Friday, June 7, 2019

A clarification on integralism

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Talk of integralism is all the rage in recent weeks, given the dispute between David French and Sohrab Ahmari and Matthew Continetti’s a...
182 comments:
Sunday, June 2, 2019

Continetti on post-liberal conservatism

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At the Washington Free Beacon , Matthew Continetti proposes a taxonomy of contemporary American conservatism.  Among the groups he ...
164 comments:
Thursday, May 30, 2019

Rist slapped (Updated)

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UPDATE 5/31: Commentary from Fr. Joseph Fessio , Fr. John Zuhlsdorf , and Phil Lawler . LifeSite reports that Prof. John Rist, one o...
84 comments:
Saturday, May 25, 2019

Popes, heresy, and papal heresy

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In an interview at National Catholic Register , philosopher John Rist defends his decision to sign the open letter accusing Pope Francis...
202 comments:
Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Hayek’s Tragic Capitalism

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My essay “Hayek’s Tragic Capitalism” appears in the Spring 2019 issue of the Claremont Review of Books .  (It’s behind a paywall at th...
46 comments:
Saturday, May 11, 2019

More on presentism and truthmakers

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The esteemed Bill Vallicella continues to press the truthmaker objection against presentism.  I remain unimpressed by it.  Can we break...
74 comments:
Monday, May 6, 2019

Some comments on the open letter

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What should we think of the recent open letter accusing Pope Francis of heresy, signed by Fr. Aidan Nichols, Prof. John Rist, and other...
134 comments:
Thursday, May 2, 2019

Review of Brague

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My review of Rémi Brague’s new book Curing Mad Truths: Medieval Wisdom for the Modern Age appears at Catholic Herald .  
56 comments:
Saturday, April 27, 2019

Open the thread!

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It’s your opportunity lawfully to indulge your impulse to make those off-topic comments I’m constantly having to delete.   Do so in go...
229 comments:
Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Aristotelians ought to be presentists

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Presentism holds that within the temporal domain, only the present exists and the past and future do not.   Alex Pruss thinks that Ari...
130 comments:
Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Vallicella on existence-entailing relations and presentism

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Bill Vallicella continues his critical response to my defense of presentism in Aristotle’s Revenge .   In the first part of his criti...
172 comments:
Saturday, April 13, 2019

Vallicella on the truthmaker objection against presentism

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Among the many ideas defended in Aristotle’s Revenge is the A-theory of time, and presentism in particular.   Relativity, time travel...
65 comments:
Thursday, April 11, 2019

Review of a new volume on Neo-Scholasticism

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My review of Rajesh Heynickx and Stéphane Symons’ anthology So What's New About Scholasticism? How Neo-Thomism Helped Shape ...
4 comments:
Saturday, April 6, 2019

Can you doubt that 2 + 3 = 5?

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In his first Meditation , Descartes famously tries to push doubt as far as he can, in the hope of finding something that cannot be do...
127 comments:
Friday, March 29, 2019

Artificial intelligence and magical thinking

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Arthur C. Clarke famously said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”   Is this true?   That dep...
192 comments:
Sunday, March 24, 2019

New volume on philosophers and Catholicism

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Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism , an anthology edited by Brian Besong and Jonathan Fuqua, will be out...
26 comments:
Monday, March 18, 2019

Five Proofs on radio

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Recently, John DeRosa interviewed me for the Classical Theism Podcast .   You can listen to the interview here .   We discuss my book ...
115 comments:
Thursday, March 14, 2019

Wrath darkens the mind

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A straw man fallacy is committed when you attack a caricature of what your opponent has said rather than addressing his actual vie...
182 comments:
Sunday, March 10, 2019

2019 Aquinas Lecture

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In January I gave the 2019 Aquinas Lecture at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, on the theme “Classical Theism and the Nature ...
35 comments:
Monday, March 4, 2019

ORDER NOW: Aristotle’s Revenge (Updated)

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UPDATE 3/9: A reader points out that another option, for readers anywhere in the world, is to order through Book Depository .  You...
72 comments:
Friday, March 1, 2019

Byrne on gender identity

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What is it to have a “gender identity”?   At Arc Digital , Alex Byrne examines some proposed definitions of the concept and common ass...
33 comments:
Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Surfing the web

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At First Things , R. R. Reno concludes that Francis’s papacy is failing .  Cardinal Gerhard Müller issues a “manifesto of faith” to a...
93 comments:
Saturday, February 16, 2019

Abortion and culpability

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Yesterday at The Corner , Ramesh Ponnuru responded to a reader who criticizes opponents of abortion who express special outrage at lat...
113 comments:
Thursday, February 14, 2019

The latest on Five Proofs

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My book Five Proofs of the Existence of God is briefly reviewed by Christopher McCaffery in the March 2019 issue of First Things . ...
40 comments:
Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Socialism versus the family

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Yesterday I gave a talk at the Heritage Foundation on the topic “Socialism versus the Family.”   You can watch the lecture on YouTub...
66 comments:
Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Adventures in the Old Atheism, Part III: Freud

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Our sojourn among the Old Atheists was briefer than I’d intended.   To my great surprise, I see that the previous installment in thi...
51 comments:
Monday, January 28, 2019

Early 2019 speaking engagements

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I recently got back from Blackfriars in Oxford, where I gave talks on classical theism and cooperation with evil . This Thursda...
66 comments:
Saturday, January 26, 2019

The Bizarro world of left-wing politics

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I have only a little to add to what others have already said about the Kafkaesque Covington affair.   There were, as you all know by n...
83 comments:
Sunday, January 20, 2019

Washburn contra the “new natural lawyers”

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I highly recommend theologian Christian Washburn’s excellent article “The New Natural Lawyers, Contraception, Capital Punishment, an...
154 comments:
Friday, January 11, 2019

Materialism subverts itself

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A naïve understanding of materialism attributes to it a naïve understanding of matter.  Matter, common sense says, is more or less the...
100 comments:
Friday, January 4, 2019

Finnis on capital punishment (Updated)

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John Finnis holds that the Catholic Church could reverse her traditional teaching that capital punishment can be legitimate in princip...
74 comments:
Thursday, December 27, 2018

The sexual revolution devours its children

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In two recent posts, we looked at philosopher Alex Byrne’s criticisms of claims made by some transgender activists to the effect that ...
78 comments:
Sunday, December 23, 2018

Christmas every day

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A Protestant friend once asked me what the point is of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.  Why is it so important to think t...
218 comments:
Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Immateriality in Rome

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Earlier this month I gave a talk on “The Immateriality of the Intellect” at a conference on neuroscience and the soul held at the Ang...
38 comments: