People have
been asking me to comment on the remarks about causation made by atheist physicist
Sean Carroll during his recent debate with William Lane
Craig on the topic
of “God and Cosmology.” (You’ll find
Craig’s own post-debate remarks here.)
It’s only fair to acknowledge at the outset that Carroll cannot justly
be accused of the anti-philosophical philistinism one finds in recent remarks
by physicists Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Indeed, Carroll has recently criticized these fellow physicists
pretty harshly, and
made some useful remarks about the role of philosophy vis-à-vis physics in the
course of doing so.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Monday, June 30, 2014
SCOTUS and Oderberg
Today, with Burwell
v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court of the United States has partially
redeemed itself after its
disgraceful 2012 Obamacare ruling. Readers
of this blog will be particularly interested to learn that the work of the
esteemed David Oderberg (specifically, his article “The
Ethics of Co-operation in Wrongdoing”) is cited in footnote 34 of the decision. Also cited are two other, older works of
traditional Thomistic natural law theory: Thomas Higgins’ Man as Man: The Science and Art of Ethics and Henry Davis’s Moral and Pastoral Theology.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Pagden on the Enlightenment
Prof.
Anthony Pagden’s recent book The
Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters has much to say not only about
the Enlightenment itself but also about the Scholasticism against which it
reacted. My
review of the book appears today at Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Law and
Liberty website.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
The last enemy
There are
two sorts of people who might be tempted to think of death as a friend: those
who think the nature of the human person has nothing to do with the body, and
those who think it has everything to do with the body; in short, Platonists and
materialists. Protestant theologian Oscar
Cullmann summarizes the Platonist’s position in his little book Immortality
of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? as follows:
Monday, June 16, 2014
Summer web surfing
My Claremont Review of Books review of John
Gray’s The Silence of Animals is
now available for free online.
Keith
Parsons has
now wrapped up our exchange on atheism and morality at The Secular Outpost.
The latest
from David Oderberg: “Could There Be a Superhuman Species?” Details here.
Liberty Island is an online
magazine devoted to conservatism and pop culture. Music writer extraordinaire (and friend of
this blog) Dan LeRoy is on board.
James
Franklin asks
“What is mathematics about?” (See
also his new book An
Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics.)
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Sullivan’s cavils
I thank The
Smithy’s Michael Sullivan for his two spirited further installments (here
and here)
in his series of posts on my book Scholastic
Metaphysics. (I responded to the
first of his posts here.) Sullivan says some very kind things about my
book, which I appreciate. He also raises
some criticisms which, though I disagree with them, are reasonable. But unfortunately, some of his remarks are
unjust and intemperate. Let me comment
on those first.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Judging a book by what it doesn’t cover
In his
encyclical Aeterni
Patris, Pope Leo XIII called for a “restoration of Christian philosophy.”
He was quite specific about what he had in mind:
[D]aily experience, and the judgment
of the greatest men, and, to crown all, the voice of the Church, have favored
the Scholastic philosophy.
Indeed, he
was even more specific than that:
Among the Scholastic Doctors, the
chief and master of all towers Thomas Aquinas…
We exhort you, venerable brethren, in
all earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and to spread it
far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic faith, for the good of
society, and for the advantage of all the sciences… Let carefully selected
teachers endeavor to implant the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas in the minds of
students, and set forth clearly his solidity and excellence over others. Let the universities already founded or to be
founded by you illustrate and defend this doctrine, and use it for the
refutation of prevailing errors.
Review of Gray etc.
Readers of
the Claremont Review of Books may
want to look for my review of John Gray’s book The
Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths
in the
Spring 2014 issue. At the moment the
review is behind a pay wall, but subscribing will fix that problem.
