The value of the loci alieni for the elimination of "false directions within the Church"

The hermeneutic of reform "doesn’t simply have to do with failures which were absorbed from without; they can be also failures which developed from within. . . . [I]f [the Church i]s not doing well, that’s not always because it’s absorbed things from without, because it’s also failed to develop from within. . . . There certainly are sides of the Protestant Reformation and of the Enlightenment that are important for the Church, that she would not want to do without.  For example, at the [Second Vatican] Council it was the admonition from the Calvinist Lukas Fischer which warned the Catholics against a kind of Pollyannic, rose-colored-glasses look at the signs of the times.  It was because of the admonitions of the Protestant side—remember that we are very corrupt in the way we read the signs of the times and we need to examine them in the light of the Gospel—that you have that marvelous nuancing in Guadium et spes 4 to read the signs of the times [and] to scrutinize them in the light of the Gospel.  That wasn’t the initial Catholic impulse. . . . It was the Protestant reminder of the brokenness of humanity that goes into the Church and also was an admonition for scrutinizing the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel.  And that is the lesson which many, even in this alienational (so-called alienational) side—they are often less ecumenical than the integrative side."

     Fr. Richard Schenk, O.P., "Memory And Conversion - Thomistic Ressourcement And Productive Non-Contemporaneity," a lecture at the conference Thomism after Vatican II, Angelicum, Rome, 27 October 2018, from 55:02.  The loci alieni of the heading is taken from Melchior Cano via Schenk.

"AI . . . is not a creature of God"

Wycliffe College (cropped)

      "A corollary to the claim that AI is a human artifact for use—and artifacts do not enjoy God—is that AI, unlike creatures, are not objects of God’s redemptive action:  God 'saves man and beast,' as the Psalmist writes (36:6)—but not chainsaws, whose good or ill use is in the hands of human beings.  It is, of course, possible to conceive of AI being part of a human world that God re-creates and 'redeems' in this sense; but in this case, AI’s relationship to God is only through its reordered use by its makers:  human beings; and that use is itself evaluated according to how it furthers the full enjoyment of God, in love and praise, by human beings."

     Ephraim Radner, "Artificial Intelligence:  a theological perspective," Toronto journal of theology 36, no. 1 (2020):  81-82 (81–83).

A remote ancestor of modern Western psychology

"While the history of psychology as a scholarly study of the mind and behaviour dates back to the ancient Greek philosophers, who developed elaborate theories of the soul, in antiquity there was no clear-cut discussion of the peculiarity of the individual person, nor were ancient philosophers interested in the individual's inner life.  As will be shown, demonology enabled monastic writers to pursue new lines of psychological investigation of which modern Western psychology is the remote heir.
"scholars investigating the history of Western psychology have tended to focus on the nineteenth-century roots of scientific psychology.  The present book, however, shows that early monastic discussions of the inner processes of the self and how they are manipulated by demons offer an important source of evidence for the history of psychological knowledge and the ways in which it is produced, articulated, and applied in psychological praxis.  In this way it demonstrates the need to broaden the scholarly investigation of the history of the discipline of psychology to include the history of psychological knowledge."

     Inbar Graiver, Asceticism of the mind:  forms of attention and self-transformation in late antique monasticism (Toronto:  Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2018), 28-29.

The myth of progress

"although we cannot deny all kinds of progress in detail, the many attempts which have been made to establish a teleology or progress in world-history as a whole have always proved to be unsuccessful. It is only fools—and at some point and in some way we are all fools—who will confuse the details with the whole, looking at technical development (in the widest sense of the word) and dreaming of a general progress of man and mankind in history as a whole. In spite of all the movement in his historical forms and activities, man himself is not progressive. In respect of his capacity, or incapacity, to live as homo sapiens, to make his being and his being together tolerable and stable, he is remarkably stationary, his actions and reactions being unfortunately only too similar to those of an unreasoning bullock plodding around a capstan. His pride is his hindrance, and it is one of the imaginations of his pride that one day he will achieve this modest control of his life. What is the obviously outstanding feature of world-history? Is it the occasional symphonies and euphonies? We must not ignore these. Is it the constant cacophonies ? We certainly cannot ignore these. But the really outstanding thing beyond and in the antitheses is the all-conquering monotony—the monotony of the pride in which man has obviously always lived to his own detriment and to that of his neighbour, from hoary antiquity and through the ebb and flow of his later progress and recession both as a whole and in detail, the pride in which he still lives to his own and his neighbour's detriment and will most certainly continue to do so till the end of time."

