Phil in class writing

Gregory of Nyssa: what is EPEKTASIS (in simple terms)?

Greek for 'straining forward' (from Phil 3:13, 'straining ahead for what is still to come'). Gregory's idea: human perfection is NOT arriving at a finished state, it is endless progress toward God. Because God is infinite, you can always go further, so the soul keeps stretching forward forever and its desire never runs out. Perfection = never stopping the climb.

Gregory, Homily 12: key summary of epektasis

The soul 'possesses an ever-renewed desire for what lies beyond her and never dulls that desire because of satiety' and 'always strains forward.' What keeps being discovered is always more lovely than what has already been grasped. True fruition = 'ever to make progress in seeking and never to halt on the upward path,' because 'her fulfilled desire ever generates a further desire.' Paul 'died every day' to what was behind. She is struck 'in the heart' by love's arrow. Last line: God is love.

GREGORY ESSAY THESIS (use in an essay)

For Gregory, human nature is made for endless desire and growth toward an infinite God. Because God is infinite, goodness and beauty can never be used up, so true perfection is never reaching a final stop but continually progressing (epektasis). Evidence: Moses keeps climbing and keeps asking; God grants the vision 'in what was denied'; the true sight of God is never being satisfied in desire; the Bride in Homily 12 seeks and never 'finds' because God eludes every grasp.

Irenaeus: why weren't humans created perfect from the beginning? (AH 4.38)

Main answer: because humans are CREATED. Anything created comes later than and is lower than its uncreated Creator, so it necessarily 'comes short of the perfect.' Newly created things are like infants: not yet used to or trained in perfect discipline. It's not that God lacks power (God could have), it's that a newly made human couldn't RECEIVE, CONTAIN or KEEP perfection yet.

Irenaeus: the mother and infant analogy

A mother could give strong adult food to a newborn but doesn't, because the baby can't take it yet. In the same way God could have made man perfect from the start, but man, 'as yet an infant,' couldn't receive it. So imperfection reflects the stage of human growth, NOT a defect in God.

Irenaeus: what is his view of FREE WILL? (AH 4.37)

Humans were made free from the beginning: 'possessing his own power' to obey God voluntarily, 'not by compulsion.' 'There is no coercion with God.'

Irenaeus: why are there no people who are 'naturally' good or bad? (AH 4.37.2)

If some were made bad by nature and others good, the good wouldn't deserve praise (they were simply built that way) and the bad wouldn't deserve blame. But all humans share the same nature, able to hold fast to the good OR throw it away. That's why we praise and blame (even in human law) and why prophets urged people to act justly.

Irenaeus: CONNECTION between free will and perfection (key essay point)

Perfection can't be forced onto us. Goodness that happened automatically would not be or precious or sought-after, and we wouldn't understand it. The harder the struggle, the more valuable the prize. By freely obeying God, having faith, and learning good from evil by experience, humans grow into the perfection.

IRENAEUS ESSAY THESIS

Irenaeus holds that humans were created as spiritual infants on purpose, not as flawed creatures. As created beings they must grow, and God (like a parent) gives them freedom and education so they mature through free obedience, faith, and experience of good and evil until they become 'gods' who see God. Free will is essential because perfection has to be freely chosen to have value; God is never to blame for human imperfection.

Augustine on INFANTS: what is his main claim? (Conf. 1.7)

Babies are not innocent. 'The innocence of children is in the helplessness of their bodies rather than any quality in their minds.' Babies don't do more harm only because they are too weak, not because they lack wrong desire.

CLASS CONNECTION: Augustine, original sin, and babies

In class: Augustine believes ORIGINAL SIN corrupted all humans, even babies. 1.52-53 (evil habits established 'in the stock of our ancestors' are 'naturally ingrained' = inherited).

Augustine: why does the infant/childhood stuff matter for his view of HUMAN NATURE?

It shows human nature is born with disordered desire: self-centered wanting ('to get my own way') appears before reason, teaching, or society. These same qualities 'pass on with us' into adulthood.

Augustine: what does the pear theft show about the NATURE OF EVIL? (essay-ready)

It shows evil loved for ITSELF. Normally sin pursues some lower good (money, power, pleasure, revenge). Here there was no good to gain: 'I loved my own undoing, I loved the evil in me, not the thing for which I did the evil, simply the evil.' So evil isn't a thing God made it's the will turning away from God (the One) toward the many (Conf. 2.1), 'that in itself was no thing' (2.8).

Augustine: how is normal sin different from the pears? (Conf. 2.5)

Normal sin: people do evil to get or keep some lower good (those goods are real but 'of the lowest order of good'), e.g. murder for gold, a spouse's property, revenge, or fear of loss. Sin happens when through 'immoderate inclination' higher goods (God, Truth, Law) are forgotten. The pear theft is shocking because Augustine finds no outside cause.

Augustine: sin as a PERVERSE IMITATION of God (Conf. 2.6)

Every sin has a 'show of beauty' that mimics something God really is. Pride imitates loftiness, ambition imitates honor, cruelty imitates God's power to be feared, lust imitates love, curiosity imitates knowledge, sloth imitates rest, avarice imitates possessing everything, anger imitates just vengeance. So 'even those who go from You and stand up against You are still perversely imitating You.' The theft imitated GOD'S freedom: like a prisoner making a small gesture of liberty, he got a 'deceptive sense of omnipotence' from doing the forbidden. 'I was that slave who fled from his Lord and pursued his Lord's shadow.'

Augustine: why does he thank God for sins he did NOT commit? (Conf. 2.7)

Since he loved evil just because it was evil, he realizes he could have done anything. Any evil he avoided is due to God's grace, so he thanks God for forgiving both the sins he did and the sins he would have done. Nobody who avoids sin should scorn others: he was healed 'by the same doctor' who kept the other person from falling.

AUGUSTINE ESSAY THESIS (pears + infants)

Augustine argues that human nature is corrupted from birth: even babies show selfish disordered desire (Conf. 1.7), and as a teenager he did evil for its own sake (pears, 2.4-10). Evil is not a created substance; it is the will turning from God to lesser goods or imitating God perversely. God is not the author of sin ('You made man but not the sin in him'), but human beings inherit a damaged will and need God's grace (the doctor).

Augustine: relationship between GOD, EVIL, and ORIGINAL SIN (essay-ready summary)

1) God is perfectly good and creates only good things 2) Evil is NOT created by God meaning he governs it and can bring good out of it. 3) Evil comes from the creature's will turning to lower goods and away from God (2.5, 2.1). 4) Original sin: humans are born with this corrupted will inherited from our ancestors 5) 'Every disorder of the soul is its own punishment' (1.12); we can't fix ourselves and need Christ the doctor (OCT 1.27-30). So God stays good, humans are responsible and damaged.

Augustine: define ENJOY and USE (OCT 1.7-8)

ENJOY = to hold fast to something in love FOR ITS OWN SAKE. USE = to apply something to getting what you love (if what you love ought to be loved). Improper use = ABUSE. Things to be enjoyed make us happy; things to be used help us get to the things that make us happy. If we enjoy what should only be used, our progress is 'impeded and sometimes even diverted.'

Augustine: what is the ONLY thing to be enjoyed? (OCT 1.10-12, 1.39)

The Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 'one God from whom, through whom, and in whom everything is.' Each is fully God, all three are one God and one substance; unity in the Father, equality in the Son, harmony in the Holy Spirit. Only 'the eternal and unchangeable things' are to be enjoyed; everything else is used to reach them. (God can't truly be put into words, 1.13.)

Augustine: should humans enjoy or use each other? (OCT 1.40-43)

He says we should love people FOR ANOTHER REASON (for God's sake), not enjoy them for their own sake. What is loved for its own sake constitutes our happy life, but 'cursed is he who puts his hope in a man' (Jer 17:5). We should not even enjoy OURSELVES as an end: a person is at their best when striving wholeheartedly toward the unchangeable God. So love of self and neighbor must be swept on to the love of God with all heart, soul, mind; no part of life can 'back out and enjoy some other thing.'

Augustine: what is the ORDER OF LOVE? (OCT 1.59-60)

A just, holy person has 'ordered his love': he doesn't love what is wrong to love, doesn't fail to love what should be loved, doesn't love more what should be loved less (or less what should be loved more), and loves equally what should be loved equally. 'No sinner, qua sinner, should be loved; every human being, qua human being, should be loved on God's account; and God should be loved for himself.' Ranking: God above yourself; another person above your own body (because a neighbor's soul can enjoy God with you, a body can't).

Augustine: the FOUR things to be loved (OCT 1.45)

1) what is ABOVE us (God), 2) what WE are (ourselves), 3) what is CLOSE to us (neighbor), 4) what is BENEATH us (the body). No commands are needed about #2 and #4 because everyone naturally loves themselves and their body, even sinners. We need instruction on #1 and #3. (Person = mind + body, neighbor = mind + body, so the two great commandments cover everything.)

