Aquinas on Absolute and Relative Foreigners

[W]e understand the Greek word for non-Greek to mean something foreign, and we can call human beings foreigners either absolutely or in relation to someone.  Those who lack reason, by which we define human beings, seem absolutely foreign to the human race, and so we call those who lack reason foreigners in an absolute sense.  They lack reason either because they happen to live in a climate so intemperate that it causes them to be dim-witted, or because there is an evil custom in certain lands whereby human beings are rendered irrational brutish, as it were.  And it clearly comes from the power of reason that reasonable laws govern human beings, and that human beings are practiced in the art of writing.  And so the fact that human beings do not establish laws, or establish unreasonable laws, and the fact that some peoples have no literary practices are signs that appropriately manifest barbarism.

The Good and the Bad

Good: We watched P. T. Anderson's Magnolia for film class tonight.

Bad: I have several papers and paper-revisions due the end of this week upon which I could not work during the three hours spent watching Magnolia.

Good: I just learned that I got a good grade on an old paper, which means one fewer paper to revise.

Bad: I also have a bunch of reading for tomorrow, meaning yet less time to write.

Good: Half of my reading is from Aristotle's De Anima.

Bad: I have to type up a focus statement on the De Anima, as well.

Good: My professor says I get to use St. Thomas' commentary in writing said focus statement.

All in all: things are good, if hectic.

Sorry for the dearth of posts of late: much to do for school recently.  I'll be back to regular posts in a couple of weeks. 

Instruments of Virtue and Vice, Part III

The question that occurred to me upon hearing Dr. Müller's defence of the Neautral-Product Thesis was whether, if virtuous exercise is never demanded of poietic products, the same held true of vicious exercise.  It seemed to me that it did not, for some poietic products (I used viciously racist propaganda as my example, so sorry if that offends any anti-PC sensibilities) appear to just by their very nature to exclude virtuous use.  Still, I was open to being proved wrong, which is why I posed the question to Dr. Müller.  His tentative answer was agreement with me that such products are intrinsically vicious in character, but some interesting counterexamples to that claim arose in our discussion between ourselves and a philosopher of law on whose name I am currently blanking (argh!).

The first, posed but rejected by Dr. Müller, was the Scholastic point that such propaganda could be used as an example of what not to engage in or be tempted by; the second, posed by the philosopher of law whose name I cannot remember, was that such propaganda might be used to excite the identification of unconsciously racist viewers with the propaganda presented, thus exposing their unexamined vice.  I shall deal with both of these objections in turn.

Instruments of Virtue and Vice, Part II

To the second objection, I reply that while many, if not all, poietic products are ultimately ordered to some variety of genuine human flourishing in accord with virtuous habit, this does not render evil use entirely repugnant to them.  There is nothing mysterious or unusual about such lack of repugnance: our hands and feet, after all, are on Aristoteleanism also ultimately ordered to virtue-enabled human flourishing, but we can quite obviously use them in ways contrary to such flourishing, such as theft.  Note also that in so using our hands and feet, we do not use them for the sake of any end opposed to their respective specific functions, viz. manipulation and locomotion, though we do use them in a manner opposed to their ultimate telos, which is eudaimonia.  This point will become important in our examination of the first objection, to which we now turn.

Instruments of Virtue and Vice, Part I

I have now returned from the second day of the Anscombe conference at the University of Chicago, and found it just as intellectually rewarding as the first.  In addition to the two* papers (which I'll get to shortly), I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Thompson, who is at once encyclopaedically knowledgeable, funny, and eminently approachable and overall enjoyable; further acquainting myself with Jennifer Frey, who is unfailingly polite, insightful, and moreover ably defends an identifiably Aristotelean/Catholic philosophical position; and briefly meeting with the other speakers at the conference (all mentioned in my previous post), as well as some of my fellow non-participants at the conference, who were likewise pleasant to meet.  I am particularly grateful for the condescending (in the good sense) conversation afforded me by Anselm Müller himself.  Many thanks to them all!

Aquinas on the A- and B-Series

Summa Theologica I:14:15,

Whether the knowledge of God is variable?

Objection 3. Further, God knew that Christ would be born. But He does not know now that Christ will be born; because Christ is not to be born in the future. Therefore God does not know everything He once knew; and thus the knowledge of God is variable.…

Should old Aquinas be forgot?

I recently encountered these excellent song lyrics and thought they might afford my slight readership some laughter.  (ht)

Should old Aquinas be forgot, and never brought to Mind?
Should old Aquinas be forgot,in these days of Wittgenstein?
Can quiddity and haecceity, analogies divine,
Resolve the paradoxes of Willard Van Orman Quine?

Should symbols bleak replace the speech we learned at Mother's knee?
Or should we now reverse ourselves, and write the backwards E?
Can form and matter be preserved, and analyticity,
If we but put particulars for variables free?

Now Henry Veatch and Peter Geach we really must berate:
The subject and the predicate they leave to copulate.
Intensions pure we can't secure with Frege, Russell, Boole,
By treating good old Barbara with a novel kind of tool.

And Hesperus and Phosphorus are entities distinct--
Or should we say, not this, but that they're analytically linked?
Shall we aver they're one indeed, with Smullyan, Church and Fitch?
Or should we moan "Ah, Quine alone can tell us which is which"?