Friday, April 13, 2018

LOVING JESUS

"OH HOW I LOVE JESUS!" My afternoon meditation of a poignant passage in Aristotle's NICOMACHEAN ETHICS (1941, 2001), p. 1023-1024, was seamlessly augmented by the soul-stirring transportive music of the late Rev. James Moore: "Oh! How I love Jesus !" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ihmePgaVcdg Aristotle wrote: "We said before that there are two parts of the soul--that which grasps a rule or rational principle , and the irrational; let us now draw a similar distinction within the part which grasps a rational principle . And let it be assumed that there are two parts which grasps a rational principle --one by which we contemplate the kind of things whose originative causes are invariable, and one by which we contemplate variable things; for where objects differ in kind the part of the soul answering to each of the two is different in kind, since it is in virtue of a certain likeness and kinship with their objects that they have the knowledge they have. Let one of these parts be called scientific and the other calculative; for to deliberate and to calculate are the same thing, but no one deliberates about the invariable. Therefore the calculative is one part of the faculty which grasps a rational principle . We must then learn what is the best state of each of these two parts; for this is the virtue of each. "The virtue of a thing is relative to its proper work. Now there are three things in the soul which control action and truth--sensation , reason, desire. "Of these sensation originates no action; this is plain from the fact that the lower animals have sensation but no share in action. "What affirmation and negation are in thinking , pursuit , and avoidance are in desire; so that since moral virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, and choice is deliberative desire, therefore both the reasoning must be true and the desire right, if the choice is to be good, and the latter must pursue just what the former asserts . Now this kind of intellect and truth is practical ; of the intellect which is contemplative, not practical nor productive, the good and the bad state are truth and falsity respectively (for this is the work of everything intellectual ); while of the part which is practical and intellectual the good state is truth in agreement with right desire." "Truth in agreement with right desire," as Aristotle explains, is practical virtue. That practical virtue also explains why, after reading both the Bible and the Qu'ran, I chose Jesus Christ . The choice was also imminently practical, for me, being the religion of my immediate ancestors, and also being as true as Islam, Buddhism, Judaism or any other faith or religion existing on earth . Oh! How I love Jesus! Indeed! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ihmePgaVcdg