Augustine: why love God more than yourself, and neighbor more than your body? (OCT 1.60)

Because everything is loved on account of God. Another person can ENJOY GOD together with us in a way the body cannot (the body lives only through the soul, and the soul is what enjoys God). So people outrank your own body, and God outranks you.

Augustine: God wants to be loved (OCT 1.64)

God wants to be loved not for his own gain but to give us an eternal reward, namely himself. The more we enjoy God now, the easier it is to bear our distance from him.

Descartes: stated PURPOSES for writing the Meditations (list all)

1) Prove God exists and that the soul/mind is distinct from the body (title page). 2) Treat God and the human mind again more carefully 3) Free the reader of PREJUDICES and withdraw the mind from the SENSES. 4) Build 'something firm and lasting in the sciences' by razing his old opinions and starting from the foundations. 5) Show the mind's annihilation doesn't follow from the body's decay, giving mortals hope in an afterlife. 9) Show that our knowledge of our own MIND and of GOD is more certain than knowledge of material things: 'Proving this one thing was for me the goal of these Meditations.'

Descartes (Synopsis): what does he say about immortality of the soul?

He doesn't go deep, but shows enough: the MIND is indivisible and a pure substance; the BODY is divisible, a configuration of accidents that can perish. Substances don't cease unless God withdraws his support. So the mind's annihilation doesn't follow from the body's decay, giving 'mortals hope in an afterlife.'

Descartes (Synopsis): what is each Meditation about?

M1: reasons for doubting everything (esp. material things); frees us from prejudice and withdraws the mind from the senses. M2: the mind supposes nothing exists that can be doubted and finds it can't doubt its own existence; mind vs body. M3: the principal argument for God's existence.

Descartes: WHY does he introduce methodological doubt? (Med. 1)

He realizes many opinions he accepted young were false, so everything built on them is shaky. To establish 'anything firm and lasting in the sciences' he must raze everything and rebuild 'from the original foundations.' He doesn't need to prove every belief false, only find SOME reason to doubt it, and withhold assent from anything not completely certain as carefully as from the plainly false. He attacks the foundations (the senses) because undermining the foundations makes what is built on them crumble. Purposes: free from prejudice, withdraw the mind from the senses, and make it impossible to doubt later truths.

Descartes: HOW does methodological doubt work? (the rules)

Treat anything doubtful as if false. Because old habits of belief keep creeping back, he deliberately turns his will the opposite way and pretends the old opinions are false until prejudices 'weigh down each side equally.' He does it alone, free from cares, and it concerns knowledge not action, so 'there is no danger' in excessive distrust. Analogy: a prisoner enjoying imaginary freedom in sleep who fears waking up. If nothing else, he'll know 'that nothing is certain.'

Descartes' FIVE STEPS of doubt (in the order of the text -- CONFIRM with your class notes)

1) SENSES sometimes deceive, and it's prudent never to fully trust those who've deceived us even once. 2) NEAR/OBVIOUS THINGS (sitting by the fire, this paper, my hands): only the insane (kings who are paupers, heads of glass) would doubt these -- but he'd look mad to copy them. 3) DREAM ARGUMENT: I often dream I'm sitting by the fire when really in bed; no sure signs separate waking from sleeping; so particular sensory beliefs and composite sciences (physics, astronomy, medicine) are doubtful. 4) Even simple universal things (arithmetic, geometry: 2+3=5) survive dreams, BUT an all-powerful GOD who made me could make me err even there; and if no God, a less powerful origin makes error even more likely. 5) EVIL GENIUS: suppose a supremely powerful, clever deceiver bent on deceiving me; the heavens, colors, shapes, sounds are 'hoaxes of my dreams,' I have no hands, eyes, flesh, or blood, only the false belief that I do. Result: I can at least withhold assent from falsehood.

Descartes: argument that the EGO (I) must exist (Med. 2) -- step by step

1) Suppose everything I see is false; I have no senses, no body. 2) Maybe a God or something puts these thoughts in me. 3) But even then I must exist for something to deceive: 'Then too there is no doubt that I exist, if he is deceiving me.' 4) 'Let him do his best at deception, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I shall think that I am something.' 5) So 'I am, I exist' is necessarily true every time I say or think it.

Descartes: what is REPRESENTATIONALISM (his epistemology in simple terms)?

