gale or hum of murmuring bees!

Links of Note

 * Sarah Catherine Byers, Trinitarian Metaphysics in Confessions 13: Marius Victorinus and the Neoplatonic Triad 'Being, Understanding, Life' (PDF)

* Gregory B. Sadler, The Stoic Metaphor of Inner Citadels

* Jacob Allee, The Consolation of Philosophy, at "Study the Great Books"

* Flame & Light, Four General Approaches to Fictional Entities

* Neil Tennant, Aristotle's Syllogistic and Core Logic (PDF)

* TJH, Love & Justice in Anselm's Soteriology, at "Caput Mundi"

* Ben Holloway, A Defense of 'Extreme' Intentionalism (PDF)

* Peter Graziano, On Studiousness and Curiosity, at "Mercurial Thomist"

* Russell Sprout, Gilmore Girls as a Greek Tragedy, at "Sproutstack"

* Medieval Cookery

* John Dickson reviews T. C. Schmidt's Josephus and Jesus, at "The Gospel Coalition"

* Edward Feser, No, AI does not have human-level intelligence

* Brian Kemple's Aquinas Lecture: "Broken Minds: Artificial Intelligence, Digital Technology, and the Enslavement of Humankind":

Fortnightly Book, February 8

 'Gilgamesh' is the Akkadian version of the name for a king of Uruk; in Sumerian sources he is sometimes called 'Bilgames'. Our stories of him probably go back to various Sumerian poems, perhaps originally from the Third Dynasty of Ur, in the 21st century BC, of which a few late recensions here and there survive, but the earliest extant text of the tale of Gilgamesh is known as the Old Babylonian version, which survives in a few tablets, and is from the 18th century BC. A Hittite version, rather different in parts from the main stream, was worked up a few centuries afterward. A newer version, the Standard Babylonian version, was put together in perhaps the 11th or 12th century BC, and survives in fragments that have come to us through the rediscovery of the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh in the 1850s. There are many other fragments, however, across this expanse of time. The destruction of the Assyrian Empire seems, however, to have mostly swallowed the Gilgamesh tale, as it did much more of the cuneiform literature; its resurrection is one of the great achievements of modern archeology.

I will be reading The Epic of Gilgamesh in the Penguin Classics edition translated and edited by N. K. Sandars. Like all other versions, it is a reconstruction, following the Assyrian collation in great measure, but drawing on other sources, such as the Old Babylonian; when Sandars first worked up a version in the 1950s she drew more heavily on the scattered Sumerian fragments than was common at the time. 

Homer, The Odyssey

 Introduction

Opening Passage:

Tell me the tale of a man, Muse, who had so many roundabout ways
To wander, driven off course, after sacking Troy's hallowed keep;
Many the people whose cities he saw and whose ways of thinking he learned,
Many the toils he suffered at sea, anguish in his heart
As he struggled to safeguard his life and the homecoming of his companions.
But he did not save his companions even so, though he longed to,
For their heedlessness destroyed them, theirs and nobody else's--
Fools that they were, like children, who devoured the sun-god Hyperion's
Cattle, and so he took from them the day of their homecoming.
Goddess, start where you will; daughter of Zeus, share the tale with us too. (p. 73)

Summary: The obvious story of The Odyssey is that of Odysseus, but this is merely the dominant of three interwoven stories.

The first, and most encompassing, is a tale of Athena. We begin the poem with Athena authorized by Zeus to begin the process of allowing Odysseus to return home. We end the poem with Athena, again authorized by Zeus, bringing to an end the bloodshed that threatens to flood over everything after Odysseus's return. Odysseus is her favorite, but he is opposed by Poseidon, and thus we have the story of Athena threading the needle as she works to bring Odysseus successfully home while not directly opposing her uncle Poseidon. (It is somewhat tempting to see her as being especially careful because some of her actions in The Iliad got her into trouble with the major gods, including Zeus himself.) She plays an active role, constantly showing up in disguises to advise heroes at opportune times, putting thoughts into mortal hearts, pouring divine splendor on people when they need to impress, bringing Odysseus ever closer to home. She also, as he returns, intensifies his difficulties, hardening the hearts of the Suitors trying to take his wife and his home and repeatedly provoking them to more extreme action. This is certainly in order to make his homecoming more splendid and definitive, but may also be a sort of sop to her uncle, making sure that Odysseus endures trouble not merely as he comes home but precisely so that he can come home despite being under Poseidon's wrath. She is a goddess, so she has no character arc; rather, she forms the story successfully to her satisfaction.

