Progressive Catholics and capital punishment

The debate over capital punishment between conservative and progressive Catholics typically exhibits the following dialectic.  The conservative will set out a case from natural law, scripture and tradition, and social science for the thesis that capital punishment is at least in principle licit and in practice still needed in some circumstances – as Joseph Bessette and I do at length in our book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed.  The progressive will reply with an impassioned but vague appeal to human dignity, a cherry-picked statement from the recent magisterium, and a tendentious empirical claim (for example, that capital punishment does not deter, or is implemented in a racist manner), and top things off with in an ad hominem attack (such as accusing the conservative of being bloodthirsty or having a political motive).  The conservative will then complain that the progressive has attacked a straw man and simply ignored rather than answered his key points.  The progressive will at this point either ignore the conservative or simply repeat his original, question-begging reply at higher volume.

Augustine, liberalism, and political polarization

In my latest article at Postliberal Order, I discuss the light that Augustine’s account of peace as “the tranquility of order” sheds on the increasing political polarization that characterizes liberal democracies today.

Immortal Souls now available

After some frustrating delays in distribution, my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature is now in stock and available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  Here are the back cover copy, endorsements, and table of contents:

Immortal Souls provides as ambitious and complete a defense of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical anthropology as is currently in print.  Among the many topics covered are the reality and unity of the self, the immateriality of the intellect, the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, the critique of artificial intelligence, and the refutation of both Cartesian and materialist conceptions of human nature.  Along the way, the main rival positions in contemporary philosophy and science are thoroughly engaged with and rebutted.

Abortion and subsidiarity

Ever since the Dobbs decision permitted states to set their own abortion policies, Donald Trump has taken the position that the issue should stay at the state level.  Dobbs itself doesn’t require this, and leaves open the possibility of a federal ban.  But Trump nevertheless declines to pursue such a ban, and indeed is opposed to such a ban.  Now, a federal ban is in any event currently politically unrealistic, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future.  But some take the view that, even if abortion amounts to murder, it would be wrong to impose a federal ban even if it were politically possible to do so.  They make their case on federalist grounds, arguing that a national abortion ban would usurp power that rightly belongs to the states.  Some argue on natural law grounds, specifically, suggesting that the principle of subsidiarity would rule out a federal ban.  If this were true, then it would follow that even a pro-life Catholic should oppose a federal abortion ban.  What should we think of this argument?

Vinco on Feser in Philosophische Rundschau

German-speaking readers might be interested in Roberto Vinco’s article “Neo-Scholastic Metaphysics in the 21st Century: An Examination of the Perspective of Edward Feser,” in the latest issue of the journal Philosophische Rundschau.

The latest on Immortal Souls

Philosophers William Vallicella and Christopher Kaczor weigh in on my new book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature.  At his blog, Bill writes: “Like all of Feser's books, Immortal Souls is a model of expository clarity and analytic precision informed by an extensive knowledge of the contemporary literature.”  At Word on Fire, Chris writes:

The new Aquinas 101

The Thomistic Institute has launched a new Aquinas 101 learning platform for its well-known and excellent series of videos.  Check it out here.  Press release and further information can be found here.

The popesplainer’s safety dance

Pope Francis recently added yet another item to the long list of doctrinally problematic statements he has issued through the course of his pontificate.  Commenting on the plurality of religions during a speech at the Catholic Junior College in Singapore, he said:

If you start arguing, “My religion is more important than yours,” or “Mine is the true one, yours is not true,” where does this lead?  Somebody answer.  [A young person answers, “Destruction”.]  That is correct.  All religions are paths to God.  I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine.  But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children.  “But my God is more important than yours!”  Is this true?  There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God.  Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian.

As the article from which I quote this passage notes, while the Vatican’s initial English translation of the pope’s words attempted to sanitize them, it was later corrected to make it clear that this is indeed what the pope said.  And what he said flatly contradicts traditional Catholic teaching.  Francis criticizes those who take one religion to be the true or most important one, and implies that Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, etc. are as equal as different languages are. 

