Tuesday, September 8, 2026

Craig on finitism and presentism

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The kalām cosmological argument for God’s existence holds that the universe must have had a beginning.  (Not all versions of the cosmologic...
72 comments:
Saturday, August 29, 2026

Just war doctrine and Congress’s war powers

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As I have argued since it began , President Trump’s war on Iran fails to meet several of the conditions of traditional just war doctrine.  N...
61 comments:
Monday, August 17, 2026

Berkeley’s God

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In my latest article at Postliberal Order , I discuss how the novel metaphysical assumptions that modern philosophy brought to the tradition...
86 comments:
Thursday, August 13, 2026

Abortion and partisan politics

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This week, Massachusetts’ Democratic governor Maura Healey signed a law removing existing restrictions on late-term abortion, thereby legal...
256 comments:
Thursday, August 6, 2026

Anthony Kenny (1931-2026)

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Sir Anthony Kenny died on August 3 .  Of philosophers of his generation, Kenny was among those I most admired.  He made important contributi...
18 comments:
Thursday, July 30, 2026

Summer web surfing

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Several new articles from David Oderberg: “Hylemorphism as a Generalized Research Programme” ; “In Defence of Panmoralism” ; and “Turning th...
49 comments:
Friday, July 24, 2026

The evil and incoherence of targeting civilian infrastructure

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President Trump has renewed his threats to destroy Iranian civilian infrastructure such as power stations and bridges, which could result i...
74 comments:
Monday, July 13, 2026

Anscombe on human dignity

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My essay “Misunderstanding “Human Dignity,’” which discusses some illuminating things Elizabeth Anscombe had to say about the subject, appe...
50 comments:

Review of Smith

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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 Augus...
21 comments:
Saturday, July 11, 2026

I'm a grandfather!

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58 comments:
Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Nguyen on Immortal Souls

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In New Blackfriars , Br. Francis Dominic Nguyen kindly reviews my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature .  From the review: “Fese...
44 comments:
Friday, July 3, 2026

Chesterton on patriotism

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In his classic book Orthodoxy , G. K. Chesterton famously said that the doctrine of original sin is the part of Christian theology that can ...
95 comments:
Thursday, June 25, 2026

The Journal of Natural Law

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The second issue of the new Journal of Natural Law is out soon.  It includes, among other things, a debate between Melissa Moschella and R...
37 comments:
Wednesday, June 17, 2026

What is the mechanical world picture?

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Early modern philosophy and science are often said to have put a “mechanical” or “mechanistic” conception of nature at the center of Western...
107 comments:
Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Leo XIV contra the new Babel: Reflections on the pope’s landmark encyclical

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Last week, Pope Leo XIV issued Magnifica Humanitas , the first encyclical of his pontificate.  It has received much attention, both positive...
178 comments:
Saturday, May 23, 2026

Nagel on Stroud on the possibility of metaphysics

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Much of modern philosophy has been hypnotized by the idea that causality, necessity, and value are not features of objective reality but mer...
42 comments:
Monday, May 11, 2026

No, the U.S. has not been at war with Iran for 47 years

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After the United States and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February of this year, the war’s defenders suddenly began to claim (and inces...
85 comments:
Saturday, May 2, 2026

The transmission theory of authority

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Scholastic thinkers like Cardinal Cajetan, St. Robert Bellarmine, and Francisco Suárez developed what is sometimes called a “transmission th...
99 comments:
Friday, April 24, 2026

Misunderstanding the “just cause” condition of just war doctrine

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In a recent article at First Things , I argued that the just war tradition holds that for a war to be justifiable, it must be morally certai...
67 comments:
Tuesday, April 21, 2026

Just war doctrine and moral certainty

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In an article at First Things , I show that the standard view in the Catholic just war tradition is that for a war to be just, it is not eno...
53 comments:
Monday, April 20, 2026

The Journal of Natural Law

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The first issue of The Journal of Natural Law has now been published.  Among other things, it includes my review of Stephen Boulter’s boo...
1 comment:
Friday, April 17, 2026

Caught in the web

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At The Telegraph , John Haldane remembers the late Dominican theologian Fr. Fergus Kerr. At UnHerd , Sohrab Ahmari has had enough with D...
66 comments:
Friday, April 10, 2026

The New Neo-Scholasticism

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My article “The New Neo-Scholasticism” appears in the Winter 2026 issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly .  It is available...
24 comments:
Thursday, April 9, 2026

Rational social animals and addiction

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Roger Scruton’s book Beauty contains an interesting brief treatment of addiction.  Too much discussion of this topic today overemphasizes n...
69 comments:
Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Will “a whole civilization die tonight”?

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From Twitter/X , on the president’s deranged post of this morning (which managed to top even his deranged Easter post):
126 comments:
Thursday, April 2, 2026

Contra White and Graham

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From Twitter/X , on the comments made at the White House yesterday by Paula White and Franklin Graham :
187 comments:
Saturday, March 28, 2026

Texts on tyranny from the tradition

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“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen,...
78 comments:
Tuesday, March 24, 2026

The epistemology of microphysics

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On March 21, I delivered a lecture on “The Epistemology of Microphysics” at the 49 th Annual Meeting of the American Maritain Association a...
52 comments:
Friday, March 20, 2026

Just war doctrine and the duties of soldiers

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The main point of just war doctrine is to guide public authorities in determining whether a military action they are considering is morally ...
36 comments:
Tuesday, March 17, 2026

Harrington on “Thomophobia”

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Earlier this month, British author Mary Harrington delivered a First Things Lecture titled “Our Crisis is Metaphysical” in Washington, D.C....
160 comments:
Monday, March 16, 2026

Thomism Revisited

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Thomism Revisited , a new anthology edited by Gaven Kerr, is out this month from Cambridge University Press.  It includes my essay “The Thom...
28 comments:
Wednesday, March 11, 2026

America’s conflict in Iran is not a just war

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In a new article at Public Discourse , I argue that it is even more obvious now than it was at the start that the Iran war does not meet the...
76 comments:

Dissent and double standards at Where Peter Is

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Mike Lewis, editor of Where Peter Is , is well known for freely accusing fellow Catholics of “dissent” from the teaching of the Church.  Yet...
16 comments:
Wednesday, March 4, 2026

The New Neo-Scholasticism

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For those with access to the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly , my forthcoming article “The New Neo-Scholasticism” is available in ...
20 comments:
Saturday, February 28, 2026

The U.S. war on Iran is manifestly unjust

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Last summer the United States joined in Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear program.  Many of us warned that it would be difficult for the U.S...
216 comments:
Thursday, February 26, 2026

Xenophanes and natural theology

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Natural theology is knowledge of the existence and nature of God that can be attained through the use of our natural rational powers, speci...
74 comments:
Friday, February 13, 2026

Cancelled in L.A. (Updated)

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I had been invited to speak later this month at St. John’s Seminary in Los Angeles. I have now been informed that the event is being cancel...
125 comments:
Saturday, February 7, 2026

No, AI does not have human-level intelligence

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In an article at Nature , Eddy Keming Chen, Mikhail Belkin, Leon Bergen, and David Danks ask “Does AI already have human-level intelligence?...
91 comments:
Friday, January 30, 2026

Van Fraassen on microscopy

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Philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen is well known for defending the “constructive empiricist” position that the success of a scientific...
43 comments:
Monday, January 19, 2026

Socratic politics: Lessons from the Gorgias

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Almost forty years ago, the liberal pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty published an essay titled “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy....
110 comments: