A quick summary of my upcoming Locke paper:

1) Analogous naming requires one word to have several meanings which are in an order.
2) Locke's theory of knowledge requires that any idea which can be the subject of a science falls under the power of our own arbitrary making.
3) Different meanings of the same word cannot be in an order if each meaning is equally the product of our arbitrary making.
4) Therefore, Locke cannot account for analogy. The most he can hope to do is come to an agreement at the beginning of a discussion about which precise meaning of a word is intended in the present context.

This is one more example of Locke's typical emasculating liberalism, where man's activities - whether intellectual or political - are limited to rather modest goals. It also agrees with his disdain for received opinions: the multiple ways in which a word has been used only serve to confuse thought, not lead to an enriched understanding. Thoughts?

In memory of a great man, and as a tribute to Whom and what he worked for, I offer this reminder of his charge to graduates of Thomas Aquinas College. Although he did not write the words, he fulfilled their intention in his life, and this exhortation constituted his final act as president for every student who graduated from the college in the last 18 years.

YOU ARE CHARGED, BEGINNING THIS DAY,
WITH MAINTAINING, DEFENDING, AND PROTECTING
YOUR CATHOLIC HERITAGE —
ITS FAITH, ITS HOPE, ITS CHARITY,
AND ALL ITS LEARNING AND CULTURE.

YOU MUST STRIVE IN YOUR LIVES TO LIVE FOR GOD ALONE,
THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT.

AND TO INSIST, IN SEASON AND OUT OF SEASON,
ON THE PRIMACY OF PETER AND THE CHURCH HE GOVERNS.

YOU MUST UNDERSTAND
THAT NO MATTER WHAT THE CONDITIONS OF THE WORLD,
WHAT THE VICISSITUDES OF THE SUFFERING CHURCH,
WHAT THE PAST HAS BEQUEATHED YOU,
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR YOU,

THAT, IN NEWMAN’S COURAGEOUS AND HOPEFUL WORDS,
“ALL WHO TAKE PART WITH THE APOSTLE
ARE ON THE WINNING SIDE.”

EACH OF YOU MUST SO LIVE YOUR LIFE
THAT WHEN YOU ARE TO MEET YOUR MAKER YOU CAN SAY,
AS DID THE ANGELIC DOCTOR
AS HE RECEIVED THE EUCHARIST FOR THE LAST TIME,

“I RECEIVE THEE,
PRICE OF MY REDEMPTION,
VIATICUM OF MY PILGRIMAGE,
FOR LOVE OF WHOM I HAVE FASTED, PRAYED, TAUGHT, AND LABORED NEVER HAVE I SAID A WORD AGAINST THEE.
IF I HAVE IT WAS IN IGNORANCE
AND I DO NOT PERSIST IN MY IGNORANCE.
I LEAVE THE CORRECTION OF MY WORK TO THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH,
AND IN THAT OBEDIENCE I PASS FROM THIS LIFE.”

MAY GOD BLESS YOU ON YOUR WAY.



May the Risen Christ bring him swiftly into Paradise.

Today on the occasion of my 25th birthday I would like to defend a philosophy I want to affiliate myself with.

This is a big deal for me so I will express myself in the correct mode: dialetic:
The mind which knows itself as free and wills itself as this its object, i.e. which has its true being for characteristic and aim, is in the first instance the rational will in general, or implicit Idea, and because implicit only the notion of absolute mind. As abstract Idea again, it is existent only in the immediate will - it is the existential side of reason - the single will as aware of this its universality constituting its contents and aim, and of which it is only the formal activity. If the will, therefore, in which the Idea thus appears is only finite, that will is also the act of developing the Idea, and of investing its self-unfolding content with an existence which, as realizing the idea, is actuality. It is thus 'Objective' Mind.

No Idea is so generally recognized as indefinite, ambiguous, and open to the greatest misconceptions (to which therefore it actually falls a victim) as the idea of Liberty: none in common currency with so little appreciation of its meaning. Remembering that free mind is actual mind, we can see how misconceptions about it are of tremendous consequence in practice. When individuals and nations have once got in their heads the abstract concept of full-blown liberty, there is nothing like it in its uncontrollable strength, just because it is the very essence of mind, and that as its very actuality. Whole continents, Africa and the East, have never had this Idea, and are without it still. The Greeks and Romans, Plato and Aristotle, even the Stoics, did not have it. On the contrary, they saw that it is only by birth (as, for example, an Athenian or Spartan citizen), or by strength of character, education, or philosophy (- the sage is free even as a slave and in chains) that the human being is actually free. It was through Christianity that this Idea came into the world. According to Christianity, the individual as such has an infinite value as the object and aim of divine love, destined as mind to live in absolute relationship with God himself, and have God's mind dwelling in him: i.e. man is implicitly destined to supreme freedom. If, in religion as such, man is aware of this relationship to the absolute mind as his true being, he has also, even when he steps into the sphere of secular existence, the divine mind present with him, as the substance of the state, of the family, etc. These institutions are due to the guidance of that spirit, and are constituted after its measure; whilst by their existence the moral temper comes to be indwelling in the individual, so that in this sphere of particular existence, of present sensation and volition, he is actually free.

If to be aware of the Idea - to be aware, that is, that men are aware of freedom as their essence, aim, and object - is matter of speculation, still this very Idea itself is the actuality of men - not something which they have, as men, but which they are. Christianity in its adherents has realized an ever-present sense that they are not and cannot be slaves; if they are made slaves, if the decision as regards their property rests with an arbitrary will, not with laws or courts of justice, they would find the very substance of their life outraged. This will to liberty is no longer an impulse which demands its satisfaction, but the permanent character - the spiritual consciousness grown into a non-impulsive nature. But this freedom, which the content and aim of freedom has, is itself only a notion - a principle of the mind and heart, intended to develop into an objective phase, into legal, moral, religious, and not less into scientific actuality.

...april fools!