Here’s the
table of contents:
1. Church
Teaching against Racism
2. Late
Scholastics and Early Modern Popes against Slavery
3. The
Rights and Duties of Nations and Immigrants
4. What is
Critical Race Theory?
5.
Philosophical Problems with Critical Race Theory
6. Social
Scientific Objections to Critical Race Theory
7. Catholicism versus Critical Race Theory
Advance
reviews:
“This is the
best book I've read on the topic. Ed
Feser writes in accessible yet nuanced ways to demonstrate the philosophical
and theological errors of both racism and Critical Race Theory.” Ryan T.
Anderson, President, Ethics and Public Policy Center
“There is
not a better book on the subject from a Catholic perspective. All One
in Christ should be required reading for any Catholic prelate, parent, principal,
or college president.” Francis J. Beckwith, Professor of Philosophy and
Church-State Studies, Baylor University
“Feser's
account of the Church's opposition to slavery is authoritative, but it is his
devastating takedown of Critical Race Theory that makes this book so special.” Bill Donohue, President, Catholic League for Religious
and Civil Rights
“Dr. Feser
shows the consistent magisterial emphasis on the dignity of every human person
and brilliantly articulates the Church's clear and unambiguous teaching against
racism. An absolute must-have for all
Catholics who want to be well informed about racism and Critical Race Theory.” Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, Author, Behold the Man: A Catholic Vision of Male
Spirituality
“Edward
Feser reveals that Critical Race Theory, by its own definition, embraces
partiality, thus making it clear that this theory is in no way an answer to
racism, but is, in fact, a covert form of racism.” Rev. Walter B. Hoye, Founder, Issues4Life
Foundation
“A careful
examination of Critical Race Theory that goes beyond the political and
journalistic squabbles to fundamental questions of truth and justice. Ed Feser maintains steadiness and balance as
he brings faith and reason to bear on the most heated public controversies.” Robert Royal, Author, A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth
Century
“Edward Feser
offers an analysis that helps Catholics better understand the Church's stance
on racism and uphold the inherent dignity of each human Being.” Fr. John M. McKenzie, National Shrine of the
Little Flower Basilica
Will a Kindle version be coming soon? Can't wait to read this
ReplyDeleteBump - me too! :)
DeleteSame here!
DeleteKindle version is now up! I just bought mine.
DeletePardon the question if it is silly, do you discuss what race even is?
ReplyDeleteI love it when people say, "Catholics cant be racist, 'cause its bad!!, and besides, there is only one race! The human race!"
DeleteSo smug.
Why don't both of you read the book, eh? Novel idea.
DeleteSo smug.
That's a great and fundamental question. I'd like to know his definition and context for racism, too. Important to understand any projected value in a book purporting to be of value in the discussion. I saw an interview with him on EWTN and I wasn't impressed...at least not in a good way. - Ukumbwa Sauti
DeleteWCB
ReplyDeletePope Nicholas V issued two notorious bulls. Dum Diversus in 1452 and Romanus Pontifex in 1454. Both commanded the king of Portugul to invded and destr started on a massive scall.oy all lands of Saracens and Paagans Who were declared enemies of God and Jesus Christ. Their movable posessions were to be seized. The Saracens and pagans were to be condemned to be slaves in perpetuem. A number of later Popes reiterated Nicholas V's bulls. Slavery was later extended to South America. When Indian slaves kept dying, the slave trade from Africa started on a massive scale. In the U.S. it took the civil war to end slavery. Simon Boliver ended slavery in Spanish speaking South America. Boliver was an Atheist. Brazil officially ended slavey in 1888.
Anybody who has not read Dum Diversus or Romanus Pontifex should. 600 years later we are still struggling with the effects of these two evil papal bulls.
WCB
WHo says they are evil? Nicholus, Gods voice, didn't think so!
DeleteThe African Slave trade took off because the Indian slaves kept dying!?
DeleteI've never heard that before. Where did you get that factoid? Why were they dying and not the Africans?
@Tim
DeleteI heard that before, but not said by people that studied the period. It is probably one of these "facts" that "everyone knows" that you see on history discussions.
While slavery declined on Western Rurope during the middle ages, it never stopped on islamic territory, who had a good deal of Africa. From what i can see the social-economic chances caused on Europe after the middle ages plus the contact with muslims helped slavery getting ahead again, sadly.
WCB
DeleteGoogle for Bartolomo De La Casa. Casa became a fierce critic of Spanish and Portugeuse slavery of Native Americans. Because Indians did not survive long as slaves, he suggested importing African slaves.
Educate yourselves! Start with DeLaCasa. Google is your friend.
WCB
@ WCB:
Delete"Educate yourselves! Start with DeLaCasa. Google is your friend."
Or our enemy. It depends. Look at what it has done for you. You're an intellectual rag. Aren't you the fool that said at StrangeNotions that the Universe "auto-assembled" itself? Like a massive celestial building-blocks toy? :)
Stephen Jay Gould: “Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory” (Ontogeny and Phylogeny, 1977).
ReplyDeleteAll-One-in-Evolution.
And I have yet to heat from an evolutionist why racism is 'evil', specially since morality is the result of an unguided, dumb process that is wholly imperfect and per Darwin 'favored races are preserved in the struggle for existence'. Who am I to contradict billions of years of Evolution (not to mention that we humans are meat-machines with no free will?)
So evolutionist: how can evolution teach me what is 'evil' if she is a friggin' idiot?
UncommonDescent,
DeleteRacism is evil because, based on skin color, it results in treating people as inferior in ways that skin color has no effect upon. Humans have no sub-species and no true races.
Why don't you join a fundamentalist church and become a young-earth creationist already, UncommonDescent? You're already halfway there.
Delete@ One Brow:
DeleteRacism is evil because, based on skin color, it results in treating people as inferior in ways that skin color has no effect upon.
But evolution does not care at all about what's 'evil' and what's 'good'. Whatever helped our ancestors to pass their genes along got selected and transmitted to their descendants (which of course includes us). 'She' does not care (basically because it's a mindless process) at all about the 'goodnes' of anything. Therefore there can not be even in principle any selective pressures for 'goodness'.
Humans have no sub-species and no true races.
