Monday, November 23, 2009

"Objectivity"

You know the problem with all this d------ objectivity is that how can people know that their objectivity is real???? Is objective truth only "objectivity" or can "objectivity" be abstract even though it claims to subsume both objectivity and subjectivity it is impossible to do it when you say it!!!! even for Aquinas truth only "exists" in the mind - and mostly in the mind of God!!! but the people who make the parameters and the structures.... D----- IT ARISTOTLE DIDN'T WRITE IN OUTLINES!!!!!!! I'm not saying there was no order to what he was writing but I am saying it at the same time!!!!! But it is an order I can deal with. I can't deal with these other orders!!!!! Listen to the guy:
"Beginning" means a) that part of a thing from which one would start first, e.g. a line or a road has a beginning in either of hte cotnrary directions. b) That from which each thing would best be originated, E.G. EVEN IN LEARNING WE MUST SOMETIMES BEGIN NOT FROM THE FIRST POINT AND THE BEGINNING OF THE SUBJECT, BUT FROM THE POINT FROM WHICH WE SHOULD LEARN MOST EASILY.
What about the first book of the Metaphysics - and wonder - and senses - and progression - and unifying from particulars - what about when you kill wonder and place objective requirements, etc. I hate repeating philosophy and what is the most ironic is that i don't have to repeat it. I am capable of understanding it and of entering into it but if you give me the same space that Aristotle would give me if he were my teacher. And it's not the constraints of the semester system in general - a good teacher can be more insightful than that and can exploit the system to teach instead of reductivism in teaching - or allowing the only original reading to be that of the teacher....

All of this is just spleen.... but it is giving me my adrenolyn back. I may recant or modify or even strongly object to what I am saying at a later point but for now it has to be valid!!!
I would rather be calm and enjoy it as I go along but I will fall asleep if I become placid.

I need my sensitive appetite - I need the irascibility of it as well... and damn it I need my will!!!!!!! damn it I know the intellect is primary!!!!! I'm always telling everyone to be rational and critiquing myself!!!! But intellect has become a "no-brainer" for me!!!!! And "intellect, intellect, intellect" becomes false when it is the only thing - because an incomplete truth - even about the primacy of the intellect itself, is still incomplete!!!!! I am not an angel - I don't care if you are because I'm not there!!!!!!! and I learn like a human being!!!!

Don't you think I would love to be a professor with leisure - whose source of income is studying what he loves and passing it on and talking about it (i can work just as passionately on what I love) and being assured of an income, of health care, or dental care in my case, of resources to help the people I love if they are in dire straits?

Don't you think I feel all the shame of "having an agenda" when I study - of being obsessed with getting a good mark - becuase this good mark depends not only my future and profession but also the means of paying for that!!!! I am already $30,000 in debt!!!!
I am a true philosopher as well as you - my leisure hours are not spent watching TV or shopping but reading and writing!!!! But if I am thinking about marks in my courses it's becuase there's not enough freedom to go about it in the way I would love to as much as you!!!

Even Aristotle said that wisdom is better, but when you are poor or when you need to make a living, that that is better in a qualified way!!!!!!!

You can bask in the per se considerations but I am young and worried and my existentialism is not confined to texts!!!! I don't care if I enter in the "christian" part of the Hegelian scheme or whatever... i don't care if I am stuck in the particular or the subjective - I don't care where I am placed but I am there and I am concerned ethically about it!!! And because it preoccupies me it doesn't mean I am a dialectician or a sophist or an unthinking Cristian or an unphilosophical Christian.... or that I have given up ideas and am focusing on the world of appearances and becoming and am Kantian and am simply "approximate the best I can do here and nwo becuase this is all there is" - no I am fundamentally Aristotelian but perhaps even more Aristotelian than you in the sense that I WOULD WRITE MY ETHICS BEFORE MY METAPHYSICS AND I WOULD WAIT UNTIL I WAS FORTY OR FIFTY DAMMIT. it's not that I say there is no metaphysics although i would not like wolffian metaphsyics or whatever it was that ppl did with metaphysics even beginning in the middle ages... BUT FOR ARISTOTLE IT ALSO COMES DOWN TO THE GOOD IN A WAY AND I'M GETTING THERE... THE GOOD IS WHAT STOPS INFINITE REGRESS AND ACTUALLY maybe my concrete thinking now may be more what makes me metaphysical than the dialectical subtleties of reading Aristotle at a graduate level.
Whatever I say, I say now so that I may work. Whatever I say after will perhaps be the fruit of freer thought and to that extent maybe closer to being true - but this has a different kind of true - which one is mor eimmediately helpful? I am a rational animal; if I focus on the first I cannot be rational - I am not confined to the second because of the first but the first does not allow me to leave the second behind but makes the second different.

Sorry if this doesn't make much sense but it is slowly restoring my confidence.

And okay admittedly the irascible might cancel out the sorrowful a little bit but it is still not going to help me think well... I will have to do the Stoic thing because thinking does require "omnimodem quietatem" - so I don't have to undersatnd everything - I don't have to be perfect - I just have to do what Amy can do in these circumstnaces and proceed this way....
changing my judgments... I can do this but I'll take away the stresses that I mentioned.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Avoid UPS!!!

UPS delivered a package for me from NY to Mississauga this summer. I checked out the price first, asked if there would be any extra fees, and when told this was it, paid in person at an outlet, got the parcel mailed. I thought this was the end of the story until one month later I got a phone message (how they got my phone in Canada I don't know) demanding $48 in "brokerage fees" which was about $20 more than the original cost of mailing the parcel. No invoice, no info, nothing. They called me back 6 times over the next week, leaving insistent messages - they got through to me and I asked them why I was not informed of this charge and why it came after the fact, and that I should not have had this fee because it was for a computer repair, which I was told would not require customs services (and that I would not have sent the computer if I knew about these). The service representative agreed with me but told me she would send me information and an invoice (which I never received). A couple days later the insistent phone calls began again, I had a similar conversation with a representative and he said, "yes you're right for a repair you don't have to pay these fees". Two days peace until the phone calls began again, but this representative told me I would have to pay the fee in any event - and when I told him that the UPS store had promised me no more fees, he said that UPS takes no responsibility for their outlets!!!!!!!!!?!?!?!?! then I demanded more info and an invoice which I still never received. My parents, whom I informed of these troubles, advised me simply not to pay, and I felt fully justified in not doing so. Until once more they have tracked me down to a different address with a collections agency called RMS promising not to take action for 10 days after I receive the letter (and when I received the letter there are only 3 days left). Now I am trying to pay - I would fight this further if I had the energy and intend after this semester to write them a letter - but for now I just want to avoid any more stress (which I am certain they count upon - especially seeing their harassment policy which I have already experienced). But the RMS has no contact info - they say I can fax my payment (but why would I want to fax my credit card number and security code to all eyes?) and that I can pay online but there is no login and password given which is required to make a payment on their website - only UPS phone number and th epayment is supposed to be made to RMS. So what to do?

AVOID BUSINESS WITH THESE JACKANAPE CROOKS!!!!

I'm unfortunately not the only one to have these experiences:

It's so bad they're doing a class action suit. Read the following:


THIS IS NOT AN ISOLATED EXPERIENCE!!!!!!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Getting disposed for things...

on being a student

I've got a lot of work to do but because this will help me I am going to write it out and remember it. Every time I get annoyed with my work, or I get frustrated or fearful that I am running out of deadlines, or I desire to do a lot in a small amount of time, I get into difficulties and impediments - it's like trying to run through ice-cold chest-deep water, someting is pushing against you every moment to slow down and stop. well I have found that out with many things - with writing proposals for scholarships (feeling constrained by what I think they will want) and now I am frequently constrained by wanting to get things done fast, by wishing I could do what I want to do, by wishing I had time to go about it leisurely so that the big picture would just "happen". I have neither the time to do the latter nor am I so compressed as to be forced to do the former. I thought about writing out the things I am looking forward to to buck me up, like going to Europe in the spring, or even being relieved of these courses and the poverty research - even if I get new courses in their place, the second semester is always much easier (because the first semester usually has a lot of carry-over and starts rather late) and then you have the drudgery of the first semester to make everything seem light and easy no matter what the courses are.
But anyway.... it's funny... I have been really busy this semester and faithfully so... I have run up against computer glitches and I have been at the computer store several times to exchange the faulty hard drives (my computer jinx extends to computer accessories); I have been running to pay back old bills now that my OSAP is coming in - the dentist - I'm missing a big chunk of a tooth and I need a crown - and the prices those crowns are, you'd think they were studded with diamonds - so I'm going to wait until I'm under coverage again which may be a while. Anyway, it's funny how little things seem to take up so much time. So now I am back and working, but my point was earlier that when I was going to look into the future to console me for the present this doesn't work either. Because it just gets me all tense and determined to "get through" this. Which is not true anyway because I am living a good life and a life I would have envied before.... I'm a PhD student - apart from all the time-consumers I've experienced - applying for scholarships, defending the thesis, preparing the student conference, fixing computers, trying to keep up and to catch up to lost hours for which I am responsible and to demanding seminars (these seminars are very demanding; one in terms of contributions and memory work and overall metaphsycial thinking, and the same for the other - and there is very, very little freedom in either of them to be creative which is why I think I am chafing and partially why I am claustrophobic and panicky because I like to do things very thoroguhly. If you want me to know the whole Metaphysics I will take you at your word. If you confine the area in which I can write my essay on Thomistic knowledge, I will read the whole treatise several times over, translate it a couple of times (allowing for the files which I lost with my computer glitches) I have already read at least twenty articles on specialized topics and paid intense attention at all the lectures, matching things up. I keep two blogs related to my researches in Aquinas and out on this single course. But again it leaves little time for my poverty research, for boiling down Amartya Sen to philosophical issues - for "scoping the reseaarch" and basically becoming someone's reference for contemporary currents in poverty. I would love to do any one or any two of these things, but three of them is pressing me as deadlines approach and no one seems willing to be flexible with deadlines - even by a week or two. And if I focus on poverty, again the others get less room.
But now that I have confessed my difficulties, become more aware of what the difficulties really are, I can also settle down and work devotedly and patiently, appreciating the "aha" moments enough to push me through moderately at a steady pace. Trusting in God. I like to pray but I don't pray as much now and sometimes that makes me feel claustrophobic as well.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Long time no blog

Well I am up to my ears in work now!!! I apologize for not blogging, and I apologize to my friends to whom I have not responded by email, by Facebook... i did not forget you!!! it's only I've pretty much forgotten myself by now : ) I'm working on an essay and I am determined to have a good basic essay tonight so I can catch up on all my other work. so cheers, prayers, and arrivederci!! Once I'm over this "hump" of the essay and my other class, I will have only my "poverty" to catch up on and then I will be back in touch!!!!

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Can't believe I never saw this before...

