Mere Comments discussion of the death penalty

initiated by Dr. Podles

Duties Before Rights

Duties Before Rights


Interview With Director of Van Thuan Observatory

VERONA, Italy, DEC. 15, 2006 (Zenit.org).- By promoting a culture of rights without first promoting a culture of duties, society creates a "babel" of rights in which the strong prevail over the weak, says the director the Van Thuan Observatory.

Stefano Fontana, who heads the institute that promotes the social doctrine of the Church, is also the author of "Per una politica dei doveri dopo il fallimento della stagione dei diritti" (For a Politics of Duties After the Failure of the Season of Rights), published in Italian by Cantagalli of Siena.

In this interview, which also appears on the Web page of the observatory, the author explains why it is necessary for a society to not only promote duties, but to make them a priority.

Q: Two questions immediately come to mind when reading the title of your book. The first is: Has the season of rights failed already? Are we still far from the complete fulfillment of human rights?

Fontanta: It is true that many people in the world do not enjoy even the most basic human rights. But I wonder: Isn't this because other people in the world have sped up the race for the state of the art rights to the point that they have transformed all their desires into rights?

Q: But the Church, and especially Pope John Paul II, has been a leading advocate for human rights for a very long time.

Fontana: The question is not to deny rights, in fact the opposite is true. The point is that we have to understand that without duties rights spiral upon themselves, they annul each other. In the end, the babel of rights leads to the triumph of the right of the strongest. The rights themselves, in order to be truly such, must accept the priority of duty over them. This is the right way to protect rights and the Church has always done that.

Q: Why talk about the priority of duty? Isn't it enough to reaffirm the complementarity between duties and rights?

Fontana: Any right has a corresponding duty and vice versa, this is absolutely true but it is not sufficient. It is easy, in fact, to artificially fabricate a duty that can be used as a justification for a new right. In Italy, the right to abortion is recognized by a law that starts from the duty to nurture life. The right to euthanasia is based on the duty to relieve suffering. The complementarity between rights and duties is true but is susceptible to ideological manipulation. We really have to go back to the priority of duty.

Q: And this priority of duties would be grounded on what?

Fontana: On the priority of receiving and accepting over producing. We do not produce ourselves but we receive and accept ourselves. We do not produce nature but we receive and accept it, we do not produce culture but we receive and accept it. Of course, we also do produce, but on the basis of an original receiving and accepting.

Q: Receiving and accepting implies a duty?

Fontana: Duty is "being available" while a right is "to have the availability of" something. This is why duty does not come from within us but from the outside. Now we have to decide if we are our own masters and the masters of our own being or if we, ourselves, and our own being are entrusted to us as a task. Modern thought holds the first belief and therefore absolutizes rights, I hold the second belief and thus I start from the duties, i.e., from a call, from a task that has been entrusted to us.

Q: It seems to me that the "I" is a rather risky concept: Isn't the "I," i.e., the subject, the place of free creativity? After all, we are who we want to be. We are the architects of our lives.

Fontana: According to the modern notion of consciousness, this is true: the "I" is a pure consciousness that shapes itself as it wishes. However, according to Christian philosophy, from Augustine to Wojtyla, the "I" is not pure consciousness, but is consciousness of being, i.e., it is a subject that becomes aware that it is something that is given to itself. I am first and foremost also a task for myself, I am a duty to myself, I cannot even dispose of myself, as well as of others, as I wish.

Q: In other words, the priority of duty over rights is the response to a call that comes from outside, from transcendence that is?

Fontana: Rights refer to the right to do something. Thus, they refer to having the availability of something. Instead, duty is to be available. Thus, it refers to a dimension that is unavailable to me, which I cannot use but which I must serve. Since it refers to the unavailable, duty always refers to the transcendent. As Dostoevsky said, without God there is nothing a man is bound not do; i.e., there are only rights and not duties.

Q: In the title we see the word "politics." What does politics have to do with duties?

