Neoteronous

2006-08-29T20:36:00.000-05:00

As was pointed out to me by some kind soul, I typed the wrong address for my new blog. It is actually demiurge.unzilla.com, with a g in demiurge. Thanks.

2006-08-29T19:43:00.000-05:00

Msgr. Sokolowski, the famous Catholic phenomenologist, is fond of saying that philosophy is mainly or entirely concerned with making distinctions. This seemed both idiosyncratic and false at first. When asked about it in class today, he elaborated a bit, by distinguishing making distinctions from intuition. Intuition connotes a direct vision into a single object, a simple grasping of a unitary object. Making distinctions, however, involves seeing one thing by seeing it as not another thing, that which it is distinguished from. It is thus an indirect grasp of a thing, one that involves a vision of more than one object.

I've begun to see that there is something to Sokolowski's doctrine. Here's my train of thought:

There has been a traditional, and I think good, distinction arising out of Aristotle's organon between the three acts of the mind: the grasping of concepts, the forming of judgments by combining concepts, and the forming of syllogisms by combining judgments. It is quite clear from this distinction that everything depends on the first act. Syllogisms make no sense if the judgments they contain are not understood, whereas if they are, syllogisms are easy to make and undisputable. If philosophy was mainly concerned with syllogising, all disputes would have ended long ago.

Judgments, on their part, are clearly meaningless unless the concepts, the terms involved, are understood. In fact, judgments are born from their terms. Given the meaning of the terms 'man' and 'mortal', it follows immediately that all men are mortal. Nor can the meaning of the terms be identified with their definition, another judgment. There may be some cases where the meaning of complex words are identical with their definitions, but if the meaning of all words were identical with their definitions, we would have an infinite regress of definitions, and thus no word would truly have an understandable definition. For a definition containing words that themselves have to be defined would define nothing, unless those words were replaced with their definitions to form a single more complex definition. This cannot go on forever. Judgments, therefore, are reducible to terms which are grasped by a simple act, the first act of the mind, and not the reverse (i.e., it is not the case that terms are reducible to judgments, the first act to the second act of the mind, as it would be if the meaning of terms were their definition, a judgment.) Definitions only serve to indicate the meaning, to point it out, and are not themselves the meanings of terms.

The main business of philosophy, then, is the first act of the mind, the grasping of irreducible concepts. Once these are truly grasped, judgments and syllogisms follow automatically. It may not be easy to work them out (though it wouldn't be too hard) but once they have been found out they would be indisputable. There is an ever-present and formidable problem, however, connected with the grasping of terms. The grasp of a term cannot be directly communicated. A concept can only be expressed by a word, and a word can only communicate anything if the hearer both knows that which the word expresses, and knows the word expresses it. It would be difficult for me to communicate anything about snow to a Chinese man, because, although he knows what snow is, he does not know that the word 'snow' is connected to that thing. It would be even more difficult, however to communicate anything about snow to an Amazonian savage who has never seen it before, not even in pictures. He not only has no knowledge of the word 'snow', he has no knowledge of the thing itself which the word names. How then, when one obtains some new grasp of a concept through reflection, can that grasp be communicated to some other thinker? If he does not already have that grasp, any word I use to communicate it would not signify it to him, but only to me.

The grasping of terms, the first act of the mind, can only be communicated indirectly, by drawing on terms of which two people have some common grasp, and trying to dance around and point at the new concept that the one is trying to communicate to the other. The same process would be used to try to communicate a deeper grasp of some concept that both already had some grasp of in the past. I believe there are many methods of indirectly communicating the first act of the mind, including dialectic and definitions. However, perhaps the most potent is the making of distinctions. By showing that the concept we are trying to communicate is not some other concept, confusion is done away with, the field of vision is cleared, so to speak, of obstacles. The mind of the other person was looking in the right direction, which is how he got confused by the similar concept, the one closest to the one in question, and when the source of confusion is removed, he can see it. Perhaps experience teaches this best. Distinctions seem to convince people more than anything else.

I'm not sure that Sokolowski thinks like this. Maybe not. But I know what I think. Making distinctions cannot be the prime business of philosophy in the deepest sense, because distinguishing one thing from another involves seeing each thing, otherwise, how could one see that the one was unlike the other? Therefore, making distinctions is itself based upon intuition, the direct grasp of simple concepts. Making distinctions is really a second act of the mind, a compounding of concepts to form judgments, in this case, negations. However, making distinctions is the type of second act which lies closest, perhaps, to the first act. Although arising out of the first act itself, it is the greatest helper in the further cultivation of the first act.

2006-08-03T22:13:00.000-05:00

I have a new blog, built almost entirely from scratch. It's still under construction, but its nearly fully functional. It can be found at demiure dot unzilla dot com. Thanks to Donzilla for hosting me. I have no immediate plans to take this one out of operation, and may still post to it.

BTW, it looks right in Firefox, but not in IE.

2006-06-09T20:27:00.000-05:00

Any community, from the smallest to the largest, must be ordered in such a way as to respect the dignity of each of its members. This implies that each member is able to effectively take up the attitude of opposition, as JPG describes in the previous post, when he or she honestly has a problem with some aspect of the life of the community. (This does not imply that he or she need be correct, but only sincere.) All members of a human commuity have a radical equality due to their shared human nature. It is appropriate to the nature of a rational being that he or she provides an order to things. A community is composed of equal, rational beings, and therefore a community ought to provide each member with a share in the ordering or governance of such community. This principle applies in different ways to diverse communities, in one way to a family, in another to a college, and in yet another way to a government, but it nevertheless does apply to each of them. An example of a government so constructed would be a republic built around the conviction that 'small is beautiful.'

Simply having the right to vote in huge elections does not give a person the ability to exercise his right to have a hand in the ordering of things in a truly fulfilling way. In the past, when not so much states as counties and towns had meaningful and significant functions, a person's vote was meaningful and significant as well. It was an expression of his person, and not just some vote indistinguishable in the vast sea of votes. More importantly than this, the person was able to engage in meaningful dialogue, to have his concerns and thoughts respected and effective in a personal way. A vote is just 'yes' or 'no', and alone it has nothing more than numerical significance. People are not binary, they have a varied and complex richness.

I do not in any way intend to suggest that people should not care about voting in America because of the centralization of the federal government. Although politics in America (while staying way ahead of Europe and the rest of the world) fall short of according to each citizen their full civic dignity, the right to vote does contribute towards recognizing such dignity, and the act of voting helps each person to fulfill his dignity. It is also the only way things could ever get better.

2006-06-08T15:19:00.000-05:00

From JPG:

"Of course, different interpretations of opposition are possible, but we have here adopted the one that sees it as essentially an attitude of solidarity; . . . Those who stand up in opposition do not intend thereby to cut themselves off from their community. On the contrary, they seek their own place within the community, they seek for that participation and that attitude to the common good which would allow them a better, a fuller, and a more effective share in the community.

"The attitude of opposition is a function, on the one hand, of the particular view one takes of the community and of what is good for it, and on the other, of the strong need to participate in the common existing and even more so in the common acting. There can be no doubt that this kind of opposition is essentially constructive; it is a condition of the correct structure of communitites and of the correct functioning of their inner system. This condition, however, must be defined precisely: the structure, the system of communities, must be such as to allow the opposition that grows out of the soil of solidarity not only to express itself within the framework of the community but also to operate for the benefit of the community-to be constructive. The structure of a human community is correct only if it admits not just the presence of a justified opposition but also that effectiveness of opposition which is required by the common good and the right of participation.

"We thus see that the common good has to be conceived of dynamically and not statically-a fact that has been briefly noted earlier. Essentially it must liberate and support the attitude of solidarity but never so as to stifle and shut itself off from opposition. It seems that the principle of dialogue is very aptly suited to that structure of human communities and participation which satisfies these needs. . . . Admittedly opposition may make the coexistence and cooperation of men more difficult, but it should never damage or prevent them. The principle of dialogue seems to be best suited to select and bring out what in controversial situations is right and true, and to eliminate any partial, preconceived, or subjective views and attitudes. . . . All this confirms the value of the principle of dialogue, which without evading the strains, the conflicts, or the strife manifest in the life of various human communities takes up what is right and true in these differences, what may become a source of a good for men."

-Person and Act, pp. 342-344

2006-06-02T23:58:00.000-05:00

This is a beautiful post.

2006-05-30T11:14:00.000-05:00

Who knew that I would turn into a geek this summer? I've been a nerd for quite some time, but now I'm a geek too. I've learned html, css, a lot of php, and some basic mysql. Now I'm set to start building websites. Quite an unexpected summer job, but very welcome.

Bonaventure, who was a term paper producing machine all school year, has turned into a web development machine, with apache, php, mysql, and phpmyadmin on it. Wow! I didn't even know what any of those were 2 weeks ago. God is full of surprises.

I am also excited to have LiLosSoljr and SomethingInMyEye here in DC for the summer. HT should be here soon as well. God is good.

2006-05-22T08:38:00.000-05:00

My favorite line from The White Stripe's Seven Nation Army: "All the words are gonna bleed from me and I will think no more."
Who knew that Jack White knew Greek philosophy? Verbal speech is just the outer logos which is the sign of the inner logos. Thinking requires inner logoi, inner words.

2006-05-15T15:03:00.000-05:00

In The Acting Person Wojtyla (JPG) distinguishes between a man's experience of himself, which is an inner experience in which the subject and the ego are directly given, and a man's experience of others, which is an outer experience which grasps things as objects. The outer experience of man and inner experience both experience man. The understanding of man is developed by integrating the inner, subjective experience of one's own person with the outer experience of other men. (Only then are all men understood as persons.) After speaking of this, Wojtyla makes a very interesting comment:

"Perhaps we have the right to assume that the divergence of the two great currents in philosophical thought, separating the objective from the subjective and the philosophy of being from the philosophy of consciousness, has at its root the experience of man and that cleavage of its inner aspect from outerness which is characteristic of this experience. Admittedly, to attribute this divergence only to the double aspect of experience or to the duality of the date in this experience would unduly simplify the matter. . . . From the point of view of our subject matter itself, which is the acting person, and which we will try to interpret and understand on the ground of the experience of man (the experience of 'man-acts'), we reach the conclusion that much more important that any attempt to attribute absolute significance to either aspect of human experience is the need to acknowledge their mutual relativeness. If anybody asks why, then the answer is that this relation lies in the very essence of the experience that is the experience of man. We owe the understanding of man precisely to the interrelation of these two aspects of experience, and this interrelation serves as the basis for us to build on the ground of the experience of man (of 'man-acts') our conception of person and action." (The Acting Person, p. 19)

From this it is clear that John Paul the Great believes that both ancient and medieval philosophy, the philosophy of being, and modern philosophy, the philosophy of consciousness, not only have value, but are fundamental to human intellectual endeavours. Neither one can do without the other, and they must be integrated with each other. Wojtyla did precisely this in his philosophical work, using as his main sources the objective philosophies of Aquinas and Aristotle, and the subjective philosophies of phenomenologists like Scheler and Husserl.

