Summer web surfing

Several new articles from David Oderberg: “Hylemorphism as a Generalized Research Programme”; “In Defence of Panmoralism”; and “Turning the Tables on the Table Deniers: Metaphysical Mythmaking About Ordinary Objects.”

Celebrated writer-artist John Byrne delivers an old school comics last hurrah in X-Men: Elsewhen.  Byrne is interviewed by The New York Times and at The Hollywood Reporter.  Meanwhile, after 90 years in NYC, Marvel Comics is moving its headquarters to Los Angeles.

The Chronicle of Higher Education interviews philosopher Alex Byrne about academic freedom, cancellation, and recent debates about sex and gender.

The evil and incoherence of targeting civilian infrastructure

President Trump has renewed his threats to destroy Iranian civilian infrastructure such as power stations and bridges, which could result in a humanitarian disaster.  By longstanding principles of just war doctrine, this would be gravely immoral.  The innocent do not lose the right to their property and capacity to get on with ordinary everyday life by virtue of living under an unjust and oppressive regime.  Deliberately to inflict such suffering on them is to become a second oppressor, not a liberator.  As Pope Leo XIV has said:

[Among] certain non-negotiable requirements… [on] the decision to use lethal force… [is to] ensure robust protection for civilians and the infrastructures necessary for their survival… When we witness the bombing of civilians, attacks on hospitals, schools or vital infrastructure, and violence that affects children, we are confronted with scandals that wound humanity itself. (Magnifica Humanitas 200, 216)

Anscombe on human dignity

My essay “Misunderstanding “Human Dignity,’” which discusses some illuminating things Elizabeth Anscombe had to say about the subject, appears today at Postliberal Order.

Review of Smith

My review of James K. A. Smith’s book Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing appears in the August/September issue of First Things.

I'm a grandfather!

Nguyen on Immortal Souls

In New Blackfriars, Br. Francis Dominic Nguyen kindly reviews my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature.  From the review: “Feser engages in a fresh dialogue between ancient and modern philosophy.  The result is spectacular… Many of [his] arguments appear to be original as well as invitingly readable… Feser has undertaken a laudable and courageous task making some first important steps in breaking down the walls between the current schools of philosophical anthropology, while remaining himself a good disciple of the scholastic method by engaging in dialectic.  Like Aristotle and Aquinas, Feser extracts the truth from his interlocutors, without prejudice as to who they are.”

Chesterton on patriotism

In his classic book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton famously said that the doctrine of original sin is the part of Christian theology that can really be proved.  What he had in mind, I think, is the part of that doctrine that holds that as a result of the Fall, our capacity to obey even the most obvious precepts of natural law has been gravely impaired.  I think this impairment is indeed obviously real.  One illustration would be the way people find it so difficult, in one area of human life after another, to adhere to the virtuous middle ground between opposite extreme vices.  When we aren’t gluttonous, we tend to become overly fixated on dieting and healthful eating.  When we aren’t drunkards, we often become prigs who scold even those who drink in moderation.  And so on.  Worse, those in thrall to one vice often suppose that the only alternative is the opposite extreme vice.  Sober moderation eludes us.