Fontana: Our society is dying from rights. The right to produce man in laboratories and, in general, the right of doing any action is absolutizing technology, and technology alone is deadly. Rights will never put a limit on themselves. Rights are the right to do something; there will always be new things to do and therefore new rights, without any limits. Limits stem from duties. A politics of duties is a politics of sense and of limit.

Q: A politics of duties, where do we start?

Fontana: A politics of duties concerns all social spheres. However, if I were to suggest a starting point, I would say it is the theme of life. It is the first duty we are entrusted with, the first duty that is placed in our hands. When life is denied, all the subsequent duties are weakened and at the end only the rights prevail.

Q: Could you suggest other realms where a politics of duties might be urgent?

Fontana: I think about the fact that we have many universal declarations of rights but none of duties. I think about the fact that no community identity can be created without duties and therefore the dialogue between cultures is extremely difficult. I think about the crisis of citizenship if it does not become an ethical citizenship, i.e., one that is grounded on sharing duties. I think about the many subjects of civil society that would be ready to take on new responsibilities, i.e., duties.

Devopment of Doctrine East and West

Scott Carson's post

Again, thanks to Dr. Liccione.

Ancestral sin and original sin

Ephrem Hugh Bensusan on original sin and ancestral sin

See also his Original Sin in the Eastern Orthodox Confessions and Catechisms and Fr. George Mastrantonis on Ancestral Sin.

Thanks to Dr. Liccione.

Plus, he writes:

An excellent example of the traditional schema for rejecting the Immaculate Conception can be found in the book The Orthodox Veneration of Mary the Birthgiver of God, by St. John Maximovitch, the relevant chapter of which can be found here.

If one aspect of original sin is inheritable corruption of the body, why should the Blessed Mother not be preserved from it? After all, she contributes 1/2 the matter at conception; if God were to purify the matter miraculously, one could make the case that the Blessed Mother is not really a mother at all, just a womb or incubator.

Plato, The Laws

The Internet Classics Archive Laws by Plato
Alfred Edward Taylor's translation
Banjamin Jowett's translation
unknown translation
Perseus: English, Greek

OUP: The Laws of Plato

Other links:
Plato's Laws in the Hands of Aristotle (pdf)

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate

Evolutionary psychology vs... Aristotelian physics. Two alternate explanations of how something is what it is? Is Aristotelian physics committed to a view of efficient causality that precludes neo-Darwinism? I have written on that elsewhere... just some comments.

If the matter is proportioned to form and function, then should we not expect that the body and its tools, including the brain, are hard-wired in a certain way, and differently for the sexes, if being of a certain sex entails a certain role and function within Creation?

Links:
book website; Amazon
Biology vs. the Blank Slate
Edge; interview
Tanner lecture
MIT world
Q&A with Steve Sailer; Pinker's Progress
The Great Debate
Observer review
age-of-the-sage

Master

Used to translate dominus or kurios (and a synonym of lord in this sense).

But also used to translate magister (but not exactly a synonym of teacher).

Which sense is being used to refer to one's teacher? I would think the second. I believe master in the second second is what translates the degree and title conferred upon those who received the appropriate university education in the middle ages and thus had a license to teach.
One is a teacher of some science or skill or art, having 'mastered' it.

It is not the same as being called a master because one is the master of some person. Today in our egalitarian age this meaning of master is unpleasant. I should look up the meaning of si, as in si fu.

Ckhnat has a post on the use of master or lord to refer to one's husband (after the example of Sarah in the OT. This would make me a bit uncomfortable, and seems to me to be an example of illegitimate or sinful patriarchy. A wife is not a slave or maid of the husband. Still, the Church teaches that is a rightful exercise of authority by the husband over the family (as a social unit).

John Finnis critiques Aquinas' account of the husband-wife relationship in his Aquinas, Moral , Political, and Legal Theory, pages 171-5. What would Finnis make of Fr. Check's The Authority of the Husband According to the Magisteruim?