I.20.1 - on God's love - very good. But something here I have missed:

Reply to Objection 1. The cognitive faculty does not move except through the medium of the appetitive: and just as in ourselves the universal reason moves through the medium of the particular reason, as stated in De Anima iii, 58,75, so in ourselves the intellectual appetite, or the will as it is called, moves through the medium of the sensitive appetite. Hence, in us the sensitive appetite is the proximate motive-force of our bodies. Some bodily change therefore always accompanies an act of the sensitive appetite, and this change affects especially the heart, which, as the Philosopher says (De part. animal. iii, 4), is the first principle of movement in animals. Therefore acts of the sensitive appetite, inasmuch as they have annexed to them some bodily change, are called passions; whereas acts of the will are not so called. Love, therefore, and joy and delight arepassions; in so far as they denote acts of the intellective appetite, they are not passions. It is in this latter sense that they are in God. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii): "God rejoices by an operation that is one and simple," and for the same reason He loves without passion.

Perhaps this could shed light on why depressed people can't think or focus or concentrate - for me, I was unsure - because I thought it was because I wanted other things or was under a burden or "overwhelmed" and wanted help, encouragenment, affection, enlightenment, peace - or even pleasures to restore inasmuch as it is more bodily troubles. This is not to say that depressed ppl aren't "motivated" but the loss or the lack to them is more present than the motivation which makes that loss or lack felt so badly. There is something to those sayings "just don't have the will". Remember this - you have to desire to think - and remember to be understanding to people who seem to not have it.


Also interesting - from the second article in that question:

I answer that, God loves all existing things. For all existing things, in so far as they exist, are good, since the existence of a thing is itself a good; and likewise, whatever perfection it possesses. Now it has been shown above (Question 19, Article 4) thatGod's will is the cause of all things. It must needs be, therefore, that a thing has existence, or any kind of good, only inasmuch as it is willed by God. To every existing thing, then, God wills some good. Hence, since to love anything is nothing else than towill good to that thing, it is manifest that God loves everything that exists. Yet not as we love. Because since our will is not thecause of the goodness of things, but is moved by it as by its object, our love, whereby we will good to anything, is not thecause of its goodness; but conversely its goodness, whether real or imaginary, calls forth our love, by which we will that it should preserve the good it has, and receive besides the good it has not, and to this end we direct our actions: whereas thelove of God infuses and creates goodness.


Other tidbits which I will reserve for commenting later..

II-II. 93 a. 2

I answer that, A thing is said to be in excess in two ways. First, with regard to absolute quantity, and in this way there cannot be excess in the worship of God, because whatever man does is less than he owes God. Secondly, a thing is in excess with regard to quantity of proportion, through not being proportionate to its end. Now the end of divine worship is that man may giveglory to God, and submit to Him in mind and body. Consequently, whatever a man may do conducing to God's glory, and subjecting his mind to God, and his body, too, by a moderate curbing of the concupiscences, is not excessive in the divineworship, provided it be in accordance with the commandments of God and of the Church, and in keeping with the customs of those among whom he lives.

On the other hand if that which is done be, in itself, not conducive to God's glory, nor raise man's mind to God, nor curb inordinate concupiscence, or again if it be not in accordance with the commandments of God and of the Church, or if it be contrary to the general custom--which, according to Augustine [Ad Casulan. Ep. xxxvi], "has the force of law"--all this must be reckoned excessive and superstitious, because consisting, as it does, of mere externals, it has no connection with the internalworship of God. Hence Augustine (De Vera Relig. iii) quotes the words of Luke 17:21, "The kingdom of God is within you," against the "superstitious," those, to wit, who pay more attention to externals.


II-II. 129.6 does confidence belong to magnanimity

I answer that, Confidence takes its name from "fides" [faith]: and it belongs to faith to believe something and in somebody. But confidence belongs to hope, according to Job 11:18, "Thou shalt have confidence, hope being set before thee." Wherefore confidence apparently denotes chiefly that a man derives hope through believing the word of one who promises to help him. Since, however, faith signifies also a strong opinion, and since one may come to have a strong opinion about something, not only on account of another's statement, but also on account of something we observe in another, it follows that confidence may denote the hope of having something, which hope we conceive through observing something either in oneself--for instance, through observing that he is healthy, a man is confident that he will live long. or in another, for instance, through observing that another is friendly to him and powerful, a man is confident that he will receive help from him.

Now it has been stated above (1, ad 2) that magnanimity is chiefly about the hope of something difficult. Wherefore, since confidence denotes a certain strength of hope arising from some observation which gives one a strong opinion that one will obtain a certain good, it follows that confidence belongs to magnanimity.

Reply to Objection 1. As the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 3), it belongs to the "magnanimous to need nothing," for need is a mark of the deficient. But this is to be understood according to the mode of a man, hence he adds "or scarcely anything." For it surpasses man to need nothing at all. For every man needs, first, the Divine assistance, secondly, even human assistance, sinceman is naturally a social animal, for he is sufficient by himself to provide for his own life. Accordingly, in so far as he needs others, it belongs to a magnanimous man to have confidence in others, for it is also a point of excellence in a man that he should have at hand those who are able to be of service to him. And in so far as his own ability goes, it belongs to a magnanimous man to be confident in himself.


Less interesting but still interesting:

I answer that, As stated above (Article 1), magnanimity regards two things: honor as its matter, and the accomplishment of something great as its end. Now goods of fortune conduce to both these things. For since honor is conferred on the virtuous, not only by the wise, but also by the multitude who hold these goods of fortune in the highest esteem, the result is that they show greater honor to those who possess goods of fortune. Likewise goods of fortune are useful organs or instruments ofvirtuous deeds: since we can easily accomplish things by means of riches, power and friends. Hence it is evident that goods of fortune conduce to magnanimity.

Reply to Objection 1. Virtue is said to be sufficient for itself, because it can be without even these external goods; yet it needs them in order to act more expeditiously.

Reply to Objection 2. The magnanimous man despises external goods, inasmuch as he does not think them so great as to be bound to do anything unbecoming for their sake. Yet he does not despise them, but that he esteems them useful for the accomplishment of virtuous deeds.

Reply to Objection 3. If a man does not think much of a thing, he is neither very joyful at obtaining it, nor very grieved at losing it. Wherefore, since the magnanimous man does not think much of external goods, that is goods of fortune, he is neither much uplifted by them if he has them, nor much cast down by their loss


Interesting

I am going through the whole Summa trying to figure out the point of my essay. It sounds anal but it's actually really helpful, but I have stopped on the way as I realized that "justice" is the HUGEST treatise I have come across - at 56 articles, it is almost twice as big as the bigger ones!!! And I've really come to notice the parts which I haven't really picked up on before - offenses against the neighbour in word - and in reading them - reviling, backbiting, tale-bearing, derision - I have been immersed in compunction for the offenses which I am guilty of and at the same time admiration for the principles which Aquinas holds there - how dear honor is to the person - dearer than possessions (see II-II 72.2: I answer that, As stated above (Article 1), words are injurious to other persons, not as sounds, but as signs, and this signification depends on the speaker's inward intention. Hence, in sins of word, it seems that we ought to consider with whatintention the words are uttered. Since then railing or reviling essentially denotes a dishonoring, if the intention of the utterer is to dishonor the other man, this is properly and essentially to give utterance to railing or reviling: and this is a mortal sin no less than theft or robbery, since a man loves his honor no less than his possessions.) in these, there is a lot for a positive theory of respect for persons that is based in an anthropology, a sociology, that is quite detailed and humanist in its concerns.

But I came across this passage which I thought was very interesting from II-II 74.2 I answer that, As stated above (73, 3; I-II, 73, 8), sins against one's neighbor are the more grievous, according as they inflict a greater injury on him: and an injury is so much the greater, according to the greatness of the good which it takes away. Now of all one's external goods a friend takes the first place, since "no man can live without friends," as the Philosopher declares (Ethic. viii, 1). Hence it is written (Sirach 6:15): "Nothing can be compared to a faithful friend." Again, a man's good name whereof backbiting deprives him, is most necessary to him that he may be fitted for friendship. Therefore tale-bearing is a greater sin than backbiting or even reviling, because a friend is better than honor, and to be loved is better than to be honored, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. viii).




Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Great resource

Aha... here are semiotics. This is a really accessible site!!

"Trope"

Trope (linguistics)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[hide]

In linguistics, trope is a rhetorical figure of speech that consists of a play on words, i.e., using a word in a way other than what is considered its literal or normal form. The other major category of figures of speech is the scheme, which involves changing the pattern of words in a sentence.

The term trope derives from the τρόπος - tropos "turn, direction, way, related to the root of the verb τρέπειν (trepein), "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change".[1] A trope is a way of turning a word away from its normal meaning, or turning it into something else.

[edit]Types

  • metonymy — a trope through proximity or correspondence, for example referring to actions of the U.S. President as "actions of the White House".
  • irony — creating a trope through implying the opposite of the standard meaning, such as describing a bad situation as "good times".
  • metaphor — an explanation of an object or idea through juxtaposition of disparate things with a similar characteristic, such as describing a courageous person as having a "heart of a lion".
  • synecdoche — related to metonymy and metaphor, creates a play on words by referring to something with a related concept: for example, referring to the whole with the name of a part, such as "hired hands" for workers; a part with the name of the whole, such as "the law" for police officers; the general with the specific, such as "bread" for food; the specific with the general, such as "cat" for a lion; or an object with the material it is made from, such as "bricks and mortar" for a building.
  • antanaclasis — is the stylistic trope of repeating a single word, but with a different meaning each time. Antanaclasis is a common type ofpun, and like other kinds of pun, it is often found in slogans.
  • allegory - A sustained metaphor continued through whole sentences or even through a whole discourse. For example: "The ship of state has sailed through rougher storms than the tempest of these lobbyists."

[edit]See also

[edit]References

  1. ^ "trope", Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, 2009, retrieved 2009-10-16

[edit]Sources

  1. Silva Rhetorica (rhetoric.byu.edu)
I was trying to figure out if psychoanalysts use tropes or if they are really connected... maybe they do and maybe they don't, maybe no one probes deeply and maybe it doesn't matter. But it is hard to sustain a scientific discourse using tropes because science spills into - no - PHILOSOPHY spills into other things - it refuses to remain in tropes even if it does employ tropes and even myths - instead of noting - Oh philosophy can't escape myths - or all philosophy is story-telling, it is also "Look how philosophy can only have so much story-telling - look how its very dynamics spills out of it!!)

Figuring out role of psychoanalysis...

