A Few More Notes on the Soul

- The old philosophers' conception of the human soul followed from the consideration of the human intellect or reason and the proper object thereof. Without this consideration, all philosophical psychology will appear arbitrary.

- The word 'color' is the expression of an idea that is not reducible to any particular color or colors. Words are universals, the tools rational beings use to communicate intellectually. Without this ability, we could not rise above our individual sensations.

- If the human intellect is responsible for the creation of knowledge (as it is, say, in Kant's epistemology), then the intellect must be an active power, meaning that it alters the thing upon which it acts. But knowledge is the possession of the form of another qua other, and form is the perfection of being. If the intellect is an active power, then it must contain within itself all perfections, meaning that the human intellect must be infinite. No human intellect is infinite, therefore...

Living Parts

If life is essentially self-motion, then living things must contain within themselves a certain amount of heterogeneity. Remember that motion is the reduction of some potency to act, so in a being that moves itself, some parts must be in potency and other must be in act. No one part can be in both potency and act in the same way. A unified being endowed with self-motion, a living thing, then, is composed of heterogeneous parts.

For We Are Many

A machine, strictly speaking, can never be one thing. Rather, it must be a collection of things which are put together, meaning a machine can never have an existence given by nature. It has an inauthentic unity placed upon it by an artificer. Authentic unity is a oneness that is irreducible, if a thing is said to have parts but is essentially one, no knowledge of the parts without reference to the whole will yield real knowledge of the thing itself. Without the unified whole, the parts cease to be. This irreducible unity is known as life, and to confuse something whose parts exist in virtue of some unified whole with the mere aggregate is to mistake the living for the dead. That which is dead can never truly be one thing.

Notes on Necessity

There is a sense in which possibility is not opposed to necessity but is, in fact, a consequence of it. All necessity, as such, entails possibility inasmuch as something necessary cannot contain any repugnance within itself. The source of possibility is, in this case, ontologically posterior to necessity.

Possibility is also unopposed to necessity inasmuch as something possible undergoes motion, meaning the reduction of some potency to act. That which was first in potency and later in act can be necessary.

Ontologically speaking, possibility and necessity are opposed to one another when possibility is taken to mean contingent. Contingency is the possibility for non-existence, and that which is potentially non-existent cannot possibly be necessary.

A Good Friday

"If we wish to understand the power of Christ’s blood, we should go back to the
ancient account of its prefiguration in Egypt. “Sacrifice a lamb without blemish”,
commanded Moses, “and sprinkle its blood on your doors”. If we were to ask
him what he meant, and how the blood of an irrational beast could possibly
save men endowed with reason, his answer would be that the saving power lies
not in the blood itself, but in the fact that it is a sign of the Lord’s blood. In
those days, when the destroying Angel saw the blood on the doors he did not
dare to enter, so how much less will the devil approach now when he sees, not
that figurative blood on the doors, but the true blood on the lips of believers,
the doors of the temple of Christ."

-St. John Chrysostom, On The Power of Christ's Blood

Act, Potency, and the Four Causes

Mobile being is divided according to act and potency. Potency, again, when speaking of mobile being, is regarded as matter or the material cause. Act is the formal cause, rendering the being in actuality and intelligibility. Potency, though, according to its own power, cannot become act. It must therefore become act by the operation of another. This other, which must itself be in act in some way in order to exercise power over that which is, of itself, in potency, is the efficient cause. No being, though, operates without some determinate end, all potency is ordered toward some act. This end is the final cause, that for the sake of which a potency becomes an actuality. So, from this division of mobile being into act and potency, we derive the four causes.

Angels vs. Demons

James Chastek, at Just Thomism, discusses one critique of "rights." Here is another:

In America, since at least the Civil War, the fiction of "rights" has been popularly used as a justification for violence, both physical and verbal, against whoever is perceived to be against the "rights" in question. Instead of speaking about justice, morality, virtue, the health of the community or the common good, we only hear of ever expanding rights that only an inhuman or, worse, subhuman creature could possibly oppose.

Once you limit the debate to the categories of those who are in favor of expanding "rights" and those who would deny this expansion, you have created a morality play in which "rights" proponents are angels whose cause is justified no matter the content. The popular arguments over homosexual "marriage" play out in just this way. A practice that makes absolutely no sense from any normal human metric of individual morality or the common good not only becomes acceptable, it becomes the default morally superior position. How can the pendulum swing so hard and fast? This is only possible when the discussion is framed in terms of "rights." Those who stand against such behaviors and actions can, in principle, have no justifiable reason for their opposition. They are demons, and demons do not have to be treated like human beings.