(Originally written February 6, 2014 on scrap paper)
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Book I
Chapter II - The Milesian School
Thales, circa 585 BC, believed that water was the original substance out of which all other things were formed, magnets had a soul because they moved iron and that all things were full of gods.
Anaximander, born circa 610 BC, slightly younger than Thales, also believed that all things came from an original substance. Unlike Thales, who thought this was water, Anaximander taught that the original substance was an eternal, infinite substance.
Anaximander believed that this original substance was transformed into empirical substances (i.e. fire, water, etc.) and then transformed back again. Each of the empirically observable substances wished to enlarge itself at the expense of others, but a cosmic justice superseded the elements and kept them in check.
Justice - a profound Greek belief, taught that each thing had an eternally fixed proportion and that when things began to overstep their bounds a correction would take place. This justice bound both the natural and supernatural, man and god alike. However, this justice, though being supreme over man and god, was not a supreme god.
Anaximander taught a sort of evolutionary theory. "Man, like every other animal, was descended from fishes" (Russell, 27). Unlike Darwinian reasoning though, Anaximander used a rational argument to support his theory. The length of human infancy is too long for it to have been the original state; otherwise, man would have not survived.
Anaximenes, the third of the Milesians, held that the fundamental substance was air.
The soul is air. Fire is rarefied air. Water is condensed air. Very condensed air is earth.
The Milesian school was, though crude, very scientific in nature. There was limited religious nature in it.
Miletus was a cultural melting pot. Greek religion and thought mixed with successful commercial activity brought in by both Egyptian and Babylonian and fused with the thinking. This blending of culture provided the spark for philosophical thinking to begin.
Chapter III - Pythagorus
"Pythagorus was intellectually one of the most important men that ever lived, both when he was wise and when he was unwise" (Russell, 29).
Pythagorus combined mysticism and mathematics. He was a reformer of Orphic traditions, itself a reformed worship of Bacchus. In this way, Pythagorus took an already mystical transformation of Bacchic rites and made it even more intellectually bent.
Pythagorus put more stock in the otherworldly, relegated the physical world to the illusionary. He taught the transmigration of souls and taught that the soul was immortal.
The body is a tomb of the soul. However, suicide is not an option without permission of God.
There are three classes of men: those who buy and sell (the lowest), the participants, like those at the Olympics and the spectators who simply think on the doings of the participants. These are the philosophers and by doing this, they can achieve release from the wheel of birth.
In Pythagorean thought, because the contemplative life was the achievement of all that is worth achievement, mathematics took on a sort of ecstatic context. Discovery in mathematics was sort of an intoxicating experience - a oneness with god.
Pythagorus embodies two diverging views of religion. Personal religion is derived from ecstasy - union with God; theology is derived from mathematics. Theology is derived from mathematics as it takes the shape of geometry. Geometry (Euclidian) starts with axioms deemed to be self-evident and then derives theorems from deductive reasoning. Theology proceeds in a similar fashion. Pythagorus embodied both personal religion (mystical nature) and theology (a system based on deductive reasoning).
Russell seems to be doing a bit of this geometry when he states "But for him (Pythagorus), Christians would not have thought of Christ as the Word; but for him, theologians would not have sought a logical proof of God and immortality. But, in him all this is implicit. How it became explicit will appear" (Russell, 37). And now from the axiom that Pythagorus began the long tradition of mathematical theology (an axiom deemed self-evident by Russell we shall see the theorems...)
Showing posts with label Suicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suicide. Show all posts
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Friday, October 10, 2008
Notes on An Absurd Reasoning & Absurd Freedom (The Myth of Sisyphus)
(Originally Written October 10, 2008 in the Journal)
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
Myth of Sisyphus
An Absurd Reasoning
"Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to human, stamping it with his real" (Camus)
This is pure subjectivism - all thought is anthropomorphic. A thought then, What of Imago Dei? If we, created in the image of God reflect on the world out of this sense aren't we reflecting on the world from a universal standpoint, albeit imperfectly due to our limitations?
Camus is an absolute empiricist. I feel my heart, it exists. I feel the world, I touch it. Therefore, it exists. "There ends all my knowledge, the rest is construction" (Camus). But he states even his own heart is and will remain indefinable to him.
The gap between certainty of existence and defining the content of existence is so wide it cannot be filled.
The irrational (existence's paradoxes and inconsistencies), the human nostalgia (our deepest desire for unity familiarity, and obsession with clarity), and the absurd (the abyss we stare at when we attempt of true knowledge and find none) converge to create in our minds a desert which we ought not attempt to escape by suicide (literal or the act of giving up thought or reason) or attempt to transcend by hope (a process of leaving knowledge to enter into pure construction). This is the point that demands action - suicide or recovery.
Philosophical suicide is the abdication of duty in pursuing knowledge either by giving up or by giving into hope.
The absurd is "the divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints" (Camus).
The absurd is to be both impossible and contradictory.
The absurd is a disproportion between intentions and reality of consequences. "The absurd, which is a metaphysical state of the conscious man does not lead to God. Perhaps the notion will become clearer if I risk this shocking statement: the absurd is sin without God" (Camus).
Absurdity springs from comparison. It is essentially a divorce; it does not lie within the two things being compared but in the actual confrontation of the two things. The absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in the meeting of the two.
The absurd is the fundamental truth - the one thing that cannot be disposed of.
Now, it is the absurd that crushes man - the force that drives man to a broken point. The thing that crushes us we must fight to preserve. The absurd is an unceasing struggle - which implies "a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest)" (Camus).
So Camus' way is thus:
1. Break from the monotony of life to discover life is meaningless.
2. This shock demands action, either suicide or recovery
3. The recovery is acceptance of the absurd as ceaseless struggle
4. Ceaseless struggle brings to the mind three realizations
- There is no hope
- There is continual rejection
- We must be dissatisfied
The existentialists (Chestov, Kierkegaard and Jaspers) came to the truth of the absurd and offered their reaction to it as escape. They did so out of forced hope - creating religion.
The absurd man, the existentialist, recognizes the absurd and the limited value of reason - but, rather than abandoning reason for religion, he in his awareness, simply knows there is no longer a place for hope.
The absurd man seeks to live with his ailments, while the man who has seen the absurd and turned to religion has become frantic and frenzied, seeking to be cured.
Kierkegaard views despair not as a fact, but as a state of existence - the state of sin. Now, Kierkegaard in his final dealings with the absurd sacrificed the intellect (reason) to the belief in God for he sacrificed his pride (sin) to God. Camus recognizes the limitations of reason, but states that if this is pride he sees no sufficient cause to sacrifice it.
The absurd man, the absurd mind seeks what is true at all costs. It seeks what is true, not what is desirable. If Kierkegaard warns that there is nothing but despair then the absurd man takes truth and despair.
Phenomenology (Edmund Husserl) - the making of structures of consciousness and the phenomena which appears in acts of consciousness - objects of systematic reflection and analysis. Husserl used this to provide a firm basis for all human knowledge.
Phenomenology seeks to describe actual experience - not explain the world.
Phenomenology claims truths but that there is no Truth.
Husserl's method was "the intention":
1. Negate classical reasoning (thinking as a unifying/familiarizing procedure). Thinking is actually a relearning how to see again and to direct consciousness.
2. Directing consciousness illuminates every little truth.
3. It isolates events from one another to represent an incoherent-ness in experience; thus, every isolated object of consciousness is its own "magical appearance".
The absurd spirit wishes to enumerate experience, not transcend it.
Husserl's methodology would be acceptable to the absurd man if it simply stopped at the enumeration of experience, but Husserl jumps from the psychological truth of his theory to the metaphysical. Thus, he reintroduces a rationalism akin to Plato. Unlike Kierkegaard who returns to God - Husserl returns to a form of truth as polytheism - flattening all hierarchy and making all truth equal little gods.
The difference between Husserl's abstract god and the dazzling God of Kierkegaard is minimal and only one on how to arrive at the conclusion. Kierkegaard, like other religious philosophers deified the absurd and called it God. The abstract philosophers like Husserl rationalized the absurd to the point of creating standard reasons. They began at the nausea of recognizing the absurd but go to one extreme (rationalizing/abstract) or irrationalizing (deifying/religious escapism).
Nausea is looking into the face of the absurd. There are then three paths to follow. Religion is the path of deifying the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The abstract is the pat of rationalizing the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The absurd man does neither. He takes the divorce. This is the path of acceptance.
The absurd man knows that existence is unreasonable - neither too rational nor too irrational. He accepts the limits of reason and does not give it limitless power as Husserl or abandon it as sin (pride) like Kierkegaard.
Absurd Freedom
What is known (that what is certain) cannot be denied or rejected. One can negate all, but one's desire for unity. One can refute all the world but chaos.
One can only understand a thing in human terms (thus cannot transcend). "What I touch, what resists me - that is what I understand" (Camus).
The break - the divorce of mind (reason) and the world is caused by awareness of it.
The absurd man lives in the certainty of this divorce and does nothing except on the basis of certain knowledge. The only certainty is the absurd and thus he cannot escape it in good conscious through religion. He hears that this is the sin of pride but he does not know what sin is.
Life is better lived because it does not have a meaning.
Hope in transcendence (religion) is to escape the reality of the absurd - to abolish the intellect is to elude, not solve the problem.
The absurd man lives in constant revolt against the world and against his desire for unity (escape/hope). It is in this revolt that gives life its value.
Camus really loves the pride of man. He focuses all of his energy on praising the absurd man and abhors any type of degradation.
To the absurd man the notion of the metaphysical freedom or determinism is not important - the absurd man is only certain of his own freedom.
Camus denies the paradox of God and freedom has been solved or laid to waste, it remains. Either god is all-powerful and the author of all evil or we are free and God is not all-powerful. But, none of this is important because we only experience our own freedom and the eradication of hope and future makes us more free.
The absurd tells me this: there is no future. Freedom in the classical sense is based on hope, hope based on future. Our hope in the future actually makes us slaves to the conventions of thinking.
The Ideal of the absurd man: to live with a constantly conscious soul in a ceaseless procession of presents (no pasts/no future)/
Three consequences of absurd reasoning:
1. Revolt
2. Freedom
3. The ideal (passion)
Notes on Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and other essays
Myth of Sisyphus
An Absurd Reasoning
"Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to human, stamping it with his real" (Camus)
This is pure subjectivism - all thought is anthropomorphic. A thought then, What of Imago Dei? If we, created in the image of God reflect on the world out of this sense aren't we reflecting on the world from a universal standpoint, albeit imperfectly due to our limitations?
Camus is an absolute empiricist. I feel my heart, it exists. I feel the world, I touch it. Therefore, it exists. "There ends all my knowledge, the rest is construction" (Camus). But he states even his own heart is and will remain indefinable to him.
The gap between certainty of existence and defining the content of existence is so wide it cannot be filled.
The irrational (existence's paradoxes and inconsistencies), the human nostalgia (our deepest desire for unity familiarity, and obsession with clarity), and the absurd (the abyss we stare at when we attempt of true knowledge and find none) converge to create in our minds a desert which we ought not attempt to escape by suicide (literal or the act of giving up thought or reason) or attempt to transcend by hope (a process of leaving knowledge to enter into pure construction). This is the point that demands action - suicide or recovery.
