Meinertsen on the Merely Apparent Existence of Thick Particulars

Meinertsen's bookThis is the second in a series on Bo Meinertsen's 2018 book. It is part of a 'warm-up' for a review article to appear in Metaphysica.  Here is the first installment.

A thick particular in the parlance of David Armstrong is an ordinary particular taken together with its non-relational properties. But an ordinary particular is distinct from each and from all of its properties: it is that which has these properties. If we consider an ordinary particular in abstraction from its properties, what we have before our minds is the particular qua particular. From here it is but a short step to the much maligned and hotly contested bare or thin particular. Meinertsen ably defends bare or thin particulars as constituents of states of affairs in Chapter 5.

A tomato will serve as an example. Call it 'Tom.' There are any number of contingent truths about Tom. Tom is red; Tom is ripe; Tom is round; etc.  Meinertsen and I agree that these truths need truthmakers. As I would put it, they can't just be true. What in the world makes them true? For Meinertsen, states of affairs (STOAs) play the truthmaker role.  A (first-order) state of affairs is a unified complex consisting of the instantiation of a property by a thin particular, or the instantiation of a relation by two or more thin particulars. Instantiation is an asymmetrical external relation that, in the monadic case, connects a thin particular to a property thereby forming a state of affairs.  The truth that Tom is red is thus made true by the state of affairs, Tom's being red, where the subject constituent is a thin particular, thin-Tom if you will, and not thick-Tom, Tom together with his intrinsic properties. And the same goes for the truth that Tom is ripe, and the truth that Tom is round.  For each truth there is a truthmaking state of affairs, a thin state of affairs we can call it since it includes only one of thick-Tom's properties.  

Now take the conjunction of all of Tom's intrinsic properties. The result is a conjunctive property.  Call it the nature N of Tom. The instantiation of this nature by a thin particular is a state of affairs.  This is because N is a bona fide property, and the instantiation of any property by a thin particular is a state of affairs. This state of affairs is a thick state of affairs, and is identical to the thick particular, Tom. So the following comment (in the earlier thread) by Meinertsen comes as a bit of a surprise:

As to (4), well, in my view, thick particulars aren’t real STOAs, merely apparent ones. It’s true that I assay a thick particular as the instantiation of N, the conjunctive property that is the conjunction of its intrinsic properties. But I also argue that conjunctive properties are truthmaking reducible (TM-reducible) – i.e. only existing at the level of truths, not at the level of truthmakers – and that the instantiation (‘instantiation’) of a TM-reducible property isn’t a real STOA.

This is puzzling because the dialectic started with a really existent thick particular, Tom together with his properties, but seems to end with the elimination of the starting point and the demotion of the thick particular to a mere appearance.

The reasoning seems to proceed as follows. The contingent truth that a is F needs a truthmaker, and so does the contingent truth that a is G. But the conjunction of the two truths — which is 'automatically' true given the truth of the conjuncts — does not need its own truthmaker.  So these three truths need only two truthmakers. There is no need for a third truthmaker because the truth of the conjunctive proposition supervenes on the truth of its conjuncts. It's an aletheiological 'free lunch.'

Now consider the conjunction C of all the truths about a, or about Tom in our example. What makes this conjunction true are the 'thin' states of affairs corresponding to and grounding each of the truths  in the conjunction. The 'thin' states of affairs do all the truthmaking work: there is no need for a separate 'thick' state of affairs to serve as truthmaker for the conjunction itself.  But if there is no need for 'thick' states of affairs, then there is no need to posit thick particulars in reality. (A thick particular just is a 'thick' state of affairs.)  So thick particulars are best regarded as merely apparent.

That is the argument as far as I can tell. Did I get it right, Bo?