The second tale is that of Telemakhos. Twenty-ish years ago his father had gone off to war, so long ago that he does not really remember his father. When his father did not return ten(-ish) years ago with the other heroes of the Trojan War, his nightmare began, as men from all over descended on his homestead, nominally to woo the lovely Penelope, his mother, and they have stayed as guests, devouring the substance of his father's household. Telemakhos, of course, was too young to do anything about it, and now that he has recently become of age where he might do something, he finds that his options have diminished almost to nothing. The Suitors outnumber any forces he can command, and he is inexperienced, having no inkling of how he might extricate himself and his mother from their intrusion. We learn that he is quite clever, being a true son of his shrewd father and prudent mother, but he lacks his father's self-confidence and boldness, because he has never had an opportunity to develop them. The first five books of the poem follow Telemakhos as Athena guides him through this maze. He mounts an expedition, with her help (although unbeknownst to him, because she is disguised as Mestor), to discover news of his father. They visit Pylos and Sparta, where the mission is successful, in that Telemakhos does learn something about what happened to his father, and then return home in Book Fifteen, avoiding, with Athena's guidance, a fleet sent by the Suitors to kill Telemakhos on the way. This part of the story teases what has happened with Odysseus, and gives Telemakhos the preparation he needs for when his father actually arrives. However, there is arguably a third function that it fulfills, namely, that it buys Penelope and Telemakhos more time. Part of the host of Suitors is away from Ithaca in the attempt to assassinate Telemakhos; those at home therefore have incentive to await the results of that mission; Telemakhos gets away from the Suitors for a while, which lets him get a clearer view of the situation; and what is gained is exactly what is needed to allow Odysseus the time to arrive. In Book Sixteen, his story begins intersecting with his father's, and we find Telemakhos well prepared to assist his father in restoring the rightful order of things.

And, of course, there is the tale of Odysseus. Mendelsohn notes that the poem starts out without telling us his name (we only get it in passing after twenty lines), and that this is not an accident, because Odysseus is repeatedly associated with namelessness and disguises. The most famous case is his interaction with Cyclops, to whom he says his name is Outis, No-one. But throughout the tale we find a constant blurring between Odysseus and Outis. Whenever he meets someone, Odysseus presents himself as someone else; plays on words involving ou tis and similar phrases keep recurring; his identity is often in question, his whereabouts often uncertain, his very existence repeatedly called into question. This is because Odysseus is wandering in the Anti-Home. All of the troubles he faces are in one aspect or another the opposite of what it is to be home: the inertness of the Lotos-eaters, the savagery of the Cyclopeans, the strange seductions of tempting goddesses, all of the forms of uncivilized madness. Lost in such things, can a man have a name? Can he have that for which the name is a metonymy, a self? What is worse, this Anti-Home has laid siege to his own household, and he cannot stop being Outis, the Stranger, until he is in a position to restore Home. Then, and only then, can Odysseus fully be Odysseus. As he says when he finally stands forth to take his home back:

'Here at home I am, truly myself!' (p. 399)

Favorite Passage:

And so, when she saw the corpses and the endless rivers of blood,
She launched into the victory cry, so great was the deed she beheld,
But Odysseus kept her back and restrained her, though she was eager,
And addressed her then with words that flew toward her like arrows:
  "Rejoice in your heart, old woman, but hold back--don't sound the cry.
It is an unholy thing to gloat over men who have been slain.
What vanquished these men was a god-sent fate and their own wicked deeds,
For they never showed respect to anyone on earth
Who happened to cross their path, whether wicked or good at heart.
And so, through their heedlessness, they have come to a shameful end...." (p. 419)

Recommendation: It's The Odyssey, and the translation is quite good, so obviously, Highly Recommended.

*****

Homer, The Odyssey , Daniel Mendelsohn, tr., The University of Chicago Press (Chicago: 2025).

Child of Night and Silence

 Sonnet 13
by Anna Seward 

 Thou child of Night and Silence, balmy Sleep,
Shed thy soft poppies on my aching brow!
And charm to rest the thoughts of whence, or how
Vanish'd that priz'd Affection, wont to keep
Each grief of mine from rankling into woe.
Then stern Misfortune from her bended bow
Loos'd the dire strings;-and Care, and anxious Dread
From my cheer'd heart, on sullen pinion fled.
But now, the spell dissolv'd, th' enchantress gone,
Ceaseless those cruel fiends infest my day,
And sunny hours but light them to their prey.
Then welcome midnight shades, when thy wish'd boon
May in oblivious dews my eye-lids steep,
Thou child of Night and Silence, balmy Sleep!