Philosophical suicide is the abdication of duty in pursuing knowledge either by giving up or by giving into hope.
The absurd is "the divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints" (Camus).
The absurd is to be both impossible and contradictory.
The absurd is a disproportion between intentions and reality of consequences. "The absurd, which is a metaphysical state of the conscious man does not lead to God. Perhaps the notion will become clearer if I risk this shocking statement: the absurd is sin without God" (Camus).
Absurdity springs from comparison. It is essentially a divorce; it does not lie within the two things being compared but in the actual confrontation of the two things. The absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in the meeting of the two.
The absurd is the fundamental truth - the one thing that cannot be disposed of.
Now, it is the absurd that crushes man - the force that drives man to a broken point. The thing that crushes us we must fight to preserve. The absurd is an unceasing struggle - which implies "a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest)" (Camus).
So Camus' way is thus:
1. Break from the monotony of life to discover life is meaningless.
2. This shock demands action, either suicide or recovery
3. The recovery is acceptance of the absurd as ceaseless struggle
4. Ceaseless struggle brings to the mind three realizations
- There is no hope
- There is continual rejection
- We must be dissatisfied
The existentialists (Chestov, Kierkegaard and Jaspers) came to the truth of the absurd and offered their reaction to it as escape. They did so out of forced hope - creating religion.
The absurd man, the existentialist, recognizes the absurd and the limited value of reason - but, rather than abandoning reason for religion, he in his awareness, simply knows there is no longer a place for hope.
The absurd man seeks to live with his ailments, while the man who has seen the absurd and turned to religion has become frantic and frenzied, seeking to be cured.
Kierkegaard views despair not as a fact, but as a state of existence - the state of sin. Now, Kierkegaard in his final dealings with the absurd sacrificed the intellect (reason) to the belief in God for he sacrificed his pride (sin) to God. Camus recognizes the limitations of reason, but states that if this is pride he sees no sufficient cause to sacrifice it.
The absurd man, the absurd mind seeks what is true at all costs. It seeks what is true, not what is desirable. If Kierkegaard warns that there is nothing but despair then the absurd man takes truth and despair.
Phenomenology (Edmund Husserl) - the making of structures of consciousness and the phenomena which appears in acts of consciousness - objects of systematic reflection and analysis. Husserl used this to provide a firm basis for all human knowledge.
Phenomenology seeks to describe actual experience - not explain the world.
Phenomenology claims truths but that there is no Truth.
Husserl's method was "the intention":
1. Negate classical reasoning (thinking as a unifying/familiarizing procedure). Thinking is actually a relearning how to see again and to direct consciousness.
2. Directing consciousness illuminates every little truth.
3. It isolates events from one another to represent an incoherent-ness in experience; thus, every isolated object of consciousness is its own "magical appearance".
The absurd spirit wishes to enumerate experience, not transcend it.
Husserl's methodology would be acceptable to the absurd man if it simply stopped at the enumeration of experience, but Husserl jumps from the psychological truth of his theory to the metaphysical. Thus, he reintroduces a rationalism akin to Plato. Unlike Kierkegaard who returns to God - Husserl returns to a form of truth as polytheism - flattening all hierarchy and making all truth equal little gods.
The difference between Husserl's abstract god and the dazzling God of Kierkegaard is minimal and only one on how to arrive at the conclusion. Kierkegaard, like other religious philosophers deified the absurd and called it God. The abstract philosophers like Husserl rationalized the absurd to the point of creating standard reasons. They began at the nausea of recognizing the absurd but go to one extreme (rationalizing/abstract) or irrationalizing (deifying/religious escapism).
Nausea is looking into the face of the absurd. There are then three paths to follow. Religion is the path of deifying the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The abstract is the pat of rationalizing the absurd. It is an escape or a reconciliation to avoid the divorce. The absurd man does neither. He takes the divorce. This is the path of acceptance.
The absurd man knows that existence is unreasonable - neither too rational nor too irrational. He accepts the limits of reason and does not give it limitless power as Husserl or abandon it as sin (pride) like Kierkegaard.
Absurd Freedom
What is known (that what is certain) cannot be denied or rejected. One can negate all, but one's desire for unity. One can refute all the world but chaos.
One can only understand a thing in human terms (thus cannot transcend). "What I touch, what resists me - that is what I understand" (Camus).
The break - the divorce of mind (reason) and the world is caused by awareness of it.
The absurd man lives in the certainty of this divorce and does nothing except on the basis of certain knowledge. The only certainty is the absurd and thus he cannot escape it in good conscious through religion. He hears that this is the sin of pride but he does not know what sin is.
Life is better lived because it does not have a meaning.
Hope in transcendence (religion) is to escape the reality of the absurd - to abolish the intellect is to elude, not solve the problem.
The absurd man lives in constant revolt against the world and against his desire for unity (escape/hope). It is in this revolt that gives life its value.
Camus really loves the pride of man. He focuses all of his energy on praising the absurd man and abhors any type of degradation.
To the absurd man the notion of the metaphysical freedom or determinism is not important - the absurd man is only certain of his own freedom.
Camus denies the paradox of God and freedom has been solved or laid to waste, it remains. Either god is all-powerful and the author of all evil or we are free and God is not all-powerful. But, none of this is important because we only experience our own freedom and the eradication of hope and future makes us more free.
The absurd tells me this: there is no future. Freedom in the classical sense is based on hope, hope based on future. Our hope in the future actually makes us slaves to the conventions of thinking.