Critique

But if there is no thick particular in reality, then what makes it the case that each of the thin particulars in each of the thin states of affairs is the same thin particular? Meinertsen speaks above of "the conjunctive property that is the conjunction of its intrinsic properties." (emphasis added) What is the antecedent of the pronoun 'its'?  That would have to be Tom in our example, thick-Tom, Tom together with all its properties. So the very identity of C — its being the conjunction it is and not some other conjunction — presupposes the reality of thick-Tom, Tom together with his intrinsic properties.  For C to exist and to be true, thick-Tom must exist. 

I conclude that one cannot take thick particulars to be merely apparent.  Their reality is presupposed if the STOA style of ontology is to get off the ground in the first place.

Now the tomato example is what Meinertsen rightly calls a "toy example." (5).  We philosophers employ such examples for convenience ignoring the fact, if it is fact, that tomatoes and other meso-particulars are not ontologically fundamental. So it may make sense to say that thick-Tom and his colleagues do not really exist. But surely the micro-entities of physics do exist and are thick particulars and thus 'thick' states of affairs. There have to be some thick particulars somewhere.

On p. 70, Meinertsen tells that at the level of truthmakers, there are no such things as molecules. Presumably he will say the same about their constituent atoms.  But what about sub-atomic particles?  Could he be telling us that, no matter how far down we go, we will never encounter anything fundamentally real?

Nicolai Hartmann on Søren Kierkegaard and Competing Attitudes Toward Individuality

Although existentialist themes can be traced all the way back to Socrates and then forward through St. Augustine and Blaise Pascal, to mention only three pre-Kierkegaardian luminaries, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is rightly regarded as the father of existentialism. His worked proved to be seminal for that of Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, and Jean-Paul Sartre, to mention just three post-Kierkegaardian luminaries.  You won't be able to understand properly Angst, Existenz, or Sein-Zum-Tode in Heidegger without having read Kierkegaard. And the same goes for the key concepts of the others who are loosely collectible under the umbrella of existentialism.

Kierkegaard's subjective-existential philosophical approach is one that is the polar opposite of one that could be described as objectivist or cosmological, for want of better labels. Nicolai Hartmann is an excellent representative of the latter tendency.  Here is what Wolfgang Stegmueller has to say about Hartmann's attitude toward Kierkegaard (the translation is mine):

In Kierkegaard, the spiritual creator of existential philosophy, Hartmann sees the unhappiest and most cunningly refined (raffiniertesten) self-tormentor of human history.  Hartmann denies to anxiety and death any metaphysical significance while admitting their role as emotional phenomena.  Only an egotist (Ichmensch) consumed with self-importance sees in anxiety and death something unsettling and terrifying.  Cosmically considered, the death of the individual  shows itself to be a totally insignificant event in the totality of the world process.  It is only an unnatural attitude of protracted self-reflection that artificially induces anxiety of death which then assumes metaphysical weight. (Hauptstroemungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie, Alfred Kroener Verlag, 1960, 242.)

For Hartmann, then, Kierkegaard's concern with the existing individual , and in the first instance himself as existing individual, merely reflects unhealthy self-absorption and egocentricity.  The individual, whether an individual rock, plant, animal or man is fleeting, ephemeral, of no final significance.

Maybe I will finish this entry some day. Maybe I will die first. It has been languishing  in the queue for many a year. So here it is, a stub. If it gets you reading the luminaries mentioned, then it was worth posting.

Kevin Kim on John Pepple on Sweden as Europe’s Sacrificial Lamb

A tip of the hat to Bill Keezer, and greetings to fellow bloggers Kim and Pepple. The titles of their blogs do not, however, earn the coveted MavPhil transparency of content award.

