Carroll on Scholastic Metaphysics

At Public Discourse, William Carroll kindly reviews my book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction.  From the review:

Edward Feser’s latest book gives readers who are familiar with analytic philosophy an excellent overview of scholastic metaphysics in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas…

Feser argues that Thomistic philosophy can expand and enrich today’s metaphysical reflection. His book is an effective challenge to anyone who would dismiss scholastic metaphysics as irrelevant.

Those familiar with Feser’s many books and lively blog will recognize his characteristic vigor and his wide-ranging reading of contemporary and medieval sources. This book is particularly aimed at those trained in the Anglo-American analytical tradition, repeatedly referencing contemporary debates in this tradition…

The recovery of scholastic metaphysics depends on the recovery of that understanding of nature and substance that is central to the thought of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. That recovery begins, I think, by challenging the historical narrative that tells us that its loss was a necessary feature of the rise of modern science. In his new book, Edward Feser has taken a key step in this important endeavor.

End quote.  Bill also has some gently critical remarks about the book.  First, he says:

For readers not familiar with contemporary analytical philosophy, Feser’s book, despite its title, is not really an introduction…

That is more or less correct.  The book is not a “popular” work.  It is meant as an introduction to Scholastic metaphysics for those who already have some knowledge of philosophy, especially analytic philosophy.  It is also meant to introduce those who are already familiar with Scholastic philosophy to what is going on in contemporary analytic metaphysics.  It is not a book that would be very accessible to those who have no knowledge of philosophy.  I would think that most readers who have read Aquinas or The Last Superstition should be able to handle it, though.  It is, essentially, a much deeper, more systematic, book-length treatment of the metaphysical ideas and arguments sketched out in chapter 2 of Aquinas and chapter 2 of TLS.

With these aims of the book in mind, let me briefly respond to some of Bill’s other remarks.  Bill rightly notes that with many modern readers “there is an a priori disposition to dismiss scholastic metaphysics as a curiosity” based on the assumption that modern science somehow put paid to Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy once and for all.  Adequately to rebut this false assumption requires in Bill’s view that we “argue against it through a historical analysis of its origins,” and that is not the sort of thing I attempt in the book.

Now in fact I do say a little bit by way of historical analysis in the book, e.g. at pp. 47-53, where I discuss how historically contingent and challengeable are the assumptions underlying Humean approaches to causation.  But it is true that the book’s approach is more along the lines of the “ahistorical” weighing of ideas and arguments that is common in analytic philosophy.  And that is, I think, more appropriate to the specific aims of the book.  I show, many times throughout the book, how various specific purportedly science-based objections to Scholastic metaphysical claims hold no water.  And of course, I also present many positive arguments for these metaphysical claims.  If a critic of Scholasticism wants to refute those arguments, he needs to address them directly rather than toss out vague hand-waving references to science. 

Still, I think it is true that the appeal to what the founders of modern science purportedly showed vis-à-vis Aristotelian philosophy (as opposed to Aristotelian science) has a rhetorical force for many readers that is hard to counter even with the best “ahistorical” arguments.  So, a historical analysis of the sort Bill advocates is, I agree, essential.  I did a bit of that in The Last Superstition, and Bill Carroll’s own work on the history of science, theology, and philosophy is, needless to say, invaluable. 

Bill also says:

I also would emphasize the doctrine of creation more than Feser does. It is an important feature in scholastic metaphysics, but there is not even an entry for “creation” in the book’s index… Thomas [Aquinas] thinks that in the discipline of metaphysics one can demonstrate that all that exists has been created by God, and that without God’s ongoing causality, there would be nothing at all. 

Bill is right that I do not discuss creation in the book, nor -- contrary to the impression Bill gives in a reference he makes in the review to Aquinas’s unmoved mover argument -- do I say much about natural theology at all.  That was deliberate.  I wanted to focus in the book on Scholastic approaches to certain “nuts and bolts” issues in metaphysics -- causal powers, essence, substance, and so forth -- that underlie everything else in Scholastic philosophy and have been the subject of renewed attention in analytic philosophy.  And I wanted to make it clear that the key notions of Scholastic metaphysics are motivated and defensible entirely independently of their application to arguments in natural theology.  (I have, of course, addressed questions of natural theology in several books and articles, and will do so at even greater depth in forthcoming work.)

In any event, I highly recommend Bill’s own work on the subject of creation, including Aquinas on Creation, a translation by Bill and Steven Baldner of some key texts of Aquinas on the subject, together with a long and very useful introductory essay.

Finally, Bill says:

In the beginning of the book, Feser promises to write another book on the philosophy of nature. This will be a welcome addition to his publications. Indeed, a problem that lurks behind the confusion in contemporary philosophy’s encounter with scholastic metaphysics is the loss of the sense of nature that is a characteristic starting point for Aristotle and Thomas. Feser takes up this topic in his chapter on substance, but such a discussion really ought to be conducted first in the philosophy of nature, not in metaphysics. The loss of an understanding of substance, of form and matter, and of similarly foundational ideas are all part of the larger loss of what we mean by nature.

End quote.  I agree.  I deliberately avoided going in detail into questions about the nature of biological substances in particular, or even chemical substances in particular, precisely because those are topics properly treated in the philosophy of nature rather than metaphysics.  All the same, I did say something about these topics, and (as Bill indicates) I say a lot in the book about substance in general and about form and matter.  The reason is that these are very definitely metaphysical topics as “metaphysics” is understood in contemporary analytic philosophy.  And they needed to be treated at some length in a book aimed at an analytic audience; the book would have seemed oddly incomplete to many contemporary readers without such a treatment, given the other topics addressed.  For “philosophy of nature” as a distinct discipline has, unfortunately, virtually disappeared in contemporary philosophy (though there are hopeful signs of a comeback), and its subject matter has been absorbed into metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of chemistry, and so forth. 

Here I would urge Thomists and other Scholastics always to keep in mind that the typical contemporary academic philosopher simply does not carve up the conceptual territory the way they do.  What Scholastics think is covered by “metaphysics,” what they think constitutes a “science,” etc. does not correspond exactly to the way analytic philosophers think about these disciplines (though of course there is overlap).  So -- as I think Bill would agree -- for the contemporary Scholastic effectively to communicate with analytic philosophers, he needs to make some concession to contemporary usage and current interests in academic philosophy.  In the case of my book, that made an extended treatment of hylemorphism necessary, even though in older Scholastic works that would often have been done in the context of philosophy of nature rather than metaphysics.

Anyway, I thank Bill for his review -- and for his own work, from which I have profited much.