The problem is far more dire than that. The problem is that if you couple darwinian evolution with materialism, species simply do not exist. Which means that there is nothing like 'humanity' to be found out there. It's just a matter of subjective classification/ grouping, but that's all. Which means that if a population of what is (wrongly) classified as H. sapiens decides for example to exclude black people of the definition of 'humans', then that's perfectly fine (or vice-versa). Or if a german man decides that certain population is not worthy of being labelled as 'human' and has to be exterminated, then that's fine also. No objective marker of what a human is.
That's the true meaning of All-One-In-Evolution. All equally diluted by Dennett's 'universal acid'.
@ Infinite_Growth:
DeleteWhy don't you join a fundamentalist church and become a young-earth creationist already, UncommonDescent? You're already halfway there.
Here the Principle of Proportionate Causality (PPC) applies: from a dumb evolutionary process, a dumb individual ensues.
The most fundamentalist church I know is the church of materialism (fundamentally flawed I mean) and its lovely creative myth 'evolution'. 'Matter married Chronos and they fathered all life forms in a unending copula. And that children is what we call 'science'.
Now please don't be naughty and don't secretly pray to your goddess to give me a lethal mutation. That would would be evolutionarily disgusting.
@UncommonDescent I'm sorry for being uncharitable (it is an area that needs improvement)... but don't call people dumb. That part of your comment sounded like it came from Westboro Baptist Church. They go around the USA with picket signs calling non-fundamentalists "dumb." When you stand before God, is that who you want to sound like?
DeleteIn stoicism, certain and true knowledge (episteme), achievable by the Stoic sage, can be attained only by verifying the conviction with the expertise of one's peers and the collective judgment of humankind. Because of this and because Catholicism has stoicism as a philosophical foundation, we must always defer to the collective judgment of mankind when it comes to interpreting the Bible and dogma. We do not use the historical-grammatical method of interpretation Evangelical Protestants use.
The problem is far more dire than that. The problem is that if you couple darwinian evolution with materialism, species simply do not exist. Which means that there is nothing like 'humanity' to be found out there.
DeleteThis is a key point. There's no "halfway" point in denying essentialism. If you deny it, you have to deny it all the way, and Darwinism entails its denial. But once you deny it, there are no species and no biological function for Darwinism to explain in the first place.
Real logical consistency with it entails eliminativism in the philosophy of mind as well, and the denial that there even are German men, or any sort of men, to do any sort of choosing or labeling or logical reasoning of any sort in the first place. It is utterly incoherent.
One can attempt to redefine Darwinism and natural selection to make them intelligible, such that they are no longer mechanistic and materialistic, and no longer entail a denial of essentialism, but then the definition of natural selection becomes too vague to serve as an explanation for biological essences and function.
"Now please don't be naughty and don't secretly pray to your goddess to give me a lethal mutation. That would be evolutionarily disgusting."
DeleteI don't intend to feed the dispute. I just want to say that was damn funny.
@Infinite_Growth:
DeleteThat part of your comment sounded like it came from Westboro Baptist Church. They go around the USA with picket signs calling non-fundamentalists "dumb."
It seems to me then that lots of atheists were attendants of such a church, because that's their behavior described to a tee. But that's not a surprise, because they are in fact people supporting a creative myth, while being so dumb as to not realize that 'unguided evolution' is nothing but that. An explanation to which the human mind clings desperately, because the human mind Wants (with caps) to know its origin.
So that fundamentalist subset that ferociously defend their creative myth (Dawkins and his disciples for example) while telling others that 'creative myths' are ridiculous deserve to be called dumb. Don't you agree?
Racism is evil because, based on skin color, it results in treating people as inferior in ways that skin color has no effect upon. Humans have no sub-species and no true races.
Delete"Race" is distinguished by more than just skin color.
Also, the term "race" has various meanings, and long before the modern attempt to divide humans into 5 races, it had been used much more narrowly to identify fairly recent descent: "the race of Joseph" meant those descended from Joseph. It did not mean "Semitic" or "Caucasian" (a silly term if ever there was one). It was much narrower in meaning.
Humans have no sub-species and no true races.
Humans have had populations which were separated by difficult-to-overcome physical barriers and underwent genetic drift to some extent. Since biologists now talk about "populations" and no longer have a clearly accepted definition of "species",* the notion of humans having "sub-species" is a moot point.
*A relatively common so-called "definition" of species, A biological species is a group of organisms that can reproduce with one another in nature and produce fertile offspring, has 3 debatable or undefendable elements: (1) that the reproduction must occur "in nature", given that man is part of nature; (2) the requirement that the offspring be fertile is arbitrary; and (3) it is utterly invalid with respect to species that reproduce asexually. It is a fundamental aspect of darwinism that there are no truly definable "species" properly speaking, as the drift of individuals can be historically (if we had the data) seen as a long series of pairs that at each phase could reproduce together, but an early and a late example could not reproduce together.
The acceptance of evolutionary theory in no way necessitates that you get your morals from evolution, that you think that materialism is true or any of the other things you're bringing up.
DeleteIt
@ Tony:
Delete"Race" is distinguished by more than just skin color.
Indeed. If "race" were just a skin color, I would become a member of another "race" each time I get a tan. Speaking of color, one can only wonder if according to Locke and his disciples color "isn't really out there" in nature, they are so infatuated with a theory according to which color constitutes a "selective pressure", (mimicry comes to mind), something to which organisms have to respond if they want to survive. So according to this theory, we get 'better' adapted to our environments by matching features that are not there after all. Makes sense, darwinists.
A relatively common so-called "definition" of species, A biological species is a group of organisms that can reproduce with one another in nature and produce fertile offspring.
Mayr's nonsense. This leaves us with the striking conclusion that if you put a group of men in an isolated island, they stop ipso facto being H. sapiens, because they obviously can NOT reproduce with one another and no longer fit the description. So a group of men in an island lose their humanity and become what exactly, darwinists? And this 'theory' of yours becomes the 'crown jewel' of your worldview? Lol. Please come back to your senses and revisit Aristotle.
UncommonDescent,
DeleteBut evolution does not care at all about what's 'evil' and what's 'good'.
Evolution, like gravity or osmosis, is not a personal force that could care about anything, nor did you ask what evolution might care about. You asked why racism is evil, I answered in manner that you seem to agree with. Task performed.
