Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Find

8.28.19

Find
Refuge
找到避难所
Zhǎodào bìnàn suǒ
避難所を探す
Hinansho o sagasu
ps71

I have taken refuge in my faith.
I look to find reality as the actual case.

Let reality for me act as a guide
to produce a service that will shine as a find.

Let me never be afraid of sensible reason.
Courage uses the light of truth as a beacon. 

Responsibility sets me free from fear of the unseen
to seek help in assimilating what has already been seen
as the mean for what's keen.

There is a context in perception beyond personal vision
that shapes perspective for the service of the versatile given.

Knowledge is solid until it finds a better form.
Assimilation or accommodation are resilient norms.

I know what can be known in the way that was shown,
but the shown has to be owned to be as solid as stone.

Organization for automation builds action for success.
Producing a service for others serves as the real test for what's best.

You were known before you were formed in the womb.
Speech was consecrated by maturity to reach beyond the tomb.

Information for nations requires translation to escape doom.
Knowledge of language is a task to be assumed.

If I speak without love,
I am a loud noise from above.
When I speak with love from above
the word is fulfilled with blessing from the heavenly dove.

Principle is used in the search for truth with knowledge.
Proximity to a word develops thought for college.
False principles are to be avoided, not acknowledged.

Wealth is associated with labor for a nation.
Commerce in the world is a subject for international relations.
Private ownership versus government control is a public policy implication.

The graceful darkness reached out to gain prestige
with a self-criticism that challenged the socialist intrigue.

The hemp on the edge of the pasture
served as a meal for the horse that bordered on rapture.

Let reality for me act as a guide
to produce a service that will shine as a find.

I have taken refuge in my faith.
I look to find reality as the actual case.

--------------------------

71 In te, Domine, speravi
In you, Sir, trust

1 In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge;
let me never be ashamed.

---------------------------------

I have taken refuge in my faith.
I look to find reality as the actual case.

========================

2 In your righteousness, deliver me and set me free;
incline your ear to me and save me.
3 Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe;
you are my crag and my stronghold.
4 Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the clutches of the evildoer and the oppressor.
5 For you are my hope, O Lord God,
my confidence since I was young.
6 I have been sustained by you ever since I was born;
from my mother's womb you have been my strength;
my praise shall be always of you.
7 I have become a portent to many;
but you are my refuge and my strength.
8 Let my mouth be full of your praise
and your glory all the day long.
9 Do not cast me off in my old age;
forsake me not when my strength fails.
10 For my enemies are talking against me,
and those who lie in wait for my life take counsel together.
11 They say, "God has forsaken him;
go after him and seize him;
because there is none who will save."
12 O God, be not far from me;
come quickly to help me, O my God.
13 Let those who set themselves against me be put to shame and be disgraced;
let those who seek to do me evil be covered with scorn and reproach.
14 But I shall always wait in patience,
and shall praise you more and more.
15 My mouth shall recount your mighty acts
and saving deeds all day long;
though I cannot know the number of them.
16 I will begin with the mighty works of the Lord God;
I will recall your righteousness, yours alone.
17 O God, you have taught me since I was young,
and to this day I tell of your wonderful works.
18 And now that I am old and gray-headed, O God, do not forsake me,
till I make known your strength to this generation
and your power to all who are to come.
19 Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the heavens;
you have done great things;
who is like you, O God?
20 You have showed me great troubles and adversities,
but you will restore my life
and bring me up again from the deep places of the earth.
21 You strengthen me more and more;
you enfold and comfort me,
22 Therefore I will praise you upon the lyre for your
faithfulness, O my God;
I will sing to you with the harp, O Holy One of Israel.
23 My lips will sing with joy when I play to you,
and so will my soul, which you have redeemed.
24 My tongue will proclaim your righteousness all day long,
for they are ashamed and disgraced who sought to do me harm.

-----------------------

9.8

Experience

The search for knowledge from the experience of others extends into knowledge beyond personal experience.

John Locke
b. 8.29.1632 Wrington, Somerset, England
d. 10.28.1704 High Laver, Essex, England

John Locke was an English philosopher and physician. He grew up and lived through one of the most extraordinary centuries of English political and intellectual history.

It was a century in which conflicts between the Crown and Parliament overlapped with those between Protestants, Anglicans and Catholics. The conflicts swirled into civil war in the 1640's.

He is considered one of the first of the British empiricists. He is commonly known as the Father of Liberalism. His writings on social contract theory influenced Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers and the American revolutionaries.

Locke's theory of mind has been cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self. These concepts figured prominently in the work of later philosophers such as David Hume, Rousseau and Immanuel Kant.

Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. The mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa at birth. He maintained that we are born without innate ideas. This ran contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts. Knowledge was instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.

He has not only been identified as the founder of British empiricism, he has been thought to be the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers.

Wrington

Wrington is a village in North Somerset, England. It is in the south west corner of the island.
Somerset is  a rural county with rolling hills and large flat expanses of land.

The Church of All Saints has 13th-century foundations. It was remodelled with the addition of a west tower about 1450. There was a restoration in 1859 and further restoration of the tower in 1948.

The church includes stone busts to John Locke and Hannah More on either side of the door dating from the early 19th century.

John Locke

John Locke was born on 29 August 1632, in a small thatched cottage by the church in Wrington, Somerset, about 12 miles from Bristol. He was baptised the same day.

The family moved to the market town of Pensford about 7 miles south of Bristol soon after Locke's birth. He grew up in a rural Tudor house in Belluton.

John Locke was born to Puritan parents of modest means. His mother was Agnes Keene.
His father was a country lawyer who served in a cavalry company on the Puritan side in the early stages of the English Civil War.

His father’s commander, Alexander Popham, became the local MP. It was his patronage which allowed the young John to gain an excellent education. He went to Westminster School in London in 1647.

John went to Christ Church, Oxford from Westminster in the autumn of 1652 at the age of 20. Just as Westminster school was the most important English school, Christ Church was the most important Oxford college.

Locke was awarded a bachelor's degree in February 1656, a master's degree in June 1658 and a bachelor of medicine in February 1675. He studied medicine extensively during his time at Oxford and worked with such noted scientists and thinkers as Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke.

He met Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury in 1666. Cooper had come to Oxford seeking treatment for a liver infection. He was impressed with Locke and persuaded him to become part of his retinue.

Locke had been looking for a career. He moved into Shaftesbury's home at Exeter House in London to serve as Lord Ashley's personal physician in 1667. He resumed his medical studies under the tutelage of Thomas Sydenham in London.

Sydenham had a major effect on Locke's natural philosophical thought. The effect would become evident in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Sydenham would eventually come to be called the English Hippocrates.

The essay was one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern philosophy. The first book refuted the rationalist notion of innate ideas. The second set forth the theory of ideas.

