Is Dr. Edward Feser the greatest philosopher of the 21th century? Have you read his works?

Is Dr. Edward Feser the greatest philosopher of the 21th century? Have you read his works?

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Ive only read the Last Superstition, and the second smuggest book Ive ever read.

What developments has he made in Scholasticism beyond making pop-philosophy books on them?

Given that Anscombe only died recently Im not even sure he would be able to claim the title of greatest scholastic philosopher of the 21s century.

Amscombe was a lot less scholastic than MacIntyre and she didn't deal as much afaik with the type of stuff Feser does. He's very similar to Garrigou-Lagrange in what he's doing, which is a defense and a synthesis. He's one of the most important Catholic figures right now and it's showcased by the impact By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed has had on the intellectual life, bringing the death penalty back into the Catholic mainstream.
I haven't read TLS, but By Man Shall, Aquinas, Locke and Philosophy of the Mind were all great reads. I think his contribution is mostly in Scholastic Metaphysics from what I see commonly referenced. Also, Feser would probably admit Oderberg was the better philosopher, but he has much less non academic influence.

I'm sorry, who?

>analytic “philosophy”

No, thanks. I am fairly autistic, but not to this extent.

The analytic/continental division is broad and borderline retarded when applied to thomism.

>I haven't read TLS, but By Man Shall, Aquinas, Locke and Philosophy of the Mind were all great reads.

Where they just pop texts or new contributions to philosophy? I kinda get the feeling he is more deGrasse Tyson than Einstein.

>thomism

BOOORING

get with the times FARTER

Always get the sneaking suspicion that Aristotelianism falls into issues of reification and fallacies of composition. Kind like our chap Parmenides or Plato.

There is something profoundly ironic and humorous about an Anglican talking about the evils of modernity and the necessity of Orthodoxy.

If you consider introductions into the subjects that are published specifically for students of philosophy and extensive explorations of the subject something the propagandist black man does, sure. They aren't contributions as far as I know in developing new concepts, but are defenses and explorations of the old ones. But most thomism is like this, you might as well accuse Maritain for being pop phil because he was trying to explore and harmonise thomism with modernity in his politics and aesthetics.
And yes, I don't think Feser will be remembered as an original thinker, but he is playing the chief role in shaping the new generation of thomists.

Just had a look at his wiki page and NDT is a bit over the top, I genuinely thought he must have had some bigger achivements in his past. Perhaps Carl Sagan would be more apt.

Cant say ive ever heard of Maritain so cant really comment there.

Given their fetish for Aristotle do Randians ever deal with Aquinas?

>Reading scholastics in 2017
>taking them seriously

Really?

>I cant refute this so here is a reaction pic

I don't really follow American political journals and Feser doesn't care much about Rand so I can't comment on this.
His wiki isn't particularly useful and people usually direct others to his blog, which is really just his essays on various subjects that might as well get a book of their own one day.
Sorry to say, but the 20th and 21st century have more interesting thomists than 14th-19th. There's been a large revival and it is a solution to various contemporary problems, making it extremely appealing.

I meant NDT's wiki page, I go to Fessers blog from time to time.

As for the Randians despite the focus being on politics they have their own Aristotelian metaphysical system

I know it's a bit late to the discussion, but what does NDT stand for? I assumed it was something like National Review.

Oh nothing that special its just the initials of Black Science Man's name, turns out hes more of a talker than I thought him to be.

I have to be heading off but assuming this thread lasts the night, what are your views on Plato and Parmenides?

I'm not too familiar with Parmenides, only through various secondary sources, but I like the Plato as far as reading him goes. The philosophically valid things were for the most part preserved by Augustine and find their way into Aquinas, especially in the parts where he talks about God and how he functions, so to speak.

Seeming seemings

It's only 2017 user we aren't a fifth of the way through the century.

Feser is a great writer and defender of Thomism, I always recommend his books to those interested in the field, but I can't remember him contributing anything new to the field.

a challenger appears....

