Interludium

Something sent to me from the depths of the book of faces.

Trollope on Scholasticism

While leafing through various post-1500 commentaries on Scotus and various other genres, the following comment from Trollope came to mind:

In former times great objects were attained by great work. When evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave decorum and laborious argument. An age was occupied in proving a grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in folio pages, which it took a life to write, and an eternity to read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows, and monthly novels convince when learned quartos fail to do so. If the world is to be set right, the work will be done by shilling numbers.

From Anthony Trollope, The Warden, first published 1855. I quote from the London 1976 ed.

A Scene from my Defense

This is what happens when Henry of Ghent scholars are on your committee:

Pope Francis on Thomism

The current pope recently had this to say about Thomism:

"The church has experienced times of brilliance, like that of Thomas Aquinas. But the church has lived also times of decline in its ability to think. For example, we must not confuse the genius of Thomas Aquinas with the age of decadent Thomist commentaries. Unfortunately, I studied philosophy from textbooks that came from decadent or largely bankrupt Thomism. In thinking of the human being, therefore, the church should strive for genius and not for decadence."

Ouch! Even I, Scotist though I be, have spent many happy hours poring over Thomist manuals. I can only dream of such an education.

We might ask, why were they decadent? It is contrasted with "thinking of the human being", which perhaps means restricting ones' theologizing and philosophizing to human affairs and human nature. so no transcendental metaphysics, no seven-fold division of distinction? I'm not really sure. Of course, who would disagree that the church should strive for genius and not decadence?

Maybe this is the best response.

"Fight" Philosophy

While trolling the internet looking for Thomists, I came across the following bit of Youtube awesomeness:  Fight Philosophy: James Chastek (Aquinas) vs. Lee Faber (Scotus)

Swift on Scotus

From Gulliver's Travels, pt. 3.  The scene is an island of a necromancer who calls up the dead. Gulliver calls up all the greats of history in order to ask them about what really happened.

I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treatm them better than perhaps they deserved; for he soon found they wanted a Genius to enter into the spirit of a Poet. But Aristotle was out of all Patience with the Account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them whether the rest of the Tribe were as great Dunces as themselves.

Aureola

In his Quodlibet II.12, Henry of Ghent was asked whether someone could obtain the halo given to Doctors in heaven if they were worthy to become professors of theology but never actually received a position.

No, it seems, for the judgment of the Church Triumphant conforms to the judgment of the Church Militant. If the Church on earth therefore doesn't see fit to honor a scholar with the rank of master, for which the halo specially belonging to Doctors is merited, neither will the Church in heaven.

Henry disagrees with this. One merits a halo in heaven (as one merits anything) on account of one's acts, not on account of public recognition of those acts or status. So a virgin will receive the halo of virginity even if her virtue is never recognized or lauded; similarly then so can someone who teaches and preaches in order to lead others to eternal life by the way of truth merit the halo of the Doctors.

Henry notes that it's not enough merely to wish to teach, a positive activity is required for merit; if one is impeded from teaching by one's locality or lack of opportunity one may receive the essential reward for one's good will, but not merit the halo. But if a qualified and worthy teacher who teaches well is not given a professorship [magisterium], this is an error on the part of the appointing body.

--------

I have to say that I find this quaestiuncula strangely comforting and cheering, as I hope others will who may, like me, doubt whether they can reasonably hope to be granted tenure by any other university than that whose gates St Peter guards, or wonder what college might accept us onto their permanent faculty besides that which resides in Dante's Heaven of the Sun.

William of Ware Joke

Here.  I don't know what is more shocking: that someone did a post on William of Ware or that they were able to joke about his name.

Modern Life

In these days in which we live, when existence has become a thing of infinite complexity and fate, if it slips us a bit of goose with one hand, if pretty sure to give us the sleeve across the windpipe with the other, it is rarely that we find a human being who is unmixedly happy. Always the bitter will be blended with the sweet, and in this mélange one can be reasonably certain that it is the former that will predominate.

A severe indictment of our modern civilization, but it can't say it didn't ask for it.

-Wodehouse, Uncle Dynamite

Bad News

So here are some rather sad stats. I was looking at the "cluster map" down on the sidebar, and it turns out we have had 12 visitors from Pakistan, but only 7 from the Vatican. So apparently we're not making much of a difference after all.