2006-05-15T14:24:00.000-05:00

"The title itself of this book, The Acting Person, shows it is not a discourse on action in which the person is presupposed. We have followed a different line of experience and understanding. For us action reveals the person, and we look at the person through his action. For it lies in the nature of the correlation inherent in experience, in the very nature of man's acting, that action constitutes the specific moment whereby the person is revealed. Action gives us the best insight into the inherent essence of the person and allows us to understand the person most fully. We experience man as a person, and we are convinced of it because he performs actions."

-Karol Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p.11

2006-04-18T20:40:00.000-05:00

Blessed be God! Christ is risen!

I watched the sun rise Easter morning over Lake Erie, in the best of company. That was one of God's innumerable blessings, the greatest of which is the life of Christ.

Be not afraid! God's light overcomes all darkness.

2006-03-30T22:57:00.000-05:00

Again, read The Jeweler's Shop.

"'The weight of these golden rings,'
he said, 'is not the weight of metal,
but the proper weight of man,
each of you separately
and both together.
Ah, man's own weight,
the proper weight of man!
Can it be at once heavier,
and more intangible?
It is the weight of constant gravity,
riveted to a short flight.
The flight has the shape of a spiral, an ellipse--and the shape of the heart...
Ah, the proper weight of man!
This rift, this tangle, this ultimate depth--
this clinging, when it is so hard
to unstick heart and thought.
And in all this--freedom,
a freedom, and sometimes frenzy,
the frenzy of freedom trapped in this tangle.
And in all this--love,
which springs from freedom,
as water springs from an oblique rift in the earth.
This is man! He is not transparent,
not monumental,
not simple,
in fact he is poor.
This is one man--and what about two people,
four, a hundred, a million--
multiply all this
(multiply the greatness by the weakness),
and you will have the product of humanity,
the product of human life.'"

-the jeweler (he is selling wedding rings)

2006-03-30T22:19:00.000-05:00

Read Karol Wojtyla's The Jeweler's Shop.

2006-03-19T17:40:00.000-05:00

I argued back in January on this blog that all beings in time have an internal duality: they exist both as receiving themselves from time prior and as giving themselves to the future. At the moment of death, a man is both alive and dead, though not in the same respect. He is alive as received from the past, and dead as giving to the future. From this an argument can be drawn to prove the finitude of time past, although I doubt I will do it justice now.

Given that a being, in the very moment it exists, even in the 'now', exists in one respect as receiving from the past, it exists as an effect of some cause, and specifically of some temporal cause, of the way things were in the past. The state of affairs in the past cannot be the only cause of the way things are in the present, for then there could be no free-will, nevertheless, all temporal beings essentially bear the characteristic of being effects of the past.

Every determined effect is the effect of a determinate cause. But every past moment, if it also has a time prior to it, is also a determined effect of the time before it. But a determined effect cannot be caused by a determined cause ad infinitum, for then nothing would have the determinacy which is derivatively in all the determined effects. There must, therefore, be a determinate moment in the past, which is not determined itself, at least not determined in a temporal fashion as the others are. If this is the case, it cannot have a time prior to it. Thus the world must have a temporal beginning.

To put it another way, if every moment is receiving from the past, it is receiving something. But if every moment is receiving, then where does that which is received come from? It obviously cannot come from the moments which are receiving. But that which is received is received as coming from the past. There must, therefore, be some past moment which is not receiving, but is itself the cause of that which is being received by every other moment. If there was no first moment, no temporal beginning to the world, there would be no such moment. There must, therefore, be a first moment to the world.

The fact that that which is received is not the same thing every moment, but something different each moment, does not alter the argument. For although each (middle) moment determines what is received by the following moments, it only determines as modifying what it itself received. It's determining is determined by its receiving (in the case of free agents, only partially determined.) It does not provide the determination for the future, but modifies the determination which the past provides. It cannot be the case that every moment only modifies the determinacy passed on, for then there would be no source of the determinacy which is modified. Yet the determinacy is received, i.e., it is essentially an effect, and thus must have a source. Moreover, it is received essentially from the past, and thus has essentially a source in the past. There must, then, be a moment which has a determinacy which essentially and in its entirety is not received from the past, which would mean a moment that had no past. Once again, there must be a temporal beginning to the world.

It should be fairly easy to conclude from all this that there must be a non-temporal, an eternal being to provide this initial determinacy, for we cannot conceive of a moment as self-constituting, as not having a cause. If there must be a moment with no past, no temporal cause, it must have a non-temporal cause. Every cause is prior to its effect; this non-temporal cause, must then, be prior to its effect in a non-temporal, metaphysical way. This being all men call God.

If it be objected that God determines and causes things at every moment, and did not initiate the world and then leave it be, one must first note that God's existence is granted, and thus the previous argument should be convincing to one who does not believe in God's existence. Secondly, however, when God acts on the world in each and every moment, causing its existence, he does not do so in such a way that he robs the world of its temporality. He lets secondary causes operate according to their own nature, and temporal causes according to their own nature, which requires a beginning moment. God holds all things in existence, and is the necessary condition each and every moment for their being as they are, but he still allows things to be determined by their past, and still makes the determination which the present gives to the future be determined, fully or partially, by the determination which it received from the past. If this were not the case, God would have to essentially re-create the world at every moment, and things would only seemingly be determined by the past, and not really. In this case, every moment would in fact be a first moment, a temporal beginning and the argument, although in a distorted way, would still hold.

Update: This argument is based on the supposition that never more than a moment exists. Time does not exist, on this understanding, as an extended whole, only the 'now' ever exists. On the other supposition, that time does exists as an extended whole, the argument is more simple and goes as follows:

If there was no temporal beginning to the world, then there is an infinite amount of time past. However, per the obvious nature of temporal existence, we are only at the moment we are at now, because all the time before us has passed. An infinite amount of time cannot have passed, however, for the infinite by definition cannot be traversed. If therefore, there were no temporal beginning to the world, we would not be at the moment we are at now, or at any determinate moment. But we are at the present moment, therefore the world has a temporal beginning.

2006-03-14T09:55:00.000-05:00

One of the biggest problems with philosophy since the time of Locke is that very few philosophers believe in intellectual intuition. Most assume that intuition is limited to outer and inner sense, i.e., sensation and feelings, and the few who do believe in intellectual intuition, like Hegel and Leibniz(?), are pretty weird people. Hegel's influence, moreover, is limited by the fact that he is well nigh unintelligible even to intellectuals. I once sat in on the class of a famous and old professor who said that he had spent years studying Hegel, and had known some famous Hegel scholars, and he said, "I never met anyone who could explain to me one paragraph of Hegel's Logic." Thankfully, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, at least, is intelligible given enough effort and time.

Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Bonaventure all believed in intellectual intuition. And so did Descartes. Descartes epistemology, if not his methodology, is in many ways more akin to ancient and medieval epistemology than to modern and post-modern epistemology.

2006-03-09T20:12:00.000-05:00

. . . been trying to throw my arms around the world . . .

2006-03-02T20:25:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile since I've posted. I've been working on a paper this week, on Plotinus' interpretation of the account of the receptacle in the Timaeus. The past two weekends have been quite full as well, the one before last involving a trip to Nashville to see Gillian Welch. Here's the group that went, (the pictures I pulled from the TAC '05 MSN group, Brigid left before we took the first one):

This is what our time in Nashville was like:

This expresses the drive there and back (notice the speedometer):

2006-02-12T15:01:00.000-05:00

It is snowing and beautiful here in D.C.! God sure has an artistic touch.

2006-02-10T15:19:00.000-05:00

Thoughts about a topic that has sparked much wonder in my soul: According to St. Bonaventure "every knower produces distincly because he knows distinctly, and not the converse." God's knowledge of us is prior to His creation of us. He can therefore know that which does not exist, (although the priority here is not temporal, the conclusion still follows, as God knows even that which He will never create, such as a number greater than any that exists.) Although God's knowledge is prior to the existence of the thing known, it is not prior to all existence. God knows things other than Himself, and knows non-existence things, by means of the Divine Ideas or Eternal Reasons, which do exist. (St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas agree on this.) The Divine Ideas, however, are not really distinct from God. God knows us by means of Himself, by knowing Himself. His knowledge of Himself is the principle of His knowledge of us.

It is not only knowledge which is prior to production, but also love. God first loved us, then created us. Love for a thing is not always a response to finding it in existence, but can in fact be the cause of its existence. Just as the knowledge which preceedes existence, however, is founded on the knowledge of that which already exists, so too the love which preceedes existence is founded on the love of that which already exists. God's love for us flows from His love for Himself, the Love of Each Person of the Trinity for the Other Persons. It is obvious to me that there is a connection and move from love of one person, to love for and creation of another, but the connection is far from clear to me.

This connection is essential to love, and is reflected in the fact that sexual love naturally results in procreation. This fact is not merely biological, but concerns the wholeness of sexual love and engages the whole person, body, soul, mind, and will. The reproductive aspect of sexual love is there because procreation is part of the essence of love, as contained in the Holy Trinity. The married couple must be open to life and love their children, even before they exist, yet procreation is not the first principle of their love. A married couple do not need to expect to have children every time they perform the act of married love, and this need not be (and probably should not be) the purpose of performing the act. The act has to be an act of love for the spouse first and foremost, and the marriage must be for love of the other person first and foremost.