"so bleibt es doch bei der furchtbaren Tatsache, daß zwar die Leugnung von allerlei Fortschritten im Einzelnen nicht möglich ist, daß aber die Feststellung einer Teleologie, einer Progression im Ganzen der Weltgeschichte zwar immer wieder versucht worden ist, sich aber auch immer wieder als noch viel unmöglicher erwiesen hat. Es braucht Narren dazu – irgendwo und irgendwie sind wir aber alle immer wieder diese Narren – um das Einzelne mit dem Ganzen zu verwechseln und also etwa im Blick auf die Entwicklung der Technik (im weitesten Sinn dieses Begriffs) von einem in der Weltgeschichte stattfindenden Fortschritt des Menschen, der Menschheit im Ganzen, zu träumen. Der Mensch selbst ist, alles Wandels seiner geschichtlichen Gestalten und Betätigungen ungeachtet, gerade nicht «progressiv». Hinsichtlich seiner Fähigkeit bzw. Unfähigkeit, als homo sapiens zu leben, sein Sein und Zusammensein auch nur im Blick auf eine gewisse Erträglichkeit, auch nur auf eine gewisse Dauer in Griff zu bekommen, ist er vielmehr wunderbar stationär, in seinem Agieren und Reagieren einem am Göpel im Kreis herum laufenden, höchst unvernünftigen Rindvieh leider gar sehr vergleichbar. Sein Hochmut hindert ihn daran, und es ist selber nur einer von den Träumen seines Hochmuts, wenn er sich einbildet, auch nur diesen bescheidenen Griff eines Tages doch noch fertig zu bringen. Was ist das aufregend Interessante der Weltgeschichte? Ihre je und dann aufklingenden Symphonien und Euphonien? Sie sind nicht zu überhören. Ihre immer wieder durchbrechenden Kakophonien? Man kann gewiß auch sie nicht überhören. Noch aufregender und interessanter aber ist ihre jenseits dieser Gegensätze und in ihnen immer wieder siegreiche Monotonie: die Monotonie des Hochmuts, in welchem der Mensch sich selbst und seinem Nächsten schon in grauer Vorzeit und dann im Auf und Ab seiner späteren Fortschritte und Rückschritte im Einzelnen wie im Ganzen offensichtlich nur immer aufs neue zu Leid gelebt hat, bis auf diesen Tag zu Leid lebt und ganz bestimmt bis zum Ende aller Tage zu Leid leben wird."

     Karl Barth, CD IV/1, 507 (§60.3) =KD IV/1,  566-567 (§60.3).

"the act of attention . . . must conduct us to that brutal threshhold and pull us across it."

Christian Menghi (cropped)

"La verité de l’acte d’attention dont nous parlons doit nous conduire à ce seuil brutal et nous le faire franchir."

     Raymond Duval, "La dimension humaine de la vie spirituelle." La vie spirituelle 129 (1975):  857 (852-867).  The threshhold of eternity is death.  (The durable as distinguished from immediate conditions of attention are silence and solitude on the one hand, and the memento mori on the other.  Together they are an "amplification across the whole of one's life of the particular and precise attitude of the retreat" (856).)