Feed: BigHominid's Hairy Chasms
Posted on: Thursday, September 5, 2019 1:22 AM
Author: Kevin Kim
Subject: Pepple on Sweden

Is Sweden Europe's sacrificial lamb, to be laid out as a bloody example of what happens when you heedlessly allow an influx of Muslims who refuse to assimilate into your culture? In John Pepple's grim blog post, Dr. Pepple quotes a Frenchwoman who immigrated to Sweden, but who is now leaving the country for Budapest because the crime has gotten so bad, and because PC politicians, who fear being branded as racists, refuse to recognize that there's any problem with current immigration policy and law enforcement. Here's an excerpt of something the woman wrote—one long, cri de coeur sentence:

I can no longer live under this immense mental stress, insecurity, murder, shooting, executions, explosions, rapes and gang rapes, robberies, home burglaries, beatings, car fires, school fires, serious criminals who, after a relatively short prison stay, may again be released to move freely among us, an increasingly dismantled welfare system, lack of health care staff, teachers, elderly housing, lack of elderly care, an increasing number of poor pensioners, municipalities in principle bankrupt or in bankruptcy, all these no-go zones called something else, lack of police resources where it may take 1.5-2 hours for them to arrive at the scene of ongoing crimes if they arrive at all, the lying politicians regardless of political color and the accomplished so-called PC media, the demonization of people who think differently, the shrinking freedom of expression, the increasingly diminishing democracy, and last, but not least, the ongoing and widespread Islamization of the country.

Go read the rest.

A similar picture is being painted of countries like France, which is dealing with its own immigration/assimilation problem. France has a built-in cultural immune system called laïcité or, roughly, secularism. This is why French law has made no bones about disallowing the wearing of religious items like Muslim veils (hijab, etc.). But in the area surrounding Paris, which is filled with tenements and housing projects, there are the same no-go zones, with plenty of robbery, rape, car fires, and so on. In Paris itself, tent cities—with their attendant filth and violence—can be found as well. But once you leave Paris, you'd be forgiven for thinking France is still France. In the area where my buddy Dominique lives, in the small town of Le Vanneau-Irleau, life goes on much as it has for decades, utterly untouched by what's happening in France's big cities.

In the United States, there's a similar state of affairs, albeit with somewhat different demographics. Still, the heart of the US problem has much in common with Europe's problem: a lack of political will when it comes to things like immigration and the true causes of poverty, and a lack of will when it comes to law enforcement. Any teacher knows that losing control of the classroom means the students will rule and nothing of significance will be learned. This is basic human psychology: people need structure if they are to live in harmony and to flourish. Without structure, life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

This is the paradox of freedom: true freedom is, far from being unstructured, veined throughout with structure. The creative freedom and amazing technique you can see in a great painter or martial artist is the result of focus and discipline. It's strange, but it's strictures that allow humans to flourish. And a society is no different from an individual in this regard: a society without strictures—an organic system of rules and laws and unspoken social contracts—becomes flabby and moribund. Look at New York City before and after Rudy Giuliani's two terms: Giuliani enforced the law, and his policies resulted in a few years of glorious prosperity between long periods of poverty and crime. Sweden is experiencing this problem now; so is France, at least in its big cities. The US has its own similar urban problems. As the folk song goes, When will they ever learn?

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Non-Substantial Change, Trope Bundle Theory, and States of Affairs

MeinertsenI am presently writing a review article for Metaphysica about Bo R. Meinertsen's Metaphysics of States of Affairs: Truthmaking, Universals, and a Farewell to Bradley's Regress (Springer 2018). Since I will probably incorporate the following critical remarks into my review, I want to give Bo a chance to respond. 

Substantial and Non-Substantial Change

One way a thing can change is by coming into being or passing away. This is called substantial change.  We could also call it existential change. The other way could be called alterational change. This occurs when a thing, persisting for a time, alters in respect of its intrinsic properties during that time.  Consider the ripening of a tomato. This typically involves the tomato's going from green to red.  This change in respect of color is an alterational, or accidental, or non-substantial change. One and the same entity (substance) persists through a non-zero interval of time and instantiates different properties (accidents) at different times.  As I would put it, there is no alterational change without existential unchange: numerically the same tomato is green, hard, inedible, etc. at time t and red, soft, and edible at later time t*. Bo and I are both assuming that things in time persist by enduring, not by perduring. 