Plato takes a swim

From a mss. of thirteenth-century exempla, edited in Antonianum 2 (1927), p.233:

"Dicit fr. Pe[trus] de Taren[tasia] quod legitur in quodam sermone cuiusdam doctoris greci super illud verbum: 'Perdam sapientiam sapi[entium]' etc. quod Plato semel incedens iuxta mare invenit piscatores et interrogavit si aliquos pisces vel aliquid cepissent vel haberent. Qui responderunt: Quos cepimus non habemus et quos habemus nundum cepimus, intelligentes hoc de pediculis. Quod problema ruminans Plato et intelligere non valens, proiecit se in mare pre dolore."

Words to Live By from Seneca

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Epistle 2 (ed. Motto, p.5): "Distringit librorum multitudo; itaque cum legere non possis quantum habueris, satis est habere quantum legas. 'Sed modo' inquis 'hunc librum evolvere volo, modo illum.' Fastidientis stomachi est multa degustare; quae ubi varia sunt et diversa, inquinant non alunt."

Bonaventure, Bernard, and the Last Man on Earth

St Bonaventure attributes his position on the portions of the natural law which can be suspended, which I alluded to yesterday, to St Bernard. Here's what he says in IV Dist. XXXVIII Art. II Q. III:

Item, Bernardus dicit: quaedam sunt praecepta moralia primae tabulae ordinantia ad Deum; quaedam secundae ordinantia ad proximum; quaedam superaddita, ut canonicae sanctiones et Patrum instituta. In primis non potest despensare nec homo nec Deus; in secundis non homo, sed Deus; in tertiis et homo et Deus. Ratio autem huius est, quia praecepta primae tabulae immediate ordinant ad Deum.

"Bernard says that there are some moral precepts which belong to the first tablet [of the Ten Commandments], ordered to God; some which belong to the second [tablet of the Ten Commandments], ordered to one's neighbor; and some superadded precepts, such as the sanctions of canon law or [monastic and religious rules] instituted by the holy fathers. The first [set] neither man nor God can dispense from; the second man cannot, but God can; the third both man and God can. The reason for this is that the precepts of the first tablet are immediately ordered to God."

The relevant passage is in St Bernard's De praeceptio et dispensatione [c. 2-3], where he says pretty much what St Bonaventure says. Those precepts pertaining to charity, that is, to the good of our relationship to God, are necessary and inviolable. But:

Necessarium deinde, quod inviolabile nominavi, illud intelligo, quod non ab homine traditum, sed divinitus promulgatum, nisi a Deo qui tradidit, mutari omnino non patitur, ut, exempli causa: NON OCCIDES, NON MOECHABERIS, NON FURTUM FACIES, et reliqua illius tabulae legisscita, quae, etsi nullam prorsus humanam dispensationem admittunt, nec cuiquam hominum ex his aliquid aliquo modo solvere aut licuit, aut licebit, Deus tamen horum quod voluit, quando voluit solvit, sive cum ab Hebraeis Aegyptios spoliari, sive quando rophetam cum muliere fornicaria misceri praecepit.

And so forth. This is just what Bonaventure said, and it should be clear that this position is not therefore the first bad fruits of Scotism, nominalism, or some imaginary hybrid of the two.

Moving on: in the same question St Bonaventure asks the hilarious question: say there's only three people left alive on the Earth: myself, one woman, and the pope, and say I've taken a vow of perpetual continence. Can the pope dispense me from my vow for the sake of the conservation of the species?

No! For one thing, this would never happen. For another, even if the case would arise, there would be no way to know that the species could be preserved by breaking my vow. If I did the deed with the woman it very well might be that no children result anyway. So I would certainly break my vow for the uncertain possibility of some good not under my control.

