A Giant Among Pygmies

…[Thomas Aquinas] once came upon “a holy nun who used to be levitated in ecstasy.”  His reaction was to comment on how large her feet were.  “This made her come out of her ecstasy in indignation at his rudeness, whereupon he gently advised her to seek greater humility.”

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, by Edward Feser

Feser moves from Aristotle to Aquinas.  Much of this chapter is devoted to Feser’s examination of Aquinas’ proof of God’s existence, using and developing Aristotle’s metaphysical logic.  Further, Feser examines the feeble responses of today’s New Atheists – the group who claim that morality can be found without God, and in fact can only be found without God.

Why is this important to me at this blog?  It isn’t to prove the existence of God.  It leads right back to the idea of the necessity of a foundation – and a specific foundation – if we are to move toward liberty.  To greatly summarize: Christian ethics are a required foundation for liberty as we have come to know it in the west; without this foundation, we have no chance for liberty. 

New Atheists claim that these ethics can be had without God – and without God, our liberty will increase.  Many libertarians also believe the same – in fact, some will say that religion must be crushed for liberty to thrive.  Of course, I believe they are wrong, therefore – despite having the evidence of the last century or two on my side – it seems worthwhile to explore the reason as to why.

Feser begins by pointing out the paucity – if not complete absence – of New Atheist arguments contra Aquinas.  He really is funny when he does this – his ability to abuse with words is fabulous. 

One wonders how [Aquinas] would have reacted to the mental and moral midgets now being marketed as “New Atheists” who peddle stale “refutations” of theism that were themselves refuted long before Aquinas came on the scene.

What do these New Atheists do with Aquinas?  Dawkins – a biologist, not a student of philosophy – “is the only “New Atheist” to offer anything even remotely like an attempt to answer [Aquinas], feeble as it is.”  Sam Harris – who at least has an undergraduate degree in philosophy – finds room to mention Feser in his book End of Faith, yet says nothing of Aquinas and very little about the classical arguments for God’s existence.

Daniel Dennett – “a long-established “big name” academic philosopher” – in his 448-page book devoted to “breaking the spell” of religion, devotes three pages to addressing the classical philosophical arguments for God’s existence.  Even Dennett’s peers found his work lacking “philosophical depth”; Michael Ruse offered by email to Dennett: “I thought your new book is really bad and not worthy of you…”

Why Aquinas?  He has written perhaps eight million words examining God.  Feser describes him as a towering intellect with a single-minded devotion to God. When his brothers held him captive to prevent his joining the Dominicans, Aquinas memorized the entire Bible and the four books of the Sentences of Peter Lombard.

The Four Books of Sentences (Libri Quattuor Sententiarum) is a book of theology written by Peter Lombard in the 12th century. It is a systematic compilation of theology, written around 1150; it derives its name from the sententiae or authoritative statements on biblical passages that it gathered together.

A commentary on the Sentences was required of every master of theology, and was part of the examination system. At the end of lectures on Lombard's work, a student could apply for bachelor status within the theology faculty.

Puny thinker Aquinas was not.

The classical argument for God’s existence is attacked by these New Atheists as if a scientific hypothesis; instead, Aquinas is making an argument based on the reasoning evidenced in geometry or mathematics: for example, the Pythagorean Theorem can be reasoned through once one understands triangularity, etc.

Geometry doesn’t work that way.  It doesn’t involve the formulation and testing of hypotheses, after the fashion of empirical science.  This hardly makes it less rational than empirical science; it just shows that the sort of argumentation used in empirical science is not the only kind of rational argumentation that there is.

I will not attempt to present Aquinas’s arguments here; I will offer that these are built on the metaphysical arguments made by Aristotle: we observe things that exist, these undergo change, and exhibit final causes; therefore “there necessarily must be a God who maintains them in existence at every instance.”

Metaphysical arguments cannot be dismissed as “not scientific”; in fact, scientific arguments are built on metaphysical assumptions: there is a physical world existing independent of our minds, there are objective laws of logic and mathematics that apply to this objective world.  To dismiss metaphysical arguments is to dismiss science.

As E.A. Burtt offers: “But inasmuch as the positivist mind has failed to school itself in careful metaphysical thinking, its ventures at such points will be apt to appear pitiful, inadequate, or even fantastic.”

