NT reviewr (2)

Gospel of John
1. “I am”
a. Book of Signs: “I am the predicate”
b. Book of Glory: “I am”; Moses echo; irony Jesus’ suffers

2. Xtology: high (starts with logos)
3. Minipoints
a. Explicated the implied themes of synoptics (e.g. Jesus as God)
b. Jesus seems not human: more human since he cried, he asks for love
c. Theological reflection in narrative form
d. Philosophical
e. Naming Jesus makes the namer subordinate (John the Baptist); He named himself… I am.
f. Symbol: Jesus himself is the symbol of heaven realities as kingdom of heaven is to synoptics
g. Full of irony: characters say things without realizing the weight of their words à reader elevation. (e.g. Pontius Pilate “What is the truth?”

Johanin Letters
- regarding the inner conflict within the community
- 1st John: doctrinal and moral disagreements; more of a homily
- 2nd John: proper teachings
- 3rd John: political teachings

Revelation
- not a foretelling, apocaplyptic literature
a. persecution literature
b. esoteric code
c. seems to foretell but it is intended for the present
d. God is incontrol of History
§ Good-evil = won already
§ Suffering = part of God’s plan
§ Human history has a goal = judgment
§ Sufferers with Xt will share in his glory
- realized eschatology - a saved already (e.g. Corinthians’ )
- very Jewish: suffering speeds up actualization of God’s glory
- made sense to its first audience – the persecuted
- read, think metaphorically


ACTS
1. Pattern of Moses’ Story
- Moses in weakness, rejected (Jesus human weakness)
- Moses in power, rejected (Jesus resurrection and HSP)
- Rejected are rejected (move to Gentiles

2. doubtful Gentiles:
a. Is god faithful to his promises?
à Luke: fulfilled in the restored Israel (jews who accepted Jesus)
b. Sino and leader? Sanhedrin or apostles
à Apostles may power and authority
3. Tower of Babel vs. PENTECOST
a. story of arrogance and pride vs. story of hope
b. division/barrier vs. unitive
c. divided vs. preached

4. Paul’s mission
a. Not only peculiar to Paul; most sikat
b. Very much conncected with Jeruslem Church
§ He did not see jesus in flesh
§ He was ex persecutor

5. Difference of Acts and Letters
a. Chronology
i. Acts: Council of Jerusalem, Paul reports every after mission
Letters: solo si paul
b. Apostolic Style
i. Acts – Paul master talker
Letters – not a talker
ii. Acts – works signs and wonders
Letters – preaching about the cross
iii. Acts – relation and dependence on Jerusalem church
Letters – minimized dependence
iv. Acts – observant Jew
Letters – observant Gentile
v. Acts – prophetic tradition
Letters – suffering for ministry

c. Theology
i. Acts: Prosopopaea
à Luke’s theology on Paul’s mouth
Letters: Paul’s own theology in letters


6. OVERall: Paul, apostle, gentile, prophe
Acts -- > God is faithful to his promises



Letters Introduction
1. Paul Ministry Patters
a. From urban to rural
b. Works with team
c. Used letters to cordinate
2. Elements of Composition
a. Emenuensis – secretary
b. Works with others
c. Pauline school

Liberation Article Outline

Liberation

I. Japanese Rebuilding
A. Aim: to orientalize the Filipinos
1. purge the Filipinos of traits imbibed through years of contact with the British and Americans
2. positive educational program focusing Japan as the center of culture and civilization
3. reviving pre-Hispanic elements as far as they were compatible with the Japanese aims

B. Education Measures
1. required Filipinos to learn Niponggo
2. replaced English school texts to Japanese texts
3. references to western culture were deleted
4. Philippine Cultural institute was opened
5. Elite were encouraged to study in Tokyo
6. stressed useful & vocational objects
- empty residential lots were planted with vegetables
- Radio Taisho: daily drill/body exercise broadcast

C. Masanori Oshima
1. professor of Philosophy at Imperial university of Tokyo
2. “the true Filipino trait is Family Spirit”
- evident in Tagalog literature
- moral force that fostered loyalty to pre-hispanic tribal community
- Christianity had not succeeded in eradicating it
- All Soul’s day: reunion of Filipino families
3. suggested changing Philippines name to “Apo”