Procreation is the natural and necessary result of such love, and not just on a biological level. It is not just that the spouses love each other, and, because of some fact of biology which God wanted to build into nature, they happen to have children, whom they then love if they have any virtue in their soul. Just as the love of the Father for the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the reciprocal love of the Son and Holy Spirit, exists eternally and creates a love for us and thus our creation, so too the parents' love for their children and desire for their existence flows from their love for each other. Their love for their children preceedes their children's existence, but is not prior to, nor the motive or cause of, their love for each other, but rather it is a function of their love for each other. (If they tried to love each other without loving their as yet non-existent children, without being open to life, they would be rejecting the essence of love and so could not love each other.)

I see that perfect love for another person present to one always flows over into love for another who does not yet exist, and I love this fact, yet I do not understand it. Why be concerned about what does not exist? How can one care about non-being, wish its good? How can one love one's children when there are no children to love? How can God love us? But He does. Blessed be God.

2006-02-05T14:09:00.000-05:00

I finally came up with an answer to the question "what school of philosophy do you belong to?" I'm a Wojtylan-Newtonian-Bonaventurean-Augustinian-Platonist. Of course, this answer will not likely be accurate for any considerable length of time.

2006-02-04T20:44:00.000-05:00

I wish that I and every TAC student/tutor I ever discussed the question of universality/form with had read Husserl's Logical Investigations. I have only read the first of six investigations and the first chapter of the second, but already I am immensely impressed. I was intrigued, but not impressed with the Husserl that I read at TAC.

Husserl discusses the question of species and abstraction. In what I have read so far it seems that he holds neither the Aristotelian nor the Platonic view of species, yet what he says is so perceptive, fundamental, and nearly self-evident, that it could serve well as the background upon which to conduct any discussion of universality. I think both Platonists and Aristotelians could find much to agree with and love in this work of Husserl's. I think, of course, that what Husserl says leads more to Platonism, (though he definitely rejected that route,) but that's because I think Platonism is the truth.

2006-01-26T10:20:00.000-05:00

Our Pope just released his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God is Love).

Update: "The State may not impose religion, yet it must guarantee religious freedom and harmony between the followers of different religions. For her part, the Church, as the social expression of Christian faith, has a proper independence and is structured on the basis of her faith as a community which the State must recognize. The two spheres are distinct, yet always interrelated." (DCE 28)

No theocracy, not even a Catholic theocracy, is defensible.

More from DCE:

"Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love." (28)

2006-01-23T22:18:00.000-05:00

I participated in the march for life today in Washington D.C. There is very little in the news about it, even though there were at least 100,000 people there, probably more like 200,000 thousand. The coverage I have seen is short and gives as much time to the pro-abortion counter-demonstrators, never mind that there were not more than a grand total of 20 of them. I would be surprised if there were more than 10 actually. I believe I saw them all. There may have been some more yesterday, which was the day of their march, but I don't think it was big.

In other news, my protestand friend Big Vic converted today, during the march (the culmination of a process that started on December 18) Blessed be God.

2006-01-19T15:31:00.000-05:00

Proof of a claim from the last post (that a creature has two really distinct 'sides', only generically the same, when at rest, not only when in motion): Take the case in which a creature is at rest for some finite time and begins to move. Suppose that during the rest it had only one side and during the motion two sides. The creature would have to change from having one side to having two sides. Since there are not successive moments, there could be no last moment in which the creature had one side and a first moment when it had two sides unless they were one and the same moment, or there was some finite time between these states in which the creature had no sides, which is absurd. If the moments were one and the same, then the creature would have to have a total of three faces to accord with the principle of contradiction: a backward side having on side and a forward side having two sides.

Even being at rest is a duality.

2006-01-18T21:18:00.000-05:00

The Shulamite is right in saying that the problem laid out in the last post is one of limits generally, yet this particular formulation of the problem is both harder and more interesting to deal with than most formulations: more difficult because it deals with time and not with space, and more interesting because it is a matter of life and death. Everyone would admit that place exists as an extended whole, but in the eyes of most people only a moment of time exists anyway. If the limit of time, the moment we call the present, doesn't exist simply speaking, then no time exists simply speaking and temporal beings, us included, simply don't exist.

To throw something positive, yet tentative, out there in answer to the question, I would suggest that all created being is of an essentially temporal fashion. To speak Platonically, we are always becoming and never truly being. At every moment a creature possesses whatever being it has because it received it from the time previous and it also passes this being on to itself in the time to come. There is a sort of universal inertia, not just of local motion, but of all being, including substantial being.

Every being at every moment has two faces, so to speak, the one looking back and the other looking forward. Every creature is at every moment a duality, an indeterminate dyad. When a creature is at rest, and exactly in that respect in which it is at rest, it's two faces are generically the same, though they are not one and the same. When the creature is changing, every moment in which it changes the creature is both that which it is changing from and that which it is changing to, BUT NOT in the same respect. It is the one with respect to its past facing side but the other with respect to the forward facing side.

Thus the answer to the question I posed would be that at the moment of death a man is both alive and dead. Yet he is not either of these most properly speaking, for to be something fully, as creatures can be it, means to be that thing with respect to both faces or sides. This requires that the creature be some particular thing for some finite duration, i.e., to be at rest in some respect, for otherwise the creature could not have both faces generically the same, (for it is impossible for there to be successive moments.)

2006-01-15T16:32:00.000-05:00

According to the law of excluded middle, a human being is either alive or dead. A human being is alive as long as he is in the process of dying. The moment of death is the boundary between life and death. At that moment, is a person alive, dead, both, or neither?

There is no such thing as successive moments, just as there are not successive points. If moments or points have no distance between them, they are one and the same. If they are different moments or points, then there is distance between them, and there is necessarily an infinite number of points or moments in that distance. It is therefore not a viable option to say that there is a last moment in which one is alive and a next moment which is the first in which one is dead. There would have to be some finite duration between them, and in that time one would be neither dead nor alive. This would contradict the law of excluded middle and is impossible.

If one was alive only at the moment of death, there would be no first moment of death, and thus no beginning to being dead. Death would begin without a beginning, which is absurd. Conversely, if one was dead only at the moment of death, there would be no last moment, no ending to life, and life would end without an ending. This also is absurd. Moreover, how would one distinguish between these two options? What cause would there be to chose one over the other? There is no philosophical reason I can think of to chose an endless end over a beginingless begining.

(Aristotle has something to say contra this last paragraph in the Physics, I believe. I remember being far from impressed, but that doesn't mean there's not something worth contributing to the conversation in there.)

To say that one is both alive and dead at the moment of death would seem to violate the principle of contradiction. A thing cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same respect.

To answer this question involves distinctions and possibly even a clarification as to what it means to be. The question still is after all these years, as Aristotle said, "what is being?"

2006-01-15T12:50:00.000-05:00

I just put new strings on my guitar. It sounds even better than when I got it. I remember now why I bought a resonator guitar. I don't have to be good to make it sound great.

2005-12-26T19:00:00.000-05:00

As I said, St. Thomas' doctrine falls under its own weight and drops one into the lap of St. Bonaventure. To be more precise, St. Thomas' natural theology fits most comfortably in the context of St. Bonaventure's epistemology. I can't claim to identify my own views on epistemology with St. Bonaventure's but I lean towards them in many respects. (I am at least disinclined, though, to accept the Seraphic Doctor's doctrine of an agent intellect.) Nevertheless, any student of medieval thought should know about the Bonaventurean epistemology.

St. Bonaventure has a theory of an agent and possible intellect and of abstraction, rather similar to St. Thomas'. The operation of the sense and of the agent and possible intellects is sufficient for knowledge (cognitio) but not for certain knowledge (scientia or cognitio certidunalis). To know anything fully and infallibly, to know anything certainly, requires attaining to the Eternal Exemplars in the Divine Mind. This is true of all three acts of the mind. As for the first act, to understand any being implies an understanding of the pure act of Being, God. Thus God is the first thing that falls in the intellect, according to St. Bonaventure. As all things are vestiges of God, and all things bear an essential reference to God, some grasp of God is necessary to know the essence of anything.

God is not attained by a direct act of vision, however, at least for the knowledge of science or philosophy. (He is attained in this way by ecstatic knowledge.) Just as all see by the light of the sun, but do not immediately notice the light by which they see, all things are seen by God, but He is not seen. The Eternal Exemplars are necessary, but not sufficient conditions for knowledge in this life. The species abstracted from sensation are necessary for all of our knowledge. God is thus not so much 'intuited' as 'contuited.' He is seen only together with some created thing and only out of the corner of the eye; He is not so much that which is seen but that by which another is seen.

The wise man, however, can turn his attention towards that by which He sees, towards God. He still only contuits Him, but He is conscious that He falls in his intellect and he can know things about Him. God is therefore not seen as other things are seen, as being the direct object of vision, but He is attained to by man's intuiting intellect. As such, there is content to the term 'God' and to the statement 'God exists', although we must always think the term 'God' with and through His created effects.

This should begin to clarify in what manner knowledge of God is derived from the senses and in what manner it is not. There is much more to St. Bonaventure's epistemology, but I am still trying to grasp and formulate it myself. I may post more about it soon. Nevertheless, this epistemology supports the Angelic Doctor's natural theology, and his claim that perfections are said analogically with respect to God. God can be contuited, and so, as St. Thomas teaches, we can know about God through His effects. Moreover, the perfections of creatures which bear an essential reference to God, which are said analogically with respect to Him, can be truly known, for as they are intuited, God is contuited with them, and so the reference they bear to Him can be understood.

2005-12-23T13:11:00.000-05:00

In case there was any confusion about the last two posts, the conclusion I meant to draw was that since God's existence is able to be proved, (as Vatican I pronounced, I believe,) and since it can't be if there is no intuition of Him, there must actually be intuition of Him in this life, even by philosophical means.

2005-12-22T20:28:00.000-05:00

Here is the first installment of my promised posts:

Kant's arguments that the existence of God cannot be proved ultimately boil down to a very simple and forcible claim: knowledge requires intuition of the object of knowledge, and there is no intuition of God, therefore the claim that God exists is an empty one. There is no content to the concept of God, for there is no vision of Him, and so, just as the statement that “red exists” means nothing to the blind man who has never seen, i.e., had an intuition, of the color red, the statement that God exists means nothing to man who has no intuition of Him. The statement may, in fact, mean something emotionally, even practically, just as the statement “red exists” means something emotionally and practically to the blind man, but each statement means nothing speculatively, for the purposes of knowledge.