On another
matter, readers keep asking me how to get hold of Scholastic
Metaphysics, which was released on April 1, somewhat ahead of schedule. Apparently the book sold out very quickly because
supply could not meet all the pre-orders and Amazon has been out of stock for
some time. I have been told that a new
shipment arrived at the U.S. distributor’s warehouse a week or so ago and that
the book should once again be available from Amazon this week. So, sit tight, and many, many thanks for your
patience and interest.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Sexual cant from the asexual Kant
Kant never
married and apparently died a virgin. He
is sometimes described as having had a low opinion of sex, on the basis of
passages like this one from his Lectures
on Ethics:
[S]exuality is not an inclination
which one human being has for another as such, but is an inclination for the
sex of another… The desire which a man has for a woman is not directed towards
her because she is a human being, but because she is a woman; that she is a
human being is of no concern to the man; only her sex is the object of his
desires. Human nature is thus subordinated. Hence it comes that all men and
women do their best to make not their human nature but their sex more alluring
and direct their activities and lusts entirely towards sex. Human nature is
thereby sacrificed to sex. (Louis
Infield translation, p.164)
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Linked in
Two new papers
from David Oderberg: “Is
Form Structure?” and “The
Metaphysics of Privation.”
Donald
Devine and I have been debating the merits of John Locke for years. Don offers his latest thoughts at The Federalist in “The
Real John Locke -- And Why He Matters.”
Stratford
Caldecott -- Catholic writer, G. K. Chesterton Research Fellow at St. Benet’s
Hall, Oxford, and Marvel Comics fan -- has cancer. Marvel has stepped up to grant him a dying
wish, and the stars of the Marvel movies have given him a touching
tribute. Fr.
Z has the story, as do The
Independent and the Catholic
Herald.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
This is philosophy?
This
is Philosophy is
a new introduction to the subject by Prof. Steven Hales. A reader calls my attention to the book’s companion website,
which contains links to some lecture slides keyed to topics covered in the
book, a dictionary of terms, exercises, and so forth.
I’ve got a
little exercise of my own for the reader, which has three steps. Here’s how it goes:
Step 1: Read this blurb from the website:
The text’s scholarship
is as noteworthy as its hipness. Hales clearly
explains important philosophical ideas with a minimum of jargon and without sacrificing depth of content
and he consistently gives a fair and
accurate presentation of both sides of central philosophical disputes.
Step 2: Read
this
set of lecture slides on the cosmological argument, holding before your
mind the highlighted words from the blurb while doing so.
Step 3: Try
not to laugh.
Ha! Knew you couldn’t do it! Me neither.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
New Scholastic books
The old
Scholastic manuals of the first half or so of the twentieth century are often
hard to find, though fortunately many are now being made available again by Editiones Scholasticae, Wipf and Stock, and TAN Books, as well as by public domain
reprint publishers like Kessinger, HardPress, and Literary Licensing. Still, many remain out of print, and many
have never been translated into English.
For some reason, the large older manuals of Catholic dogmatic theology
seem harder to find than the philosophy and moral theology material.
Fr. Kenneth
Baker has undertaken the project of translating Joseph Dalmau’s mammoth Sacrae Theologiae Summa (or Summa of Sacred Theology), originally
published in 1955, into English. It is
being published by Keep the Faith, which puts out The Latin Mass magazine. The
first volume was recently published and advertised in the magazine. Appearing out of sequence, it is Sacrae Theologiae Summa IIA: On the One and
Triune God. At the moment I do not
see it advertised on their website, but I imagine that if you contact them by
email you can find out how to order a copy.
(I ordered one after seeing the magazine ad -- the price was $35 -- and
it arrived yesterday.)
Friday, May 16, 2014
Pre-Christian apologetics
Christianity
did not arise in a vacuum. The very
first Christians debated with their opponents in a cultural context within
which everyone knew that there is a God and that he had revealed himself
through Moses and the prophets. The
question, given that background, was what to think of Jesus of Nazareth. Hence the earliest apologists were, in
effect, apologists for Christianity as
opposed to Judaism, specifically.
That didn’t last long. As
Christianity spread beyond Judea into the larger Mediterranean world, the
question became whether to accept Christianity as opposed to paganism. Much
less could be taken for granted.
