#scholasticism

[ohholydyke]

All girls these days know how to do is be lesbian, obsess over niche medieval theology, hyperfixate on Mary Mother of God and yearn.

[maklodes]

Six Proofs of the Existence of Princess Celestia, by St. Thomas Equinas.

[grandpasessions]

So we can see that here — and he’s [Aquinas] the pinnacle of Scholasticism — this is a systematization of Christian teaching, and actually subordinates Christian teaching to logic. But logic itself, of course, depends on the starting point. And they thought they were starting with basic Christian revelation. We’ll see soon that there are all kinds of other things entering in, which affect reason.

In this Scholastic system logicalness becomes the first test of truth, and the living source of faith is placed in a secondary place. And that’s why later people hated it so much because they felt it to be a completely dead framework in which there’s no life left, idly discussing questions which no one is concerned about, and when you do discuss true questions, you flatten them out and deaden them. And a Western man, under this influence, begins to lose his living relation to the Truth. And thus Christianity is reduced to a system, to the human level. And this is one of the chief roots of the later errors in the West, which can actually be summed up as the attempt to make by human efforts something better than Christianity.

Dostoyevsky has a little story about this in the legend of the Grand Inquisitor, Brothers Karamazov, in which he very acutely describes what the Popes did, that is, the whole Western Church making something better than Orthodoxy, by their own powers.

You can see this, for example, in the celebrated “Proof of the Existence of God” in Anselm, who invented the new proof of the existence of God, which, as you can see, is extremely clever and doesn’t prove a thing.

...

This is really the very same thing that Descartes tried to do when he tried to prove his own existence by saying, “I think, therefore I am”; and is also something which later on Metoxis Makrakis was to do when he said that he was the first man in the history of Orthodoxy to prove the existence of the Trinity, as though before this time all the Fathers had been wasting their time, and he was the first one to have enough intelligence and understanding of philosophy to prove what the Holy Fathers couldn’t prove. Makrakis has exactly that same mentality of, “By my own efforts, I will give you simple people who believed in sort of whatever you were told, I will give you the real explanation of things.” And this is exactly what people like Anselm are trying to do. This is again the spirit of trying to improve on Christianity, trying to accept not as Holy Fathers accepted in simple faith, but proving by means of — actually he’s under the influence of all these new currents coming in, and especially of course Aristotle who was very influential in those times, because he seemed to have sort of the universal philosophy — except Christianity; his view of nature was considered to be absolutely the truth.

Orthodox Survival Course S. Rose

[lightthewaybackhome]

Art..."has such a power that it can draw us beyond the beautiful object itself to dim awareness of, contemplation of, not the artist but the Creator."

-Art and Scholasticism by Jacques Maritain

And suddenly, I'm weeping in the middle of this stupid book because I've never had what I adore about art (literature mostly, also music) in my heart of hearts so clearly stated.

[duardius]

ockham’s razor[s]

set in monotype bembo—vide ‹bembismo›.

[seasideretreat]

God is one

To worship any other god than the one God is considered idolatry. Of course, we have seen throughout history the promise of worshipping many gods. This is the curse of the secular age. Most people don't consider the question of Gods oneness to be very interesting. The just accept the stories from the priests that we ought to worship Christ and think critically of sinners and fools. However, it seems there isn't that much to the Christian religion. The Christian religion is based on repentence, and they are less inclined to familiarize themselves with scripture, the ways Jews do. Then there is Islam. Islam has very powerful clergies, but they are marked by a humility, treating God as someone who is just really confoundly good. The best in fact.

Today, many people hate religion, because they believe that there's a lot of trouble in the world, and religion does nothing to help those. However, this is only natural. Religion isn't meant to solve the world's problems: it is meant to solve spiritual problems. Still, there are religions that work to make the world a better place, albeit in a religious way; I am thinking mostly of Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion that suffers greatly under its own creeds. I mean that in a very Zen way. I want to tell people that the world is an evil place, and that we should seek enlightenment; but I don't know what enlightenment is, and the more I think about it, the more I am thankful that the Dharma exists, to pull me towards the simple things in life. In this way, Buddhism also strengthens itself. But I think we'll see that many people are dissatisfied with Buddhism's internal inconsistencies and for this reason seek salvation elsewhere.

I suppose this is why many people will find China's religions to be the best. In China, Confucianism satisfies the spiritual needs for people who are curious and independent minded; Daoism fulfills the needs of those who are basically doing fine and don't really need anything more than than to live up their lives. Nonetheless, Daoism can be confusing. After all, many things in life are worth striving for: we can desire things in a way that makes us want to put in great effort (Kung fu) and Daoism detracts from this by putting us in the role of loafers and men of leisure. Really, Daoism isn't that profound. It seeks to point our soul towards an obscurantist metaphysical principle, but we only call it metaphysical because it is unfathomable, and this is what Daoism does. it tells us to stop acting "because". Still, the principle of non-intervention that underlies Daoism has religious merit. It can be fulfilling to take it easy just because. Why work harder than you need to? Of course, one might say it is because we want things, and here is the confusing part of Daoism, the foundations are self-denial. Here is where I see the promise of Judaic religion. It believes in duty. Judaism transcends apathy by allowing people to act and to speak.