Therefore there can not be even in principle any selective pressures for 'goodness'.
Should there be good behaviors that improve fitness or enhance selection, then said good behaviors would be reinforced. These might include selflessness, caring for others, treating people nicely, etc. All of them enhance group survival, and so would be selected for.
No objective marker of what a human is.
Humans are descendants of a population that existed 50K years ago. Such descent is objectively verifiable, so there is an objective marker.
Tony,
Delete"Race" is distinguished by more than just skin color.
Name any other feature that only occurs in people of a specific "race".
It is a fundamental aspect of darwinism that there are no truly definable "species" properly speaking,
Thank goodness no one uses Darwinism anymore.
Are there other biological understandings that remove any of the difficulties in defining species? All the examples you offered seem to create issues in defining species regardless of paradigm.
Please come back to your senses and revisit Aristotle.
DeleteAristotle has no better definition of species.
@ One Brow:
DeleteEvolution, like gravity or osmosis, is not a personal force that could care about anything.
Then she certainly does not care at all about what is 'good' or about what is 'evil'. And if she does not care, why should I? And what do you mean by 'force'? Can evolution be described in mathematical terms? Gravity and osmosis can.
You asked why racism is evil, I answered in manner that you seem to agree with. Task performed.
I obviously do not agree with what you said and you certainly have failed to answer my question. Evolution knows nothing, it's a stupid process that can teach us nihil. And you said that races do not exist, which makes no sense because how can people be racist if races are not real?? Btw, you are contradicting Darwin, whose book's name was: On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Existence Are you saying that Darwin was wrong?
Should there be good behaviors that improve fitness or enhance selection, then said good behaviors would be reinforced. These might include selflessness, caring for others, treating people nicely, etc. All of them enhance group survival, and so would be selected for.
You speak like a priest :) That's why darwinism is a religion and not a rational enterprise. Why is there so much 'evil' then in the world? Why do people kill each other, commit rape, steal and oppress the most vulnerable? Those behaviors are here, which means they have been selected. That destroys your scenario about selection of 'good' behaviors. Evolution does not understand 'niceness'. Evolution is a friggin' idiot as I have stated.
Humans are descendants of a population that existed 50K years ago.
Where did that population exist? And what marks its 'humanity'?
UncommonDescent,
DeleteAnd if she does not care, why should I?
You're a human, and we're a social species. Thus, we care.
Can evolution be described in mathematical terms? Gravity and osmosis can.
Some aspects of evolution, like some aspects of gravity or osmosis, can be accurately modeled mathematically. Mathematics does not capture the entirety of any of these phenomena.
I obviously do not agree with what you said ...
You haven't mentioned any part of my first response you thought was wrong. You claimed it was inadequate, but that is not the same as being wrong.
Evolution knows nothing,
Your initial question did not reference evolution in any fashion.
... which makes no sense because how can people be racist if races are not real??
How can people be fans of Star Trek when Star Trek is not real? Humans seem to find a way.
Btw, you are contradicting Darwin, whose book's name was: On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Existence Are you saying that Darwin was wrong?
1) Darwin was not referring to human races in that title.
2) Darwin was less wrong than most of his early contemporaries, but most of his hypotheses didn't hold up (just as most of what Newton, Galileo, etc. did not hold up). When remember these scientists for the small parts that they got right.
You speak like a priest :)
I used to be Catholic.
That's why darwinism is a religion
If it was, it is now a dead religion. I accept evolutionary theory, not "Darwinism".
That destroys your scenario about selection of 'good' behaviors.
Some good behaviors being selected for has no effect on some evil behaviors being selected for.
Where did that population exist?
Africa.
And what marks its 'humanity'?
That question is too broad to answer in a com box.
You're a human, and we're a social species. Thus, we care.
DeleteI am not a 'human' because according to Darwinism (the materialistic sort), species are not real entities, therefore there is nothing like 'humanity' to be found out there. Thus, no, I do not care at all. Neither did Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol-Pot etc... Your lovely scenario about selection for 'niceness' is useless. But materialism is a useless enterprise, so no surprises here. Btw, there's nothing like 'selection for' to be found out there in Nature also. The adaptationist paradigm is broken.
You haven't mentioned any part of my first response you thought was wrong.
I asked why racism is 'evil' since evolution is a friggin' idiot that does not care at all about good or evil. You stated some sentimentalist nonsense and then contradicted yourself saying that humans have no subespecies or races, which makes racism impossible. . We are racist but races are not real, and we are a species although species aren't real either. And that's what you and your pals label as a 'scientific theory'. Like phlogiston and leeches :)
Humans seem to find a way.
Humans as individual instantiations of the universal species 'humanity' do not exist according to your pseudo-theory. What does not exist can NOT find any 'way' to do anything at all. Another of your lame non-answers.
1) Darwin was not referring to human races in that title.
Darwin was referring to 'races' of any species. In fact for him, "races" were "species". According to this very confused man, who wrote "On The Origin of Species", species are just human conventions. But he proposed an (invalid) mechanism ('NS') that according to him is what creates species, which means that species are real after all and part of Nature. So species are real and not real at the same time. Maybe Mr. Darwin did not know about the LNC. What a mess of a man, really. And the materialist worships him as his prophet.
I used to be Catholic.
And now you are a priest of your goddess "matter" and her maiden evolution.
If it was, it is now a dead religion. I accept evolutionary theory, not "Darwinism".
Good for you to acknowledge that Darwin Was Wrong. What 'evolution' accept you then? The Aristotelian sort? Where species develop according to their intrinsic properties (grounded in their substantial forms?) Good boy.
Some good behaviors being selected for has no effect on some evil behaviors being selected for.
Ahhh. The good old 'evolution selects for everything and its contrary'. So 'scientific'. Go read Fodor and Massimo-Piattelli Palmarini (What Darwin Got Wrong). The 'selection for' paradigm is a non-explanation. Another darwinian misstep. Poor guy, he did nothing right.
That question is too broad to answer in a com box.
Shorthand for 'I don't have a clue'. You can not define 'humanity' and that's very sad. But Aristotle could: a human is a rational animal . Sweet and straight to the point.