Trump: A buyer’s guide

In the weeks since I wrote on the dilemma that Donald Trump has put social conservatives in, the problem has only become far more pronounced.  Trump has stated that a second Trump administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights.”  His running mate J. D. Vance has said that if a national abortion ban were passed by Congress, Trump would veto it.  Though claiming to support pro-life measures at the state level, Trump says that in Florida, abortion should be legal even past the first six weeks of pregnancy.  And he has said that in a second Trump administration, the government would either pay for, or require insurance companies to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment – even though IVF treatments kill more embryos every year than abortion does, so that an IVF mandate would be even worse than Obama’s notorious contraception mandate.  Trump has also come out in support of legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

The problem with the “hard problem”

Robert Lawrence Kuhn is well-known as the creator and host of the public television series Closer to Truth, an invaluable source of interviews with major contributors to a variety of contemporary debates in philosophy, theology, and science.  (Longtime readers will recall an exchange Kuhn and I had at First Things some years back on the question of why there is something rather than nothing, which you can find here, here, and here.)  Recently, Kuhn’s article “A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications”    appeared in the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.  It is an impressively exhaustive survey of the field, and will be extremely helpful to anyone looking for guidance through its enormous and often bewildering literature.  Kuhn kindly includes a section on my own contributions to the subject.

Rawls’s liberal integralism

John Rawls’s political liberalism is no more neutral and no less religiously particular than a comprehensively Catholic society.  I elaborate in “Political Liberalism and Rawlsian Religion,” my latest article at Postliberal Order.

Trump has put social conservatives in a dilemma

Let’s begin with the obvious.  No social conservative could possibly justify voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.  They are pro-abortion extremists, as Ryan Anderson shows in an article on Harris at First Things and Dan McLaughlin shows in an article on Walz at National Review.  Their records on other matters of concern to social conservatives are no better.  It goes without saying that they are absolutely beyond the pale. 

Despite his recent betrayal of social conservatives, Donald Trump remains less bad on these issues.  Indeed, his appointments to the Supreme Court made possible the overturning of Roe v. Wade.  It is understandable that many social conservatives have concluded that, his faults notwithstanding, they must vote for him in order to prevent a Harris/Walz victory.  The argument is a serious one.  But the matter is not as straightforward as they suppose, because the problem is not merely that Trump will no longer do anything to advance the pro-life cause.  It is that his victory would likely do positive harm, indeed grave and lasting damage, to the pro-life cause and to social conservatism in general. 

Damnation roundup

The reality of hell is the clear and infallible teaching of scripture and tradition.  I would argue that even purely philosophical argumentation can establish that the soul that is in a state of rebellion against God at death will remain that way forever.  The universalist heresy denies these truths, and insists that all will be saved.  It has in recent years seen a remarkable rise in popularity.  In Catholic circles, Balthasar’s view that there is at least a reasonable hope that all human beings will be saved has also gained currency.

These are extremely grave delusions which, by fostering complacency, are sure to add to the number of the damned.  In reality, there is no reasonable hope whatsoever that all are saved.  The relevant philosophical and theological considerations make this conclusion unavoidable.  I have addressed these issues in some depth in many articles over the years, and it seemed to me a good idea to collect them in one place for readers who might find that useful. 

Word on Fire Institute course

My six-part video course on Six Arguments for the Existence of God is available for free from the Word on Fire Institute.  A short preview and sign-up information are available here.  An interview about the course can be read here.