Feser is the most assblasted conservative on the planet.

Who assblasted him
Sadler isn't a thomist and also isn't exactly a writer, aside that one very specific book.

Why do non-Catholic Christians hate Thomism so much?

They don't as of recently because all Protestant philosophy always falls into some trap of ending bringing their faith down (Kant, Kierkegaard, Hegel). Also, Thomists usually end up converting to Catholicism later on anyway.

I am certain I have a higher IQ than Sadler just from listening to him struggle to articulate himself every other minute in his videos

Since you seem to be confusing rhetorical ability with intelligence I can confidently say that you're not smarter than him.

>There's been a large revival and it is a solution to various contemporary problems, making it extremely appealing.
you're using the word solution, but what you mean is 'response'.

That's just internal dialectic, kiddo. He's just trying to synthesis his contradictory thoughts.

Thank you, Mr. Pedantic.

it's not pedantry, presenting something as a solution when it's merely an answer is misleading, and this stupid kind of discourse is undoubtedly a large part of why people think thomists have anything of value to offer today.

>and this stupid kind of discourse is undoubtedly a large part of why people think thomists have anything of value to offer today.
If you have an argument, just develop it instead of being passive agressive in a post that has nothing to do with that.

They way you just presented that answer just makes you look like a troll seeking attention by offending. If you want to be taken serious, then post like a normal person that is actually looking for an honest discussion.

Huh?

No, I mean solution. I know why I said it. Me and other people who like Aquinas and scholasticism in general obviously believe that various problems are solved by thomism, otherwise, why would we be parts of the tradition? Feel free to disagree on the claim that thomism solves certain problems, but don't give me this shit. And a large part of people never read more than the 3 pages of the 5 ways because Thomism isn't generally explored at all in many, if not most schools.

Because it gives priority to pagan philosophy over the Church Fathers

Because they find the truth in Augustinian Christianity.

t. Catholic who despises Thomism

Why does one exclude the other?

Augustine (following Plato) believed that knowledge of God was impossible and that the world is but a shadow of the truth. For Augustine, you need faith and grace to know God.

Aquinas (following Aristotle) believed that knowledge of God was possible through the exercise of right reason, and that this God is knowable empirically.

In other words, they're completely opposed in their view of reason.

>Aquinas (following Aristotle) believed that knowledge of God was possible through the exercise of right reason, and that this God is knowable empirically.

I don't think you're accurately representing Aquinas. Aquinas distinguished two types of revelation, natural, which can be called scientific or empirical and supernatural revelation. I've never seen anything to suggest he thought we can know God utterly through only one type, but instead he posits that actual knowledge of God requites both and he's fairly explicit in saying that natural or empirical revelation can only take you so far.

I was just trying to demonstrate why they exclude each other. My description of both are very simplistic.

The problem isn't that your description is simplistic, it's that it's completely wrong for the reason I just explained. Aquinas doesn't say that you can utterly know God empirically. To Aquinas faith and reason is complimentary, not contradictory.

I didn't say utterly

I didn't accuse you of saying it.

you are nothing a but heretic pinky

P I N K Y

>He's one of the most important Catholic figures right now

Isn't there some French (or Belgium?) Dominican (?) who's been publishing some huge tomes on Thomism for the past decade or so? (I'm drawing a mental blank, obviously.)

Fr. Cessario?

I think it's someone else. If I remember or dig it up, I'll post. (The web pages I have about him are from a computer that crashed two years ago.)

Have you ever read him? He really is a synthesis of everything that came before him. He also didn't have access to as many of the Fathers as we do, but there's as much of pseudo Dionysus and Augustine as there is Aristote, but respectively for different things.

>Augustine (following Plato) believed that knowledge of God was impossible and that the world is but a shadow of the truth. For Augustine, you need faith and grace to know God.

