Gilson on philosophy and its history

You might suppose from the title of Etienne Gilson’s The Unity of Philosophical Experience that it is a book about philosophy in general.  And ultimately it is.  But its bulk is devoted to detailed accounts of the ideas of thinkers Gilson regards as having gotten things badly wrong, such as Abelard, Ockham, Descartes, Malebranche, Kant, and Comte.  There is relatively little about thinkers Gilson regards as having gotten things largely right, such as Aristotle and Aquinas.  This might seem odd.  For the sympathetic reader might suppose that the experience of philosophers like Aristotle and Aquinas should surely count as least as much as (indeed, more than) that of more wayward thinkers, when elucidating the nature of philosophy.

Nicholson on Immortal Souls

At Catholic World Report, philosopher Sam Nicholson kindly reviews my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature.  From the review:

"As its title suggests, Immortal Souls by Edward Feser provides a robust philosophical defense of the immortality of the soul.  The scope of the book reaches far beyond this one topic, however, as Feser methodically exposits and defends the entire Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics of the human person, addressing in depth such topics as personal identity, freedom of the will, perception and cognition, phenomenal consciousness, and artificial intelligence.  The result is an extraordinarily comprehensive and detailed sweep through contemporary philosophy of mind, addressing nearly every major topic of interest.  Feser makes a forceful case that Thomism remains a live option, able to resolve many seemingly intractable problems at the intersection of philosophy and the sciences of cognition…

Full interview on Pints with Aquinas

My recent three-hour interview with Matt Fradd on Pints with Aquinas is now available in its entirety at YouTube.  The discussion is wide-ranging, covering the current state of the Catholic Church, papal history, contemporary U.S. politics, atheism and theism, the sexual revolution and its transformation of the Western world, philosophical skepticism, artificial intelligence, integralism, and much else.

Pints with Aquinas interview (Updated)

Recently Matt Fradd kindly had me on Pints with Aquinas for a wide-ranging three-hour interview. At the moment, the full interview is available to members but an excerpt has been posted today at YouTube, wherein Matt and I discuss the current state of the Catholic Church.

UPDATE 12/3: Today a second excerpt has been posted at YouTube, wherein Matt and I discuss the question of what would falsify Catholicism.

Zubia on Hume and liberalism

“Hume’s Trojan Horse,” my review of Aaron Alexander Zubia’s new book The Political Thought of David Hume: The Origins of Liberalism and the Modern Political Imagination, appears in the Fall 2024 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

Popper’s via negativa

Negative theology (also known as apophatic theology) is an approach to the study of the divine nature that emphasizes that our knowledge of God is (either largely or wholly, depending on how far one wants to take this) knowledge of what God is not, rather than what God is.  There is an interesting parallelism between this idea and Karl Popper’s account of the nature of scientific knowledge.  I don’t claim that this necessarily has much if any significance for either theology or the philosophy of science (and I’m no Popperian in any event), only that the parallels seem real.  Make of them what you will.

Advice to Christian Philosophers

My essay “From Justin Martyr to Alvin Plantinga and Back Again: Advice from the First Christian Philosopher” appears in the anthology Advice to Christian Philosophers: Reflections on the Past and Future of Christian Philosophy, edited by (and with an essay by) Christopher Woznicki.  It’s a volume of articles inspired by Alvin Plantinga’s famous essay “Advice to Christian Philosophers,” which is included.  Other contributors include Charity Anderson, Michael Austin, William Lane Craig, Gregory Ganssle, Marina Garner, Paul Gould, Adam Green, Ross Inman, J. P. Moreland, Dolores Morris, Meghan Page, Timothy Pawl, Tim Pickavance, Joshua Rasmussen, Yoon Shin, Peter van Inwagen, Thomas Ward, Greg Welty, Eric Yang, and Linda Zagzebski.  More information here.

Pro-lifers must resist Trump on abortion and IVF

Pro-lifers should rejoice in the defeat of Kamala Harris, and of the Democratic Party, which remains the greatest threat to the unborn in American politics.  But they cannot rest, because their job is only half done.  The second greatest threat has yet to be dealt with, and that is Donald Trump.