Dashed Off IV

 drawing the solution from the problem like the sculpture from the block
the problem as the lock that structurally requires a certain sort of key
structural impediments to solution-finding (wrong kind of key) vs combinatorial impediments (size of the field of possible shapes of the right kind of key)

In matters of skill, exercise the skill in such a way as is consistent with a just society.

Every inquiry is a cooperation between practical reason and theoretical reason.

the literary sketch and the metonymies of human life -- seeing the person through his traces

metonymic depth and metaphoric depth in a story

All four gospels refer to Isaiah 40:3 LXX: Mk 1:2-3, Mt 3:3, Lk 3:4-6, Jn 1:23

We are usually most influenced by things we see identifiably but dimly.

guised being
(1) projection/imposition
(2) indirection
(3) translation
(4) perspectivalization
-- (4) is perhaps a version of (2)

guising with text, guising with model

Reasoning is always from understanding to understanding.

syllogistic functions
(1) non-illation (e.g., expository)
(2) subjectively illative (e.g., explicative)
(3) objectively illative (e.g., scientific)

principles of the way-of-tea
(1) wa (harmony)
(2) kei (respect)
(3) sei (purity)
(4) jaku (tranquillity)

truth as thing, truth as object, truth as value

The more personal something is, the more it seems to involve something of simplicity, immutability, eternity, and infinity; the personal suggests transcendence of measure and limitation, just as part of what it is.

'Be' may be a sign of identity, of predication, and of existence, and this is not mere historical account; and any account that does not make sense of how it can be all three is defective metaphysics.

'fact' as always about objects (perhaps a fact is a relationship of objects, itself taken as an object and recognized as corresponding to the relations of the things objectified -- or perhaps more simpy, true relation of objects, itself made or taken as objects)

justice as the virtue of social order

"In distributive justice, something is given to a person insofar as what belongs to the whole is due to the part...." Aquinas
"To govern is to bring the thing governed in a suitable way to its proper end."

It is pointless to talk about distributive justice until one has established something to be distributed.

Our concept of 'event' presupposes our concept of 'cause'.

Christ's humanity as perpetual memorial

the choralization (integration into heavenly choir and liturgy) of humanity

Satisfaction differs from retributive punishment in that the proper amends is not imposed externally.

Often one of the most important things you can do toward reform is to stop pretending that it is easy.

the giver, the gift, the spirit of the gift

Unlike secular citienship, which is developmental & often piecemal, heaveny citizenship comes altogether and at once.

Grace opposes guilt as a formal rather than an efficient cause (by internal exclusion/resistance rather than removal).

Even Christ had to prepare for His burdens.

A recurring problem of the modern age is the fictionalization of love, the repeated attempt to replace love with fantasies of it.

Where God does not require reparation, no human can have the right to demand it.

To love others well requires loving one's love of them.

the intelligible splendor of Christ

Kant regularly attributes to the intelligible features that belong to the superintelligible; but this helps him to explore the traces of the intelligible in the empirical itself.

ST 3.22.2ad3 is not in the manuscripts; it was added in the late sixteenth century by editors and perhaps presupposes a Suarezian view of Christ's holiness. (See Legge, Christology 140, referring to Rohof.)

Christ's human holiness is the same holiness that he shares with us. (Note that Peter in Acts 10:38 describes Christ's anointing in terms used elsewhere of His followers.)

Wisdom is the state of the intellect appropriate to the fullness of genuine love.

Habitual grace is instrumentality for divine purposes.

"The Holy Spirit, as we are taught by Scripture, is the cause of every perfection of the human mind." Aquinas, SCG 4.18

The minister works as minister, the soldier as a soldier, the servant as a servant, by a habitus.

"The Son, as the Word, gives us his teaching, but the Holy Spirit makes us capable of receiving that teaching." Aquinas In Ioan. 14.6

disposition to an act vs disposition within an act

Part of prudential action is to apply natura law, and part to situate ourselves within a broader natural lawfulness.

We knwo things in themselves, just not things in themselves apart from what we can know about them.

Truth is not the sole property of the speculative intellect; the practical intellect involves truth for action.

speculative intellect : truth of being :: practical intellect : truth of goodness

Learning is said in many ways.