The Ideal of the absurd man: to live with a constantly conscious soul in a ceaseless procession of presents (no pasts/no future)/
Three consequences of absurd reasoning:
1. Revolt
2. Freedom
3. The ideal (passion)
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Brief Notes on City of God - Book 1
(Originally Written June 4, 2008 in the Journal)
Notes on City of God by Augustine
Introduction
"The great lesson of the City of God is that out of all things come good" (Augustine, ix)
Book I
Great effort is needed to convince the proud of the power of humility.
The city of this world seeks to dominate but is dominated by its lust for domination.
"God's providence constantly uses war to correct and chasten the corrupt morals of mankind, as it also uses such afflictions to train men in a righteous and laudable way of life, removing to a better state those whose life is approved, or else keeping them in this world for further service" (Augustine, 6).
It is foolish to trust in gods who can be conquered and yet saved by man's hands. A god ought to be unconquerable and capable of saving man, not the other way around.
The god of Rome would have perished long ago if the Romans had not so painstakingly preserved them.
It is foolishness for men to blame the collapse of Rome on Christ when they invoked his name to save their very lives! The fall of Rome was brought about by their corrupt morals.
In the sack of Rome, the savagery of war was tempered by something new: Christianity. Pagan and Christian alike were spared in the temples of Christ. How then can Christ be blamed for the fall of Rome?
The mercy of the Lord extends to both the good and the bad. This is so the wicked can repent and come to the Lord, for God waits for all men to come. Some choose to harden their hearts, but that is their own task for destruction.
The mercy God extends will someday in the future only extend to those who accept Him.
God has willed that temporal goods and temporal evils will befall good and bad alike.
"The good man is not exalted by this world's goods; nor is he overwhelmed by this world's ills" (Augustine, 13-14).
Not all evil doing is punished in this world. Some punishment is stored up for the final judgment.
God punishes some sin in this world so that the belief in providence never ceases.
God rewards some good deeds here so that we do not believe God has no concern for temporal blessings, but other good deeds have blessings that are bestowed after this temporal life is done.
Though the suffering of the good and evil are alike, the sufferers are different. The wicked curse God under affliction; the good offer prayers to Him.
"Stir a cesspit, and a foul stench arises; stir a perfume, and a delightful fragrance ascends. But the movement is identical" (Augustine, 14).
The suffering of Christians have caused their moral improvement because they viewed them with eyes of faith.
Christians suffer justly when they do not admonish sins, for not to admonish sin is a sin itself.
The good and bad suffer because though they do not live equal lives, they both love this temporal world too much.
The worldly advantages of life are not discreditable in themselves. What is discreditable is when the Christian is unduly attached to those advantages.
The Christian loses nothing in the deprivation of temporal goods. A man can be poor in life, yet rich in spirit. A Christian ought to be content with that they have and bless the Lord for it.
Those Christians who grieve the loss of their temporal goods, though they do not love them as much as they love Christ, can learn how much sin they have committed in losing those temporal things. These Christians refused to be taught by words and so God taught them by experience.
Christ condemns the desire for riches, not the opportunity riches afford.
Those who suffer torture who have no wealth on account of wealth confess Christ. If the torturer is not swayed the tortured will still be justly rewarded in heaven.
The only thing that makes death an evil is what comes after death. We ought not worry about death because all die; we should instead focus on our destination after death.
We need not worry over the body of a man who has died. Those who can kill the body have no power over the soul. The saints who have fallen but not been given a proper burial will still be resurrected.
Suicide is never justifiable.
Purity is a virtue of the mind, not the body.
Courage endures evil, but does not condone it.
We cannot commit suicide for the Bible says we cannot kill (which implies a human being) and to kill one's self is to kill a human being.
Not all homicide is murder. God orders killing, but when He does so the man does not do the killing. He is just an instrument of God. He is like the sword that God is wielding.
Though gods may be false, worship of those gods can be sincere.
The judgment of God is inscrutable and His ways are mysterious. Sometimes we cannot comprehend why we suffer, but we can take consolation in the fact that Divine Providence is at work.
God always works suffering to result in our justification or our correction.
The saints ought not to regret this temporal life for it is their schooling for eternity.
Those who rebel against the Christian era do so that they may indulge themselves in extravagant sin.
The Church has members hidden amongst the world as the Church has ungodly hidden in its midst. But, God knows these men.
The city of God and the city of man stand interwoven and intermixed, awaiting separation on the Judgment Day.
Notes on City of God by Augustine
Introduction
"The great lesson of the City of God is that out of all things come good" (Augustine, ix)
Book I
Great effort is needed to convince the proud of the power of humility.
The city of this world seeks to dominate but is dominated by its lust for domination.
"God's providence constantly uses war to correct and chasten the corrupt morals of mankind, as it also uses such afflictions to train men in a righteous and laudable way of life, removing to a better state those whose life is approved, or else keeping them in this world for further service" (Augustine, 6).
It is foolish to trust in gods who can be conquered and yet saved by man's hands. A god ought to be unconquerable and capable of saving man, not the other way around.
The god of Rome would have perished long ago if the Romans had not so painstakingly preserved them.
It is foolishness for men to blame the collapse of Rome on Christ when they invoked his name to save their very lives! The fall of Rome was brought about by their corrupt morals.
In the sack of Rome, the savagery of war was tempered by something new: Christianity. Pagan and Christian alike were spared in the temples of Christ. How then can Christ be blamed for the fall of Rome?
The mercy of the Lord extends to both the good and the bad. This is so the wicked can repent and come to the Lord, for God waits for all men to come. Some choose to harden their hearts, but that is their own task for destruction.
The mercy God extends will someday in the future only extend to those who accept Him.
God has willed that temporal goods and temporal evils will befall good and bad alike.
"The good man is not exalted by this world's goods; nor is he overwhelmed by this world's ills" (Augustine, 13-14).
Not all evil doing is punished in this world. Some punishment is stored up for the final judgment.
God punishes some sin in this world so that the belief in providence never ceases.
God rewards some good deeds here so that we do not believe God has no concern for temporal blessings, but other good deeds have blessings that are bestowed after this temporal life is done.
Though the suffering of the good and evil are alike, the sufferers are different. The wicked curse God under affliction; the good offer prayers to Him.
"Stir a cesspit, and a foul stench arises; stir a perfume, and a delightful fragrance ascends. But the movement is identical" (Augustine, 14).
The suffering of Christians have caused their moral improvement because they viewed them with eyes of faith.
Christians suffer justly when they do not admonish sins, for not to admonish sin is a sin itself.
The good and bad suffer because though they do not live equal lives, they both love this temporal world too much.
The worldly advantages of life are not discreditable in themselves. What is discreditable is when the Christian is unduly attached to those advantages.
The Christian loses nothing in the deprivation of temporal goods. A man can be poor in life, yet rich in spirit. A Christian ought to be content with that they have and bless the Lord for it.
Those Christians who grieve the loss of their temporal goods, though they do not love them as much as they love Christ, can learn how much sin they have committed in losing those temporal things. These Christians refused to be taught by words and so God taught them by experience.
Christ condemns the desire for riches, not the opportunity riches afford.
Those who suffer torture who have no wealth on account of wealth confess Christ. If the torturer is not swayed the tortured will still be justly rewarded in heaven.
The only thing that makes death an evil is what comes after death. We ought not worry about death because all die; we should instead focus on our destination after death.
We need not worry over the body of a man who has died. Those who can kill the body have no power over the soul. The saints who have fallen but not been given a proper burial will still be resurrected.
Suicide is never justifiable.
Purity is a virtue of the mind, not the body.
Courage endures evil, but does not condone it.
We cannot commit suicide for the Bible says we cannot kill (which implies a human being) and to kill one's self is to kill a human being.
Not all homicide is murder. God orders killing, but when He does so the man does not do the killing. He is just an instrument of God. He is like the sword that God is wielding.
Though gods may be false, worship of those gods can be sincere.
The judgment of God is inscrutable and His ways are mysterious. Sometimes we cannot comprehend why we suffer, but we can take consolation in the fact that Divine Providence is at work.
God always works suffering to result in our justification or our correction.
The saints ought not to regret this temporal life for it is their schooling for eternity.
Those who rebel against the Christian era do so that they may indulge themselves in extravagant sin.
The Church has members hidden amongst the world as the Church has ungodly hidden in its midst. But, God knows these men.
The city of God and the city of man stand interwoven and intermixed, awaiting separation on the Judgment Day.
Saturday, September 9, 2006
Phaedo Notes
(Originally Written September 9, 2006 in History I)
Phaedo - Plato
1. Suicide is always immoral
2. Death is not to be feared
-Philosophers are concerned with the soul
-The soul is in bondage to the body
-Death brings release to the soul
3. The philosopher "practices death"
4. The immortality of the Soul
-Argument from natural cycles:
1)Things are always generated by their opposites
2)Life generates death
3)Therefore, death generates life.
-Argument from recollection
We have knowledge of absolute truths, but we didn't get them from existence. Thus, the soul must be preexistent and if it is preexistent it ought to be past-existent as well.
-Argument from the soul simplicity
The soul is a simple substance and cannot be broken down and therefore is indestructible.
-Argument from the theory of forms
1)A thing participates in forms.
2)That particular thing cannot participate in opposite forms.
3)The soul participates in the form of life.
4)Therefore, the soul cannot participate in death and thus, cannot die.
5. The nature of the afterlife
-The destiny of impure souls is wandering and reincarnation
-The destiny of the law abiding souls is reincarnation as social animals or people.
-The destiny of the philosopher is wisdom and the next life.
6. Objections
-Simmias' atunement objections: Maybe the soul is just an attunement of the body's parts (attunement = a harmony)
Socrates' reply to Simmias: This view cannot account for three things:
1) The preexistence of the soul
2) Goodness
3) Body-Soul conflict
-Cebes' objection: "Tailor analogy": The soul has been in many bodies, but this body is the soul's last and the soul will die with this body's death.
Socrates' reply to Cebes is his fourth argument for the immortality of the soul, an appeal to the forms.
Phaedo - Plato
1. Suicide is always immoral
2. Death is not to be feared
-Philosophers are concerned with the soul
-The soul is in bondage to the body
-Death brings release to the soul
3. The philosopher "practices death"
4. The immortality of the Soul
-Argument from natural cycles:
1)Things are always generated by their opposites
2)Life generates death
3)Therefore, death generates life.
-Argument from recollection
We have knowledge of absolute truths, but we didn't get them from existence. Thus, the soul must be preexistent and if it is preexistent it ought to be past-existent as well.
-Argument from the soul simplicity
The soul is a simple substance and cannot be broken down and therefore is indestructible.
-Argument from the theory of forms
1)A thing participates in forms.
2)That particular thing cannot participate in opposite forms.
3)The soul participates in the form of life.
4)Therefore, the soul cannot participate in death and thus, cannot die.
5. The nature of the afterlife
-The destiny of impure souls is wandering and reincarnation
-The destiny of the law abiding souls is reincarnation as social animals or people.
-The destiny of the philosopher is wisdom and the next life.
6. Objections
-Simmias' atunement objections: Maybe the soul is just an attunement of the body's parts (attunement = a harmony)
Socrates' reply to Simmias: This view cannot account for three things:
1) The preexistence of the soul
2) Goodness
3) Body-Soul conflict
-Cebes' objection: "Tailor analogy": The soul has been in many bodies, but this body is the soul's last and the soul will die with this body's death.
Socrates' reply to Cebes is his fourth argument for the immortality of the soul, an appeal to the forms.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
St. Augustine's Philosophy and Theology
(Originally written July 22, 2006 in Book 5)
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter IV - St. Augustine's Philosophy and Theology
To escape the madness of metaphysics and thoroughly infuriate myself by reading an attack on one of the greatest men in human history. Russell will only focus on what he considers important in Augustine:
1. Augustine's pure philosophy, especially his theory of time
2. Augustine's philosophy of history (developed in City of God)
3. Augustine's theory of salvation, against Pelagius
Pure Philosophy
Augustine is not preoccupied with pure philosophy, mostly he concerns himself with theology. But he shows immense talent in philosophy when he does.
Augustine was the first philosopher (of many) to speculate with a necessity of matching speculation and Scriptures.
Origen (an earlier Christian philosopher) differed from Augustine in that Origen kept Christianity and Platonism separate while Augustine grated Platonism into Christianity.
The most purely philosophical book is the 11th book of Confessions. Most contemporary Confessions end at Book 10 because that is where the biographical part ends.
Augustine remarks that the Genesis of account of creation (ex nihilo, out of nothing) was completely foreign to Greek thought. Greeks believed God formed preexisting matter. Christianity and Judaism holds God created matter, then simultaneously formed it. The Greek view of creation has reappeared since the dawn of Christianity and has led to pantheism.
Augustine asks if God created the world ex nihilo then why didn't he do it sooner? Augustine states that there was no sooner before creation because time was created at the same point as all creation.
God is eternal; He is timeless. In God there is no past or future, only eternal present.
"God's eternity is exempt from the relation of time; all time is present to Him at once" (Russell, 353).
When Augustine refers to time he has an intriguing relativistic theory. Time can only be measured as it is passing. The past and future is not really 'is', only the present really is. But there really is a past and future.
Augustine says that the past or future is considered at the present through memory or expectation.
He states that there are three times:
1. A present of things past (memory)
2. A present of things present (sight)
3. A present of things future (expectation)
He confesses to God that he is perplexed by time and asks for enlightenment. Without fully understanding time, see does believe that is subjective.
Time is in the human mind and time exists only because created beings exist.
Augustine's theory of time seems to anticipate at least three things;
1) Kant's theory of subjective time
2) Descartes' cogito
3) Descartes' reply to Gassendi's ambulo ergo sum.
"As a philosopher, therefore, Augustine deserves a high place" (Russell, 355).
The City of God
When Rome was sacked by the Goths in 410 the Roman pagans attributed the defeat to the abandonment of the ancient religions. The City of God was an answer to this accusation.
"Like some other very great books, it composes itself in the memory of those who have read it, into something better than at first appears in rereading" (Russell, 355).
Russell holds that the book contains "a great deal that hardly anyone at present day can accept" (Russell, 355).
Russell does hold that it remains inspirational today and can be restated in non-theological terms.
Linehan - Thus destroying the meaning and value of the book.
In the book Augustine states that worse things then the sacking of Rome occurred prior to the Christian age. He also said that Christianity kept the sacking from being as brutal as it could have been (the Goths were Christians).
He says that not all sins are punished on earth, thus the Last Judgment.
All that Christians endured virtuously would lead to their edification eventually.
Temporal losses for Christians does not cause loss of anything of value for them.
Nothing can interfere with the resurrection of the body.
Virginity lost through rape doesn't diminish chastity. Chastity is a virtue of the mind. Virginity and chastity can be lost even without the physical act. It can be lost in the mind.
Suicide is condemned by Augustine. Even if one commits suicide to avoid the loss of virginity it is still a sin. Apparently Lucretia (a woman in Rome) committed suicide for this reason.
He says that rape, if enjoyed, becomes sinful for the woman.
He condemns the pagan gods. He claims that it would be better to worship a virtuous man than a heathen god.
Christians have a constant sanctuary in the pilgrim City of God.
In this world, the city of earth and the city of heaven are intermingled.
Augustine holds Greek philosophers as partially right.
He holds that the philosophers could not overthrow the pagan gods because their moral instructions were weak due to the wickedness of their gods.
Augustine believed the heathen gods existed, but were devils.
He held astrology as to be both wicked and false. He proves this through the fortunes of twins who have the identical zodiac sign.
God has foreknowledge of man's sins, but God's foreknowledge does not cause man's sins.
Virtuosity does not bring unhappiness; even if Christians are unfortunate, they still can be happy.
Augustine holds Plato in higher regards than any other philosopher. Augustine credits Plato with a number of things:
1) Plato's belief that God was Spirit, not material.
2) Plato's belief that perception is not the source of truth.
3) Platonic logic and ethics are closest to Christianity
Augustine aslo credits Plotinus as being the best comprehender of Plato. Plotinus lived slightly before Augustine.
Augustine considered Aristotle lower than Plato, but better than all the others.
He condemned both Plato and Aristotle for believing that all the gods were good. He condemned the Stoics for condemning all passions because Christian passions can lead to virtue.
He held that Plutonists were right about God, wrong about gods and wrong in denying the Incarnation.
Augustine holds the Platonic view that the sensible world is inferior to the super-sensible world.
He believed that Knowledge of God comes only through Christ. Certain things can be learned through reason, but religious knowledge must come through Scriptures.
Time and space prior to creation should not be considered because it is pointless.
Everything blessed is eternal, but everything eternal is not blessed (hell and satan).
He denounces Origen's view of souls being put into bodies as punishment.
He believed the world was created in 6 days because 6 is a perfect number (i.e. equal to the sum of its factors).
