The biggest obstacle to understanding Aquinas's account of the soul may be the word “soul”. On hearing it, many people are prone to think of ghosts, ectoplasm, or Rene Descartes's notion of res cogitans. None of these has anything to do with the soul as Aquinas understands it. But even the standard one‐line Aristotelian‐Thomistic characterization of the soul as the form of the living body can too easily mislead. As is well known, the word “soul” is in Aristotelian‐Thomistic philosophy essentially (...) a technical term for the substantial form of a living thing. Material substances can be destroyed by other natural objects because they do have an inherent tendency toward corruption. A human being is the kind of substance which, in its mature and normal state, exhibits both the properties and causal powers characteristic of animality and those characteristic of rationality. (shrink)

In a series of publications over the course of a decade, Edward Feser has argued for the defensibility and abiding relevance to issues in contemporary philosophy of Scholastic ideas and arguments, and especially of Aristotelian-Thomistic ideas and arguments. This work has been in the vein of what has come to be known as "analytical Thomism," though the spirit of the project goes back at least to the Neo-Scholasticism of the period from the late nineteenth century to the middle (...) of the twentieth. Neo-Scholastic Essays collects some of Feser's academic papers from the last ten years on themes in metaphysics and philosophy of nature, natural theology, philosophy of mind, and ethics. Among the diverse topics covered are: the relationship between Aristotelian and Newtonian conceptions of motion; the varieties of teleological description and explanation; the proper interpretation of Aquinas's Five Ways; the impossibility of a materialist account of the human intellect; the philosophies of mind of Kripke, Searle, Popper, and Hayek; the metaphysics of value; the natural law understanding of the ethics of private property and taxation; a critique of political libertarianism; and the defensibility and indispensability to a proper understanding of sexual morality of the traditional "perverted faculty argument.". (shrink)

Critics of Robert Nozick's libertarian political theory often allege that the theory in general and its account of property rights in particular lack sufficient foundations. A key difficulty is thought to lie in his account of how portions of the world which no one yet owns can justly come to be initially acquired. But the difficulty is illusory, because the concept of justice does not meaningfully apply to initial acquisition in the first place. Moreover, the principle of self-ownership provides a (...) solid foundation for Nozick's libertarianism, and when seen in the light of that principle and its full implications, the standard purported examples of injustices in acquisition are revealed to be nothing of the kind. Footnotesa The original draft of this paper was written in the summer of 2002 while I was a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University. I thank the directors of the Center, Fred D. Miller, Jr., Ellen Frankel Paul, and Jeffrey Paul, for hosting me. I also thank colloquium audience members at Bowling Green State University for comments on that draft. (shrink)

The “existential inertia” thesis holds that, once in existence, the natural world tends to remain in existence without need of a divine conserving cause. Critics of the doctrine of divine conservation often allege that its defenders have not provided arguments in favor of it and against the rival doctrine of existential inertia. But in fact, when properly understood, the traditional theistic arguments summed up in Aquinas’s Five Ways can themselves be seen to be (or at least to imply) arguments against (...) existential inertia and in favor of divine conservation. Moreover, they are challenging arguments, to which defenders of the existential inertia thesis have yet seriously to respond. (shrink)

Actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient causality and teleology are among the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Aristotle's Revenge argues that these concepts are not only compatible with modern science, but are implicitly presupposed by modern science. Among the many topics covered are: the metaphysical presuppositions of scientific method; the status of scientific realism; the metaphysics of space and time; the metaphysics of quantum mechanics; reductionism in chemistry and biology; the metaphysics of evolution; neuroscientific reductionism. (...) The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophy of science, so as to bring contemporary philosophy and science into dialogue with the Aristotelian tradition. (shrink)