"the sleeper, who endeavours to obtain sleep through the whole of life"

"my discourse does not bring with it an exhortation to every description of men. For it is not directed to those who are occupied in sordid mechanical arts, nor to those who are engaged in athletic exercises; neither to soldiers, nor sailors, nor rhetoricians, nor to those who lead an active life. But I write to the man who considers what he is, whence he came, and whither he ought to tend, and who, in what pertains to nutriment, and other necessary concerns, is different from those who propose to themselves other kinds of life; for to none but such as these do I direct my discourse. For, neither in this common life can there be one and the same exhortation to the sleeper, who endeavours to obtain sleep through the whole of life, and who, for this purpose, procures from all places things of a soporiferous nature, as there is to him who is anxious to repel sleep, and to dispose everything about him to a vigilant condition. But to the former it is necessary to recommend intoxication, surfeiting, and satiety, and to exhort him to choose a dark house, and

A bed, luxuriant, broad, and soft,---

as the poets say; and that he should procure for himself all such things as are of a soporiferous nature, and which are effective of sluggishness and oblivion, whether they are odours, or ointments, or are liquid or solid medicines. And to the latter it is requisite to advise the use of a drink sober and without wine, food of an attenuated nature, and almost approaching to fasting; a house lucid, and participating of a subtle air and wind, and to urge him to be strenuously excited by solicitude and thought, and to prepare for himself a small and hard bed. But, whether we are naturally adapted to this, I mean to a vigilant life, so as to grant as little as possible to sleep, since we do not dwell among those who are perpetually vigilant, or whether we are designed to be in a soporiferous state of existence, is the business of another discussion, and is a subject which requires very extended demonstrations."

     Porphyry, On abstinence from animal food 1.27, trans. Taylor.  I was put on to this by Bernard Collette-Dučić, "Sommeil, éveil et attention chez Plotin," χώρα:  revue d'études anciennes et médiévales 9/10 (2011/2012):  260 (259-281).

Sleeping through life

"Do not . . . seek to see with mortal eyes [the First] as our account describes it, nor to see that it is in the way in which someone would expect it to be who assumes that all things are perceived by the senses, by which supposition he eliminates that which is most real of all [(τὸ μάλιστα πάντων)].  For the things which one thinks are most real [(μὰλιστα)], are least real [(μὰλιστα οὐκ)]; and the [materially] large has less genuine existence.  But the First [(τὸ πρῶτον)] is the principle of existence and, again, more authentic than substantial reality [(κυριώτερον αὖ τῆς οὐσίας)].  So reverse your way of thinking [((ὥστε ἀντιστρεπτέον τὴν δόξαν)], or you will be left deprived of God, like the people at the festivals who by their gluttony stuff themselves with things which it is not lawful for those going in to the gods to take, thinking that these are more obviously real than the vision of the god for whom they ought to be celebrating the festival, and take no part in the rites within.  Yes, in these our rites also the god, since he is not seen, creates disbelief in his existence in those who think that that alone is obviously real [(ἐναργὲς)] which they see only with the flesh; as if people who slept through their life [(τινες διὰ βίου κοιμώμενοι)] thought the things in their dreams were reliable and obvious [(πιστὰ καὶ ἐναργῆ)], but, if someone woke them up, disbelieved in what they saw with their eyes open and went to sleep again.
     "One must perceive each thing by the appropriate organ [(Χρὴ δὲ βλέπειν ᾧ ἕκαστα δεῖ αἰσθάνεσθαι, No, it is necessary to see each thing by [that by] which it is necessary to perceive [it])], some things with the eyes, others with the ears, and so on.  One must believe, also, that one sees other things with the intellect, and not think that intellectual perception is seeing or hearing, which would be like insisting that the ears should see and that sounds do not exist because they are not visible."

     Plotinus, Enneads V.5 [32].11-12, as trans. A. H. Armstrong (LCL 444, 186-189).  I was put on to this by Bernard Collette-Dučić, "Sommeil, éveil et attention chez Plotin," χώρα:  revue d'études anciennes et médiévales 9/10 (2011/2012):  269 (259-281).  Enneads III.6 [26].6 (LCL 442, 239) is similar, but more strikingly dualistic.