Many pro-life Trump supporters will be shocked and angered at such a statement.  But I urge them to resist this emotional reaction and dispassionately consider the cold, hard facts.  Trump supports preserving access to the abortion pill, which is responsible for the majority of abortions in the United States.  Since these pills can be sent by mail into states where abortion is restricted or banned, preserving such access largely undermines recent state-level pro-life measures.  Trump also actively opposes those measures in any event, insisting that they are “too tough” and need to be “redone.”  He has repeatedly said that, even at the state level, abortion must remain legal beyond six weeks.  And he wants the federal government to pay for, or to force insurance companies to pay for, in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments – a practice that results in the destruction of more human embryos than even abortion does.  The only threat to the unborn Trump has clearly and consistently opposed is late-term abortion, which accounts for a mere 1% of abortions.  In short, the policies Trump favors would prevent very few abortions and encourage the discarding of millions of embryos.  True, Trump is much better than Harris in supporting the rights of pro-lifers.  But he is now only a little better in upholding the rights of the unborn.

Progressive Catholics and capital punishment

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

Augustine, liberalism, and political polarization

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

Immortal Souls now available

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

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

Abortion and subsidiarity

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

Vinco on Feser in Philosophische Rundschau

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

The latest on Immortal Souls

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

The new Aquinas 101

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

The popesplainer’s safety dance

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

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

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

Trump: A buyer’s guide

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

The problem with the “hard problem”

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

Rawls’s liberal integralism

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

Trump has put social conservatives in a dilemma

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

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

Damnation roundup

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

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

Word on Fire Institute course

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

More on the GOP and social conservatism

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

Now is the time for social conservatives to fight

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

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

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

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

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

Fight, yes, but for what?

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

The future of the Magisterium

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

Rawls on religion

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

Hobbes and Kant on capital punishment

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

Immortal Souls in eBook format

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

UPDATE: The book is back in stock at Amazon.

Scruton on tradition

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

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

Immortal Souls now available for pre-order

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

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

Postliberalism is not despotism

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

Multiverses and falsifiability

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

Update on Immortal Souls

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

New video course at Word on Fire

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

Immortal Souls

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

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

Let’s open it up

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

Dignitas Infinita at The Catholic Thing

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

Plato and Aristotle on youth and politics

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

Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)

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

Mansini on the development of doctrine

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

Two problems with Dignitas Infinita

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

Western civilization's immunodeficiency disease

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

Ed Piskor (1982-2024)

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

The illusion of AI

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

Wishful thinking about Judas

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

Jesuit Britain?

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

Mind, matter, and malleability

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

The metaphysics of individualism

Modern moral discourse often refers to “persons” and to “individuals” as if the notions were more or less interchangeable.  But that is not the case.  In his book Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau (especially in chapter 1, section 3), Jacques Maritain notes several important differences between the concepts, and draws out their moral and social implications.

Traditionally, in Catholic philosophy, a person is understood to be a substance possessing intellect and will.  Intellect and will, in turn, are understood to be immaterial.  Hence, to be a person is ipso facto to be incorporeal – wholly so in the case of an angel, partially so in the case of a human being.  And qua partially incorporeal, human beings are partially independent of the forces that govern the rest of the material world.

When do popes speak ex cathedra?

Consider four groups that, one might think, couldn’t be more different: Pope Francis’s most zealous defenders; sedevacantists; Protestants; and Catholics who have recently left the Church (for Eastern Orthodoxy, say).  Something at least many of them have in common is a serious misunderstanding of the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility – one which has led them to draw fallacious conclusions from recent papal teaching that seems to conflict with traditional Catholic doctrine (for example, on Holy Communion for those in invalid marriages, the death penalty, and blessings for same-sex couples).  Some of Pope Francis’s defenders insist that, since these teachings came from a pope, they must therefore be consistent with traditional doctrine, appearances notwithstanding.  Sedevacantists argue instead that, given that these teachings are not consistent with traditional doctrine, Francis must not be a true pope.  Some Protestants, meanwhile, argue that since Francis is a true pope but the teachings in question are (they judge) not consistent with traditional Christian doctrine, Catholic claims about papal infallibility have been falsified.  Finally, some Catholics have concluded the same thing, and left the Church as a result.

What counts as magisterial teaching?

Popes speak infallibly when they either proclaim some doctrine ex cathedra, or reiterate some doctrine that has already been taught infallibly by virtue of being a consistent teaching of the ordinary magisterium of the Church for millennia.  Even when papal teaching is not infallible, it is normally owed “religious assent.”  However, the Church recognizes exceptions.  The instruction Donum Veritatis, issued during the pontificate of St. John Paul II, acknowledges that “it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies” so that “a theologian may, according to the case, raise questions regarding the timeliness, the form, or even the contents of magisterial interventions.”  Donum Veritatis explicitly distinguishes such respectful criticism from “dissent” from perennial Church teaching.