0053 I can get away with anything if I can find the right words.  Call me a smooth talker.

Every one of us is infected with this potential.  We are sinners before we are conceived.  Let us not strain under the illusion that we can sort out the voluntary from the involuntary, knowledge from ignorance, or freedom from slavery.  Speech-alone talk produces a privation rarely seen in the natural world.  My spoken words can tell me whatever I want to hear.

0054 That is just the beginning.

My own self-justification_3b seals my commitment_2c to free-nihilation_3c

I_3c decide what makes sense_3c, not the One Who Gives, Without Us Knowing Why_3c.

Then, I expect_3a someone else to agree_1a with my blather_2a.

0055 The sacrament of baptism contests this mystery of iniquity.  Grace flows into human nature.  A spiritual battle is already engaged before my arrival.

0056 Kanzelberger lays out the moral theodrama.

The mystery of iniquity starts to unfold when I come up with ‘something’ objective_1b, without attention to the rules of reason and the divine law_1c.  At first, the objective_1b sets aside the suprasubjective_1c, by not admitting to the intersubjective_1b.  

I decide what makes sense_3c.

0057 Isn’t this the nature of concupiscence?  Why should I worry about right reason or Yahweh’s law?  I’m going to hang out with Cupid.  Cupid likes me.  Cupid agrees with me.

After a phantasm_2b of deliciously-worded_2a desire_2b becomes habitual, self-justification_3b strains towards the intersubjective_1b.  For self-deception_1b to become openly regarded, it must first become intersubjective.

So, I, a self-deceiver_3b, search out a team that will judge_2c my privation_2b as virtuous and true.  Let my intersubjective_2bhabit find an accommodating suprasubjectivity_1c.  Yes, I may join the club.  I may join the secret society that does not pay attention to some aspect of the rule of reason or the divine law_1c, then justifies the consequences_2a.

In fact, our common intersubjective privation_2b reflects a self-congratulating fullness of suprasubjective being_2c.  Our good is obvious to anyone who is “educated”.  We all love one another and despise the uneducated morons, don’t we?

0058 We blather_2a in production of our subjective agreement_1a.

Are we really free to choose_1b?

Or, am I forgetting something_1c?

0059 There are privations in things and events_2a, including speech-alone talk_2a.

There are privations in phantasms_2b, losing the balance between judgment_2c and speech_2a.

Here is a diagram for social construction.

What am I missing?

0060 In sections four and five, Kanzelberger pulls more threads through the loops of Poinsot’s scholasticism and Peirce’s postmodernism.  He does so well, that I continue in parallel, like a harmony to his melody.

0061 I turn to privation of judgment_2c.

Consider an example.

0061 Crooked lawyers love the sin of omission.  They love to omit the evidence that would cause them to lose the case.  This love is justified by the doctrine of total satisfaction for the client.  The crooked lawyer does not serve justice.  The crooked lawyer serves only his client, even when his client is guilty as charged.

In the domain of morals, the doctrine of total client satisfaction stands in opposition to an oath to serve justice.  Lawyers take an oath to serve justice.  This doctrine deprives the oath of its merit.  Evil is a privation of good.

Legal theory contextualizes a lawyer’s cupidity, even as the lawyer’s exploits defy the attainment of justice.

0061 Is there a hierarchy here?

Crime is what happened_3a.  A trial is what is happening_3a.  Victory in court is what it means to me_3b.  Someone really depraved constructs the legal process that permits it all_3c.

There is a hierarchical difference between a corrupt lawyer_3b, who objectifies what is happening_3a in the pursuit of total victory for his client_1a, and a legal theorist_3c, who formulates the consensus of what is legally permissible_1c.  Legal theorists_3c fashion suprasubjective entities, concocting law-determining judgments_2c that alter, tweak, nudge, correct and re-configure the intersubjectivity_2b within which a moral agent_3b signifies.  Legal theorists_3c alter the machinery of justice_2c.  Evil ex academia_1c.

