(urth) All is Shadow and dust
Chris
rasputin_ at hotmail.com
Sun Apr 10 02:08:30 PDT 2005
Maru said:
>Just a minor point- Are you sure about that definition of the 'theological
>move'?
>human logic is essentially guaranteed to be wrong, simply because we lack
>the necessary data or heuristics. Which is not a normative claim, but more
>a pratical one, like a monkey trying to understand calculus, 'don't even
>bother trying'.
Well, yes, more or less. I think you have the idea here - 'don't even bother
trying' being normative, not descriptive.
To put it in context, the whole reason Aquinas was addressing this subject
was the "Problem of Evil", ie "If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, how
could he be good and still allow evil in the world?" Aquinas is pointing out
that when you ask that question, you're presuming to judge God (and so it's
obviously not *impossible* to judge God). But the inadequacy of your
knowledge and reason in this case give you no way of knowing what would be
an accurate judgment for a being like God. As such he can't try to *answer*
the question without making the same mistake, so he points out that we
shouldn't ask it.
>if not well or completely, and the Hs do not act utterly superior; they go
>so far as to repeatedly test Autarchs and get some semblance of permission
>from Urthians (the battle), so they definitely don't believe in the
>normative claim, and if the Hs don't accept it, who could have the right?
>The Increate? But the Increate never intervenes.
If I remember correctly I wasn't suggesting that the Hierogrammates make
such a claim. I was saying that it was one reason a person might give for
why they don't judge Severian harshly.
The way you're interpreting the battle as a sort of "consent test" for the
population of Urth is possible, I suppose, but I don't know that it's to be
taken for granted. There is something a little paradoxical about the trial
on almost any explanation of it.
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