Update on Posts

I meant to get one or two posts out last week but had some things come up and wasn’t able to. I might be publishing less over the next few weeks, but should get back to normal by the end of August/early September. My apologies.

Also, some unfortunate news: I’ve had to delete my reading Aristotle and reading Aquinas posts. I had thought that quoting from texts for the intention of commentary/educational purposes was allowed by fair use under copyright laws, and it is, but I recently discovered that quoting whole chapters might be pushing it. This was quite disappointing, as I had put quite a significant amount of time and work into those posts, and deleting one’s work is always difficult; but, it’s always better to be safe rather than sorry. In the future, I may continue the series but in different formats, with less direct quoting and more personal commentary. We’ll see. If I do that, eventually I may go back and do the same for the old chapters I’d already gone through, but that would be a lot of extra work. Anyways, my apologies for this as well.

Thanks and God bless,

Harrison

Sens Homines 100th Post

This is officially the 100th post published here on Sens Homines over the past fifteen months. Thank you to everyone who reads and follows along! I’ve very much enjoyed the process and journey and look forward to continuing on.

A lot has changed over the course of writing these one hundred posts. I’ve been reading back over some of my early posts, and honestly can’t help but cringe at times. If nothing else, blogging regularly has helped develop my own writing (although I certainly still have a long ways to go). But that was the whole point of this blog in the first place: the journey. Growing, learning, interacting.

So, with that said, I thought it’d be fun and interesting to take a look back.

Here’s a list of my own top fifteen personal favorite posts (ordered chronologically). These are the posts I enjoyed writing the most:

1. Prime Mover Part 3: Final Objections
2. G. K. Chesterton’s Heretics and the Importance of Creeds
3. The Person of Jesus Part 1: Jesus’s Shadow over History
4. My First Mass and the Worst Mass Shooting in American History
5. A Socratic Dialogue about the Nature of Love
6. Arguments for Atheism #2: Material Causation and Creation Ex Nihilo
7. Christmas: To the End of the Way of the Wandering Star
8. Brief Thoughts on Meaning, Purpose, and God
9. Aquinas’s Argument from Degrees of Perfection Part 4: Conclusion
10. Could an Evil God Exist? Thoughts on Classical Theism and Definitions of God
11. Aquinas’s Argument from Design Part 3: The End
12. An Augustinian Defense of Hell
13. Beginning Metaphysics IV: Essentialism
14. Assessing the Kalam Cosmological Argument, Part I
15. The Incarnation and Boethius’ Hierarchy of Knowledge

A few of these might also be some of my least favorite posts. It’s funny how that works. It’s also quite interesting to compare this list to the list of most viewed posts. With a few exceptions, the two are almost completely different.

I currently have plans for upcoming posts that I’m excited for, including posts on more modern/contemporary material. And of course, always more Aristotle and Aquinas. Until then, thanks again to all my readers.

God bless,

Harrison Jennings

The Incarnation and Boethius’ Hierarchy of Knowledge

The ancients and medievals were fascinated with the concept of hierarchies. In fact, for many of them, the very fabric of their worldview was essentially hierarchic. All things were seen as originating from God as their source, and being directed toward God as their final end/good; and within this framework the entire universe was held as existing in ordered, purposeful relationships. This understanding of reality as ordered/hierarchic manifested itself in nearly every aspect of life and thought: family and community structure, political systems, ecclesiastical organization, theology, philosophy, and, as we’ll see, epistemology.

Pseudo-Dionysius wrote of the celestial hierarchy of angels, mirrored in the Church’s own hierarchy. St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas wrote of the hierarchy of existing beings, from inanimate objects, to living plants, to animals, to rational humans. Plato had explained reality as ordered from the material to the immaterial and ultimately to the Form of the Good. For all these classical thinkers, their belief in an ordered universe expressed itself through hierarchical relations.

Boethius was certainly no exception.