In my previous post on Feser’s work, RMB asked: “Wonder how Aristotle defended the existence of the 4 causes. Or was it simply that he asserted and defended the distinction of actuality and potentiality?”  To which I replied, basically…I have no idea.  But, maybe, some hints of it can be found here – in this understanding of metaphysics: premises that are obviously known from our sensory experience.

Conclusion

As mentioned, I will not present Feser’s review of Aquinas’s arguments for the existence of God – albeit I have marked up this section in my copy of this book perhaps more extensively than any other pages I have read anywhere.  I will just offer:

I realize, of course, that many will reply that there is still a fatal flaw in Aquinas’s argument insofar as final causes don’t exist. …But they are wrong to say it.  The reality of formal and final causes is rationally unavoidable, as we will see by the end of this book.

All I can say: if final causes don’t exist, I have no idea the point of life; if final causes don’t exist, we can all quit this libertarianism nonsense.

Epilogue

I am going out on a limb here, but I believe that it is through Kant that this idea of turning metaphysics into a science gained traction.  Reason must be limited to what we “know”: the physical objects of our experience.  

Turning metaphysics into a science makes it something man can manipulate.  And dominate.  Like making a triangle something other than a triangle; this could be “reasonable,” depending on who was doing the reasoning.

Aristotle finds cause in the essence of things; Kant finds cause in the physical thing – there is no essence.  Like there is no such thing as a triangle unless there is a physical triangle.  Per Kant, it would be unreasonable to assume otherwise.

Aristotle’s Metaphysics

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between possibility and actuality.

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, by Edward Feser

Feser has issued a rather large promissory note regarding the importance of Aristotle to Western thought and the cost to the West of abandoning Aristotle.  He will take a few chapters to pay off this note.  He starts with a down payment: explaining Aristotle’s metaphysics.

Actuality and Potentiality

Change is possible.  Sounds obvious, but Aristotle had to disprove a predecessor – Parmenides – who said otherwise.  Take the actuality of a blue rubber ball: we can say it is blue, solid, round and bouncy.  We can also say it is not red or square.  It also has potentiality – the potential to be something it currently is not: gooey if melted, red if painted, a globe if the continents are drawn on it.

None of these potentials are currently manifest in the ball, but they are potential if acted upon by an outside force.  No potential can actualize itself.  Whatever is changed is changed by another; whatever is moved is moved by another:

Once you make this simple distinction between actuality and potentiality, you are on your way to seeing that there is and must be a God.

Is any potential possible?  Can the rubber ball be bounced to the moon?  No.  Aristotle suggests that the ball has the potential that is consistent with its nature – its nature as it actuality exists.  Finally, actualities and potentialities exist in a hierarchical order: humans are rational animals; because humans are rational, they have the potential for speech.

Unless you make these distinctions, you cannot fully understand the abortion and euthanasia debates…

Form and Matter

Tables, chairs and rocks – these things are paradigmatically real.  Here again, Aristotle has to overcome a predecessor: Heraclitus, who insisted that change is all that there is.  Yes, these can change, but only through the influence of an outside force.

What is “real” about the rubber ball?  Is it the rubber?  There are many things made out of rubber.  Is it the roundness?  There are many things that are round.  It is when the matter and form are combined that we have a rubber ball.  While the matter and form are essential, the color is not essential: red or blue, the ball will bounce.

Contra Plato, the form of the ball does not exist by itself – without the matter.  The form and matter can only be understood in relation to each other.

There are objective essences, natures, or forms of things, just as Plato says; but our knowledge of them derives from the senses, and is grounded in ordinary objects of our experience, just as common sense holds.

The Four Causes

·        The material cause: what is it made of?  Rubber, in the case of our ball. 

·        The formal cause: the form, structure, or pattern of the matter.  In our case, its sphericity, solidity, and bounciness. 

·        The efficient cause: what brings the thing into being – what actualizes the potentiality.  In our case, the workers, machines, etc.

·        The final cause: what is the end, goal, or purpose of the thing?  For the ball, amusement for a child.

In combination, these causes provide a complete explanation of a thing.

Updates

I have updated the following tabs, all to be found at the top of the page:

BU2B (Brought up to Believe): call it a combination of my alternative version of history and the result of my taking the red pill.