The mind directly knows its own IDEAS (mental images/representations), not outside things themselves. Outside things are known only indirectly, by reasoning that ideas come from them. So the big question: do my ideas match anything outside my mind, and how can I know? Descartes' answer: use reason (the causal principle) and God's goodness (no deceiver) to get from ideas to the world.

Descartes: why do I think my ideas come from outside things? and his replies (Med. 3)

Two reasons: 'nature taught me,' and the ideas come involuntarily (I feel heat whether or not I will it). Replies: (1) 'taught by nature' is just a spontaneous impulse, not the LIGHT OF NATURE (the unshakable clear insight, like 'I doubt therefore I am'); natural impulses have misled him before. (2) Involuntary doesn't prove external: I may have an unknown faculty producing them, as in dreams. (3) Even if they come from outside, they needn't RESEMBLE the things: the TWO IDEAS OF THE SUN (a small one from the senses, a huge one from astronomical reasoning) can't both resemble the real sun, and the sensory one resembles it least. So the belief was a 'blind impulse,' not a well-founded judgment.

Descartes: key vocabulary -- OBJECTIVE REALITY, FORMAL REALITY, EMINENTLY (Med. 3)

OBJECTIVE reality = how much reality an idea has as a representation in the mind (how much 'stuff' it is about). FORMAL reality = the actual being a thing has in itself. Ideas of substances have more objective reality than ideas of modes; the idea of God (infinite, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent creator) has the most. EMINENTLY = a cause contains the effect's reality in a higher form. Causal principle: whatever reality an idea has objectively must exist formally or eminently in its cause.

Descartes: the CAUSAL PRINCIPLE (Med. 3)

'There must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as there is in the effect.' Something can't come from nothing, and the more perfect can't come from the less perfect. This applies to the objective reality of ideas too: from an idea you can infer a cause that contains (formally or eminently) that much reality. No infinite regress: you reach a first idea, an 'archetype.' If none of my ideas had more reality than I do, I would have no argument for anything beyond myself.

Descartes: what ideas could come from ME alone? (Med. 3)

Ideas of other men, animals, angels could be built from my ideas of myself, bodies, and God. Corporeal ideas: clear and distinct content (extension, shape, position, motion, substance, duration, number) could be borrowed from my idea of myself or contained 'eminently' in me. Sensory qualities (light, color, sound, odor, taste, heat, cold) are confused and obscure, possibly 'materially false' (representing a non-thing as a thing), but I don't need an outside source for them. Only the idea of GOD can't come from me.

Descartes: how do we know bodies exist? what's the order of certainty?

Order: (1) I exist as a thinking thing; (2) God exists (idea of the infinite needs an infinite cause); (3) God is no deceiver, so clear and distinct perceptions are true; (4) so knowledge of the material world can be built on that. Synopsis: the arguments for material things (Med. 6) are 'neither so firm nor so evident' as those for mind and God. Bodies are perceived 'by the intellect alone' (wax).

Descartes: main argument for GOD'S EXISTENCE in simple steps (Med. 3)

1) I have an idea of God: an infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful substance who created me and everything else. 2) That idea has more objective reality than any idea of a finite thing. 3) Causal principle: the cause of an idea must have at least as much reality as the idea contains. 4) I'm finite, so I can't be the cause of the idea of the infinite. 5) Therefore something infinite -- God -- exists and is the cause of my idea. Quote: 'the mere fact of my existing and of there being in me an idea of a most perfect being demonstrates most evidently that God too exists.'

Descartes: the 'craftsman/machine' analogy (Preface/Synopsis)

A very perfect machine design in a craftsman's mind needs a cause (the craftsman's skill, or the teacher who taught him). Likewise the idea of God in us must have God himself as its cause.

DESCARTES ESSAY THESIS (doubt -> ego -> God)

Descartes wants a firm foundation for knowledge, so he doubts everything doubtful (senses, dreams, even math via a deceiving God or evil genius). The doubt hits a limit: even a deceiver can't deceive someone who doesn't exist, so 'I am, I exist' is certain, and I am essentially a thinking thing. But he needs God to trust his mind, so he argues from the idea of the infinite (plus the causal principle, conservation, and no infinite regress) that God exists and is no deceiver, which guarantees that clear and distinct perceptions are true.

Role of GOD for GREGORY (one sentence + support)

God is the infinite Good and Beauty, the endless OBJECT OF DESIRE the soul climbs toward forever. Support: God is incorporeal, incorruptible, unbounded (else bounded by evil), 'inaccessible to knowledge'; true sight = never-satisfied desire; the Word is the Bridegroom the soul follows; 'God is love.'

