Heavy Meta

My new book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction will be out this May.  I’ve expounded and defended various aspects of Scholastic metaphysics at some length in other places -- for example, in chapter 2 of The Last Superstition and chapter 2 of Aquinas -- but the new book pursues the issues at much greater length and in much greater depth.  Unlike those other books, it also focuses exclusively on questions of fundamental metaphysics, with little or no reference to questions in natural theology, ethics, philosophy of mind, or the like.  Call it Heavy Meta.  Even got a theme song.

To whet your appetite, here’s the cover copy and a detailed table of contents:

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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

0. Prolegomenon

0.1 Aim of the book

0.2 Against scientism

0.2.1 A dilemma for scientism

0.2.2 The descriptive limits of science

0.2.3 The explanatory limits of science

0.2.4 A bad argument for scientism

0.3 Against “conceptual analysis”

1. Act and potency

1.1 The general theory

1.1.1 Origins of the distinction

1.1.2 The relationship between act and potency

1.1.3 Divisions of act and potency

1.2 Causal powers

1.2.1 Powers in Scholastic philosophy

1.2.2 Powers in recent analytic philosophy

1.2.2.1 Historical background

1.2.2.2 Considerations from metaphysics

1.2.2.3 Considerations from philosophy of science

1.2.2.4 Powers and laws of nature

1.3 Real distinctions?

1.3.1 The Scholastic theory of distinctions

1.3.2 Aquinas versus Scotus and Suarez

1.3.3 Categorical versus dispositional properties in analytic metaphysics

2. Causation

2.1 Efficient versus final causality

2.2 The principle of finality

2.2.1 Aquinas’s argument

2.2.2 Physical intentionality in recent analytic metaphysics

2.3 The principle of causality

2.3.1 Formulation of the principle

2.3.2 Objections to the principle

2.3.2.1 Hume’s objection

2.3.2.2 Russell’s objection

2.3.2.3 The objection from Newton’s law of inertia

2.3.2.4 Objections from quantum mechanics

2.3.2.5 Scotus on self-motion

2.3.3 Arguments for the principle

2.3.3.1 Appeals to self-evidence

2.3.3.2 Empirical arguments

2.3.3.3 Arguments from PNC

2.3.3.4 Arguments from PSR

2.4 Causal series

2.4.1 Simultaneity

2.4.2 Per se versus per accidens

2.5 The principle of proportionate causality

3. Substance

3.1 Hylemorphism

3.1.1 Form and matter

3.1.2 Substantial form versus accidental form

3.1.3 Prime matter versus secondary matter

3.1.4 Aquinas versus Scotus and Suarez

3.1.5 Hylemorphism versus atomism

3.1.6 Anti-reductionism in contemporary analytic metaphysics

3.2 Substance versus accidents

3.2.1 The Scholastic theory

3.2.2 The empiricist critique

3.2.3 Physics and event ontologies

3.3 Identity

3.3.1 Individuation

3.3.2 Persistence

3.3.2.1 Against four-dimensionalism

3.3.2.2 Identity over time as primitive

4. Essence and existence

4.1 Essentialism

4.1.1 The reality of essence

4.1.2 Anti-essentialism

4.1.3 Moderate realism

4.1.4 Essence and properties

4.1.5 Modality

4.1.6 Essentialism in contemporary analytic metaphysics

4.2 The real distinction

4.2.1 Arguments for the real distinction

4.2.2 Objections to the real distinction

4.3 The analogy of being