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Writer's pictureMichael Aguilera

Status Without Merit?


Men who aspire to honor should fear status without merit. "Honor" the Angelic Doctor states, "denotes a witnessing to a person's excellence. Therefore men who wish to be honored seek a witnessing to their excellence, according to the Philosopher." (1) Aristotle, the Philosopher, states further "honor is due to the best." (2)

Talk of the best we cannot go without mentioning wisdom, to see the whole and its parts. In practice wisdom looks like labor to obtain a totality of self-knowledge, both what we are and what we ought to be, despite the ambit of our inquiry continually expanding. The desire sublimate our various parts is part of this work. Still, if this were all we would be eating the bread of folly not of wisdom, lamentably. Here there is no crown of honor, maybe a ribbon of praise.

Another facet of wisdom is to aim at the highest causes. The highest cause is God. God is the Archetypal Model, He is the Mold that makes honorable men where there are seldom any to imitate. Men of honor labor to realize to the archetype of themselves contained in God for God by God, the Highest Cause.

This man will move the Divinity will by his thirst, and the Divinity will grant him the science necessary to bring his tongue, ears, eyes, hands, feet; voice and speech, memory and discernment, imagination and recollection, and movement to an elevated state. The state necessary to excel in the pursuit most suited him spreading honor to his friends, his state, his Mother, and his God. Here is the crown of honor.

This man is more than a self-help afficionado, the unfortunate ideal of Godless men that sometimes goes under the label of Nietzsche's übermensch.

So, men of honor are of the best because they are wise. And wisdom's excellence they demonstrate by deeds aimed at the Divinity, beginning within the Divinity, and sublimated by the Divinity. Wise men of action have serviceable merit. This course of action, although available to all men, is not tread on by all. Neglecting one or more of these element we mentioned, and history somewhat harshly will pass over us as a men of status-- doctors, teachers, financiers, lawyers, statesman, entrepreneurs, and so on-- without true merit. Even if we do not land on a page of history, we will in the pages of the Divine Mind.



Sources

  1. Summa, Dulia

  2. Summa, Dulia

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