Still, significant
common ground for debate was provided by Greek philosophy. In Book VIII of The City of God, Augustine noted that thinkers in the Neoplatonic
tradition had seen that God is the cause of the existence of the world; had
seen also that only what is beyond the world of material and changeable things
could be God; had understood the distinction between the senses and their
objects on the one hand, and the intellect and its objects on the other, and affirmed
the superiority of the latter; and had affirmed that the highest good is not
the good of the body or even the good of the mind, but to know and imitate God. In short, these pagan thinkers knew some of
the key truths about God, the soul, and the natural law that are available to
unaided human reason. This purely
philosophical knowledge facilitated Augustine’s own conversion to Christianity,
and would provide an intellectual skeleton for the developing tradition of
Christian apologetics and theology.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Dominicans Interactive reviews Aquinas
Dominicans
Interactive is a new online initiative of the Irish Dominicans. (Check out their Facebook page and website.) Today the website reviews
my book Aquinas. From the review:
The chapter on natural theology deals
with all five of Aquinas’s proofs for the existence of God… as well as
containing a short treatment of the divine attributes (God’s simplicity, perfection,
goodness, immutablity, and so on). The
reader will encounter in this chapter one of the most robust defences of the
validity of every one of the arguments for the existence of God (Five Ways)
available in the English language… This chapter is a tour de
force and bears witness to Feser’s deserved reputation as a master
of natural theology. Both students and
established scholars ought to acquire a copy of the book for the sake of this
chapter alone.
Very
kind! The review also warns: “[A] note
of caution: Feser’s book, while it ought to be required reading for any
introductory course on Aquinas’s philosophy, is nonetheless very challenging
for the neophyte.” That’s worth
emphasizing. The book’s subtitle “A
Beginner’s Guide” is a bit misleading. It
was not part of the original title when the book was contracted, and writing a “beginner’s
guide” was not something I had in mind when working on it. What happened is that after the book was
finished the publisher decided to fold it into their “Beginner’s Guides”
series. In fact most readers will find
it more challenging than The
Last Superstition, though not as challenging as Scholastic
Metaphysics.
Friday, May 9, 2014
Miracles, ID, and classical theism
The esteemed
Lydia McGrew, a friend of this blog, wonders
whether my defense
of classical theism and criticisms
of “Intelligent Design” theory can be reconciled with some of the miracle
stories one finds in the Bible. Her concerns are twofold. First,
such stories clearly attribute personal characteristics to God; yet classical
theists reject what they call “theistic personalism.” Second, the miracle
stories in question involve effects which could at least in principle (Lydia
claims) have been caused by something other than the God of classical theism;
yet I have criticized ID theory precisely on the grounds that it cannot get you to the God of
classical theism.
Neither “a person” nor impersonal
Lydia’s
first objection, I’m sorry to say, rests on a pretty basic (albeit annoyingly
common) misunderstanding. Contrary to the impression she gives in her
post, I have never denied that God is personal, nor do classical theists in
general deny it. On the contrary, like classical theists in general, I
have argued that there is in God intellect and will, and these are the defining
attributes of personhood; and as a Catholic I also affirm that there are in God
three divine Persons. So, I hardly regard God as impersonal.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
A second exchange with Keith Parsons, Part II
Prof. Keith
Parsons has posted his
own opening statement in our second exchange, which is devoted to the topic
of atheism, naturalism, and morality.
(An index of the posts in our first exchange can be found here.) As it happens, there is a remarkable amount
of agreement between what Keith says in his newest post and what I said in my
opening post. Both of us take a
broadly Aristotelian approach to ethics, grounding the good for human beings in
the biology of human nature.
Unsurprisingly, though, there is also disagreement. I have argued that human biology can have
moral import only if interpreted in light of an Aristotelian metaphysics. Keith argues that it ought to be interpreted
in light of a purely naturalistic metaphysics.
He would interpret the biological functions that ground what is good for
us, not as instances of immanent teleology of the sort the traditional Aristotelian
affirms, but rather in terms of Darwinian natural selection. As Keith indicates, in this regard his views
parallel those of Larry
Arnhart.
Friday, May 2, 2014
School’s out forever?
John Farrell,
Forbes science blogger extraordinaire
(and friend of this blog), comments on my
recent talk at Thomas Aquinas College, over
at his own personal blog. As you
know if you’ve read or listened to the talk, I call for a return to
Scholasticism within Catholic intellectual life as essential to sound theology
and apologetics. John has some kind
words about my talk, for which I thank him, but he also expresses skepticism
about the prospects of the metaphysics of the School and its Schoolmen (to use
the jargon of the good old days). Writes
John:
My own sense is that Scholasticism
can't work now because it presupposes an Aristotelian philosophy of nature that
is simply not adequate to support what modern science has uncovered about the
natural order. Which is not to say it is no longer valid, but rather that it is too limited. [No one
says Newtonian physics is wrong, but it only addresses a limited aspect of a
much wider, broader nature.]