The Problem of Non-Substantial Change of Continuants

This is 

. . . the problem of how to ground the fact that continuants 'persist through change'. For instance, a tomato's changing from red to green [sic] is a case of non-substantial change, and how do we ground the fact that the tomato that has changed exists both before and after the change? The bundles of basic trope theory essentially have the members they actually have and are therefore incompatible with such change. (Meinertsen 2018, 49)

The problem is that we want to say that one and the same tomato goes from being green to being red. We want to be able to uphold the diachronic identity of the tomato as it alters property-wise.  But this is impossible on basic bundle-theoretic trope theory because trope bundles have their members essentially.  This means that if bundle B has trope t as a member, then it is impossible that B exist without having t as a member. The counterintuitive upshot is that a green tomato assayed as a bundle of tropes ceases to exist when it ceases to be green.  This implies that our tomato when so assayed cannot undergo alterational, or accidental, or non-substantial change when it goes from green to red, hard to soft, etc.  It implies that every change is a substantial change. I agree with Meinertsen that this is a powerful objection to the basic bundle-of-tropes assay of ordinary particulars.

Does a State of Affairs Ontology Face the Same Problem?

Meinertsen says that it does not:

State of affairs ontology has no problem in dealing with the problem of non-substantial change. None of the properties of a particular in a state of affairs — which as we shall see in Chap. 5 is a bare particular — is included in it, as opposed to instantiated by it. Hence, it changes non-substantially if and only it ceases to instantiate at least one of these properties or whenever it instantiates a new property. (49)

It seems to me, though, that states of affairs (STOA) ontology faces, if not the very same problem, then a closely related one.

Critique

It is true that a bare particular does not include its properties: the bare or thin particular stands to its properties in the asymmetrical external relation of instantiation.  So what Meinertsen is telling us is that it is the bare particular that remains numerically the same over time while some of its properties are replaced by others. This is what grounds the diachronic numerical identity of the continuant.  The substratum of change is the bare particular 'in' the tomato, not the tomato as a whole.

But this answer is less than satisfactory. What changes over time is not a thin particular, but a thick particular. It is the green tomato with all its properties that loses one or more of them and becomes a red tomato.  This is supported by the fact that we do not see or otherwise perceive the thin particular; we do, however, see and otherwise perceive thick particulars.  What we have before us is a tomato that we see to be green and feel to be  hard, etc.,  and that we then later see to be red and feel  to be soft, etc.  

Arguably, then, it is the thick particular that is the substratum of non-substantial change, not the thin particular. If so, then a problem arises similar to the problem that arose for the bundle-of-tropes theory. How?

Well, the green tomato is a STOA whose nature is N1, where N1 is a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are all the intrinsic properties of the green tomato. The red tomato is a STOA whose nature is N2, where N2 is a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are all the intrinsic properties of the red tomato.  These STOAs differ numerically for they differ in one or more constituents.  The first has greenness as a constituent, the second does not. A STOA is a complex, and two complexes are the same iff they have all the same constituents. 

So what's the problem? The problem is that any non-substantial change in the green tomato assayed as a STOA destroys its identity just as surely as any non-substantial change in the green tomato assayed as a bundle of tropes destroys its identity. On either account, there is no adequate explanation of non-substantial change. This is because there is no numerically self-same substratum of change that endures through the change in properties. The thin particular is not plausibly regarded as the substratum. I note en passant that Gustav Bergmann regarded bare particulars as momentary entities, not as persisting entities.

The problem set forth as an aporetic sextad:

  1. There is no change in intrinsic properties of an ordinary particular over time without a numerically self-same substratum of change. (endurantist assumption)
  2. The green tomato changes to red. (pre-theoretical datum)
  3. The green tomato that changes to red is a thick particular. (pre-theoretical datum)
  4. Thick particulars are STOAs. (theoretical claim)
  5. STOAs are complexes. (true by definition)
  6. Two complexes are the same iff they share all constituents. (theoretical claim)

These six propositions are collectively inconsistent. My question to Meinertsen: which of these propositions will you reject? Presumably, he will have to reject (3) and say that 'the green tomato' refers to an invisible thin particular, and it is this item that changes from green to red and that serves as the substratum of change.