More on the GOP and social conservatism

For those not following me on X (Twitter), some posts from the last couple of days attempting further to clarify what is at issue, and at stake, in the debate over the direction of the GOP:

Now is the time for social conservatives to fight

Readers who follow me on X (Twitter) will know of the intense debate occurring there over the last week between social conservatives critical of Trump’s gutting of the GOP platform and those defending it.  A pair of bracing, must-read articles at First Things and National Review recount how pro-lifers were brazenly shut out of the platform process.  For social conservatives to acquiesce out of partisan loyalty would be to commit assisted political suicide.  Today I posted the following, which elaborates on considerations I raised in an earlier article:

A brief memo to social conservatives worried that criticism of the GOP will cost it votes, and who claim that the critics are politically naïve:

First, yes, criticism could cost the party votes. That’s precisely the point. The party could lose votes IF, in the months remaining before the election, it does not try seriously to meet the concerns of social conservatives. In particular, the GOP must be made to see that it cannot take their votes for granted. And the party must do something to make up for the appalling injustice that was done to social conservatives during the platform process, as recounted in the First Things article linked to. 

Second, it is not the critics, but those who urge their fellow social conservatives to keep their mouths shut, who are politically naïve. The only thing politicians can be relied on to respond to is the prospect of losing votes or losing money. If the GOP fears that it might lose the votes or financial contributions of a critical mass of social conservatives, it will have to take their concerns seriously. If, instead, social conservatives acquiesce to what has happened rather than fighting back, the party will have no incentive to try to address their concerns in the future – and every incentive not to do so, given the unpopularity of social conservatism in the culture at large.

The stakes are high, and that is precisely why social conservatives must raise the alarm NOW, while they might still influence the direction of the party, not in some fantasy post-election future. The actual political reality is that if the GOP wins, having thrown social conservatives under the bus without any pushback from them, the party will draw the lesson that it no longer needs to worry about them or their concerns.

Fight, yes, but for what?

It is impossible not to admire the resilience and fighting spirit with which Donald Trump responded – literally within moments – to the failed attempt to take his life.  And that he is among the luckiest of politicians is evidenced not just by his survival, but by the fact that the moment was captured in photographs as dramatic as any seen in recent history.  His supporters are understandably inspired, indeed electrified.  And his enemies are sure to be demoralized by the sympathy this event will generate – not to mention the blinding contrast between Trump’s virility and the accelerating decline of his doddering opponent.  Naturally, that those enemies include some very bad people only reinforces Trump’s supporters’ devotion to him, which is now at a fever pitch.  But it is precisely at moments of high emotion that the cold water of reason, however unpleasant, is most needed.

The future of the Magisterium

The latest issue of First Things features a symposium on the future of the Catholic Church, to which I contributed an article on the future of the Magisterium.  You can read the entire symposium online here.

Rawls on religion

Though John Rawls wrote much that is of relevance to religion – and in particular, to the question of what influence it can properly have on politics (basically none, in Rawls’s view) – he wrote little on religion itself.  After his death, his undergraduate senior thesis, titled A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, was published.  Naturally, it is of limited relevance to his mature thought.  However, published in the same volume was a short 1997 personal essay titled “On My Religion,” which is not uninteresting as an account of the development of his religious beliefs.  I think it does shed some light on his political philosophy.  From Rawls’s best-known works, the conservative religious believer is bound to judge Rawls’s knowledge and understanding of religion to be shallow.  And indeed, I think his views on these matters were shallow.  But as the essay reveals, that is not because he didn’t give much thought to them.

Hobbes and Kant on capital punishment

Thomas Hobbes and Immanuel Kant both had an enormous formative influence on modern moral and political philosophy, and on liberalism in particular.  But their approaches are very different.  Hobbes begins with what strikes the average reader as a base and depressing conception of what individual human beings are like in their natural state, and sees society arising out of an act of cold, calculating self-interest.  Kant, by contrast, seems committed to a lofty and inspiring conception of human beings, and regards society as grounded in a respect for the dignity of persons.

Immortal Souls in eBook format

The paperback version of my new book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature sold out on Amazon within a day of being listed there.  No word on when it will be back in stock, but I imagine it will be soon.  Meanwhile, the eBook version is available through Barnes and Noble.  You can also order either version through the publisher’s website or through Amazon’s websites in the U.K. and Germany.

