Chapter 5: Descent of the Modernists This chapter deals with modern philosophers, i.e., René Descartes and later. The first part of it is pretty much philosophical inside baseball, of little interest to those who care less about how ideas have been developed than about which conclusions were eventually reached. I’ll only point out one passage … Continue reading “The Last Superstition: Hedonism Killed Aquinas”
Chapter 4: The problem of evil This section deals with the problem of evil, a problem so big that, just as chemistry is divided into carbon (organic chemistry) and everything else, so I’m told theology is divided into the problem of evil (theodicy) and everything else. But first, Feser has to digress to lay some … Continue reading “The Last Superstition: The Problem of Evil”
Chapter 4: Heaven and whatnot Continuing his exploration of “natural law”, Feser “reminds” us that First of all, since knowing God is our highest end, our moral duties include, first and foremost, religious duties: duties to pursue knowledge of God, to honor Him as our Creator and the giver of the moral law, to teach … Continue reading “The Last Superstition: Pie in the Sky When You Die”
Chapter 4: Natural law We now get to the section on “natural law” morality, which Feser begins by telling us that New Atheists and secularists hate “traditional morality”, by which he means homophobia, and insinuates that Richard Dawkins is, if not a pedophile, then at least an apologist for pedophilia. He starts by going back … Continue reading “The Last Superstition: No Kinky Sex!”
Chapter 4: Reference: My ass, personal communication For the most part, Feser’s opinions are private, harmless affairs: whether he thinks that all things have final causes, or only some; or whether he thinks things have “essences” “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg”, as a famous person once said. But then he uses these opinions … Continue reading “The Last Superstition: Black and White Morality”
Chapter 4: Minds Are Not Material In order to prove that human souls are immortal, Feser has to prove that there’s some part of a person that survives death, and the destruction of the body. If there’s a part of a human left behind when you remove the matter, that part must presumably be immaterial, … Continue reading “The Last Superstition: Software Is Immaterial”
Chapter 4: Scholastic Aptitude Having introduced his main themes in chapters 1-3, Feser now elaborates upon them, starting with The Soul a soul is just the form or essence of a living thing. [p. 121] And the form or essence, you’ll recall, is the whatever-it-is that makes a thing the sort of thing that it … Continue reading “The Last Superstition: Animal Souls”
Chapter 3: The First Cause If you thought Feser’s “Unmoved mover” argument was just mental masturbation, the sort of sophistry that gives philosophy a bad reputation and evokes the image of a tweed-wearing ivory tower professor using five-dollar words to ask meaningless questions, then you can skip his First Cause section, because it’s more of … Continue reading “The Last Superstition: The First Cause”
Chapter 3: The Existence of God: The Unmoved Mover First of all, “movement” in this context really means change of any kind, not necessarily motion through space. Yes, I know this is annoying and confusing. Feser introduces two kinds of causes: accidentally ordered and essentially ordered. (Here, “accidentally” doesn’t mean “by misfortune”, and “essentially” doesn’t … Continue reading “The Last Superstition: The Unmoved Mover”
Chapter 3: The Existence of God So when people say “God”, what sort of entity are they talking about? Many secularists seem hell-bent (if you’ll pardon the expression) on pretending that religious people in general believe in a God so anthropomorphic that only a child or the most ignorant peasant could take the question of … Continue reading “The Last Superstition: Who Is This God Person, Anyway?”
Epsilon Clue 