A distinction was drawn between simple and complex ideas. Simple qualities such as "red," "sweet," "round," etc were used to build complex abstractions such as numbers, causes and effects, abstract ideas, ideas of substances, identity and diversity.

The primary qualities of bodies like shape, motion and the arrangement of minute particles are distinct from the secondary qualities that produce various sensations like sweetness. Secondary qualities are dependent upon the primary.

Locke considered personal identity or the self to be founded on consciousness by way of memory. It was not the substance of either the soul or the body.

Book III is concerned with language. Book IV describes knowledge in intuition, mathematics, moral philosophy, natural philosophy ("science"), faith and opinion.

Locke's medical knowledge was put to the test when Shaftesbury's life was threatened by the liver infection. Locke coordinated the advice of several physicians.

He was probably instrumental in persuading Shaftesbury to undergo surgery to remove the cyst. Surgery was life-threatening itself. Shaftesbury survived and prospered. He credited Locke with saving his life.

Locke served as Secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations during this time. He was the Secretary to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina. It helped to shape his ideas on international trade and economics.

Shaftesbury was a founder of the Whig movement, exerted great influence on Locke's political ideas. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute monarchy. The position against Hobbes as an advocate for absolute monarchy was a straw man fallacy.

The Whigs played a central role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. They were the standing enemies of the Stuart kings who were Roman Catholic. They supported the slave trade and slavery for the colonies.

Locke became involved in politics when Shaftesbury became Lord Chancellor in 1672. He spent some time traveling across France as tutor and medical attendant to Caleb Banks following Shaftesbury's fall from favor in 1675.

He returned to England in 1679 when Shaftesbury's political fortunes took a brief positive turn. Locke composed the bulk of the Two Treatises of Government around this time most likely at Shaftesbury's recommendation.

The First Treatise attacks patriarchalism in the form of a refutation of Robert Filmer's Patriarcha. The Second Treatise outlines Locke's ideas for a more civilized society based on natural rights and contract theory.

Two Treatises was first published, anonymously, in December 1689. It was translated into French by David Mazzel in 1691. Mazzel was a French Huguenot living in the Netherlands. The translation left out Locke's "Preface," all of the First Treatise and the first chapter of the Second Treatise which summarized Locke's conclusions in the First Treatise.

It was in this form that Locke's work was reprinted during the 18th century in France. Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau were exposed to this translation.

The only American edition from the 18th century was printed in 1773 in Boston. It left out the same sections. There were no other American editions until the 20th century.

The First Treatise is focused on the refutation of the Patriarcha of Sir Robert Filmer. Filmer had argued that civil society was founded on a divinely sanctioned patriarchalism.

Locke proceeded through Filmer's arguments, contested his proofs from Scripture and ridiculed them as senseless. He concluded that no government can be justified by an appeal to the divine right of kings.

Filmer and Locke represented their incarnation of the debate based on the differences of Plato and Aristotle. Plato favored the description of the deity as Absolute, whereas Aristotle concerned himself with universal conditions that explicitly tolerated slavery as an elevation of civilized over primitive society.

The Second Treatise outlined a theory of civil society. Locke began by describing the state of nature with a picture that was more stable than that presented by Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes had described nature without government as a state of "war of every man against every man."

Locke argued that all men are created equal by God in the state of nature. He explained from this the rise of property and civilization. The only legitimate governments are those that have the consent of the people. Any government that rules without the consent can be overthrown as had been the case in the "Glorious Revolution."

While Locke presented an argument that sounded like it was more reasonable, he made some radically liberal statements that are still used to influence foreign and domestic policy in contemporary western society.

The "consent of the people" was a perception that could be manipulated with media expression. Stories could be told to 'inform' the public that other governments did not satisfy the condition of consent.

The claim of the violation of civil or human rights was used to suggest that the government was not civil. If it was not civil, it was tyrannical and warranted rebellion towards the end of regime change.

The media expression was made to 'check' to see if the public would protest taxation to overthrow the foreign power.

This was where the doctrine for destruction became especially devisive.     

The State of War
https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/john-locke-two-treatises-1689

Locke used an argument against somebody else to implicate Hobbes as an advocate for absolute monarchy.

Louis XIV had used the statement "I am the state" to manage the affairs of France for 72 years. He instituted some changes in his rule that refused to delegate authority in the customary way.

It is probably more appropriate to associate the idea of the absolute with the philosophy of Plato and the universal with that of Aristotle, than with the political philosophy of Hobbes.

It is appropriate to question the particular use of the concepts of absolute or universal authority with respect to human application.

The law against murder is still regarded as an absolute. The prohibition of killing someone else is not absolute or universal insofar as lethal defense against a deadly attack is regarded as an exception to the general prohibition.

Locke documented a number of reasonable provisions with respect for government for the Earl of Shaftesbury. The Whigs were the political forum for the Puritans.

They enacted the English Bill of Rights for their demographic representation. The expression is much too particular for modern standards of legality, but there were advances in legislative initiatives that have come to be be recognized as standard for constitutional government for monarchy or republic.

When Locke wrote about the state of war, he made the statement that he had the right to destroy anyone who had the intent to destroy him.

State of War S.16
Two Treatises on Civil Government: 2d Treatise
"THE state of war is a state of enmity and destruction...I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being..."

--------------------------

The statement in itself alludes to something that is correct, but the assertion that there is a right to destroy implied a proposal to enslave those who had yet to adopt settlement and private property as manifestations of civil society. The proposal was used in a general application to subject primitive people to slavery with respect for universal law.

The primitive lifestyle was taken to represent a threat to the extension of civilized society into primitive territories. Natives in invaded lands were given the 'choice' to work as slaves, or the suffer indefinite war against any indication of opposition to expansion.

The Whig support for slavery, aristocracy and serfdom was documented in the Carolina Constitutions. The document was co-authored by Locke. The extension of civilized society would not have been as rapid without the provisions, but it would not have been as offensive with respect for the inclusion of primitive people into civilized society.

Locke fled to the Netherlands in 1683. He had time to return to his writing. He spent time re-writing the Essay on Human Understanding and composing the Letter on Toleration. Locke did not return home until after the Glorious Revolution.

King James II of England (VII of Scotland) was overthrown in 1688 by a union of Parliamentarians and the stadtholder of the Dutch Republic William III of Oranje-Nassau (William of Orange).

The decision to retain a monarch a resulted in his ascension to the English throne as William III of England. He ruled jointly with Mary II, as Protestants. Mary was the daughter of James II. She had a strong claim the English Throne.

Locke claimed in the "Preface" to the Two Treatises that its purpose was to justify William III's ascension to the throne.

Locke's close friend Lady Masham invited him to join her at Otes, the Mashams' country house in Essex. His time there was marked by variable health from asthma attacks. He became an intellectual hero of the Whigs nevertheless. He discussed matters with such figures as John Dryden and Isaac Newton during this time.

He died on 28 October 1704 at HIgh Laver in Essex at 72 years of age. He was buried in the churchyard of the village of High Laver, east of Harlow in Essex, where he had lived in the household of Sir Francis Masham since 1691. Locke never married nor had children.

Events that happened during Locke's lifetime include the English Restoration, the Great Plague of London and the Great Fire of London. He did not quite see the Act of Union of 1707, though the thrones of England and Scotland were held in personal union throughout his life. Constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy were in their infancy during his time.

John Locke
wiki John Locke
IEP Locke
SEP Locke Political Philosophy
Text: Two Treatises on Civil Government
Liberty Fund txt
Adelaide E-Books
Commentary
SparkNotes
Locke Library
Liberty Fund

Felons in Sanctuary Cities

Convicted felons who have crossed the border illegally ought to be deported.

The restriction of the purchase of a gun for an illegal immigrant is not secure enough as a measure for law enforcement.

The idea of sanctuary from prosecution extends back to questionable belief in the sanctity of providing sanctuary for the enemy of my enemy. It was allowed for local administration by the Catholic Church, but the notion of universal law was attached by way of overstatement.

Locke expressed an argument for sanctuary that was overextended as well.

He wrote in his Second Treatise "I doubt not but this will seem a very strange doctrine to some men: but before they condemn it, I desire them to resolve me, by what right any prince or state can put to death, or punish an alien, for any crime he commits in their country."
(https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/john-locke-two-treatises-1689, S.9)

The expression "their country" is ambiguous. It suggests that law enforcement can't even punish a felon seeking sanctuary in their homeland. The felon could commit a crime in his own country, then immigrate to another to escape prosecution where the liberal ethic would protect him from prosecution for further criminal action.

This liberal doctrine has been aggressively promoted by leading Democrats who seek to tax citizens to pay for the prevention of extradition or deportation.

Build

8.28.19
Rome, Italy

Build
Defense
建立防御 
Jiànlì fángyù
防御を構築する 
Bōgyo o kōchiku suru
ps87
Aedificare defensionis

The city was built on a mountain.
The mountain grounded that which was founded.

Height held the advantage of sight for distance.
When invaders attacked the city prepared for resistance.

Traders from different directions could be seen.
Welcome was prepared by the social machine.

The gate to the city welcomed visitors, family and friends.
It wasn't closed to ministers, misters, sisters or gems.

The gate was the way through which travelers entered.
Messengers shared word as a gift from the sender. 

Egypt and Babylon were among those who knew me.
Revelation was the gate for the truth of our history.

Philistia, Tyre and Ethiopia were partners in trade.
Weapons, wheels and cattle were the offerings they made.

The ring of fellowship is that which unites.
Power is grounded in defense of alliance.

Alliance against the destructive elements 
prepares people for defense against violence.

The military is drawn from the people.
Training in strength overcomes feeling feeble.

Search for those lost while at work or at play
lends experience to training in a beneficial way.

The source of life is love.
Rescue comes from within and above.

Zion is a lion on a hill.
Orion and Kiron match the iron will.

------------------------

Psalm 87
Fundamenta ejus

1 On the holy mountain stands the city he has founded; *
the Lord loves the gates of Zion
more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
2 Glorious things are spoken of you, *
O city of our God.
3 I count Egypt and Babylon among those who know me; *
behold Philistia, Tyre, and Ethiopia:
in Zion were they born.
4 Of Zion it shall be said, "Everyone was born in her, *
and the Most High himself shall sustain her."
5 The Lord will record as he enrolls the peoples, *
"These also were born there."
6 The singers and the dancers will say, *
"All my fresh springs are in you."

--------------------------

8.28

Freedom

Augustine was an early Roman Christian theologian and philosopher from Africa. He was born in Thagaste. He became the bishop of Hippo Regius. Both cities are in present day Algeria.

He is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers in western Christianity. He wrote in the Patristic era. “The City of God,” “On Christian Doctrine” and “Confessions” are among his most important works.

Augustine has been criticized as neo-Platonic in his philosophy and theology. His statement about the good man is a modification of what Plato had to say about slavery.

There isn't a king that wasn't descended from a slave. There is not a slave who did not have royal ancestors. When slavery was a spoil of war, the rulers who were not killed were enslaved to serve the conquering force.

He has been criticized for his philosophy because he defined human nature as totally corrupt. This had dark political implications in relation to Plato's definition of republic.

The Spartans were in the ascendance politically when he shifted the dialog of Socrates from the defense of democracy as practiced with Pericles to an advocacy for a form of government that was oppressively militaristic in aggression.

Athenian men were actively involved in the decisions made for the city state. The citizens were controlled by the destructive use of elements in the republic. Plato defined democracy as dictatorship when he overturned an earlier judgment.

Augustine's statement about the good man wasn't a rejection of slavery. It was a qualification of goodness in corrupted nature The statement was made in the "City of God." Given the postulation of a 'just war' this has dark implications in the context of a Constitution that ascribes the 'right' to declare war to an authority of the state.

Augustine said that John the Baptist did not bid soldiers to give up soldiering. He told them to do no violence and to be content with pay. This doesn't forbid soldiering or war.

It is a ban against invasion. The crusader popes thought that reclaiming the city of Jerusalem and the surrounding territory was a just cause for invasion. The proposal wasn't well received by those who had to pay for it.

Much of the domestic political strife in Europe resulted from immoral political proposals from the papal office. The popes had had to work their way into a position of authority with the development of monotheism as the prevailing cultural force for the European homeland.

There are grounds to argue that the crusades were conducted for a defensive purpose, but there was a significant consequence that resulted from the sectarian position that promoted the policy.

The Judean homeland was redefined as 'Christian' when it was Roman. Jews in Europe weren't the only ones who suffered from the Inquisition as the aggressive policy that sought to insure victory for Christian monotheism. Those Christians, Druids and Wiccans who did not agree strongly enough with the position of the Church militant were persecuted as well.

Augustine was on the ground floor for the development of monotheism as the dominant cultural force for Europe. What was his life like? Why did he write the "City of God"? How did his life affect the future that he envisioned for Rome?

Augustine of Hippo
b. 11.13.354 Thagaste 
d. 8.28.430 Hippo Regus, Numidia

Augustine was born on November 11 in the year 354 in the municipium of Thagaste  in the Roman province of Numidia. Thagaste is now Souk Ahras, Algeria.

Tipaza, Home of the Gods

He learned about the religious differences in the Roman empire from his parents. His father was a pagan who honored the Punic gods. His mother was a zealous Christian. Augustine was not interested in religion and education in his youth.
Pigs

The adolescent Augustine was interested in sex and mischievous living. He confessed that he had joined with friends to steal pears from a neighbor's vineyard. The purpose was "not to eat them ourselves but simply to throw them to the pigs."