From Christian Order, Karol Wojtyla and the Patriarchal Hierarchy of the Family by G.C. DILSAVER

Edited, 5 April 2007:
Holy Thursday at St. Columkille was a mixed English-Spanish Mass. During the Mass I was thinking of master again, and was look at the Spanish maestro, which seems to be derived from magister. Though the etymology of master is not as obvious to me, I came home to check and see what info was available online. This is what I found at Online Etymology Dictionary:

master (n.)
O.E. mægester "one having control or authority," from L. magister "chief, head, director, teacher" (cf. O.Fr. maistre, Fr. maître, It. maestro, Ger. Meister), infl. in M.E. by O.Fr. maistre, from L. magister, contrastive adj. from magis (adv.) "more," itself a comp. of magnus "great." Meaning "original of a recording" is from 1904. In academic senses (from M.L. magister) it is attested from 1380s, originally a degree conveying authority to teach in the universities. The verb is attested from c.1225.

I don't think Master should be used as a synonym for Lord (Kurios, Dominus), but if the etymology dictionary is correct, it gained the sense of "one having control or authority" rather early.

Access from BC?

The following work when accessed from BC.

An article by Fr. Cessario:
http://sce.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/3/305

A review of Fr. Sherwin's book By Knowledge and by Love by Daniel Westberg.
http://sce.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/19/3/426

an article about autonomy
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0384-9694.00072

Solomon's prayer

Liber Sapientiae, IX

1 “ Deus patrum meorum et Domine misericordiae,
qui fecisti omnia verbo tuo
2 et sapientia tua constituisti hominem,
ut dominaretur creaturis, quae a te factae sunt,
3 et disponeret orbem terrarum in sanctitate et iustitia
et in directione cordis iudicium iudicaret,
4 da mihi sedium tuarum assistricem sapientiam
et noli me reprobare a pueris tuis,
5 quoniam servus tuus sum ego et filius ancillae tuae,
homo infirmus et exigui temporis
et minor ad intellectum iudicii et legum.
6 Nam, et si quis erit consummatus inter filios hominum,
si ab illo abfuerit sapientia tua, in nihilum computabitur.
7 Tu elegisti me regem populo tuo
et iudicem filiorum tuorum et filiarum;
8 dixisti me aedificare templum in monte sancto tuo
et in civitate habitationis tuae altare,
similitudinem tabernaculi sancti,
quod praeparasti ab initio.
9 Et tecum sapientia, quae novit opera tua,
quae et affuit tunc, cum orbem terrarum faceres,
et sciebat quid esset placitum in oculis tuis
et quid directum in praeceptis tuis.
10 Emitte illam de caelis sanctis tuis
et a sede magnitudinis tuae mitte illam,
ut mecum sit et mecum laboret,
ut sciam quid acceptum sit apud te.
11 Scit enim illa omnia et intellegit
et deducet me in operibus meis sobrie
et custodiet me in sua gloria.
12 Et erunt accepta opera mea,
et diiudicabo populum tuum iuste
et ero dignus sedium patris mei.
13 Quis enim hominum poterit scire consilium Dei?
Aut quis poterit cogitare quid velit Dominus?
14 Cogitationes enim mortalium timidae,
et incertae providentiae nostrae:
15 corpus enim, quod corrumpitur, aggravat animam,
et terrena inhabitatio deprimit sensum multa cogitantem.
16 Et difficile conicimus, quae in terra sunt,
et, quae in prospectu sunt, invenimus cum labore;
quae autem in caelis sunt, quis investigabit?
17 Consilium autem tuum quis sciet,
nisi tu dederis sapientiam
et miseris spiritum sanctum tuum de altissimis?
18 Et sic correctae sunt semitae eorum, qui sunt in terris;
et, quae tibi placent, didicerunt homines
et salvati per sapientiam sunt ”.

"Principles of Doing Philosophy"

Never engage someone in a discussion of someone else's thought, even if he believes in it wholeheartedly.

1. He may be misunderstanding or misrepresenting what the author/text is saying. An example: a discussion last week of how AM defines modernity.

