The fiercer the contention, the more honorable the reconciliation.
IMAGE: Peter Paul Rubens, The Reconciliation of Esau and Jacob (1624)
Friday, January 3, 2025
Seneca, Moral Letters 74.7
But to pass these questions by: either these so-called goods are not goods, or else man is more fortunate than God, because God has no enjoyment of the things which are given to us. For lust pertains not to God, nor do elegant banquets, nor wealth, nor any of the things that allure mankind and lead him on through the influence of degrading pleasure.
Therefore, it is either not incredible that there are goods which God does not possess, or else the very fact that God does not possess them is in itself a proof that these things are not goods.
Besides, many things which are wont to be regarded as goods are granted to animals in fuller measure than to men. Animals eat their food with better appetite, are not in the same degree weakened by sexual indulgence, and have a greater and more uniform constancy in their strength.
Consequently, they are much more fortunate than man. For there is no wickedness, no injury to themselves, in their way of living. They enjoy their pleasures and they take them more often and more easily, without any of the fear that results from shame or regret.
Therefore, it is either not incredible that there are goods which God does not possess, or else the very fact that God does not possess them is in itself a proof that these things are not goods.
Besides, many things which are wont to be regarded as goods are granted to animals in fuller measure than to men. Animals eat their food with better appetite, are not in the same degree weakened by sexual indulgence, and have a greater and more uniform constancy in their strength.
Consequently, they are much more fortunate than man. For there is no wickedness, no injury to themselves, in their way of living. They enjoy their pleasures and they take them more often and more easily, without any of the fear that results from shame or regret.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 74
Here is the sort of passage that reminds me how the Stoics could be just as elegant in their reasoning as an Aristotle or an Aquinas. Once I examine something precisely, and squint at it from all the angles, I often find that my hasty assumptions had been leading me in entirely the wrong direction.
If, for example, I claim that God is perfect, let me be careful about what I mean by such a term. At first, I may speak of the Divine as “owning” everything, like a landlord gazing upon his vast estate, but would it not be better to say that God is complete in identity, not in a relation to a possession? In other words, what is perfect never needs anything added to it from the outside, for it already “has” everything on the inside.
A creature is hardly a supplement to the Creator, merely a contingent expression of the Creator’s absolute existence. As Boethius argued so beautifully in his Consolation, a thing is more or less perfect by its degrees of self-sufficiency, and God is therefore the only total subsistence—what the Peripatetic and the Thomist call pure act without any potency.
In human terms, why would I believe myself to be any better by an increase of fortune and fame? I am at my best when I the master of my own nature, and I am thereby a reflection of the order pervading all of Nature. Having more “stuff” has nothing to do with excellence, which is why God doesn’t require any “stuff” at all.
Along similar lines, I have sometimes wondered why humble animals seem to have advantages over us haughty humans. For all of our supposed intelligence, the beasts are usually stronger, more resilient, and seemingly impervious to our many vices. Oh, to be a simple bird, without a care in the world!
And yet this is precisely as it should be, because they are defined by their instincts, while we are defined by our reason: the animal thrives on fortune, and the man thrives on character. We are intended to rise above our circumstances, even as they are bound by them.
Is it not terrible that a man can choose evil, and that the animal has no malice in its soul? No, it is remarkable that a man has a freedom of judgment, and how even its abuse provides just another opportunity in the struggle for virtue—the errors are then paths for improvement. The animal knows nothing of this, nor should it.
As much as the romantic in me daydreams about the beasts attending magical banquets in the forest, their particular purpose is of a very different sort. A man has the power of understanding, and he has the power of love, and for this he has no need to rely on accidents. In this, he is a little image and likeness of his Maker.
Here is the sort of passage that reminds me how the Stoics could be just as elegant in their reasoning as an Aristotle or an Aquinas. Once I examine something precisely, and squint at it from all the angles, I often find that my hasty assumptions had been leading me in entirely the wrong direction.
If, for example, I claim that God is perfect, let me be careful about what I mean by such a term. At first, I may speak of the Divine as “owning” everything, like a landlord gazing upon his vast estate, but would it not be better to say that God is complete in identity, not in a relation to a possession? In other words, what is perfect never needs anything added to it from the outside, for it already “has” everything on the inside.
A creature is hardly a supplement to the Creator, merely a contingent expression of the Creator’s absolute existence. As Boethius argued so beautifully in his Consolation, a thing is more or less perfect by its degrees of self-sufficiency, and God is therefore the only total subsistence—what the Peripatetic and the Thomist call pure act without any potency.
