Return of the missing links

My Christmas gift to you, dear readers – a revival of the blog’s “links of interest” posts, by popular demand.  Let’s get to it:

J.P. Andrew interviews Rob Koons and Daniel Bonevac about their two forthcoming books on Aquinas’s Five Ways.

At The New Yorker, Rachel Aviv reveals that neurologist Oliver Sacks made up many of the details of his famous case studies.

Sohrab Ahmari on the late Norman Podhoretz, at UnHerd.

At Fusion, Oliver Traldi on John Searle’s forgotten book The Campus War.

Jacob Savage on the lost generation that DEI created, at Compact.

Lawful authority in just war doctrine

In an earlier article, I set out the conditions that traditional just war doctrine says a war must meet in order to be morally legitimate, and argued that a war with Venezuela would not meet them.  Here I want to look more closely at one of those conditions, namely that a war can be just only if carried out by lawful authority.  It seems to me that many of those defending a prospective war with Venezuela too glibly assume that this condition has been met, and focus almost exclusively on what they take to be the justice of the cause.  I don’t think the justice of the cause has in fact been established, and indeed it has only become more doubtful in the week since my first article appeared.  But even if it had been established, that is by no means the only crucial consideration.

Kant’s claustrophobic metaphysics (Updated)

My review of Marcus Willaschek’s Kant: A Revolution in Thinking appears in the latest issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

UPDATE 12/20: The review is no longer behind a paywall.

Would a U.S. war against Venezuela be just?

To all appearances, the United States is preparing for war with Venezuela.  For months now, American military forces have been blowing up Venezuelan boats said to be carrying drugs.  The U.S. has deployed a fleet of warships off the country’s coast.  President Trump has said that “this is war” and that “very soon we’re going to start doing it on land too,” and he has ordered the closure of airspace over Venezuela.  He has also declared that Nicolas Maduro’s “days are numbered” as president of Venezuela and ordered him to resign and leave the country.  And it has been reported that the administration is planning for a post-Maduro Venezuela.

It's an open thread!

We’re due for an open thread.  Now is your chance to bring up matters that would otherwise be off-topic.  For example, sometimes readers want to respond to something I said on Twitter/X (and write up such a comment under a post here – where it doesn’t get past moderation if it’s not on topic).  But feel free to bring up whatever you like.  From Cantor’s continuum problem to Canter’s Deli, from Gertrude Stein to grapefruit wine, from Jack Kirby to Kier Kirby, everything is fair game for discussion.  Just keep it civil and classy, as always.  Previous open threads archived here.

Liberalism and the virtue of gratitude

In a new essay at Postliberal Order, I reflect on the virtue of gratitude or thanksgiving and the ways it tends to be eroded in liberal societies.

Pope Leo on immigration enforcement

Pope Leo was recently asked by a reporter about the deportation and detention of illegal immigrants.  In response, he made the following remarks:

I think we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.  If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that.  There are courts, there’s a system of justice.  I think there are a lot of problems in the system.  No one has said that the United States should have open borders.  I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter.  But when people are living good lives, and many of them for ten, fifteen, twenty years, to treat them in a way that is extremely disrespectful to say the least, and there has been some violence unfortunately, I think that the Bishops have been very clear in what they said and I think that I would just invite all people in the United States to listen to them.

This is a refreshingly calm, reasonable, and nuanced approach.  As I have shown in earlier articles (at Public Discourse and at UnHerd), the Church has traditionally affirmed both that wealthy nations have a general obligation to welcome immigrants to the extent they are able, but also that they are not obligated to let in all who seek to enter, that they may put conditions on entry that take account of the economic needs and cultural cohesion of the receiving nation, and that immigrants must obey the law.

Searle contra deconstruction

In a new essay at Postliberal Order, I recall the late John Searle’s critique of deconstructionism and postmodernism more generally, which were major influences on today’s woke ideologies.

Remembering John Searle

I wrote an obituary for John Searle, which appears in the December 2025 issue of First Things.