Working on my proposal and trying to figure out what to do with psychoanalysis - Kristeva - who is the closest account I can get to philosophy recently - and yet I resist psychoanalysis at many levels. The reason I am fascinated temporarily by psychoanalytic accounts is their daring; I don't even know that psychoanalysis even pretends to be reductive - depends on the person I guess but it seems to me that this is a preciously subversive language - subversive in the most useful sense of the term - although I think "exaggeration" is a mild term - "imaginative constructs" maybe? A new form of myth attempting to combine science, praxis, and writing myths like those of hte ancient Greeks? The value of psychoanalysis would be that it helps people - I do see its value (and not merely its instantaneous - but momentary appeal which I mentioned) with myself is that it enables me to get rid of fruitless thinking or unnecessary guilt-ridden ethical questions. If I find myself worrying too much about whether someone needs help or whether perhaps I have offended someone - in relationships, I find the ability to think of these things in terms of "neuroses" helps me to clarify my thinking - to the extent that I am neurotic, however. But this is not a statement that Amy is only so neurotic, this is a statement that any human being can only be so neurotic. Yes, ppl can be messed up - ask me I know from experience. And the vulnerbaility is never not-there - yes - this is why the wise of us do not have narratives nor "self-images" of indomitable strength and success - at least not on our own accounts.
But there is something fundamentally only so knowable about thisi - and the problem with psychoanalysis is not only that it can conflate myths with science with psychology - or if it does not, then they are far more clever than I shall ever be, but disentangling what is a very intelligent way of destabilizing to make other things possible - and what those possible things ARE I will not undersatnd, but I think its partially becuase it can't really be made into a science, or that if you ARE going to make a science of psychology, that it CANNOT be pathologically-based or mythologically based (well there is never NOT myth perhaps) but there has to be something more - not normative, perhaps teleological, no even before that - I don't like the word "natural" because it has SO many undesirable connotations - not only after Romantics but there are many more myths and images surrounding the word - not only in philosophy and neo-aristotelians or more likely neo-thomists but even to hippies and health-conscious folks - it would be really hard to trace all these meanings - but I would want to say a capacity-based approach to nature - what is something capable of doing (I am careful about saying what is something meant to do because to limit the end of the human being who is limited by "nature" but infinite intellectually (at least potentially, but even by the very ntaure of what intellectual activity is) - well - you get into trouble when you try to "pin it down"!! And yet not into worse trouble when you only focus on the elmenets for neuroses and not try to see where all these elements fit rationally - and then going from there to have another account of how they go astrayper accidens or for more obvious reasons....

But I think I will have psychoanalysis in there - because it is the thing which takes sorrow most seriously today - more seriously than religion does, I think - and I have already dealt with teh medicalization people. The people in between - the psychiatrists and thinkers who aren't in these ways are guided by a lot of sense and balance, but I need more extremes nad more big names to show up what is being done - I don't need a more sensible synthesis becuase you can only use so many words to get something right, but then you are not going into depth, and therefore though you may be right it may not be profound becuase it doesn't integrate enough or go high enough - either way, while it may be good enough for living it's not enough for a thesis.

So now after becoming aware, and thus making unnecessary other neuroses, now I think I am beginning to have dealt with my sense of the necessity of psychoanalysis but ambivalence and even intense dislike for it - it is important for dialogue - the descriptiveness is important, they have experience, being practictioners, and even if I don't subscribe to the myths or point to the lack of any "teleological" thing which makes other things quite impossible, there are descriptions there which are valuable and I can integrate a more sophisticated critique than the one here - becuase whether or not I am a big fan of psychoanalysis, it has made a permanent mark and there are still heavyweights around, and it would be nice even for my own interest to know more precisely its limits.

_________
Actually have been looking around -t here are many good critics of Kristeva who also note what is noteworthy. Here is an excellent example - well articulated as well.

Ecstatic subjects, utop and recogn. K, H, Irig.
Agency affect and the postmodern subject
feminists leery of voluntaristic - positing irrational elements on marginalzied etc.
p. 78 - her critque of Heidegger effectuates a return to dialectics - feminist critics charget hat dialectical cocneptions of subjectivity - ranging from Hegel's spec. dialectics to Sartre's and Beauvoir's repsectpive existential philosophies - are haunted by a cartesian ghost in that they continue to posit a prelinguistic locus of intentionality. In order to dispel the concept of a "doer behind the deed" numerous poststructuralist feminists develop a notion fo agency as resignification. Here agency denotes a linguistic competency defined as th ecreative capacity to rewrite the script of our discursively constituted identities. In this chapter - want to accept a linguisticallly based notion of agency as creativity while addressing the difficulty that notiosn of creative resignification often failt o specify what makes one kidn of performance nonstoic and another stoic. (....) - wants to recuperate a view of dialectical praxis as th eability not simply to alter meaning but to critically mediate and intensify one's affective investment in particular meanings. In this endeavor, I turn to Kristeva and borrow from Allison Weir's interpretaiton of her work as notably occpying a middle position between traditional existential theories and poststructuralist thought. Although a borerline figure, at times valorizing transgression in itself, K points to a connection between overcoming stoic consciousness and a capacity for critique.
First aim - demonstrate that K strives, although not with complete success, to delineate a post-Beauvoirian theory of intentioality which is grounded in alngague rather than in a paradigm of consciousness. (..) what is significant about K's project (in her teory of intentionatliy) is that it recognizes the need to explicate teh relation between affective life and language. k relaizes that the existential intention to transform meaning denotes a particular kind of affect, namely, a prosocial desire to express oneself coherently in terms of shared meanings. Weir defines this prosocial desire as an EXISETNTIAL (ital) striving to deliberaltely harness the tension between identification with the social whole and the heterogeneous aspects of one's nonidentity with the social whole. Against the thinner view that agency arises from slippage in meaning, K demonstrates that affect froms the bridge between meaning and identity. The ability to invest linguistic meanings iwth affective force binds the work of altering meaning to psychosomatic or self transformation. Itfollows that there is some relation ebtween effectuating critical rather than naiveself change an da capacity for nonrepressive ethical relations.
My second, more critical aim, whoever, will be to reground K's theory of existential desire in a critical social ontology rathe rthan, as she does, in a Freudian drive theory. In 3.3I arguet hat K's reliance upon Freud's drive theory has, minimally, two seirously undesirable otucomes which undermine the contribution she makes to developing a linguistically grounded notion of intentionality. First, drive theory undercuts her effor tto treat affective life as genuinely social, rather than partialy antisocial. Second, the idea that intentionality is a transmutation of drive cathexes also encounters, if not difficulties supporting a notion of free agency, then a similar inability to treat intersubjective relations as sympathetically grounded rather than as desparate longings to compensate for repression of asocial pleasures. This compensatory view leads K to a dangerous valorization of an arguably patriarchal ieal of romantic love as hysterical collapse into another person. I am to corect these two deficiencies (using heidegger against hediegger!)
So can I!! but my project will be different than this author's.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

After Mass

today Mass was lovely - there were tons of children!!! I miss seeing children a lot. It was very beautiful to have so many people at our parish and to have the children's explanations!!! I am very happy to see what the Dominicans are doing and it gives me a lot of encouragement as well that we can work together for projects - just SEEING some kind of success makes you realize that your community can be spurred on to more things - but things don't become a reality unless there are atleast two or three involved. Our project is "Philosophy on Tap" which we are slating for November 19. Before I used to get discouraged by teh amount of things I have to do - for example, I am two weeks behind in my research and am putting together proposals, etc. and I am helping organizing the student conference again, working with the Lay Dominicans, and trying to open up my life more to those little meetings - I like the french better - "reunions" with people - instead of running and hiding or running and going back to my books telling myself I have so much to get done. This is the thing, "I can do all things in him who strengthens me". Yes, certain times are appropriate to clinging to your rooms - but life and grace make different demands of you in time and age and God gives you what you need to rise to the occasion. The thing is, none of this is being done alone - it is Christ and it is others - but the key is becoming a part of others so that you can participate in the projects and help to increase the fruits together - pulling alone or looking for glory - the recherche de pouvoir as Fr. Martin so well pointed out today contrasts so much with the suffering servant (see the Gospel and the readings - the disciples represent us in their desire to get the place - which also actually is somehow related to envy and acedia as i was trying to articulate it at the end of the post "on sadness") - but we don't even have to be the suffering servants - we are following the suffering and resurrected servant together in joy and patience.
But this is one of the joys of being where I am - for me, I am very fortunate - I realized how many ways I am living community in my life - all the lay people, I felt really much a part of. We lay Domincans (joined by a Carmelite and Opus Dei) had a great discussion the other evening about how ecclesial communities bring a different spirituality - Br. Solomon is right on the pulse of that and he's going to share the article with me. But this is the life of the church - and there are so many ways to enliven it further.
going to a very practical and specific level, I do think that all people should increase their particiaption at all levels - and I do think - without intending to be political - that deaconnesses should come back too. It's not so much a quesiton of identity or power or place, as a semi-institution permitting things to happen that wouldn't happen with so much community, ease, support, and efficiency otherwise. But all my conversations on this blog are not consistent!!! I go from very theoretical to very practical - I'd love to have that pithy gift which people have to stay in one mode of discourse for one meditation or length or whatever, but it's something I haven't really developed yet.
But thinking about this community I realize more explicitly than I have been that my ideas about what I want to do with my life were so abstract - wanting to do great things and start great things - to be an active "part" (thinking "part" in the literal, living, interactive, useful and functioning sense of the body parts of which St. Paul speaks) - this is the height of what it means - to follow Christ - to "drink the cup" and to "be baptized" with what Christ has drunk and to be baptised - I may not travel the whole world and make a name - but it would be a great thing to come back here - but why don't we semi-instutionalize the possibility of being there actively in the church like deaconesses!!! why only deacons, when women are even a more ideal choice for the ministries for which deacons were originally founded - taking care of widows and orphans and such things!!! because women have so much experience and are likely involved in that already and often want to tend!! it would be ideal for all of us to be flexible and learn different ministries - which is what I like about Dominicans - because they may have PhD's but they also run the Children's Mass and go to hospitals and elementary schools and things - and in a way I am glad that my education has been very book-focused (and may still be for a while) because it will balance out for me how much I love being with people and children and the sick - it's never a question of one over the other - but for the very reason that I love those things it would be better to become wiser. Anyway this is all mere speculation - and totally without basis - because everyone is formed differently and reaches a certain perfection in charity in the unique and interesting pathways of life... and also because what do I know about the pattern of my life? I really don't know - God knows - but I'm finding out while I'm thinking I know but there's a lot more to discover than to confirm. Even now, though, there are challenges as God is drawing me out of melancholy things by the circumstances of my life - will I stress and hold back and say "there's too much!" Or will I enjoy each minute and say, "I can do all things in him who gives me strength?" Obviously I am over-simplifying in either direction - it is neither one nor the other except in rare moments which may be for that reason the more memorable, but to run faster and trust that the abilities will grow at the same time. It's not even like my life is that busy perhaps to other people, but everything is relative even to myself - even to different periods in my life of growth or of decline. That being said, I have other things to do. Happy Sunday!!!