This is wrong and nonsensical because it's completely confusing terminology of even Augustine. He believed that God existed and was a rational truth, there's the Augustinian proof of God that Aquinas employs in his dealings with the universals.

>Aquinas (following Aristotle) believed that knowledge of God was possible through the exercise of right reason, and that this God is knowable empirically.

Through the senses and by apprehension of reason isn't empirical. He also explicitly denied that you could know the essence of God. You can know that God exists by reason, but you cannot know much else without faith and grace.

>In other words, they're completely opposed in their view of reason.
No, no they are not, you just don't understand either Augustine or Aquinas.

Feser is important because of his extremely wide reach, he is, due to his clarity and the fact that everyone speaks English and can read his blog, accessible and read beyond the anglophone world, unlike every French theologian currently writing. To be fair the only post V2 French speaking intellectual with wide reach was Lefebvre and that's because there's literally no other figures with reach.

I enjoyed Feser's book on Aquinas and some of his blogposts are interesting but he certainly doesn't rank as one of the "greatest", let alone one of the "the great". He doesn't strike me as particularly mature, and he falls victim to the same sin of intellectual pride that tends to befall Catholic converts. Even when I was a Catholic myself, the obstinacy of Catholic writers "who've got it all figured out" and devote too many of their words to shitting on le DUMB moderns rubbed me the wrong way.

Feser provides a solid, cogent description of Thomist metaphysics for our age but seems to fail to properly address Enlightenment criticism of Aristotelianism, apparently dismissing it out of hand the same way we do Aquinas. His treatment of Hume's theories on causation is enlightening but unconvincing. 'Intelligibility' is a strangely common idol among Scholastic writers, for whom the mystery of divinity apparently means nothing more than a lack of knowledge, rather than of even the ability to comprehend like it were a natural thing within the created physical universe. Scholastic writers tend to demand that God be perfectly logical - not since God is beholden to logic, but since what we call logic is a necessary property of Godliness, or 'emanates' from him, or some such thing. The Scholastic will shut down at the slightest suggestion that the rules of causality as we know them are not absolute. Brute fact is not within their vocabulary.

His association with American conservatism bores me, too.

Brute facts aren't in the vocabulary because most thomists think the concept is stupid and dishonest.
Also, I can't say I've encountered criticism of aristotelian-thomist philosophy in the enlightenment, that is something which addresses something which is their actual position outside of Leibniz. Rival theories, sure, specific criticism no.

> He really is a synthesis of everything that came before him

If you limit that to figures like Aristotle and Averroes. Certainly not the Cappadocian fathers, given the rejection of the essence–energies distinction

>there's as much of pseudo Dionysus and Augustine as there is Aristote
Strikes me as hyperbole unless you can actually back that up

Have you actually tried reading anything he wrote?

Have you tried backing up your claims?

What is the difference between a brute fact and an axiom?

How can causality not be absolute?

Most similarities between Augustine and Aquinas are found in SCG book 1 where it's exceedingly apparent that Aquinas has the Neoplatonic way of looking at God and explaining him as such, the aristotelian part comes in where Platonism gets into problems in general, connecting the world of ideas with the physical one. This is where the two diverge. For example Aquinas accepted Augustine in his theodicy and his concept of evil, but added a few things to it that made it more easy to connect with material existence, evil not being only a complete lack of goodness, but that goodness is lost in degrees in relation to the form of the thing. Augustine's idea that all good comes in the next life in reference to his two armies meeting and the better one winning is enlarged by adding the apprehension of natural ends and their connection to the good life, all Justice finally comes in the next life, but living in accordance with God's law is good in this one as well. God is for Aqunas as well pure oneness, whose mind is not different from his essence, he only builds on it with the actuality/potentiality as means of explaining why God is perfect and why we are not. They differ more in mindest and approach where Augustine conflicted various principles more than Aquinas, for example the political order is for Aquinas something which naturally arises from the essence of man, who is a social and rational animal, for Augustine it was a way to keep sin in check because of how twisted man is. I guess Augustine found his successor in de Maistre as far as this goes, but the difference is not something in contradiction, both can be true at the same time, which I believe can be said for most of their differences.

