Category: Scholasticism New and Old
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On the Status of Thomistic Common Natures
Aquinas says that any given nature can be considered in three ways: in respect of the esse it has in concrete singulars; in respect of the esse it has in minds; absolutely, in the abstract, without reference to either material singulars or minds, and thus without reference to either mode of esse. The two modes…
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Book Notice: Edward Feser, Neo-Scholastic Essays
The phenomenal Edward Feser. How does he do it? He teaches an outrageous number of courses at a community college, five per semester; he has written numerous books; he gives talks and speeches, and last time I checked he has six children. Not to mention his weblog which is bare of fluff and filler and…
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Posits or Inventions? Butchvarov and Geach on Intentionality
One philosopher's explanatory posit is another's mere invention. In his rich and fascinating article "Direct Realism Without Materialism" (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. XIX, 1994, pp. 1-21), Panayot Butchvarov rejects epistemic intermediaries as "philosophical inventions." Thus he rejects sense data, sensations, ways of being appeared to, sense experiences, mental representations, ideas, images, looks, seemings, appearances,…
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Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons
I suspect that Vlastimil V's (neo-scholastic) understanding of potentiality is similar to the one provided by Matthew Lu in Potentiality Rightly Understood: The substance view of persons holds that every human being either has the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood or does actually manifest them. For the adherent of the…
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Is Hegel Guilty of ‘Epochism’?
In these politically correct times we hear much of racism, sexism, ageism, speciesism, and even heterosexism. Why not then epochism, the arbitrary denigration of entire historical epochs? Some years back, a television commentator referred to the Islamist beheading of Nicholas Berg as “medieval.” As I remarked to my wife, “That fellow is slamming an entire…
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Lukas Novak on Reference to What is Not
Our Czech friend Lukas Novak sent me a paper in which, drawing upon John Duns Scotus, he rejects the following principle of reference: (PR) It is impossible to refer to that which is not. In this entry I will first pull some quotations from Novak's paper and then raise some questions about the view he…
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Is Dying an Accidental or a Substantial Change?
On animalism, I am just a (live) human animal. And so are you. But there is a reason to think that I cannot be identical to my animal body. The reason is that it will survive me. (Assume that there is no natural immortality of the soul.) Assume that I die peacefully in my bed.…
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Some Concepts of Matter
Perhaps Patrick Toner could tell me whether whether I understand the different uses of 'matter' in Aristotelian-Scholastic (A-S) philosophy. Here are some of the distinctions as I understand and interpret them. 1. For starters, we can and do use 'matter' to refer to material particulars, a horse, a statue, a man, and indeed any hylomorphic…
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Coming into Being and Passing Away: Two Definitions of Chisholm Examined
Some changes are merely accidental or alterational. Others are substantial or existential. It is one thing for Tom to gain or lose weight, quite another for him to come to be or pass away. Alterational changes including gaining weight, shifting position, and becoming depressed. Such changes are changes in a thing that already exists and…
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Book Notice: Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics
This from the back cover: Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (editiones scholasticae, vol. 39, Transaction Books, 2014) provides an overview of Scholastic approaches to causation, substance, essence, modality, identity, persistence, teleology, and other issues in fundamental metaphysics. The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics, so as to facilitate…
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What Exists Exists
Reflecting on the seeming tautology, 'What exists exists,' Jacques Maritain writes, This is no tautology, it implies an entire metaphysics. What is posited outside its causes exercises an activity, an energy which is existence itself. To exist is to maintain oneself and to be maintained outside nothingness; esse is an act, a perfection, indeed the…
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The Fictional and the Merely Possible
"To be or not to be, that is the question." Or at least that is one question. Another is whether Hamlet, that very individual, might have been actual. It is a mistake to conflate the fictional and the merely possible. Hamlet, for example, is a fictional individual, the central character and eponym of the Shakespearean …
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Do Merely Intentional Objects Have Being of Their Own? With a Little Help from Ingarden
WARNING! Scholastic hairsplitting up ahead! If you are allergic to this sort of thing, head elsewhere. My old post, On Hairsplitting, may be of interest. My Czech colleague Lukas Novak seems to hold that there is no mode of being that is the mode of being of purely or merely intentional objects: . . .…
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More With Novak on the Real Distinction
I have been defending the real distinction between essence and existence in contingent beings. Lukas Novak, though not rejecting the distinction, finds my arguments wanting. Here is his latest challenge to me: 1) First I will use your own weapons against you. The following triad is inconsistent, any two propositions entail the negation of the…