Edward Feser

"One of the best contemporary writers on philosophy" National Review

"A terrific writer" Damian Thompson, Daily Telegraph

"Feser... has the rare and enviable gift of making philosophical argument compulsively readable" Sir Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement

Selected for the First Things list of the 50 Best Blogs of 2010 (November 19, 2010)

Friday, May 29, 2020

Metaphysical taxidermy

I’ve often emphasized that the reason consciousness poses such a persistent problem for materialism has less to do with consciousness it...

Friday, May 22, 2020

The lockdown is no longer morally justifiable

As I have said before , I think that the lockdown that was put in place in the United States two months ago was morally justifiable give...

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Oderberg on the hierarchy of being

In February, David Oderberg gave a lecture in Oxford on the theme “Recovering the Hierarchy of Being.” You can now watch it on YouTube...

Friday, May 15, 2020

The lockdown and appeals to authority

Here are two things every serious student of logical fallacies understands. First, if what is at issue is the soundness of an argument ...

Friday, May 8, 2020

Presentism and analogical language

Terms are used univocally when they are used in the same sense, as the word “bat” is in both “The baseball player swung the bat” and “T...

Friday, May 1, 2020

Joe Biden Superstar

For something lighter as you go into the weekend, have a listen to songstress Hannah Hoffman’s “You Know the Thing,” a setting to m...

Thursday, April 30, 2020

The burden of proof is on those who impose burdens (Updated)

I have argued both that the lockdown was a justifiable initial reaction to the Covid-19 crisis, and that skeptics ought nevertheless to...

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Links for the lockdown

Thomas Osborne’s new book Aquinas’s Ethics , part of the Cambridge Elements series, is available online for free for a month . How s...

Sunday, April 19, 2020

Kremer on classical theism

At YouTube, philosopher Elmar Kremer provides a useful multi-part introduction to the dispute between classical theism and theistic pers...

Thursday, April 16, 2020

The lockdown’s loyal opposition

At First Things , Fr. Thomas Joseph White has defended the Covid-19 lockdown, whereas Rusty Reno has criticized it . As I said last we...

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Review of Scientism

My brief review of the anthology Scientism : Prospects and Problems , edited by Jeroen de Ridder, Rik Peels, and René van Woudenberg, a...

Sunday, April 12, 2020

The lesson of the Resurrection

The lesson of the Resurrection is that the significance of our bodily life and its sufferings should be neither overstated nor understat...

Friday, April 10, 2020

Some thoughts on the COVID-19 crisis

I commend to you Fr. Thomas Joseph White’s First Things essay on the COVID-19 situation and the bishops’ response to it . It...

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Damnation denialism

Here’s a narrative we’re all by now familiar with. Call it Narrative A: Those who initially downplayed the dangers of COVID-19 were...

Monday, March 30, 2020

Franklin on Aristotelian realism and mathematics

At YouTube, mathematician and philosopher James Franklin, author of An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics , offers a brief i...

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Craig, conventionalism, and voluntarism

At his personal Facebook page and also at the Reasonable Faith Facebook page , William Lane Craig briefly comments on my Firs...

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Aquinas anticipated everything

So notes a friend who sent me this image of the cover of a dissertation from the 1950s. (No doubt the author was using the phrase in a d...

Friday, March 20, 2020

Craig contra the truthmaker objection to presentism

Presentism holds that, in the temporal realm (that is to say, apart from eternal and aeviternal entities), only present objects and even...

Sunday, March 15, 2020

Coronavirus complications

For reasons most of which have to do directly or indirectly with the COVID-19 coronavirus situation, none of the remaining public lectur...

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Review of Craig’s God Over All

My review of William Lane Craig’s book God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism appears in the April 2020 issue o...

Sunday, March 8, 2020

On-topic open thread (and a word on trolls)

Folks, please don’t post off-topic comments in the comboxes. I will delete them, and any responses to them, as soon as I see them, and...

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

The other way to lose a war

Rod Dreher comments on the U.S. deal with the Taliban to withdraw, at long last, from Afghanistan. He writes: “The Taliban whipped… th...

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Agere sequitur esse and the First Way

Aquinas’s First Way is also known as the argument from motion to an Unmoved Mover. The most natural way to read it is as an argument to...

Friday, February 21, 2020

Morgan on Aristotle’s Revenge

At The Imaginative Conservative , Prof. Jason Morgan kindly reviews my book Aristotle’s Revenge . From the review: In 456 very wel...

Saturday, February 15, 2020

The socialist state as an occasionalist god

Hobbes famously characterized his Leviathan state as a mortal god. Here’s another theological analogy, or set of analogies, which m...

Saturday, February 8, 2020

Sandstad and Jansen on Aristotle’s Revenge

At the Bryn Mawr Classical Review , philosophers Petter Sandstad and Ludger Jansen review my book Aristotle’s Revenge . From the revie...

Thursday, February 6, 2020

Discussion with Graham Oppy

Earlier today on Cameron Bertuzzi’s Capturing Christianity program, I had a very pleasant and fruitful live exchange with Graham Oppy....

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Review of Kerr

My review of Gaven Kerr’s excellent book Aquinas's Way to God: The Proof in De Ente et Essentia appears in the current issue o...

Friday, January 31, 2020

Preternatural theology

Natural theology is traditionally distinguished from revealed theology . Natural theology is concerned with knowledge about God’s exi...

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Adventures in the Old Atheism, Part IV: Marx

I have never been remotely attracted to Marxism. Its economic reductionism, vision of human life as a struggle of antagonistic classe...

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Aquinas 101

The Thomistic Institute has added to the great work it is already doing by introducing Aquinas 101 , “a series of free video co...

Monday, January 20, 2020

Upcoming talks, etc.

On February 6 on Cameron Bertuzzi’s Capturing Christianity , Graham Oppy and I will resume the debate on the existence of God that we b...

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Johnson on Aristotle’s Revenge

At Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews , Monte Ransome Johnson reviews my book Aristotle’s Revenge . Prof. Johnson is an Aristotle schola...

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Scruton’s virtues

The Guardian reports that conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton has died . I vividly recall the first time I became aware of Scr...

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Review of Swinburne

My review of Richard Swinburne’s recent book Are We Bodies or Souls? appears in the February 2020 issue of First Things . ...

Thursday, January 9, 2020

The rationalist/empiricist false choice

I’ve often argued that contemporary philosophers too often think only within the box of alternative positions inherited from their early...

Friday, January 3, 2020

Links for a new year

Joseph Bessette on criminal sentencing laws and retributive justice , at Public Discourse . The Catholic Thing on the late, great M...

Saturday, December 28, 2019

Overestimating human responsibility

One of the many pernicious aspects of modern political life is the tendency, every time something bad happens, to look for someone to bl...

Friday, December 20, 2019

Cundy on relativity and the A-theory of time

One of the many topics treated in Aristotle’s Revenge is the relationship between Aristotelian philosophy of nature and contemporary de...

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

New from Oderberg

Fans of David S. Oderberg have long been looking forward to a new book from him, and now it is here – just in time to fill Christmas sto...

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About Me

Edward Feser: I am a writer and philosopher living in Los Angeles. I teach philosophy at Pasadena City College. My primary academic research interests are in the philosophy of mind, moral and political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. I also write on politics, from a conservative point of view; and on religion, from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective.

View my complete profile

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