Role of GOD for IRENAEUS (one sentence + support)

God is the uncreated Creator and wise parent/teacher who makes humans free and immature, educates them step by step (milk to solid food), and brings them through free obedience to maturity, becoming 'gods,' seeing God, and immortality. Support: milk analogy, Christ came 'as we were capable of beholding,' free will, knowledge of good/evil, God is never to blame.

Role of GOD for AUGUSTINE (one sentence + support)

God is the Trinity, the only thing to be ENJOYED for its own sake and the 'homeland' we travel toward; Creator of all good things but not of sin; Christ is the road and doctor who heals pride; everything else, including people and ourselves, is loved in relation to God. Support: Conf. 1.1 restless hearts, use/enjoy, order of love, 'You made man but not the sin in him.'

Role of GOD for DESCARTES (one sentence + support)

God is a proven premise: the infinite, perfect, non-deceiving CAUSE and CONSERVER of me whose existence guarantees that clear and distinct perceptions are true, which makes knowledge beyond the self possible. Support: idea of the infinite + causal principle, conservation, innate idea, 'all fraud depends on some defect.'

COMPARE: SIMILARITIES between the four authors on God (Prompt 3)

1) God is creator, infinite/perfect, unchangeable/incorporeal; humans are finite and dependent. 2) God is beyond full human comprehension (Gregory: transcends all characteristics; Augustine: unspeakable; Descartes: incomprehensible; Irenaeus: God must be beheld gradually). 3) Humans are made in God's image through a rational/thinking soul (Irenaeus AH 5.16, Augustine OCT 1.39, Descartes Med. 3). 4) God isn't to blame for evil/error (Irenaeus: our fault; Augustine: Ruler not Creator of sin; Descartes: not a deceiver; Gregory: a bounded God would imply evil outside the Good). 5) We know our imperfection by contrast with God's perfection. 6) Ultimate happiness = seeing/enjoying/contemplating God. 7) Turn the mind from the senses/bodily things toward higher things.

COMPARE: DIFFERENCES between the four authors on God (Prompt 3)

1) Method: the Fathers start from Scripture/faith/Christ; Descartes starts from doubt and reason ('light of nature'), setting faith and conduct aside. 2) Function: for the Fathers God is the GOAL of love/desire; for Descartes God is the GUARANTOR of knowledge, a premise in a proof. 3) Knowability: Gregory says God can only be desired, not known; Descartes says God's existence can be clearly known though not comprehended. 4) Fulfillment: Gregory endless progress; Irenaeus growth to maturity (glorified, see God); Augustine rest/enjoyment at the homeland; Descartes' God already complete with nothing potential. 5) Human problem: Irenaeus immaturity, Augustine inherited corrupt will, Gregory passions/earthly attachment, Descartes error from misusing judgment. 6) Christ is central to the Fathers, absent from Descartes' proof.

COMPARE: single most important difference (thesis you can use)

For Gregory, Irenaeus, and Augustine, God is the END (goal) of human life, so humans are defined by desire/love and need moral-spiritual transformation. For Descartes, God is the FOUNDATION of knowledge, so humans are defined as thinking minds whose main problem is doubt and error. So the Fathers' view of human nature is moral/spiritual (love, sin, virtue); Descartes' is epistemological/metaphysical (mind, truth, certainty).

COMPARE: Augustine vs Irenaeus on why humans are imperfect

IRENAEUS: humans are imperfect because they are newly CREATED (like infants); imperfection is a natural starting point and God intends growth through free choice; it's not a corrupted nature. AUGUSTINE: humans are imperfect because of a corrupted will inherited from the first sin (original sin); even babies show it; humans need grace and a doctor. Both: God is not to blame; Christ heals/teaches.

COMPARE: Gregory vs Descartes on knowing God

GREGORY: God cannot be known, only endlessly desired; whoever thinks God is something to be known 'does not have life' (LM 234). DESCARTES: God's existence can be known with certainty by reason from the idea of the infinite, though God can't be COMPREHENDED. Both agree God is infinite and beyond the finite mind's grasp.

COMPARE: withdrawing from the senses (Fathers vs Descartes)

Similar movement away from the body/senses toward the intelligible: Gregory (soul released from earthly attachment rises), Augustine (use the world, don't enjoy it; purify the mind), Descartes (withdraw the mind from the senses; mind known better than body). Difference: the Fathers frame it as MORAL (love of lower things), Descartes frames it as KNOWLEDGE (senses deceive).