UPDATE: The book is back in stock at Amazon.

Scruton on tradition

Roger Scruton’s essay “Rousseau and the Origins of Liberalism” first appeared in The New Criterion in 1998, and was reprinted in The Betrayal of Liberalism, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball.  Among the many good things in it, there is an important expression and defense of the conservative understanding of tradition.  Scruton writes:

Modern liberals tend to scoff at the idea of tradition.  All traditions, they tell us, are “invented,” implying that they can therefore be replaced with impunity.  This idea is plausible only if you take the trivial examples – Scottish country dancing, Highland dress, the Coronation ceremony, Christmas cards, and whatever else comes with a “heritage” label.  A real tradition is not an invention; it is the unintended byproduct of invention, which also makes invention possible… [A] tradition, precisely because it is not invented, has authority.  “Unintended byproducts” of invention contain more knowledge than any person can discover unaided.

Immortal Souls now available for pre-order

My new book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature is now available for pre-order in the U.S. at Amazon.com.  Here again are the back cover copy, endorsements, and table of contents:

Immortal Souls provides as ambitious and complete a defense of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical anthropology as is currently in print.  Among the many topics covered are the reality and unity of the self, the immateriality of the intellect, the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, the critique of artificial intelligence, and the refutation of both Cartesian and materialist conceptions of human nature.  Along the way, the main rival positions in contemporary philosophy and science are thoroughly engaged with and rebutted.

Postliberalism is not despotism

In a new article at Postliberal Order, I explain why, contrary to a common straw man, postliberalism does not entail despotism.

Multiverses and falsifiability

Adam Becker’s 2018 book What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics is an excellent account of the longstanding and intractable controversy over how to interpret quantum mechanics.  One of the main themes of the book is how much the direction of twentieth-century physics was driven by personalities, political factors, career interests, and, not least, unexamined and woolly philosophical assumptions – something philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend have shown has always been true of science historically.  The tendency of contemporary physicists, especially, to be both ignorant of and condescending toward philosophy comes in for special criticism.

Update on Immortal Souls

Immortal Souls has at last been reduced from potency to act.  The official publication dates are in June for Europe and July in the United States.  Pre-order is now possible at Amazon’s websites in the U.K. and in Germany.  It should be available for pre-order soon at Amazon’s U.S. website, and I’ll let you know when it is.  You can find the table of contents and endorsements here, and other details at the publisher’s web page.

New video course at Word on Fire

Recently I recorded a six-part video course titled Six Arguments for the Existence of God for the Word on Fire Institute.  You can find an interview about the course and further information here.

Immortal Souls

My book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature will be published this summer by Editiones Scholasticae.  At well over 500 pages, it's my longest book yet.  Here are the back cover copy, endorsements, and table of contents:

Immortal Souls provides as ambitious and complete a defense of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical anthropology as is currently in print.  Among the many topics covered are the reality and unity of the self, the immateriality of the intellect, the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, the critique of artificial intelligence, and the refutation of both Cartesian and materialist conceptions of human nature.  Along the way, the main rival positions in contemporary philosophy and science are thoroughly engaged with and rebutted.

Let’s open it up

If we had a new open thread post, what would you talk about?  Current events?  That off-topic philosophical or theological question you vainly keep trying to bring up in other threads?  Or perhaps one of the Postliberal Order articles of mine that you were unable to access before, but are now out from behind the paywall?  Let’s find out.  From vocalese to Daniel Keyes, from temporary intrinsics to temporary insanity, from Eisenhower to Einstein to Eisenstein – here, everything is open for discussion.  Just keep it civil and classy.  Previous open threads archived here.

Dignitas Infinita at The Catholic Thing

At The Catholic Thing, Diane Montagna interviews me about the Vatican’s recent Declaration Dignitas Infinita.