Libertarians and Culture: my examination of libertarianism thick and thin which led me to my examination of the intersection of libertarianism and culture which led me to the specific culture born in medieval Europe which led me to my slowly diminishing view of the Enlightenment.

Bibliography: the blog posts based on the dozens of books I have read since the mosquito began this journey.

The Love of Knowledge

Philosophy: from Greek philosophia "love of knowledge, pursuit of wisdom; systematic investigation," from philo- "loving" + sophia "knowledge, wisdom," from sophis "wise, learned;"

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, by Edward Feser

…for most of the history of philosophy and science, there was no rigid distinction between these disciplines; “philosophy” was just that general “love of wisdom”…

Philosophers were after an understanding of the world, whether this involved physics, metaphysics, biology, ethics, or any other branch of science – which explains much about why we brand the most formally educated in almost any discipline a “Doctor of Philosophy.” 

This very broad view of the meaning of philosophy was true for much of western history; it is only recently where science is somehow considered a breed apart and the final arbiter – one might say only since the Enlightenment.

Feser provides an overview of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle; in this post I will not get through all of this – much too heavy.  It will take a second post.

Plato

Feser describes Plato’s theory of forms, a complete account of the relationships between the material and immaterial worlds.  His “form” was the essence of a thing.  For example, although a triangle can come in many shapes, colors, angles, widths of the lines, etc., one could know the form – the “triangleness” of a triangle: three sides, angles add to 180 degrees, etc.  This idea of “form” is true for all things. 

Further, the form exists independent of anyone knowing it.  It is there to be discovered, not invented; it was there before our birth and will be there after our death.  No one invented the idea that a triangle had three sides, 180 degrees, etc.  It just is. 

One can consider the form of the thing to be the archetype.  This “real” triangle need not have a location in time and space; hence, if correct, Plato’s theory “proves” that there is more to reality than time and space. 

The ultimate form is the Form of the Good; to know any form, one must know the Form of the Good.  Does Plato see this form as God?  Some argue that he does, but it only becomes apparent through his followers in later centuries.

The word “good” is important.  Feser emphasizes – he says “good” instead of “moral values”; the term “values” implies something dependent on the person doing the valuing – and, as we know, value is subjective, based on each individual’s own scale.  If the “good” is as Plato describes, it is not dependent on any person’s “value.”  It just is; it is not subjective:

…the good for a thing, including for a human being, is entirely objective, it is determined by its essence or Form and has nothing necessarily to do with what we happen contingently to “value” or desire.

As these forms exist outside of and are not contingent on the material world, there must be an eternal source for these forms and morality is to be found in this source.  This Feser describes as “realism.”

Feser offers that it is very hard avoid something like Plato’s theory: one cannot make sense of mathematics, language, science, and even the structure of the world without this idea.  He offers three sorts of things as examples to demonstrate this point: universals, numbers, and propositions.  These all exist outside of the human mind and would exist even if there were no human minds.

The debate between the new atheists and their critics hinges on the idea of universalism – the universal triangle, the universal redness, the universal humanness.  Plato’s realism is abandoned by these atheists for either nominalism – a denial that universals are real, or conceptualism – the universals are real but they exist only in the mind.

Returning to the idea that what is good for a thing is determined by its form: when applied to a human, this idea leads to certain conclusions about a man, a woman and a child.  A question remains: what is “good” for a human?  Define “good.”  TBD.

Aristotle

Feser doesn’t give Plato a slam-dunk win; he offers Aristotle to clean things up a bit.  To get a couple of things out of the way: first, some consider Aristotle kind and generous, others a vain SOB; he “compared homosexuality to eating dirt” (Plato also offered that this practice was contrary to nature); he lacked Plato’s literary flair, although he was more down to earth.

Overall, then, Aristotle just isn’t as “sexy” as Plato. His only advantage is being right.

 Like Plato, Aristotle is a realist within the context discussed above; however he thinks it an error to consider that objects occupy a third realm – outside of the material or the intellect.  The triangleness only exists in the triangle that it occupies; considered as abstractions, these only exist in the mind.

What this means can only be understood in the context of Aristotle’s metaphysics: “his description of the basic principles and categories governing all reality, knowledge of which must inform any sound scientific, ethical, political, or ideological inquiry.”