Ruins in Carthage

Augustine set off to school in Carthage at age 17. The country boy was in the jewel of North Africa. There the underachiever became enraptured with his studies and started to make a name for himself.

He immersed himself in the writings of Cicero and the Manichaean philosophers. He cast off the vestiges of his mother's religion.

Amphitheater in Thagaste

Augustine returned to his home town of Thagaste to teach rhetoric when his studies were completed. He taught some Manichaeism on the side.

The philosophy was based on the teachings of a Persian named Mani. Mani believed that the teachings of the Buddha, Zoroaster and Jesus were incomplete. His revelations were for the entire world. He called his teachings the "Religion of Light." He claimed to be the Paraclete for truth as promised by Jesus.

Mani

Manichaeism purported to be the true synthesis of all the religious systems then known. It composed of Zoroastrian Dualism, Babylonian folklore, Buddhist ethics and some small and superficial additions of Christian elements. It was a dualist corruption of Christianity in the western world.

Seneca on Religion

It professed to be a religion of pure reason as opposed to Christian credulity. It professed to explain the origin, the composition and the future of the universe. It had an answer for everything and despised the mysteries of Christianity. The sacraments of Christianity were developed in relation to the mystery cults of polytheism when it was an 'underground' religious development.

Manichaeism taught that the world of light and the world of darkness constantly war with each other. War caught humanity in the struggle.

The Higher Nature

Manichaeism offered Augustine a way to accommodate his conflicts. He could pursue his career and retain his partner while purging his sins through his service to the pure Elect. He could blame his sins on his lower alien nature. The lower nature had been made by the power of evil like the material world. The doctrine taught that his true self would eventually shed this alien nature.

Quote Against Religion

Manichaeism also modified the need to respect the name of Christ that was instilled by his childhood. His initial distaste for the Christian scriptures was gratified. He could regard the Bible as a crude and contaminated attempt at the truth. The Manichaean scriptures offered the name of Christ and what seemed to be a profound understanding of the universe and of human life.

Slave to Pleasure

Augustine had joined the wildest young men of Carthage. They were called the "overturners" or the "destroyers." He became the delighted slave to pleasure in Carthage as a Manichee. Festivals celebrating the gods were used for drunken revelry. He took a partner. They soon were parents of a baby boy whom they named Adeodatus.

Augustine tried to hide his views from his mother, Monica. She threw him out of the house when she discovered them.

Monica had dreamed that her son would become a Christian. She continued to pray and plead for his conversion. She followed him to Carthage when he moved there to teach. She begged him not to go when Augustine was offered a professorship in Rome. He told her to go home and sleep comfortably in the knowledge that he would stay in Carthage. He boarded a ship for Rome when she left.

Rhetoric – Plato

Augustine moved again after a year in Rome. He became the professor of rhetoric for the city of Milan. There he began attending the cathedral to hear the impressive oratory of Ambrose the bishop.

He kept attending because of Ambrose's power as a preacher. He soon dropped his Manichaeism in favor of Neoplatonism. This was the philosophy of both Roman pagans and Milanese Christians.

Pears

Augustine was struggling with himself. This struggle added to the emotional strain of forsaking his lover and the shift in philosophies. He had sought to overcome his fleshly passions for years. Nothing seemed to help.

It seemed to him that even his smallest transgressions were weighted with meaningful consequence. When he wrote about the pear stealing of his youth he reflected, "Our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden. The evil in me was foul, but I loved it."

“Take up and read.”
Benozzo Gozzoli

He wrestled anxiously about such matters one afternoon while walking in his garden. Suddenly he heard a child's sing-song voice repeating, "Take, read." (Tolle, legge) A collection of Paul's epistles that he'd been reading laid on a table.

He picked it up and read the first thing he saw: "Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, spend no more thought on nature and nature's appetites" (Romans 13:13-14)

He later wrote, "No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away."

Cassiaco

Augustine's conversion sent shockwaves through his life. He resigned his professorship, dashed off a note to Ambrose telling of his conversion and retreated to a country villa in Cassiciacum with his friends, mother and his son, Adeodato.

There he continued discussing philosophy and churning out books in a Neoplatonist vein. He wrote the “Dialogs.”  He returned to Milan after a year to be baptized by Ambrose, then headed back to Thagaste to live as a writer and thinker.

He had lost his mother, his son and one of his closest friends by the time he reached his home town. The journey was lengthened by political turmoil.

These losses propelled Augustine into a deeper, more vigorous commitment. He established a lay ascetic community in Thagaste to spend time in prayer and the study of the Scriptures with his friends.

Church Ruins Annaba (formerly Hippo)

Augustine traveled to Hippo in 391 to see about setting up a monastery in the area. His reputation went before him. The story goes that Bishop Valerius put aside his prepared sermon and preached on the urgent need for priests in Hippo when he saw the renowned layman in church one Sunday.

The crowd stared at Augustine. They pushed him forward for ordination. Augustine was made a priest against his will. The laity thought that his tears of frustration were due to his wanting to be a bishop rather than priest. They assured him that good things come to those who wait.

Neo-Punic from Tunisia

Valerius spoke no Punic. It was the local language from Phoenician sources. He quickly handed over teaching and preaching duties to his new priest. Augustine spoke the local language fluently. Augustine became bishop of Hippo within five years after Valerius died.

Dispute with Fortunatus
Church of St. Augustine
San Gimignano, Italy

Guarding the church from internal and external challenges topped the new bishop's agenda. The church in North Africa was in turmoil. Though Manichaeism was already on its way out, it still had a sizable following.

Augustine knew its strengths and weaknesses. He debated Fortunatus, a former schoolmate from Carthage and a leading Manichaean at the public baths. The bishop argued against the errors in the doctrine. Fortunatus left town.

Dispute with the Donatists

Donatism was more difficult to handle. It was a schismatic and separatist North African movement in the church. The Roman governor of North Africa had been lenient to the large Christian minority during his rule through the persecutions. 

“Traditors” is the root word for traitors.

He was satisfied when Christians handed over their scriptures as a token repudiation of their faith. Christians who did so were called traditors or “those who handed things over” by their critics. The critics were mainly from the lower class.

The Donatists were rigorists like the third century Novatianists. They held that the church must be a church of “saints”, not “sinners.” Sacraments administered by traditors were invalid.

No one without a past.


Donatists believed the Catholic Church had been compromised and that catholic leaders had betrayed the church during earlier persecutions. Augustine argued that catholicism was the valid continuation of the apostolic church.

He wrote scathingly, "The clouds roll with thunder, that the house of the Lord shall be built throughout the earth; and these frogs sit in their marsh and croak 'We are the only Christians!' "

None Righteous
Romans 3:10

The controversy came to a head as the imperial commissioner convened a debate in Carthage in 411 to decide the dispute. The commission had been appointed by Pope Militiades. Augustine's rhetoric refuted the Donatist doctrine. The commissioner pronounced against the group.

