Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Dashed Off

Various notes from my notebook, about things I've been reading, ideas for poems, etc. As always, take with a grain of salt.

direct & indirect objectivity

Prudence is analogous to understanding (nous, intelligentia); it is to basic particulars as understanding is to universal principles.

Pleasures differ in kind.

The act of the intellect is like sight because of the richness of its object, like touch because of the firm reality of its object, and like taste because of the intimacy of its union with its object.

Where the Furies do not rule, law's sanction can only be weak; it is the Eumenides who give punishment its proper sting.

ethical Grand Rounds

If Hume were right, there would be no episteme, only empeiria -- no scientia, only experientia -- no knowledge, only familiarity. But although there is scientia, Hume is still often right about empeiria.

Setting aside special cases like direct divine inspiration, all acts of the human intellect are in some way abstractive, although most are not merely abstractive. Likewise (and by the same token!) every ordinary act of the human intellect is in some way conversive, involving a use of phantasms.

The materiality of a cognitive power is compatible with its nonsingularity, where it is indifferent to singularizing features; but indifference and universality are not the same, and even indifference is a sort of cognition of singulars, merely in those singular features that the cognitive power does not distinguish according as it belongs to this or that. Thus the imagination is a material power of cognition that is capable of such indifference, but it still treats of singulars in this indifferent way, because despite the fact that this indifference is possible because of the universal, the imagination cannot sort out the features of sensation so as to grasp the universal itself.

We usually sort out 'obviousness' by the difficulty of telling a plausible story on the contrary assumption.

dialectical likelihood: what actually happens for the most part.
rhetorical likelihood: what happens for the most part or is commonly thought to happen for the most part
poetic likelihood: what is not inconsistent with what happens for the most part, or is commonly thought to do so, and admits of some reason for happening in this or that case that is not inconsistent with what happens for the most part, or is commonly thought to do so

feudally structured capitalism

Lk 2:46 & Christian Socratism

There is no good reason to think that every truth is enunciable.

argument qua inference vs argument qua proof

One can imagine a culture in which reasoning was primarily assessed not logically but indirectly by way of a well-developed ethics of inquiry and persuasion.

Logic shares its generality with metaphysics.

the strictly predictable vs the loosely predictable

With certainty, people reason; with uncertainty, people try not to be left out of what everyone else is getting.

craft goods vs herd goods in philosophy

Liturgy must speak in all three of Vico's languages: the language of the gods, a mute language of signs and physical objects with natural relations to the ideas they wished to express; the language of the heroes, with emblems, similitudes, comparisons, images, metaphors, and natural descriptions; and the language of men, purely conventional discourse ruled by the will of the people.

precision of language, order of matters, truth of conclusions

end intended, object chosen

Sinc can never be approved; but it can often be sympathetically understood, & compassion builds on this.

The end, the goal, of the state is justice rooted in civic friendship.

The study of Torah is an act of rest.

marriage as institution
as contract
as friendship
as union
as sacrament

A lector, more than any other reader of Scripture, must attend to the sentiments and moods of the tex, for by simple and subtle suggestion of mood a lector may aid the one who hears to sense the meaning of the text more vividly.

(1) formalization
(2) regimentation
(3) annotation

Loans have a structure more like gifts than sales.

Aquinas : divine light qua that by or in which we can see :: Palamas : divine light qua that which we can see
In Thy Light we see Light.

the infinity of universal good

Petition to man
(1) to lay bare the desire & need of the petitioner
(2) to incline the mind of the one petitioned to the need
(3) presupposes intimacy as opportunity
Petition to God
(1) to reflect on shortcomings of the petitioner
(2) to incline the mind of the petitioner to good
(3) involves intimacy in itself

"Human nature inclines us to have recourse to petition for the purpose of obtaining from another, especially from a person of higher rank, what we hope to receive from him." Aquinas CT 2.2

No aggregation of common circumstances can identify a singular per se, although it may do so per accidens.

Phantasms are cognitions of singulars in prospectu nostro, from our point of view.

manual Thomism : St. Thomas :: literary study : work of literature

A description is an indication of what a thing is in terms of its accidents or of effects, things posterior to it, when those things are prior and better known to us than things that are simply prior. One use of descriptions is as a substitute for definitions when the latter are unavailable or practically unhelpful; another use is to prove that definitions actually apply to what they are supposed to define (although proving why they apply requires a different approach).

A nominal definition is an interpretation of a word convertible with the word itself.

reasonable qua within rational tolerances
qua able to be plausibly reasoned out
qua reasonworthy

Hebrew parallelism is not merely repetitive; it identifes on truth with two different constructions, as if I said 4-2 = 1+1 so that by two constructions you could know one number.

To give the Scriptures as He wished, God chose the Jews to be a peculiar people and built up Holy Writ through and in this people. For the Jewish people were the pen and ink by which divine revelation was written.

"Dare to be wise" is pointless without "Well begun is half done."