What do I say?  For now I say merely that, pace Bo, on the issue before us, STOA ontology is no better than the bundle-of-tropes theory.

Trump

Donald Trump cannot restore us morally or reverse our cultural decline. He is, after all, a product of it. But he can secure the political and economic preconditions for such a restoration. And that is something the Left cannot and will not do. In fact, Trump has already taken great strides in the direction of restoration by his judicial appointments. And in other areas as well. But leftists, consumed with hate and blinded by it, cannot credit the man with any accomplishment. Their unrelenting negativity may well prove to be their undoing. One can hope.

Joe China and the Cherokee Maiden

China is the conservatives' Russia, and Joe Biden is the conservatives' Trump. This meme will explode full force should sleepy Joe get the nod, which is possible though unlikely. 

On the nod, he won't get the nod.

My money is on the Cherokee maiden.

One has to feel sorry for her.

Desperately wanting to play the identity-political game, but lacking a politically correct identity, she faked one. But the fakery of Fauxcahontas has been exposed and this will be her undoing. This, in tandem with the lunacy of her policy proposals such as 'free' health care for illegal aliens.

So she will win the the nomination, but lose the election. The Orange Man will force the 'redskin' back to the reservation.

Democratic Socialism?

The label smacks of an oxymoron. Essential to socialism is collective ownership of the means of production. Democratic socialists will presumably want to distinguish socialism from statism, which may be defined as state control of the economy, where the state control is not in turn democratically controlled. Historically, however, the tendency is for supposedly collective, democratic control to transmogrify into control by an elite group of central planners who, exulting in their power, will use all the means at their disposal to hold on to it and expand it — and 'the people' be damned.

The tendency, then, is for socialism to terminate in statism and totalitarianism. Power to the people? Hardly. 'The people' end up among the socially planned and not among the social planners. Either that or they end up in a gulag.

Addendum 8/31. London Ed comments:

Good post, and the seed of an answer to the ‘No true Marxist’ argument. As you say, collective ownership of the means of production is essential to socialism, not just a mere accident.

The next step in the proof would be to show that it is essential, not just accidental, to collective ownership that supposedly collective, democratic control will inevitably transmogrify into ‘control by an elite group of central planners who, exulting in their power, will use all the means at their disposal to hold on to it and expand it’. Hence, the bad history of Marxism is not a mere accident, despite what its supporters claim.

This would be the next step in the proof if a proof in the strict sense could be had. Here socialists enjoy some 'wiggle room.' A strict proof is not available. My first point above is non-negotiable since it is merely a consequence of the definition of 'socialism.' But how do we prove that collective ownership necessarily and inevitably issues in statism and totalitarianism?  Of course, repeated failure is a good inductive argument for an ideal's being unrealizable. But induction is not demonstration. Without a demonstration, we cannot deny the socialist his 'wiggle room.' 

The Chesterton Move

The true-believing socialist will most likely make what I will call the 'Chesterton move.'  G. K. C. famously asserted,  or at least implied, that Christianity hasn't failed; it's never been tried.  "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. (G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (1910), ch. 1.5)

The idea here is that Christianity is a  realizable ideal, but that we simply haven't realized it.  Now if an ideal is realizable, then its never having been realized is no apodictic proof of its not being a genuine ideal, one  that we ought to try to realize.  Our democratic socialist can say something similar. Insufficient attempts have been made properly to implement the socialist ideal; the fact that it has never been achieved is no knock-down argument against the ideal.  We have to organize and make a concerted effort and suppress the evil capitalist greed-heads who stand in our way.