There is a line in Knights of the Old Republic 2 by Chris Avellone that says "Apathy is death." Now Daoism doesn't necessarily inspire apathy, nor does Buddhism, but they all seem to point us towards confusion, and confusion can lead to apathy. Now I wish so bad to be a philosohoper, a metaphysicist in fact, who can tackle the most important problems of philosophy in a good way; but instead I am just a theologian, hell perhaps even a theologian of the nation, like Eugen Weber called it, because I also see myself as a historian of sorts; yes, history is the mistress of life, I really think so, and my days would be considerably more miserable if I didn't have history, but I am not sure how significant the difference would really be. But in any case, no matter how wholesome history is and how nourishing, and no matter how badly I want to be a philosopher, these things block us, and keep us from acting. But yeah, Daoism and Buddhism do seem oddly "philosophical" in some particular way, and this is probably why they can also paralyse us. Anyway, it seems we have to practice Judaim in some way - and I ain't even a Jew - to survive in the world, to write; because writing is the epitome of life, through writing we can give purpose to our whole day, and really support us in our horrors and terrors.

But anyway, metaphysics I suppose is a lot like telling jokes, you can't do it on command, yet we have to speak anyway. In history, religion has very often inspired metaphysics; in fact, metaphysics used to be a flourishing science in the days of Christianity, but since the days of secularism, it barely exists anymore; and the weird thing is, I can't think of a single metaphysical sentence, except maybe for Sartre's existence precedes essence, which I would only think of because Heidegger called it a metaphysical sentence. But I don't know any real metaphysics: it seems it doesn't even exist. All I can think of is a picture from a book by Thomas Carlyle of a blind man walking off the face of the Earth, subtitled "metaphysics". And they call Hegel metaphysics, but it is just misguided jabbering, even though it might be called good writing by wise fools.

Anyway, this is my new method for writing: I will be a Jew, and I will study the Bible and learn the language of the Bible, and I will hold sermons perhaps and theologize the nation if luck will have it, or something; but in the end metaphysical thoughts may flow out of it. In fact, my master is Robin Williams, because he probably couldn't make jokes on command either, but he was still great at improv; you know, improv is my passion, 'cept I ain't a comedian. I'd be a metaphysicist. You know, you may say something, and it may be funny, but afterwards, if you quote it out of context, it may not be so funny after all. Who knows, it might be also the case with metaphysics, that its metaphysical when you say it, but it ain't metaphysical anymore when you quote it out of context. You know, just now I am looking at the Wikipedia page of Duns Scotus, the English metaphysicist, and it has for example the following sentence: universalia exist. This is supposedly metaphysics. It sounds somewhat metaphysical, right? Because of the word "exist". You know, there's another metaphysical story from the oeuvre of Avicenna, that says that the soul must exist because if you imagine a floating man to come into existence who has no knowledge of his body he'll still have a consciousness. That's also metaphysical - or actually, it is a thought experiment that invites metaphysical speculation. But you have to admit, it's unclear to really pinpoint what kind of thoughts these are. What are we thinking about here? The relationship of mind and matter. Why is that metaphysical? I don't know, it really has nothing to do with any other philosophical problem. These kind of questions have a tendency to take on a life of their own. It seems that these are questions of a scholastic origin, predicating definitions on things that really mean something else entirely. I suppose that's where "ordinary language philosophy" comes from. But the problem with ordinary language is that there's nothing ordinary about ordinary language, it's just language. We see this most profoundly in John McDowell's work. The guy is unintelligible, but he speaks with words that sound very hands-on and actionable. That's what I am saying. Can we be metaphysical by accident? Is there metaphysics outside of scholasticism? Of course, some would say there is, in Kripke's work. But that stuff is too focussed on language. People shouldn't think philosophy is the study of language. There's nothing philosophical about language. As I said, my master is Robin Williams, I am more like Larry David than like Kripke (understand Larry David better than Kripke too, of course). This is what I am saying: you can't be metaphysical on cue, you can benefit from religion to get you out of your apathy. We might say, there ain't no metaphysics without religion, weird as it might be. We might say: Buddhist philosophy is more metaphysical than Kripke. Fulfilling your spiritual goals opens up your discourse for metaphysical philosophy. Metaphysics is the ultimate pastime. Of course, here we are reminded of that very true statement by Lipsius, that it is sad to do philosophy for merriment, when it is the most serious of fields. Still, his friend Montaigne said there wasn't much philosophy going down if people weren't laughing.