More on Philosophical Style

A couple of years ago now I posted an excerpt from Brand Blanshard's On Philosophical Style. It was a snippet I'd found somewhere on the Internet, where I have no idea. So, a couple of days ago I was browsing in the used bookstore and came across this little books in the flesh, and snatched it up for a paltry couple of bucks. It turns out that it's full of good things. Here's the passage immediately following the one I posted before:

Some philosophers would surely do better here if they bore in mind what great writers seems to know by instinct, that a generalization which we can make without trouble if we are allowed to start at the bottom may be quite beyond us if we have to start from the top. Most of us are incapable of moving freely in the world of pure universals or "as suches"; we are like Antaeus, and must touch ground again pretty often to renew our strength and courage. To be sure, there is some risk in such returns, for concrete things are complex, and if you are offered one as an example, you may pick out the wrong point in it. Kant was so convinced that this would happen that, for the most part, he deliberately abstained from illustrations. With all due respect, this seems to me rather silly. Most men's minds are so constituted that they have to think by means of examples; if you do not supply these, they will supply them for themselves, and if you leave it wholly to them, they will do it badly.

This excellent point, unfortunately, applies to a great many, probably most, of the scholastics. For myself I've felt it keenly in Scotus. Sometimes I've labored on for a dozen pages thinking to myself "I'm pretty sure I know what's going on; if only he'd give me an example so I could be sure!" Perhaps the scholastics were so trained to think logically and generally from an early age that they didn't feel the lack; perhaps we just can't fully appreciate the largely oral culture in which their texts were produced, so that perhaps the examples would be produced on the spot in class or disputation but were not thought necessary to always include in the writing. In any case it can make for difficulty. And it must be admitted that Scotus is a spectacularly bad writer in any case, which doesn't help at all.

Blanshard's most frequent gibes are at the Germans, which seems perfectly fair. Nearly all the greats - Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger - are nearly unintelligible much of the time, and, as he points out, this is not simply because what they have to say is so profound and difficult. Compare Husserl, for instance, with his explication by such a very clear writer as my old teacher Robert Sokolowski. The thought is still difficult, but the reading is much more pleasant.

Sometimes the difference between good and bad writing is a matter of mere laziness. Husserl, like Scotus, produced most of his writing as notes of his thinking for himself, and took few pains to prepare it for public consumption. Neither of them, perhaps, was trying to be obscure, they just weren't trying very hard not to be obscure. But there is bad writing, and then there grows up a tradition of bad writing. Blanshard says:

One influential teacher who writes badly can infect a whole brood of offspring, who proceed to spread the infection. Often our young philosophers, and still oftener our young psychologists and sociologists, are allowed to commit mayhem on the language unwarned, and to grow up under the innocent impression that such behavior is somehow scholarly. "A spectre haunts our culture," says Lionel Trilling. "It is that people will eventually be unable to say, 'We fell in love and got married,' let a long understand the language of Romeo and Juliet, but will, as a matter of course, say, 'Their libidinal impulses being reciprocal, they integrated their individual erotic drives and brought them within the same frame of reference.'" Many of these young people carry no model in their minds by comparison with which they could stamp that sort of thing as barbarism.

It seems to me that this is the sort of thing which has happened with the Heideggerians and the postmodernists, if we are not to assume uncharitably that they really have an ideological commitment to obscurity.

Blanshard also warns against excessive abstractness of language in general. This is difficult, because philosophy is necessarily abstract much of the time. But we should distinguish between a habit of abstract thought and a habit of abstract speech. Precisely abstract thoughts should be presented in as concrete a language as possible. One more amusing excerpt:

One distinguished philosopher talks to us about "the aspirational character of life." Another, in an able book, just off the press, writes, "a relation requires for its exemplification two or more particulars each of which must perform its special exemplificational function," and is on intimate terms with such strange new entities as "characteral features," and "punctuational commitments." In other writers I find it described how a philosopher approaches a problem "from the observational angle," how certain refugees coming to America had their "premigrational conceptions" changed, and how a certain kind of conduct is "organizationally cloaked with official piety." No doubt a case can be made out for such coinages on the ground that they take less space than the simpler words that might replace them. That may well be true. The case against them is that they are ugly misshapen verbal abortions.

Ray Bradbury on the Internet

The Internet? Don't get him started. "The Internet is a big distraction," Mr Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles . . . "Yahoo called me eight weeks ago," he said, voice rising. "They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? 'To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet."

"It's distracting," he continued. "It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere."

This is not the voice of a crank but that of a word lover who has spent his life creating stories about worlds far more exotic and wonderful than anything dreamed up by a video-game programmer or cyber-fabulist. He's scathing, amusingly so, on the subject of the blogosphere and Internet chat rooms. "Who do you want to talk to? All those morons who are living across the world somewhere? You don't even want to talk to them at home."