@ One Brow:
Delete2) Darwin was less wrong than most of his early contemporaries, but most of his hypotheses didn't hold up (just as most of what Newton, Galileo, etc. did not hold up). When remember these scientists for the small parts that they got right.
Well, the only small part that Mr. Darwin got right is that things in Nature change. But that is not a very striking thing to be remembered for. Like, most of humanity has known it for centuries and without the need to publish silly books about "Origins" that are not origins, "species" that are not species and fake "mechanistic selectors".
So yes, things do change in Nature, because they actualize their potentials, potentials which are characteristic of each species and which are grounded in their substantial forms. And that's why we humans categorize species, because they do really exist in Nature and are not a "useful fiction". The substantial form is what the materialist in his desperation labels as "complexity" and his "emergent properties" are aristotelian "powers or dispositions". Poor materialist, I understand that is hard to acknowledge that your worldview is a failure. But it is a failure :)
The Book of Nature is written in the hylemorphic language. Through and through.
UncommonDescent,
DeleteI am not a 'human' because according to Darwinism (the materialistic sort), species are not real entities,
1) That's misleading, at minimum. The concept of species, much like the concept of sex, is unambiguous for the overwhelming majority of living beings. Yet, some soservatives think the exceptions to the former invalidate the categoriization, but not those to the latter.
2) Why would anyone care what Darwin said at this point? Who are these Darwin worshippers you talk about?
I asked why racism is 'evil' since evolution is a friggin' idiot ...
No, you did not. You asked, "And I have yet to heat from an evolutionist why racism is 'evil', ...", and I answered. You still have not objected to the content of that response.
"... contradicted yourself saying that humans have no subespecies or races, which makes racism impossible. "
Humans seem to find a way.
Innacurate spew deleted.
What 'evolution' accept you then?
The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis has no peers, so far, in explanatory power and accuracy.
The Aristotelian sort? Where species develop according to their intrinsic properties (grounded in their substantial forms?)
Mystical nonesense. Groups of individuals don't have a form, they have commonalities among their various individual forms.
Ahhh. The good old 'evolution selects for everything and its contrary'.
The is no one best chess opening. There is no one best evolutionary path. That doesn't mean everything works.
Shorthand for 'I don't have a clue'. You can not define 'humanity' and that's very sad. But Aristotle could: a human is a rational animal . Sweet and straight to the point.
Not every human is rational, and not every human had the potential to be become rational, so that definition suffers from the exact problem you assign to the modern concept of species. Then again, I don't expect consistency from you.
Name any other feature that only occurs in people of a specific "race".
Delete@One Brow, I already did that:
The race of Joseph, i.e. those descended from Joseph. Again, the term "race" had a long, long history before the attempt to corral it by a modernist set of notions in the 18th - 19th centuries into a set of 5, which (perforce) overlooked major problems with those as "the" groups.
As the peoples of various continents have mixed over the last 70 years more and more, there are millions upon millions of people whose background partake (in vastly many different ratios) of two or more different peoples. It is utterly impossible to characterize these people into one of the earlier 5 "races" without all sorts of arbitrary assumptions, and even that would hardly be successful.
Are there other biological understandings that remove any of the difficulties in defining species? All the examples you offered seem to create issues in defining species regardless of paradigm.
The original sense of "species" was not primarily driven by ability to sexually reproduce, (or it could NEVER have arrived at different species of organisms that reproduce asexually). It was driven by more a rooted principle, e.g. that individuals of a single species differ from individuals of another species by some critical distinction that addresses something essential to them, that is not found in the others. The "some critical distinction" that addresses something "essential" to them is broad enough to cover ANY kind of essential difference, and need not be compressed into narrow confines.
As a recent example of this kind of thinking, David Oderberg wrote an article arguing that aliens from another planet who are rational animals would BE HUMANS in virtue of being rational animals, regardless of their morphology (6 legs, no eyes, whatever). I disagree with his conclusion, but not with his sense that "rational" is the kind of essential characteristic that could constitute the critical distinction between species. (Note that his result would easily ignore whether earthling humans could reproduce sexually with said aliens, as not being in any way determinative.)
@ One Brow:
DeleteThe concept of species, much like the concept of sex, is unambiguous for the overwhelming majority of living beings.
So 'unambiguous' for the materialist as to need 20+ different definitions of species, most of them incomplete and leading to absurd conclusions (like Mayr's silly 'biological' one). Guess you have not heard about 'The Problem of Species', but that does not surprise me.
Maybe in your desperation you are trying to acknowledge that species are objective features of reality and that we humans can recognize most of them, although that there are epistemomogical limitations due to the imperfections of our cognitive apparatus. Well, that's very Aristotelian and St. Thomas surely would agree. You're a good disciple of the Stagirite.
Now be a good boy and give me a materialistic defintion of 'life'. Mhhhh. Let me imagine your answer: 'but chemicals find a way'?
2) Why would anyone care what Darwin said at this point? Who are these Darwin worshippers you talk about?
If according to you Darwin did not get anything right, why is he considered the key figure of the evolutionary paradigm? A scientist that gets everything wrong is to be pitied, not to be praised as a 'revolutionary'. The cornerstone of the adaptationist paradigm was 'NS' as a mechanistic creator, and it's utterly wrong. 'NS' is not a force. It 'creates' nothing. Creatures develop according to their intrinsic properties, grounded in their substantial forms. Aristotle was right. And I know it hurts.
No, you did not. You asked, "And I have yet to heat from an evolutionist why racism is 'evil', ...", and I answered. You still have not objected to the content of that response.
You answered some nonsense about racism existing while declaring by fiat that 'human races' are not real. Therefore, no racism. And since evolution does not care at all about 'evilness', it's impossible for its creatures to have learnt it from 'her'. Therefore, no evil for the evolutionist. But you can try again.
Humans seem to find a way.
Your typical childish non-answer. If humans are racist while according to you races do not exist, then humans are magical creatures. Do you believe in magic, One Brow?
The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis has no peers, so far, in explanatory power and accuracy.
Lol. ALL the tenets of the 'Modern Synthesis' have been invalidated.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350412774_The_Illusions_of_the_Modern_Synthesis
So what's left? 'Things change in Nature'. Wow.
There is no one best evolutionary path. That doesn't mean everything works.