2. In a dialogue, one is concerned not with what some accepted authority teaches, but whether that teaching is true or not. So if the other person says, "I believe that x's teaching on y is true," the reply is to see whether this teaching has sufficient support or not, not whether he is reporting the teaching correctly because presumably he believes in this teaching, regardless of whether it is actually that of the author or not.

If it turns out that he's just a yes-man, then a different approach must be taken.

3. This principle is even more important if you yourself are not familiar with the texts or authors to which he refers. So a common basis for dialogue must be sought elsewhere--our knowledge of reality, which should be the primarily resource anyway.

Some articles by Fr. John Behr

Fr. John Behr is a member of the faculty at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary.

The Trinitarian Being of the Church
The Paschal Foundation of Christian Theology
Orthodoxy

Fr. Oliver Herbel makes references to Fr. Behr in the discussion of St. Maximos and the filioque at Energetic Procession.

(SVS photo gallery)

Worker's paradise?

Today I read an article on the Jesuit Reductions of South America, and posted it over at The New Beginning. Was the evangelization of the Guaraní halted with the destruction of these Jesuit missions? How many Guaraní today are Catholic? How much of the current state of S. American countries is due to the injustices perpetuated by those with power? How great of an impediment to evangelization has been created by these so-called "Catholics"? Did the Church fail to excommunicate when it should have, even at the risk of persecution? And what have the liberal revolutionaries done to improve the situation for the poor? (How anti-Church and anti-clerical were they?)

Should the Reductions be considered to have been truly self-sufficient polities? What sort of crops did they cultivate for food? Did they domesticate animals? What can the transition of these hunter-gatherers to agriculture teach us about limiting the ecological footprint of our communities? While their adoption of European culture (especially music) as their own is well-known, is this an example of cultural imperialism? Or is it the case that the Guaraní found European music to be truly beautiful?

The Reductions were an example of communes--property was owned in common, I believe--though it is not clear to me if there was no private property whatsoever. Were they Communist? Not at all--they were Christian in inspiration. I do not know if the Guaraní owned things in common as hunter-gatherers, and if this was something they carried over into the Reductions, or if it was introduced by the Jesuits. Who exercised leadership in the Reductions? The Jesuits? The Guaraní? A select group among the Guaraní? The Jesuits and the Guaraní jointly? I should see if there are any good histories that would provide the answers to these sorts of questions.

Was this sad event an example of just polities being destroyed by empire? The oppression of the peaceful and relatively powerless by the powerful and the rich?

Tonight I checked out Fr. Augustine Thompson's Cities of God from O'Neill. I will be looking to the Italian city-states to see what sort of lessons can be drawn for the science of politics. Does the conversion of peoples lead to the formation of healthier political communities? And if so, why did it not happen, especially with the Germanic tribes? How does one account for the rise of monarchies and the feudal system? Would not tribes be more likely to have some sort of democratic government? Or did the Germanic tribes grow too big in size for this to be practically possible? Was the feudal system rooted in the customs proper to tribal alliances/subordination?
When did the Germanic tribes start practicing agriculture? Were there different social strata/classes within the tribes?

So many questions for me to find answers to...

St. Francis de Sales, on the natural love of God

See his Treatise on the Love of God


CHAPTER XVI. THAT WE HAVE A NATURAL INCLINATION TO LOVE GOD ABOVE ALL THINGS.

CHAPTER XVII. THAT WE HAVE NOT NATURALLY THE POWER TO LOVE GOD ABOVE ALL THINGS.

CHAPTER XVIII. THAT THE NATURAL INCLINATION WHICH WE HAVE TO LOVE GOD IS NOT USELESS.

Cicero, the cardinal virtues?

again, from the De Officiis

{15} V.