Cardinal Fernández on doctrinal clarity

From Twitter/X today, apropos of Mater Populi Fidelis:

There are two sides to the Catholic immigration debate

Everyone knows that the Catholic Church teaches that wealthy nations ought to welcome immigrants.  It is less well known that she also teaches that a nation may put conditions on immigration, that it need not take in all those who want to enter it, and that those it does allow in must follow the law. In an article at UnHerd, I spell out this neglected side of Catholic teaching.  Defenders and critics of Trump administration policy alike can appeal to moral premises from the Church’s tradition.

Vallicella on Immortal Souls

At his Substack Philosophy in Progress, my old buddy Bill Vallicella engages with my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature.  Bill kindly opines: “[It] may well be the best compendium of Thomist philosophical anthropology presently available.  I strongly recommend it.”  All the same, he has doubts about the compatibility of two of the books key themes: the Aristotelian hylomorphic conception of the soul as the form of the body, and the continued existence of any particular individual’s soul after the death of his body.  Let’s take a look at his objection.

Fastiggi and Sonna on Catholicism and capital punishment (Updated)

Recently, theologian Robert Fastiggi was interviewed about the topic of the Church and the death penalty by apologist Suan Sonna on his podcast Intellectual Catholicism.  Fastiggi’s views are the focus of the discussion, but Sonna, who largely agrees with him, adds some points of his own.  Their main concern in the discussion is to try to defend the changes Pope Francis made to the Church’s presentation of her teaching on the subject. 

I appreciate their civility, and Fastiggi’s call at the end of the interview for charity in dealing with those who disagree.  But their attempt fails.  Much of what Fastiggi has to say are reheated claims that I have already refuted in past exchanges with him, such as the two-part essay I wrote in response to his series on the death penalty at Where Peter Is.  (You can find it here and here.  The essay was reprinted as a single long article in Ultramontanism and Tradition, edited by Peter Kwasniewski.)  Fastiggi simply repeats his assertions without acknowledging, much less answering, my rebuttals.  He also makes some new claims, which are no more plausible than the older ones.  Let’s take a look.

Against flag burning

In a new essay at Postliberal Order, I argue that burning the flag as an expression of contempt for one’s country is contrary to the virtue of piety, is something we therefore have no right to do under natural law, and may, in principle, therefore be outlawed by the state.  I also argue that the Supreme Court was, in Texas v. Johnson, mistaken in claiming that a right to burn the flag is implied by the U.S. constitution.

John Searle (1932-2025)

Daily Nous has reported that John Searle has died.  Searle was one of the true greats of contemporary philosophy, having made huge and lasting contributions to several of its subdisciplines, but especially to philosophy of mind and philosophy of language.  His work had an enormous influence on me in my undergrad and graduate student years.  His books Minds, Brains, and Science, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, Speech Acts, and The Rediscovery of the Mind were especially formative.  And his uncommonly lucid style was the main model for my own approach to philosophical writing.  I had the pleasure of meeting and talking to him on several occasions, and Steven Postrel and I interviewed him for Reason magazine over twenty-five years ago.

How not to limit free speech

I am by no means a free speech absolutist.  In an article at Postliberal Order a couple of years ago, I set out the natural law position on the issue, noting that the teleology or final cause of our rational and communicative faculties entails not only a broad range of freedom of expression, but also definite limits.  There can be no natural right to expression that is positively contrary to what is good for us given our nature as rational social animals.  However, that by no means entails that just any old limitation on free speech imposed in the name of a good cause is a good idea, or even justifiable in principle.

Thucydides’ times and ours

All of my readers will no doubt have been following the horrific and heartbreaking news of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and its aftermath.  As those who follow me on Twitter/X know, I have had a lot to say about the matter there.  One of Twitter’s advantages over traditional blogging is that it is more conducive to running commentary on unfolding events.  But because some readers of this blog are not on Twitter, it seems appropriate to comment here as well.

When major and shocking events occur, there is, of course, a tendency for people to respond more emotionally than rationally, and to overinterpret their significance.  But it seems to me that two general points can safely be made about the current situation.

Is mandatory vaccination intrinsically wrong?

Florida governor Ron DeSantis and state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo have announced that they will be ending all mandatory vaccination in the state.  President Trump has criticized them for this, saying that “some vaccines… should be used otherwise some people are going to catch [diseases] and they endanger other people.”  I have long supported DeSantis and have been critical of Trump, but on this issue Trump is right and DeSantis is wrong. 