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Corrupting the Calvinist youth [UPDATED]
Some guy
named “Steve” who contributes to the group apologetics blog Triablogue informs us
that “Feser seems to have a following among some young, philosophically-minded
Calvinists.” (Who knew?) “Steve” is awfully perturbed by this, as he
has “considerable reservations” about me, warning that I am not “a very
promising role model for aspiring Reformed philosophers.” And why is that? Not, evidently, because of the quality of my
philosophical arguments, as he does not address a single argument I have ever
put forward. Indeed, he admits that he
has made only an “admittedly cursory sampling” of my work -- and, it seems, has
read only some blog posts of mine, at that -- and acknowledges that “this may
mean I'm not qualified to offer an informed opinion of Feser.” So he offers an uninformed opinion instead,
making some amazingly sweeping remarks on the basis of his “admittedly cursory”
reading. (Why that is the sort of example “aspiring Reformed philosophers” should
emulate, I have no idea.)
Normally I
ignore this sort of drive-by blogging, but since Triablogue seems to have a
significant readership among people interested in apologetics, I suppose I
should say something lest “Steve” corrupt the Calvinist youth by his rash
example.
Friday, April 25, 2014
A second exchange with Keith Parsons, Part I
I’d like
once again to thank Keith Parsons, and moderator Jeffery Jay Lowder, for the
very fruitful first exchange we had a few weeks ago. You can find links to each installment here. Per Jeff’s suggestion, our second exchange
will be on the topic: ”Can morality
have a rational justification if atheism or naturalism is true?” Jeff has proposed that we keep our opening statements
to 2500 words or less, and I will try to rein in my logorrheic self and
abide by that limitation. That will be
difficult, though, given that my answer to the question is: “Yes and No.”
Let me
explain. I’ll begin by making a point
I’m sure Keith will agree with. Many
theists and atheists alike suppose that to link morality to religion is to
claim that we could have no reason to be moral if we did not anticipate
punishments and rewards in an afterlife.
I am sure Keith would reject such a line of argument, and I reject it
too. To do or refrain from doing
something merely because one seeks a
reward or fears reprisals is not morality.
I would also reject the related but distinct claim that what makes an
action morally good or bad is merely
that God has commanded it, as if goodness and badness were a matter of sheer
fiat on the part of a cosmic dictator who has the power to impose his will on
everyone else. This too would not really
be morality at all, but just Saddam Hussein writ large.
Friday, April 18, 2014
God’s wounds
The God of classical
theism -- of Athanasius and Augustine, Avicenna and Maimonides, Anselm and
Aquinas -- is (among other things) pure actuality, subsistent being itself,
absolutely simple, immutable, and eternal.
Critics of classical theism sometimes allege that such a conception of
God makes of him something sub-personal and is otherwise incompatible with the
Christian conception. As I have argued
many times (e.g. here,
here,
here,
and here)
nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, to deny divine simplicity or the other attributes distinctive
of the classical theist conception of God is implicitly to make of God a
creature rather than the creator. For it
makes of him a mere instance of a kind, even if a unique instance. It makes of him something which could in
principle have had a cause of his own, in which case he
cannot be the ultimate explanation of things. It is, accordingly, implicitly to deny the
core of theism itself. As David Bentley
Hart writes in The Experience of God
(in a
passage I had occasion to quote recently), it amounts to a kind of “mono-poly-theism,” or indeed to atheism.
But it is not only generic theism to which the critics of classical
theism fail to do justice. It is Christian
theism specifically to which they fail to do justice. One way in which this is the case is (as I
have noted before, e.g. here)
that it is classical theism rather than its contemporary rival “theistic
personalism” that best comports with the doctrine of the Trinity. But to reject classical theism also
implicitly trivializes the Incarnation, and with it Christ’s Passion and Death.
Friday, April 11, 2014
What We Owe the New Atheists
Last week I
gave a lecture at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, CA, on the theme “What
We Owe the New Atheists.” You can read
the text and/or listen to the audio of the lecture at
TAC’s website. The faculty,
students, and guests who attended were a wonderful bunch of folks and I thank
them for their very kind hospitality.
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