“John Locke (1632-1704) follows Machiavelli by moderating the political philosophy of Hobbes. Power controlled by consent is also the central theme of the Second Treatise on Government; but the issue goes beyond just self-preservation as with Hobbes to comfortable self-preservation; not just staying alive but being well off. This shift in emphasis from mere life to the accumulation of property shows up in his version of the state of nature in which labor as giving the right to property and money as making unlimited accumulation of property possible are featured much more centrally. Continue reading “John Locke”
Month: April 2007
Christ on the cross
“Christ on the cross! Inconceivable what he went through as he hung there. In the degree that we are Christian and have learned to love the Lord, we begin to sense something of that mystery of utter helplessness, hopelessness. This then the end of all effort and struggle! Everything, without reserve–body, heart and spirit given over to the illimitable flame of omnipresent agony, to the terrible judgement of assumed world-sin that none can alleviate and whose horror only death can end. Such the depths from which omnipotent love calls new creation into being. Taking man and his world together, what impenetrable deception, what labyrinthian confusion, all-permeating estrangement from God, granitic hardness of heart! This the terrible load Christ on the cross was to dissolve in God, and divinely assimilate into his own thought, heart, life and agony. Ardent with suffering, he was to plunge to that ultimate depth, distance, center where the sacred power which formed the world from nothing could break into new creation” (Romano Guardini, The Lord, p 399-400).
Eulogy to Nietzche
‘Come let us reason together’
you said,
sitting in the chair seeming vacant.
We returned to the table.
As you spoke you gave us a feast,
prepared from the flesh of a once lively faith.
As we ate we felt the absence of God rise up before us
with such power that the stones which litter the in roads of our hearts
cried out in anger.
(2001/1)
Justice: The Most Terrible of the Virtues
by James Schall
Published in the Journal of Markets and Morality (vol 7, number 2, fall 2004).
The place of justice among the virtues, both moral and theological, has always been a delicate issue. Machiavellians tend to underestimate or deny its central significance. Contemporary religious rhetoric often tends to exaggerate it. Classi-cal philosophy was ever aware of the ambiguity of justice—its impersonality and rigidity. Unless placed within a higher order of “good,” as Plato saw, or of “charity,” as Aquinas understood, justice introduces an unsettling utopianism into any existing polity.
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In ethical and political affairs, no more frequent or more agonizing word is found than that of justice or its related words fair, equitable, right, or rights. In its own way, of course, justice is also a noble word standing at the height of the practical, not theoretical or theological, virtues. It is also one of the attributes applied to the divinity—God is just. Justice, following Plato, can have a very broad scope. It means that everything is voluntarily doing what it ought to do so that the whole may do what it is ordered (that is, designed) to do. Such is the fifth definition of justice in the fourth book of Plato’s Republic. The standard subtitle of this famous dialogue is precisely “On Justice.”
Justice is classically treated in the fifth book of Aristotle’s Ethics, wherein he distinguishes between legal or general justice and special justice. In earlier books, he offered an overall description or analysis of virtue and responsibility, together with the vices opposite to each of the virtues.1 Aristotle explained how virtues applied to human action and passion in which they exist as habitual guides or moderators. Justice is a virtue, which, unlike courage or temperance, does not look inward. Rather, it looks ad alium, to how we stand to another or others besides ourselves when we chance to come into various relationships with them. It implies that our perfection is not something totally dependent on or related to ourselves alone. If we speak of “justice to ourselves,” we mean that we compare or relate what we ought to be with what we in fact are and do. Continue reading “Justice: The Most Terrible of the Virtues”
Good Friday (1 Corinthians 13)
It may be strange to hear “the love passage,” along with the Passion according to John. Today we are called upon to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us. Here we are called upon to think in particular upon his suffering and death. It is hard for us. It has, in many ways, become so cliché, so common, so much a part of our culture and history, that it is hard for the full weight of what he did to hit us… If we aren’t careful, the very works of art and stained glass that surround us, that seek to represent the Passion of the Christ to us, may also serve to deaden us to it’s full impact…
Yes, we are all responsible for what happened to the Son of God. We are responsible. The Jews called out, “may his blood be on us and on our children”. Those fated words, which have been used as a rationale for anti-Semitism, are actually the means for salvation, for them and for us.
It is only by saying those same words, saying “we will bare the full responsibility of our actions in this matter” that the same blood we shed can become our soul’s salvation and protection. No, we don’t deserve it. No, we don’t deserve the curse that we put on him to be overturned into such a blessing. It’s true, we suffer, and Jesus entered into that suffering in the most extreme way, and overcame it, but through it all, we don’t deserve such love.
I read recently, “Love is the only difference between an execution and martyrdom… ” Only Love.
