Sullivan’s cavils

I thank The Smithy’s Michael Sullivan for his two spirited further installments (here and here) in his series of posts on my book Scholastic Metaphysics.  (I responded to the first of his posts here.)  Sullivan says some very kind things about my book, which I appreciate.  He also raises some criticisms which, though I disagree with them, are reasonable.  But unfortunately, some of his remarks are unjust and intemperate.  Let me comment on those first.

In his most recent post, Sullivan accuses me of “casually dismissing” brands of Scholasticism other than Thomism, comparing my treatment of them to the superficial objections to the cosmological argument one finds in New Atheist writers and of which I’ve often been so critical.  In the course of the combox discussion that followed my previous reply to him, he also speaks of my purported “dismissal of the genuine scholastic tradition,” and accuses me of holding that “there's no point in taking non-Thomism seriously.”  He even compares me to P. Z. Myers.  And of my treatment of one area of dispute between Thomists and Scotists, he writes:

There's… really no difference between what Feser does in this instance and Bertrand Russell saying in his history of philosophy that Aquinas wasn't really a philosopher because the Church told him what to think, so we needn't bother studying him.

This is all quite outrageous.  It is true, of course, that I am a Thomist, and that my book reflects that fact and takes a Thomist position rather than a Scotist or Suarezian one on issues where there is a disagreement between the schools of thought.  It is true that I do not treat the disputes between Thomists and other Scholastics in depth sufficient to convince advocates of those other schools (since, as I explained in my previous reply to Sullivan, the book is not about intra-Scholastic disputes but rather about the dispute between Scholasticism in what I take to be its strongest form on the one hand, and modern and contemporary philosophy on the other).  But though the rival views are neither agreed with nor treated at the length that would be required to turn a Scotist or Suarezian into a Thomist, they are nevertheless discussed respectfully.  There is no polemic whatsoever against Scotist and Suarezian views, nor the least suggestion that those views are unserious or unworthy of study.  This is all in Sullivan’s mind, not on the page. 

The reason it is not on the page is that it is simply not my view of Scotism and Suarezianism.  On the contrary, though I think some of their views are seriously wrong, I regard Scotus and Suarez with reverence, and highly recommend the study of their work and that of their followers.  I gave my book the title Scholastic Metaphysics rather than Thomistic Metaphysics precisely out of solidarity with other Scholastics, including non-Thomist Scholastics -- precisely to make it clear that Aquinas is not the only great figure in the tradition.

This brings me to something else that is entirely in Sullivan’s mind.  On the one hand he acknowledges that:

Feser admits in the book that scholasticism is more than Thomism and neo-Thomism, and… does in fact claim as part of the goal of the book to discuss non-Thomist ideas to the extent that they diverge from Thomism.

and:

[I]n the very first sentence of Feser's book he recognizes that Scholasticism is that tradition of thought which includes not only Aquinas, but Scotus, Ockham, Suarez, etc etc.

But then he also says that:

Once that recognition has been made it's already tendentious to go on to say that Scholaticism = Thomism and that those other thinkers are only worthy of mention when they "depart" from Thomism.

and:

[M]y main point, which I'm going to stop repeating ad nauseum, is that it's factually untrue that scholasticism = Thomism.

and:

[I]n practice he seems to waffle between the view that scholasticism=Thomism or that Thomism is the default or the only view worth considering on the one hand, and the view that Thomism is simply the best or most convincing of the scholastic systems on the other hand, but these two views are not at all the same.

But there is no “waffling” in the book at all, because nowhere in the book do I say or imply that “Scholasticism = Thomism,” nor does Sullivan quote any passage to that effect.  Indeed, as Sullivan admits, I explicitly say that that is not the case.  Rather, I merely maintain (as Sullivan puts it) that “Thomism is simply the best or most convincing of the scholastic systems.”  That is what is actually on the page, and Sullivan at least sometimes sees that that is what is on the page.  But when he is unhappy about some criticism I make of Scotus or Suarez, he projects onto the page the thesis that “Scholasticism = Thomism” and then invents an inconsistency.  The waffling between these views is not mine, but his.  He shifts between seeing what is on the page and seeing the “Scholasticism = Thomism” straw man that exists only in his mind. 