Teleology features prominently in recent discussions in the philosophy of mind, action theory, philosophy of biology, and in the dispute between Intelligent Design theorists and Darwinian naturalists. Unfortunately, discussants often talk past each other and oversimplify the issues, failing to recognize the differences between the several theories of teleology philosophers have historically put forward, and the different natural phenomena that might be claimed to be teleological. This paper identifies five possible theories of teleology, and five distinct levels of nature at (...) which teleology might be said to exist. Special attention is paid to the differences between Aristotelian-Thomistic and ID theoretic approaches to teleology. (shrink)

Classical natural law theory derives moral conclusions from the essentialist and teleological understanding of nature enshrined in classical metaphysics. The paper argues that this understanding of nature is as defensible today as it was in the days of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. It then shows how a natural law theory of the grounds and content of our moral obligations follows from this understanding of nature, and how a doctrine of natural rights follows in turn from the theory of natural (...) law. With this background in place, the implications of the theory for questions about property rights and taxation are explored. It is argued that classical natural law theory entails the existence of a natural right of private property, and that this right is neither so strong as to support laissez faire libertarianism, nor so weak as to allow for socialism. Though the theory leaves much of the middle ground between these extremes open to empirical rather than moral evaluation, it is argued that there is a strong natural law presumption against social democratic policies and in favor of free enterprise. (shrink)

This book provides a detailed, updated exposition and defense of five of the historically most important (but in recent years largely neglected) philosophical proofs of God’s existence: the Aristotelian, the Neo-Platonic, the Augustinian, the Thomistic, and the Rationalist. It also offers a thorough treatment of each of the key divine attributes—unity, simplicity, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, and so forth—showing that they must be possessed by the God whose existence is demonstrated by the proofs. Finally, it answers at length all (...) of the objections that have been leveled against these proofs. This work provides as ambitious and complete a defense of traditional natural theology as is currently in print. Its aim is to vindicate the view of the greatest philosophers of the past— thinkers like Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, Leibniz, and many others— that the existence of God can be established with certainty by way of purely rational arguments. It thereby serves as a refutation both of atheism and of the fideism that gives aid and comfort to atheism. (shrink)

Defenders of the thesis of self-ownership generally focus on the “ownership” part of the thesis and say little about the metaphysics of the self that is said to be self-owned. But not all accounts of the self are consistent with robust self-ownership. Philosophical accounts of the self are typically enshrined in theories of personal identity, and the paper examines various such theories with a view to determining their suitability for grounding a metaphysics of the self consistent with self-ownership. As it (...) happens, only one such theory is suitable: the hylemorphic theory of Aristotle and Aquinas. To adopt such a theory, however, is to see that self-ownership may in some respects have implications different from those many of its defenders take it to have. Footnotesa For comments on earlier versions of this essay, I thank Christopher Kaczor, Ellen Frankel Paul, the participants at an Institute for Humane Studies current research workshop in January 2004, and the other contributors to this volume. (shrink)

Aquinas holds that after death, the human soul can no longer change its basic orientation either toward God or away from him. He takes this to be knowable not only from divine revelation but by purely philosophical reasoning. The heart of his position is that the basic orientation of an angelic will is fixed immediately after its creation, and that the human soul after death is relevantly like an angel. This article expounds and defends Aquinas's position, paying special attention to (...) the action theory underlying it. (shrink)

This paper examines the Scholastic thesis that truth is a transcendental property of being, and its relevance to debates in contemporary analytic philosophy. The paper begins with a brief survey of analytic views about truth. Then, after setting out the Scholastic doctrine of the transcendentals in general, it explains how truth in particular fits into it, with special attention to the Scholastic distinction between logical truth and ontological truth. The paper then considers the light these Scholastic ideas shed on debates (...) about realism and anti-realism, skepticism and conceptual relativism, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the Augustinian theistic argument from eternal truths, Trinitarian theology, and other controversies. (shrink)

James Ross developed a simple and powerful argument for the immateriality of the intellect, an argument rooted in the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition while drawing on ideas from analytic philosophers Saul Kripke, W. V. Quine, and Nelson Goodman. This paper provides a detailed exposition and defense of the argument, filling out aspects that Ross left sketchy. In particular, it elucidates the argument’s relationship to its Aristotelian-Scholastic and analytic antecedents, and to Kripke’s work especially; and it responds to objections or potential objections to (...) be found in the work of contemporary writers like Peter Dillard, Robert Pasnau, Brian Leftow, and Paul Churchland. (shrink)

