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.”

Nguyen’s main criticism of the book is that “if Feser intends to borrow the whole parts from the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas on the soul, this treatise could benefit greatly from a closer reading of the original texts.”  Here it seems Br. Francis may have overlooked some remarks I make in the Preface to the book:

[T]hough Aristotle and St. Thomas are by far the greatest influences on my own views, this book is not concerned with exegesis of their work.  The claims and arguments I defend in this book are mine, and not always necessarily theirs.  If, on some topics, I say something that sounds very much like what they say, that is because I think they were right about it.  If, on other topics, I say something that is different from anything they say, or even conflicts with what they say, that is because I think my approach is better.  Like other Thomists, I am often accused of following Aquinas too closely, but also of not following him closely enough.  In reality, I try only ever to follow an argument wherever it leads. (p. 5)

Among academics and autodidacts who are classified as Thomists, there are two general types.  The first are those whose emphasis is on developing the most plausible formulation possible of Thomistic ideas and arguments and applying them to contemporary issues and controversies.  The second are those whose emphasis is on the closest possible reading of St. Thomas’s own texts and those of the great commentators on St. Thomas.  (There is a similar distinction to be made among those classified as Aristotelians.)

Both tasks are important, and both groups can and should learn from each other.  There need be no rivalry between them.  But each has its potential drawbacks.  From the point of view of the second group, those in the first group do not always stick closely enough to what St. Thomas himself actually said, or, where they go beyond him, stay within the range of opinions developed by the great Thomists of the past.  From the point of view of the first group, those in the second group are too prone to obsessive nitpicking over exegetical minutiae, to policing alleged departures from what they claim to be authentic Thomism, and to an insularity that leads them to talk more to other Thomism adepts than to the wider world. 

I’ve always been in the first group, and while I certainly agree that it has potential drawbacks that need to be guarded against (as all approaches do), in my opinion the most urgent task today is to get Aristotelian and Thomistic ideas and arguments into the contemporary conversation, rather than to pursue what can often seem endless “in-group” debates over Aristotle or Aquinas exegesis.  Hence, while commentary from the second group on the work of the first group is sometimes helpful, in my experience a lot of it has the feel of petty sniping from the sidelines.  That’s the reason for the remarks I put in the Preface.

Br. Francis is fair-minded, and not guilty of this sort of sniping.  However, it does seem to me that some of his remarks are a little pedantic.  He objects to my using “synthetic sense” in place of the “common sense,” and to my characterizing “passive intellect” and “possible intellect” as sometimes used synonymously (he cites a passage from Aquinas that distinguishes the possible intellect from the passive intellect). 

The unwary reader might think from Br. Francis’s remarks that I am guilty of making elementary mistakes in reading Aristotle and Aquinas.  But in fact, as anyone can see who reads the pages he cites from my book, I make clear there that I was merely noting how some early twentieth-century Thomists had themselves come to use the terms in question.  (For example, Thomas Verner Moore’s Cognitive Psychology proposes “synthetic sense” as a term to include the functions of what had traditionally been called the “common sense”; and H. D. Gardeil’s Psychology uses “possible intellect” and “passive intellect” as interchangeable.)  As I explain, I adopted these usages of “synthetic sense” and “passive intellect” because it seemed to me that they were least likely to be misunderstood by modern readers unfamiliar with Aristotelian and Thomistic jargon.  As long and bitter experience has taught me, though, every gain in intelligibility for contemporary readers has the cost of criticism from sticklers for more traditional usage!

In fairness to Nguyen, though, he characterizes these as “relatively minor flaws of this work” which “do not appear to obstruct its great merit.”  I thank him for his engagement with and kind words about the book.