Monday, July 22, 2019

Notes: Tuesday, February 5-Monday, July 22, 2019 (part 1 of 3)

1. The latest changes to this blog's sidebar

Immediately before posting this part of this issue of "Notes", I removed from this blog's sidebar the links to What's Up With Francis-Church? (because it's no longer being updated) and to "Sources for the Syllabus of Errors" and the respective websites of The Archdiocese of Sydney, The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, and The Diocese of Wollongong (because I never or hardly ever use them, nor can see any other good enough reason to keep them), and moved the remaining links to the "Miscellaneous links" section from the "Magisterium" or "Bishops and (Local) Churches of Australia and the world" sections (hence I deleted those sections). I then added links to the revived Bernard Gaynor blog and to The University of Birmingham's The Philological Museum. (When I first saw that Mr. Gaynor had resumed blogging, I think that the most recent post at his blog was "Anzac Day dawn service march too dangerous for female CO" ("Posted By Bernard Gaynor on Friday, April 12, 2019 4:07 pm"); the last post before his blog went into hiatus seemed to have been "Vale Larry Pickering" ("Posted By Bernard Gaynor on Tuesday, November 20, 2018 7:31 pm"), and his first post after that hiatus was apparently "By George, it’s unbelievable" ("Posted By Bernard Gaynor on Tuesday, March 5, 2019 1:12 pm").)

But I don't think that there's any need for me to mention such changes in future. If you want to know how, when, or why I make future alterations to the sidebar, please feel free to ask me.

Labels: blogs

2. Prof. Schofield on two points of Plato's political philosophy:

2.1 Rule of law vs. rule of men:
The companion dialogue Politicus or Statesman addresses more squarely than Republic did the practical as distinct from the theoretical knowledge of the ideal statesman. Its contribution to this topic consists of three major claims. First is the rejection of the sovereignty of law. Plato has nothing against law as a convenient but imprecise rule of thumb in the hands of an expert statesman, provided it does not prevent him using his expertise. Making law sovereign, on the other hand, would be like preferring strict adherence to a handbook of navigation or a medical textbook to the judgment of the expert seafarer or doctor. If you have no such expert available, a constitution based on adherence to law is better than lawlessness, but that is not saying much. What law cannot do that expert rulers can and must is judge the kairos: discern the right and the wrong ’moment’ to undertake a great enterprise of state. …
[hyperlinks and italics in the original, my ellipsis symbol,
§ "16. Later dialogues", art. "Plato (427–347 BC)" (version 1), by Emeritus Prof. Malcolm Schofield, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online:
https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/plato-427-347-bc/v-1/sections/later-dialogues]
Labels: morals, Plato, politics

2.2 The essential function of authority:
Statesman makes the statesman a sort of weaver. There are two strands to the analogy. First, like weaving statesmanship calls upon many subordinate skills. Its job is not to be doing things itself, but to control all the subordinate functions of government, and by its concern for the laws and every other aspect of the city weave all together. …
[hyperlink in the original, my ellipsis symbols,
ibid.]
Labels: morals, Plato, politics

3. Lady Mary Peters and Lord Salisbury have joined The Order of the Garter

H.M. The Queen has appointed Lady Mary Peters L.G. C.H. D.B.E. a Lady Companion of The Order of the Garter and The Most Hon. The (7.) Marquess of Salisbury K.G. K.C.V.O. P.C. D.L. a Knight Companion of the same Order, according to the Press Release "New appointments to the Order of the Garter announced", February 27, 2019:

https://www.royal.uk/new-appointments-order-garter-announced

(That date is presumably the effective date for the appointments in question, judging by usual practice and by this Tweet ("3:43 AM - 27 Feb 2019") from the Twitter account "The Royal Family" (@RoyalFamily), which says that "Two new appointments have been made to the Order of the Garter today.", and names the aforementioned appointees:

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1100723225527492610

Unusually, that date seems to be both the effective date and the nominal date for those appointments; see Notice No. 3316805, February 27, 2019, Notice Type "State", Sub-Type "Honours and Awards" (Notice Code: 1105), The London Gazette, Issue No. 62703 (printed on July 5, 2019, containing all notices published online the previous day), p. 11956:

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/3316805

(A digital version of the full text of p. 11956 is available here:

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/62703/page/11956

and a digital version of the full text of Issue No. 62703 is available here, with p. 11956 being p. 2 in your document reader:

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/62703)

I say "unusually" because Gazette items promulgating new Garter Knight or Lady appointments which (appointments) are effective from dates other than April 23 usually describe the appointments as 'to be dated' April 23; that happened mostly recently in 2016, ’13, ’11, ’08, and ’05, judging by the results of searching "To be dated" and "Order of the Garter" and "Companion" together at that gazette's website.)