He believed that there are good and bad angels, but bad angels do not have an essence contrary to God.
"God's enemies are not so by nature, but by will. The vicious will has no efficient cause, but only a deficient one; it is not an effect, but a defect" (Russell, 359).
He held the the world was less than 6,000 years old and history is not cyclical.
Sin caused death. If there were no sin there would be no death. Sin caused both physical and eternal death. Eternal death is damnation.
Bodies in heaven will be spiritual, but not spirits. They will be weightless. Men will have male bodies; women will have female ones. People who die in infancy will have adult bodies.
Adam's sin brought eternal death to all mankind; God's grace freed them from it.
Augustine contributes sin to the mind, contrary to flesh as Platonism and Manichaeism holds.
Sex in marriage is not sinful, provided procreation is the reason for it. Married men are virtuous if they love without lust. Sex, even in marriage is associated with shame because of Adam's sin. Lust is shameful because it is independent from the will. Sexual intercourse can occur without lust. "The need of lust in sexual intercourse is a punishment for Adam's sin, but for which sex might have been divorced from pleasure" (Russell, 360).
Asceticism dislikes sex because of its independence of the will. Virtue demands a complete control of the will over the body. This control does not suffice to make sex possible.
He denounced skepticism.
He held that virtue is inextricably connected with Christianity. Pagan virtue is too marred by the heathen gods to be true virtue.
He believes in predestination. All men deserve damnation, so any receiving salvation is merciful. The rest perish justly.
The influential part of the book is that the State can only be part of the City of God if it submits to the Church in all religious matters. The theocratic implications of Augustine's theory lasted until the Reformation.
Russell states that Marx used Augustine in socialism:
YHWH = Dialectical Materialism
The Messiah = Marx
The Elect = The Proletariat
The Church = The Communist Party
The Second Coming = The Revolution
Hell = Punishment of the Capitalists
The Millennium = The Communist Commonwealth
The Pelagian Controversy
Pelagius was a Welshman and less fanatical than most of his contemporaries. He believed in free-will and questioned the doctrine of Original Sin. He believed that virtue occurs through man's own moral effort.
Augustine convinced Catholic Christianity to hold Pelagius as a heretic.
Augustine argued men were incapable of free-will after the Fall and that virtue was only acquired through God's grace. Augustine held that damnation proved God's justice and salvation proved His mercy. Both proved God's goodness.
Augustine's views were adopted by Calvin and had their root in Paul (especially in Romans).
"A great deal of what is most ferocious in the medieval Church is traceable to his sense of universal guilt" (Russell, 365).
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter IV - St. Augustine's Philosophy and Theology
To escape the madness of metaphysics and thoroughly infuriate myself by reading an attack on one of the greatest men in human history. Russell will only focus on what he considers important in Augustine:
1. Augustine's pure philosophy, especially his theory of time
2. Augustine's philosophy of history (developed in City of God)
3. Augustine's theory of salvation, against Pelagius
Pure Philosophy
Augustine is not preoccupied with pure philosophy, mostly he concerns himself with theology. But he shows immense talent in philosophy when he does.
Augustine was the first philosopher (of many) to speculate with a necessity of matching speculation and Scriptures.
Origen (an earlier Christian philosopher) differed from Augustine in that Origen kept Christianity and Platonism separate while Augustine grated Platonism into Christianity.
The most purely philosophical book is the 11th book of Confessions. Most contemporary Confessions end at Book 10 because that is where the biographical part ends.
Augustine remarks that the Genesis of account of creation (ex nihilo, out of nothing) was completely foreign to Greek thought. Greeks believed God formed preexisting matter. Christianity and Judaism holds God created matter, then simultaneously formed it. The Greek view of creation has reappeared since the dawn of Christianity and has led to pantheism.
Augustine asks if God created the world ex nihilo then why didn't he do it sooner? Augustine states that there was no sooner before creation because time was created at the same point as all creation.
God is eternal; He is timeless. In God there is no past or future, only eternal present.
"God's eternity is exempt from the relation of time; all time is present to Him at once" (Russell, 353).
When Augustine refers to time he has an intriguing relativistic theory. Time can only be measured as it is passing. The past and future is not really 'is', only the present really is. But there really is a past and future.
Augustine says that the past or future is considered at the present through memory or expectation.
He states that there are three times:
1. A present of things past (memory)
2. A present of things present (sight)
3. A present of things future (expectation)
He confesses to God that he is perplexed by time and asks for enlightenment. Without fully understanding time, see does believe that is subjective.
Time is in the human mind and time exists only because created beings exist.
Augustine's theory of time seems to anticipate at least three things;
1) Kant's theory of subjective time
2) Descartes' cogito
3) Descartes' reply to Gassendi's ambulo ergo sum.
"As a philosopher, therefore, Augustine deserves a high place" (Russell, 355).
The City of God
When Rome was sacked by the Goths in 410 the Roman pagans attributed the defeat to the abandonment of the ancient religions. The City of God was an answer to this accusation.
"Like some other very great books, it composes itself in the memory of those who have read it, into something better than at first appears in rereading" (Russell, 355).
Russell holds that the book contains "a great deal that hardly anyone at present day can accept" (Russell, 355).
Russell does hold that it remains inspirational today and can be restated in non-theological terms.
Linehan - Thus destroying the meaning and value of the book.
In the book Augustine states that worse things then the sacking of Rome occurred prior to the Christian age. He also said that Christianity kept the sacking from being as brutal as it could have been (the Goths were Christians).
He says that not all sins are punished on earth, thus the Last Judgment.
All that Christians endured virtuously would lead to their edification eventually.
Temporal losses for Christians does not cause loss of anything of value for them.
Nothing can interfere with the resurrection of the body.