That is by no means to say that all mandatory vaccinations are defensible.  As I have argued, the Covid shot should never have been mandatory.  But it goes way too far to claim, as Ladapo does, that all mandatory vaccination as such is “immoral” and amounts to “slavery.”  The truth lies in the middle ground position that while there is a moral presumption against a mandate, in some cases that presumption can be overridden and it can be licit for governments to require vaccination.  Sweeping statements of either extreme kind are wrong, and we need to go case by case.

Maimonides on negative theology

Negative theology (also known as apophatic theology) is the approach to understanding the divine nature that emphasizes that what we know about God is what he is not rather than what he is.  One might take the strong view that all of our knowledge of God’s nature is negative in this way, or the weaker position that much (but not all) such knowledge is negative.  The medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) is among the most famous of negative theologians.  He takes the stronger position.  More precisely, his view is that when we predicate something of God, we are describing either his effects in the world of our experience, or the divine nature itself, and in the latter case we must understand our predications in a purely negative way.

Diabolical modernity

Satan tempted Christ to avoid the cross, and offer us instead the satisfaction of our appetites, marvels or wonders, and political salvation – exactly what modern market economies, science, and liberal democracy promise us.  In my latest essay at Postliberal Order, I discuss Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s analysis of the diabolical, and the light it sheds on the character of the modern world.

Hanson on observation

According to the conception of scientific method traditionally associated with Francis Bacon, science ought to begin with the accumulation of observations unbiased by any theoretical preconceptions.  The idea is that only such theory-neutral evidence could provide an objective basis on which to choose between theories.  It became a commonplace of twentieth-century philosophy of science that this ideal of theory-neutral observation is illusory, and that in reality all observation is inescapably theory-laden (to use the standard jargon).  That is to say, even to describe what it is we observe, we cannot avoid making use of theoretical assumptions about its nature, circumstances, and so on.

Newman on capital punishment

It was announced last week that Pope Leo XIV will be declaring St. John Henry Newman to be a Doctor of the Church.  As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, the Church proclaims someone to be a Doctor on account of “eminent learning” and “a high degree of sanctity.”  This combination makes a Doctor an exemplary guide to matters of faith and morals.  To be sure, the Doctors are not infallible.  Their authority is not as great as that of scripture, the consensus of the Church Fathers, or the definitive statements of the Church’s magisterium.  All the same, their authority is considerable.  As Aquinas notes, appeal to the authority of the Doctors of the Church is “one that may properly be used” in addressing doctrinal questions, even if such an appeal by itself yields “probable” conclusions rather than incontrovertible ones (Summa Theologiae I.1.8).

Suffering for the truth (Updated)

As many readers will have heard by now, last week Detroit’s new archbishop Edward Weisenburger suddenly fired three well-known professors at Sacred Heart Major Seminary: theologians Ralph Martin and Eduardo Echeverria and canon lawyer Edward Peters.  No official explanation has been given.  Martin has said that he was told only and vaguely that it had to do with “concerns about [his] theological perspectives.”  Echeverria has declined comment because of a non-disclosure agreement.  Peters says that he has “retained counsel.”

A postliberal middle ground on trade

In my latest article at Postliberal Order, I defend a postliberal middle ground position between free trade dogmatism and rigid protectionism, and argue that sound trade policy depends more on circumstances and prudential judgment than appeal to abstract principle.

Heeding Anscombe on just war doctrine

Elizabeth Anscombe’s “War and Murder” is a magnificent essay, an intellectually rigorous and morally serious defense of traditional Christian and natural law teaching against pacifists on the one side and, on the other, those who attempt to rationalize the unjust killing of civilians.  As she argues, both errors feed off of one another.  The essay is perhaps even more relevant today than it was at the time she wrote it.