Yes. We know that pigs don't have wings. But instead of positing your imaginative just-so-stories about untestable 'selective pressures', intelligent people are moving on an acknowledging the role of the organism in the process and how the organism constrains evolutionary paths. 'Evo-devo' rings a bell? 'Niche construction' maybe? All based in the organism's intrinsic properties. That are grounded in its substantial form. Aristotle rearing his head again. Today is not your day, One Brow.
@ One Brow:
DeleteMystical nonesense. Groups of individuals don't have a form, they have commonalities among their various individual forms.
Are you saying that 'forms' exist in Nature?? I know a greek that right now is jumping with delight.
Not every human is rational, and not every human had the potential to be become rational, so that definition suffers from the exact problem you assign to the modern concept of species
There's no 'modern concept of species'. There are 20+ 'modern' attempts at definitions of species, and not one gets it right. That's pretty sad.
Please substantiate your assertion that "not every human had the potential to become rational". Based on what premises? You seem to know a lot about act/potency. You sure you are a materialist?
All humans are humans because they have the same substantial form (individuated in matter), which makes us a species. And all humans are potentially rational, providing that they do not suffer from impairments in their matter (physical ones) or defects in the will (for example willing to be a materialist).
Then again, I don't expect consistency from you.
How quaint coming from the proponent of the 'species exist but they do not exist', 'races do not exist but exist', 'individual forms do exist but not shared ones' and 'evil is my subjective feeling that I have learnt no one knows from, since evolution is incapable of teaching us moral behavior'.
But don't despair, because consistency finds a way after all. The way of hylemorphism. You can try it.
@ One Brow:
DeleteYour posts are so full of non-sense and contradictions. They're like the gift that won't stop giving.
Let's do a brief recap of your position:
- racism is evil but races are not real, but they are real because 'color' is the specific difference that divides one race from another. So race is the genus. That's essentialist thinking, the same that you deny.
- evolution is amoral but we, its products, are not. That sounds like a miracle to me.
- 'good' behaviors are 'selected', which means that people who are good have no merit after all, since it's something that has been chosen for them. Neither merit 'bad' people any punishment (for the same reason).
- you say that there's a human species that exists objectively, and that what marks its difference from another one is 'that it existed 50k years ago in Africa'. But man, Africa is such a big continent. Could you please be more specific? (pun intended).
- as Tony has noted, scientists no longer use 'species' but 'populations'. You are contradicting both science and logic. That's something impressive.
- people 'find ways' to find things in Nature that are not there (like 'race'), which contradicts the selectionist account according to which we HAVE to accomodate to our surroundings, not to PROJECT things into Nature.
- you say that all definitions of species fall prey of inconsistencies, and yet you do not mind the inconsistencies of the 'modern' ones. That's illogical (again).
Wow. Certain religions are weird (not that I'm suggesting that atheistic evolution falls under the category 'creative myth'. Not at all. It's 100% backed up by 'science').
Tony,
DeleteHow would people identify the "race of Joseph" as separate from "the race of Bob", considering the mixing of Joseph's and Bo's descendants? Are you trying to say everyone is really the same race (in which case I agree)? Or, was this just a lesson in etymology?
As the peoples of various continents have mixed over the last 70 years more and more,
People have mixed over the last 70,000 years. Except for evolutionarily brief periods separating some people by oceans, there has always been gradual intermixing over generations across the population. Within continental boundaries, the mixing has been continual.
... that individuals of a single species differ from individuals of another species by some critical distinction that addresses something essential to them, that is not found in the others.
That requires sorting out which distinctions are "critical" and which features are essential, which runs into the same issues of blurriness that using mating, or genetic construction, or any other classification scheme suffers from.
@ One Brow:
DeleteThat requires sorting out which distinctions are "critical" and which features are essential, which runs into the same issues of blurriness that using mating, or genetic construction, or any other classification scheme suffers from.
And yet according to you, we can know what the human species IS and therefore when it started to walk the Earth (was it 50k years ago exactly, no more no less, wasn't it? In 'Africa' :) No blurriness there for the priest of evolution. You seem to have certain problems understanding that the LNC (Law of No Contradiction) is a no-no in philosophy. But hey, you are not very bright. You can join Darwin and both would make such a good team of fools. Like in that infamous movie "Dumb and Dumber". Both perfectly adapted to your environments.
How would people identify the "race of Joseph" as separate from "the race of Bob", considering the mixing of Joseph's and Bo's descendants? Are you trying to say everyone is really the same race (in which case I agree)? Or, was this just a lesson in etymology?
DeleteIf one of Joe's descendents marries one of Bob's descendents, then the "race of Joe" and the "race of Bob" will intersect, with shared individuals, while (potentially) also each having other members not in the intersection. There is no problem with the two races having an intersection, when taking race in this sense.
The human race IS one race, when the term is used in that context. As is the case, obviously, from the very phrase itself, which is a common phrase in the language. That there are OTHER contexts, which allow for OTHER ways of grouping races, just shows that the term has a lot of range to its meaning. The "race of Abraham" includes as a subset the "race of Jacob" who was his grandson, but the "race of Jacob" does not include as a subset the "race of Ishmael" who was also Abraham's son. Each of these uses of the term "race" casts a context that allows for other groups above and below the listed group to also be "races". And yes, that is (in part) an etymology lesson. But it is an etymology lesson with a philosophic / political point: the narrower meaning of "race" to refer to say, one of the 5 groups listed by Johann Blumenbach in 1793, was a conscious effort to apply (and constrain) the term in a specialist way, and whether the attempt was well-meaning or not (or mixed in motive), the result of the effort is not wholly supported by the better data we have now.
That requires sorting out which distinctions are "critical" and which features are essential, which runs into the same issues of blurriness that using mating, or genetic construction, or any other classification scheme suffers from.
The effort of identifying critical and essential features is difficult, and thus may sometimes run astray, or may be inconclusive at times. That does not imply that the principle is invalid.
On the other hand, the existence of different species of things that reproduce asexually proves definitively that the definition of species that rests on successful sexual reproduction is certainly not THE definition of the word. It is, at best, only partial or only an approximation or only gets at one marker of "species", not at the foundational meaning.