I think it is clear enough what is going on.  As I noted in my previous post, every so often one finds at The Smithy expressions of annoyance at the tendency to treat Aquinas as the Scholastic gold standard.  It is obvious from the history of that (excellent) blog and from various remarks in Sullivan’s latest posts that he has had one too many encounters with Thomists who are insufficiently respectful of or knowledgeable about Scotus and other non-Thomist Scholastics, or too quick to try to settle the dispute between Thomists and other Scholastics with an appeal to ecclesiastical authority.  While Sullivan says that he is not accusing me of such Thomist “triumphalism,” I think his long-standing grievances with other Thomists have nevertheless colored his perceptions of my book, and he’s decided to use his review as an opportunity to vent.  He’s got a bee in his bonnet; he’s got a hair trigger; he’s got issues.  He comes off like Robert Conrad in that old Eveready battery commercial, apparently keen to have the chip on the shoulder replace the dunce cap as the contemporary Scotist’s accessory of choice.

The problem is not really philosophical, then, but attitudinal.  And the remedy is as dry, bracing, and agreeable to a refined palate as a page of Scotus: I recommend to Sullivan a glass or two of good Scotch, in honor of the Subtle Doctor.  I’ll buy it for him if we’re ever at the same conference or the like. 

Some substantive issues

Let me now say something about Sullivan’s other criticisms.  One of them goes like this:

One general observation is a tendency throughout to present the Thomist position on a topic while putting off actually arguing for it. Over and over again the reader encounters remarks to the effect that "my position is this, but the reasons for it depend on something I'm going to say in a later chapter"; this gives the impression of getting the run-around, as though the good deep arguments are always just around the corner. I emphasize that Feser does not always do this; but he does it enough for it to be frustrating.

Here too I think Sullivan exaggerates.  “Over and over again”?  Not really.  But I do occasionally defer a more detailed treatment of an issue until later in the book.  The reason is that given the tight interconnections between many Scholastic notions, it is sometimes necessary to do a fair bit of exposition before one can set out the complete case for some particular claim or respond to all the objections a critic might raise against it.

What Sullivan does not do is offer an example of where I fail to make good on a promise later on to revisit the reasons for some claim.  The closest he comes is complaining that I do not provide arguments for all the many distinctions I draw in the section on “Divisions of act and potency” (subjective versus objective potency, first act versus second act, etc.).  That is true, but I also don’t promise to provide arguments for all of those distinctions.  The reason is that many of them are irrelevant to the specific metaphysical issues that the book does focus on and the debate between Scholastics and analytic philosophers that is its main concern.  That section is merely intended to give the reader a sense of how complex the theory of act and potency is when fully worked out.  You could write a book just on the divisions of act and potency, but my book, which has a lot of other ground to cover, is not that book.  (It is worth noting that, as it is, I went significantly over the page limit that the publisher proposed when inviting me to write the book.)

Here again Sullivan can’t seem to decide what he wants to see on the page.  On the one hand he acknowledges that we need to “[keep] in mind that it is an introduction and that we shouldn't expect an exhaustive treatment of any given topic.”  But on the other, he criticizes me in this instance for not providing a more exhaustive treatment than is called for given the specific aims of the book.  Once again I think his manifest annoyance with certain other Thomists is leading him into an uncharitable reading.  He isn’t attacking a straw man this time, but he is nitpicking.    

More interesting is Sullivan’s criticism of the structure of the book:

In my opinion there are also some structural problems. For instance, in my opinion the treatment of causality is pretty seriously defective… [Feser begins] his discussion of causality with final vs efficient causes, which is a misstep. Material and formal causality are put off until the following chapter, under the discussion of substance. The result is that the nature and force of the reasons for accepting the reality of final causality always remain somewhat obscure, because final causality is unintelligible without formal causality… The proper way to get back to final causality is to reinstate the robust notion of form; and this is, by the way, the order the causes are treated in in the standard neo-Thomist manuals I'm familiar with. In taking things backwards I think the clarity and rigor of Feser's exposition suffers.

End quote.  Note first of all that whereas elsewhere Sullivan complains that I too slavishly follow “the standard neo-Thomist manuals,” here I am to be blamed for departing from them.  I can’t win!

There are, in any event, reasons why I covered things in just the order I did.  It was quite deliberate.  Consider first that it is, after all, final cause and not formal cause which Aquinas regards as “the cause of causes.”  And there is a good reason for that.  Though the substantial form of a thing is the ground of its finalities, a thing’s finalities are in turn essential to understanding its substantial form.  For a thing’s substantial form is the intrinsic principle of its operations or activities.  But for the Scholastic, operations or activities are understood in terms of the ends toward which they are directed.  Moreover, substantial forms are best explained by contrast with accidental forms, and accidental forms are most easily understood in terms of the extrinsic nature of the ends with which they are associated.  Hence my frequently used example of a liana vine, which has a substantial form insofar as it is intrinsically directed toward operations like taking in water and nutrients; and of a hammock made out of liana vines, which has an accidental form insofar as the end of serving as a comfortable place to take a nap is extrinsic or imposed from without.  The distinction between substantial and accidental forms thus seems to me best explained once the notion of finality, and the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic finality, have already been hammered out.