Plato and Aristotle on youth and politics

As faculty, including even philosophy professors, aid and abet student bad behavior on campus, it is worth considering what the most serious thinkers of the Western tradition would have thought about the political opinions and activities of the young.  What follows are some relevant passages from Plato and Aristotle in particular.  For purposes of the present article, I put to one side the specific subject matter of the recent protests, because it is not relevant to the present point.  What is relevant is that the manner in which the protesters’ opinions are formed and expressed is contrary to reason.  That would remain true whatever they were protesting.  Part of this is because mobs are always irrational.  But they are bound to be even more irrational when they are composed of young people.

Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)

Prominent philosopher of mind, apostle of Darwinism, and New Atheist writer Daniel Dennett has died.  I have been very critical of Dennett over the years, but he had two great strengths.  First, he wrote with crystal clarity, no matter how difficult the subject matter.  Second, as even we critics of materialism can happily concede, he could be very insightful on the distinctive nature of psychological modes of description and explanation (even if he went wrong when addressing how these relate metaphysically to physical modes of description and explanation).  It is also only fair to acknowledge that of the four original New Atheist tomes (the others penned by Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens) his Breaking the Spell, despite its faults, was the one that was actually intellectually interesting.  RIP

Mansini on the development of doctrine

My review of Guy Mansini’s excellent new book The Development of Dogma: A Systematic Account appears in the May 2024 issue of First Things.

Two problems with Dignitas Infinita

This week the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) published the Declaration Dignitas Infinita, on the topic of human dignity.  I am as weary as anyone of the circumstance that it has now become common for new documents issued by the Vatican to be met with fault-finding.  But if the faults really are there, then we oughtn’t to blame the messenger.  And this latest document exhibits two serious problems: one with its basic premise, and the other with some of the conclusions it draws from it.

Western civilization's immunodeficiency disease

Liberalism is to the social order what AIDS is to the body.  By relegating the truths of natural law and divine revelation to the private sphere, it destroys the immune system of the body politic, opening the way to that body’s being ravaged by moral decay and ideological fanaticism.  I develop this theme in a new essay over at Postliberal Order.

Ed Piskor (1982-2024)

This week, cartoonist Ed Piskor committed suicide in the wake of the relentless online pillorying and overnight destruction of his career that followed upon allegations of sexual misconduct, of which he insisted he was innocent. Piskor’s work was not really to my taste, but I often enjoyed the Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel he co-hosted. I was always impressed by the manifest love, respect, and appreciation he showed for the great comic book artists of the past. These are attractive and admirable attitudes to take toward those from whom one has learned.

The illusion of AI

My essay “The Illusion of Artificial Intelligence” appears in the latest issue of the Word on Fire Institute’s journal Evangelization & Culture.

Wishful thinking about Judas

In a recent article at Catholic Answers titled “Hope for Judas?” Jimmy Akin tells us that though he used to find convincing the traditional view that Judas is damned, it now seems to him that “we don’t have conclusive proof that Judas is in hell, and there is still a ray of hope for him.”  But there is a difference between hope and wishful thinking.  And with all due respect for Akin, it seems to me that given the evidence, the view that Judas may have been saved crosses the line from the former to the latter.

Jesuit Britain?

Did Spanish Scholastic thinkers influence British liberalism? You can now access my Religion and Liberty review of Projections of Spanish Jesuit Scholasticism on British Thought: New Horizons in Politics, Law, and Rights, edited by Leopoldo J. Prieto López and José Luis Cendejas Bueno.

Mind, matter, and malleability

Continuing our look at Jacques Maritain’s Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau, let’s consider some arresting passages on the conception of human nature the modern world has inherited from Descartes.  Maritain subtitles his chapter on the subject “The Incarnation of the Angel.”  As you might expect, this has in part to do with the Cartesian dualist’s view that the mind is a res cogitans or thinking substance whose nature is wholly incorporeal, so that it is only contingently related to the body.  But it is the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas and its implications that Maritain is most interested in.