The Chesterton Move and the 'No True Marxist' Fallacy

Now if our democratic socialist has available to him the Chesterton Move, then he is in a position to deny that 'No True Marxist' is a fallacy.  He can say that true Marxism, or rather true socialism, will not lead to totalitarian tyranny. If it does, then it was not true socialism!

A Deeper Issue

Can we know from experience the natures of things and thus what is possible and impossible?  Can we know a posteriori that socialism without totalitarian tyranny is impossible?

The conservative will presumably answer this question in the affirmative, but he won't be able to prove that he is right. Or so say I.

The Aporetics of the Situation

1) An ideal that has never been realized, despite repeated attempts to realize it, cannot be realized.

2) An ideal that cannot be realized is no (genuine) ideal at all

3) Democratic socialism  is a genuine ideal.

The above is known in the trade as an antilogism or an inconsistent triad. The limbs of the triad are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent. 

If you are not willing to accept that the triad is a genuine aporia or insolubilium, then you must reject/modify one of the constituent propositions.   I don't believe that (2), an analog of the 'Ought implies Can' principle, can be reasonably rejected. So we either reject (1) or (3). I reject (3). The democratic socialist would have to reject (1).

Can I refute him? No. Can he refute me? No. And yet we must act. So I battle socialism and stand with Donald Trump:

America will never be a socialist country!

Watch the video and check out the expression on Bernie Sanders' face. And how about the tribal females all in white?

Real Enough to Debase, but not to Satisfy

Today is the Feast of St. Augustine.

At Confessions, Bk. VI, Ch. 11, Augustine speaks of "a greed for enjoying present things that both fled me and debased me."

A paradox of pleasure.  Certain pleasures madly striven after prove fleeting and unreal, yet not so fleeting and unreal that they cannot degrade and debase their pursuers destroying both their souls and their bodies.

At the apogee of this mad trajectory, the pleasure pursued issues in death as in the case of David Carradine's death by auto-erotic asphyxiation in a Bangkok hotel room.  Is there any more extreme case of the insane abuse of the body as a pleasure factory?

As I noted earlier, the celebrity chef, 'foodie,' and gastro-tourist, Anthony Bourdain, hanged himself in his hotel room.  I speculated that the man was spiritually adrift. "If Bourdain had a spiritual anchor, would he have so frivolously offed himself, as he apparently did?" 

Then I found the graphic below. Now I know the man was spiritually adrift. The view he gives vent to is utter nihilism. If the summum bonum lies in the gratification of the lusts of the flesh, why didn't Bourdain find his solace in further such indulgence? 

Bourdain body not a temple

Enjoy the ride and then commit suicide. And then there is Jeffrey Epstein whose ride to the bottom ended miserably.

Mysticism with Monica

OstiaSt. Monica's feast day is today; her son's is tomorrow. Of the various mystical vouchsafings, glimpses, and intimations recorded by St. Augustine in his Confessions, the vision at Ostia (Book 9, Chapter 10) is unique in that it is a sort of mystical duet. Mother and son achieve the vision together. Peter Kreeft does a good job of unpacking the relevant passages.

Kreeft in Is Stoke a Genuine Mystical Experience? lists fourteen features of mystical experience which comport well with my experience.

Surfers take note.

Related: Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, and Wisdom

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Seder Scene in “Crimes and Misdemeanors”

"Crimes and Misdemeanors" is Woody Allen's masterpiece. Here is the Seder scene.

Crimes-and-misdemeanors- seder

Addendum 8/26

The scene ends with Saul saying "If necessary, I will always choose God over the truth."  It works cinematically, but it is a philosophically lame response to the atheist Aunt May. It is lame because Saul portrays the theist as one who self-deceivingly embraces consolatory fictions despite his knowledge that they are fictions. Saul might have plausibly replied along one or both of the following lines.