St. Thomas holds that man has no intuition of God (unlike St. Augustine, Plato, St. Bonaventure, and almost every Christian theologian of the 13th century, but like the theologians of the 14th century). However, he holds rightly that God's existence, and many other things about Him, can be proved. He has an account of how we can speak meaningfully of God without an intuition of Him. This cannot be by directly applying the intuitions we have of created beings to Him, not even our intuition of being, for 'being' is said equivocally of creatures and of God. There are, however, three ways of speaking meaningfully of God according to St. Thomas: the way of negation, the way of causation, and the way of preeminence.

The first way is fairly straightforward. We say that God is not-finite, not-created, not-temporal, etc.. This way of speaking, however, is clearly insufficient by itself if the statement 'God exists' is to be meaningful. Negations alone, no matter what their number, do not yield any positive content. The statement 'God exists' would only mean 'something-not-anything-which-I-know exists' or 'something-I-know-not-what exists.' It gets even worse. God is not a 'something', even that word is said equivocally of God and creatures, so the statement 'God exists' would really boil down to 'not-anything exists' (not to be confused with 'not anything exists').

The second way of speaking, the way of causation, is to say that God is the cause of that which we intuit, is the cause of that which we know to be. God is the cause of the finite, the cause of the temporal, the cause of man and the world. However, there is a problem here as well. 'Cause' is said equivocally of God and creatures, and we have no intuition of God's causation according to Thomas, for that would imply intuition of Him Himself. Therefore we do not know what it means for God to be the cause of anything, the statement is meaningless. By any possible intuition of causation that we have, it must be said that God is 'not-cause'. Statements about God as cause ultimately only tell man something about creatures in Thomas' system. For cause and effect are relatives, and according to Thomas, there is a real relation of creatures to God, but not of God to creatures. To say that God is the cause of anything only has meaning, then, in that it posits creatures as being effects of 'we-know-not-what.'

The third kind of speech about God, that by the way of preeminence, does speak positively of God, and Thomas claims it is not equivocal, but analogical, (all things are called good with reference to God, and the meaning of God's goodness is contained in the meaning of creature's goodness.) In this way, in virtue of the fact that every effect pre-exists in a preeminent fashion in its cause, we can say that since good is an effect of God, then God must be good in a preeminent way. All of the imperfections about goodness as we know it are removed, and God is said to be good in a perfect way. However, Thomas' analogical predication falls apart, leaving us with no way of speaking meaningfully about God.

First of all, the proposition 'every effect pre-exists in a pre-eminent fashion in its cause,' taken from creatures we intuit, cannot apply to God, for He is not a cause as we intuit the term. Moreover, goodness, or any thing predicated analogically of God, as we intuit it, is in one of the 10 categories. Each of these categories is a category of created being, and thus imperfect in essence. The genus is not a part of that of which it is the genus, but indeterminately the whole of it, according to Thomas. Therefore goodness, as we intuit it, is in its whole essence imperfect. God's goodness is not in the same genus with any goodness we have experience of, and change in genus means change of essence according to Thomas. Therefore goodness as it applies to God is wholly unlike any goodness which we intuit.

When we speak analogically of God, according to Thomas, it is not that goodness, or any other predicate, has some core meaning which applies to God and creatures, from which we remove the imperfections, such as finitude, in order to leave just that core meaning which we can then apply meaningfully to God. (This is more or less the position of Duns Scotus, not St. Thomas.) This cannot be the case, because then God and creatures would be in the same genus, because the same meaning would be predicable of both. There is thus nothing left of the meaning we intuit when we predicate anything analogically of God. Statements about God are still left entirely without meaning, at least about God. Analogical predication does at least, once again, say something about creatures, namely that their very goodness, etc., bears an essential reference to their Creator's goodness, (the I-know-not-what I-know-not-what-preposition I-know-not-what.) As such, creatures cannot be understood without their Creator being understood. Thus St. Thomas' position of analogical predication not only leaves God entirely unknown, but leaves every creature unknowable.

St. Thomas said and knew many true things about God. He just didn't realize that his theory of knowledge left him unable to account for the knowledge he had of both creatures and God. His philosophical thought is worth studying for the near innumerable true and valuable things he said, but his system as a whole cannot stand. His value must be lifted out of its flawed setting and put into a setting that can support that value.

2005-12-22T19:44:00.000-05:00

St. Thomas, the Angelic Doctor, by his own positions expressed in the beginning of the Summa, leads directly to St. Bonaventure's opposite position. I have come to realize lately that, leaving aside questions of matter and form, St. Thomas is deeply inconsistent and unable to stand. His position kills itself and drops one on the lap of St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor. I believe this is undeniable once discovered. I will attempt in the coming weeks to demonstrate this.

Study of St. Thomas is nevertheless invaluable, and much is to be learned from him. Moreover, the beginning of the Summa, with which I am taking issue, is natural theology, a branch of philosophy, not revealed theology, theology proper. Thomas is more of a theologian than a philosopher, and the Summa is a Summa of theology, not philosophy. His main work is in theology and his greatest contributions are found there, and I think he would wish to be remembered in that way.

2005-12-21T17:49:00.000-05:00

By the way, Redeem the Time links to me as a "recovering anti-Aristotelian." He may have got this impression from some posts about Avicenna a while back, which ultimately came to nothing, but at any rate, clarification is in order. I am in no way more Aristotelian than I was when I left TAC, in fact, I'm even less Thomistic now. I am, however, more able to appreciate those two thinkers now that I'm not sorrounded by them day in and day out. I'm truly grateful for the opportunity to study them which I have had, but now it's on to other philosophers. Right now I am planning on studying St. Bonaventure, Kant, and the phenomenologists. If I get the opportunity, I want to study Scheller and the personalists who influenced John Paul the Great. As is evident in the last post, I hope to study John Paul the Great himself as well.

Currently reading: Theology of the Body by JPG, Being and Time by Martin Heidegger, and On Loving God by St. Bernard of Clairvaux

2005-12-21T17:12:00.000-05:00

Christian morality is based upon the two great commandments: to love God with all of one's heart, with all of one's mind, with all of one's soul, and with all of one's strength, and to love one's neighbour as oneself. If any ethical philosophy is to be true, it must be consistent with these two commandments. I am inclined to believe, in fact, that no ethical system that does not place these two commandments as the determining ground of human action must be false. These commandments have force not just in the context of christian life, but apply to unbelievers also. As such, Christian revelation seems to reveal that these two commandments are the ultimate determining ground of morality, and therefore an ethical philosophy that places anything else as the determining ground of morality contradicts revelation. There are not "two truths," philosophy cannot say otherwise than theology, at most it can be silent on issues beyond its scope. To say that ethical philosophy cannot speak of the determining ground of morality, however, is to say that there cannot be an ethical philosophy at all, and that no human being can know what he ought to do without revelation.

The only premiss in this argument open to debate, as far as I can tell, is the premiss that the two great commandments are binding upon unbelievers and the greatest commandments for them as well as for us.

If I am right, then much work needs be done in the realm of ethical philosophy. For Aristotle, and virtue ethics in general, as far as I know, do not say much about love, and definitely do not place it as the principle virtue, the foundation of all others. Utilitarianism is right out, of course. The closest the various systems of ethics get to the two great commandments, as far as I can tell, is the personalistic norm of the personalists, ultimately deriving from Kant: treat people as if they were ends and not means. John Paul II uses just this as the foundation of his work on sexual ethics from a philosophical perspective, Love and Responsibility. John Paul II did much work on ethical philosophy, which, unfortunately, is not well known. It is hard to get his main work, The Acting Person, and I'm told the translation is not good. If ethical philosophy is going to be re-worked so that it can be deeply consistent with revelation, the first step is to open up John Paul II's thought to the Catholic faithful in America.

2005-12-15T13:27:00.000-05:00

Bissex and I went to the Mayorga Coffee Factory for a Kant study "power-session." We had a full day of studying in front of us to prepare for the Kant final tonight at 6:00.

Due to snow and freezing rain, the campus shut down, and the university policy was that today's finals would be moved to Saturday. The professor, however, realizing that this would conflict with people's travel plans, decided to e-mail us the final today.

Although I know there are usually moral implication about making a final public, I have decided to share his final with all of the TAC blogosphere:

Final Examination PHIL 823: Kant's Critique of Judgment

December 15, 2005 R. Velkley, instructor

Please give your answers in the space provided or, if necessary, on a separate page (or most preferably not at all) but in no case give essay-length answers. I plan to see a good movie this weekend, so all but one question is of the multiple-choice type.

You may write in German if your German grammar is not atrocious, and if your English

grammar is atrocious then of course write in German. Also quit this program as soon as possible.

This exam is worth .0015% of the final grade for the course.

1. What are the titles of Kant's three Critiques? (Hint: the term "critique" appears in all three.) For an extra .0002 points give either Kant's birthday or his Prussian social security number (awarded as a posthumous honor by Chancellor Bismarck in a solemn ceremony in 1888).*

2. Which of the following is Kant's best joke? (a) The Indian and the bottle of ale (b) the cheerful mourners at the rich man's funeral (c) the merchant whose wig turns grey (d) the joke that appears in the original manuscript at p. 334 (German) after the phrase "relaxation of the elastic parts of our intestines " which the publisher prudently deleted.

3. If Kant were alive today his favorite baseball team would be the (a) Baltimore Orioles (b) Chicago Cubs (c) Washington Nationals (d) Cincinnati Reds, because losing all the time in games produces consciousness of "a merely formal purposiveness in the play of the faculties" without definite purpose (CJ, secs. 11-12).

4. "To read (or to listen to) Kant is to have the experience of a tense expectation that is transformed into nothing." (See CJ, sec. 54.) This statement was made by (a) Msgr. John Wippel (b) Fr. Kurt Pritzl (c) all faculty in the CUA School of Philosophy except Richard Velkley and Holger Zaborowski (d) The Countess von Keyserling to whom (rumor has it) Kant may have proposed marriage.

*Prof. Hans Soffitpflege has speculated quite plausibly that this event contributed to Nietzsche's

mental breakdown.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2005-12-10T20:36:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile since I've posted. Papers have been taking up most of my time of course. It snowed 3 or 4 inches a few weeks ago, and it was beautiful. I even had to clean the snow off my car before I could drive anywhere. A few days later it snowed again. Then the temperature rose above freezing right away and melted everything. Then it got colder again before anything dried and it all turned to ice. This is all very new to me.