Feser warns the reader: while understanding Aristotle is vitally important, get ready for some dry stuff!  Feser describes Aristotle’s version of realism as “the most powerful and systematic realist metaphysics ever developed”; however, it took Aristotle’s medieval followers to complete the development of his thought.

How significant is Aristotle?  Well, I wouldn’t want to exaggerate, so let me put it this way: Abandoning Aristotlianism, as the founders of modern philosophy did, was the single greatest mistake ever made in the entire history of Western thought.

Mmmm…emphasis in original.  I think Feser really wants us to pay attention.

This abandonment has contributed to the civilizational crisis that has plagued the west for several centuries – and has accelerated in the last century or so.  Feser offers that there were other, non-intellectual, contributing factors – and some of these were more important. As this is an examination of philosophy, Feser is thus far staying in his lane:

It is implicated in the disintegration of confidence in the rational justifiability of morality and religious belief; …in the modern world’s corrosive skepticism about the legitimacy of any authority, and the radical individualism and collectivism that have followed in its wake…

Feser points to the depersonalization of man that has followed the abandonment of Aristotle: unparalleled mass-murder; abortion’s slaughter of countless millions; euthanasia; same-sex marriage and the sexual revolution generally.

This list of depersonalizations is interesting: he points to outcomes some of which an individualist could support and some that would make an individualist shriek in horror; yet both come from the same mother of abandoning Aristotle.  Depersonalizing by ignoring the human form has consequences, it seems.

It was the logical development of Aristotle’s ideas – as developed by his medieval followers – that offered the powerful and systematic intellectual foundation for Western religion and morality.  The unraveling of these ideas – despite the wishes of the new atheists – will undermine any rational and moral standards that these atheists attempt to claim.  I would say that we already have the proof.

I will develop Feser’s views on Aristotle’s ideas in the next post.

Walking the Fine Line…

…between pagan and Christian

-        Steve Vai, For the Love of God

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, by Edward Feser

In this book, Edward Feser intends to refute the new atheists: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and the like.  This will be a difficult book for me to work through.  First, the topic is not something that comes easily to me: the nuances of the early philosophers and the science of philosophy.  Much more difficult: I want to stay focused on the aspects important to the culture and tradition of Western Civilization, and avoid – as much as possible – getting into the middle of the debate.

In other words, I will address the “Christian” part of this from the viewpoint of the functional benefits to liberty in the west, and the costs to liberty of losing the “Christian.”  This is the fine line that I will try to walk.

For when the consequences of [secular progressivism’s] philosophical foundations are worked out consistently, it can be seen to undermine the very possibility of rationality and morality themselves.

Friedrich Nietzsche offered, in “Twilight of the Idols”: “When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident…”  I think Nietzsche and Feser fully agree on this point.  Peter Singer demonstrates the point, with his defense of infanticide, necrophilia, and bestiality.

Yet these new atheists believe they can create something approaching Christian morality without the Christian faith.  Given that it was through this Christian morality that western liberty was born, it would seem an important issue for libertarians to take up.

In his opening chapter, Feser raises many points and objections that he will develop in more depth in subsequent chapters.  He suggests that the new atheists demonstrate their ignorance on the matter of Christian philosophy, as they understand nothing of the philosophical tradition – going back to even the pre-Christian Plato and Aristotle, and continuing through Augustine and Aquinas.  Their “philosophy” is dependent on this tradition, yet without understanding it they believe they can remove the tradition and still have a coherent philosophy.

…the very possibility of reason and morality is deeply problematic at best on a modern naturalistic conception of the world, but perfectly intelligible on the classical philosophical worldview and the religious vision it sustains.

Instead of addressing the foundational philosophers of this Christian tradition, Feser offers that these new atheists tackle the caricature Sunday-morning televangelists.  These make for very easy targets, but worthless if one is after a meaningful conversation…or the truth.

Feser offers several comments about the materialist idea – all is material, there is no purpose, meaning or design in our universe.  Explain the human mind and consciousness?  These atheists have no answer other than faith: one day science will find the answer.

Feser intends to show the following through the remainder of this book: the so-called war between science and religion is, instead, a war between rival philosophical or metaphysical systems, namely the classical worldview versus modern naturalism; this naturalistic worldview makes reason and morality impossible; secularism, therefore, can do nothing other than manifest irrationalism and immorality.