D. Implementation of Plan: no time
1. Japanese occupation: January 2, 1942 - February 23, 1945
2. August 6 and 9: Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
3. May 6: suicide of Hitler
4. August 1945: Return of Peace
5. * Manila = second most devastated city

II. Return of MacArthur
A. Allied Forces
1. constant communication with guerilla units
2. August 9, 1944: Americans bombed Davao
3. August 12: Americans bombed Visayas
4. September 21: Americans bombed Manila
5. October 20: MacArthur, and Commonwealth officials land in Leyte

B. Philippine Guerillas
1. aided Allied offensive
2. presented Japanese with 2 enemies
3. Japs in desperate effort killed everyone on sight

C. After Japanese Retreat
1. MacArthur turned over Philippine government to Osmena
2. February 27, 1945 – MacArthur opens Malacanang
3. Osmena faced unbelievable odds (no desks, no writing papers… etc)

III. Osmena’s Regime
A. Initial Problem: legitimacy of office
1. vice presidential term – lasts till November 15 1943
2. Japanese – declared independence a month earlier
3. Quezon – wanted to continue in office

B. Solution
1. Opinions:
a. Some legislators wanted legal provision of Commonwealth terms to be observed
b. Others felt Quezon should be allowed to continue in office
c. Osmena: offered no objections, agreed to latter opinion for the sake of unity
2. Roosevelt: signs Administrative Join Resolution No. 95, legalizing Quezon’s presidency til normal conditions were restored
3. Quezon dies on August 1, 1944

C. Restoration Problem
1. Presence of Japanese military units in some parts of Philippines
2. ruined economy
3. Osmena wasn’t given help from MacArthur
a. Philippines too much bother
b. MacArthur disliked Osmena
c. Future of Philippines depended on both

D. Philippine Congress Convention (June 9, 1945)
1. 24 Senators = 2 died; 7 in prison suspected as traitors; 2 away from Manila; the rest did not belong to Osmena’s party
2. 98 representatives = only 70 came: 17 in detention; 11 died
3. Thus, out of 128 lawmakers = only 83 were present; almost all were suspected to have collaborated with Roxas

E. Second Problem: Collaboration
1. Osmena forced to reinstate lower officials a number of known collaborators to start the government machinery

IV. Roxas
A. Food Czar
1. Japz flooded 500 peso bills; food ran critically low
2. Laurel named Roxas the food czar; also incharge of feretting out hoarded supplies; prosecuting the guilty
3. Roxas neglected these duties and was deposed from Office

B. Collaborator
1. January 1945
- Makapili = counted 500, 000 trained members to spy for the Japanese
- Americans: “collaborator – one who sided with the enemy and therefore a traitor”
- Roosevelt: “collaborators – should be removed from public office”
2. After War
- Mac Arthur turned over all suspected collaborators
- No concrete guidelines for the conourts
- Osemena badly need the politicians


C. Exonaration
1. Mac Arthur
- exonerated Roxas;
- captured Yulo, delas Alas, Paredes, Sison
2. Tomas Cabili
- acting secretary of National defense
- General Order No. 20: remove from active duty all who had been active in the puppet government under the Japanese
- Challenged MacArthur’s exoneration of Roxas
3. Basilio Valdez
- chief of staff
- inactivated Roxas, reverting him to civilian life
- Cabili and Confesor tried blocking Roxas from permanent appointment
4. Osmena
- to avoid open confrontation:
a.) sent Cabili and Confessor to Washington
b.) convinced Roxas to remain with the Nationalist Party

V. People’s Court
A. Henry S. Truman
1. created People’s Court to finish the trials of suspected collaborators
2. gave Osmena the final say in each case
3. Mac Arthur: trials are responsibility of the Phil government not US

B. Osmena
1. distinguished between:
a. mere occupation of an office under Japanese
b. motive for doing so
c. one’s record in office – the norm of loyalty; not what one did but why one did it
2. collaboration could be due to:
a. desire to protect the people
b. pressure and fear from reprisal
c. outright disloyalty
· no clear policies guided the judges
· became the loophole that led to the solution of many collaboration cases

C. Roxas Case
1. MacArthur’s aid before the war
2. left in the Philippines, became an official in the puppet government
3. tried to escape but Japanese spy foiled the attempt
4. Roxas escaped death because of a Japanese soldier’s interceding
· other suspects could have made the same plea but they did not enjoy the personal friendship with MacArthur

VI. Roxa’s Candidacy
A. Mac Arthur
1. wanted an efficient government for the Philippines
2. Roxas = an able man in his eyes
3. forced the hungry Filipinos to election
4. roxas announces his candidacy for the presidency

B. Osmena
1. feared political eclipse by roxas
2. promised to observe original date of independence, if elected
3. 1945: went back to US to work out technical and economic assistance for the country; went home empty handed

C. Election Results
- Osemana was against all odds

1. Filipinos jumped unto Roxas bandwagon
2. Joaquin Elizalde (Osmena’s former campaign manager) switch loyalties
3. Paul V. McNutt, High Commissioner, supported Roxas in a fit of personal pique with Osmena
4. MacArthur gave army transportation and means of communication
5. Foreign Newspapers/Quezon former supportes sided with Roxas
6. Roxas won presidency by 54 % of the votes
- May 28, 1946 = became the third commonwealth president of the Philippines

D. Roxas Term
1. briefest and last presidential term under Commonwealth
2. July 4, 1946 – Philippines declared as independent and sovereign Republic
3. Roxas became the first president of the Philippine Republic

Nietzsche (1)

I. Background/Contemporary Age (see notes)
II. Nietzsche
- stress on becoming (flow of time) rather than on being (a system of reality)
- of critique rather than on a position
- critiques make us think/rethink our position
- 7 themes:
§ birth of tragedy
§ critique of morality
§ critique of metaphysics
§ critique of religion
§ critique of language
§ will to power
§ aesthetic phenomenon

Birth of Tragedy
§ Nietzche’s Background:
o philology = study of Greek/Latin literature only a bit of Philosophy
o study of Greek Drama (Aeschylus, Hippocles)
§ one of his first writings, wasn’t that good, a mix of many things (philo, literature, etc..)

* What makes a good drama effective?
a. Elements of drama:
§ Apollo - (god of sun, agriculture, etc..) – reason, intellect, order
§ Dionysius - (god of wine, orgies etc..) – passion, drive, desire
b. There must be balance of the two
c. Similarly in life: balance between discipline and passion
§ man is neither only about his consciousness nor his desires.
§ Antedates Freud’s idea of id, consciousness

? Why birth of tragedy?

Critique of Morality
§ made him famous
§ continuation of the birth of tragedy

1. Traditional Morality
a. Set of rules which suppresses the individuals drive rather than allow him to move and mature. Suppresses individuality, originality, uniqueness. Don’t do these. Don’t do that.
b. Do we simply confirm to a set of rules or a group of people? Are we mere followers of words?
c. We should have the courage to be what we are. Everybody is called to be the best he is. The calling to a good which realizes us.

2. Resentiment – crab mentality: anybody who tries to be true to himself is pulled down.

3. Transvaluation of Values
a. Sometimes morality has hidden motives (e.g. Aha that is porn! My mind is green. This is my gift. I get something in return!)
b. sfads
c. We have to reverse the process

4. Ubermench
a. true morality – being true to one’s self, being prepared to be pulled down, morality of the strong and courageous
b. not afraid of suffering for standing out of one’s principles

5. Effect in Contemporary Thoughts

Critique of Metaphysics (platonic)
1. Pre-socratics: down to earth wisdom
2. Plato: other worldy (eternal, world of ideas…); a form of escape; running away instead of addressing the problems
3. Effect: distance from metaphysical philosophy; an open ear to phenomenological

Critique of Religion (medieval thinking)
1. What does our faith really consists of?
a. Hierarchy? Dogmas? Organization of churches? Councils?
b. What is essential in our faith? What gives meaning to our lives?

2. tendency to emphasize the eschatological (end)
a. devaluation of the world: this world is a valley of tears
b. purpose of life: to gain points for heaven; nevermind saving other people, we’re gonna die anyway. Let’s just prepare for heaven.

3. emphasis on majesty of God in contrast with man as nothing
a. before God, one is worse than a worm.
b. Jean Paul Sarte: I’d rather choose humanity.”
c. dismissal of individual dignity
d. Church stand: St. Iraneus: “the man alive is the glory of God.”

4. Death of God
a. Nihilism
· Europeans lived their life as though God was dead
· God doesn’t matter because he doesn’t make a difference in their lives.




b. UBERMENCH: the core value of man’s life, the answer to emptiness in man (nihilism); a difference is made when one concentrates on his own life.

5. Stress on Suffering
a. Symbol of Xtianity: cross
b. Is suffering of itself a value, good? Is salvation to suffer?

6. dfa
7. sdf


critique of language
will to power
aesthetic phenomenon

Karl Marx (2)

G. Critique of Language
1. Traditional View of Language: the house of being/manifests being; close link between being and language; enables us to see being
2. Nietzsche’s say:
a. Not so much a revelation but an interpretation of reality
b. Language is a mobile army of metaphor
c. Depending on the language, you see a different aspect of reality
i. certain tribe counts 1, 2, many
ii. Filipino colors vs. American colors

F. Will to Power
- After Nietzsche’s death, his writings were controlled by Q. Elizabeth (his sister). Her husband was a Nazi so, she kinda slanted towards will to power
1. Will to Dominate
a. The only writing presented by Elizabeth
b. Everything has a tendency to dominate (tree’s roots, teachers, love… etc)
c. weakness
2. Will to Nothingness
a. a tendency to destroy either one’s self or others
b. psychological phenomenon
3.Will to Self determination
a. The capacity to dominate oneself (Ubermensch)
b. But in failure to succeed, one might revert to dominating others
c. Real strength

G. Aesthetc Phenomenon
- comes from the Birth of Tragedy book
1. Sense of the Beautiful
a. Redemption: seeking for the element of beauty
b. Seek out by artists
c. Our ultimate purpose in life: make our life a thing of beauty
d. “If I were to believe in God, it would be a dancing God>”
2. What is the Beautiful?
a. not just spiritual but embodied
b. The language for beauty has to be creative, poetic, enhances life

III. Karl Marx
(Critique Aspect and Prophetic Aspect: tied up to each other)

Critique Aspect
- an immanent critique: not to impose my norms on somebody but to try simply to understand
- awareness of the internal contradiction between how the society thinks itself too be and how the reality is
- grips every member of society

A. Religious Critique (check notes)
B. Political Critique (check fuckin notes)
C. Economic Critique
1. View of money:
a. everything is weighed according to monetary standards (What’s your salary? Networth?…etc)
b. laws of economics: allows men to die out so that money can grow back: law of the Jungle!
2. View of work
a. Anything has value to the extend that it was worked on
b. Money is just paper and coin: the main value is work and the worker
c.

Prophetic Aspect

Nietzsche biography

http://nietzsche.thefreelibrary.com/

Friedrich Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran pastor and a devout hausfrau. His father died - mad - in 1849. Rejecting his father's faith, Nietzsche became a lifelong rebel against Christianity. "In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross", he wrote in Der Antichrist (1888). Nietzsche was brought up by pious female relatives. He studied classical philology at the universities of Bonn (1864-65) and Leipzig (1864-68) and became, at the age of twenty-five, a professor at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Among his acquaintances was Jakob Burckhardt, the writer of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). During the Franco-Prussian War, Nietzche served briefly as a medical orderly with the Prussian army. Nietzsche's military career was short: he contracted dysentery and diphtheria.

In 1872 Nietzsche published his first book, Die Geburt De Tragoedie Aus Dem Geist Der Musik (The Birth of Tragedy). In it, he diagnosed human beings as subject to unconscious, involuntary, overwhelmingly self-destructive Dionysian instincts. According to Nietzsche, the Greeks went against this tendency and erected the sober, rational, and active Apollonian principle.

Nietzsche considered reality as an endless Becoming (Werden). Apollinian power is associated with the creation of illusion - the plastic arts deny the actuality of becoming with the illusion of timeless beauty. Dionysian frenzy threatens to destroy all forms and codes. Download the easiest screen capture (print screen) program. Free trial Only the Apollinian power of the Greeks was able to control the Dionysian flood. But all illusions are temporary, and in his "experimentalist phase" (1878-1882) Nietzsche saw that the loss of the Apollinian spell will make the return to Dionysian actuality even more painful. But it must be noted, that the Dionysus whom Nietzsche celebrated in his later writings was the synthesis of the two forces and represented controlled passion. In the earlier work he favored Apollo. His thesis, however, was that it took both to make the birth of tragedy possible. Later in life Nietzsche addressed Cosima Wagner as "Princess Ariadne" in his letters to her and declared that the author of them is the god Dionysus.

At Basel, Nietzsche had become a close friend of Richard Wagner (1813-1883), and the second part of The Birth of Tragedy deals with Wagner's music. Nietzsche called the composer "Old Minotaur." In History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell remarked: "Nietzsche's superman is very like Siegfried, except that he knows Greek." By the end of the decade, Nietzsche became interested in the French enlightenment, which ended his friendship with Wagner in 1878. The composer despised the French and searched acceptance in Germany. Also Nietzsche did not accept the rising Wagnerian cult at Bayreuth, especially with its anti-Semitism. The religiosity of Parsifal was too much for him. "What did I never forgive Wagner?... that he became reichdeutsch," Nietzsche wrote, disillusioned.

Nietzsche gave up Prussian citizenship in 1869 and remained stateless for the rest of his life. In 1879 Nietzsche resigned his professorship - or was forced to give up his chair - due to his headaches and poor health. He wandered about Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, living in boardinghouses, and producing most of his famous books.
"When thou goest to woman, take thy whip."

Nietzsche respected that sincere and "genuine Christianity" that he considered "possible in all ages" - but Wagner's Parsifal, with its sickly Christianity, clearly did not seem to him to belong in that category. In Bayreuth Nietzsche had became increasingly aware of the impossibility of serving both Wagner and his own call. Rejected by Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937), to whom he had proposed marriage, Nietzsche withdrew into the existence of a tourist-scholar. He spent summers in Switzerland and winters in Italy, and published his major works in a period of ten years. Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) appeared first in three parts in 1883-1884 and was formally published in 1892. Among his other works were Jenseits Von Gut Und Böse (1886), Zur Genealogie Der Moral (1887), Götzen-Dämmerung (1889), and Ecce Homo (pub. in 1908, written in 1888).

Thus Spoke Zarathustra centered around the notions of the will to power, radical nihilism, and the eternal recurrence. Pain, suffering, and contradictions are no longer seen as objections to existence but as an expression of its actual tensions. In a note, 'Anti-Darwin', Nietzsche stated that "man as a species is not progressing." He substituted the ordinary conception of progress for a doctrine of eternal recurrence, and stressed the positive power of heroic suffering.
"I call Christianity the one great curse, the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground and too petty - I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind." (from The Twilight of the Idols, 1888)

In January 1889 Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown in Turin, Italy. He was found in a street, weeping and embracing a horse. Nietzsche lived first in an asylum and then in his family's care. His insanity was probably due to an early syphilitic infection. During his disease Nietzsche was almost invariably gentle and pleasant, and in lucid hours he engaged in conversation. Nietzsche spent his last decade in mental darkness and died in Weimar on August 25, 1900. After his death, his sister, Elisabeth, secured the rights to his literary remains and edited them for publication - sometimes in arbitrary and distorted form.
Elisabeth had married Bernhard Förster in 1885. Förster was a prominent leader of the German anti-Semitic movement which Nietzsche loathed. "For my personal taste such an agitator is something impossible for closer acquaintance," he wrote in a letter to his mother. In 1880’s Elisabeth founded with Förster a German colony in Paraguay, which was meant for the "Aryans only." Förster killed himself 1889 when his hand was caught in the till.

How much Nietzsche's illness - dementia paralytica or syphilis - affected his thinking and writing is open to speculations. During the second period of brain syphilis, the patient often acts manic-depressively and has megalomaniac visions. During his manic period in the 1880s Nietzsche produced Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Gay Science, and Beyond Good and Evil.
Nietzsche believed that all life evidences a will to power. Hopes for a higher state of being after death are explained as compensations for failures in this life. The famous view about the "death of God" resulted from his observations of the movement from traditional beliefs to a trust of science and commerce. Nietzsche dissected Christianity and Socialism as faiths of the "little men," where excuses for weakness paraded as moral principles. John Stuart Mill's liberal democratic humanism was a target for scorn, and he called Mill "that blockhead." His announcement of the death of God can be interpreted religiously or atheistically: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him... What was holiest and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?..." (in Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882)

According to Nietzsche, the other world is an illusion, and instead of worshipping gods, man should concentrate on his own elevation, which Nietzsche symbolizes in the Übermench. The contrast of "good and evil" as opposed to that of "good and bad," Nietzsche associated with slave morality. He argued that no single morality can be appropriate to all men. The meaning of history was the appearance, at rare moments, of the exceptional individual. And by creating the figure of Zarathustra, Nietzsche presented the teacher of the coming superman.
"My first dose of Nietzsche shocked me profoundly. In black and white he had had the audacity to affirm: 'God is dead!' What? I had just learned that God did not exist, and now someone was informing me that he had died." (Salvador Dali in Diary of a Genius, 1966)
First Nietzsche's works began to gain significant public notice by Danish critic and scholar Georg Brandes, who lectured on Nietzsche at the University of Copenhagen in 1888. The philosophers’ thoughts influenced, among others, Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, André Malraux, André Gide, Albert Camus, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, Sigmund Freud, and Jean Paul Sartre. Although the Nazis used some of the philosopher's ideas, Nietzsche was deeply opposed to the collective tendencies that labeled National Socialism. He rejected biological racism and German nationalism, writing "every great crime against culture for the last four hundred years lies on their conscience." Nazis, on the other hand, welcomed Nietzsche's view of "Herrenmensch," a new type of man who with his robber instincts was able to manipulate the masses and who was a law unto himself. Adolf Hitler kept a bust of him and in 1943 gave his works to Mussolini, who did not read them. When Elisabeth Nietzsche died in 1935, Hitler participated in the funeral ceremony. The Nazis built three years later a monument for Nietzsche.


Famous quotations by Friedrich Nietzsche:
Women can form a friendship with a man very well; but to preserve it--to that end a slight physical antipathy must probably help.
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
When marrying, one should ask oneself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this woman into your old age?
When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way--before one began.
One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

transvaluation and aesthtetic

However, descendants of the lower class began to resent being so powerless; they began to resent being bad. Their hatred toward the superior class resulted in a "radical transvaluation of their values." That is, 'good' and 'bad' began to reverse in meaning such that 'good' now applied to the common, low, poor and powerless, while 'bad' now applied to the superior, privileged, rich, and powerful. In this way, the deprived, poor, sick, and helpless become pious, whereas as the powerful, noble, and rich became impious.

Nietzsche's general metaphysical situation follows thus: the Dionysian truth about life, namely that the self-annihilating immersion of all things in unity is intolerable, may be rendered tolerable by creating ways to veil the intolerability of this truth. Every attempt to make life tolerable or justifiable is in fact the creation of some such veil and springs from the Apollinian spirit, the "principium individuationis." The highest, most self-conscious exemplar of this creation of tolerance-rendering illusion is art. Dionysian tragic artists are those who self-consciously recognize the tragic basis of what they are doing. It is for this reason that Nietzsche emphasizes that "the existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon" (BT, 22).

Karl Marx (last lecture)

Themes
1. Alienation
- From the self, fellowmen, nature, work
- Corrected only in the historical revolution
2. Universal
- work = the only universal factor; universalizes man: linked to a universe of man
3. Dialectic
- Hegel: “God is abstract and alone so he externalizes himself through creation of nature and of man”; “Religion, art, philo = highest cultural values, the consciousness of man reaching God’s.”
- Marx: “Man externalizes himself through work and in so doing realizes himself”
4. Praxis
- No such thing as pure worker or pure thinker/no monopoly on either side
- As I think, I work. As I work, I think actively.


