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Actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter,
efficient causality and teleology are among the fundamental
concepts of Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Aristotles 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; and 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.
Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction 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 the analytic reader's understanding of Scholastic
ideas and the Scholastic reader's understanding of contemporary
analytic philosophy. The Aristotelian theory of actuality and
potentiality provides the organizing theme, and the crucial
dependence of Scholastic metaphysics on this theory is
demonstrated. The book is written from a Thomistic point of view,
but Scotist and Suarezian positions are treated as well where they
diverge from the Thomistic position.
F.A. Hayek (1899-1992) 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.
One of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the
history of Western thought, St Thomas Aquinas established the
foundations for much of modern philosophy of religion, and is
famous for his arguments for the existence of God. In this cogent
and multifaceted introduction to the great Saint's work, Edward
Feser argues that you cannot fully understand Aquinas's philosophy
without his theology and vice-versa. Covering his thoughts on the
soul, natural law, metaphysics, and the interaction of faith and
reason, this will prove a indispensible resource for students,
experts or the general reader.
In this lively and entertaining introduction to the philosophy of
mind, Edward Feser explores the questions central to the
discipline; such as 'do computers think', and 'what is
consciousness'; and gives an account of all the most important and
significant attempts that have been made to answer them.
The central contention of the "New Atheism" of Richard Dawkins,
Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens is that there
has for several centuries been a war between science and religion,
that religion has been steadily losing that war, and that at this
point in human history a completely secular scientific account of
the world has been worked out in such thorough and convincing
detail that there is no longer any reason why a rational and
educated person should find the claims of any religion the least
bit worthy of attention. But as Edward Feser argues inThe Last
Superstition, in fact there is not, and never has been, any war
between science and religion at all. There has instead been a
conflict between two entirely philosophical conceptions of the
natural order: on the one hand, the classical "teleological" vision
of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, on which purpose or
goal-directedness is as inherent a feature of the physical world as
mass or electric charge; and the modern "mechanical" vision of
Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, according to which the physical
world is comprised of nothing more than purposeless, meaningless
particles in motion. As it happens, on the classical teleological
picture, the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the
natural-law conception of morality are rationally unavoidable.
Modern atheism and secularism have thus always crucially depended
for their rational credentials on the insinuation that the modern,
mechanical picture of the world has somehow been established by
science. Yet this modern "mechanical" picture has never been
established by science, and cannot be, for it is not a scientific
theory in the first place but merely a philosophical interpretation
of science. Moreover, as Feser shows, the philosophical arguments
in its favor given by the early modern philosophers were notable
only for being surprisingly weak. The true reasons for its
popularity were then, and are now, primarily political: It was a
tool by which the intellectual foundations of ecclesiastical
authority could be undermined and the way opened toward a new
secular and liberal social order oriented toward commerce and
technology. So as to further these political ends, it was simply
stipulated, by fiat as it were, that no theory inconsistent with
the mechanical picture of the world would be allowed to count as
"scientific." As the centuries have worn on and historical memory
has dimmed, this act of dogmatic stipulation has falsely come to be
remembered as a "discovery." However, not only is this modern
philosophical picture rationally unfounded, it is demonstrably
false. For the "mechanical" conception of the natural world, when
worked out consistently, absurdly entails that rationality, and
indeed the human mind itself, are illusory. The so-called
"scientific worldview" championed by the New Atheists thus
inevitably undermines its own rational foundations; and into the
bargain (and contrary to the moralistic posturing of the New
Atheists) it undermines the foundations of any possible morality as
well. By contrast, and as The Last Superstition demonstrates, the
classical teleological picture of nature can be seen to find
powerful confirmation in developments from contemporary philosophy,
biology, and physics; moreover, morality and reason itself cannot
possibly be made sense of apart from it. The teleological vision of
the ancients and medievals is thereby rationally vindicated - and
with it the religious worldview they based upon it.
F.A. Hayek (1899-1992) 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.
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."
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