2005-11-14T21:27:00.000-05:00

Why must everybody be so pessimistic about the power of philosophy? Even Thomas leaves me starving. His position that man cannot know God in this life breaks my heart. If he were right, I think I might give up philosophy. Give me Plato, Augustine, and Bonaventure. They all give one hope that God can be known. They promise something which will make philosophy worthwhile.

2005-11-14T21:14:00.000-05:00

To the dissapointment of many people I'm sure:
After writing my Avicenna paper on his doctrine of prime matter, I must report that his doctrine ultimately has the same problem as Aristotle's and Thomas' and I cannot accept it.

2005-11-09T19:39:00.000-05:00

This guy was just seriously dissed:

"This also seems to be what Beck is stating (though far less clearly than Hegel) when he speaks of the second postulate as 'displacing' the moral command."

(I'm researching for my Kant paper, and thought this was too funny to pass up.)

2005-11-09T18:10:00.000-05:00

I was told, by a good friend, years ago, that I had to go to DC, "You can just feel the power in the air." Well, last night I got on the metro and realized that I had just left behind my copy of T.S. Elliot. I wasn't about to lose that book, so I got off at the next station to get on the train going back. When I stepped onto the platform there was already a train on the other side, but the lights were off and it was out of service. No big deal, right. Happens all the time. Just wait for the next train.

Then I noticed that the lights were on in the front car, and that there was a man in uniform carrying what was definitely a very large gun. He was guarding the door, and kept looking down the train to make sure no one got on. In a few moments, some more people in uniform arrived with some sort of equipment, which they moved onto the train. The man with the very large gun then got on the train, and it rolled off. Another train, this one with passengers, came by the next minute. It was very surreal.

2005-11-06T13:22:00.000-05:00

Here is the view from my balcony. That's the metro station down there in the third picture.

2005-11-06T13:05:00.000-05:00

This is stolen from LiLosSoljr:

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to
write one story, and writes another, and his humblest
hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what
he vowed to make it."

-J.M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937)

What then, ought a man to do? Try to write the story again, as he originally planned it? Or find a new, easier story to write? Or should he stop trying to write his life at all, and just let it be written for him?

2005-11-03T13:02:00.000-05:00

The Michelson-Morley experiment provides no difficulties, I believe, for Newton's particle theory of light, but only for the ether-wave theory of light. The experiment does not suggest Einstein's relativity at all, unless one is committed to thinking of light as an ether-wave. To be sure, there are experiments which are hard to explain when light is viewed as a particle, which suggest that light is a wave. However, there are yet other experiments which are hard to explain when light is viewed as a wave, which suggest that light is a particle. All in all, the particle theory has the upper hand.

2005-10-25T14:27:00.000-05:00

St. Bonaventure on ecstatic knowledge (as opposed to comprehensive,) in Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ:

"The subject is drawn toward an object that exceeds it in a certain ecstatic mode that draws the soul beyond itself. Dionysius speaks of this form of knowledge in the book On Mystical Theology and in the seventh chapter of On the Divine Names: 'We ought to acknowledge that our intellect has a certain power to understand through which it contemplates the intelligible realities, and we ought to acknowledge a union that surpasses the nature of the intellect, through which it is united to those things which are beyond it. Knowing divine things in this way, not according to our own capacity but in as far as we are drawn entirely beyond ourselves, we are totally deified; for it is better to belong to God than to belong to oneself. ...'But this mode of knowing by means of ecstasy exists both in the wayfaring state and in heaven.... In the comprehensive mode of knowledge the subject grasps the object, while in the ecstatic mode the object takes the subject captive.... And indeed this ecstasy is that ultimate and most exalted form of knowledge which is praised by Dionysius...This type of knowledge can be understood only with great difficulty, and it cannot be understood at all except by one who has experienced it. And no one will experience it except one who is 'rooted and grounded in love so as to comprehend with all the saints what is the length, and the breadth,' etc. It is in this that true, experiential wisdom consists. It begins on earth and is consummated in heaven. In trying to explain this, negations are more appropriate than affirmations, and superlatives are more appropriate than positive predications. And if it is to be experienced, interior silence is more helpful than external speech. Therefore, let us stop speaking, and let us pray to the Lord that we may be granted the experience of that about which we have spoken."

2005-10-24T14:34:00.000-05:00

Who knew that Kant played a positive role in the german romantic movement? The Critique of Judgment has some very interesting remarks on genius. In fact, the whole work is very perceptive on the subject of art, taking into account all sorts of little things which always struck me about art. That is not to say that I accept his overall theory of course.

2005-10-18T23:11:00.000-05:00

Blessed be God, Who in His providential love takes care of all of us, and carries us by unforeseeable paths to Himself if we only let Him.

2005-10-18T19:01:00.000-05:00

Haeceitty (sp?) is one of the coolest philosophical concepts ever. "Contuition" is another good one. I got that from St.Bonaventure.

My epistemology is in the process of deepening and maybe being revised. I think perhaps we intuit individual haeceitties and contuit the appropriate Divine Idea. By natural knowledge, we never intuit the Divine Idea separate from an individual haeceitty, say of the person standing in front of us, but always "contuit" it. This would allow me to posit a qualitative difference between our knowledge of God in this life and our knowledge of Him in Heaven. Up to now I have held that it was only a quantitative difference. (I think I asserted this publicly in my thesis defense.) To be fair to myself, though, I had thought of the quantitative difference as a Hegelian "quantity as quality", i.e., so great a quantitative difference that it amounted to a qualitative one.

2005-10-18T18:01:00.000-05:00

If one was going to be lonely, Gallup would be a good place to be lonely in. I felt like the whole town was just holding down the fort in the vast desert. I also felt like I had stepped back several decades in that town, like maybe to the 30's, with the weird addition of some modern technology.

The people in the Mayorga Coffee Factory are sure nice.

2005-10-14T14:03:00.000-05:00

It is nice that the Albuquerque airport has free wi-fi, given that I've been sitting here for hours.

Having St. Bonaventure's Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ is nice too. I'm still trying to understand him, but it appears that he melds the nearly opposite Thomistic and Augustinian views on the theory of knowledge. This is very interesting. More later I hope. (While Augustine was truly a source for Bonaventure, Bonaventure and Thomas, in that in which they are similar, are drawing from common sources. Neither one influenced the other as far as I know.)

2005-10-11T23:43:00.000-05:00

I have finally found a real coffeshop in my new hometown. Starbucks does not cut it for hard-core studying, a deep conversation, or a cool place to hang out on the weekend. The Mayorga Coffee Factory satisfies all of these needs. It is not only a coffeeshop, but a restaurant and a bar! It is open until 1 am on Friday and Saturday night and it has live music. Moreover, it is on the outskirts of the dingy section of town, so it has a great feel. You can even see the train go by out the window. Did I mention it has free wi-fi?

2005-10-10T20:04:00.000-05:00

In response to the Shulamite's first comment, disregarding Avicenna: I deny your minor.
Potential being is not being. The only being of which man has a concept is actual being. The only being there is is actual being. God is Actuality. All that He makes is more or less act, not act and potency mixed in various ratios. Just so, God is good. All that He makes is more or less good, not a mixture of good and evil. Evil is simply a deficiency. Just so, potency is a deficiency.

The ancients were dualists of a sort. They explained potency, prime matter, since it was the ANTITHESIS of God, as a co-eternal principle with Him, thus explaining evil and imperfection in the world.

There is no problem with saying that some things are less intelligible than others, just as there is no problem with saying that some beings are less good than others, as the Archangel Michael is less good than the Virgin Mary. But the variability in the goodness of things is not due to the fact that there are two principles, good and evil, which are mixed in various ratios. Both St. Michael and the Virgin Mary are wholly good. It is due, rather, to a simple variability in the degree to which the single quality, goodness, is possessed. Evil, when "present", is present as a privation. Intelligibility must be understood in the same way. Nature is not as intelligible as angels are, but this cannot be due to an admixture of positive unintelligiblity, which is what prime matter as a co-principle with form or actuality has to be. The reason that this is impossible is that all being is created by God. God is in essence intelligible. Prime matter, or potency, cannot be a being created by God because it is positive unintelligibility, the antithesis of God.

Again, imperfect things have no principle of imperfection in them, they simply lack a further perfection. Imperfection is privative, not a co-principle with perfection.

Classical ideas of atoms, space, and time, to which I definitely ascribe, render nature completely intelligible. This does not mean that nature becomes as intelligible as spiritual reality, just that there is no aspect of them which is unintelligible per se.

As regards the Shulamite's second comment, contingency cannot be explained by prime matter in a Christian system. Material beings are definitely receptive of change and can be one way or another, but yet there is always an efficient cause to determine them to be one way rather than the other. For prime matter to account for contingency, it would have to be the source for spontaneous uncaused events.
Otherwise, all things would be determined by a chain of efficient causes, and all events would be necessary. But if prime matter existed and fulfilled this function, then it would be a positive source for disorder, and clearly could not proceed in any way from God. In the Christian world-view, free-will is the only source of contingency.

The introduction of prime matter in the Physice is in the context of explaining substantial change, and although this role of prime matter should not be separated from the cosmological role, substantial change does indeed necessitate prime matter. Therefore, if substantial change, in the Aristotelian sense, occurs, Christianity seems proven false. But substantial change is in no way a fact of experience, and I would argue that it is a contradiction in terms.

2005-10-10T13:02:00.000-05:00

Time to say something shocking: I think that the theory of prime matter and form as Avicenna holds it may not be false. The jury is still out. At any rate, I believe that, even as Avicenna holds it, it is a misleading way to speak of things. More on this latter, and more in response to the Shulamite.

2005-10-04T12:51:00.000-05:00

For most of the ancients, including Plato and Aristotle, there had to be some reason why all things were not immutable, eternal, and simple like their gods were. They posited prime matter, an opposite co-eternal principle, which caused the vagaries, imperfections, and complexities of sensible existence. The world was not simply the product of the gods, for then it would be simple and perfect, but was tainted with matter.

