![[icon]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/34068024/772971) |
The metaphysics of the healing
|
| “White House at odds with bishops over abortion”
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press Writer
The White House is on a collision course with Catholic bishops in an intractable dispute over abortion that could blow up the fragile political coalition behind President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
A top Obama administration official is praising the new Senate health bill’s attempt to find a compromise on abortion coverage — even as an official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says Sen. Harry Reid’s bill is the worst he’s seen so far on the divisive issue.
The bishops were instrumental in getting tough anti-abortion language adopted by the House, forcing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to accept restrictions that outraged liberals as the price for passing the Democratic health care bill.
Reid, D-Nev., now faces a similar choice: Ultimately, he will need the votes of a handful of Democratic senators who oppose abortion to get his bill through. Republicans hoping to block the health bill in the Senate are relishing the Democrats’ predicament.
[…]
The bill would forbid including abortion coverage as a required medical benefit. However, it would allow a new government insurance plan to cover abortions and let private insurers that receive federal subsidies offer plans that include abortion coverage.
In all cases, the money to pay for abortions would have to come from premiums paid by beneficiaries themselves, kept strictly separate from federal subsidy dollars. Government funds could be used for abortions only in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother — reflecting a current law known as the Hyde amendment.
The Hyde amendment restrictions apply to Medicaid, military health care and the federal employee health plan. Many states provide abortion coverage to low-income Medicaid beneficiaries, but they must do so separately with their own funds.
Abortion opponents say Reid’s bill circumvents Hyde. For example, they say that any funds a government insurance plan would use to pay for abortion would be federal funds by definition — even if the money comes from premiums paid by beneficiaries.
“All the money the government has starts out being private money,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for National Right to Life. “Once the government has them, they’re federal funds.”
The restrictive language passed by the House would forbid any health plan that receives federal subsidies from paying for abortions, except as allowed by the Hyde amendment. Women would have to purchase separate coverage for abortion services.
Abortion rights supporters say that fencing off government funds from private premiums would achieve the same goal, without forcing women to get special coverage for a legal medical procedure now routinely included in many private health insurance plans. | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| Tuesday afternoon a Somali woman in Wajid, Somalia was stoned to death for adultery on the basis of a strict interpretation of Islamic law imposed by a Somali Islamist terrorist group known as al-Shabaab (الشباب). The man with whom she allegedly had an affair was given 100 lashes. Although Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, moderate Islamist and new President of Somali, wants to implement Sharia law, Al-Shabaab says Sharif Ahmed’s version would be “too lenient.”
As I recall theologian Karl Barth’s admonition to read Scripture and the newspaper simultaneously,* I am shamed that too many American Christians, myself included, have their heads in the sand when it comes to world issues. (Many of us are equally naïve about the Bible.) That said, alongside this terrible report let us juxtapose John 8:1-11:At dawn [Jesus] appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” Bearing in mind Jesus’ response to Philip in John 14:12, in which Jesus says that anyone who has faith in him “will do what [he has] been doing” and “do even greater things than these,” what—along with disgust, indignation, and sincere intercessory prayer—are the appropriate responses to the above injustices?
*E.g.: “One broods alternately over the newspaper and the New Testament and actually sees fearfully little of the organic connection between the two worlds concerning which one should now be able to give a clear and powerful witness”; “…take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible”; “The Pastor and the Faithful should not deceive themselves into thinking that they are a religious society, which has to do with certain themes; they live in the world. We still need—according to my old formulation—the Bible and the Newspaper”; “I always pray for the sick, the poor, journalists, authorities of the state and the church—in that order. Journalists form public opinion. They hold terribly important positions. Nevertheless, a theologian should never be formed by the world around him—either East or West. He should make his vocation to show both East and West that they can live without a clash. Where the peace of God is proclaimed, there is peace on earth is implicit. Have we forgotten the Christmas message?” | | comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
| I don’t know whether to be amused or appalled at the ignorance and arrogance exhibited by some of LiveJournal’s familiar philosophers as of late.
I suppose it all began when ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) zentiger made the claim that Aquinas’s Five Ways are “bullshit,” but it wasn’t until later I realized the extent of the problem.