No Sin
1 John 1:8

The Donatists were repressed along with the Circumcellions. They condemned property and slavery. They advocated free love, canceling debt and freeing slaves.

The term "Circumcellions" was coined by others, based on "circum cellas euntes". They “go around units” because "they roved about among the peasants, living on those they sought to indoctrinate."

The condemnation of Donatism did not produce a time of rejoicing for the church. The year before the Carthage conference, the barbarian general Alaric and his troops sacked Rome.

Many upper-class Romans fled for their lives to North Africa. It was one of the few safe havens left in the empire. Augustine was given a new challenge. He wrote a defense for Christianity against claims that it had caused the empire's downfall by turning eyes away from Roman gods.

City of God

Augustine's response to the criticism came in “The City of God.” The work included 22 volumes. It took over 12 years to write. He argued that Rome was punished for past sins, not new faith.

His neo-Platonism provided a bridge to monotheism, but the convictions regarding the corruption of human nature and 'just war' allowed for the perpetuation of the fatalism that was so reflective of the polytheistic Roman order.

His lifelong obsession with original sin was fleshed out. His work formed the basis for the medieval mind. "Mankind is divided into two sorts," he wrote. "Such as live according to man, and such as live according to God. These we call the two cities… The Heavenly City outshines Rome. There, instead of victory, is truth."

Sin City

Pelagianism was another front Augustine had to fight to defend Christianity. Pelagius was an Irish monk. He gained popularity just as the Donatist controversy ended. He rejected the idea of original sin. He insisted instead that the tendency to sin is humankind's own free choice.

Jerome and Augustine saw Pelagianism as the ‘heresy of Pythagoras and Zeno.’ It amounted to the act of saying that slavery was not slavery. It was the ‘sin’ that had justified the overthrow of Babylon by Cyrus and the Achaemenid Persians.

Divine grace was not seen as necessary to do the will of God. The church excommunicated Pelagius in 417, but his banner was carried on by young Julian of Eclanum.

Julian took potshots at Augustine's character as well as his theology. He argued that Augustine and his other low-class African friends had taken over Roman Christianity. Augustine argued with the former bishop for the last ten years of his life.

Vandal Invasion

The Vandals invaded North Africa in the summer of 429. They met almost no resistance along the way. Hippo was one of the few fortified cities. It was overwhelmed with refugees.

The 76-year-old Augustine died in the third month of the siege. He was not killed by an arrow. He died from a fever.

His writings survived the Vandal takeover miraculously. His theology became one of the main pillars on which the church of the next 1,000 years was built.

And the Son

Some of his teachings have been disputed in the East. Theologians such as John Romanides have questioned his assertion regarding the degree of depravity in human nature and the Neo-Platonic argument regarding the names of God.

Theologians like Georges Florovsky in the Eastern Orthodox Church have shown significant appropriation of his writings.  The most controversial doctrine surrounding his name is the fililoque clause.

The clause regarding the procession of the Spirit added “from the Son” to the Nicene Creed. This clause has been rejected by the Orthodox Church.

Predestined to Original Sin?

Other disputed teachings include his views on original sin, the doctrine of grace and predestination.  Though considered to be mistaken on some points, he is still considered a saint.

He has even influenced Eastern Church Fathers like Gregory Palamas. Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith" according to his contemporary Jerome.



Lectionary Augustine of Hippo
wiki Augustine of Hippo
Christianity Today: Theologian Augustine
IEP Philosopher Augustine
Augustinian Augustine
Manichaeism
Persian Religion

Sunday, August 25, 2019

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9.1.19
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When September observes the death of August
the heat of day starts to diminish for us.

Nature remembers the value of labor.
Vegetable harvest is sold to savor.

Summer has moved closer to Fall. 
Light has decreased some from the solstice call.

The wind blows cool to calm the heat.
People find ways to stay off the street.

The bee still dances from flower to flower
to drink the golden glow of particulate power.

The comb is a home
to many a drone.

This model of society is a recognized monarchy.
The natural government has a strong hierarchy.
The hierarchy frames the strength for society.

There is order, stability and interest for production.
The utility of purpose acts as a reduction.

The reduction of wasted time and effort is the result.
The production of a tasteful product reduces tumult.

I am the sole unbusy thing.
My watching doesn't make honey, build or sing.

The hive is the superorganism.
The community is a form of swarming formalism 

Observers open the chambers hunting for the queen.
Is she eating honey, laying eggs or avoiding being seen?

Love fulfilled is chance imbibed. 
The dance circumscribed 
is the eternal flow of time in the hive.

Darkness is welcome even without rain.
The clouds spell relief from the heat as pain.

The earth waits with patience for the golden guest of ray.
The brilliance is released to sing of angelic play.

This voice of gold has called me out there,
outside the window to receive the soft stare.

The uncontested summer played plainly in the air.
Your love looked as simple as that purest of pears
that you picked for me with the greatest of care.

The pearskin’s fleck and trace
was as smooth as any human grace.

It gave the power to break the attack
that held us back from what we lack.

You were brought into a plentiful land
to enjoy its fruit and to make it grand.

The prophets prophesied by the official deposit
then went after things that do not profit.

People changed their glory
for the deception of the liberal media story.

The fountain of living water has been forsaken.
Faith in God has been given away or taken.

That barrier that held us back
was best known to our zodiac
as the curse of the megalomaniac.

The “fear” most of us defined
was a product of the mind. 

Those who conquered this great foe
weren't called heroes.  

The feeling was brave
for it seemed unafraid. 

The fear was not ejected.
It was actually extended
that courage could be defended.

Corporations probed households to increase their prices.
The prices shrieked MORE despite the height of their highness.

The veil of light in day hid the sky seen at night.
The memory of the hive was inscribed in the light
of mind's sight.


Industry sat in the shell of defense.
We built benefit to protect ourselves from menace.

The world was all that was the case.
The Dutch republic decided to give monarchy chase.

The seventeenth century was the frame.
The slave trade became the insane part of the game.

Otherwise, Dutch art became world reknowned.
It celebrated life as it was found.

Sea travel became more frequent.
The ships increased risk with the increase in sequence.

Large waves due to storms had a regularity in their swell.
The up and down was large, but it was manageable.

The rogue wave that was thought to have been a fiction
was met more often in the sailor predeliction for prediction.

The ocean south of Africa's Cape of Good Hope
was likely to make the seasoned sailor feel like  a dope.

The monster wave was formed by different factors.
They came together when it was wished that it hadn't mattered.

Crosswinds can push the water waves into a higher swell
when they converge in diagonals in the currents that propel.

Ocean currents also created a rogue.
The water conjoined as the waves arose.

The result was a monster twice the size of normal.
This wave could break your boat as if it were paranormal.