In 1995, he told a college audience, rather bravely: "I don't understand this whole thing about computers and the super-highway. Who wants to be in touch with all of those people?" The answer now, fifteen years on, is: everyone, more or less.

This is from Christopher Buckley's Introduction to the new Everyman Library collection The Stories of Ray Bradbury.

Self Portrait?

A clerk ther was of Oxenford also,
That un-to logik hadde longe y-go.
As lene was his hors as is a rake,
And he nas nat right fat, I undertake;
But loked holwe, and ther-to soberly.
Ful thredbar was his overest courtepy;
For he had geten him yet no benefyce,
Ne was so worldly for to have offyce.
For his was lever have at his beddes heed
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye,
Than robes ryche, or fithele, or gay sautrye.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;
But al that he mighte of his freendes hente,
On bokes and on lerninge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf him wher-with to scoleye.
Of studie took he most cure and most hede.
Noght o word spak he more than was nede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

--Chaucer

Benedictio nuptiarum

Our worthy and esteemed Faber was married two days ago and consequently may not post for some time as he adjusts to his new duties. I offer both Mr and the new Mrs Faber my heartiest congratulations. At the end of my Best Man speech I offered a toast in English which I here present in its original form:

Benedictio nuptiarum

Utinam uxoris scientia et sollertia arte Latine
id mariti praestet semper--

Utinam ea usque irrideat ei,
et semper poenitet--

Et ergo impensam librorum suorum
semper ignoscat.

Update

From here on out, I will be adopting Dr. Feser's descriptive categories. In addition to everyone's favorite A-T (Aristotelian-Thomism), the putative perennial philosophy (never mind that the term was invented in the 16th century to designate pure pagan platonism) look for discussions of A-S (Aristotelian-Scotism), or perhaps it should be A-A-S (Aristotelian-Augustinian-Scotism), or, following Gilson, A-A-A-S (Aristotelian-Augustinian-Avicennian-Scotism). Maybe it would be simpler to stick to A-H-S (Aristotelian-Henrician-Scotism; after all, Henry of Ghent is target #1), and to stay away from A-S-S (Aristotelian-scholastic-Scotism). And for our bitterest foes, the "invincible" and "unconquered" school of the nominalists, expect A-O (Aristotelian-Ockhamism; hey, he wrote as many commentaries on Aristotle as did Aquinas!) or a safe N-A-D-S (Nominalist-Aristotelian-dialectical-scholastics).

Ockham contra Auriol

Here's a bit I've been meaning to post for a while, Ockham's comments prior to criticizing Auriol's theory of apparent being (also, as I am sure you recall, criticized by Petrus Thomae).

William of Ockham, Ordinatio I d. 27 q.3 (trans. Pasnau p. 226):

"This view seems to me false as regards the conclusion for which the above arguments are advanced. But because I have seen little of what this Doctor says - for if all the time I have had to look at what he says were put together, it would not take up the space of a single natural day - I do not intend to argue much against the one who holds this view. For from ignorance of what he says, I might facilely argue against his words rather than against his meaning. But since his conclusion appears to me false, based on what he says, I will argue against it, regardless of whether the arguments run contrary to his meaning. The arguments that I made in distinction 36 of this book, against one view of cognized being, could also be advanced against this conclusion. I composed that material, and almost everything else in book one, before I had seen the view recited here. Whoever wants to should look for those arguments there and apply them." [arguments follow]

Paradox!

Item quaritur de hoc quod dicit: 'Confessio ibi commendatur: Iustus in principio est accusator sui'. Videtur enim male dicere, quia aut accusat se iustus in quantum iustus aut in quantum peccator. Se in quantum iustus, sed omnis qui accusat iustum in quantum huiusmodi, accusat iustitiam; et omnis qui accusat iustitiam est iniustus: ergo, si accusat se in quantum iustus, est iniustus. Si accusata se secundum quod peccator, sed omnis qui accusat peccatorem secundum quod peccator, accusat peccatum; et omnis talis iuste accusat et est iustus: ergo, si accusat secundum quod peccator, accusator est iustus, et ita secundum quod peccator est iustus.

--St Bonaventure, Sententiarum Lib.IV Dist. XVI. Pars I. Dubium IV