It's -10 F outside now!
-7:39 am Comments (0)
I now live in Cleveland. I dig it.
-1:45 pm Comments (7)
Has anybody else discovered The Black Keys? They're a gritty, lo-fi blues rock band from Akron, OH. I discovered them on Pandora. Check 'em out, if you're at all in to that kinda stuff.
-11:16 am Comments (0)
I've been meaning to write up something about political philosophy for a while. The following is more an account of the direction in which I think my thoughts need to go than a worked-out system.
A political philosophy should be founded upon an understanding of what is good for human beings as such. For governments are ordered either to the good of individuals as such, or the common good of the collection of individuals, or both. In the second case, since the collection is made up of individuals, what is good for it must be based in some way on what is good for the individuals that comprise it.
Human beings are traditionally defined as rational animals. This definition implies, and perhaps conceals, some important additional aspects of human nature. Aristotle also refers to human beings as political, or one might say social, animals. Human beings are also creative animals, and responsible animals. In some way that I don't quite understand yet, these other three aspects of human nature, sociality, creativity, and responsibility, are all part and parcel of rationality. Either they are all different aspects of the same thing, or they imply one another, or they are all wrapped together in man. Human beings find fulfillment in creatively and responsibly exercising their rationality in an interpersonal context. To find fulfillment, even leaving aside the question of their physical necessities, human beings come together and form communities. As Wojtyla says, humans find their individual good in the common good, but only if they can participate in it in a personal way.
The political community is one specific kind of community. Like any community, to be good it must allow its members to freely exercise their rationality as part of the community. Like any community, each of its members must be in a radical way equal, for each of its members is a human being, possesses equally human nature and the dignity of a person. But there must be something which differentiates a political community from any other kind of community. The essence, the specific difference, of political community is unclear to me, but two things seem to characterize it. One: it alone (besides the parent-child relationship) carries a stick; it alone of all communities of adult humans can legitimately use force to carry out its functions. Second: political community is perhaps the only community sufficient by itself to provide for man's physical needs. Perhaps the first derives from the second, and political community is that community which provides the basic structures necessary for human beings to subsist in security, and it legitimately carries a stick because this purpose requires it (due to human depravity or fallenness, of course.)
Because government essentially involves a stick, for government is not government if its pronouncements are not enacted with force or the threat of force, its role must be carefully limited. Force is contrary to the fullness of inter-personal community, for it limits the responsibility and creativity of individuals. It is necessary because of human depravity, to prevent one human being from trampling on the good of another, and to prevent human beings from failing to cooperate in ways essential to their common good (such as building roads) through a total lack of concern for others/laziness which is contrary their own good as well. However, governmental projects designed to promote the common good pro-actively (as opposed to mere policing to keep the peace) must be carefully monitored. Since these projects are carried out by the government, there is a great danger that one or many individuals can have their personal involvement in and responsibility for the community and common good seriously threatened. Their voice may not have been heard, or may have been ignored. They may be forced to act in a way that seems to them gravely prejudicial to the common good and their own good. The common good becomes something imposed on them from above, not arising out of their personal involvement in the community. It may also be a "common good" whose fruits they cannot share in, because it is contrary to their own individual good. Humans find their good in the common good, but only if they can participate in it in a human way, in a personal way. Humans must be able to participate in the responsibility of securing the common good, and must be abke to participate individually in the enjoyment of the common good.
These thoughts are based on Wojtyla's discussion of "acting together with others" in the final chapter of The Person and Act.
-9:56 am Comments (0)
Anyone interested in rooming with me in Cleveland? I'm moving there in June, and would love a good roommate. Rent is cheap.
-2:21 pm Comments (2)
An act of justice is doing what is good for another person because he or she is a human being. We can recognize our equality as human beings, and understand that just as we desire the good, so too do others, with just as much right as we have to obtain it. Accordingly we can desire and act towards their good as members of the human species (in a metaphysical, not a biological sense).
An act of love is doing what is good for another person because that person is who he or she is. We can recognize the peculiar goodness of an individual as that individual, and accordingly desire and act towards what is good for him, precisely for his own sake, and desire to enter into personal union with that person.
Justice and love are the virtues by which we habitually do such acts.
Because of what human beings are, their proper good and fulfillment comes through being affirmed in their unique individuality and by that means entering into personal relationships and communities. Justice demands not only that we be just towards others, but that we love them. Paradoxically, the virtue of justice cannot fulfill its own demands. Only love is the fulfillment of justice. (As the Bible says, charity is the fulfillment of the law.)
-8:09 pm Comments (0)
"It is impossible for man's happiness to consist in a created good, for happiness is the perfect good which wholly brings desire to rest, for it would not be an ultimate end if something should still remain to be desired. Now the object of the will, or human appetite, is the universal good, just as the object of the intellect is universal truth. Hence it is evident that nothing can bring the will of man to rest except the universal good. This is not found in any created thing but only in God, for all creatures have goodness by participation. Hence only God can satisfy the will of man, as is said (Psalms 102:5), 'Who satisfieth thy desire with good things.' Therefore man's happiness consists in God alone."