So we have the “love chapter”, used at so many weddings, and one of the most beautiful passages of Scripture, and one of the most beautiful poems ever written… We have it, and it’s most perfect expression, side by side. It may be strange to hear “the love passage,” along with the Passion according to John, but there is a connection.
We have this beauty held together with Christ’s agony and bloody death. We have this beauty held together with the perfect Son of God bearing upon himself the evil and corruption of the entire created universe.
Christ’s sacrifice is, in fact, Love in its finest suit. Continue reading “Good Friday (1 Corinthians 13)”
Blaise Pascal
“Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) wrote his Pensées in order to provide an apology for the Christian religion. He contrasts the geometric spirit (esprit géometrique = Descartes’ method of reducing complex whole to simple elements, ideas, or principles followed by deductive reconstruction) with the spirit of finesse (esprit de finesse) in which we intuitively see things at a glance and not through progressive analysis and reasoning. Continue reading “Blaise Pascal”
René Descartes
“René Descartes (1591-1650), like Bacon, follows Machiavelli in orienting knowledge to the acquisition of the power to “promote as far as possible the general good of mankind.” In his Discourse on Method he preferred the clear and distinct ideas of geometry with its certain conclusions to all other forms of knowledge. He tried to set all knowledge on the sure and firm foundation of certainty, arguing that we should suspect as false anything we think we know that can be doubted. His “method of universal doubt” stats the Enlightenment “prejudice against prejudice.” His “I think therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum) is supposed to prove his own existence as a thinking being and becomes the basis for the certain foundations of all knowledge, which includes two kinds of substance: non-corporeal (thinking beings, subjects) and corporeal (extended things, objects). Beginning from the knowledge he finds in himself, he proceeds to the “book of nature” outside him to build up an edifice ofknowledge with a certainty that is supposed to equal that of geometrical demonstration (the key to which is clear and distinct perception by reason independently of sense experience). The purpose of such knowledge, however, is “to make man the master and possessor of nature” (Frederick Lawrence, Philosophers and Theologians, Boston College).
Thomas Hobbes
“Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) followed Machiavelli’s teachings in the area of political science by radicalizing them, finding a basis which “passion not distrusting may not seek to displace;” and using a version of geometric reasoning: proceeding step by step from a premise to a necessary conclusion. In the wake of long and bloody wars of religion, he was determined to get beyond the “seemings,” “vain imaginings,” and “fancies” of revealed religions in order to work out how civil society could establish and maintain a peaceful state. For Hobbes there is no highest good; people only desire “power after power that ceaseth only in death.” Continue reading “Thomas Hobbes”
Francis Bacon
“Franicis Bacon (1561-1626) followed Machiavelli’s idea of conquering and controlling nature “for the relief of man’s estate.” He had a plan for the total reorganization and development of human knowledge. His chief concern was with the method for acquiring knowledge and for using it to increase human dignity and greatness, which he presented in The Great Insatauration (first part on Advancement of Learning and second part called Novum Organum) [Insatauration=restoration]. His restoration of mankind to “dominion over the universe” was to be based on “pure and uncorrupted natural knowledge” and not on moral or religious knowledge. The Novum Organum calls the four great impediments to learning (1) the Idols of the Tribe (distortions of sense perception to which all are subject), (2) Idols of the Cave (personal limitations and prejudices of individuals), (3) Idols of the Market Place (i.e. of misleading communications with others on account of the misleadingness of words), (4) Idols of the Theater (i.e. of dogmas, systems, and theories). To advert these he proposed the inductive method of deriving general laws (“simple natures” that are like an “alphabet of nature”) or principles from a number of particular instances (a posteriori). His methodical strategy intended for human beings to obey the laws of nature in order to conquer it (parendo vincere); the end of science is “the invention of principles to command nature in action” (Frederick Lawrence, Philosophers and Theologians, Boston College).
Martin Luther
“Martin Luther (1483-1546) broke from the Church of Rome and started the German part of the Protestant Reformation. He had what he thought was a sudden revelation which convinced him that faith alone justifies without works (“By faith alone!”). He went on to deny the mediating role of the Church (excluding any sacraments besides Baptism and Eucharist) and of the priesthood (“By grace alone!” “Priesthood of all believers”). He also contended that individual believers could find out by themselves the message of salvation in the revealed Word of God without need of official teachers or Church traditions. He also taught that “Sacred Scripture is its own interpreter,” meaning that if you could not understand any passage of the Bible, the best way to uncover its meaning is to look in other parts to clarify its meaning: Scripture as a whole illumines all its parts (“By Scripture alone!”),” (Frederick Lawrence, Philosophers and Theologians, Boston College).
Mind your Maker 
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