From St. Augustine

ReadingA letter to Proba by St Augustine
Let us exercise our desire in prayer
Why in our fear of not praying as we should, do we turn to so many things, to find what we should pray for? Why do we not say instead, in the words of the psalm: I have asked one thing from the Lord, this is what I will seek: to dwell in the Lord’s house all the days of my life, to see the graciousness of the Lord, and to visit his temple? There, the days do not come and go in succession, and the beginning of one day does not mean the end of another; all days are one, simultaneously and without end, and the life lived out in these days has itself no end.
So that we might obtain this life of happiness, he who is true life itself taught us to pray, not in many words as though speaking longer could gain us a hearing. After all, we pray to one who, as the Lord himself tells us, knows what we need before we ask for it.
Why he should ask us to pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him, may perplex us if we do not realise that our Lord and God does not want to know what we want (for he cannot fail to know it), but wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we may be able to receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it. That is why we are told: Enlarge your desires, do not bear the yoke with unbelievers.
The deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the larger will be our capacity to receive that gift, which is very great indeed. No eye has seen it; it has no colour. No ear has heard it; it has no sound. It has not entered man’s heart; man’s heart must enter into it.
In this faith, hope and love we pray always with unwearied desire. However, at set times and seasons we also pray to God in words, so that by these signs we may instruct ourselves and mark the progress we have made in our desire, and spur ourselves on to deepen it. The more fervent the desire, the more worthy will be its fruit. When the Apostle tells us: Pray without ceasing, he means this: Desire unceasingly that life of happiness which is nothing if not eternal, and ask it of him who alone is able to give it.
This is very beautiful from St. Augustine. I think we always need to hear this again - because when we need prayer the most - which is always - because we are always in need of it - but it is more than something we just "need" because "need" has this utilitarian connotation about it which is difficult to get away from in the English langauge and yet it is also very important because it shows the necessity of this attachment - we may become confused even as we are beginning to become aware of the merciful bounty of God. but the point is not to be able to express ourselves before God, even for our own sakes to understand totally our relationship with him, because we will never know it exaclty and because that is not the point of the relationship - it is about being together before God, repenting, praising and blessing, and receiving our nourishment. What St. Augustine says helps to point to this reality - that we are to become aware of God's presence in opening ourselves to God, which God is already doing for us. But it is more about desire than anything else because there is something about this which we cannot understand - and it is here that Aquinas expresses it well that "the love of God is better than the knowledge of God" (1.82.3)
So it does become about desire, love and pleasure more than about words -you see at the beginnng of Augustine's commentary that he talks about "pleasure" - if not that word he speaks of everything tha tis required for pleasure - timelessness, completion, the "unity" - the ONE THING that fulfils everything - there is a life of happiness (which he does say) to which we are oriented. This is the whole reason in which the context of "needs" makes sense - we feel needs because we desire wholeness, being in time, we desire to take care of what is needed, but also we desire to receive what God can give us - but we may not desire it enough!!! We may not desire it enough because we are too timid - because we are lost in the circle of needs, paradoxically we may not desire it enough because we want it so much that we withdraw from anxiety and turn to other things. But St. Augustine here is urging us to come with our anxieties and lay them before God - instead of thinking to pile up appropriate prayers for ourselves and for others, which requires knowing who you are praying for and what to ask for in the first place, he says we pray at set times and seasons for ourselves to help us but that these are merely signs - signs of what is going on already in the work of love of the Holy Spirit which is bearing fruit by encouraging answering desire. There is something in the Psalms about young women running after Christ (i don't remember the figure - becuase I am so programmed - being Catholic - to typologize immediately) more literally, Paul talks about running the race. The thing with being Catholic (as opposed to being Protestant - at least in the inceptions of Protestant reactions) is that you don't have to be "righteous" - while justice and religion are important and sacred, we do not carry the burden of perfection - we know human nature too well for that on one hand and the mercy and infinity of God too well on the other. This is why "acedia" is such a big issue for Cathlics - what reason do you have to be melancholy? For the Protestants, acedia had to be about not working hard enough - because it means that you are not doing your duty by God and to the economic structure of society. I don't mean to set up a Catholic-Proestant dichotomy - it is just that I have been reading things about Puritanism and melancholy lately. And the approaches of churches may vary exceedingly from century to century.

God, we praise you; Lord, we proclaim you!
You, the Father, the eternal –
all the earth venerates you.
All the angels, all the heavens, every power –
The cherubim, the seraphim –
unceasingly, they cry:
“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts:
heaven and earth are full of the majesty of your glory!”
The glorious choir of Apostles –
The noble ranks of prophets –
The shining army of martyrs –
all praise you.
Throughout the world your holy Church proclaims you.
– Father of immeasurable majesty,
– True Son, only-begotten, worthy of worship,
– Holy Spirit, our Advocate.
You, Christ:
– You are the king of glory.
– You are the Father’s eternal Son.
– You, to free mankind, did not disdain a Virgin’s womb.
– You defeated the sharp spear of Death, and opened the kingdom of heaven to those who believe in you.
– You sit at God’s right hand, in the glory of the Father.
– You will come, so we believe, as our Judge.
And so we ask of you: give help to your servants, whom you set free at the price of your precious blood.
Number them among your chosen ones in eternal glory.
Bring your people to safety, Lord, and bless those who are your inheritance.
Rule them and lift them high for ever.
Day by day we bless you, Lord: we praise you for ever and for ever.
Of your goodness, Lord, keep us without sin for today.
Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us.
Let your pity, Lord, be upon us, as much as we trust in you.
In you, Lord, I trust: let me never be put to shame.

On sadness

Is there a way out? I found many interesting things to read recently (I'll put a list later) but one unique one (on art and disengagement) associated post-modernism and melancholy using Kristeva, Lacan, Freud.. I am always thrilled and fascinated by these things but also saddened as I think how useful these will be to analyze some people (my sister who started psychology used to get extremely high marks in her classes because she was always able - for her own private mnemonic device - to put the name of a person she knew to every "abnormality" - this says something - that according to this we all have such names!) but anyway I love reading these things but always feel slightly sick after - because there isn't much of a way out once you're in. Psychoanalysis is that wonderful destabilizer that refuses to be integrated in the start - that refuses to let you climb out of it once you're there - (or at least I haven't read enough to see how to build something from within that project). But at any rate, I find this an itneresting thesis. And I find it interesting also when I am concerned about people who are close to me and about the problems that I think people have - if pschoanalysis is something that helps you to identify an area which might open up to therapy for the other person, but where would such a therpay begin and take place? Because even if we are reducible to those elements to abstract causes, the rebuilding of us doesn't really happen at that level - and someone - perhaps Kristeva - pointed out that the love and hatred present made the process of discovery risky to the analysand.... and I see this - people who never get out and continue to be bitter. You can't be fixated on your parents or your family forever - and even if your relationships with your parents are still not what you are comfortable with, then need communicative action or something... but anyway... the academics or practictioners have hte advantage in writing of being detached - or is it an escape that is actually not advantageous? I don't know. I don't know enough about these things. But I have ethical questions in my life and this parallels with the need to write about it in my proposal. But I shouldn't be so fixated on the importance of doing a good proposal either - there's the rub - the fixations - identifying these things may be sufficient to loosen the hold on them if we don't become attached to the identification process.
But moving to someone like Aquinas, what does Aquinas have to offer? why do I really want to do a PhD in Aquinas? I identified all the "unimportant" reasons earlier - that it is easier, that these are the people who I can work with, that for what I think I want to do later on it seemed to be the most practical. But there must be something more - and I have to stop pleading ignorant. I DO think it is possible to do an interesting parallel reading of Aquinas with things from psychoanalysis - the "loss" and the "wound" and those things compare favourably with the "present evil" the "loss" being painful, with the "desire for unity".
But if I think that Aquinas is psychologically very acute and penetrating, on the other hand I don't think he leaves himself in the lurch, as it were.
one of the biggest challenges I've had in trying to write this proposal was I want to propose something that I don't know how to say in a positive way is "normative"; "teleological" having a happy ending, and not just an artificial one, but a real resolution - but as soon as I get into any of htese languages, I don't seem to be sufficiently post-modern. Of course I haven't read enough material - perhaps Gadamer or others would be helpful in this respect - because surely something must be possible. But how to present this in a way that is not Hegel, that is not Aristotle, that is not simplistic or naive or too savvy, becoming a sheer stream of elegantly-expressed consciousness....

What about the ethics of writing? Now I am torn between different philosophy ethics - and finally the sheer one might say
lack of ethics that is just sophistry - that wants to advertise what I am doing to get money - and am constricted by the very nature of what is being proposed.
But this is seeing in the NEGATIVE way - seeing in the positive way would be quite different.

But through all of this something is happening - this is not just sheer crisis or powerlessness - I am reading and the material itself is daunting - the subject is daunting - and it should be.
what does Aquinas have to offer? religion? do i know what that means? If i did, I probably would be able to tell it to people in a way that they think would merit some help in writing it out.

_________________________________________________________________

I wrote this sometime last week and it appeared on my other blog. But since then I have been experimenting and so I am curious - about "envy" for example - becasue I noticed myself stressing about money and feeling competitive about scholarships even with my friends! and then I was able to realize when I prayed that these anxieties would not perplex me if I had real confidence in Providence, and gratitude as well - gratitude makes you conscious of Providence at work - forseeing and ensuring that you get what you need and an abundance more, and not always what you want - for me - I would love to be free of debt and for my family to be free of debt, but maybe there are other things which I cannot foresee - working extra can be very beneficial for me, maybe teaching me how many things aren't important that I would have taken for granted otherwise, so I can't even say that "Providence" means only that some years I get a lot of money to live on but it extends to everything, but most of all it extends to the "long" view which God has not only for me but for all the interconnected lives that have ever lived and touched each other - making it possible for us to end merrily in heaven. And "Providence" - not an intellectual knowledge, but a confidence which is more affective but based on recognition and remembrance, this also helps with a form of acedia by which we are saying that others are better than us - it helps us to see what God has given and the seeds of what we have - in this way - the virtue of religion - debts of gratitude, etc. will be crucial for envy and acedia.
now mercy and anxiety - mercy does not have to be alleviated, but perhaps perfected so as to become a virtue instead of a fruitless passion. Anxiety could also be soothed by consideration of providence - yes of course it could.
anyway it is almost time for Mass.
But I am really interested now "in the will" - I am working my way up almost perhaps - and my teacher gave me a good hint for my class on human intellection. This class is coming at a good time although I did not realize it so deeply before - how really this is an important next step that corresponds to a lot of what I was doing - again this whole "Providence" thing! because the passions were the appetitive that were the most immediate - but going to the intelligent is looking at what is special about the human being - the opposite meaning of pati which is to be perfected - and the very special perfection of the human being... and the elements of the human being that pertain to the theologian are the apprehensve and appetitive. This will really balance out things!!! but please say a little prayer so I am able to find a good essay topic and pursue it.
Instead of looking anxiously at my studies to see "what I have to get done" which is kind of how I felt because I am on a time-slot thing for one work for which I am being paid (and am two weeks behind) if I focus on what is important and good in these things, I will be able to catch up. I often don't realize how often anxiety motivates me - and how it hinders me by preventing me from working well, from enjoying it - and from enjoying it to moving more clearly and easily and swiftly to what I need to study, to synthesize, to compare, critique, contrast, and to appropriate, articulate.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

St. Callistus

St. Callistus was a really cool guy. There was a nice summary of his life from Universalis.com which I was for some reason unable to copy. But he had an interesting life - an ex-slave who lost the money entrusted to him and who ended up as Pope. What I like best about his contribution was that he insisted that repented sins should be absolved, that they were forgiveable. This is a big deal!