Here is a summary of her position.  The pacifist holds that all killing is immoral, even when necessary to protect citizens against criminal evildoers within a nation, or foreign adversaries without.  This position is contrary to the basic precondition of any social order, which is the right to protect itself against attempts to destroy it.  It also has no warrant in the orthodox Christian tradition.  A less extreme but related error is the thesis that violence can never justly be initiated, but at most can only ever be justified in response to those who have initiated it.  In fact, Anscombe argues, what matters is not who strikes the first blow, but who is in the right.  For example, it was in her judgment right for the British to initiate violence in order to suppress chattel slavery.

A second Honorius?

Like his predecessor Honorius, Pope Francis failed clearly to uphold traditional teaching at a time the Church was sick from heresy.  So I argue in my contribution to a symposium on Francis in the latest issue of The Lamp.

Aquinas and prudential judgment

In contemporary debates in Catholic moral theology, a distinction is often drawn between actions that are flatly ruled out in principle and those whose permissibility or impermissibility is a matter of prudential judgment.  For example, it is often noted that abortion is wrong always and in principle, whereas how many immigrants a country ought to allow in and under what conditions are matters of prudential judgment.  But exactly what does this mean, and how do we tell the difference between the cases?

Talk it out

Time again for an open thread.   Now’s your chance to get that off-topic comment off your chest.  The burning philosophical or theological question you’ve been dying to raise?  That political rant you’ve been meaning to inflict on fellow readers of this blog?  Some tweet of mine that you wanted to complain about?  All fair game.  From real numbers to realpolitik, from That ‘70s Show to Kurtis Blow, from monads to gonads, there’s no limit to what you might talk about.  (Other, that is, than the demands of good taste and basic sanity.  So no trolling, please.)  Previous open threads archived here.

Solidarity

The ideal to strive for in international relations is what in the natural law tradition and Catholic social teaching is called solidarity. On the one hand, this entails respecting the independence of nations and their right to preserve their own identities, rather than absorbing them into a one-world blob; on the other hand, it entails promoting their cooperation and mutual assistance in what Pope Leo XIV calls the “family of peoples,” rather than a war of all against all in a Hobbesian state of nature.

Where economics is concerned, this entails rejecting, on the one hand, a globalism that dissolves national boundaries and pushes nations into a free trade dogmatism that is contrary to the interests of their citizens; but also, on the other hand, a mercantilism that walls nations off into mutually hostile camps and treats international economic relations as a zero-sum game. From the point of view of solidarity, neither free trade nor protectionism should be made into ideologies; free trade policies and protectionist policies are merely tools whose advisability can vary from case to case and require the judgment of prudence.

Where war and diplomacy are concerned, this vision entails rejecting, on the one hand, the liberal and neoconservative project of pushing all nations to incorporate themselves into the globalist blob by economic pressure, regime change, or the like; but also, on the other hand, a Hobbesian realpolitik that sees all other nations fundamentally as rivals rather than friends, and seeks to bully them into submission rather than cooperate to achieve what is in each nation’s mutual interest.

This solidarity-oriented vision is an alternative to the false choice between what might be called the “neoliberal” and “neo-Hobbesian” worldviews competing today – each of which pretends that the other is the only alternative to itself. It is the vision developed by thinkers in the Thomistic natural law tradition such as Luigi Taparelli in the nineteenth century and Johannes Messner in the twentieth, and which has informed modern Catholic social teaching.

The principle of solidarity is fairly well-known to be central to natural law and Catholic teaching about the internal affairs of nations (and famously gave a name to Polish trade union resistance to Communist oppression). But it ought to be better known as the ideal to pursue in relations between nations as well.

(From a post today at X/Twitter)

Preventive war and the U.S. attack on Iran

Last week I argued that the U.S. should stay out of Israel’s war with Iran.  America has now entered the war by bombing three facilities associated with Iran’s nuclear program.  Is this action morally justifiable in light of traditional just war doctrine? 

War aims?      

Let us note, first, that much depends on exactly what the U.S. intends to accomplish.  A week ago, before the attack, President Trump warned that Tehran should be evacuated, called for Iran’s unconditional surrender, and stated that the U.S. would not kill Iran’s Supreme Leader “for now” – thereby insinuating that it may yet do so at some future time.  Meanwhile, many prominent voices in the president’s party have been calling for regime change in Iran, and Trump himself this week has joined this chorus.  If we take all of this at face value, it gives the impression that the U.S. intends or is at least open to an ambitious and open-ended military commitment comparable to the American intervention in Iraq under President Bush. 