Virginity lost through rape doesn't diminish chastity. Chastity is a virtue of the mind. Virginity and chastity can be lost even without the physical act. It can be lost in the mind.
Suicide is condemned by Augustine. Even if one commits suicide to avoid the loss of virginity it is still a sin. Apparently Lucretia (a woman in Rome) committed suicide for this reason.
He says that rape, if enjoyed, becomes sinful for the woman.
He condemns the pagan gods. He claims that it would be better to worship a virtuous man than a heathen god.
Christians have a constant sanctuary in the pilgrim City of God.
In this world, the city of earth and the city of heaven are intermingled.
Augustine holds Greek philosophers as partially right.
He holds that the philosophers could not overthrow the pagan gods because their moral instructions were weak due to the wickedness of their gods.
Augustine believed the heathen gods existed, but were devils.
He held astrology as to be both wicked and false. He proves this through the fortunes of twins who have the identical zodiac sign.
God has foreknowledge of man's sins, but God's foreknowledge does not cause man's sins.
Virtuosity does not bring unhappiness; even if Christians are unfortunate, they still can be happy.
Augustine holds Plato in higher regards than any other philosopher. Augustine credits Plato with a number of things:
1) Plato's belief that God was Spirit, not material.
2) Plato's belief that perception is not the source of truth.
3) Platonic logic and ethics are closest to Christianity
Augustine aslo credits Plotinus as being the best comprehender of Plato. Plotinus lived slightly before Augustine.
Augustine considered Aristotle lower than Plato, but better than all the others.
He condemned both Plato and Aristotle for believing that all the gods were good. He condemned the Stoics for condemning all passions because Christian passions can lead to virtue.
He held that Plutonists were right about God, wrong about gods and wrong in denying the Incarnation.
Augustine holds the Platonic view that the sensible world is inferior to the super-sensible world.
He believed that Knowledge of God comes only through Christ. Certain things can be learned through reason, but religious knowledge must come through Scriptures.
Time and space prior to creation should not be considered because it is pointless.
Everything blessed is eternal, but everything eternal is not blessed (hell and satan).
He denounces Origen's view of souls being put into bodies as punishment.
He believed the world was created in 6 days because 6 is a perfect number (i.e. equal to the sum of its factors).
He believed that there are good and bad angels, but bad angels do not have an essence contrary to God.
"God's enemies are not so by nature, but by will. The vicious will has no efficient cause, but only a deficient one; it is not an effect, but a defect" (Russell, 359).
He held the the world was less than 6,000 years old and history is not cyclical.
Sin caused death. If there were no sin there would be no death. Sin caused both physical and eternal death. Eternal death is damnation.
Bodies in heaven will be spiritual, but not spirits. They will be weightless. Men will have male bodies; women will have female ones. People who die in infancy will have adult bodies.
Adam's sin brought eternal death to all mankind; God's grace freed them from it.
Augustine contributes sin to the mind, contrary to flesh as Platonism and Manichaeism holds.
Sex in marriage is not sinful, provided procreation is the reason for it. Married men are virtuous if they love without lust. Sex, even in marriage is associated with shame because of Adam's sin. Lust is shameful because it is independent from the will. Sexual intercourse can occur without lust. "The need of lust in sexual intercourse is a punishment for Adam's sin, but for which sex might have been divorced from pleasure" (Russell, 360).
Asceticism dislikes sex because of its independence of the will. Virtue demands a complete control of the will over the body. This control does not suffice to make sex possible.
He denounced skepticism.
He held that virtue is inextricably connected with Christianity. Pagan virtue is too marred by the heathen gods to be true virtue.
He believes in predestination. All men deserve damnation, so any receiving salvation is merciful. The rest perish justly.
The influential part of the book is that the State can only be part of the City of God if it submits to the Church in all religious matters. The theocratic implications of Augustine's theory lasted until the Reformation.
Russell states that Marx used Augustine in socialism:
YHWH = Dialectical Materialism
The Messiah = Marx
The Elect = The Proletariat
The Church = The Communist Party
The Second Coming = The Revolution
Hell = Punishment of the Capitalists
The Millennium = The Communist Commonwealth
The Pelagian Controversy
Pelagius was a Welshman and less fanatical than most of his contemporaries. He believed in free-will and questioned the doctrine of Original Sin. He believed that virtue occurs through man's own moral effort.
Augustine convinced Catholic Christianity to hold Pelagius as a heretic.
Augustine argued men were incapable of free-will after the Fall and that virtue was only acquired through God's grace. Augustine held that damnation proved God's justice and salvation proved His mercy. Both proved God's goodness.
Augustine's views were adopted by Calvin and had their root in Paul (especially in Romans).
"A great deal of what is most ferocious in the medieval Church is traceable to his sense of universal guilt" (Russell, 365).
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Proverbs 31 & Suicide
(Originally written April 11, 2006 in 3 Subject)
Let them drink
Contemporary Issues of Philosophy: Suicide
-Suicide
-Assisted Suicide
-Passive euthanasia (termination of life support)
-Active euthanasia
For the Christian, suicide seems to be a simple No-No, but assisted suicide and various forms of euthanasia are complicated by a section of Proverbs.
Proverbs 31:6-7
"Let beer be for those who are perishing, wine for those who are in anguish! Let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more."
Contemporary Issues of Philosophy: Suicide
-Suicide
-Assisted Suicide
-Passive euthanasia (termination of life support)
-Active euthanasia
For the Christian, suicide seems to be a simple No-No, but assisted suicide and various forms of euthanasia are complicated by a section of Proverbs.
Proverbs 31:6-7
"Let beer be for those who are perishing, wine for those who are in anguish! Let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more."
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