Issues/Questions
1. Atheism
- Nietzsche: not visibly an atheist, only a critic
- Marx: essentially an atheist
- Basic reality: society, man, and nature is bound together by work
- No such thing as vertical dimension
- The solution to everything is Work work work work work work
- Fix economic problems, there will be no religion
- Marxism and atheism go together
2. Violence
- the very discrepancy between forms and forces of production
- result of the alienation
- essential? It is the fact of life; it’s already there. Victims are not aware of what is happening and what needs to be done.
- Proletariat = the waking up, the reign of consciousness
- Party = prepares the proletariat gain consciousness; paves the way for violence: (essential in view of the goal, classless society) (not a senseless violence, factories should not be destroyed)

3. Individual Person
- Marx: man is social, we depend on one another
- Individual dimension: search for self, meaning of life à not important/doesn’t matter
- The meaning of life is dying for society, life is meant for the society

Parallelism with Xtianity
1. Praxis
- implementation of Action
- Marx: continuous action in history; leads to certain awareness which leads to other set of actions; work, technology…
- Xtianity: God acts on us; leads to reflect on how God acts on the person and what he wants us to do; no total answers but sufficient; transcendental view…
2. History
- participation with the historical action (science, justice, society…) in preparation for the final end; salvation is in the future; not simply meditation
3. Messiah vs. Proletariat
- one suffers to save mankind/society
4. Role of Church vs. Party
- prepares society/mankind to the final end
5. Sin vs. Alienation
- brokenness of man; comes to end after revolution/judgement
6. Final End
- kingdom of God vs. Classless Society; inspires us all to want to change.

Without the transcendental sense,
Marx may be right there is nothing else to worry except work.
But there is such a thing as a transcendental sense,
Thus, there is a matter between me and my God.

Marriage and Sexuality

3.2.2. Salvific
3.2.2.1. Antecedents (the history of the concept)

a.)Augustine: believed in the literal truth of Gen. 1-3
i. Original justice
· everything went according to the reason/will of God
· No uncontrollable passions
· Sex = for procreation use only
ii. Original sin/first sin
· An act of rebellion against God
· Produced an analogous rebellion in man himself
- Lower passions vs. reason
- No control over lower faculties
· A state of rebellion: concupiscence
iii. Procreation – the only reason for sex
· Marriage can’t be salvific except in a very restricted sense – for procreation use only not for fun

b.)Vatican II (Gaudium et Spes 48 –51)
i. Radical move away from Augustine
ii. Third meaning of S.I. : sacrament/expression of love
· Uniquely expressed and perfected in marriage
· Arises from love and leads to greater love
· Sexual compatibility is built through the years
iii. Enlarged the understanding of marriage from a mere exchange of rights (contract) to an intimate community of life and love – Consortium Totius Vitae (CTV)
· Contract – sign marriage contract; exchange of rights; consummation of marriage; isolated SI from the other elements of marriage (understanding, patience, love…)
iv. Sexual intercourse = rooted in dailly life of spouse; not a mere separate incident; expresses love
v. Marriage requires psychological maturity not only potency to consummate marriage.

c.) Social Sciences
i. Basic needs of man: to belong, to create, to nurture/be nurtured
· Fulfilled in a special way in marriage
· Ned to Belong: the greates fear of man is to be alone; a desire to communicate to other people
· Need to create: perpetuation of one’s memory through creation (books, painting, siring children)
· Ned to nurture/be nurtured: paternal/maternal instinct

3.2.2.2 How is Marriage said to be salvific
a.) Mackin: salvific = from death/lesser life (i.e. not meeting the basic needs of man)
b.) Through marriage as CTV that includes SI arising from love leading to greater love
c.) Spouses can become better/more mature persons through marriage
i. Human reality as symbol (appropriate and revelatory)
· FEAR (baka’s, paranoia, suspicions) – paralyzing: you’ll never get anywhwere
· A loving, supporting marriage can overcome fear – thus, salvific
d.) marriage is a good tsign to represent what God is doing in the supersensate level
e.) salvific and revelatory – not disconnected elements; it is revelatory because it is salvific

3.3. Role of Faith

Saint Thomas' 5 Ways

THIRD ARTICLE
http://www.trosch.org/phi/stst-q2.htm

Whether God Exists?
We proceed thus to the Third Article: --

Objection 1. It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.

Obj. 2. Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle, which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle, which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.

On the contrary, It is said in the person of God: I am Who am (Exod. iii. 14).

I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways.

The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e., that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or one only. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.

The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble, and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest, and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum of heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

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