The Christian notion of God is that He is a person, in fact three persons. Not a static, purely rational being. Moreover, Christianity insists that God created everything, that there is no co-eternal principle with him, such as prime matter. Christians thus could not look to prime matter to explain the corruption of the world, but rather had to look to free will, created in the image and likeness of God. Since God is the cause of everything, everything is a likeness of Him, (though man is, of course, in a special way,) thus prime matter, which had historically been the OPPOSITE of God, had to be radically altered or even ditched. To make it fit with Christianity, the concept of prime matter has to be so radically altered that it is almost nothing like the ancient concept.

2005-09-27T20:41:00.000-05:00

A thought: Prime matter was something necessitated by the ancient cosmology, in which the immaterial beings were all impersonal and did not have freedom in a Christian sense. Matter was needed as an opposite principle, to explain contingency and corruption. Christianity caused the eventual death of the doctrine of prime matter.

2005-09-27T19:31:00.000-05:00

Who knew? There was quite a wide variety of views concerning matter in the ancient world spawned by Plato's and Aristotle's works. Some of them even hold views similar to mine. (?!?!) I am reading a long article entitled Simplicius and Avicenna on the Essential Corporeity of Material Substance, (by Abraham Stone) which is found in a book titled Aspects of Avicenna (ed. Robert Wisnovsky.) This is a great secondary source, which covers many more philosophers than just Simplicius and Avicenna on the subject of prime matter. It talks about Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Porphyry among others. It has a great discussion of various questions associated with prime matter and the different views spawned by these questions. TAC'ers interested in the subject should read it, if they can get a copy of it.

2005-09-20T16:33:00.000-05:00

Those who met with me at The Underground know my conception of love: that it is the unification of persons. The question came up then, and it haunts me now, “how then, can one love those whose lives one cannot share, such as enemies?” How also, can one love those with whom one cannot communicate, or whom one has had to sever ties with? Persons are characterized by having an interior life, with which no one outside has access to, unless let in. How can one love someone when that person does not let one into his or her life?

How do I even begin to answer this question? How can I speak worthily about the greatest of virtues, the greatest of all beings, Love, who is God, in Whom we must participate? I feel like I'm just taking a shot in the dark.

Perhaps love can be spoken of in two ways. In one way it is the unification of persons, the relationship between two persons. In another way it is the disposition to unify with another person. The first sense of love is not entirely within our power, it requires reciprocation from the other person. The second sense of love, however, is within our power, and is also twofold. It is either a habitual disposition, or a singular act of the will limited to a specific time. The first is the virtue of love, the second the act of love.

Which sort of love is commanded by the two great commandments? I humbly suggest it is love as a virtue, though I am willing to be corrected. Love in this sense, will always lead to love as the actual unification of persons when given the chance, when it is reciprocated. Given that God loves us, the first commandment is thus in effect a command to be unified to God. He calls us to Himself.

The situation becomes more complicated in loving other human beings who do not always reciprocate. Also, sometimes we cannot see or feel the love of God for us. In both of these situations love becomes difficult and confusing. Love becomes a source of pain when it is not reciprocated, or seems to not be reciprocated. What do we do then? Human beings must recognize the limits of their nature, both physical, psychical, and metaphysical. We cannot continue to love in some ways, but in other ways, it is imperative to love in those painful times.

More on this later. No one wants to read a post even this long. The question, for now, remains unanswered.

2005-09-20T15:16:00.000-05:00

Quote from U2:

"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief.
All kill their inspiration and sing about their grief."

2005-09-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

“Christ was lifted up so that He might draw all men unto himself.” (I quote this from memory from I know not where in the Bible, so it may be innacurate.) The universal calling of mankind is to draw close to Christ, to be united with Him in love. All the normal talk about one's calling should be seen in this context. Whatever one's more specific vocation is, it is directed towards drawing close to Christ as an end, and ought to grow out of it. One's vocation is the specific path which God has set for you to draw close to Him, as such your vocation can be viewed as the best way for you to draw close to Christ.

This must be distinguished from the best way simply to draw close to Christ, which at the very least includes a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. This sort of life is a great gift from God: it is a direct path to Christ, and all others are indirect. However, like all paths towards Christ, it is a gift. As such one cannot reason thus: the religious life is the best, therefore if I really loved Christ, I would choose it. This stems from a lack of humility and is the cause of a strangling sense of guilt in not being able to bring oneself to it. Angels do not need sensation of bodies to rise to knowledge of God, but do it more directly. It would be folly for a human being to think that for this reason he was going to cease to use his eyes and ears in order to know God more directly. That more direct route of knowledge is not given to us humans. So too, to many human beings the ability to draw close to Christ by that most direct route of the religious life is not given.

But God calls all human beings to Himself, in His mercy He has given all of us a path to His Holy Son. Some paths are more direct than others, but they all lead to the same place. In the end, what matters is not the path given to one, but whether one walked that path.

To return, then, discerning a vocation is discerning the path to God which He has made open to you. Drawing close to Christ means loving Him, and loving Him means sharing His life. His life is primarily one of joy and peace, which means that one's vocation should fill one with joy and peace. Joy and peace are, in fact, natural attributes of a life of love, and as such, their absence hurts one's ability to love. However, Christ's life is also one of suffering and death, and so any complete love of Christ will involve sharing in His suffering. One's vocation is not, then, the most pleasant life open to one, but it should still have the characters of joy and peace. Therefore, though far from being the only step in discerning one's vocation, yet it is still an important one to learn in what sort of life, or with whom, one will find joy and peace.

2005-09-15T21:17:00.000-05:00

As a follow up to my post about Avicenna and Aquinas: one major difference between them is that for Avicenna, the primary concepts are innate, not gained at all from experience, while for Aquinas, obviously, these concepts are the first thing which the intellect abstracts from experience. An islamic thought-experiment illustrates the difference well. Suppose a man created ex nihilo fully adult, suspended somewhere in the heavens, such that he cannot move at all, and with no visible lights: in other words, totally sensory deprived. According to Avicenna, this 'flying man' would still know that he existed and that he had an essence. For Thomas, with no phantasms at all to work from, the intellect would be totally empty, and so not at all self-conscious.

2005-09-13T18:54:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading St. Augustine's dialogue On the Free Choice of the Will, which is not in the TAC curriculum. Although I have yet to read through Augustine's entry on this work in his Retractions, I perused it and he does not seem to recant any of his positions stated in this book.

That said, this book really confirmed my opinion that Augustine's anti-Pelagian writings, such as On the Predestination of the Saints and On the Gift of Perseverance are colored in their presentation by the fact that they are polemical, addressing specifically the Pelagian heresy. On the Free Choice of the Will tackles the same sorts of questions but in a different, more palatable way. As far as I can tell, the positions are entirely consistent in the several works, yet they each emphasize and develop a different side of the question.

This said, if any TAC sophomores, and any TAC'ers for that fact, are still troubled by St. Augustine's teaching concerning grace and free will, I suggest that they read On the Free Choice of the Will.

2005-09-11T23:03:00.000-05:00

Where have all the bloggers gone? It seems as if the glory days of TAC blogging are over. Doesn't mean that they can't come back. Here's what I have to offer:

According to one professor at CUA, who happens to be a genius, (which doesn't make what he says true, of course,) Avicenna is the fourth most influential philosopher in history, after Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. Thomas, according to him, while being truly original in many respects, took his basic understanding of Aristotle from Avicenna, (of course he had to Christianize it to some extent.) In effect, this makes Avicenna's influence on Thomas in the same ballpark as Aristotle's.

I am currently reading book 1 of Avicenna's Metaphysics for class. In chapter 5 he discusses the first concepts that occur in the mind. These are "the existent" "the thing" and the necessary. Most of the chapter is about "the existent" and "the thing", i.e., being (ens) and essence. He claims that these are the first concepts in the mind, and that essence must have existence either in the world or in the soul, but that it can be considered irrespective of either. This same teaching can be found in Aquinas' On Being and Essence, which you seniors will read towards the end of the year. I am sure there are differences between that work and Avicenna's, but I think Aquinas is drawing a lot more from Avicenna than from Aristotle in that book.

2005-09-07T20:20:00.000-05:00

Classes at CUA have been going well. I have been joyfully reading St. Augustine again, loving his Christian Platonism. On the Teacher and On Free Choice of the Will are the first two assignments for my Illumination class. St. Anselm's dialogue On Truth is next. Kant's Critique of Judgment promises to be marvelous too. (That's for another class, obviously.) The translation of Avicenna's Metaphysics, which was just published a few months ago, is the first full translation into english.

2005-08-24T22:04:00.000-05:00

I'm in D.C. Well, almost. I'm in Silver Spring MD, in my new apartment, which is inside the Beltway. I had an awesome trip across the country. Here are some pictures.

The infinte train in the Mojave Desert

Downtown Memphis

Louisiana, the state in which everything is wet all the time

Nearly ghost town in Texas

Bourbon St. in the French Quarter of New Orleans

2005-08-05T00:06:00.000-05:00

This is mine.
My mother's comment: "That's not a guitar!"

2005-07-14T22:35:00.000-05:00

Follow up to my post about emotion: when things cleared up a little, I realized that the only thing that had become clear was the question, not the answer. The question is this, put in Husserlian terms: Does the phenomenon of emotion and/or feeling contain its object within itself? In other words: when we experience an emotion, is the emotion something other than the experience of it, as another human being is something other than one's perception of him, or is the emotion itself the experience?

2005-07-14T22:26:00.000-05:00

The Critique of Practical Reason should be read at TAC. Kant's conception of the person is much more evident in it than in either the Critique of Pure Reason or in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. This conception sheds light on John Paul the Great's conception of the person as I understand it from Love and Responsibility. In fact, I get the impression that Kant's conception of the person is the wellspring of personalism and vast sections of contemporary philosophic thought. John Paul the Great, of course, does not whole-heartedly accept Kant's conception, but he seems to have been influenced greatly by it.

2005-07-09T00:33:00.000-05:00

A comment: Very few TAC bloggers seem to be saying anything about the London bombings. This does not look good for a group of people who are acused of not living in the world.

Another comment: Does anybody else get the impression that bombing London was the stupidest thing the terrorists could have done? Does anyone think that the British are gonna cower in fear and cave in like the Spaniards? I would hope that the British will stiffen their spines and be even more the U.S.'s ally in the war on terror than they have been.