Axiom is a starting point. A brute fact is something you reach which you cannot account for with your philosophy, so you just pretend it's okay for it to be there without explanation.
As far as causality, I think it's more the question of how you explain it, not the fact that it is the most basic axiom, where the problem thomists have with brute facts comes into play.

That being said, would you recommend anything in particular on the subject?
I should also revisit Augustine soon, read De Civitate Dei 4 years ago.

>so you just pretend it's okay for it to be there without explanation.

Is the world being rational without a God an example of a brute fact?

>I think it's more the question of how you explain it, not the fact that it is the most basic axiom, where the problem thomists have with brute facts comes into play.
Can you expand on suggest a thinker/website that develops this issue a bit more?

Yes, it would be a brute fact, as opposed to the world being rational because of God, due to the PSR.
Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics and his blog have some interesting writings and, indirectly as defense of PSR God His Existence and His Nature by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange.
edwardfeser.blogspot.hr/2014/10/della-rocca-on-psr.html?m=1 this as well as the articles and exchanges linked are not bad reads (people sometimes see Feser as an ass, maybe you'll be annoyed, but I've personally never had the impression).

>Yes, it would be a brute fact, as opposed to the world being rational because of God, due to the PSR.
Thinking more about it could be a product of rationality being a projection of the human mind - kind of like seeing faces in clouds or simply just an axiom. What are some other examples of brute facts.
>(people sometimes see Feser as an ass, maybe you'll be annoyed, but I've personally never had the impression).
I hope its different from the Last Superstition or some of his other blog posts but for me reading his work is like reading dawkins or hitchens grating but more importantly to the point where I cant trust him to accurately represent the opposing viewpoint.

In my experience he usually provides plenty of quotations to whatever he is responding and I can't say that I've noticed him misrepresenting his opponents, which may be due to being unfamiliar with a lot of what they say first hand. TLS is his most popular, but least important work and with the New atheism having died, I hope we can set that work behind us and focus more on his more interesting work.

>In my experience he usually provides plenty of quotations
>which may be due to being unfamiliar with a lot of what they say first hand

Thats one of the major concerns I have with any contraversial and complex issue and why when it comes to scholasticism I want to avoid the whole "just read and trust this one polemical author" buisness.

Are you familiar at all with Richard Swinburne?

Very vaguely, I haven't read any of him yet. My experience first hand with thomsim has been a lot of Aquinas of course and MacIntyre, almost everything he published after his shift to aristotelian philosophy, Feser, Jaques Maritain, Frederick Copleston and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. I'm not studying philosophy so I haven't yet gotten through most of post Kantian era.

Any other experience with other philosophers? I got the sense that Thomists would be interested in figures like Kant

Aside from the classical figures, I've been going through lots of stuff relatively chronologically, so Machiavelli, More, Erasmus, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, Amscombe and the thomists I've already mentioned. There's probably more, but this is the general gist of it.

What were your thoughts on Kant, Hume and Spinoza specifically?

With Kant my experience has been in ethics (as law is my field of study) and I'm not a fan, but it's respectable. I find it to be too arbitrary (in the sense that human rights as a concept are largely Kantian, but are devoid of non ideological meaning and can lend themselves into any interpretation one wishes to make) and dependant on context, while also trying to ignore that context. Spinoza annoyed me partially because he characterised entire scholastic tradition blatantly wrong and I've found him to be generally unconvincing. Hume is a mixed bag, his scepticism is interesting in the context of materialism and is a good critique of various rationalist concepts, he of course doesn't deal with Aristote at all, but his chapter on miracles is some of the most blatantly wrong, borderline stupid philosophy I've encountered thus far.