I heard the unfamiliar voice say,
"I eased his burden along the way."

I answered you from the secret place of thunder.
You were rescued when you thought you had made a fatal blunder.

The bitter bite of storm
had threatened to take you from your normal forms.

The calm waters appeared to be made from luck
after the storm had tossed the ship around like a rubber duck
in a tub of foamy bubbles to remove your nasty funk. 

Moxibusted mugwort was worth more than gold
when the sailor felt that his body had been told
that it had been mugged, drugged, thugged and rolled.

We confront death while we live
that salvation may be that which gives
us life as the win.

It is energy for the body 
that makes it feel alive or godly.

Time for rest is given as a form of freedom
that the body may be forgiven for being driven as needed 
in season with or without reason.

Beauty is a state of mind in elegance
that is refined with the practice of intelligence.

Let love be mutual. 
Functional relationship has to be usual.

Do not neglect to show kindness to the stranger.
Some have entertained angels that delivered them from danger.

Cool black night had crept in through the forest.
The shadows shrunk as the darkness became enormous. 


L'Auberge (The Inn) de Sedona, AZ

The shy moon cast little light between the stones upon the river.
The river of stars reached across forever to cause a shiver.


Milky Way

The artist pulled back to look at the canvas.
Certain strokes needed more art as exacted by practice.

The musician cast a wary eye out the window.
The rest was a pest that wanted to be known as wind blown.

The ravine was parched by the heat of the day.
The porch held some souls without much to say.

The black leather jackets were open all the way.
Whatever the color, the wooden house looked grey.

The hi-fi made "Angels Never Die" echo through the trees.
The memory of the highway played along with the breeze.

The Harley hog road by fields, gardens and towns.
Nomadic soul drowned amidst the domestic sounds.

The starving black angel hid in human disguise
with dimensionless being by American design. 

A solemn charge was laid upon our gift
as we had come from the land of misery for this.

We are born to suffer
the power of the other.

Sit down and breathe
the breath that you need.

The breath relaxes tension
with attention for descension.

Aim high and plan low.
Constant effort will help you grow.
A mockingbird chased a squirrel with the confidence of flight. 
The squirrel had to scramble as the bird left sight.

Choice in chance is a social gambit
but there are times when things work as you plan it.

Work like the sun 
to see what you've done.

Don't take poison to see if the antidote works.
If it doesn't, your body will suffer pain or worse.

Realize birth in the boundless moment. 
The light is delight in what power has chosen. 

The celestial entourage shines in paradise.
The divine device resides inside your surprise.

Shine in your heaven.
The news is on at seven.

Give the past its place. 
The present shapes your face. 

The future will meet you further in space 
with a place for you in grace. 

Forget the flash in which you exist.
The world is your map should you persist. 
If there was a time when you had to resist,
it went by like a gift without a twist.

This level of gambling is high stakes.
Preserve your benefit with what is right about what it takes.

The logic of reason in constitutional life
is a measure that proves progression against strife.

You are the other already. 
You took the Chevy to the levy.

It may sound heavy, 
but eternity is steady.

It's a lasting paradigm.
You are the heavy in eternal time. 
Become one with your story. Revel with your rhyme.

Tell us who you are with every step. 
We vanish inevitably, only when inept. 

You remain in the experience you have kept. 
You were hewn in dreams as you slept.

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
drifts past with the mingled measure.

I don't know how to pray to make pain pass.
I know how to fall down on my knees in the soft grass
to press the earth with my temple sideways cast. 

It is a miracle of rare device.
My heart becomes warm where there had been ice. 
What do you plan to do with your wild and precious life?

Sing with joy as your strength.
Let the divine experience of being human guide you at length.

-------------------

81 Exultate Deo
Exult in God

1 Sing with joy to God our strength
and raise a loud shout to the God of Jacob.
2 Raise a song and sound the timbrel,
the merry harp, and the lyre.
3 Blow the ram's-horn at the new moon,
and at the full moon, the day of our feast.
4 For this is a statute for Israel,
a law of the God of Jacob.
5 He laid it as a solemn charge upon Joseph,
when he came out of the land of Egypt.
6 I heard an unfamiliar voice saying,
"I eased his shoulder from the burden;
his hands were set free from bearing the load."
7 You called on me in trouble, and I saved you;
I answered you from the secret place of thunder
and tested you at the waters of Meribah.
8 Hear, O my people, and I will admonish you:
O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
9 There shall be no strange god among you;
you shall not worship a foreign god.
10 I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt and said,
"Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it."
11 And yet my people did not hear my voice,
and Israel would not obey me.
12 So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their hearts,
to follow their own devices.
13 Oh, that my people would listen to me!
that Israel would walk in my ways!
14 I should soon subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes.
15 Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him,
and their punishment would last for ever.
16 But Israel would I feed with the finest wheat
and satisfy him with honey from the rock.

----------------------

Jeremiah 2:7-13

I brought you into a plentiful land
to eat its fruits and its good things.
When you entered you defiled the country
and made my heritage an abomination.

The priest did not say, 'Where is the LORD?'
Those who handle the law did not know me.
The rulers transgressed against me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal
and went after things that do not profit.

Once more I accuse you, says the LORD.
I accuse your children's children.
Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and look.
Send to Kedar and examine with care.
See if there has ever been such a thing.

Has a nation changed its gods
even though they are no gods?
My people have changed their glory
for something that does not profit.

My people have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water.
They dug out cisterns that cracked
and can hold no water.

----------------------

You were brought into a plentiful land
to enjoy its fruit and to make it grand.

The prophets prophesied by the official deposit
then went after things that do not profit.

People changed their glory
for the deception of the liberal media story.

The fountain of living water has been forsaken.
Faith in God has been given away or taken.

================

Hebrews 13:1-2

Let love be mutual. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers. Some have entertained angels without knowing it.

----------------------

Let love be mutual.
Functional relationship has to be usual.

Do not neglect to show kindness to the stranger.
Some have entertained angels that delivered them from danger.

================

Luke 14:10-11

Jesus said, 'When you are invited to a banquet, go and sit at the lowest place. When your host comes, he may say to you, "Friend, move up higher." Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.

'Those who exalt themselves will be humbled. Those who humble themselves will be exalted.'

----------------------

Aim high and plan low.
Constant effort will help you grow.

Choice in chance is a social gambit
but there are times when things work as you plan it.

================

Stanley Cavell was subtle in the way he addressed the idea of eternal return in the re-construction of classical consciousness.

If the Greek thought was tainted with obsession for technical brilliance in individual exposition and the Roman polytheistic variant was more concerned with the public proof of personal expertise, then what is the goal for philosophy in monotheistic culture?

Where does personal perspective fit into the grand scheme of cultural development? How does the comedy of re-marriage influence the view of how things change with a different partner? Is it possible to achieve progress in the recurrence of cyclical events?