2005-06-30T23:11:00.000-05:00

Those who read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason carefully may have wondered at Kant's claim that space and time were merely the forms of sensible intuition, i.e. only pertained to things as appearances and not belonging to things in themselves or to reality. There seemed sufficient grounds for assuming that sensible intuition could only occur under the conditions of space and time, and that thus they were forms of intuition, but there seemed no sufficient argument to conclude that space and time were not also attributes of things in themselves.

Now I belive in the reality of space and time as things in themselves, as is manifest to all who know my philosophical opinions, but there is an interesting argument that time at least is only an attribute of phenomena and not of noumena in the Critique of Practical Reason. Kant there argues that freedom and the moral law would be impossible if time were an attribute of things in themselves, and not just of phenomena.

The argument is basically this: moral law requires freedom, freedom means having control over our actions. All of our actions appear to be determined by actions, motives, and character traits that existed in a time previous to the action, and all of these character traits also seem to be determined by conditions from a previous time, ad infinitum. If this appearance were a reality, then we would have no control over our actions, therefore the stream of our actions in time, in which each moment determines the next, must be an appearance only.

Now I don't buy this, but it makes for an interesting theory of human action. Kant's conclusion is this: "It may therefore be admitted that if it were possible to have so profound an insight into a man's mental charcter as shown by internal as well as external actions, as to know all its motives, even the smallest, and likewise all the external occasions that can influence them, we could calculate a man's conduct for the future with as great certainty as a lunar or solar eclipse; and nevertheless we may maintain that the man is free. In fact, if we were capable of a further glance, namely, an intellectual intuition of the same subject (which indeed is not granted to us, and instead of it we have only the rational concept), then we should perceive that this whole chain of appearances in regard to all that concerns the moral laws depends on the spontaneity of the subject as a thing in itself, of the determination of which no physical explanation can be given. ... Whatever springs from a man's choice (as every action intentionally performed undoubtedly does) has as its foundation a free causality, which from early youth expresses its character in its manifestations (i.e., actions). These, on account of the uniformity of conduct, exhibit a natural connection, which, however, does not make the vicious [or virtuous] quality of the will necessary, but, on the contrary, is the consequence of the evil [or good] principles voluntarily adopted and unchangeable, which only make it so much the more culpable [or commendable] and deserving of punishment [or reward]."

Basically, Kant sees the person as existing outside of time and of timelessly choosing good or evil, and human activity as the appearance in time of a timeless character. I tend to think that this is incompatible with the doctrine of redemption, but fits well with a Lutheran idea of salvation, in which the evil character of man is only hidden by Christ, not altered.

2005-06-30T16:35:00.000-05:00

I'm having some technical difficulties with blogger. With some help from DZ things are improving, but this blog still doesn't look right.

2005-06-27T21:24:00.000-05:00

I have made the distinction between sensing and intellecting, or intuiting, before. They are two distinct faculties of perception, with different objects. Sense perceives colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, while the intellect perceives ideas. There is yet another faculty of perception, the inner sense. This faculty of perception has the states of our own body and soul for its objects.

This faculty is either twofold or has two objects. On the one hand, there is the faculty of feeling, by which we perceive pleasure and pain and the like. Such perceptions are very physical and localized, yet they do not present themselves as perceptions of an extrinsic object. The feeling of pain is not experienced as some object or quality of an object, but a state of the perceiving subject's body or a part of it. On the other hand there is emotion, which as an experience is also not of an object or of a state of an object. As an experience, emotion is the perception of a state of soul.

It seems then that man has four perception faculties: intellect, sense, feeling, and emotion. Intellect perceives ideas, sense perceives the qualities, feeling perceives the state of the subject's body, and emotion perceives the state of the subject's soul. Emotion may be a bad word, for it seems to refer rather to what the faculty perceives than to the faculty itself. If this was strictly the case, though, a man might have emotions which he did not perceive or experience, just as there are sounds that we happen not to hear.

I'm trying to work this all out so it's not in a stable state yet. Thinking of things this way, though, sheds some light for me on moral questions about emotion.

2005-06-16T22:48:00.000-05:00

I went to Mass this evening at Our Lady of Guadalupe in an entirely mexican neighborhood in Oxnard. I have never in my life seen so many people at a normal daily mass. There were 100-150 mexicans and 5 white people. I could only catch random words and phrases, and the occasional sentence, but the homily was awesome. I wanted to learn Spanish just to listen to this priest give it. Mexicans are so cool.

2005-06-15T21:34:00.000-05:00

First day of work as a driver for Pep Boys. The only thing of note that happened was that me and the other driver, (he was showing me where all the client shops were,) stopped at a shop run by an Argentinian named Sergio with a thick accent and an Argentinian flag hanging from his garage. He was cool. Come to think of it, a lot of mechanics seem to be foreigners with accents.

2005-06-13T21:47:00.000-05:00

One of the very first things which Benedict XVI said as Pope: "John Paul II rightly pointed out the Council as a 'compass' by which to take our bearings in the vast ocean of the third millennium. Also, in his spiritual Testament he noted, 'I am convinced that it will long be granted to the new generations to draw from the treasures that this 20th-century Council has lavished upon us.'"

The Catholics of our generation should read carefully the documents of Vatican II and try to imbibe their spirit. John Paul the Great has been an instrument of God in renewing the church in large part by implementing Vatican II in his pastoral work, and Benedict the XVI has given every indication that he plans on doing the same. Vatican II did not change the doctrine of the church, (that would be impossible,) but it did change the attitude, and it changed it for the better. Let us not be more Catholic than the pope, or than John Paul the Great. Let us acknowledge the world-historical importance of Vatican II as they do.

2005-06-13T21:44:00.000-05:00

Visit this blog to hear about the adventures of a southerner in Peru. He should be a lesson to all of us. Be alive, do something interesting now that you've graduated.

2005-06-13T21:15:00.000-05:00

My cousin just gave me a digital camera, so here are some pictures of The Underground.

2005-05-30T21:09:00.000-05:00

Visited El Pueblo de Los Angeles this weekend. It's is the original city center of L.A., founded in 1781. (Did you know L.A. was that old?) It had awesome buildings from the time period, and it felt a lot like I imagine parts of Mexico feel like. The mexican food there was good, and the mariachis played, "and they would not shut up until they were payed" or something like that. There was a plaque with the original census recording the names, ages, sexes, and races of the 11 original families. Two of families had black fathers, and a lot of the adults were recorded as mulatto/a (mixed black/caucasian, the census was in Spanish.) There were no white people other than 1 or 2 espanolos. (Spaniards) There were a lot of indios (native americans, probably native Mexicans) and even a mestiza. (mixed native american/caucasian) L.A. was multi-cultural from the very beginning.

A few weeks ago, in downtown L.A., my girlfriend and I ran across a real live communist parade. We were walking through downtown L.A., and this white lady with a green beret emblazoned with a red star came up to us and asked if we wanted a newspaper, which was titled "Revolucion." She then asked "Are you gringos down for the parade?" We said we didn't know about any parade. "Oh, it's just that we don't often see gringos down here." Then we noticed that a crowd of people in red shirts was about to reach our block. The crowd was almost entirely composed of hispanics and orientals carrying signs, and was many blocks long. A flyer was passed to us that read "No es Bush y Arnold, es capitalismo!" It detailed (there was English on the back,) how capitalism exploited the working class, and that socialism was no answer, as it retained too much of capitalism. It claimed that America was racist, and exploited white workers and 'super-exploited' blacks and hispanics and other minorities. We thought that was funny, having just been called gringos. I didn't know real-life classic communists still existed in America. But we saw the same newspaper, "Revolucion," being passed out in El Pueblo yesterday. L.A. is an odd place.

2005-05-25T20:56:00.000-05:00

Stopped by "Manny's Auto Repair and Elephant Graveyard" today, as Sinnerman likes to call it. I went to ask Manny for a job.

Me (approaching Manny): I was wondering if you were hiring.
Random guy Manny just finished talking to: Do you know how to use a two-by-four?
Me: A two-by-four, for what?
Random Guy, with hand gestures: To pop the engine out, we don't have any hoist.
Me: uhh... yeah.
Random Guy: Good, right answer.
...
Manny: Don't mind him, he's crazy.

Manny had no openings, but he said he'd call me, "because most of my mechanics are from Mexico, they're just kinda passing through." "Great," I thought, "he won't mind when I leave in August."

2005-05-23T22:04:00.000-05:00

I feel like driving to Arizona for no reason at all, and just sleeping in my car or something. The Southwestern desert just seems really attractive for some reason. Must be the weather.

In other news I succesfully got through jury duty today, all done for the year. (I got as close as the courtroom to a rape/1st degree murder trial.)

2005-05-19T22:08:00.000-05:00

Discovered a new favorite coffee shop; it's called The Underground. It's in Ventura and has free wi-fi, and a cool atmosphere. Maggie told me about it. Maybe now that it's summer, I'll blog more.

Worked for 6 hours at an auto repair shop in Ojai today, in an attempt to get hired there. I have a good chance of being hired part time as an assistant mechanic, which would be cool because it's my favorite kind of work, (academics isn't work,) and the atmoshpere was really relaxed. The owner and the guy I would be working with are both really nice and laid back.

Summer projects:
Get job
Read more Kant
Learn German
Practice Bodhran
Stay in Shape

2005-05-05T16:37:00.000-05:00

In the past I have written much about love being other-centeredness, and that man's purpose was to will the happiness of others and not his own. While most of what I said is true, it is incomplete.

Love is so other-centered that no man can be other-centered on his own. No human being can rely on himself to love; no human being is self-sufficiently other-centered. Because of how finite and small we are, we can merely begin to love on our own; we cannot complete the act.

This explains the unavoidable urge for the objects of our love to love us back. This is not self-centered, except in a way which it is impossible for humans to avoid. If the object of one's love does not return the love, one has no access to the other person, for all persons are by nature free and inviolable. Thus in giving oneself, in loving another, one empties himself and alienates himself from himself. In such a situation, in order not to be rendered completely incapable of ever acting again, a person recoils and ceases to love. A person thus finds it impossible to complete the act of love without having it returned. All persons are essentially free, and as such no gift of self can be made to someone unwilling.