Friday, October 09, 2009

Got to check this out

This book looks amazing. Very helpful: "The Quality of Life" ed. by Sen and Nussbaum.

Take a look at the chapters in the "Overview" section to see how many areas this book looks at!!!
(E.g. Poor Relatively Speaking; Goods and People; Sex Bias in Poverty; Economics in the Family.)

Another wonderful looking text I covet by Sen:
Identity and Violence: the illusion of destiny (review available on Amazon)
Nowadays the economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen travels the world, opinions at the ready. His subjects are rarely economic. In the main, he works "out of area," taking on a wide range of political and social issues that have little to do with the dismal science. He is serene and confident, full of good cheer, ready to see the best in everyone.

Over this discursive little book lies the shadow of Sen's formidable Harvard colleague, the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, with his celebrated theory of the "clash of civilizations." Sen has assigned himself the role of the anti-Huntington: Sen sees Huntington's thesis of cultural conflict yielding a one-dimensional approach to human identity -- and leading to the "civilizational and religious partitioning of the world," which can only occasion greater global disorder.

ere, in contrast, is Sen celebrating the complexity of human identity: "The same person can be, without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance runner, a historian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theater lover, an environmental activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician," etc. One's civilizational identity is not one's destiny, Sen observes, and civilizational "partitioning" -- seeing the planet culture by culture -- does not capture the messiness of the world. This Earth of ours, he says, is made more "flammable" by warring definitions of human identity, rather than an embrace of the many different facets that make us human.

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Same and different

I have been thinking a little bit about what I wrote earlier as I am easing back into a more feasible rhythm after rushing to catch up with the things I was already behind in. Sometimes things don`t necessarily have to ``throw one off`` like that conversation did at that point in my life - it is impossible and unnecessary to ensure against vulnerability, but vulnerability can be supported in a number of ways - it can be an opportunity for enrichment if it has time for prayer, leisure, thought. But if the vulnerability was supported prior to such moments, by prayer, by not running around because you have acedia or want to please people, well then the time might arguably have been spent considerably more profitably. Because life is short. It really is. But before I go back to the Metaphysics, I want to think a little bit about the ``confusions`` I have been having about ``same`` and ``different``. It is a ``dialectic`` or a polemic that I thought had drifted out of relevance but it pops up again - just conversations with people - my reactions of old were to deny difference - or show that difference is socially constructed - what really counts is to be together and do things together and instead of gazing at the other in some kind of stability, to be actually engaged in doing something with the other so that these things are not as important. Because sometimes I do think that Kant has affected us - not Kant - but something in modernity about focusing overly much on appearances - something that happens particularly in our contemporary world, I like the word my friend has given it in his thesis - ``statufication``. While it can`t be something wholly modern - there is an obsession with appearances that may be a perennial possibility within each human being - but mass media definitely takes it to a whole new much more pervasive level. For me, the problem that kept on resurfacing was a fear of not being accepted - asserting ``You`re different`` means, ``You can`t play with us`` or ``There is a kind of chasm between you and us`` or ``I really don`t quite undersatnd you because you are different, but keeping in mind your difference, I`ll try to have a conversation with you,``which is the most preferable of the three, but still there are many levels of ability to be receptive to dialogue. Of course I do the same thing - this is not about only what others are doing - and sometimes recognizing the differeces can be because someone does respect the other person, and am trying to match up what they are saying with something to make a bridge where there was maybe false assumptions or nothing at all before. Or it could be respecting the person and rejoicing at one's own good fortune to converse with someone who is wise, educated, virtuous, experienced, and feeling,"I am very happy to have a conversation with you.`` Or wit or other things, but these may not bring the same kind of awe but more of a camaraderie.
Anyway, so there are many ways in which differences are impossible to get away from. But you are missing the point of difference if you think you are supposed to stay there - recognizing differences is not the same thing as imposing them, as making them permanent -recognition is like an introduction to something else. And "recognition" - a good word - is already "re-thinking" - there is something the same in all the difference that makes you able to identify a difference in the first place. Where disparity is so wide, we scarcely remark upon it because we can no longer really speak of it in the same sentence. For instance, you wouldn't speak of a microchip and a hippopotamus in the same sentence, or of "polka-dotted" and "subtle" unless you were illustrating something totally incompatible or blowing off words.
In this sense, recognizing differences can be a disposition to prepare you for engaging in an activity together, while remaining different - because if there was only one, there would be none.
There is something good to come out of this unsettling - I thought I would just "grow out of" the same and difference things but it refuses to go away so it is good to reflect on these things. Anyway, it may help to simultaneously cast light on and shift the ways I think about many things which can be better. I have been pretty good on the "universalist" side of the equation - and pretty good at detecting problematic motivations behind the desire to differentiate - perhaps too good. But this is related to my sensitivity and fear of being ostracized or put in a box or "statufied" as my friend has so nicely put it. And when I studied politics inadvertently I became a regular doctrinaire against asserting differences, because I saw where these opportunities were taken advantage of to justify unjust situations, and usually used as preludes to creating unjust situations. But I also discovered on the other end of the scale that an exaggerated "universality" can actually be used to promote inequality because the current molds ARE developed and adapted for a certain type of individual - let's say the "male" body in the workplace, for example, in which at some points (and probably still in many places) "prostrate cancer" was considered a normal health issue while "pregnancy" was considered something ``abnormal`` (I don`t remember the exact terminology, but the effect was that either for paid leave or for medical coverage prostrate cancer was covered and pregnancy was not - this is not right - I don`t remember the exact circumstances). Anyway - when the systems have been one-sided and not allowing for differences, then you got to say HEY, there are differences which we have not accommodated - so there is a justice issue to recognizing differences as well but it depends upon the presumption that they are the same - or entitled to equal health care for the issues which hit you personally in your life whether you are a man or a woman. Not so that you limit the person and say ``You can`t work here because you might get pregnant`` but to say ``When you are pregnant, you are entitled to appropriate health coverage``. For me, the idea that you have to recognize difference in order to accomodate for more Others doesn't really matter - I think the universalism also serves the same purpose - in a way, there's soemthing that gets away from same and different in the "i-thou" relationship - it doesn't matter whether the other is same or different fro you (i know that "Other" connotes different - but in the gaze there is someting between same and different, or regardless of these -it is kind of in its own category).
Anyway, it is hard to get away from the fact htat you need to recognize difference to ENSURE injustice - but then it is still always interesting that the ``different`` is from the perspective of a dominant norm, which is internalized even in those who don`t conform to that ``norm``. Anyway. These are the issues with ``same`` and ``different`` that can arise in a justice context. But the ``justice`` and ``political`` comments must maintain both distinctions formally and be used wisely - its conversations and laws. For my life, it is something different - the two have to be reconciled experientially and something of their reconciliation be recorded.
Being attentive to all the problems associated with ``same`` and ``different`` from a justice and from the opportunity to be and act together, and mindful of the many experiences in my life which led me to reflect on these issues and settle for particular interpretations which often favoured the "universality" side, I think it is time for me to progress a little further. I bump up with it all the time. I hate the discourses on difference which showed why I go for the universality - but if I'm going to embrace it it's going to have to be something quite "different" : ) frankly - not only a different articulation but a different kind of social and experiential and self-esteem reality. Because they go together. I am not "womanly" or "femnine" or "girly" or any of those things - I used to grind my teeth when a particular individual used to "compliment" me and say how I was attractive to him for that reason - such an honour! but this is not going to be what I'm talking about, needless to say. Effeminate women unnerve me, just as macho men annoy me. I prefer to see people stretching towards characteristics which are percieved to belong more to the opposite sex - I find these people usually more intelligent and fun to be around - it can be often because they are indeed original and interesting - but this is all mere opinion and speculation.
See, the importance of reconciling same and different in our lives mean that we can do and be whatever we are in a peculiar situation to do and to be. I was thinking sadly about my ingratitude in wishing that I knew `cool`` older women and had sisters to be a part of - I wanted role models, basically, I wanted some people to help to define me and shape me and integrate me into their image and community, all because I saw that I was different when my situation seemed weird to a friend, and I realized that I didn`t really belong to the Dominicans either in the fullest sense becuase I am a girl. It wasn`t just that - I wanted friends. (Yes, all this obscures the fact that I DO have friends, but i`ll get to that point). I wanted friends who were like me - I love my roommate - and I love a few girls really well - but the ``few`` is the key - I know many less girls and i work with many less girls - and there are many whom I compassionate much more than respect and that kind of gets in the way of a real friendship - you know, the whole mutual thing - the working together thing - I agree in many respects with Aristotle. I basically want to be a friar and part of friars but I undersatnd this is complicated because I am a girl, and then I wanted a girl version, but there aren`t really any that I know although I may know some in the future. But none of this is really the point. The point is that even where I am - there is no reason to live in the future, and I am indeed very blessed - here is where I will find out something real adn original and different - sure - there is a lot of ease to going somewhere where you can work out your identity in a place where every one is there kind of helping you towards it - you have the `sameness` down and the originality springs up out of there. I am working from the opposite - I don`t have a socius - I have friends whom I love though - my roommate - my schoolmates, my friarmates. So this means that I simply be and become who I am and what I can do and to flourish in these circumstances. "Celebrating" the differences is not just a mindless homage, it is a daily humorous reliving of them, encountering them, accomplishing unique things with others in them, laughing and enjoying them, but all the same entering universality through them - there will be different paths - but in one sense, I am no more different from "the friars" or from "the classmates" or from even any one of my girl friends than each one is different from each other. We are animals - intelligent, social animals who are intended for life with God - but the difference between the sexes is going to stand out more. I have been on the fortunate end of the equation where it was very easy for me to see the universality - I was on the "margins" - it's normal for me to be around a lot of men and to forget that I am one among others and that I look different to others than I feel to myself (I tend to think I am pretty good at identifying people in the second person, but it`s also clear that I third-person them when I begin to abstract their supposed ideas from things that they say).
But when I am around a lot of men and there are only a few or no girls, I will be the one who sticks out. It`s the other way around when the ratios are reversed, of course. And this is all true - experiences testify to it. But there are also some things about ``me`` that I should accept thankfully from God and use. Teresa of Avila was very good in this respect - she thought that it was kind of a first to recognize the gifts and thank God for granting you to them. It`s not just male and female differences I have tended to resist - it`s differences in other things - ability or education, for example. And it is healthy to resist naming people according to what you think their ability is - including yourself - because capabilities are dynamic and open-ended, and the question is not to be measuring or comparing them but to be using them and interacting with them - so that instinct is a very healthy one, actually. But sometimes a lack of recognition ends in a lack of self-confidence which can lead to harmful things. I sometimes think in this sense (although thankfully more rarely than formerly) that sometimes people may have something more to provide thought or critique in my life - or in general - than may be the case which might actually be only a mistake. But this mistake has led to some more in-depth thinking about this than I have ever done - and the glimpse of beginning to attempt a reconcilation which I might have continued to be ignorant of. Other problems include a slacking off in studying, taking time out for things that a person will say randomly to me without any knowledge of circumstances in my life, that sort of thing and thinking that perhaps I should reflect on what they suggest. I dont know what a difference in abilities means for others - I have not been much of a teacher yet - I speak primarily from my experiences in conversations which is not, perhaps, so revealing as doing a class together would be. Finally, why not thank God? There is no reason to hide my gifts or to be ashamed of them if I really believed they were a gift from God and was not afraid of my unique configuration of gifts, just as I can recognize other peoples unique configurations. But it has been hard for me to see uniqueness in myself or in anyone - again that whole universalism thing. And everything which I might head for in the opposite direction is also dependent on this universality in the first place. I think my instincts are very British - but I found myself recoiling when I read the British political philosophers ideas about how everyone was close enough in abilities - if you take the human species generally - there is not a huge span of difference - I saw immediately political problems with this naivete and then reacted at other levels. So it is hard for me to take my own medicine when someone else says it!
The Gospel was a really nice one today - it conjoined the thing about the disciples beig all happy about casting out demons and Christ saying be happy about being written in heaven - and taking a little childl - to me the two go well together - we think that we`re acting and doing such good things and we`re taking pride - and Christ steers us away from that - not from the rejoicing, but gives us a more light and heart-filled reason to rejoice that does not depend on any imagined accomplishments (and thus also is not affected by the inevitable accompanying discouragements and self-pitying or self-loathing that goes wtih recognizing failures - so it is an immense gift!!! a great bargain - to give up rejoicing about our successes in this world - as well as to mourn over our presumable failures - and to rejoice always in God`s writing our name in heaven) Then this is tied in with the children - we are small to rejoice - we rejoice because we are small - humour is related to the ground and to being human - it`s because we didn`t create, maintain, and redeem the world but are made of the world that we can rejoice that our names are written in heaven and can thank our Father for revealing all these things to little ones.
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Now it`s sunday - I wrote this yesterday and today the Office of readings had a very nice thing from the first book of Genesis - the whole Adam and Eve thing. It reminded me of a commentary Aquinas had - but I`ll come back to that later if I have time.

