Happy Thanksgiving

To all you givers of thanks, which you ought to do even if you're an ingrate.

Update: And to get you in the mood for the upcoming season (starring Elizabeth, of course, from a 2000 dress rehearsal for the School of Performing Arts, choreographed by Russell Sultzbach). Slightly larger version here.

Volume I, Issue 3

The new issue of The Christendom Review is up, with stories by John Farrell and Rick Barnett, a variety of poetry, photography by Todd McKimmey, and introducing Lydia McGrew, literary critic, who ponders Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. And in our Signs of Grace column, Kateri Howard of Atlanta's 40 Days for Life campaign tells us why we ought to keep praying and never lose heart.

Sunday Despair: Is Doggie Heaven a Boondoggle?

So Catholic Aristotelian-Thomistic philosopher Ed Feser puts up a post considering Plato's argument in the Phaedo for the immortality of the human soul. I'm always up for reassurance on that score, so I checked it out. Plus, I've actually read the Phaedo. A long time ago. So long ago I can't remember what was in it.

Dr. Feser's purpose was to point out that many modern philosophers don't think much of Plato's case, but ought to. He's probably right.

Once I got there, it turned out that - though I like reassurance - I'm pretty well convinced of the soul's immortality, and instead of examining Plato's soundness (responding, in other words, to the post's actual subject) I got distracted by other thoughts. I think it's called threadjacking. But not before some other guy beat me to it. Said he:

What comes to mind is Francis of Assisi, who no doubt observed the following in nature, as I certainly do in dogs, but not so intensely in people..."Love is patient, love is kind, etc..."

I submit it is just these noble qualities in the essence - the soul – of dogs which has made them man's best friend. I am inclined to think that what Aquinas so scholastically asserts to be the high moral value setting humans apart and superior to the other creatures – knowledge, or intellect – subordinates the sublime to the clever.

To which Dr. Feser responds:

To love someone, in the deepest sense, is to will what is good for him. But will is something only beings with intellects have. Furthermore, the fulfilled intellect is one which is wise, not one which is merely clever. (Lots of intelligent people are clever; very very few are wise.) So, it seems to me you're selling Aquinas short.

To another commenter he points out that Aquinas says

that "the souls of brutes are corrupted." What he means is that though forms per se don't perish, nevertheless the particular instantiation of the form or soul in this particular brute disappears when the animal does (while the human soul, by contrast, does not).

The original doglover responds:

I think, like Hartshorne, the anthropomorphic bias inherent in Aquinas' system as well as that of plain humanism "does not do justice to the creatures."

Could you give a succinct definition of this will and intellect?

That's where I jump in, asking

Is this a necessary conclusion of A-T metaphysics, or might there be some attributes in the sentience of certain creatures that would allow us to entertain at least the possibility of immortality, and which would not be incompatible with that metaphysics if certain knowledge of the attributes were available to the A-T'er.

Says Dr. Feser to the first guy:

Intellect is the power to grasp abstract concepts and reason on the basis of them. Will is appetite moved by intellect, by what the intellect grasps. Non-human animals cannot grasp abstract concepts -- the most they can manage are something like general mental images (but a general image of a man, say, is not the same as the concept "man"). And since they cannot, their appetites are mere appetites, not governed by reason. This is why they cannot love in the strict sense. They can manage affection and the like, but that is not the same thing.

Oh. And then to me:

William, Yes, I'm inclined to say that it is a necessary consequence, at least given that brutes carry out no activities that involve an immaterial power. Unlike intellectual activities, sensation and imagination (which animals do have) are from an A-T point of view entirely dependent on matter. So lower animals have nothing which might carry on beyond the deaths of their bodies.

"Brutes", huh? My feeble response was to note that I didn't know how to break this to my daughter. She has a chihuahua...

Mallory Code, RIP

Bernadette sends me this link to a Golfweek story noting the death of a girl Bern used to play with in the Florida Junior Golf Association. Her name is Mallory Code, and she was afflicted all her life with cystic fibrosis. She was cared for in the bosom of a strongly Christian family, her stout heart admired by all who knew her, and only 25 when she passed away. Unexpectedly, I should add. God bless her.

Life is Cheap

I always thought it was supposed to be safe, legal and rare. That's what Bill Clinton told me, but I should have known better than to trust The Great Prevaricator. Well, it's not rare and, of course, it's never safe for the baby. But 'safe' for the woman surely meant that the murder would take place in a sterile atmosphere, such as a hospital or clinic surgery, with a fully qualified and state-licensed killer doctor on hand. An accomplished accomplice nurse might come in handy too. But enterprising American human beings are always on the lookout for a way to save a buck. And even though this particular kind of murder is legal, most women who avail themselves of it seem to want to hide the fact from everyone else. So, with both these goals in mind, a 7 months pregnant 17 year old Utah girl hired a thug to beat her up, the primary target being her belly. The cost of hiring a pregnant belly-beater: $150. She later "entered a no contest plea in May 2009 on charges of second-degree felony criminal solicitation of murder." This was subsequently vacated by a judge who ruled that her actions "fit the state's definition for an abortion and, therefore, she 'cannot be held criminally liable for'" them. So she walked. The guy who beat her pled "guilty to second-degree felony attempted murder."

The irony? The baby survived and is currently in foster care. His mother is trying to get custody.