There was a black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin. ... Where he wanted to stay was in Eastrod with his two eyes open, and his hands always handling the familiar thing, his feet on the known track, and his tongue not too loose.

flannery o'connor wise blood, chapter 1

Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen. 

flannery o'connor, wise blood, author's note to second edition of 1962

Desire is free to propose, seize, accept or reject, want or not want--but not to obey

david bentley hart, Christ and nothing

(see also this pascal quote)

Is not general incivility the very essence of love?

jane austen, pride and prejudice, ch. 25


props to mdc. 

"I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant.

Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the methodical path of the Jesuits . . .

It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons.

Everyone has a right to salvation. DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of

scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user,

and takes for granted the idea that all can reach salvation."

umberto eco

i'd be curious to know his opinions on the aesthetic of computers now -- especially his thoughts on e-book readers and tablets. 

Such was, or must have been the origin of society and of law, which gave new fetters to the weak and new power to the rich; irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, fixed forever the laws of property and inequality; changed an artful usurpation into an irrevocable right; and for the benefit of a few ambitious individuals subjects the rest of mankind to perpetual labor, servitude, and misery.

jean jacques rousseau, second discourse, p.125

He who sang or danced best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most dexterous, or the most eloquent, came to be the most respected: this was the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice. From the first distinctions there arose on one side vanity and contempt, on the other envy and shame; and the fermentation raised by these new leavens at length produced combinations fatal to happiness and innocence.

jean jacques rousseau, second discourse, p.118

some preliminary roughings out of my thesis


since the very dawn of philosophy, man has looked to mathematics to describe the world accurately. we rely on math for certainty. 


in chimes the frenchman. 
"we are not merely skeptics, nor only mathematicians. we are Christians. we can not only doubt, we may not only affirm. we must, somewhere, submit." - pascal, in a rough paraphrase of pensée 201.

 in the Christian cosmos, then, what abides? where can we stand? what abides? 


the jew. 
"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." - st. paul, 1 cor. 13:13
              
faith                 hope                          love                          -- normative aspect: philosophy of math
   |                       |                                 |
knowledge      truth                         wisdom                      -- situational aspect: physics (math applied)
   |                       |                                 |
grammar         logic                         rhetoric                     -- existential aspect: teaching math
   |                       |                                 |
   |                       |                                 |
   |                       |                                 |
arithmetic     algebra              quantum theory                   -- the kinds of mathematics we learn
                     calculus      non-euclidean geometries


math, at its foundation, is faith
               we have faith in God as the Creator, as the Constant One, the Righteous one. math is trustworthy not because it is self-evident, it is trustworthy because God is; because He loves us and does not lie to us. 2+2=4 because He is forever 1 which is always 3. 

math next is hope
               we hope to one day have dominion over creation. the Creator has hidden glories everywhere for us to search out. this means that when we do a calculus problem involving a decreasing mass, increasing acceleration, highly variable friction, and decreasing gravitational force, we simply hope that our rocket will actually escape the atmosphere. we have faith in the numbers working out, but there is only hope that it will actually describe the world. we hope in the righteousness, the trustworthiness of our God. 


and the greatest of these is love. 
               mathematics is the meter of creation, which was sung by God. and He is love. mathematics, then, is the meter chosen by love. and so, to choose the right meter, we must be loving. i declare to you a mystery. force is nothing more or less than the mass of a thing times its acceleration. always. most of the time. unless you're not on earth. then, at least you can be sure that the energy is equal to the mass of the thing counted as many times as light is fast squared. except, that's not really how it works all the time. because turns out there's something faster than light on the universe. truly, a great mystery, yet i give you a greater. my mother's forehead wrinkled between her eyebrows. it was a wednesday. my father says, "come on, let's grab lunch quick. you're getting a headache from not eating, aren't you?" my mother's forehead wrinkled between her eyebrows. this time it was a thursday. my father says, "hey let's get out of here. you're worried about eating too much. so let's go." 
               here is the riddle's heart, here the knot of the mystery: for the creation is our bride, and we are her husband. we must know her parts well enough to know which language we use to speak to her. we should love creation enough to know that the language of newton's calculus is wonderful, but creation doesn't like that language when we're speaking about black holes and electrons. what will happen on the day that we actually love the handiwork of our Creator? i daresay we'll fly faster than light, fall upwards, and burn things without them being consumed. i dare, even, to say that we shall be creators ourselves. that we shall give life at last, and not death. then, death, thou too shall die. 

If we were first of all to take stock of ourselves, we would realize how incapable we were of progressing further. How could a part possibly know the whole? But we will perhaps aspire to knowing at least those parts on our own level. But the parts of the world are so connected and interlinked with each other that I think it would be impossible to know one without the rest.

pascal, pensée 230, pp.70-71

That is our true state. That is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge or absolute ignorance.

pascal, pensée 230, p.70


man is incapable of certainty. there it is. 

We must  know where to doubt, where to affirm and where to submit when necessary. Whoever does not do this does not understand the force of reason. There are some who fall short of these three principles, either by affirming that everything can be demonstrated, lacking all knowledge of the demonstration, or doubting everything, lacking the knowledge of where to submit, or by submitting to everything, lack the knowledge of where to discriminate.

pascal, pensée 201


and just like that, pascal wipes away the arguments of descartes and most of modern/postmodern mathematical theory. beautiful. 

Happiness is neither outside us nor within us. It is in God, and both outside and within us.

pensée 26, blaise pascal

I blame equally those who decide to praise man, those who blame him, and those who want to be diverted. I can only approve those who search in anguish.

pensée 24, blaise pascal

[Philosophers] inspired movements of pure greatness and that is not man's state.
They inspired movements of pure baseness and that is not man's state.
...
We need moments of greatness, arising not from merit but from grace, having passed through the state of abjectness.

pensée 17, blaise pascal

True nature having been lost, everything becomes natural. In the same way, the true good having been lost, everything becomes their true good.

pensée 16, blaise pascal


when every man does what is right in his own eyes. God gives every man what his heart desires. even if that heart is unrepentant. 

When we want to think of God, is there nothing which turns us aside, tempts us to think of other things? All that is bad, and it is born with us.

pensée 14, blaise pascal

The two Testaments look to Jesus Christ, the Old as its expectation and the New as its model, and both have him as their centre.

pensée 7, blaise pascal

If man is not made for God, why is he only happy with God?
If man is made for God, why is he so hostile to God?

pensée 18, blaise pascal

right before cain kills his brother, he is angry because his sacrifice was not accepted. and God says to him,

"Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it."

genesis 4:7


yet one chapter earlier, we find God telling eve:

"I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you."


genesis 3:16

sin is cain's wife. i think milton was quite on track to portray sin as a woman. the devil is definitely masculine, but sin seems to be attributed with feminine qualities. it hearkens back, of course, to lady folly in proverbs. this makes Christ's temptations all the more interesting, because you've got satan as the prospective father-in-law pimping out his daughter, sin, to the Son of Man, who instead chooses the other woman before Him: israel. 

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

proverbs 4:18


now don't that make you extremely frightened and incredibly encouraged.