Friday, October 02, 2009

Review of Nussbaum "Frontiers of Justice"

Just thought I'd include my review on Nussbaum requested by my prof for poverty research.

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NUSSBAUM – FRONTIERS OF JUSTICE
The point of Nussbaum's book, as hinted at in the title "Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership" is to identify three weaknesses in the social contract (SC) tradition with respect to disability, transnational relations, and animals.
Nussbaum is explicitly writing in answer to, and improvement upon, the social contract theory, (cf. p. 10, p. 94) and notes particular features about one SC tradition, particularly in its Rawlsian formulation, which contribute towards the exclusion of disabled human beings and of other species, and that at least the Rawlsian version does not provide an adequate basis for just international relations in the contemporary world.
RESPONDING TO THE SOCIAL CONTRACT TRADITION
Working in Nussbaum's nuanced account of the social contract tradition, we note a keen insight of hers, namely, that the social contract tradition often conflates two questions that are in principle distinct: "By whom are society's basic principles designed?" and "For whom are society's basic principles designed?" (p. 16)
The issue cannot be simply solved by sharing and opening the task of designing society`s principles to every individual, nation, and to other species, in large part because of the parameters in which social contract theory works. The ``Circumstances of Justice`` (cf. p. 12 – articulated by Hume and approved by Rawls) according to which the parties are free, roughly equal in powers, independent, sharing same terrain, subject to conditions of “moderate scarcity” such that at the same time none achieve dominance and all would benefit from the exchange. Nussbaum notes that these “circumstances” ultimately do not apply to all those having stakes in concrete political life. Another issue is that not all share in the idealized rationality of political participants which Nussbaum notes remains a feature even of Hugh Grotius` (time period) political theory (Nussbaum otherwise appreciates and identifies with Grotius` approach, because of the associations of his theory with a ``natural law`` which allows Grotius to provide a rich account of the determinate ``good`` of the human being as being already social and politicized. While Nussbaum does not link these given elements about the ``good`` or ``goods`` of the human being to metaphysical statements, as does Grotius, Nussbaum's capabilities approach operates with a similarly determinate account of a human being whose good is indispensably intertwined with social and political life, a view which she also attributes to Aristotle and to Marx).
Ultimately, while Nussbaum states she is working in response to or in dialogue with the social contract tradition, it seems to me that very little of that tradition remains in the final product of her theory (at least within any of the three contemporary strains of SC theory motivations which she broadly characterizes as focusing for the motivation of the parties on a) mutual advantage, b) the “mixed” version of Rawls, and c) a justice based approach. The Rawlsian tradition in particular she notes does not seem to address these three urgent questions of “justice” in the contemporary world (and she traces some of the factors to other thinkers in the larger social contract tradition). If the social contract theory is formulated in terms of mutual advantage, either solely or at least significantly (as is the case with Rawls) and if such advantage is narrowly defined in terms of material gain, it is clear that Nussbaum is in a different sphere – that of “justice” as something that human beings love and do pursue for its own sake, and which cannot depend upon an assurance of or any necessary correlation with mutual advantage – cf. p. X).
Is the capabilities approach derivable from within or at least intertwinable with a social contract approach to accounting for and coping with questions of justice? Nussbaum does identify a fundamental difference in theoretical structure between her approach and typical contractarianism: contractarianism is a procedural theory while the capabilities approach centres on concrete social outcomes (cf. p. 81).

A term which Nussbaum uses is ``overlapping consensus`` (cf. Where) a kind of language which seems to suggest more a human rights approach than a SC procedure – (and indeed Nussbaum notes that the capabilities approach is a species of a human rights approach). She makes it clear that the capabilities are an open, somewhat abstractly conceived and formulated principles that allow space for given societies to work out exactly how they are realized in practice, although sufficiently determinate to provide grounds for respectful consensus and adequately identifiable internal and international standards for accountability (and thus she diverges from Sen's more open-ended approach by insisting on the possibility of a list; she herself provides ten basic forms of capabilities (available pages 76-78). Perhaps something like the kind of activity propounded in ``social contract`` theory obtains at the more practical levels, at both intra-national and international levels of determining policies, distributions, and use of resources, guided from the principles of capabilities as semi-determinate accounts of the goods of the human being.

“Capabilities” Approach: Context in Economic Theories
(Relative to the issue of poverty measurement)
Nussbaum notes the particular context of the capabilities approach (in its Sen version, which was the version that she noted and began to develop and contextualize philosophically) arose out of a response to a prevalent form of economic utiltiarianism in development economics. In her own words, it was "designed above all as an alternative to the economic-Utilitarian approaches which dominated, and to some degree still dominate, discussions of quality of life in international development and policy circles, especially approaches that understand the point of development in narrowly economic terms". (p. 71)
The popular GNP (Gross National Product) approach in development economics was "not very illuminating" about real human lives and Nussbaum proceeds to identify significant problems with the Utiltiarian approach in general. Nussbaum notes that the aggregation approach does not only obfuscate the fact that lives are distinct, but also confuses `distinct elements` of lives (e.g. liberty, economic well being, health, and education are not distinguished from each other in this crude measure). She notes Rawls' critique that this approach encourages trade-offs between goods (e.g. trading off political or religious liberty) to obtain largest social total (or average). Another issue is that utiltarianism simply does not regard what people can do and be - and Nussbaum notes the phenomena of "adaptive preference" according to which people adjust their preferences to what they think they can achieve within their own given socio-economic configuration. Finally, she notes that by focusing on the state of satisfaction, this theory (utiltiarianism) "shows deficient regard for agency.`` (I think from p. 71 and onwards)
The capabilities approach, in contrast, Nussbaum associates with the ``intuitive`` underlying conception of the dignity of the human being which is associated with the practical possibility of a life worthy of that dignity, which has available in it "truly human functioning," (referring to Marx`s 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, careful to distinguish between her political use of the term and a use which would attempt to formulate a comprehensive doctrine of human life, a distinction neglected by Marx.)
Nussbaum contrasts this approach with the approach of speaking in terms of "resources" as an index of well being which somehow skirts the crucial facts that "human beings have varying needs for resources, and also varying abilities to convert resources into functioning. Thus two people with similar quantities of resources may actually differ greatly in the ways that matter most for social justice. (cf. p. 75).
Here's where we see in relation to our own interests concerning ``poverty`` that many of the discourses on the definitions of poverty appear themselves to be ``impoverished`` - minimalistic, narrow, and negatively-formulated ways of considering the issues. By identifying concrete (Nussbaum does think it is possible to agree upon determinate capabilities, and she cites Maritain's observation about the possibility of agreeing on such principles – in Maritain's case, it was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) entitlements of the human being associable with capacities of that human being - by showing positive requirements and possibilities, it becomes possible for the discourses to become more enriched and attention focused on subjects of justice in a different way.
Nussbaum's ambition is to provide a minimal account of social justice, if a society does not guarantee this to all its citizens at some appropriate threshold level, it falls short of being a fully just society, whatever its level of opulence (interesting to contrast with Sachs approach, which is surprisingly optimistic and it appears to me, almost prepared to accept the difficulties of Bangladesh women labouring under conditions that would be unacceptable in OECD countries to some extent as the interim between now and economic success).
Nussbaum protects pluralism (the capabilities approach is a form of political liberalism after all) in many ways – by insisting this is an open-ended basket subject to normal revisions, by positing capability and not functioning as the goal: for example, Muslim women who veil themselves would be completely free to do so – the Nussbaum condition would be that they do not lack education, economic and other buttresses of autonomy – thus assuring their ability to have a real choice in such matters. The exceptions for Nussbaum would be children and animals whose capacity for consent is not fully developed (e.g. she supports compulsory primary education and an age of consent for sex) and in some cases, the mentally disabled, for whom in a case-by case basis it might be more appropriate to aim for functioning than for capability. She also includes major liberties which protect pluralism on the list, and insists on a strong separation between “justification” and “implementation” - rather than being a basis for military and economic sanctions, she considers these a basis for persuasive activities.
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MY OWN COMMENTS

