Who Were the Sea Peoples?

When the issue of gay marriage first hit my radar, perhaps ten years ago, my first inclination was, "Well, why not?" But I wanted to understand why others might object to it. And I had already encountered Aquinas's theorizing on sexual morality. So I have returned again and again in my thoughts to his arguments, because Aquinas is clearly one of the most brilliant people who has ever lived, and nothing he wrote should be dismissed lightly. Furthermore, Aquinas's argument was certainly not based on any "bigotry" against homosexuals, since, as noted in the post above, it condemns masturbators and heterosexual promiscuity far more strongly than it does a committed homosexual relationship. As I have noted in that post, I think Aquinas erred. But I am epistemically humble enough that my thoughts return to his arguments repeatedly, to see if I have missed something. (The idea that I am epistemically humble may appear ridiculous to some of you, but realize wh...

After Aquinas formulated his " Quinque Viae ," students would often spend weeks studying each "way," as an introduction to these ideas. Today, students spend five seconds having some professor guffaw, "Ha, if everything has a cause, what caused God?!" (Showing the professor himself has no idea what the second way claims .) But to take this argument seriously, to spend the time necessary to grasp it, would start to produce doubts : maybe Aquinas was on to something! And we don't want that.

Livio Di Matteo has a nice discussion of the history of supply-and-demand analysis here . Along the way, the idea of a "just price" arises, and is regarded, both by Di Matteo and commenter Bob Murphy (probably no relation to the Murphy we know and love) as an antiquated idea, incompatible with modern price theory. But perhaps just price theories are not incompatible with supply-and-demand analysis. My reading of Aristotle (from whom Aquinas would have drawn his basic notions) suggests to me that what he was looking at (without having the terms, of course!) was producer and consumer surplus, and the "equality" that had to hold was between these surpluses, so that if I would buy at any price under $2, and Murphy would sell at any price above $1, the just price should be around $1.50. "Unjust" prices would come about when one of us has far greater bargaining power, and "forces" the price to $1.01 or $1.99. To consider this in more concrete term...

I've begun reading Ed Feser's Aquinas , hoping to fill a lacuna in my philosophical education. Now Ed is a fine writer and a clear thinker, so I figure if anyone can sell me on the superiority of scholastic metaphysics over its rivals, it will be Ed. As is my recent practice, I plan to blog the book as I read it: this helps me to take notes for later, and hopefully will prove useful for somebody else as well! Now, let me open with a caveat here: it is early days in my contemplating the idea of potencies, and I may decide later I was just confused at present, but so far, despite Ed' protests to the contrary, he has done nothing to convince me that Molière was not correct: these Scholastic categories are explanations empty of any empirical content and also otiose. Consider this: Feser quotes Aquinas as saying "the form of numbness is in the eel which makes the hand numb" (p. 23). OK, this strikes me as: 1) Being exactly like the opium example that Molière mocked...

This is a theme I am start to look at seriously, to see the development of these ideas. Here's round one: 'If Locke had said what he meant–that the feeling of oppression in an individual’s mind justifies resistance against authority–he would not have found support from classical sources. Socrates, most prominently, participated willingly in his own execution when it was ordered by a decision he believed to be unjust though lawfully rendered by the civil authorities. Plato insisted in The Republic that "faction is a wicked thing and members of neither side are lovers of their city. " 'Aquinas, too, suggests that the long term communal stability of a society is better defended by tolerating small or occasional bouts of tyranny: "it is more expedient to tolerate milder tyranny for a while than, by acting against the tyrant, to become involved in many perils more grievous than the tyranny itself."' -- Scott Robinson