"The wrath of God against sin is as changeless as His Love, of which indeed it is but one side or aspect." Hastings Rashdall
"To believe in the Son makes it so much easier to believe in the Father."
"Humanity is capable of, and (if any teleological assumption is justified) seems made for a good so much higher than any that is actually attainable in this life."

Imitations of realistic fiction drift farther and farther from reality the longer the chain of imitation extends.

Leclerq's division of charisms
(1) pertaining to instruction of the faithful: apostle, prophets, doctor, evangelist, exhortation, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, discernment of spirits, glossolalia, interpretation of tongues
(2) pertaining to corporal aid: alms, hospitality, assistance, faith, charisms of healing, operations of miracles
(3) pertaining to government: pastor, presiding, deacon, charism of government

the artifact as a medium of cognition
-- note that to understand something, we might try our hand at making it, or, if that is not possible, a model of it, or, if that is not possible, a discourse about it
-- the artifact as such as medium vs the artifact as sign as medium

"Beauty has an infinite amplitude, like being." Maritain

For as far back as we can trace any evidence of poetry, poetry has suggested the supernatural or divine.

The imitations of fine art affect the spectators because they are assimilations to the things; we are drawn to things *through* the works of art.

In the fine arts, we are the supreme imitators, even the angels cannot best us, for it is our own field, oru connatural domain.

All genuine appreciation of art is a form of learning; who is not taught by the work of art cannot appreciate the work itself.

Sacraments are often doubly composed: word and thing, which makes the material sign, which is composed with the signification.

Artifacts have a double genus, one in the order of nature and one in the order of will or art.

The Characteristic of Truth

 The characteristic of truth is to be intimately related with a supreme unity out of which it evolves into plurality. Each unit of this plurality also gives rise to a further plurality of more limited truths, which in turn produce an abundant crop of truths that germinate further rich crops. So the seed of immortal truths, which continues to extend ever more widely, is classifed into species and genera and develops into various branches of knowledge, art forms and intellectual disciplines. The characteristic of truth, as I have already mentioned, is to flow into other truths, in which it is renewed and continually increases in number, without losing its primal unity and simplicity. It is so incorporeal and divine that, as I said, it finds no satisfactory likeness or representation anywhere amongst material, sensible beings. 

[Antonio Rosmini, Introduction to Philosophy, Volume I: About the Author's Studies, Rosmini House (Durham 2004) p. 20.]

Habitude XXIII

 To the second one proceeds thus. It seems that it is unfitting to distinguish three speculative intellectual virtues, to wit, wisdom, knowledge, and intellection. For species ought not to be divided into genera, but wisdom is a sort of knowledge, as is said in Ethic. VI. Therefore wisdom ought not to be divided from knowledge in the numbering of intellectual virtues.

Further, in the division of powers, habitudes, and acts, which is considered according to objects, one considers principally the distinction that is according to the formal notion of the objects, as is obvious from what was said above. Therefore different habitudes ought not to be distinguished according to the material object, but according to the formal notion of that object. But the source of demonstration is the notion for knowing conclusions. Therefore intellection of the sources ought not to be put in another habitude, or another virtue, from knowledge of the conclusions.

Further, intellectual virtue is said of that which is in the rational itself through essence. But reason, even speculative, as it reasons by deducing demonstratively, so also it reasons by deducing dialectically. Therefore knowledge, which is caused by demonstrative deduction, is put forward as a speculative intellectual virtue -- and so also opinion.

But contrariwise is that the Philosopher, Ethic. VI, puts forward only these three speculative intellectual virtues, to wit, wisdom, knowledge, and intellection.

I reply that it must be said that, as was already said, speculative intellectual virtue is that through which speculative intellect is completed so as to consider the true, for this is its good work. Now the true can be considered in two ways: in one way, as recognized through itself [per se notum]; in another way, as recognized through another. 

(1) Now what is recognized through itself has itself as a source, and is perceived immediately by the intellect. And thus the habitude completing the intellect to this kind of consideration of the true, is called intellection, which is the habitude of the sources.

(2) But the true that is recognized through another is not perceived immediately by the intellect, but through inquiry of reason, and has itself in the notion of an endpoint. This is able to be in two ways: in one way, as being the ultimate in some genus; in another way, as being the ultimate with respect to the whole of human cognition. And because those things that are recognized afterward with respect to us, are beforehand and more recognized according to their nature, as is said in Phys. I, therefore that which is ultimate with respect to the whole of human cognition is that which is primarily and maximally cognizable according to nature. And concerning this kind is wisdom, which considers the highest causes, as is said in Metaphys. I. Thus fittingly it judges and sets in order all things, because complete and universal judgment cannot be had without resolution to first causes. 