You see here, Marcus, my son, the very form and as it were the face of Moral Goodness; "and if," as Plato says, "it could be seen with the physical eye, it would awaken a marvellous love of wisdom." But all that is morally right rises from some one of four sources: it is concerned either (1) with the full perception and intelligent development of the true; or (2) with the conservation of organized society, with rendering to every man his due, and with the faithful discharge of obligations assumed; or (3) with the greatness and strength of a noble and invincible spirit; or (4) with the orderliness and moderation of everything that is said and done, wherein consist temperance and self-control. Although these four are connected and interwoven, still it is in each one considered singly that certain definite kinds of moral duties have their origin: in that category, for instance, which was designated first in our division and in which we place wisdom and prudence, belong the search after truth and its discovery; and this is the peculiar {16} province of that virtue. For the more clearly anyone observes the most essential truth in any given case and the more quickly and accurately he can see and explain the reasons for it, the more understanding and wise he is generally esteemed, and justly so. So, then, it is truth that is, as it were, the stuff with which this virtue has to deal and on which it employs itself.

{17} Before the three remaining virtues, on the other hand, is set the task of providing and maintaining those things on which the practical business of life depends so that the relations of man to man in human society may be conserved, and that largeness and nobility of soul may be revealed not only in increasing one's resources and acquiring advantages for one's self and one's family but far more in rising superior to these very things. But orderly behaviour and consistency of demeanor and self-control and the like have their sphere in that department of things in which a certain amount of physical exertion, and not mental activity merely, is required. For if we bring a certain amount of propriety and order into the transactions of daily life, we shall be conserving moral rectitude and moral dignity.

{18} VI.

Now, of the four divisions which we have made of the essential idea of moral goodness, the first, consisting in the knowledge of truth, touches human nature most closely. For we are all attracted and drawn to a zeal for learning and knowing; and we think it glorious to excel therein, while we count it base and immoral to fall into error, to wander from the truth, to be ignorant, to be led astray. In this pursuit, which is both natural and morally right, two errors are to be avoided: first, we must not treat the unknown as known and too readily accept it; and he who wishes to avoid this error (as all should do) will devote both time and attention

{19} to the weighing of evidence. The other error is that some people devote too much industry and too deep study to matters that are obscure and difficult and useless as well. If these errors are successfully avoided, all the labour and pains expended upon problems that are morally right and worth the solving will be fully rewarded. Such a worker in the field of astronomy, for example, was Gaius Sulpicius, of whom we have heard; in mathematics, Sextus Pompey, whom I have known personally; in dialectics, many; in civil law, still more. All these professions are occupied with the search after truth; but to be drawn by study away from active life is contrary to moral duty. For the whole glory of virtue is in activity; activity, however, may often be interrupted, and many opportunities for returning to study are opened. Besides, the working of the mind, which is never at rest, can keep us busy in the pursuit of knowledge even without conscious effort on our part. Moreover, all our thought and mental activity will be devoted either to planning for things that are morally right and that conduce to a good and happy life, or to the pursuits of science and learning. With this we close the discussion of the first source of duty.

{20} VII.

Of the three remaining divisions, the most extensive in its application is the principle by which society and what we may call its "common bonds" are maintained. Of this again there are two divisions — justice, in which is the crowning glory of the virtues and on the basis of which men are called "good men"; and, close akin to justice, charity, which may also be called kindness or generosity. The first office of justice is to keep one man from doing harm to another, unless provoked by wrong; and the next is to lead men to use common possessions for the common interests, private property for their own.

{21} There is, however, no such thing as private ownership established by nature, but property becomes private either through long occupancy (as in the case of those who long ago settled in unoccupied territory) or through conquest (is in the case of those who took it in war) or by due process of law, bargain, or purchase, or by allotment. On this principle the lands of Arpinum are said to belong to the Arpinates, the Tusculan lands to the Tusculans; and similar is the assignment of private property. Therefore, inasmuch as in each case some of those things which by nature had been common property became the property of individuals, each one should retain possession of that which has fallen to his lot; and if anyone appropriates to himself anything beyond that, he will be violating the laws of human society.