People have mixed over the last 70,000 years. Except for evolutionarily brief periods separating some people by oceans, there has always been gradual intermixing over generations across the population. Within continental boundaries, the mixing has been continual.
I think the current anthropologically popular opinions on the period of time separating the people in the Americas from those of Asia runs from about 9,000 to about 30,000 years (or 360 to 1200 generations). I would not call those "insignificant", as it provides plenty of time for populations to drift biologically if under severe environmental pressures.
The sheer existence of regionally identifiable groups that have significant concentrations of noticeable traits in contrast to other populations implies that there have been barriers to intermixing. E.G. Those on the Indian subcontinent tend to have less curly hair than those on the African continent, irrespective of skin color. Whether the barriers were physical or social is irrelevant to the sheer FACT of the different characteristics. Also, whether the barriers were absolutely impassible or only relatively so may make us note some non-zero rate of intermixing, without forcing us to conclude the groups simply constitute "one population" in spite of the readily apparent differences. Most of the various definitions of "population" refer to those living in the "same area" without requiring an absolutely impassible boundary to designate an "area". Indeed, for some definitions, it is sufficient to differentiate distinct populations by noting groups within a single area that DON'T interbreed, even if they are functionally capable of interbreeding, (such as would occur in species that place a high value on certain color markings to recognize sexually desirable mates, which might eventually lead to a divergence of two groups that no longer can interbreed though earlier they could). It is sufficient, for the notion of "population," to encompass an area within which lies the vast majority of the individuals that interbreed, without having absolutely perfect coverage of every possible breeding pair in that region. A mountain range that is nearly impassible to a species might constitute a boundary between two populations, even if one individual in 100 million manages to pass over the range.
DeleteCan’t wait to read it. I thinks it’s all about the existence of real essences and natures. Contra nominalism. The rest is a fantasy history concocted to create conflict and point blame. Same old communist tactics to create class struggle nonsense.
ReplyDeleteThe personificación of evil used to be the greedy capitalist, and after that it was the "patriarchy" and now it's the "white supremacism" non-sense.
DeleteMarxists have really run out of ideas. These people are a walking cliché.
Forms do exist in nature. Have you been able to explain the forms in quantum theory yet? Do you think their is no first cause and a distinct between The First Causes being and ours? Is our existence not dependent on the First Cause?
DeleteProf. Feser, will the english version be available in Germany? I live here but Im not a native german speaker.
ReplyDeleteYou can order the English version in Germany on Amazon Deutschland. Here is the link to the book on that site: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Edward-Feser/dp/1621645800/ref=sr_1_2?crid=25P7XK72XVE6R&keywords=feser+all+in+one&qid=1660329349&sprefix=%2Caps%2C144&sr=8-2
DeleteI can't wait to read the hysterical reviews this book will undoubtedly prompt.
ReplyDeleteYup. We can't forget the popcorn when reading them and to hold some laughs due to predictable fallacies - and whining - too!
DeleteI'd be willing to be a substantial amount of money that some Very Serious Critics will claim Ed is a racist and, in all likelihood, throw in some gratuitous remarks about his Catholic pro-life views.
DeleteNice one, Ed!
ReplyDeleteCouple of questions.
ReplyDelete1) Is there any classical formative programs for children on Aquinas (or Thomism) that a school could adopt? And what are your thoughts on the reviving the trivium way of education.
2) Do you plan on translating your books to other popular languages like French and Arabic?
Dr. Feser and other authors do not translate their writings into other languages. That is done by the publisher.
DeleteSure. But the author may want and plan to have his works translated. How he goes about doing it is not the object of my question. All I wanted to know is if he has any intention or plan to have his works translated, specifically to French and Arabic.
DeleteOne more:
ReplyDelete3) how would you personally ensure that a certain translation is doing justice to a certain work, without having to learn too well the original work's language?
15th August was the day India was partitioned resulting in the deaths of at least a million and the religious ethnic cleansing displacement of 18 million brought about by a Muslim-Hindu religious conflict that predated the British presence.
ReplyDeleteHad the Indians stayed in the empire where all these religious tensions were contained and people generally lived together in harmony that catastrophe would have been avoided.
The Indians have only themselves to blame for what happened.
Dr. Feser,
ReplyDeleteAll of the regulars here have seen how silly scientists/historians/sociologists/legal scholars/etc. can look when they try to do philosophy, and I'm sure you'll appreciate that philosophers can appear equally silly discussing science or history. How can you be sure that, as a philosopher specializing in the Scholastics, you didn't appear silly when talking about a field based in legal theory and sociology?
One Brow,
DeleteFirst, not every non-philosopher looks silly when writing on philosophy, and not every philosopher looks silly when writing on non-philosophical topics. It depends on whether they’ve done their homework. What would be silly is the judgment “Oh, this is not so-and-so’s field, therefore what he says about it must be wrong.” There’s no shortcut to looking at the actual arguments someone gives and evaluating them on their own terms rather than looking for some meta-level reason to dismiss them without a hearing.
Second, the claims of CRT and it popularizers that are most relevant to the issues I address in the book are in any case essentially philosophical in nature, and the fallacies they commit obvious to anyone with elementary logical acumen. A fallacy is a fallacy whether committed by a philosopher, a physicist, a dentist, or a CRT writer.
Dr. Feser,
DeleteI certainly endorse an approach that would look at logical fallacies. Thank you for your response.
If it does not reveal too much, who are the CRT popularizers whose writings you examine? Delgado, Bell, Williams, Crenshaw? Perhaps you mean Christopher Rufo?
Bell and Crenshaw are not popularizers, but CRT theorists in their own right. They are among the people I discuss, as is Delgado (who is also not a popularizer, exactly, though he did co-author a well-known introductory work).
DeleteRufo, of course, is a critic of CRT, so naturally he is not a popularizer of it in the sense in question here, even if he writes popular critical works about it. Anyway, I don't say anything about him in the book at all, nor did I rely on any of his stuff when working on it.
The popularizers I have in mind are people like Kendi and DiAngelo, who, though not themselves legal theorists, nevertheless make use of key concepts associated with CRT. And the idea that CRT is just some high-falutin' technical legal theory is itself a rhetorical dodge in any event. CRT enshrines a far more comprehensive philosophical position, with ethical, epistemological, and even metaphysical aspects. Which makes it a bit rich for CRT defenders to complain that critics are somehow encroaching on legal-theoretic territory.
