Learn it, live it, link it

The Best Schools has posted its list of the 50 most influential living philosophers.

New from R. R. Reno: Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society.  A podcast with Reno about the book at National Review, a video interview at YouTube, and a print interview at Christian Post.

Is the brain a computer?  Philosopher of biology John Wilkins answers “No.” And physicist Edward Witten doesn’t think science will explain consciousness.  Scientific American reports.

Is Islamophilia binding Catholic doctrine?

Catholic writer Robert Spencer’s vigorous criticisms of Islam have recently earned him the ire of a cleric who has accused him of heterodoxy.  Nothing surprising about that, or at least it wouldn’t be surprising if a Muslim cleric were accusing Spencer of contradicting Muslim doctrine.  Turns out, though, that it is a Catholic priest accusing Spencer of contradicting Catholic doctrine. 

Cue the Twilight Zone music.  Book that ticket to Bizarro world while you’re at it.

Adventures in the Old Atheism, Part II: Sartre

Having surveyed the wreckage of modern Western civilization from the lofty vantage point of Nietzsche’s Superman, let’s now descend to the lowest depths of existential angst with Jean-Paul Sartre.  So pour some whiskey, put on a jazz LP, and light the cigarette of the hipster girl dressed in black reading Camus at the barstool next to you.  Let’s get Absurd.

Review of Harris on Hume

Just back from a very enjoyable week at the Thomistic seminar in Princeton.  Regular blogging will resume shortly.

In the meantime, my review of Hume: An Intellectual Biography by James A. Harris appears in the Summer 2016  issue of the Claremont Review of Books. 

Shinkel on Neo-Scholastic Essays

At The University Bookman, Ryan Shinkel reviews my book Neo-Scholastic Essays.  Titling his review “Last Scholastic Standing,” Shinkel writes:

Early modern philosophers such as René Descartes and Francis Bacon rejected… the teleology of the Scholastics…

Against this degeneration stands the Thomist philosopher Edward Feser… He has taken a route in metaphysics (the study of ultimate causes) similar to that of MacIntyre in moral philosophy…