Are we condemned with Nietzsche to rant at the errors of the Christian religion as the weakness of western society? The logical positivists attempted to rule out metaphysical thought as an absurdity for public discourse.

The broad reach of the philosophy of language has sought to limit debate to areas of concern that can be resolved in the course of human knowledge. It is a reasonable limitation when socialist or populist economic theory isn’t seeking to destroy opposition to the demands of the liberal political position. 

Liberals want government to create problems that only their political position can refuse to resolve in order to elevate their own benefit to a superior place in society.

Cavell turned to the aesthetics of film with ordinary language philosophy to look for ways to deal with the problem of recurrence.

Re-marriage and Change
http://img.picturequotes.com/2/314/313360/can-human-beings-change-the-humor-and-the-sadness-of-remarriage-comedies-can-be-said-to-result-from-quote-1.jpg

Stanley Cavell
b. 9.1.1926 Atlanta, Georgia
d. 6.19.2018 Boston, Massachusetts

Stanley Louis Cavell was an American philosopher who taught at Harvard University for much of his life. He made statements in the fields of ethics, aesthetics and ordinary language philosophy.

He produced influential works on Wittgenstein, Austin, Emerson, Thoreau and Heidegger. Much of his expression was published as an interpreter. His work is characterized by its conversational tone and frequent literary references. He is noted for having included film and literary study in philosophical inquiry.

I remember Stanley Cavell for his recommendation to use ordinary language in philosophy, but his use of film for commentary set him apart from the philosophers who preceded him.

Atlanta

Atlanta is situated among the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It  straddles the Eastern Continental Divide. The rainwater that falls on the south and east side of the divide flows into the Atlantic Ocean. The rainwater on the north and west side flows into the Gulf of Mexico. It has one of the highest elevations among major cities east of the Mississippi River.

It is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. The estimated population in 2018 was under 500,000. The larger metropolitan area holds 5.9 million people. It is the ninth-largest metropolitan area in the nation.

Atlanta was originally founded as the end of the line for a major state-sponsored railroad. It soon became the convergence point between multiple railroads with rapid expansion. Further growth was spurred. The city's name was derived from that of the Western and Atlantic Railroad's local depot.

The city was almost entirely burned to the ground during the American Civil War in  General William T. Sherman's famous March to the Sea. The city rose from its ashes and quickly became a national center of commerce and the unofficial capital of the "New South".

It experienced a period of unprecedented growth during the first decades of the 20th century. The population tripled as the city limits expanded to include nearby streetcar suburbs in three decades.

The city's skyline emerged with the construction of the Equitable, Flatiron, Empire and Candler buildings. Sweet Auburn emerged as a center of black commerce.

The period was also marked by strife and tragedy. Increased racial tensions led to the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906. The violence left at least 27 people dead and over 70 injured.

Leo Frank, a Jewish-American factory superintendent, was convicted of the murder of a 13-year-old girl in a highly publicized trial in 1913. He was hanged in Marietta by a lynch mob after having his death sentence commuted in 1915. The event deeply impacted the Jewish community in Atlanta and across the country.

The city became a major organizing center of the civil rights movement with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph David Abernathy during the 1950's and 60's.

Stanley Cavell

Stanley Louis Goldstein was born to Jewish immigrants in Atlanta on September 1, 1926. His mother, Fannie (nee Segal) was a locally renowned pianist. She trained him in music from his early years. His father, Irving, had a series of jewelry and other small shops.

The family moved from Atlanta to Sacramento, California and back again several times when he was young. His father was chasing economic stability during the Depression.

Stanley was a gifted student. He played lead alto saxophone as the youngest member of a black jazz band in Sacramento when he was an adolescent. He graduated from high school in Sacramento in 1943.

He changed his name to Cavell. “Goldstein” had been assigned to his father, an immigrant from Poland, when he arrived in the United States. “Cavell” was a variant on the family’s original Polish name.

He attempted to enlist in the military. He was rejected because of ear damage he had suffered when he was struck by a car at age 6. He tried to bluff his way through. He was eager to serve due to his family roots. He lied about his age and forged a doctor's note about his ear.  The entry physician took a look at his ear and sent him home.

He enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley and studied music with his friend, Bob Thompson. He graduated in 1947. He studied composition at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City for a short time. He discovered that it wasn't his vocation.

He entered graduate school at UCLA to study philosophy, then transferred to Harvard. The influence of J.L. Austin "knocked him off his horse" as a student. Austin was a British philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy. He is perhaps best known for developing the theory of speech acts.

Austin pointed out that we use language to do things as well as to assert things. The utterance of a statement like "I promise to do so-and-so" is best understood as doing something. It is the act of making a promise. This speech is more significant as an act than making an assertion about anything.

He made a significant challenge to the philosophy of language with his theory of speech acts. It went beyond the analysis of morphological sentence forms that function to do what they name.

Utterance is the doing of something with words and signs. It challenges the metaphysics that would posit denotative, propositional assertion as the essence of language.

Cavell was awarded a Junior Fellowship at the Harvard Society of Fellows in 1954. He became an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956 before the completion of his Ph.D.

Cavell's daughter by his first wife (Marcia), Rachel Lee Cavell, was born in 1957. His marriage to Marcia ended in divorce in 1961.

He was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey from 1962-63. He befriended the British philosopher Bernard Williams there.

Williams was a visiting professor at Princeton University in 1963. He was an English moral philosopher. He is known for his efforts to reorient the study of moral philosophy to psychology, history and in particular to the Greeks.

Cavell returned to the Harvard Philosophy Department where he became the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value in 1963.

He joined a group of graduate students who taught at Tougaloo College in the summer of 1964. Tougaloo was a historically black college in Mississippi. The group organized a volunteer drive to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi.

This was part of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's. The claim that white racism divided and oppressed black people was used as the organizational motivation.

He and Cathleen (Cohen) were married in 1967.

Cavell was helped by his colleague John Rawls  to draft language with a group of African American students for a vote by the faculty that established the Department of African and African-American Studies at Harvard.

Rawls is known for his moral position against ultilitarian political philosophy. He argued that the 'veil of ignorance' kept people from fairness in the theory of justice. He basically asserted that there is no such thing as institutional racism from the minority group.

White racism is defined as a mechanism of the majority group. This is the political mechanism that has to be countered socially for justice. The theory institutes racism against the majority group with stories about it in the liberal media.

Cavell's first son Benjamin was born in 1976.

Prof. Cavell interacted with the continental group even though he was trained in the Anglo-American analytic tradition. He wrote about  Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin and Martin Heidegger, as well as on the American transcendentalists Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He interpreted Wittgenstein in a fashion known as the New Wittgenstein.