- St. Thomas, Summa I-II, q. 2, art. 8, resp.
-9:43 pm Comments (1)
Matter cannot be the principle of individuation. For the matter of each thing shares extension (three-dimensionality), mutability, gravitation, and many other things in common with the matter of every other thing. Therefore, matter itself is in need of a principle to individuate it, and make this piece of matter not that piece of matter.
If anyone says that extension, and other such things which the matter of any thing shares in common with the matter of other things, belongs to matter through form, and that matter individuates these things, I object that on the contrary, matter cannot individuate if not by means of extension. (Here my argument is derived mainly from Duns Scotus.) For all bodies share the property of having matter in common, which fact alone thus cannot individuate them. Only matter under determinate dimensions may individuate anything, as St. Thomas himself asserts. However, according to the objection, extension only belongs to matter through form, and thus matter can only individuate a form by means of a property it receives from that very form. Hence on this view the form individuates itself, and matter is only a necessary means, not a principle. Hence matter cannot be the principle of individuation.
-9:49 pm Comments (5)
Justice is doing what is good for another because it's your job.
Love is doing what is good for another because you experience that good, precisely as good for the other, as your good.
-10:17 am Comments (5)
I have a few thoughts about the election to share. I'm still not quite there, but I've spent some time getting up to speed over the break.
As one might expect, I think the abortion issue is the most important, but some things need to be pointed out. Roe v. Wade is close to being overturned. On this issue, thanks to George W., the court is split only 5 to 4 against our side. (It was 6 to 3 before Bush.) The next justice to retire or die is Souter, I believe, who is very liberal. There's a good chance that the next president will select his successor. The most important thing in picking one's candidate is to pick someone who will appoint conservative, strict constructionist judges. This should trump considerations of his views on anything else, including the war. Millions of babies depend on it, as the next president may well determine whether or not we have nation-wide abortion for the next few decades.
We are nowhere near being able to pass a constitutional amendment, however. Ending Roe v. Wade kicks the abortion issue back to the states. It would be illegal in Texas, say, but legal in California. Eventually we should have a constitutional amendment making it illegal nation-wide, but that won't happen for awhile, as we need two-thirds of both branches of congress for that. It is important to point this out, as, for example, Fred Thompson wouldn't support a constitutional amendment to ban abortion (and he says that if he were in a state legislature, he wouldn't support criminalizing abortion) but he is definitely against Roe v. Wade. His abortion stance leaves something to be desired, but he would appoint judges to overthrow Roe v. Wade, and his views are otherwise good. He believes in the principle of federalism, and thinks that the federal government is doing things the states should be doing, and thereby failing at its most proper job, national security. He is a small-government, strong military conservative, and has experience in the senate. Is that enough to forgive his overall weak position on abortion, given that he is strong on the most crucial aspect of it (and has voted against embryonic stem cell research)? Personally, I haven't decided yet.
What are the other options?
Democrats are right out, obviously.
Guiliani is a moral disaster, and personally, I have the impression that he is too strong on war issues. He probably won't draw the right moral lines on torture or bombs, even nuclear ones. I don't know if I would even vote for him in a general election.
Huckabee, from everything I've heard is strong on the abortion issue, but is a fiscal liberal. A compassionate evangelical who would spend money on social programs. It's been said that Huckabee and Guiliani are breaking apart the republican coalition that Reagan formed, which could spell disaster for the future of the party.
Romney is a waffler on abortion, it seems. He says he's pro-life now, but I don't trust him on life issues.
Ron Paul is appealing, but ultimately unsupportable, in my opinion. His stance on the war (pull everyone out now) is absurd. Whether or not it serves our best interests, which it probably doesn't, it would be a horrible injustice to the Iraqi people. We would be condemning them to a heinous civil war, ending in tyranny and oppresion worse than Saddam's because religiously motivated. I also get the impression that Ron Paul has no sense of prudence in the application of his ideals to our current situation. Trying to get to the ideal condition too quickly would spell disaster for the country, although he wouldn't have a congress that would allow him to do that.
McCain is weak on stem-cell issues. I have some fondness for his and Bush's failed immigration bill, however. Nevertheless, I have the impression, maybe incorrect, that he is too moderate.
I would vote for McCain, Thompson, Huckabee, maybe even Paul and Romney in a general election, but I'm still confused about the primary.
-5:28 pm Comments (8)
I have finished my first semester teaching philosophy, and I loved it! (Although it's a lot more work than I thought it would be.) I think it was a success, as my students learned something, judging by their finals. I think a few of them really enjoyed it too. I'll see when the evaluations come in.
Next semester I teach another course. It will be the first philosophy course my students have taken at CUA. We will read Plato's Apology and Republic, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Augustine's On the Free Choice of the Will, and Thomas' Treatise on Happiness from the beginning of I-II of the Summa.
-5:31 pm Comments (1)
Timaeus : Physics :: Republic : Nicomachean Ethics
Yes/no?
-4:51 pm Comments (0)
