Saturday, November 4, 2017

Impurity of heart

"when our hearts are corrupt we are hardly in any condition to contemplate Order in ourselves.  We only take pleasure in considering the imaginary relations things have to us, and we scorn the real relations they have between themselves.  Thus we may love Mathematics, but only because we are honored by doing so, or draw profit from it."

"lorsque le cœur est corrompu, on n’est guère en état de contempler l’ordre en lui-même:  on ne considère avec plaisir que les rapports imaginaires que les choses ont avec soi, et on méprise les rapports reels qu’elles ont entre elles.  On peut alors aimer les mathématiques; mais c’est qu’on s’en fait honneur ou qu’on en tire de profit."

     Nicholas Malebranche, Treatise on ethics (1684) V.xxii, trans. Craig Walton, Archives internationales d'histoire des idées 133 (Dordrecht:  Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), 81;  French from here for now.

A world gone mad

"nothing is more equivocal and more confusing than the actions of men, and often nothing is more false than what passes for certain with an entire culture."

"il n’y a rien de plus équivoque et de plus confus que les actions des hommes, et souvent rien de plus faux que ce qui passe pour certain chez peoples entiers."

     Nicholas Malebranche, Treatise on ethics (1684) V.xvi, trans. Craig Walton, Archives internationales d'histoire des idées 133 (Dordrecht:  Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), 80;  French from here for now.

"the classical metaphysics [practiced by Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas] need not blush at its fecund alliance with technology"

Source
     "Despite the rejoinders that it is possible to formulate in face of the accusation that metaphysics has bonds with artifaction [(la technique, technics, technology)], it therefore appears clearly that these bonds, if in fact real, can be understood much more positively than is suggested by the philosophy of Meßkirch [(i.e. Heidegger)].  Its critique here is finally fecund in this [respect], that it obliges one to bring to light the characteristics by which a classical metaphysics precisely escapes it.  It in fact obliges one to recognize the analogy of the causes and their non-reduction to the formal cause.  It forces a revalorization of the causes material, efficient, and final.  But more profoundly still, it obliges one to look more closely into [(à s’interroger sur)] the first efficient cause’s mode of action.  It underscores its bond with the wisdom that can also extend ultimately beyond all preoccupation with artifaction [(toute preoccupation technique)], because in the first cause resides an understanding [(connaissance)] of the causes, and because the [human] search for the causes [of a phenomenon] results in a partial accession to that ultimate understanding.  At the same time it puts a finger on the effect of this cause, namely the existence [(l’être, i.e. esse)] of the entity[, not to mention the very existence and operation of the causes].  [And] finally, it accomplishes in its own way the [very] program to which Heidegger at times (for example in the lecture 'Contribution to the question of Being') attaches himself, namely, a revivification or appropriation of metaphysics by the question of Being, because it [(the question of Being)] has been lost from view, and concerning which [program of revivification] one might ask oneself why Heidegger himself did not carry it through to success.
     . . . As distinguished from the transcendental metaphysics that developed out of the work of Scotus, "the classical metaphysics [practiced by Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas] need not blush at its fecund alliance with artifaction [(la technique)].  It rediscovers, inasmuch as [it] is a form of wisdom [(selon ce qu’est la sagesse)], the reception of being through the causes, and [it] renews [its friendship] with the question of Being that lies at its root [(origine)], without having to pass first through negativity and anguish, but rather through astonishment and admiration."

     Michel Bastit, “Sagesse et technique,” Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 105, no. 3 (Jul-Sep 2004):  233-234 (217-234), italics mine.