The New Wittgenstein interpretation is a view that the earlier Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the later Investigations are actually in less opposition to each other than usually understood. This view is in conflict with the interpretation of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus advocated by the logical positivists associated with the Vienna Circle.

A prominent view set out in the Tractatus is the picture theory of language. The picture theory is an explanation of the capacity of language and thought to represent the world. Wittgenstein was largely concerned with the way propositions function as representations although something need not be a proposition to represent something in the world.

Propositions can "picture" the world as being a certain way. The picture can accurately represent it either truly or falsely. Pictures have what Wittgenstein calls Form der Abbildung or pictorial form which they share with what they depict. This means that all the logically possible arrangements of the pictorial elements in the picture correspond to the possibilities of arranging the things which they depict in reality.

Pictures cannot represent their own logical form. They cannot say what they have in common with reality. They can only show it.

This conception of representation as picturing also allows him to derive two striking claims. No proposition can be known a priori. There is only logical necessity. If a proposition pictures a state of affairs in virtue of being a picture in logical space, then a non-logical or metaphysical "necessary truth" would be a state of affairs which is satisfied by any possible arrangement of objects.

This means that the would-be necessary proposition would not depict anything as being so. It will be true no matter what the world is actually like. If that's the case, then the proposition cannot say anything about the world or describe any fact in it. It would not be correlated with any particular state of affairs. It is like a tautology insofar as it lacks sense.

When a proposition is thought or expressed according to the logical positivists, the proposition represents reality (truly or falsely) by virtue of sharing some features with that reality in common.

Those features themselves are something Wittgenstein claimed we could not say anything about.
We cannot describe the relationship that pictures bear to what they depict, but only show it via fact stating propositions.

We cannot say that there is a correspondence between language and reality. The correspondence itself can only be shown since our language is not capable of describing its own logical structure. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

The Tractatus caught the attention of the philosophers of the Vienna Circle (1921–1933). The interest of Rudolf Carnap and Moritz Schlick was especially piqued. Schlick eventually convinced Wittgenstein to meet with members of the circle to discuss the Tractatus when he returned to Vienna.

The positivists argued that the last few passages, including Proposition 7, are confused. Carnap hailed the book as containing important insights, but encouraged people to ignore the concluding sentences.

Proposition 7 ends the book with the statement "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Wittgenstein told Schlick that he couldn't imagine how Carnap had missed the point of the work.

The New Wittgenstein argues that he did not provide a theoretical account of language that relegates ethics and philosophy to a mystical realm of the unsayable. The purpose for the Tractatus is to make the reader aware of the logic of our language. The reader is presented with a model for reason.

Cavell's writing incorporates autobiographical elements concerning how his movement within the ideas of Wittgenstein, Austin, Heidigger, Thoreau and Emerson influenced his own thought in that it impacted spheres in the arts and humanities beyond the technical study of philosophy.

Cavell established his distinct philosophical identity with Must We Mean What We Say? (1969). It addresses topics such as language use, metaphor, skepticism, tragedy and literary interpretation from the point of view of ordinary language philosophy.

One of the essays discusses Søren Kierkegaard's work on revelation and authority. The Book on Adler was written by Kierkegaard  about pastor Adolph Peter Adler. He had claimed to have received a revelation.

Adler was subsequently dismissed from his pastor duties after some questionable acts. He later restated that his was the work of genius as opposed to revelation. The rest of the work focuses on the concept of authority and how it relates to Adler's situation.

Kierkegaard was against claims of received revelation without due consideration. Cavell described the situation is an effort to help re-introduce the book to modern philosophical readers.

Modern Media

Cavell looks at photography and film in The World Viewed (1971). He also covers modernism in art and the nature of media. He mentions the influence of art critic Michael Fried's writing on his work. The philosophy of film is now a firmly established sub-field of contemporary in aesthetics.

Aesthetics has always had a concern not just with art in general but with specific art forms. Aristotle's Poetics was devoted to explaining the nature of Greek tragedy.

Philosophers have sought to explain the specific characteristics of each significant art form of their culture since controversy in the culture has stimulated a reason to understand the conflict.

Plato had banished poets from his ideal city in The Republic. There has been a thread of hostility towards the arts that has been endemic to anti-aesthetic thought.

Philosophy and the various art forms were perceived to be competing sources of knowledge and belief. Those who sought to maintain the exclusivity of their claim to truth have dismissed the arts as poor pretenders to the title of purveyors of truth.

Philosophers of film have generally opposed this view. Film is a source of knowledge. The media is a potential contributor to philosophy itself. This view was forcefully articulated by Cavell. His interest in the philosophy of film helped spark the field's development.

The meaning of film is inherently concerned with skepticism and the different ways that it can be overcome. He has argued that film shares this concern with philosophy and can even provide philosophic insights of its own in a number of his books and articles.

Cavell described his experience of seven prominent Hollywood comedies: The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Adam’s Rib and The Awful Truth in Pursuits of Happiness (1981).

He argued that these films from the years 1934–1949 formed a part of what he called the genre of "The Comedy of Remarriage." He found in them great philosophical, moral and indeed political significance.

He traced the history of moral perfectionism in the Cities of Words (2004). This was a mode of moral thinking that spanned the history of Western philosophy and literature. He used Emerson to outline the concept. The book suggested a way we might want to understand philosophy, literature and film as preoccupied with features of perfectionism.

He helped found the Harvard Film Archive along with the documentary filmmaker Robert Gardner to preserve and present the history of film.

Cavell is perhaps best known for his book, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (1979). It formed the centerpiece of his work. Its origins were investigated in his doctoral dissertation.

His second son David was born in 1984.

He remained on the Harvard faculty until his retirement in 1997. He taught courses at Yale University and the University of Chicago after he retired. He also held the Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam in 1998.

Cavell died in Boston, Massachusetts of heart failure on June 19, 2018 at the age of 91. He was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery among other Boston brahmins.

Stanley Cavell
S. 斯坦利卡维尔
T. 斯坦利卡維爾

斯 Si       this                        斯 shi    this             Su  す       ス            Seu   스  s         
坦 tan    level                       坦  tan    level          tan  たん  タン         taen  탠  tan                       
利  li       to benefit               利  ri      profit         ri     り-      リ-          li      리  lee           
卡 Ka      card                       卡 ka     card            Ka    か      カ           Ka     카   car       
维 wei   to preserve               維 i        tie              be   べ      ベ             bel    벨   bell                 
尔 er       you                         爾  ji      you             ru    る      ル                                         

------------------------

This level of gambling is high stakes.
Preserve your benefit with what is right about what it takes.

The logic of reason in constitutional life
is a measure that proves progression against strife.

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wiki Stanley Cavell
wiki Atlanta
wiki Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Obituary NYT
Obituary WP
IEP Ordinary Language Philosophy
wiki New Wittgenstein
SEP Philosophy of Film
Abstract for 'Film Philosophy' Ednbrgh Prss