If, however, the other person returns the love, then each person has opened himself or herself up to the other, and so in giving themselves to each other, they receive themselves back. Rather than being emptied and impoverished, they grow beyond measure. Thus each person retains the strength to continue giving himself or herself, thus making the act of love complete. Human persons, then, require the help of others to be other-centered. We must be so other-centered that we do not even look to ourselves to be other-centered, but look rather to others.

2005-04-19T14:43:00.000-05:00

We have a Pope! Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict XVI! Viva il Papa!

2005-04-16T17:35:00.000-05:00

I will be going to Catholic University in D.C. next year for sure now. Three more years studying philosophy. I'm gonna have mad philosophy skills or something, but I still won't have numchuck skills. Gosh!

In other news my thesis defense went fairly well, and I've become a bad blogger.

2005-03-26T15:53:00.000-05:00

Bonaventure is in the Cleveland Public Library, completely free of all cords and providing you with this lovely post. That is all.

2005-03-15T19:31:00.000-05:00

Well, thesis is turned in. It's tight. 30 pages of thick Platonism. The Dean said maybe we'd have to have the defense in the commons. (Of course it won't be.) The party after the thesis deadline was incredible; I didn't know my class was capable of partying like that as a whole.

Why won't the network let me print from my laptop in the library? They let me have internet, why not printer?

2005-03-12T18:22:00.000-05:00

Check out A Philosopher's Garden of Verses, a blog to rival Vomit the Lukewarm. Its author is in the Ph.D. program at the University of Dallas.

2005-03-02T01:45:00.000-05:00

What's happened to the "Revolution?" Seldom Sober, its apparent leader, has been hardly blogging for quite some time now. There seems to be a bit of activity over there tonight though. The Galloping Consumption is dead. Blogging just seems light overall. TAC has lost the urge to blog. Basically, I have 48 blogs on my blogroll, and I think they should continuously entertain me.

2005-03-02T01:20:00.000-05:00

Alexis de Tocqueville (19th century), whom my friend has referred to as the hero of the human race, perceived that the greatest danger of equality, which was to spread inexorably over the western world, was that it was prejudicial to liberty. De Tocqueville believed in both liberty and equality, yet he understood that they do not easily come together.

America, in his eyes, had many factors in its favor in the constant struggle to preserve liberty in the face of equality; Europe, however, was blind to the ways in which their endorsement of equality was prejudicial to liberty. He predicted for them a "soft and mild despotism" in which, in return for bread and circuses, the people would pay lip-service to their consciences' appeal for liberty by freely electing their own tyrants every few years.

This is precisely what has happened to Europe. De Tocqueville, both in Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the French Revolution, makes the political and social history of the modern western world utterly intelligible, and in ways I did not expect. It is worth staying till senior year just to read these two books.

2005-03-01T20:01:00.000-05:00

Blogging from The Pines, wireless. Yes, you heard me, The Pines is a wireless hot-spot! It was a fortunate day, as most of the car problems which Darren and I were to fix had already fixed themselves. The intake manifold which we thought we would have to remove (this would have necessitated dismantling scores of other things,) had no perceivable problems. The other jobs were easily taken care of. Now time to get Aaron Mellein over here, it's his birthday.

2005-02-27T19:47:00.000-05:00

Blogging from Starbucks on Bonaventure, I'm with HT, working on my thesis. Among other things I am removing some of the pointless Aristotle-bashing and trying to bring it up to the level of serious academic work. I must attain charity. Having the Sacraments so close at hand at TAC you'd think I could do better.

2005-02-22T23:03:00.000-05:00

This is my first post from Bonaventure, my new laptop. It has been scoured of Microsoft programs, and loaded with Firefox, Winamp, and more. I have ripped an almost complete collection of U2. They have 11 albums, 2 best of collections, and several miscellaneous semi-albums. I still have to rip The Best of 80's. (Sweetest Thing is not on any album. Bono didn't think it fit on The Joshua Tree, which I'm listening to right now.) I don't know anyone around here who has Boy, U2's first album. My brother had the rest. This might mean that I have to buy Boy.

I will avoid the temptation to put games on Bonaventure.

Senior burn-out has hit me hard. I must struggle to remain studious, charitable, and humble. I'm not presently succeeding at being any of those. It doesn't help that I'm afraid of being stuck on campus due to road closures. I like to leave campus whenever I can. This is bad.

2005-02-14T14:50:00.000-05:00

This is from last year, after being campused for several weeks. I was getting a bit loopy.

2005-02-04T00:48:00.000-05:00

This was inspired by a question from someone I love dearly:

"Anybody who seeks his own happiness for its own sake, automatically
makes his happiness unattainable. By making everything a means to his
happiness, everything becomes just an extension of himself. For the
selfish man, other human beings are objects, not ends in themselves
but only means to his own happiness, for the selfish man knows 'that
it is not good for man to be alone.' However, part of the meaning of
being a human being is to have the dignity of an end, to not be merely
a means. Hence, by making people means, the selfish man removes from
them the characteristic of humans, and thus for him there are no
humans to associate with to relieve his loneliness, there are just
human-shaped objects. By seeking people for his own happiness he makes
people non-existent for him. His very action frustrates itself.
Seeking one's happiness destroys happiness.

To be even more radical, there are no objects for the selfish man. For
the selfish man there is no sunset to be loved. He sees all things
only under the aspect of how they benefit him, and thus ignores
whatever belongs to them as things in themselves. He is concerned only
with how they appear to him. It doesn't matter whether the sunset
exists at all, as long as there is in him the sensation of a sunset.
All is subject for the selfish man, there is no object. Hence
selfishness is the ultimate prison. Man is confined strictly within
himself. There is nothing else. He is a prison to himself and he has
refused consciousness of even the existence of something beyond his
walls. No air from the outside gets in, for as far as he is concerned
there is no outside. The selfish man is not only stifled, he
suffocates.

All that I have said about the selfish man is said only about
perfectly selfish men. They are exceedingly rare, for the tendency
towards love, towards other-centeredness, is also present in human
nature."

2005-02-01T18:52:00.000-05:00

Oddly enough, it has come out in class the past few days that Platonism is much more sanguine about the knowability of the world than Aristotelianism. Platonists claim to be able to know all sorts of things about which Aristotelians are skeptical, such as natural science, which comes off looking like a cruel joke on us. For man, after Herculean struggle, has produced a theory that explains most of nature, yet he has no knowledge as to whether it is true or not.

"There are many here among us who think that life is but a joke. But you and I we've been through this, and that is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely now, for the hour is getting late." -Dylan

2005-01-30T12:02:00.000-05:00

Josh Bergen and the grammarians won this year's Trivial and Quadrivial Pursuits. He was very eloquent; the high point of his rhetorical flourish came with the question: "Is tautology false?"

2005-01-23T16:56:00.000-05:00

The canyon behind the college looks nothing like it did before. There is no trail, and there are hardly any trees or bushes. The river, swelled by the storms, cut a wide flat plain, taking all the vegetation with it, so that the whole area looks like one vast lunar landscape. The first crossing doesn't exist anymore, (indeed, there aren't really any crossings,) but one can kindof tell where it used to be because a 15 foot section of the fire road on the other side was preserved intact, though it ends abruptly with a six foot drop into the creek/river bed.

It is very nice. I felt like I was at a beginning rather than in an end game for the first time in awhile. The whole thing was a visible symbol of confession. All of the filth and trash left by ten years of hikers, gangsters, and college students had been washed away, and everything was clean again. There were a few places that pot-heads had already tagged again, but it's not much and floods will wash it all away again in another decade.

2005-01-20T19:03:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Louis Bolin, I finally have access to the full text of the papal bull Ad Christi Vicarii in which Sixtus IV condemns Aristotle's position regarding future contingent propositions as heresy, in the year 1474. No more excuses for the tutors.

2005-01-13T19:32:00.000-05:00

EC and myself just had a seminar, supposedly on books I-III of the Physics, but actually on the Pre-Socratics. Student organized, student led. Only about six showed up, but it was very good; at least, I learned and enjoyed myself.

Topic: Greek view of nature & knowledge.

2005-01-12T16:56:00.000-05:00

The situation is normalizing on campus. The carpet is being ripped up wherever it flooded, and people will have to switch rooms and roomates to accomadate all the dislocated. Power and the internet are back, as well as hot water. The road to Santa Paula, however, will take months to be opened at all. The road is a shelf perpendicular to the cliff at some points, with nothing underneath it to hold it up. The road to Ojai is messy, and undercut a bit at a few places. School is cancelled until next Monday.

The rain Monday evening was much less than forecasted, and there was no rain Tuesday; the Lord had mercy on us.

2005-01-10T13:30:00.000-05:00

I was awoken this morning by a dormmate letting me know that water was coming into my room. TAC is an island; the 150 is shut both ways and the bridge on the Santa Paula side is already falling into the river. If the rain keeps up, the bridge on the Ojai side will also be impassible, making us a long-term island. We've re-directed the water with sand-bags, and cleared the drains, so my dorm is safe for now. All the people on the other wing have massive clean-up. The water, thank the Lord, was stopped before it got far in my room. Oak-trees are falling all over the place. A large section of down-below might fall into the creek-turned-raging-river. Only the Lord can save us.

I'm blogging from the maintainence office at TAC. Pray that the rain stops VERY SOON. Pray that we are not stranded.

2005-01-06T23:40:00.000-05:00

It is amazing how one can appreciate the beauty of a lifestyle which is nothing like one's own, and which one does not approve of, and which one does not desire.

I am listening to Tom Petty's Last Dance with Mary Jane.

Beware lest, in admiring such beauty, one begins to desire one's own unhappiness. Many people so desire the powerful beauty of sadness to be their own, that they become addicted to depression. This is a pervers form of self-centeredness, (though all forms of it are,) and one which I was particularly addicted to for a long time.

2005-01-06T02:03:00.000-05:00

My brother, just slightly taller than myself, roomed with a 6'7" man named Thor Hilander during his years at That Anonymous College. Some friends of mine called Thor the Jolly Green Giant. You could often hear him running through the dorm (it sounded like an elephant) laughing joyously, followed by a *WHUMP*, which signaled that he had just jumped on somebody. He finished his thesis the day before his defense, I believe.

He is now Brother Augustine, in the Dominican Seminary. He's an admirable man, and very pleasant to be with.