(3) But as to that which is ultimate in this or that genus of cognizables, knowledge completes the intellect. And therefore according to the different genera of knowables, there are diverse habitudes of knowledge, whereas wisdom is only one.

To the first, therefore, it must be said that wisdom is a sort of knowledge inasmuch as it has that which is common to all forms of knowledge, namely, that it demonstrates conclusions from sources. But because it has something proper to it above other forms of knowledge, to with, that it judges all things, and not only as to conclusions but also as to first sources, therefore it has the notion of a more complete virtue than knowledge.

To the second it must be said that when the notion of an object under one act is referred to power or habitude, then powers or habitudes are not distinguished according to the notion of the object and the material object, just as to the same visual power pertains seeing color and light, which is the notion for seeing color and seen together with it. But the sources of demonstration are able to be considered on their own, without considering conclusions. They are also able to be considered along with conclusions, insofar as the sources are drawn out [deducuntur] into conclusions. Therefore to consider the sources in this second way pertains to knowledge, which also considers conclusions, but to consider the sources in themselves pertains to intellection. Thus, if one rightly considers, these three virtues are not distinguished from each other equally but in a sort of ordering, as happens in all powers for which one part is more complete than another, as the rational soul is more complete than the sensory, and the sensory than the vegetative. For in this way, knowledge depends on intellection as more sourceward. And both depend on wisdom as most sourceward, which contains under itself both intellection and knowledge, as judging the conclusions of forms of knowledge and their sources.

To the third it must be said that, as was said above, the habitude of virtue has itself determinately to good, but not in any way to bad. But the good of the intellect is the true, and its bad is the false. Thus only those habitudes are called intellectual virtues to which the true is always ascribed, and never the false. But opinion and suspicion are able to be true and false. And therefore they are not intellectual virtues, as is said in Ethic. VI.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.57.2, my rough translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

This is one of those articles that is trickier to translate straightforwardly than it looks. (It's notable that the Dominican Fathers translation is fairly paraphrastic in parts.) Ratio gets a full workout here; it can mean 'reason, notion, nature, ground, formal aspect', and a colloquial translation would almost have to use the full gamut. The fact that principium (principle) literally means 'source' or 'beginning' plays an essential, load-bearing role in the argument. The idiomatic phrase, se habet, closely associated with habitudes, returns, and not in an incidental way; I've just translated it literally as 'has itself', but it always indicates disposition, relation, orientation. (Perhaps 'holds itself' would be a reasonably close English idiom for it: in habitude, a power holds itself toward an object, so that virtue, for instance, holds itself in its termination to good.) The fact that intellectus is the name of both the power and one of its virtues also seems to be doing some work. A small but interesting point is that to describe what we call 'deduction', the medievals generally used 'syllogismus' -- as is found here in the third objection -- but in the reply to the first objection, St. Thomas uses the root verb of 'deduction' as a metaphor to describe what is done in this kind of reasoning.

The argument here is interesting, and captures something that is perhaps often lost in discussing Aquinas on the intellectual virtues, namely, that we in some sense start in medias res. Understanding or intellection (intellectus) concerns principles known per se; with those starting points, we ascend to more fundamental first principles in wisdom (sapientia) and descend to derivative conclusions in knowledge (scientia), going both directions by reasoning. Thus sapientia is very much like scientia, in that they both do not deal with what we recognize immediately, but sapientia is higher even than intellectus, on which scientia depends. We do not start at the top, with what is most fundamental in itself, but with what is most fundamental to minds like ours. I think a common temptation is to think that wisdom is somehow beyond reasoning, a direct insight into things; such a temptation collapses sapientia into intellectus, whereas St. Thomas insists that what wisdom concerns itself with has to be reached and not just perceived. 

And He May Softly Hum the Tune and Wonder

 When I Have Passed Away
by Claude McKay 

 When I have passed away and am forgotten,
And no one living can recall my face,
When under alien sod my bones lie rotten
With not a tree or stone to mark the place; 

 Perchance a pensive youth, with passion burning,
For olden verse that smacks of love and wine,
The musty pages of old volumes turning,
May light upon a little song of mine,

 And he may softly hum the tune and wonder
Who wrote the verses in the long ago;
Or he may sit him down awhile to ponder
Upon the simple words that touch him so.