Shields on Aquinas on the Unmoved Mover

My review of Daniel Shields’ important recent book Nature and Nature’s God: A Philosophical and Scientific Defense of Aquinas’s Unmoved Mover Argument appears in the July 2025 issue of The Thomist.

The U.S. should stay out of Israel’s war with Iran (Updated)

Let me say at the outset that I agree with the view that it would be bad for the Iranian regime to acquire a nuclear weapon.  How close it is to actually acquiring one, I do not know.  I do know that the claim that such acquisition is imminent has been made for decades now, and yet it has still not happened.  In any event, it is Israel rather than the U.S. that would be threatened by such acquisition, and Israel has proven quite capable of taking care of itself.  There is no need for the U.S. to enter the war, and it is in neither the U.S.’s interests nor the interests of the rest of the region for it to do so.

Immortal Souls in Religion & Liberty

In the Summer 2025 issue of the Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty, David Weinberger kindly reviews my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature.  From the review: “Feser combines… rigor with his talent for making difficult ideas digestible… An admirable feature of Feser’s treatise is how thoroughly he engages opposing positions.”

Riots should be suppressed swiftly and harshly

In an article at Postliberal Order, I argue that the Trump administration has the right under natural law to intervene to suppress riots of the kind seen in Los Angeles this week.

MacIntyre on Hegel on human action

Phrenology was the pseudoscience that aimed to link psychological traits to the morphology of the skull.  Physiognomy was the pseudoscience that aimed to link such traits to facial features.  In his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel critiques these pseudosciences.  Since they are now widely acknowledged to be pseudosciences, it might seem that Hegel’s critique can be of historical interest only.  But as the late Alasdair MacIntyre pointed out in his essay “Hegel: On Faces and Skulls,” Hegel’s main points can be applied to a critique of today’s fashionable attempts to predict psychological traits and human actions from physiological and genetic traits.  (The essay appears in the collection Philosophy Through Its Past, edited by Ted Honderich.)

Lamont on Trump, abortion, and Ukraine

In an article at One Peter Five, philosopher John Lamont warns his fellow Catholics and traditionalists that on issues such as abortion and Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, Trump is not an ally and must be resisted.

What is ideology?

What does the pejorative use of “ideology” amount to, and what is it to be an “ideologue”?  I consider some common accounts before developing my own in my latest essay at Postliberal Order.

Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025)

Alasdair MacIntyre has died. His classic After Virtue had a tremendous effect on me when I was an undergrad and still in my atheist days, greatly reinforcing the attraction to Aristotelian ethics I had even then. (The spine of the light mauve cover of my copy, like that of pretty much any copy printed in the 80s, has long since turned green.)  It was, of course, part of a larger body of work which had a similarly great impact on so many people, in philosophy, theology, and beyond. RIP.

Pope Leo XIV on families and the family of nations

Yesterday, Pope Leo XIV delivered an address to the diplomatic corps at the Vatican.   It was brief and very simple, but elegant and deep and shows the influence of his namesake Leo XIII and of his theological guide St. Augustine.  The world, Leo says, is a “family of peoples.”  And essential to the wellbeing of nations and the family of nations, he says, are peace, justice, and truth, where peace has justice and truth as its preconditions.  The talk is devoted to elaborating on these three themes.  What follows are some comments on Leo’s remarks.

Greenland and the ethics of annexation

President Trump has repeatedly called for U.S. acquisition of Greenland.  The motivations have to do with Greenland’s strategic location and access to its mineral reserves.  Neither the government of Denmark (of which Greenland is a territory), nor the people of Greenland themselves, are in favor of the idea.  Not only is Trump undeterred by those facts, he has repeatedly refused to rule out the possibility of using military force to annex the island.  For example, in January, when asked whether he could assure the world that he would not resort to military coercion to get control of Greenland, Trump replied “No, I can’t assure you” and “I’m not going to commit to that.”  Asked this month about using military force to take Greenland, Trump said that “it could happen, something could happen with Greenland” and “I don’t rule it out.”