For another thing, it seems to me that contemporary analytic philosophers have come farther in the direction of recovering the notion of final causality than they have in recovering the notion of substantial form.  The contemporary analytic literature on powers and dispositions is enormous, and much of it at least takes seriously the idea that powers are “directed toward” their manifestations in a manner that is described as “physical intentionality” or “natural intentionality.”  This is very close to the Scholastic idea of intrinsic finality, and many contemporary writers see the connection.  By contrast, while there is also talk of natures and essences in contemporary analytic philosophy, the link to Scholasticism is not as clear.  There is a greater tendency to connect this sort of talk to notions that Thomists would have serious reservations about, such as the idea of possible worlds. 

So, approaching formal causality by way of final causality rather than the other way around seemed to me the best way to go.  Of course, a reasonable person could disagree with this approach.  But it is not the simple “misstep” Sullivan says it is, and he completely fails to consider that I had reasons for doing things the way I did.

Scotism versus Thomism

Naturally, Sullivan also has specifically Scotist complaints about some of what is in the book.  Regarding my characterization of Scotism, Suarezianism, et al. relative to Thomism, he says:

To represent the thought of Scotus, Ockham, etc., as "departures from Thomism" is total bunk. It assumes that Thomism is normative and the default position without having to do any work to establish it. In my pretty wide experience it's a good bet that anyone who thinks this way has not made any serious effort to read and understand any non-Thomistic scholastics on their own terms… Gilson also had to revise his views on Scotism as a critique and departure from Thomism once he learned something about the actual sources of Scotus' views. Hint: Scotus was usually not even thinking of Aquinas at all.

Once again I’m afraid that Sullivan seems to want to have his cake and eat it too.  On the one hand he protests, against what I said in my previous reply to him, that he “specifically said that a historical treatment was unnecessary.”  Yet here he complains that I do not pay sufficient attention to whether, as a matter of historical fact, Scotus was reacting against Aquinas, specifically.  So which is it?

After all, nowhere in my book do I make any claim about what Scotus had before his mind when he formulated (say) the notion of the formal distinction.   When I talk about “departures from Thomism” I am not making a historical claim to the effect that Scotus consciously thought: “I now hereby depart from what Aquinas said.  Here goes…!”  I’m talking about conceptual relations between the ideas in question, not historical ones.  Compare the fact that historians of philosophy have disagreed about whether Parmenides was responding to Heraclitus or Heraclitus was responding to Parmenides, or whether they were writing independently -- and that at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter substantively.  Scholastic writers often treat Parmenides and Heraclitus as representing two extremes and Aristotle as having found the sober middle ground between them.  Parmenideans and Heracliteans might not agree with this approach, but quibbling over whether one was responding to the other as a matter of historical fact is neither here nor there.  Same with the dispute between Thomists and Scotists. 

We Thomists also tend to think of Thomism as the best way of synthesizing what was of lasting value in the Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic traditions that preceded it, and that Bonaventurean, Scotist, and Suarezian approaches are inferior and have elements that tend to lead to the dissolution of what the various Scholastic schools have in common.  Again, we are not making a claim about how, historically, people in fact tended to see things.  History is always much messier than the conceptual relationships between systems of ideas are.  We are well aware that other Scholastics did not see themselves merely as either precursors or successors to Aquinas.  We know that most thinkers didn‘t regard themselves as mere guest stars or extras on The Thomas Aquinas Show.   We’re talking about what we think is in fact the relative weight of the various systems of ideas. 

Bonaventurean, Scotist, and Suarezian mileage will of course vary.  But as I have said, the aim of the book was not to settle various intra-Scholastic disputes.  The aim of the book was to present what I take to be the most powerful form of Scholasticism and pit it against contemporary analytic philosophy.  Nor, contrary to what Sullivan implies, is there anything the least arbitrary about calling the book’s position Scholastic rather than merely Thomistic.  Sullivan says that “when you separate [Thomism, Scotism, etc.] out you see that ‘scholasticism’ includes a lot of positive theological content they all share, and practically no philosophical content they all share.”  But that’s just silly.  The Scholastics are all operating within a conceptual landscape defined by essentially Platonic and Aristotelian boundaries.  The landscape is very broad and some thinkers fall far to one side of it rather than to the other; some even appear to end up falling off this or that edge of it.  But that this landscape constitutes their common framework distinguishes them from the moderns, who have all decided to step out of it.  (To be sure, some of the moderns stick a toe or even a foot back into it, but they do so from a position essentially outside the framework.) 