In human terms, why would I believe myself to be any better by an increase of fortune and fame? I am at my best when I the master of my own nature, and I am thereby a reflection of the order pervading all of Nature. Having more “stuff” has nothing to do with excellence, which is why God doesn’t require any “stuff” at all.
Along similar lines, I have sometimes wondered why humble animals seem to have advantages over us haughty humans. For all of our supposed intelligence, the beasts are usually stronger, more resilient, and seemingly impervious to our many vices. Oh, to be a simple bird, without a care in the world!
And yet this is precisely as it should be, because they are defined by their instincts, while we are defined by our reason: the animal thrives on fortune, and the man thrives on character. We are intended to rise above our circumstances, even as they are bound by them.
Is it not terrible that a man can choose evil, and that the animal has no malice in its soul? No, it is remarkable that a man has a freedom of judgment, and how even its abuse provides just another opportunity in the struggle for virtue—the errors are then paths for improvement. The animal knows nothing of this, nor should it.
As much as the romantic in me daydreams about the beasts attending magical banquets in the forest, their particular purpose is of a very different sort. A man has the power of understanding, and he has the power of love, and for this he has no need to rely on accidents. In this, he is a little image and likeness of his Maker.
—Reflection written in 10/2013
Thursday, January 2, 2025
Maxims of Goethe 60
William Hogarth, The Company of Undertakers
Doctors get a lot of flak, surpassed only by the invectives hurled at lawyers. Though any man, in any trade, has it within himself to become a total scoundrel, I suspect that the quacks and the shysters have targets painted on their backs, because their vocations ought to be so noble, and yet far too many of them are instead seduced by fortune and fame.
Did you honestly think those mercenary mothers nagged their daughters to marry a surgeon on account of the rich moral lives they would surely share together?
In my own neck of the woods, I can confirm that academics are just as likely to be vainglorious blowhards, but the difference is that only other academics will bother to notice. Furthermore, an incompetent plumber will quickly lose his customers, while an incompetent doctor can still hide behind the magnificent appearance of his profession.
When students see this work by Hogarth, their first reaction is invariably to comment on how ignorant people were back then, and how blessed we are to now be so scientifically enlightened. I encourage them to see the human condition more broadly, and to recognize how charlatans can be found in any time or place, but they remain convinced that modern medicine can do no wrong. I fear some of them will learn otherwise, sooner rather than later.
Of all the parish priests I had in my adult years, only one stood out as a man of true faith, and the rest were abusers or frauds. Similarly, of all the doctors who ever treated my family, only one was a true healer, and the rest left us both sicker and poorer. You can counter with your clever statistics, and I will rely on my education from the school of hard knocks. I will leave it at that. . . .
Hogarth presents his doctors in a caricature of a coat of arms, with three infamous snake oil peddlers of his time on the top—John Taylor, Sarah Mapp, and Joshua Ward—and a dozen "reputable" physicians below them. The "quack-heads" and the "cane-heads" differ only by their professional trappings. In modern terms, one dispenses his cures from a storefront in a seedy strip mall, while the other receives junkets from the pharmaceutical corporations.
The description further mocks their posturing with the refined language of heraldry:
"And many are the faces of death."
William Hogarth, A Consultation of Physicians, or the Company of Undertakers (1736)
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
Delphic Maxims 69
Ἐγγύην φεῦγε
Flee a pledge
IMAGE: Jean-Francois de Troy, Jason Swearing Eternal Affection to Medea (1742)
Seneca, Moral Letters 74.6
It is a result of complaints like these that we are unappreciative in our comments upon the gifts of heaven; we complain because they are not always granted to us, because they are few and unsure and fleeting.
Hence we have not the will either to live or to die; we are possessed by hatred of life, by fear of death. Our plans are all at sea, and no amount of prosperity can satisfy us. And the reason for all this is that we have not yet attained to that good which is immeasurable and unsurpassable, in which all wishing on our part must cease, because there is no place beyond the highest.
Do you ask why virtue needs nothing? Because it is pleased with what it has, and does not lust after that which it has not. Whatever is enough is abundant in the eyes of virtue.
Dissent from this judgment, and duty and loyalty will not abide. For one who desires to exhibit these two qualities must endure much that the world calls evil; we must sacrifice many things to which we are addicted, thinking them to be goods.