{22} But since, as Plato has admirably expressed it, we are not born for ourselves alone, but our country claims a share of our being, and our friends a share; and since, as the Stoics hold, everything that the earth produces is created for man's use; and as men, too, are born for the sake of men, that they may be able mutually to help one another; in this direction we ought to follow Nature as our guide, to contribute to the general good by an interchange of acts of kindness, by giving and receiving, and thus by our skill, our industry, and our talents to cement human society more closely together, man to man.

{23} The foundation of justice, moreover, is good_faith; — that is, truth and fidelity to promises and agreements. And therefore we may follow the Stoics, who diligently investigate the etymology of words; and we may accept their statement that "good faith" is so called because what is promised is "made good," although some may find this derivation/a rather farfetched. There are, on the other hand, two kinds of injustice — the one, on the part of those who inflict wrong, the other on the part of those who, when they can, do not shield from wrong those upon whom it is being inflicted. For he who, under the influence of anger or some other passion, wrongfully assaults another seems, as it were, to be laying violent hands upon a comrade; but he who does not prevent or oppose wrong, if he can, is just as guilty of wrong as if he deserted his parents or his friends or his country.

{24} Then, too, those very wrongs which people try to inflict on purpose to injure are often the result of fear: that is, he who premeditates injuring another is afraid that, if he does not do so, he may himself be made to suffer some hurt. But, for the most part, people are led to wrong-doing in order to secure some personal end; in this vice, avarice is generally the controlling motive.

Cicero, ius naturale?

De Officiis,
source

{11} IV.

First of all, Nature has endowed every species of living creature with the instinct of self-preservation, of avoiding what seems likely to cause injury to life or limb, and of procuring and providing everything needful for life — food, shelter, and the like. A common property of all creatures is also the reproductive instinct (the purpose of which is the propagation of the species) and also a certain amount of concern for their offspring. But the most marked difference between man and beast is this: the beast, just as far as it is moved by the senses and with very little perception of past or future, adapts itself to that alone which is present at the moment; while man — because he is endowed with reason, by which he comprehends the chain of consequences, perceives the causes of things, understands the relation of cause to effect and of effect to cause, draws analogies, and connects and associates the present and the future — easily surveys the course of his whole life and makes the necessary preparations for its conduct strangely tender love for his offspring. She also prompts men to meet in companies, to form public assemblies and to take part in them themselves; and she further dictates, as a consequence of this, the effort on man's part to provide a store of things that minister to his comforts and wants — and not for himself alone, but for his wife and children and the others whom he holds dear and for whom he ought to provide; and this responsibility also stimulates his courage and makes it stronger for the active duties of life. {13} Above all, the search after truth and its eager pursuit are peculiar to man. And so, when we have leisure from the demands of business cares, we are eager to see, to hear, to learn something new, and we esteem a desire to know the secrets or wonders of creation as indispensable to a happy life. Thus we come to understand that what is true, simple, and genuine appeals most strongly to a man's nature. To this passion for discovering truth there is added a hungering, as it were, for independence, so that a mind well-moulded by Nature is unwilling to be subject to anybody save one who gives rules of conduct or is a teacher of truth or who, for the general good, rules according to justice and law. From this attitude come greatness_of_soul and a sense of superiority to worldly conditions.

{14} And it is no mean manifestation of Nature and Reason that man is the only animal that has a feeling for order, for propriety, for moderation in word and deed. And so no other animal has a sense of beauty, loveliness, harmony in the visible world; and Nature and Reason, extending the analogy of this from the world of sense to the world of spirit, find that beauty, consistency, order are far more to be maintained in thought and deed, and the same Nature and Reason are careful to do nothing in an improper or unmanly fashion, and in every thought and deed to do or think nothing capriciously. It is from these elements that is forged and fashioned that moral goodness which is the subject of this inquiry — something that, even though it be not generally ennobled, is still worthy of all honour;^[2] and by its own nature, we correctly maintain, it merits praise even though it be praised by none.

Sarah Byers article

on how Descartes gets Aristotle wrong on the definition of life

see Review of Metaphysics