1) It cannot be true that there is no God, since without God there is no truth.  The existence of truth presupposes the existence of God. Truth is the state of a mind in contact with reality. No minds, no truth. But there are infinitely many truths, including infinitely many necessary truths. The infinity of truths and the necessity of some them require for their ultimate support and repository an  infinite and necessary mind. "And this all men call God." So if there is no God, then there is no truth, in which case one cannot prefer truth over God in the manner of Aunt May.

Nietzsche understood this very well. He saw that the death of God is the death of truth. He concluded that there is no truth, but only  the competing perspectives of mutually antagonistic power-centers.

Now the above is a mere bloggity-blog sketch. Here is a more rigorous treatment.

2) Saul might also have challenged Aunt May as follows:

You say that it is true that there is no God, that there is no moral world-order, that might makes right, and so on. You obviously think that it is important that we face up to these truths and stop fooling ourselves.  You obviously think that there is something morally disreputable about cultivating illusions and stuffing the heads of the young with them, that morally one ought not do these things.  But what grounds this moral ought that you plainly think binds all of us and not just you?  Does it just hang in the air, so to speak? And if it does, whence its objective bindingness or 'deontic tug'?  Can you ultimately make sense of objective moral oughts and ought-nots on the naturalistic scheme you seem to be presupposing?  Won't you have to make at least a Platonic ascent in the direction of the Good?  If so, how will you stop the further ascent to the Good as self-existent and thus as  God?

Or look at this way, May. You think it is a value that we face reality, a reality that for you is Godless, even if  facing what you call reality does not contribute to our flourishing but in fact contributes to the opposite.  But how could something be a value for us if it impedes our flourishing? Is it not ingredient in the concept of value that a value to be what it is must be a value for the valuer? So even if it is true that there is no God, no higher destiny for humans, that life is in the end absurd, how could it be a value for us to admit these truths if truths they be?  So what are you getting so worked up over, sister? I have just pulled the rug out from under your moral enthusiasm!

Crimes and misdemeanors seder 2


On the Specificity of Traditional Catholic Claims

Just over the transom from Vito Caiati:

I want to thank you for recommending Garrigou-Lagrange's L'éternelle vie et la profondeur de l'âme, which I am reading now and enjoying, while casting an eye of the relevant sections St. Thomas’ Summa Theologiae, with which I was already somewhat familiar. 

I find Garrigou-Lagrange's thoughts on the nature, capacities, and final destinies of souls after death fascinating and often quite moving; at the same time, I simply cannot accept the idea that any living person, no matter how rich a philosophic tradition informs his thought, can possess anything like the extent and specificity of knowledge of final things that are claimed in his or St. Thomas’ books.  On these matters, we face, other than the promises and hints found in scripture, nothing but mystery that is impenetrable by human reasoning.  Why pretend that we “know” more? It is one thing to use the ancient philosophers to explore theological questions and quite another to create a theology of the soul from them, which is what I think is at work here.  As a Roman Catholic, I don’t want to take a sola scriptura position on this matter, but greater epistemological modesty should inform our efforts in speaking of final things. I can’t help feeling that there is a certain naiveté behind all of this talk of the afterlife, however much it is draped in luxuriant concepts and subtle distinctions.

I too am troubled, if that is not too strong a word, by the extreme specificity of paleo-Thomist theology as perhaps best exemplified by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange.  I must say, though, that I find this theology 'infinitely' preferable to the diluted pablum now served up in the Church as she succumbs to secularism and works out her own extinction. But I digress.

The doctrine of the immutability of the soul after death  is an example of what I mean by extreme specificity:

The ordinary magisterium of the Church teaches that the human soul, immediately after death, undergoes judgment on all the actions, good or bad, of its earthly existence. This judgment supposes that the time of merit has passed. This common doctrine has not been solemnly defined, but it is based on Scripture and tradition. There are no merits after death, contrary to what many Protestants teach. (Life Everlasting and the Immensity of the Soul, p. 50)

Garrigou-Lagrange supports the doctrine from Scripture and the traditional commentary thereon. For example, he quotes John 9:4 where Jesus says, "I must work the work of Him that sent me whilst it is day; the night cometh when no man can work." He then lists various Fathers. "These Fathers teach that after death no one can longer either merit or demerit." (52)  He continues in this vein for several pages drawing upon different passages and different Fathers.

