I was wide awake a little before 4:00 on Tuesday
because I’d gone to bed an hour early the night before. I went through my yoga
pretty slowly though so by the time I was done I was only 25 minutes ahead. I
only practiced part of one song before getting to work on the final stretch of
my essay. The lecture was from 11:00 to 12:00, but I skipped it since I didn’t
have to hand in my paper until the tutorial an hour later. I worked for six
hours, finishing up my explanation of Augustine’s argument against the skeptics
and then I tried to come up with a convincing argument to disprove Augustine’s
claim that we can know things. I said if there’s even the remotest doubt then
it proves that we can’t have certain knowledge. I might have tried to be a
little too funny though because, in response to Augustine’s claim that one can
know that one knows that one knows into infinity, I said that he was growing
beanstalks to infinity. We’ll see how it works out.
My
apartment had been freezing cold that morning and so I wore my hoody, my
leather jacket and my gloves for the ride downtown. When I stepped outside
though it was a warm day so I shoved the gloves in my pocket. On the way, while
stopped at the light at Bathurst and College, a cyclist behind me called out
and told me that my shoelace was untied. I looked down, saw that it wasn’t and
then he said, “Oh, it must be your belt!”
I got
to University College about fifteen minutes early and sat outside the classroom
to wait for tutorial. James always seems to arrive just after me. I invited him
to share my window seat and I asked him about the lecture I’d missed. He told
me that Professor Black finished up briefly with Abelard and gave an
introduction to the Medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophers. Unlike
Christianity, both Islam and Judaism are religions of law. Islamic philosophy
resulted from the Islamic religion coming into contact with Greek philosophy.
Greek thinking, including that of Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists came to
be used to interpret the Qu’ran and Islamic thought was used to understand
Greek philosophy as well. All of the major works of classical philosophy were
translated into Arabic and Syriac and it was through these translations that
Jews and Christians first encountered Greek philosophy. Islamic philosophy
began with the dialectical theologians, the Mutakalimun, which was divided into
the Mutazilites and the Asharites. The name Mutazili means “to withdraw from”.
Their founder withdrew from a certain prominent study circle because of a
philosophical disagreement and formed his own study circle. There were Jewish
philosophers who considered themselves Mutazilites.
James
recounted also that Deborah Black told them that most Jewish philosophers wrote
in Arabic but some wrote in Arabic using Hebrew letters.
The
tables in the room where we had our tutorial had been previously arranged in a
circle, but this time they’d been put into traditional rows with chairs facing
the front. James and I agreed that the previous set-up had allowed for better
group communication. I noticed though from my new perspective an ancient sign
that read, “Smoking Not Permitted Here”. I think it was 1996 when smoking was
banned in Toronto bars. I remember working at OCA in the 80s when students,
teachers and models could smoke in the classrooms.
After
handing our papers in, the rest of the class was focused on how Peter Abelard
localed moral work. We dealt specifically with killing the whole time.
When
is killing wrong?
There
are four possibilities:
1.
Deed plus
commands (always wrong but not always).
2.
Desire (will) –
want to kill or not – (also immoral)
3.
Character –
what kind of person is killing? If it’s Mufasa (from the Lion King)
rather than Scar, a killing he does is probably okay.
4.
Intention –
motive- why? Considered choice to kill (could be alright if either for self
preservation or to further justice). Intention is the only reliable determinant
of whether the killing is sinful. Intending to kill is a choice to scorn god,
which is what makes it the most immoral.
Desire for զ
Desire
for զ for ч
I asked, “What if I
have the intention to kill someone but at the last second, even as the killing
blow is on its way, I change my intention to not intending to kill the person,
but then kill them anyway because of momentum. Am I free from sin?” She puzzled
over it for a few seconds and declared that if my intention were to kill
someone or something else would have to stop me but I wouldn’t be able to stop
myself. Intention is inevitable.
Aristotelian rational
choice says that choice is part of a deliberative process.
There is no praise for
not stealing what you don’t want.
You can disobey god
without moral blame if your intention in your disobedience is to serve god.
Jesus told the lepers not to tell anyone that he’d healed them but they did so
anyway.
The Roman soldiers that
crucified Christ are without blame because they were doing their job.
Humans punish deeds but
only god evaluates. The will of god is not rational.
On the way home I
stopped at Freshco where I bought the usual stuff, plus some raspberries and a
pack of five chicken legs.
I took a very late
siesta. I grilled the chicken legs and had one with a potato and bland gravy.
I watched the fifth and
final broadcast of the first week of the Mickey Mouse Club from the set that
I’d downloaded. On disk two there was a little tribute to Annette Funicello,
though she was still alive, but very sick at the time. They showed a montage
from her teenage years. Wow, was she ever beautiful!
No comments:
Post a Comment