"The words of Japeth shall be in the tents of Shem." Gemara 9b

Erubin 13b: Jewish dispute progresses by respect for the other, in the form of respect for their position; it is kindly modest that fixes the ruling.
-- it is kind modesty that learns form others & takes their views into account even when disagreeing.

We are rational animals and therefore social animals; we are rational animals and therefore animals with rights, responsibilities, and duties.

dual right to property:
(1) individually
(2) for provision of family (familially)

significare est constituere intellectum

opsis adelon ta phainomena

gratitude as grateful feeling vs gratitude as recognized debt

We allow imperatives, questions & exclamantions to serve as conclusions but not as reasons (in themselves, at least). This is significant.

Divine revelation does not merely say, "This is true, this is to be done"; it initiates a process of pedagogy and application.

neutral analogy for antecedent credibility

mathematical models of experimentally identifiable classes of change

Only with hope can we fully taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

intrinsic titles to respect
extrinsic titles to respect

Suppositions tested are the seeds of solutions.

Our mereology needs more than just parts and wholes in order to distinguish aggregations from integrations.

The virtue of patience is often greater in its effects than any miracle.

continence, love, psalmody, & prayer

generation in creatures
(1) mutatio (term is form)
(2) productio (term is composite)

the idea of being, indeterminately considered, as a non-divine effect of a divine cause

Joy, by a kind of overflow, shines forth in the body as a kind of comeliness.

to catch life in poetry as in crystal

the heirlooms of picture-thinking handed down by tradition

the Lethe of the underworld (death)
the Lethe of the overworld (absolution)

Beliefs don't just sit there; they have roles to play in one's overall thought; they play parts in reasoning and inquiry and action.

Matrimony is in a sense a way of furthering motherhood and establishing the responsibilities of both sexes with regard to motherhood.

Theories cannot give account one way or another about the effects of causes they do not consider.

the pleasures of the body as medicinal in function (refreshment & removal of weariness)

The conversion to the phantasms is by its very nature also a conversion to the passions, albeit somewhat more indirectly.

the courteous homeliness of love

Shame deals with things that impede the recognition of the value of persons.

In order to do what it is supposed to do, Rosmini's 'idea of being' can be neither species nor concept.

Mereology requires a distinction between essential & accidental parts.

Intellect and imagination differ as much as demonstration and association do.

Two very pernicious errors
(1) that soul and body are united only per accidens
(2) that sense and intellect differ only per accidens
With these two errors put to rest one can proceed very far.

Aquinas on Joachim of Fiore (Supp 77.2ad3)

Love freely creates new responsibilities as new goods to serve other goods already in view.

The same rays of the same sun make forests grow and deserts spread.

the visceral activity of writing
-- touch and sight mingled like nature and grace

that our last end is not attainable in this life: changeableness of fortune, weakness of the human body, imperfection & instability of human knowledge and virtue

Evidence itself requries that some things be simply evident; such things can, of course, be indicated by evidence, but nothing can be evidence unless something is evident, in light of which evidence can be identified in the first place.

Talk about evidence is always an indirect way of talking about causal inferences: either a direct causal link or an indirect causal link or an analogy of direct or indirect causal links.

Moral character engenders a certain degree of immunity from and durability in suffering, although the force of even the finest character we encounter is limited in how far it can go.

All philosophical thought must undergo the spiritual process of purification, illumination, and perfection.

opus operans & opus operatum in art & poetry

Excellence in mundane life
(1) in regard to one's own person
(1a) through oneself (per se)
(1a1) generation
(1a2) growth
(1a3) nourishment
(1b) per acciens, by removal of impediment
(1b1) healing
(1b2) recovery of vigor (diet & exercise)
(2) in regard to the whole community
(2a) government
(2b) natural propagation

Everyone wishes to be Yen Yuan, but do we not all tend to be Tsai Wo?

Benevolence sympathizes with benevolence.

the Jews as the Hind of the Morning

Philosophy not done from love, or joy, or peace, or mercy, or zeal for justice, which is to say, philosophy not born of the disposition of love, tends to be barren, and, being lukewarm, spoils easily into sophistry.

signs: suggestion, expression, substitution

definition as naming well and with adequate understanding

One task of the academic is to undo the mischief of the goddess Rumor, to hunt down and eliminate the whispers of falsehood.

A theory of explanation is an account of reason in light of its final cause.

to reason with a song in one's heart

It befits a rational nature, capable of conceiving endlessly many things, to live in the physical world with endlessly many instruments.

As Albert the Great notes, the philosopher should not neglect or ignore the mechanical arts, because artisans and artists are driven to consider reasons behind the production of the works they take: the philosopher can learn from the architect, the farmer, the soldier, the surgeon, &c., when they have developed a feel or taste for what they do, and so have begun to be wise in their art.

God paints intelligible things with sensible things, that we might not overlook them.

Hope is (so to speak) holy ambition.