What bothers Dr. Caiati also bothers me, namely, the presumption to know things beyond our ken. There is something  epistemically immodest and perhaps even epistemically pretentious about claiming to have such a detailed knowledge of soteriological mechanisms. 

Can one be quite sure that there is no merit after death, no chance of metanoia? Suppose that after death the scales fall from Christopher Hitchens' spiritual eyes and he sees that he was wrong in his atheism and that his cocksure atheism was driven by overweening pride and arrogance and that he had been blinded by his brilliance like Lucifer. He repents.  If I were God, I would send him to purgatory and not to hell for all eternity.  I could argue in detail for this competing view, in which there is merit after death.

Perhaps I will be told that if the magisterium teaches infallibly that the soul, immediately after death, is judged, and that this judgment presupposes and thus entails that the time of merit has passed, then we can and do have objectively certain knowledge in this matter.  If so, then my little theological speculation is but a private judgment lacking objective certainty.  But then we are brought back to the problem of private versus collective judgment and the problem whether anyone can justifiably credit the claim of any institution of men, even if divinely instituted and inspired,  to render a collective judgment that is objectively certain with respect to questions of faith and morals.

The truth is absolute and infinite and largely beyond our ken in this life. No institution has proprietary rights in her. 

Courage: The Hardest of the Cardinal Virtues

The cardinal virtues are four: temperance, prudence, justice, and courage. Of the four, courage is the most difficult to exercise. Why is that?

Temperance and prudence are virtues of rational self-regard. Anyone who cares about himself and his long-term well-being will be temperate and prudent, whether or not he is just or courageous.  This is not to say that the temperate and prudent don't benefit others; they do: The temperate who refrain from drunkenness and drunk driving benefit others by not causing trouble and by setting a good example. The prudent who save and invest do not become a burden on others and are in a position to contribute to charities and make loans to the worthy.  This is why it is foolish to glorify the poor and demonize the rich. When was the last time a poor person helped fund a worthy enterprise or gave someone a job?

Temperance and prudence, then, are easy virtues despite the world's being full of the intemperate and imprudent. They are easy in that anyone who values his own life and future will be temperate and prudent.  Such a one will not select as his hero the foolish John Belushi (remember him?) who took the Speedball Express to Kingdom Come.

It is harder to be just: to habitually render unto others that which is due them. For the just man must not only be other-regarding and other-respecting; he must be willing and able to discipline his lust, greed, and anger.

But courage is hardest of all. That man is courageous who, mastering his fear, exposes himself to danger for his cause. One thinks of the firefighters who entered the Trade Towers on 9/11, some of whom made the ultimate sacrifice. But Muhammad Atta and his gang were also profiles in courage. Their ends were evil, but that does not detract from the courageousness of their actions. To think otherwise, as so many do, is to fail to grasp the nature of courage.  

Courage, then, is the most difficult and the noblest of the cardinal virtues.  It is an heroic virtue, a virtue of self-transcendence.  By contrast, there is nothing heroic about the bourgeois virtues of temperance and prudence. 

But now a question is lit in the mind of this aporetic philosopher: Is it prudent to be courageous? Is there an antinomy buried within the bosom of the cardinal virtues? Can there be such a thing as a virtuous man if such a man must have all four of the cardinal virtues?

At most, there is a tension between prudence and courage.  But this tension does not spill over into an antinomy. In the virtuous, prudence is subordinated to courage in the sense that, in a situation in which acting courageously is imprudent, one must act courageously.  

Poem of the Day

THE WRATH OF THE AWAKENED SAXON
by Rudyard Kipling

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not suddenly bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.