I was amazed when i_am_lane said he couldn’t think of any well-known virtue ethicist but Aristotle. Seriously? What about Thomas Aquinas and Alasdair MacIntyre? Come to think of it, how about Plato, the Stoics generally and Epictetus in particular, and arguably Epicurus as well? Less famous but still influential—yes, even within that intellectual failure known as analytic philosophy—is Philippa Foot.
vox_diabolica, in the same thread, is to be commended for correcting i_am_lane’s ignorance by naming G. E. M. Anscombe as a virtue ethicist, but he then quickly goes on to prove his own ignorance in claiming that Aquinas is a deontologist. (This is almost as moronic as his claim, in the original post, that virtue ethics involves “no ontological commitments,” for it clearly does presuppose a commitment to the existence of virtues and to an adequate subject of those virtues.) This claim is either trivially true or resoundingly false depending on how one understands deontology and classifies individual moral philosophers. More to the point, it is irrelevant to Aquinas’s clear embracement of virtue ethics. Anyone with an even passing familiarity with Aquinas would know that he wrote extensively on the virtues (and corresponding vices) in his Summa Theologiae (in particular, I-II.55-67 and II-II.1-170), and that these are nearer to the center of his ethics than his notion of duty (which must be understood in connection with the virtue of justice).
In a later thread to the same post, vox_diabolica multiplies statements evidencing his ignorance—this time not only with respect to Aquinas’s ethics, but also to what constitute the major normative branches in moral philosophy. For instance, he seems to think the “is–ought fallacy” applies to Aquinas’s ethics, whereas Aquinas’s doctrine of the convertability of being with goodness and his Aristotelian understanding of practical reason insure that it does not. Moreover, there is even reason to question whether the fallacy even is a fallacy. See, for example, John Searle’s “How to Derive ‘Ought’ from ‘Is’,” Philosophical Review 73 (1964): 43-58. Also, vox_diabolica claims that natural law theory is not a major system of normative ethics. I shall not reiterate my initial response to this absurd claim, but take careful note: Although one does find in Aquinas the most thorough pre-modern presentation of natural law theory, the roots of natural law sink as deep as the soil of Plato and Aristotle. And the fact that the virtue theory of both of these thinkers depends on their teleonomic “philosophical anthropology”—i.e., their analysis of human nature in terms of function and telos—might further enlighten us as to the dependence of the former on the latter.
More recently, i_am_lane’s ignorance of Aquinas’s important distinction between natural law and human law (and the corresponding distinction between natural right and positive right) has materialized. But zentiger’s consequent remarks really take the cake. zentiger disingenuously accuses me of “shut[ting] down conversations by asserting ‘intellectual superiority’.” This is especially ironic given his red herring track record. He also claims that I like to “namedrop,” as if it is inappropriate to point in the direction of thinkers of whom one should be aware or give them their due credit. But what is perhaps most annoying is not the ridiculous frequency with which zentiger misrepresents me, my arguments, etc., but his apparently profound ignorance of philosophers outside the short-sighted tradition of the analytics. As a Kierkegaardian, a Thomist, and a semiotician, I have many objections to Anglo-American analytic philosophy. But my greatest complaint against many of the practitioners of that tradition is their marriage of intellectual myopia to an almost incredible hubris. Not only is zentiger ignorant of both the Thomistic and semiotic traditions (so much so that he once held the two to be identical), he is proud of this ignorance. And yet he also wishes to seem knowledgeable, so he makes pronouncements on schools and fields of inquiry of which his personal knowledge is equivalent to a pea under a thimble.
Incidentally, I would respond to zentiger’s ignorance concerning the defensibleness of the Five Ways, but vox_diabolica has rejected my ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) convert_me post on Aquinas’s First Way and once again arbitrarily—and quite predictably—banned me from convert_me and atheist_fail. He is too pig-headed to take seriously my criticisms of his governance of convert_me. And since he has, as yet, received no serious complaints over my bans, I am out of the picture for a time. If anyone wants to stand up to the wanna-be Machiavellian Monad, this is the place to do it. vox_diabolica claims an interest in virtue ethics, but it is easy to see that it is purely academic in nature. It would seem the only way to get through to him is through strength in numbers, as truth does not seem to interest him. If you are a member of the community, I encourage you to say something. Galactus approaches. Uatu is watching. The time is near.