Gone is courage, which should be continually testing itself; gone is greatness of soul, which cannot stand out clearly unless it has learned to scorn as trivial everything that the crowd covets as supremely important; and gone is kindness and the repaying of kindness, if we fear toil, if we have acknowledged anything to be more precious than loyalty, if our eyes are fixed upon anything except the best.
Hence we have not the will either to live or to die; we are possessed by hatred of life, by fear of death. Our plans are all at sea, and no amount of prosperity can satisfy us. And the reason for all this is that we have not yet attained to that good which is immeasurable and unsurpassable, in which all wishing on our part must cease, because there is no place beyond the highest.
Do you ask why virtue needs nothing? Because it is pleased with what it has, and does not lust after that which it has not. Whatever is enough is abundant in the eyes of virtue.
Dissent from this judgment, and duty and loyalty will not abide. For one who desires to exhibit these two qualities must endure much that the world calls evil; we must sacrifice many things to which we are addicted, thinking them to be goods.
Gone is courage, which should be continually testing itself; gone is greatness of soul, which cannot stand out clearly unless it has learned to scorn as trivial everything that the crowd covets as supremely important; and gone is kindness and the repaying of kindness, if we fear toil, if we have acknowledged anything to be more precious than loyalty, if our eyes are fixed upon anything except the best.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 74
When I grumble about how I didn’t get what I wanted, did I first bother to ask about what I needed? My frustrations come from loving the wrong things, not from receiving the wrong things.
It took me some time to realize how many of our efforts are wasted on griping, and now I discipline myself to avoid whining about the whiners. It is enough for me to manage my own resentments, while offering a kind word to my neighbor who also struggles. Even a solidarity of silence is healthier than incessantly casting blame.
I long assumed that other people were far happier and more fulfilled than me, but I was allowing myself to be misled by the outer impressions. Once I got to know something more of their souls on the inside, I saw the very same anxiety and pain, all because we had lost our way.
We too easily forget who we are, and what we were made for, by seeking out a remedy in all the wrong places. If I am only tinkering with the accidents, while neglecting the very essence, I will never find peace.
The philosophy of it is simple, though it feels so formidable because its demands are absolute: as a creature of reason and will, I will achieve happiness, the fulfillment of my nature, by perfecting those powers. The rest is relative, becoming good or bad through the exercise of my judgments about whatever may happen.
To speak of virtue or honor may sound so stuffy, but what other terms can describe the pinnacle of human excellence? I suspect our apprehension about first and foremost being good people has to do with a fixation on the lower at the expense of the higher, a fear of risking an ascent from the base to the noble.
No, the virtuous man will not surrender to the vulgar, the lowest common denominator, because he chooses what is best, not what is easy. Without such a moral conviction, a man fails to freely embrace his total responsibility for himself, and so he can hardly practice any justice or compassion for others.
Each moment spent complaining could be better spent improving. When there is virtue in here, there is no threat from obstacles out there.
When I grumble about how I didn’t get what I wanted, did I first bother to ask about what I needed? My frustrations come from loving the wrong things, not from receiving the wrong things.
It took me some time to realize how many of our efforts are wasted on griping, and now I discipline myself to avoid whining about the whiners. It is enough for me to manage my own resentments, while offering a kind word to my neighbor who also struggles. Even a solidarity of silence is healthier than incessantly casting blame.
I long assumed that other people were far happier and more fulfilled than me, but I was allowing myself to be misled by the outer impressions. Once I got to know something more of their souls on the inside, I saw the very same anxiety and pain, all because we had lost our way.
We too easily forget who we are, and what we were made for, by seeking out a remedy in all the wrong places. If I am only tinkering with the accidents, while neglecting the very essence, I will never find peace.
The philosophy of it is simple, though it feels so formidable because its demands are absolute: as a creature of reason and will, I will achieve happiness, the fulfillment of my nature, by perfecting those powers. The rest is relative, becoming good or bad through the exercise of my judgments about whatever may happen.
To speak of virtue or honor may sound so stuffy, but what other terms can describe the pinnacle of human excellence? I suspect our apprehension about first and foremost being good people has to do with a fixation on the lower at the expense of the higher, a fear of risking an ascent from the base to the noble.
No, the virtuous man will not surrender to the vulgar, the lowest common denominator, because he chooses what is best, not what is easy. Without such a moral conviction, a man fails to freely embrace his total responsibility for himself, and so he can hardly practice any justice or compassion for others.
Each moment spent complaining could be better spent improving. When there is virtue in here, there is no threat from obstacles out there.
—Reflection written in 10/2013
