Brian Hamilton is a Ph.D. student in moral theology at the University of Notre Dame, with interests in the history of Christian political thought, recent political theory, and negative theology. Contact him or read his CV.
Blog
Although I do occasionally post independent, more personal news items here, my regular blogging now happens at Memoria Dei. All I write there is also cross-posted here as a link.
For the most part I’m quite happy with my decision to end up studying ethics, rather than philosophical or systematic theology, since it’s nearly always the material meaning of philosophical concepts I’m interested in emphasizing. But I do sometimes have a pang of regret, not knowing when it is I’ll finally have a chance to do the kind of reading I’d really like to do in Trinitarian debates, fundamental ecclesiology, etc. It may actually be that I occasionally regret not being a philosopher: what really fascinates me in the Trinitarian debates is the viability and consequence of the thought of the infinite, and my real interest in fundamental ecclesiology has to do with the essential relation between individual and the collective subjects… Though in a philosophy department of the sort that intrigues me, I doubt if I would have been able to think those questions in an unapologetically theological frame; or at least, a great deal of prolegomena would always seem necessary.
Not really saying anything. Especially after a long conversation this afternoon about “making ourselves marketable” to one institutional niche or another, just once again feeling the strictures of academic life that, as often as not, severs thought into so many discrete lifeless pieces.
I confess that over the past several months, I have set myself a very determinate research agenda into various theories of property for no good reason whatsoever, except that I was annoyed at having no determinate research agenda at all. Turns out almost nobody has a research agenda until they force one on themselves third or even fourth year, which makes me feel better. But imposing some kind of focus has been fruitful. By the end of the spring term, I’ll have essays on property in early Marx, Locke/Rousseau, Aquinas, and Bonaventure—the last of which I’ll be presenting for a session on Franciscan political thought at Kalamazoo next May. I just finished up with Marx a couple weeks ago, and even though I’m not terribly happy with the paper, I have the unfamiliar but very pleasant sense that it’s going somewhere. As it happens, this is extremely good for morale.
(Note: I’ve posted a slightly more substantial explanation of why this is coming to interest me over at Memoria Dei, and more posts on this theme can be expected over there as I work through Bonaventure this spring.)
One of the aspects of Dionysius’ system I’ve been trying to get handle on is what you can call the principle of necessary mediation: the lower ranks of the hierarchy can only receive the divinity through the higher ranks. The point of the principle, believe it or not, is not to absolutize the place of the bishop or any other church authority. Dionysius’ treatise on the ecclesiastical hierarchy assumes that some such principle is in effect, but it’s not a point of explicit insistence. The point of the principle, rather, is to say that the angels are absolutely necessary in relaying the divine word and the divine activity to human beings—that’s the reason that they, above all other creatures, are fittingly called angels or messengers. If the ecclesiastical hierarchy also works that way, it’s for the precise reason that the ecclesiastical hierarchy ought to be a perfect image of the celestial one.
That doesn’t rule out the possibility that this is all just ideological obfuscation, of course. And the fact that Dionysius offers literally no philosophical defense the principle might lend some credence to that interpretation. (The defense he does offer is scriptural: showing that Ezekiel, Moses, even Jesus only received the divine will through angelic intermediaries.) I’m inclined, though, to think Dionysius is being genuine here, especially since he’s creating this whole concept of hierarchy more or less ex nihilo, and affording himself a relatively low status. But then I’m just left baffled. Why insist on this principle at all? Even if there’s good reason to say that no one has gazed upon divinity directly, that there’s some necessary mediation there, what could possibly be the point of insisting that all communication from God be stepwise? And that not only knowledge of God is so mediated, but that the knowledge of the higher angels is as well?