Ibram X. Kendi has specifically said he's not a critical race theorist. Diangelo does not seem to claim to be a critical race theorist, either. They say they are authoring works on anti-racism, white fragility, and similar notions. Critical race theory was extremely obscure until Rufo et. al. brought it into the mainstream, certainly he is the popularizer of the conservative perception of CRT. This was a deliberate attempt to take the concept of "anti-racism" and give it a more threatening sounding appellation, however inappropriate. This appealed to many people.
DeleteAs CRT is a somewhat post-modern take on the racism and social justice, I can see where you would find some of the epistemological and metaphysical aspects of it questionable. However, your choice of who to emphasize and who to downplay is not promising.
Please. These sorts of claims are sheer obfuscation and damage control on the part of CRT boosters. If you use “Critical Race Theory” in a narrow sense that confines it only to certain legal theorists, then in that narrow sense Kendi et al. are not Critical Race Theorists. But no one says they are, in that sense. The claim is rather that they have popularized certain themes that originated in CRT, and that is true. Kendi himself has admitted as much:
Delete“I’ve certainly been inspired by critical race theory and critical race theorists. The ways in which I’ve formulated definitions of racism and racist and anti-racism and anti-racist have not only been based on historical evidence, but also Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectional theory. She’s one of the founding and pioneering critical race theorists”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/critical-race-theory-ibram-kendi-racism-racists.html
Dr. Feser,
DeleteI appreciate your patience, and I am sure I have mildly tested it. I don't expect to persuade you, so I will just leave this with a shoe-on-the-other-foot example.
Were I to write a book on how Scholasticism is aiming to control our government and create oppression, that would likely raise a skeptical eyebrow. Were I, within said book, devote only a paragraph or two to scholars such as yourself or Dr. Oderberg, and instead devote chapters to likes of Bill Donohue, I'd think you find such a work very silly indeed.
Thank you for this discussion and your responses.
Hello One Brow,
DeleteThe analogy is not apt, for several reasons. First, Kendi and DiAngelo are themselves academics, even if they have written popularizing works. Second, while I do say a lot about them, I don’t say as little about people like Bell, Crenshaw, Delgado, et al. as you imply. Third, like it or not, it is the popularizations of people like Kendi and DiAngelo rather than the more academic works of CRT writers that are having the most direct and widespread influence, so naturally I am going to say a lot about them.
A better analogy would be this. Imagine a situation where popular works by Mortimer Adler and Peter Kreeft became bestsellers, were being widely promoted in the news media, on college readings lists everywhere and guiding HR department training, influencing even grade school curricula around the country, etc. Suppose this was widely characterized as people pushing an Aristotelian-Thomist worldview. And suppose others pushed back and said “Oh how ridiculous! A-T is an abstract set of metaphysical ideas with a large body of academic literature! No one is pushing that in the schools! No one is having school children read copes of The Thomist or assigning them Oderberg’s Real Essentialism to read!”
This would, of course, be a totally dishonest response. Of course this really would be a case where A-T was being pushed throughout the culture, even if in a popularized form. The same with what is going on now with CRT. And just as it would be totally appropriate for critics of A-T in this scenario to talk a lot about Alder and Kreeft – since, in the scenario, those would be the writers in fact having the most widespread and direct influence – so too is it appropriate to talk a lot about people like Kendi and DiAngelo.
Racism is a fake word. Its a fancy curse word. Its a lefty word meant to shut white people up and create good whites and bad whites so we can fight. Its an anti white slur, thats all. THe Catholic Church never used the R word. Conservatives don't want to be called bad, they want lefty and blacks to pat them on the head and tell them that they are good whites.
ReplyDeleteStop playing lefties games.
Vatican II and Catholicsm are 2 very different things. If racism is so evil, why is in only 100 years old?
DeleteBut thatnks for the quote! THe NO is no different than any other progressive religion
DeleteI'm sorry, where is the word "racism" in Piux XI's letter to the German bishops?
DeleteIts not there, is it?
If I said, "Africa for blacks, Asia for yellows, South America for reds, and Europe and America for whites" would be called the R word, no? DId I say that one race is better than the others?
Delete@Norm. If racism is idolization of one's own race above God, is patriotism the idolization of one's own nation/country above God?
DeleteIt seems to me that "a healthy love or preference for one's own race" is precisely what constitutes racism, at least as far as white people are concerned.
DeleteTake the example of patriotism. Patriotism is the "healthy" expression of love of country and jingoism (or whatever) is the unhealthy, idolatrous version. What is the "healthy" version of racism? Ethnocentrism? How is ethnocentrism supposed to apply to a racial community as patriotism applies to a national one *without* being racist? Patriotism compels us to make sacrifices for our own national community that we wouldn't make for another community, and to give preference to those of our own nationality over those of another--this is entirely within the norms of morality, widely agreed upon. But what of ethnocentrism, or, racial patriotism? For a racial group (at least a European one) to make sacrifices for itself and not for others, to exclude outsider races from the preferential treatment it reserves for itself is considered racist and I have no doubt would be considered racist to those using the "Catholic" definition of the term.
As an example, if a white housing community were to give preferential treatment to white homebuyers over those of other races, this would be deemed "racist" by most people. But it could also be construed as a kind of racial patriotism--many people, after all, would agree that granting similar privileges within a *national* community is perfectly acceptable, that there is nothing wrong with giving preferential treatment to your own nationality over foreigners.
See where I'm going with this?
It seems your way of thinking relies largely on a certain interpretation of historical events. I believe this interpretation of events is largely a product of 20th century developments in American political discourse and mostly alien to the historical Catholic understanding. One also has to wonder how groups all over the world should relate to each other, when all groups have been victimized by another and been the victimizer in their turn.