As for what to do about the general ignorance that these e-philosophers perpetuate, I cannot say. But Charles Peirce’s maxim remains my lodestar: Do not block the path of inquiry! | | comments: 43 comments or Leave a comment |
| You cannot really value a subject without at the same time valuing the web of contrapuntal relations that it takes part in.
—Morten Tønnessen, “Umwelt Ethics,” Sign System Studies 31.1 (2003), pp. 281-99, esp. 292 | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Red Dragon is dreadfully remarkable from start to finish. With an all-star cast including Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Philip Seymour Hoffman, et al., this film is thrilling, copasetic brilliance. Fiennes definitely mastered the tragically disturbed mind long before his role as Harry Potter’s Voldemort. This line should give you a picture:I am the Dragon. And you call me insane. You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing. To me, you are a slug in the sun. You are an ant in the afterbirth. It is your nature to do one thing correctly. Before me, you rightly tremble. But, fear is not what you owe me. You owe me awe. As for the interactions between Hopkins and Norton, words fail me. To take but one example:Will Graham (Norton): I thought you might enjoy the challenge. Find out if you’re smarter than the person I’m looking for.
Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins): Then, by implication, you think you’re smarter than I am, since it was you who caught me.
Graham: No, I know I’m not smarter than you.
Lecter: Then how did you catch me?
Graham: You had…disadvantages.
Lecter: What disadvantages?
Graham: You’re insane. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I recently watched the following movies. There are important lessons to be learned from each of them.
Saw V: Murder is distasteful, but forcing people to maim themselves in order to stay alive is totally okay!
The Spirit: Romance enough women, and one day one of them may save your life.
Godsend: Cloning is bad. Don’t do it!
Rear Window: Even voyeurs can solve murder mysteries.
Also, I need some horror movie recommendations. Classic or contemporary, I don’t care. | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| 
How do you conceive God’s disappointment with and unrelenting love toward humanity? | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | buber, cathexis, christ, christian, divine hiddenness, fear and trembling, levinas, lyrical, philosophy, seduction, semiotics, the absurd, the demonic, the other, the paradox, the spheres | | Subject: | The unpredictable twists and turns of seduction | | Time: | 09:19 pm |
|
| I am starting to achieve further theoretical clarity on seduction and its proper application. The shift from the particular to the universal is felicitous, for only in the universal does the particular receive its ontological situation. (Not only that, but concern with the universal is in itself a freeing cathexis.) If the games we play are dishonest or at least not honest enough for my taste, and I am not in a position to change the rules, can I not then resist the rules with an irony that submits to the rules, but submits omnipotently? Can I not stand within the system but on the borderline? I submit that a cynical acquiescence to the rules permits one to play the game while standing invisibly outside the game as spectator. But this invisibility reveals itself only negatively and even then only ambiguously.
Here is the knight of faith, performing his infinite movements so close to finitude that they are unspeakably absent to those who have not crossed through the absurd—and here the absurdity is twofold, part French and part Danish. No matter, the postmodern plays with any and all sign-systems that accommodate his narrative. Now, then, how does ethics’ openness relate to esthetics’ ambiguity, and how in turn does the religious relate to both? This is narratively vital. The ethical is the transition from ambiguity to truth, anticipating the religious awareness that there is relative ambiguity even for one absolutely related to the highest truth. But whereas the ethical desires that esthetic ambiguity see itself as it is, a mere bundle of entia rationis in need of higher ontological grounding, the religious does not then so much call on the ethical to understand that there is validity to ambiguity (for the ethical may understand that full well), but rather to see that there is a higher context, a relationship without which no other relationship may receive its proper validity—the God-relationship.* And only when the God-relationship gains paradoxical expression in and through the God-man is there the possibility for its existential embodiment across all other relations. Christ is the Other that the individual becomes (through participation, not strict identity) without losing the Same.**
Thus seduction in the human sphere becomes an analogy to the divine seduction. Ergo, when caught up into the religious, seduction is not mere ambiguity used for erotic purposes, but repetition toward and reconciliation with Eternal Purpose. And now I am even further along than where I began, though for all we know it could be a clever ruse, a demonic seduction that tantalizes with self-deception and premature enlightenment. The only way out is through signs that far exceed what this uncurrently current work of uncustomary customary signs signifies. Alas! Does the truth hide behind ambiguity? Divine hiddenness is appropriable by the paradoxical individual. It is not a question of finding an answer, but properly giving one—in fear and trembling, in Christ alone.