That Press Release says that Lady Mary
(born 6 July 1939) served as Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of the County Borough of Belfast between 2009 and 2014. In the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich, Dame Mary won the Gold Medal in the pentathlon. In 1975, she established The Mary Peters Trust to support talented young sportsmen and women across Northern Ireland.
while His Lordship
(born 30 September 1946) is a former Leader of the House of Lords. Lord Salisbury is a Deputy Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, and was Chairman of the Thames Diamond Jubilee Foundation, which organised the Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames in 2012. Lord Salisbury is also Chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire.
It also mentions that its "announcement brings the number of Companions to twenty-three (out of a maximum of twenty-four)." See item 7.2.1 of part 2 of my previous issue of "Notes" for the names of the other twenty-one Companions in question, as well as those of the current Royal-Family and Stranger ones (minus one from the latter category—see the end of this item), and the accuracy, as of Garter Day this year, of the names in the first two categories can be confirmed by comparing my lists to the lists in the Court Circular for the 17. ult. (The only absentees other than Stranger Knights or Ladies this year were Lords Ashburton and Inge and T.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh and The Duke of Cambridge, but Their Lordships are, judging by Wikipedia, still alive, and so are Their Royal Highnesses, of course.)

According to that issue of the Court Circular, this year's Garter Day activities consisted of
  • a Chapter of the Order held by Her Majesty, accompanied by all the Royal-Family Garter Knights and Ladies except T.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh and The Duke of Cambridge and with, among others, H.M. The King of Spain, H.M. The King of The Netherlands, and all the other Garter Knights and Ladies present except Lords Ashburton and Inge and the other Stranger Knights and Ladies, in the Throne Room, Windsor Castle, during which "The Queen welcomed The King of Spain and The King of the Netherlands as Extra Knights Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter" and invested Lady Mary and Lord Salisbury with the Garter Insignia. (Her Majesty had already received Lady Mary and, presumably separately, His Lordship last May 16 and, at their respective receptions, invested them with the same Insignia, according to the Court Circular.)
  • a later Luncheon Party given by The Queen for the Garter Knights and Ladies.
  • in the afternoon, an Installation Service in St. George's Chapel for the installation of the new Garter Companions.
(See also the article "Garter Day 2019", dated June 14 (sic), 2019:

https://www.royal.uk/garter-day-2019)

You might also have noticed in the Court Circular the reference to Grand Duke John of Luxembourg's State Funeral last May 4. According to the English version of His late Royal Highness's biography at Luxembourg's Royal Family's website, Grand Duke John died on April 23, 2019 (which would, of course, have been St. George's Day had it not fallen during the Octave of Easter):

http://www.monarchie.lu/fr/famille/grand-duc-jean/biogrgdjean-en.pdf

Labels: John of Luxembourg, Mary Peters, Order of the Garter, Philip VI. Borbón, Robert Salisbury, William Alexander of The Netherlands

4. Alberico Gentili (in Latin: Albericus Gentilis) is "regarded as one of the founders of the science of international law and the first person in western Europe to separate secular law from Roman Catholic theology and canon law." (In other words, he is "considered the originator of the secular school of thought in international law".)

The first quotation, including its hyperlinks, in that headline comes from the Encyclopædia Britannica article "Alberico Gentili (Italian jurist)":

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alberico-Gentili

Apparently, the second quotation comes from that encyclopedia's article "International law" (s.v. "Historical development"):

https://www.britannica.com/topic/international-law/Historical-development

(The article is behind a paywall, but the quotation shows up in the related-articles section of "Alberico Gentili (Italian jurist)" and came up in the ninth result when I searched "Gentili" at Britannica's website.)

Labels: law, morals, politics, secularism

5. More items on the grounds of political legitimacy

5.1 "considering the bases of the League doctrines, it is impossible not to accord them the highest importance in the history of political ideas. Power, they said, was derived from God through the people, and they opposed the false, absolutist, and Gallican doctrine of the Divine right and irresponsibility of kings, such as Louis XIV professed and practised"

The quotation, minus hyperlinks, in that headline comes from the article "The League" (s.v. "Political doctrines of the League") in The Catholic Encyclopedia:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09098b.htm

Labels: Democratism, morals, politics, regalism

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, Penitent, A.D. 2019

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