Justice between nations
This takes a crucial place in Nussbaum's analysis: it is the second of the three major issues which she notes the Rawlsian tradition fails to address adequately. The concept of “free, equal, and independent” (read Hume's “circumstances of justice”) states she suggests is so far removed from today's world (configured not only by relations between states, but complicated by multinational corporations, economic relations, NGO's, and a host of other factors) as to be hardly useful, and is skeptical about a two-stage approach to social contract theory, namely, treating states as analogous to “moral persons”, noting that this assumes (where it cannot be assumed) that a state is first of all stable and secondly functions internally in a just way (and does not itself rely on exclusion of entire groups from political or economic or other participation).
Nussbaum devotes time also to critiquing Rawls' definition of what constitutes a “people” and finding his description not to add anything useful to the notion of a “state” prefers to focus on the latter concept. She mentions the issue of justice between nations in relation to the world of classic social contract doctrines – noting that its main theorists were “very well acquainted“ with wars between states and with the phenomena of trade and colonial expansion. Her critique of the SC tradition however, is that it seemed seemed possible to “adopt a thin approach” to international relations, focusing on issues of war and peace and refusing to discuss economic redistribution or protection for basic human rights (noting however the case of Grotius who had argued that peace would not be lasting if it failed to address economic redistribution) and notes this “thin” approach is increasingly inadequate today.
Nussbaum suggests that even if we were to “bracket” questions of “retrospective justice” created by legacy of colonialism (and I would say that she does bracket historical factors throughout the whole book: the basis for her argument is not so much historical as the more philosophical argument that accidents of birth should not “pervasively” influence a person's life chances) that urgent “forward-looking issues” of justice are in store. Even the best attempts from within the social contract tradition to solve these problems (she mentions Rawls, Pogge, and Beitz) prove insufficient guides to the complexity of the issues we face, and she argues the capabilities approach is more useful.

Policy and grassroots application
Nussbaum doesn`t fully develop the impacts which her theory can have from a practical involvement in “development” but understandably stays at the level of theory: she articulates general and abstract concepts which become principles for political thought, public policies, and fruitful practical comparison which challenges and shifts experiential learning. I can add to her discussions in this sense in speaking from my own observations in people-based development programs in Andhra Pradesh, India, I can say that engaging the people and investing in all their capacities in social and political forms of fostering - such as in the community-based development programs of Bala Vikasa also solves many practical problems which development agencies run into - of inapplicable, short term, culturally inappropriate or unilateral ``solutions`` which, in a top-down or policy-based approach, do not ``take root`` at the ground level, or at least not with the same success rate when more holistic and participatory alternatives are employed). Engaging the capabilities of persons and communities in the process of assuring their capabilities are fulfilled is more likely to ensure that interdependent rights are achieved (all rights interconnective and non-fungible, as Nussbaum notes, and the enduring limitation of policy-based initiatives is that they can never quite address issues holistically). Nussbaum's theory has occasionally been characterized as “paternalistic” and she herself applies the term to human-animal relationships in a more positive sense of the term. But the focus of her book concerns the fact that it is special-needs people and other species who are left out, so her discussions are oriented in that direction. On the other hand, it is important, I think, not to confuse an “entitlement” with a “duty” because it has been a problem in economic theories (such as those of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations) that poverty is a matter of tightening belts and taking responsibility for one's situation. Nussbaum discusses O'Neill's emphasis on duties as a way to initiate discussion about these issues but prefers her entitlement-based-account. In terms of practical application, she does give concrete recommendations when she discusses the disabled, for example.

Peripheral note
As a specific issue that Nussbaum draws attention to in the question of addressing justice for mentally or physically disabled, she notes this involves a justice issue not only for them, but for those who care for them, and that issues such as allocation, labor involved in caring, and social costs of promoting fuller inclusion of disabled citizens need to come into focus (cf. p. 33). In poverty, the costs which are incurred by caring work are important. I have done research on a related question in the past concerning correlations between motherhood and poverty for a woman, for example, and I think interesting work could be done in these kinds of matters.

Closing comments
It was difficult to abstract the economic application of Nussbaum's principles in relation to specific questions on poverty, although it is easy to see how the capabilities approach enters as an alternative form of – or at least a critique of current – poverty measurements. Ultimately, however, this text (Frontiers of Justice) was one that is strongly inserted with, and dialoguing with a political philosophy tradition to point out urgent questions today which such theories fail to cope with but it necessarily remained highly abstract, in part intentionally because Nussbaum's proposal was to introduce a more helpful political conception of the human being for initiating more practical discussions by starting with principles. I think perhaps to really explore and derive the benefit of the capabilities approach in relation to other areas of research, it would be helpful for me to further explore the critiques of Sen or the other works of Nussbaum which are more closely united to concrete issues which she identifies in real societies (as for example, in Sex and Social Justice or Women in Human Development.)

Prayer before study

CREATOR ineffabilis, qui de thesauris sapientiae tuae tres Angelorum hierarchias designasti et eas super caelum empyreum miro ordine collocasti atque universi partes elegantissime distribuisti: Tu, inquam, qui verus fons luminis et sapientiae diceris ac supereminens principium, infundere digneris super intellectus mei tenebras tuae radium claritatis, duplices, in quibus natus sum, a me removens tenebras, peccatum scilicet et ignorantiam. Tu, qui linguas infantium facis disertas, linguam meam erudias atque in labiis meis gratiam tuae benedictionis infundas. Da mihi intelligendi acumen, retinendi capacitatem, addiscendi modum et facilitatem, interpretandi subtilitatem, loquendi gratiam copiosam. Ingressum instruas, progressum dirigas, egressum compleas. Tu, qui es verus Deus et homo, qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

O INFINITE Creator, who in the riches of Thy wisdom didst appoint three hierarchies of Angels and didst set them in wondrous order over the highest heavens, and who didst apportion the elements of the world most wisely: do Thou, who art in truth the fountain of light and wisdom, deign to shed upon the darkness of my understanding the rays of Thine infinite brightness, and remove far from me the twofold darkness in which I was born, namely, sin and ignorance. Do Thou, who givest speech to the tongues of little children, instruct my tongue and pour into my lips the grace of Thy benediction. Give me keenness of apprehension, capacity for remembering, method and ease in learning, insight-in interpretation, and copious eloquence in speech. Instruct my beginning, direct my progress, and set Thy seal upon the finished work, Thou, who art true God and true Man, who livest and reignest world without end. Amen.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Hrm.