F. A. Hayek was among the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century. He is widely regarded as the principal intellectual force behind the triumph of global capitalism, an 'anti-Marx' who did more than any other recent thinker to elucidate the theoretical foundations of the free market economy. His account of the role played by market prices in transmitting economic knowledge constituted a devastating critique of the socialist ideal of central economic planning, and his famous book The (...) Road to Serfdom was a prophetic statement of the dangers which socialism posed to a free and open society. He also made significant contributions to fields as diverse as the philosophy of law, the theory of complex systems, and cognitive science. The essays in this volume, by an international team of contributors, provide a critical introduction to all aspects of Hayek's thought. (shrink)

Hayek's attack on the ideal of social justice, though long ignored by political theorists, has recently been the subject of a number of largely unsympathetic studies (those of Lukes and Johnston being the most recent) in which his critique is dismissed as at best simply mistaken and at worst frivolous. The responses to Hayek's case against social justice, however, fail to draw any blood, for they do not seriously deal with Hayek's central claim that the very notion of social justice (...) is incoherent. (shrink)

This chapter sets out the traditional natural law defense of the claim that the death penalty can in principle be a just punishment for certain offenses. It begins by explaining the relevant principles of traditional natural law theory and how they are grounded in a broadly Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics. It then shows how the goodness of retribution follows from these principles, and thus is intelligible given that metaphysical picture. This is followed by an application of these results to the justification of (...) capital punishment specifically, as an instance of retributive justice. Finally, Feser responds to some objections. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 8, August 2022.

Traditional natural law theory grounds morality in human nature. In particular, it defines what is good for us in terms of the ends for the sake of which our natural faculties exist. For the traditional natural law theorist, our sexual faculties have two natural ends, procreative and unitive, and what is good for us in the context of sexuality is therefore defined in terms of these ends. The article provides an overview of this approach to sexual morality and its implications, (...) and explains why the natural law theorist holds that the procreative and unitive ends cannot be separated. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.1 (Spring 2013): 69–76. (shrink)

David Johnston 's Rejoinder to my defense of Hayek's critique of social justice, though it has the merit of attempting to deal with Hayek's claim that the very idea of social justice is incoherent, fails to undermine that defense. Johnston 's suggested counterexample to Hayek's claim that talk of an injustice presupposes an agency responsible for the injustice is not even prima facie plausible; he overlooks crucial disanalogies between the pursuit of social justice and the pursuit of other social goals; (...) and he fails to understand the distinction between Hayek's case against social justice and his case for the market. (shrink)

The indirect realist theory of our knowledge of the external world which Russellian philosophers of mind have appealed to in formulating and defending a unique version of the mind-brain identity theory can be applied also to the formulation and defence of a unique version of functionalism. On the view that results, qualia turn out to be features which do not exist over and above the natural world , and are irreducibly subjective but are non-intrinsic properties of brain states . This (...) view, which can be called ‘Hayekian functionalism’ , thus shows how we can combine the best insights of functionalism with the respect for the subjectivity of qualia which critics of functionalism claim it cannot accommodate. (shrink)

This paper is a book review of "Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction" by Edward Feser.

A review of Edward Feser's Five Proofs of the Existence of God.

I argue that Edward Feser misconstrues the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition on issues relevant to the arguments for God’s existence that proceed from finality in nature because he misapplies the A-T view that ordering to an end is inherent in natural things: (1) Feser speaks as if human action in no way serves as a model for understanding action for an end in nature; (2) he misreads, and ultimately undermines, the Fifth Way, by substituting intrinsic end-directedness in place of (...) end-directedness; (3) he overlooks striking similarities between Paley’s argument from design and the Fifth Way. He also fails to consider the role of the good in the Fifth Way. (shrink)