Hence when I characterize the position of my book as “Scholastic” and not merely “Thomistic,” I am, again, indicating precisely that I am trying to bring what all or at least most Scholastics have in common to bear on contemporary disputes in analytic metaphysics -- albeit with a strongly Thomistic emphasis and despite the fact that I agree with the Thomist position when it differs from the other Scholastic views.  I mean precisely to include the other Scholastic positions in the debate, not exclude them.  And I can certainly imagine someone like Sullivan writing a book with the exact title mine has and more or less the same organization too, but with Scotism taking the starring role and Thomism given secondary status.  While I would of course disagree with many of the details, I would not be offended about the title or the approach.  Indeed, it would be very useful if Sullivan or some other Scotist wrote such a book. 

Finally, Sullivan is very critical of my treatment of the dispute between Thomists and Scotists vis-à-vis the theory of distinctions.  He accuses me of attacking caricatures of the Scotist position and of inconsistency and begging the question in defending the Thomist view.  Yet his own response involves inconsistency, caricature, and begging of the question.  For example, he writes:

Feser says that it's hard to see how the formal distinction can avoid collapsing into either a real distinction or a virtual or logical distinction. The short answer to this is that Thomists play a shell game with the notion of real distinctions: sometimes they act as though separability is an obvious criterion and sometimes as if it isn't. The Scotist position is that a fully real distinction in general is one to which the separability criterion applies (with a very few special exceptions), and that the formal distinction is a species of lesser real distinction to which the separability criterion does not apply. It's not a virtual or logical distinction because, to take Feser's example, animality and rationality are really non-identical prior to and aside from any consideration of the intellect. (Emphasis added.)

If Sullivan wrote this with a straight face, that can only be because that chip on his shoulder got too heavy for him to crack a smile.  If a Thomist “sometimes… act[s] as though separability is an obvious criterion and sometimes as if it isn't,” that, we are told, is a “shell game.”  But if a Scotist says that “in general… the separability criterion applies” but that there are “a very few special exceptions” and that there is a “lesser real distinction to which the separability criterion does not apply,” then that, we are assured, is not a “shell game.”  Get it?  Me neither, but then we can’t all be Subtle Doctors.

But do Thomists really play the “shell game” in question?  Well, no, they don’t.  They don’t say that “sometimes separability is an obvious criterion and sometimes it isn’t.”  It’s always an obvious criterion; if A and B are separable, then they are really distinct.  It’s just not the only criterion.  That’s a very different claim.  Nor is the distinction between the claims very subtle, which is perhaps why Sullivan the Scotist misses it.

Then there is the fact that the claim that “animality and rationality are really non-identical prior to and aside from any consideration of the intellect” is precisely something the Thomist would deny, in which case Sullivan can hardly appeal to it as a premise in a criticism of the Thomist account of distinctions.  Like “shell games,” begging the question is apparently OK when Scotists do it.

Sullivan goes on at length about the dispute between Thomists and Scotists concerning real, logical, and formal distinctions, and its relevance to issues like the relationship between essence and existence.  And what he has to say is hardly less tendentious than what I have to say about these matters in my book.  He surely realizes that Thomists would simply not agree with the assumptions that lie behind his arguments, nor with his insinuation that they have no principled but only ad hoc grounds for rejecting those assumptions.  Yet Sullivan writes as if the burden of proof were on me or other Thomists to establish the superiority of our position to the Scotist one, rather than on Scotists to establish the superiority of theirs.

It’s hard to see how such a presumption in favor of the Scotist view could be justified.  It is, after all, hardly as if the Scotist position, with its famous (some would say notorious) subtlety and abstraction, were somehow more intuitive or obvious than the Thomist one.  But put that aside.  The main point is that while it would be reasonable to expect me to have pursued these matters at greater length if my book had been intended as a neutral account of intra-Scholastic debate, in fact -- as I keep saying -- that is not what the book is about.  It is, again, intended rather to bring analytic philosophy into conversation with what I take to be the strongest version of Scholasticism (while noting some of the key disputes among Scholastics along the way).

At the end of the day, Sullivan’s beef is that he just doesn’t agree with me that Thomism is the strongest version of Scholasticism.  Well, fine.  He should write his own book.  I’d buy it.