Newman and Paley

[Back after a long break.]

So right now I am working through parts of William Paley's Evidences of Christianity (1794), mainly so that I can understand the marginalia John Henry Newman left in his copy. He marked the book up a good deal in preparation for his first Essay on Miracles (1826), and relied upon Paley as an initial guide in responding to Hume's critique of miracles in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). However, by the time he wrote his second Essay (1843) more than fifteen years later, Newman had come to think of Paley's evidence-based approach (similar to some apologetics still practiced today) as tending toward rationalism, misguided in its insistence on the priority of rational proof over the grounds provided by rational faith.

In one of the remarkable notes written inside his copy of the Evidences, Newman wrote this:

NB. Jan. 13. 1836
* Paley assumes a miracle is the only way of ascertaining a rev [revelation]. -- true, ascertaining--but why need for ascertain? faith lies in acting upon what is before one, before ascertaining -- vid [vide] St Antony’s remarks. This seems to be in its consequences, etc., the evil of such a line of argument as Paley’s, leading one to rely on reason {later inserted in place of reason: “a more explicit reason or argt. [argument]}, which is a slow and carnal principle. “I will not believe, till it is proved to me, etc., etc.” --

Hinting at the argument he would make a few years later in the Thirteenth University Sermon, Newman holds that Paley relies too much on "explicit reason," overlooking the priority of that deeper, more foundational faculty, "implicit reason," a faculty allied with faith.

Newman on Utilitarian Moral Theory

Reading Newman, The Tamworth Reading Room (1841) in preparation for teaching it later this semester. It's the most satiric thing I've read of Newman's, outside The Present Position of Catholics in England (1851), and that crazy chapter at the end of Loss and Gain--Part 3, Chap. 7 (1848). In the course of describing the Utilitarian view of the relation between knowledge and virtue, he says this:

"Mr. Bentham would answer, that the knowledge which carries virtue along with it, is the knowledge how to take care of number one--a clear appreciation of what is pleasurable, what painful, and what promotes the one and prevents the other."

Now, is it me, or is Newman the first to refer to the egoistic self as "Number One"? Is anyone aware of a prior such usage?

MacIntyre, and on to Virgil

Finished the review of Mong Ih-Ren a few days back (it was horrible--plagiarism on top of poor style), and finished re-reading a good part of After Virtue, but unfortunately I need to put off Whose Justice? Which Rationality? for now--the imperative of getting through a few classroom texts is gaining force. Maybe I'll still get to WJWR before the end of the summer...

One smaller thing: I re-read MacIntyre's very sharp essay from a few years ago, "Transformations of Enlightenment: Plato, Rosen and the Postmodern" (in Logos and Eros, ed. Nalin Ranasinghe (St. Augustine's P, 2006), which appreciates and critiques the thought of the Straussian philosopher Stanley Rosen. I don't know of any other place where MacIntyre actually confronts Straussianism, other than a review he wrote a few years back of a book by Thomas Pangle (but M. didn't seem to understand what was going on in that book). His critique of Rosen is thoughtful and illuminating, and basically turns on the claim that Rosen's Platonism and modified liberalism rely upon a version of Nature he is unwilling to credit as existent.

Now, as part of a class prep, I'm reading through Robert Fagles' translation of the Aeneid for the first time (I've usually read Fitzgerald before now), and I'm going through Lee Fratantuono's commentary, Madness Unchained: A Reading of Virgil's Aeneid (Lexington, 2007), at the same time. Fagles is pleasurable, though I find myself second-guessing his florid renderings from time to time. Fratantuono seems solid and very interesting so far, displaying some of the reading habits of his erstwhile mentor, the late Seth Benardete, but without descending into the maddening fog of Benardete's obscurantist prose.

A first post

Reading Ambrose Mong Ih-Ren, The Liberal Spirit and Anti-Liberal Discourse of John Henry Newman (Peter Lang, 2011) in order to review it. Very interesting topic, but some unfortunate ESL problems already in the prose. More to come.

On the side, looking at John Alvis, Nathaniel Hawthorne as Political Philosopher (Transaction, 2012), a book by one of my old profs. Re-reading MacIntyre's After Virtue, and hoping to get to Whose Justice? Which Rationality? before the summer is out.