*Thus the issue is not the validity of entia rationis as dependent on ens reale, but the validity of both sides of being as possible only through Esse Ipsum. As Martin Buber puts it, “Only out of a personal relationship with the Absolute can the absoluteness of the ethical co-ordinates arise without which there is no complete awareness of self. Even when the individual calls an absolute criterion handed down by the religious tradition his own, it must be reforged in the fire of the truth of his personal essential relation to the Absolute if it is to win true validity. But always it is the religious which bestows, the ethical which receives” (Eclipse of God, p. 98).
**Cf., of course, Levinas on the concepts of the Same and the Other—but see also Buber, ibid., p. 97: “The real self appears only when it enters into relation with the Other. Where this relation is rejected, the real self withers away—an event which at times, indeed, can evoke most phosphorescent effects.” | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| …seduction represents mastery over the symbolic universe, while power represents only mastery of the real [that is, the physical] universe. The sovereignty of seduction is incommensurable with the possession of political or sexual power.
—Jean Baudrillard, Seduction, p. 8, italics in original
Seduction is always more singular and sublime than sex, and it commands the higher price.
—ibid., p. 13
[The]…transsubstantiation of sex into signs…is the secret of all seduction.
—ibid.
( Kierkegaard’s aesthete on seduction vis-à-vis Don Giovanni ) | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| Deception in love. – We forget a great deal of our own past and deliberately banish it from our minds: that is to say, we want the image of yourself that shines upon us out of the past to deceive us and flatter our self-conceit – we are engaged continually on this self-deception. – And do you think, you who speak so much of ‘self-forgetfulness in love’, of ‘the merging of the ego in the other person’, and laud it so highly, do you think this is anything essentially different? We shatter the mirror, impose ourself upon something we admire, and then enjoy our ego’s new image, even though we may call it by that other person’s name – and this whole proceeding is not to be self-deception, not egoism! A strange delusion! – Those who conceal something of themselves from themselves and those who conceal themselves from themselves as a whole are, I think, alike in this, that they perpetrate a robbery in the treasure-house of knowledge: from which we can see against which transgression the injunction ‘know thyself’ is a warning.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, Vol. II.1.37; p. 224 (Cambridge edition) | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| How then do you fly from that path?
Johnny, angry Johnny, this is Jezebel in hell
I wanna kill you/ I wanna blow you…away…
I can do it to your mind/ I can do it to your face
I can do it with integrity/ I can do it with disgrace…
But either way, either way, you know where it stands
I wanna kill you/ I wanna blow you…away.
| | comments: Leave a comment |
| The Washington Post
Mark Driscoll
Founding Pastor of Mars Hill Church, Seattle, WA
Q: What makes the best ‘case for God’ to a skeptic or non-believer, an open-minded seeker, and to a person of faith and Why?
Answer
Jesus.
Christianity is not first and foremost about a sacred place to pilgrimage to, a philosophical system to ponder, a moral code to live, a religious tradition to honor, or an impersonal god to experience. Rather, Christianity is about a person who claimed to be the only God and said he would prove his unprecedented claim by living without sin, dying for sinners, and conquering death through resurrection.
So, as Christians, our aim is not to convince people of some god in general, but to introduce them to Jesus in particular. And since he created us with the ability to communicate, think, love, and experience, Christians have always valued using every means by which the truth and love of Jesus can be revealed.
Read the rest of the article here. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| What’s my offense this time?
You treat me just like another stranger. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| 
What are your most noticeable defense mechanisms? Are they deliberate? When do you notice them? | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
|
The metaphysics of the healing
|
|
