On the tariff crisis

Like many others across the political spectrum, I’ve been alarmed at the extreme tariff policy President Trump announced last week, which was met by a massive drop in the stock market.  As with almost everything else he does, the policy was nevertheless instantly embraced with enthusiasm by his most devoted followers, who have glibly dismissed all concerns and assured us that we are on the cusp of a golden age.  If this does not sound like the conclusion of careful and dispassionate reasoning, that is because it isn’t.  Whatever the outcome of Trump’s policy, the flippant boosterism with which it has been put forward and defended is contrary to reason.

On pride and vainglory

Pride, as Aquinas defines it in De Malo, is “the inordinate desire for pre-eminence” (Question 8, Article 2). With Augustine and the Christian tradition in general, he teaches that it is “the greatest sin” and indeed “the root and queen of all sins.” Its immediate effect is “vainglory,” which is the vice of habitually seeking to call attention to one’s own imagined excellence. And the daughters of vainglory, Aquinas tells us (Question 9, Article 3), are disobedience, boasting, hypocrisy (by which Aquinas means a tendency to magnify one’s glory by reference to “imaginary deeds”), contention, obstinacy, discord, and what he calls the “audacity for novelties” or predilection for bold actions that will call attention to oneself by bringing “astonishment” to others.

Scholastic regress arguments

Many are familiar with arguments to the effect that an infinite regress of causes is impossible, as Aquinas holds in several of his Five Ways of proving God’s existence.  Fewer correctly understand how the reasoning of such arguments is actually supposed to work in Scholastic writers like Aquinas.  Fewer still are aware that the basic structure of this sort of reasoning has parallels in other Scholastic regress arguments concerning the nature of mind, of knowledge, and of action.  Comparing these sorts of arguments can be illuminating.