DeleteArguing that whites differentiating between themselves and blacks as in-group vs. out-group is invalid because blacks are now culturally "white" Americans is at odds with both how blacks see themselves and how whites see them. In fact, your argument that the relationship between whites and blacks is defined by the historical reality of African slavery in America is entirely predicated on them being an identifiably separate people with their own identity. But the reality that blacks were the victims of racial injustice and thus need to be specially treated in recompense begs the question that blacks were supposed to be treated the same as whites to begin with and were therefore "vitcims" of anything. If they were supposed to be treated the same as whites from the beginning, the implication is that the white/black division from the beginning was invalid or immoral. Our concept of what constitutes injustice in this respect is circular: blacks were the victims of injustice because they were not treated equally as whites, presuming a common identity that didn't exist at the time and only came into existence after the fact to right the historical wrong.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I dont think your formulation of the injustice is any better, however, because it transposes a dedinition of injustice and "common humanity" that is simply anachronistic. Its equivalent to saying "coverture laws constituted a grave injustice against women because it denied them the same basic human rights as men." But this begs the question that men and women have the same *legal* rights simply by virtue of them being.equally human.
DeleteAlso, consider children. Even today children are subjected to the the authority and discipline of their parents, which often entails physical coercion and even violence. Most consider this situation acceptable because they recognize children as a separate category of human being with a subordinate status to adults. But why is this differentiation valid? Slave status was once considered valid and moral but that is no longer the case due to our undertsamding of basic human rights.
DeleteTaking a step back, what authority in society designates valid categories of persons to which different rights and obligations apply, be they in a subordinate role or one of authority?
In the military, subordinates are bound to follow orders of their superiors or suffer punishment, regardless of their being equally human and thus having the same basic rights and value owing to their common humanity.
At one point in time, racial identity and ethnicity were valid categories of differentiation in the social and legal sense and I am wondering why this was unjust when all other kinds of categories of differentiation were (and remain today) valid. Unless one believes *all* distinctions are invalid on account of a common human identity, it seems to me the immorality of "racism" is ad hoc.
Hi Norm. You said that Authority is decided by certain relationships. Also, previously:
Delete"We can deduce certain morals regarding what is right and what is wrong by observing human nature."
And
"In regards to compulsory military service, you owe that subordination to the country because it is the country that allows you to live on its land, nourishes you with food etc."
You give a similar justification for the subordination of children to parents, because as the givers of life parents have authority over their children.
I am curious how these relationships of authority/subordination are derived from observation of human nature, if you believe that to be the case anyway. What is it about human nature that compels me to submit to conscription by the state authority? Especially when you previously said that blacks were wronged by slavery because it denied them the basic respect owed to all humans, and that this denial was
"the denial of the fact that men as a rational animal belongs to himself or exists for his own sake i.e he decides or controls how his faculties are to be used as opposed to animals who don't exist for their own sake but exist in order to be used by man since they fall lower on the hierarchy of being"
Wouldn't that denial of basic humanity qua his nature apply to conscription and subordination of children as well? You assert that relationships are decisive in determining authority, but all persons with all kinds of relationships still have the same human natures and thus belong to themselves for their own sake, giving them autonomy and control over their own faculties, etc.
Are the decisive relationships from which obligations are derived deduced from observing human nature? If so, why doesn't that include enslavement of persons etc.?
Dr. Feser, I haven't read your book so maybe my question is answered there. I would like to know if is immoral for communities that identify themselves as belonging to a specific race/ethnicity to withhold certain privileges/rights from those belonging to groups outside of that community? Are ethnic groups obliged to regard all peoples, those within and without their communities, as basically the same, to be treated the same as any other?
ReplyDeleteNot under Novus Ordo/modern reality. you MUST include all races as as one race. Saying that there are more than one race, is evil. Unless you are black, then you can have your own colleges, be black and proud, and demand special treatment.
Delete@ Anonymous:
DeleteSaying that there are more than one race, is evil.
All this "white-supremacy" nonsense is nothing but a bastardization of the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. If you are "white", you have to pay for something that your forebears did (slavery), and the sin IS now in you. (What would be the chromosomal region where sin is codified? Is sin transcribed via ARN polimerases? Can sin 'mutate'? :)
Same goes for the "patriarchy" and other societal ailments. They're just misplaced religious thought. Look, those atheist loons can not stop preaching about 'evil'. They never step away from their pulpits. But according to evolutionists, religion has been hard-coded in H. sapien's, brain, so it's not a surprise after all.
Another variant of religious thought is the "materialist" cult (mother matter is all-powerful and can create life from non-life, sentience from non-sentience and intelligence from non-intelligence. She has a cute maiden that goes by the name of 'Evolution' and sometimes father Chronos joins the party.). They're deeply embedded in greek mythology (and fake greek philosophy, à la Parmenides, Heraclitus and Empedocles).
It’s the existence of the immortal soul as the form of the human body that is the source of our common nature. Nominalism again is the source of modern philosophical and theological errors. Modern social justice theory rejects hylomorphism in humans and the immortal soul as the source of human dignity and equality. Instead modern social justice is left with power and class struggle to define its unjust social justice theory. True justice necessarily is an image of the First Cause and Giver of our nature. Three cheers for teleology and the true existence of the Final Cause. “All things act for an end”.
ReplyDelete@ John Ghostley:
ReplyDeleteIt’s the existence of the immortal soul as the form of the human body that is the source of our common nature.
"Being a rational animal is (according to Aristotelians) the essence or substantial form of a human being; having black or white skin is not part of this essence, since someone can be a rational animal, and thus a human being, whatever his skin color." ( The Last Superstition, p. 57)
Instead modern social justice is left with power and class struggle to define its unjust social justice theory.
They are Darwin's pupils. Some populations are better 'adapted' to their environment and displace those populations which are not. And the cycle keeps repeating until the inexorable forces of evolution erase everything and another life form occupies 'our' place. And in the end, all was for nothing. No justice, no acknowledgement, no reward. Just the endless indifference of the Universe. The utter despair born from the materialist superstition. The essence of atheism, what defines it, is nihilism. Let's get rid of it once and for all.
TO Norm: First, it is not a sin to own slaves. Blacks subjugated their own people and sold them into slavery to Whites. No one can convince me, that after seeing orderly, how wealthy, and how good Whites treat others (in general) that blacks in Africa didn't start lining up to emigrate.
ReplyDeleteRacism is a slur against Whites. You said it yourself "that would be reverse racism". I hear this term reverse racism all the time. It clearly shows that the common usage of the word racist and racism, is a slur agains Whites.