[ananke-xiii]

I'm leaving this one here as a reminder that "immaculate conception" doesn't mean "virgin birth". The two are, of course, related because Catholics are crazy and these notions clearly go against all good sense and logic, but! the two still don't mean the same thing.

Mary was conceived the normal way (lol) but she was conceived without sin (immaculate) because she was being prepared to be fhe Holy Spirit's vessel and give birth to God's son who's also God ("virginity" in the sense that was later solely attributed to the word).

I just keep seeing it used incorrectly and I'm like no! This is actually worse than you think! The craziness level is up the wazoo! It's the beginning of the whore/madonna thing and it's not even just about sex! It's about being a sinner by default (which is a given anyway) but you can not be a sinner ONLY if God takes a fancy to you and "spares" you of said sin in order for you to become a vessel for him anyway. In comparison to this virgin birth seems totally bland as a concept if you ask me.

[chronivore]

Scholasticism - M.C. Escher, 1931.

[jamesgraybooksellerworld]

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[ammonitetestpatterns]

to continue the comparison of samperi with pound and joyce, the former knew history by its dispatch in the person, a passage into the soul from a substance that inspires recognition in time, and sought after a "quieting of the epical desire" which gave his poetry a rather apophatic political principle, against base compulsions for egoic attainment or the personalization of desires transferred onto collective fantasy and its enactment over the material, the demarcation of property boundaries and spatial, directionally singularizing enclosure, irresolute micropivoting, like a tsimtum that goes against itself and casts futility to the question of whether human action can help to complete and account for an originary divine withdrawal. it is clear how pound positioned his poetic aspirations in relation to history, with the epic poem of history being his chief generative pursuit, a troubadouric life accumulation and eventual appeal to fascist atavism. joyce was motivated to claim for ireland its national epic while granting the problems unavoidable in probing the definitional purity of its possibility given the synthetic linguistic and cultural historicity for which modernity set so aptly the critical inquest of such a project, yet it proved to retain the virtual drool of the homeric epic, descending over cultural inheritance an animal of concerns, tensions, and sentimental acids, which would subsist from joyce’s writ tendons of the multifaced hero/center voice’s progression, conceptual metabolism of psychic formation, exile from self, priming in the episodic ages of the english sprachwelt. i am interested in the technicality of samperi’s method and aspirations, the efflorescence of song in the differential, the exaltation of the spiritual man at its point of clarified reality as a reference and model vessel of ascent to freedom, that striking humility over expressive compulsions even as they entice to a collective mythology/base of reference repeated to tradition, wandering clutching melancholic mementos of angelic knowledge that pass in grasp by the diurnal suspense of sense in the awareness and pronouncement of the glorified body, bringing the sensory manifold out of its perceived durational time, the sequence of the text in all its creak and ache ladders the reading eye to a vertical oculus of the eternal for the instance of its reception. what i want to accomplish in poetics, what would inflame the feathers of my imagined bird in timeless crepuscule, is the lyricized intramedia of spirit and its masquerade, the drift sense in which total art is held down to the most involuntary bodily processes, the transcending radiance of thinking when it becomes inseparable from its compiled motor cadence, for which feeling is the oldest bridge. the valor of art is the calamitous impasse of transience. the misplacement of names, dipping them in this transience and clouding the feeling, could tonelessly embargo the opulent quavers of a song confident of its reality. i am tortured by the word that flourishes obliquely.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by Matthew Barrett | I have been teaching on the Reformation for years and I have noticed a troubling trend: most evangelicals approach the Reformation with little to no understanding of the medieval scholastics that preceded the Reformation and...

[grandpasessions]

"The Roman Church fell away from the truth only because it wished to introduce into the faith new dogmas unknown to Church tradition and begotten by the accidental conclusions of Western logic. From this there developed Scholastic philosophy within the framework of faith, then a reformation in the faith, and finally philosophy outside the faith. The first rationalists were the Scholastics; one might say the ninth and the last rationalists are the Hegelians of his day, one might say that nineteenth century Europe finished the cycle of its development which had begun in the ninth." That gives a very precise view which is a very plausible explanation of the mechanism by which Rome left the Church and developed the whole of the modern world-view which is so anti-Orthodox.

Introduce to the Orthodox Worldview Fr. Seraphim Rose

[lightthewaybackhome]

Not sure how wise it is to read this when I'm tired, but here I am looking up words and Latin phrases, making notes about what to ask my hubby, and writing synopses.

[curly-cottage-girl]

I will concede that point to you. But if based purely on enjoyment of the chocolate itself, then I will have to say de gustibus non est disputandum and agree to disagree

Remember guys if you think that milk chocolate should be considered evil because it is not as good as dark chocolate you are participating in the ancient heresy of Gnosticism thank you goodnight

[victusinveritas]

Scholasticism - M.C. Escher, 1931.