The well-educated cutting-edge legal theorist_3c offers norms_2c that may oppose the rule of reason and the divine law_1c, just as parody opposes tragedy.  The projection of alternate meaning into words_1c, such as “client interests”, “service”, “mandates” and so on, mocks the hard-won projection of true meaning_1c, where the client’s interests do not outweigh justice and true justice ultimately furthers the interests of us all, including the client.

0062 Here is a picture.

0063 What is the catch?

Alternate legal theories_2c cannot endure in the absence of the original truth of justice_1c.  There are two types of immoral actors.  The practitioners of concupiscence_2b, like crooked lawyers, struggle with self-justification_1c.  The self-justified_2c, like opportunistic legal theorists, strain to defy right reason and divine law_1c.  They offer better alternatives_2c.  They_3coffer them_2c in droves.  A multitude of alternatives_2c swarm with betterness.

Kanzelberger writes, “Purposeful evil is not a matter of ignoring the moral context of courses of action, but a semiotic disorder involving… a fictive construction… that functions as… an imagined future.”

0064 You mean, like that approaching cloud of legal locusts?

Imagine a world where the rule of reason_2c and the divine laws_1c are partially, then totally, eclipsed by a swarm of organizational objectives_2c, each declaring its own righteousness_1c, each supported by its own theoretical imperatives_1c and each relying on the power of the state to enforce its dictates.

Imagine a world where certain words_1a are made flesh_2a, and this winged flesh_2a fills the air with what is happening_3a, so that all things and events_2a actualize theory-distorted subjectivities_1a.  

Imagine a world where our phantasms_2b are not grounded in truth, but in the projection of meaning_2b into once truth-filled speech-alone words_2a.

0065 Surely, we have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good an evil.

Like locusts.

There will be hell to pay.

0066 Kanzelberger writes, “Moral evil is a dark image.  It weaves a web that bewitches its author, then ensnares others.”

But, the author and the ensnared do not necessarily stand on the same level.

0067 Natural evil makes no sense.  Natural evil is privation of the subject.

Moral evil makes sense.  Moral evil is privation in phantasms.  We selectively use word-symbols deprived of their fullness.  We seek agreement_1a, not wisdom_1c.

Metaphysical evil defies moral sense, by willfully projecting its own relations between what is and what ought to be_2c, into spoken words_2a, which cannot image or indicate on their own.

0068 Imagine a nest, full of duly-appointed avian-philic crooked lawyers, passing a law decreeing the latest innovation of their premier legal theorist.  All cats are to be banished from the sovereign realm, because they are symbols of human maliciousness and cruelty.

Here is a brood worthy of Kanzelberger’s philosophical consideration.

0069 Kirk Kanzelberger joins Thomas Aquinas with a basic acknowledgment: Evil is a privation of a good.

He then considers natural and moral evil.

In moral evil, he locates a semiotic disorder, in addition to a privation.

He considers the nature of the sign, as formulated by Charles Peirce.

0070 He publishes his argument in a journal worthy of the reader’s support.

Reality: A Journal for Philosophical Discourse

0071 My comments are not so different.  They thread through both Peirce and Poinsot.  They pass through the two loops brought to light by John Deely.

Yet, the are different, in that they offer diagrams based on Peirce’s categories.

0072 Typically, Razie Mah’s comments are published in the smashwords website and carried by a variety of e-book vendors.

Start with A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form.

Add A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.

That is all that is needed to introduce oneself to the interscope of social construction.

0073 The three-level interscope appears in the chapter on meaning in the masterwork, How To Define the Word “Religion”.

The three-level interscope plays a role in A Primer on the Individual In Community.

The three-level interscope serves as a model of langue, in Comments on Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky’s Book (2016) Why Only Us: Language and Evolution.

0074 All these works are available at the smashwords website.

So concludes this look at Kanzelberger’s foray into both Aquinas and Peirce, concerning reality and the nature of privation.

Look to Reality.

God bless.