Today is the feastday of Therese of Lisieux. I like Therese of Lisieux a lot and I am happy it is her day today. I would like to talk about that but there is so much on my mind at present that I would like to try and make something of it. I like these things, whether you call it "confession" or whether you call it "verbal diahorrea" as does my mother or "logorrea" as I heard a new professor call it. I like to think these things are more constructive than that - like building something up - maybe it's just a little house like those sugar-cube houses we used to make at christmas - it might make you sick if you eat it, and it can dissolve into nothing if you put it in water (for long enough) but it serves a purpose - it is pretty. Anyway, there's been a lot to sort out recently and I would like to make something out of it instead of just let it sit and find myself running off and getting full of acedia or something and getting even less out of life than if I just tried to focus on my work instead. For I already noticed the avoidance techniques coming out - a number of unnecessary "chores" have been creeping into my study hours!! And I already have that ambiguous thing going on with social relationships - where I want to be around people but at the same time want to be alone. So here goes all those things.
I have been thinking most recently in terms of "sadness" - the species of sadness - mostly in relation to comments a profes. of mine made with regard to my thesis. I didn't recognize species of sadness so much in my life - alhtough I thought I could recognize sadness, genuine sorrow, melancholy, all those shades and things. But there is something different with acedia and with jealousy. Now jealousy is a term - watch out for it - becuase we also have "envy" in English which is closer to the Latin invidia. In the Bible - I don't remember where - one of the prophets, I think - there's this image of God as a "jealous" God of his people. "Envy" in English, it seems to me, has more to do with things that are not related to anything erotic or anything to do with social relationships (which may also have a lot to do fundamentally with self-esteem, but self-esteem, inter-realtionships and the capacity to relate, sympathize, and to engage even perhaps intellectually rather than in a less activity-oriented way with someone - these seem to be closer to `jealousy``). I have to say that jealousy is one of the rarest of the sadnesses that I feel, but it`s still there and I am surprised to find it. I see it on both levels - I see it in relation to social relationships - but I also see it in terms of a protectiveness of myself in material things - wanting to make sure that I don`t get `stuck`with greater costs in terms of time or material resources - I am `jealous```of my limited time and resources in that sense - it is not so much being sad that others have good things - it`s being sad that I feel in a situation where I can`t easily withdraw but is putting pressure on other things I have to make room for in my life. Those two elements I am very familiar with. But the second kind seems to have less juicy stuff - the first, I think, is more complex, and certainly more capable of wounding and causing bitterness - becuase it DOES have to do with self esteem - our relationships with others are VERY intertwined with `self-image`- i like this term better than ``how we htink of ourselves`` but it is still a little abstract. And we HAVE no self-esteem if we are not with others - our selves are only social selves - relational - to use an Augustinian term - and to expand what I mean by ``social`` a bit to make room. We like to feel loved. And we like to think that love is merited. And this is where I am thinking that - in terms of matching up remedies with species (which I thought was a corny idea) might actually make sense. I am preparing for my defence : ) but am actually getting interested in it at the same time. Anyway, that`s a lot of what I have on jealousy there. It`s so much easier than writing autobiography! it`s a lot less painful, and a lot quicker, and you feel better after. There`s another remedy for you - contemplation : )
Acedia. I was making a simplistic dichotomy in my head earlier today - becuase I was realizing how I was feeling those ambiguities and tensions in my social relationships - with ALL kinds of jealousy involved - either wanting to be loved and at the same time - because I am getting more and more conscious of how much valuable time is taken up in small-talk and sometimes I feel helpless about it - there is the other jealousy too. I thought really quickly about how nice it would be to get away and get a lot of work done, but I quickly saw how ridiculous and childish and really how much I wouldn`t want it and how much I am dependent on social relations - better to accept limitations and the goodnesses within them, which I do love and crave and flourish on and relish and share in the midst of it, although the small tensions - becuaase of a number of reasons - contrive to destabilize the peace or joy that I nostalgically recall at such vulnerable moments - which, however, is never what your nostalgia simplifies it into, but anyway... still better than to just accept quietly is to sit down and sort it all out like I am doing now insofar as it can be sorted, but sorting is perhaps not so much the point as seeing and identifying sources of tensions, which is a pleasure in itself - does it completely wipe out the other things? Well, no, actually, and I am beginning to see just how "gratuitous" peace is. In reading the desert friars and those things, you see how they really noticed how much they cared about a kind of bodily purity, I guess you'd call it - I know it's an outmoded word, but I don't know well how to articulate the travails of the male who don't want to be aroused - and the words are escaping my memory because I'm tired - well, I don't talk about it much and it means considerably less to me - anyway. Those things. But being at rest from I guess sexual arousal (which is not really a term I like either - but at least people will recognize this term even if it is not a good one) was a big deal for them - and the concern of the friars - or actually monks - sorry - was to ensure that it was not so much bodily purity that excited them - or rather that it shouldnèt be the main focus at all, but rather the relationship between the individual and God and of course neighbour too. This was only a means - really - and it was not someting that depended much on their own effort - yes disposativeness has to do with it whether its sexual arousal or melancholy or whatever - but anyway - the point is that you can become focused on these things or even on moods as do I and be nostalgic for something that is not really the point. Itès like the disciples running to Jesus - and theyère like "Yay we cast out demons and stuff" and Jesus replies, "Don't go crazy over these things - instead be happy that your names are written in heaven." So none of this stuff matters (even though casting out demons and healing the sick are considerably more excting and important than bodily "purity" or than peacefulness or felicity of passions - even THAT wasn't the main point). I guess my point is that these things - I am vulnerbale to them. They make me realize my vulnerabliity - they bring home my vulnerability - they ARE my vulnerability. But it's not really the point - the point is more that my name is "written in heaven" and not so much because I wrote it there but becuase someone else wrote it there - God is kind of the one who is the point and who is bringing me and all the little people like me together in Christ - we are all made for glory. I feel like a Baptist minister - there's something quintessentially American protestant about the word "glory". Anyway verbal diahrrea moment. But it would be a lie to just leave it like that - am I happy just to say - Oh - it's okay - because of this? Because what I say would mean something if I explored the content which I didn't do and so it doesn't have content - so what DOES it mean? "Eye hasn't seen and ear hasn't heard" - maybe I have to posit something unsayable in order to say.
But still it doesn't do away with the fact that I have to deal with it here and now. And what are the remedies - I identified talking about it - in a contemplation-kind-of-way as a major one. Really, just THINKING helps out TONS of things!!! quietly reflecting. Of course, it is much more fun writing on a blog than thinking in my own head because then there is the hope or expectation of someone reading it and then I am back in the social world at the same time and having fun with it. (Bracket for now that I am the one speaking - because the reader is able to do creative things - I never feel "imposed on" when I am reading - UNLESS I'm directed to read something for a pragmatic purpose, and then it's a little different). But even then I can save my own critiques and I'm still having fun.
Anyway - there's something I want to recall from catherine of Siena that I think is very applicable for my "second jealousy" - in the "treatise on discretion" section, God is talking about the pernicious problem of people giving up their own good in order to please or even help others!! There is something awestrikingly pernicious about this. It is foolish. Simply put. And for me, even if I do "help" people in some marginal way, it is outweighed by the times I want to please people, which may be legitimately ebcause of them or may be even more for the self-esteem social reasons, which is probably the least helpful of all AND the most difficult to deal with. It is easier to separate from other people's needs than your own! Not really necessarily the case - I think EXTREME need is able to focus us. Anyway, I was thinking that "mercy" was the only non-problematic sorrow and I am beginning to see where it can present issues - very simliar to the "jealousy" issues in fact, where there is seeing yourself in the other person - instead of wanting to help the other as other - as other, you are more likely to back off perhaps or to retain your resources - as you see the other is like yourself, you might be more willing to "recreate" (even in the "recreation" sense) that person in your image. Anyway don't note this seriously if you are reading this because this is very much verbal diahorea, I don't know if it is sensible.
But back to sexual things, because I was asked a question t'other night that kind of threw me for a loop - I was hanging out with a couple of friends, one of them from France - at some point, when one of us had left to go to the washroom or someting I was talking with him and he inquired about whether I was seeing anyone at this point and I explained not at present, and when he asked if there was any reason I was just explaining how my life was very full at present and there just wasn't room at this point - and when he was giving me blank looks I threw in the fact that I was thinking of being a sister but then explained the other things again - where I had a lot of friends, felt like I had all the time I wanted with guys as well as with girls, etc. etc. And then he asked me, "Well what do you do about sex?" and asked if I was having sex - and me, all my British instincts amused and taken aback at the same time and I said ``not yet, because again, blah, blah, blah.`` And then he said, `Well what do you do with your primal instincts?`` At this point I wanted to laugh but tried to find a way to answer that would fit with the other friend who had just happened to come back after he asked me but missed the question. I don't know what kind of conversation would have happened if he wasn't there, but I know the other friend more and was less inclined to discuss such things in front of him (we are more embarrassed with those we know more!) and resorted to vague generalities about stuff that was remotely connected to "sublimation" - friends, music, etc. but it was very lame and I could sense my friend's increasing disconnect. It was actually very funny - the poor guy probably thinks that I am a horribly repressed or else very oddly constructed young woman. But maybe I would have had a more frank conversation if my other friend hadn't returned. But anyway, it made me think. I don't think much about my "primal instincts" as he so romantically called "them". I am increasingly aware - although perhaps not even so much as I could or should be, of the way the erotic influences my human relationships and many other things - moods, what I wear, my sensibilities - but I think a lot of this also ties in with self-esteem issues - which I think eroticism is very closely allied to - and narcissism too, but also many beautiful mutual relationships that cannot be called narcissitic in any perjorative sense, but a height of celebration (i hate the word "self-gift" - because I've heard it so many times to make me choke and it seems contentless anyway) anyway. At a less philosophical level - it has been clearer to me - the difference from being at home and from being in a place where I am with lots of men. And lots of normal men. And myself a normal woman. And there's other women around too. This is sounding a little weird. Anyway - I always thought I loved being around men becuase it was "less complicated" than being around women - with guys, I thought, you could just "be yourself". But in the past couple of years, I realized I have "primal instincts" too. Now I think there has been a new dimension - before I was quite contented to not be around children - and now I just kind of melt when I see babies and kiddies. I think I'm beginning to understand why women talk about a "biological clock" - and it's about time, too - I'll be 24 in December - I no longer think people are idiots to go and have children and not wait, for example, until they both have a PhD or are practicing child psychologists, with savings in the bank to boot and a structured and pleasant life to introduce children to. And probably I'll be aware of this for a long time into the future - I think women's tense periods last into maybe mid forties - I am curious to see how sisters and nuns "deal" with it. I thought all sisters and nuns were neurotic, and maybe some are. But I'd like to see mature women who know what my friend means to say by "primal instincts" and who live from 20's-40's integrating it well in their lives. I know all about men - well not really, I get confused when it comes to talking about bodily functions, but for that matter, I get confused about what goes on with women, too. I am not proud of these facts or of other random and very basic holes in my education. But I am not the only biologically ignorant person I know - I was out at the pub at the beginning of the school year with a bunch of the boarders - all guys, and slightly tipsy, and one of them asserted rather gravely in the middle of a weird conversation "I used to be swimming in my father. And when he says I'm good for nothing, I say to him, 'Well, there was that one time I won! I beat MILLIONS when it really counted! You should be proud of me." And then all the guys said, "Well, the same thing for me!" one after the other until one piped up, "Except for Amy!" "Yeah," they all chimed in, ``except for Amy!`` Apparently females are virginally conceived.
Anyway. I do know about men because I have brothers and because I have known priests and older men since I was very young and always in much more proportion to other groups I know - because for me friends have to do very much with who you work, talk, discuss with, and my school and department and fields and way of life puts me in with 95% male participants - with women, I only really know my mother and she has not had to deal much with celibacy. But I see many sad women my age - yes they are no longer girls! I am getting old- who are aching over their desires - not even so much to fall in love with a man - although there are many who are in love with the idea of being in love - but many are much more clear and specific about what they want - to be a mother... Why don`t we have ``cool`` sisters around? Can you have a group of women who are not pious, and who are yet living something like religious life? Theo and I want to resurrect ``deaconesses`` - well more for Theo than for me because I have other plans but she might get married. But what the hell? why are women`s options always more constricted? i was flipping through a book last week - very good book - must remember to read it - about Dominican Penitent Women - which in the intro spoke about how many women were in ``third orders`` because for the ones who couldn`t afford to buy a place in a convent, there were no other options - there were less men because men had many options. Well, far from EXPANDING we seem to have CONSTRICTED even more for women!! The first Domincians were women - deaconnesses were with the earliest days of the church - abbesses had almost the powers of bishops in some places. All these bright, intelligent, but moping young women! (and old women!) It makes me sad to see them go back year after year to mope at home and wait for ``God`s will`` to happen - for ``Mr. Right``. There is no Mr. Right. He`s a construct. Use your talents!!! Get together- mobilize!! and these young women are so cut off from each other. I know I am very bad for it myself - I am best in contact with the people I live with on a regular basis. But a lot of them are as bad as myself in that respect.
Anyway... these are things that have been floating through my head. Probably a lot of them useless, but it is extremely helpful to say them - at least for me!!! These were a few things that were rather heavily pressing on my cerebellum or whatchamacallit - and it feels a little lighter now! ; P

Happy feastday!!! And remember ``everything is grace.``

Here`s a final twist... I am not even sure that these things were bothering me - or that my relationships with people has not led me to identify `these```issues`` instead of other issues. I don`t normally tink in terms of ``primal instincts``and ``biological clock`` but I found rusty things lying around that go with it - it was maybe my concern for whether I am an integrated person and healthily approaching life - motivated by my friend`s dubiousness and surprise at my situation - that led me to reflect on these things - what is real? The content doesn`t matter - it could be inspired by another or inspired by something that I think is real becuase it struck me in a certain way - the weather, or the loss of sleep, or whatever. The thing is - I AM determined by all these things - but I never really know which one- or conglomerate - it is. It`s kind of unknowable in a way but important, useful, and interesting - even indispensable - to specualte. Anyway. I am not making the most sense. I should go to work soon.

But beuase I am having so much trouble recomposing myself - putting the random events and encouters of my life into narrative form - because of the lack of a coherent narrative or the tendency to go stumbling off or too much focus on the first perosn - I don`tknow - but I was reading t`other day about someone who thought that we could only achieve the ``real`` in literary things - works of art... Which philosopher? Or did someone tell me instead of reading it? I can`t remember for hte life of me. But maybe this would help me a bit!! not only to ``deal with my primal instincts`` but to get on to other primal instincts like the desire for knowledge and just to have fun and the desire to make money by styudying poverty! ; ) Anyway... got to go.