Edward Feser's Blog, page 42

Brungardt on Aristotle’s Revenge

At Thomistica, philosopher John Brungardt reviews Aristotle’s Revenge .  He provides a fairly detailed overview of its methods and contents, and judges it “a broad, substantive book” that “has gathered and ordered a nearly universal range of topics and contemporary sources in the philosophy of nature and science,” so that “it is essential reading for those interested in the topic of the perennial Aristotelian philosophy of nature and its relationship to the particular natural sciences.” Brungardt writes:
One strength of the book is actually its negative character, that is, how it relentlessly considers and negates the possibility or plausibility of alternative principles. For first principles cannot be demonstrated, strictly speaking, from principles that are prior to them. They can only be manifested (e.g., using principles prior to us) or defended in some other way (for instance, recall Aristotle’s defense of the principles of non-contradiction in Metaphysics IV)… In Aristotle’s Revenge, Feser’s is a brilliant architectonic of retorsion and reductiones ad absurdamthat gives no quarter to the metaphysical foes of the Aristotelian philosophy of nature.
Yet this extensive dialectical engagement with metaphysical enemies does not mean that Feser is unable to find any fellow travelers, allies, or friends of the Aristotelian metaphysical project. This is the other characteristic strength of the book…
So, on the one hand, Feser frequently cites philosophers outside Aristotelian or Thomistic circles to show that arriving at Aristotelian or Thomistic positions requires no special school loyalty (among other examples: support for epistemic structural realism [158–64, 191–93]; reconciling relativity with the A-theory of time [273]; defense of color realism [351]; the defense of holism in biology [384–86]). On the other hand, there are others who philosophized better than they knew and ended up with virtually Aristotelian conclusions or rediscoveries of the Stagirite’s positions, if only their arguments were pressed a bit further, clarified, or seen in a more favorable Aristotelian light (to take a few prominent examples: the embodiedness of cognition [95–97, 97ff]; the neo-Aristotelian approach to understanding laws of motion [177–90]; the reality of motion [at 215]; problems attending denying the reality of temporal passage by making a metaphysics out of mathematical method [261–64]; computationalism and nature [see 369–71]; and arguments about teleology’s relation to natural selection [in particular, 416]).
End quote.  Brungardt also says that he “hope[s] to elaborate on some points of criticism of particulars of the book and its approach in later blog-posts.”
In related news, philosopher Rob Koons, physicist Steve Barr, and I had a very good exchange about the book at an “Author Meets Critics” session at the recent American Catholic Philosophical Association meeting in Minneapolis.  It looks like the papers will appear in a forthcoming issue of American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly.
Recently I called attention to the thoughtful criticisms of the book raised by Nigel Cundy and by Bonald at Throne and Altar.  I replied to some of Bonald’s criticisms in that post, and will post a response to Cundy within the next few days.

Word to the Wise

Eric Wise takes to Facebook to express shock that an author would be annoyed with a book reviewer who doesn’t have anything to say about the actual contents of the book under review.  He also manages to pack an amazing amount of further obfuscatory nonsense into a small space.
Wise defends his criticism of my arguing for broadly Aristotelian views rather than grappling with Aristotle’s own texts by noting that the title of my book is, after all, Aristotle’s Revenge.  Shouldn’t I have called it something else if it wasn’t going to be offering detailed exegesis of De Partibus Animalium?  This is like criticizing Tolstoy’s title War and Peace on the grounds that it is really just about the Napoleonic invasion of Russia rather than war in general, or objecting to Nietzsche’s title The Antichrist on the grounds that it isn’t really about eschatology or apocalyptic literature. (I thought Straussians were not supposed to be literal-minded.)Wise says he wishes I were more “honest” and “upfront” about my favoring a Scholastic reading of Aristotle.  I guess titling one of my books Scholastic Metaphysicsand another one Neo-Scholastic Essayswas too subtle. 
As I said in my original reply, my book concerns topics in philosophy of nature and philosophy of science such as embodied cognition, epistemic structural realism, causal powers and laws of nature, the A- and B-theories of time, presentism, reductionism in chemistry and biology, essentialism, and much else along these lines.  Wise’s latest remarks offer us no explanation of why he ignored all of this – that is to say, of why he ignored the actual contents of the book.
However, he does once again repeat his preposterous and out-of-left-field insinuation that my positions on such issues rest on specifically Christian theological premises.  And he takes a second stab at cobbling together some justification for it.  Ready for it?  Here it is: the justification is that my “bibliography… includes a massive edifice of theistic sources.”
There are two problems with this.  First, Wise’s assertion here is patently ridiculous, as anyone who has a copy of the book (which, conveniently for Wise, is unlikely to include many of his readers) can easily verify.  Though I do quote some writers who happen to be theists (such as Aquinas and other Thomists) most of the writers I engage with are mainstream contemporary academic analytic philosophers working in philosophy of science and metaphysics, whose work has nothing to do with theology (and who in many cases are even hostile to that subject).
Second, even when I do cite Aquinas or some other Thomist writer, I am not citing some theological claim they make, much less some claim about Christianity, but rather something they have to say about science or philosophy.  These writers happen to be Christian, but none of the arguments they give that I endorse in my book depends on agreeing with them about that.  (Suppose a feminist said that, since most of the writers I cite also happen to be men, it follows that my book can only be convincing to other men.  I imagine Wise would agree that this would be a very moronic inference.  But his inference is no better.)
Wise also claims to find evidence for Christian theological premises insofar as “agency in all motion, angels as a concept of incorporeal beings, and miracles in evolution are... theistic concepts.”  But there are several problems with this.
First, “miracles in evolution” is Wise’s phrase, not mine.  What I actually do in the book is discuss a variety of possible ways evolution might be interpreted in terms of an Aristotelian philosophy of nature, and I explicitly note how an atheist might develop such an interpretation, even if such an interpretation is not one I would endorse.  (Thomas Nagel would be one well-known thinker who flirts with such a view, which further gives the lie to Wise’s absurd claim that only someone committed to Christian revelation could take seriously the sorts of arguments discussed in my book.  What I say about evolution no more depends on Christian theology than what I say about embodied cognition, structural realism, presentism, causal powers, etc. does.)
Second, the point I was making in the book vis-à-vis angelic intellects in no way requires the reader to believe that there are such intellects.  Rather, I was making a point about what sort of thing we would be left with if we consistentlystripped away all the aspects of our perceptual and conceptual grasp of the world that reflect a distinctively human point of view (so as to underline the difficulties in attempts to strip all that away).  Wise might as well say that the famous “Maxwell’s demon” thought experiment shows that modern physics is committed to the reality of the spirit realm. 
(“But Feser, you’re a Catholic who actually does believe there are angelic intellects!”  Well, yes I am.  So what?  Again, that is completely irrelevant to the specific points I was making in the book, which don’t rest on any such belief.  This is basic logic, which Wise apparently never studied between his readings and re-readings of Natural Right and History.) 
Third, while I would certainly hold that making sense of “agency” in the sense of efficient causal power ultimately requires affirming a divine uncaused cause, the reality of such a cause is not presupposed in talk of agency as such.  It requires argumentation to get to the existence of a divine cause.  It is not something that follows analytically or by definition from the notion of causal agency itself.  (That is how there can be neo-Aristotelian writers in contemporary analytic metaphysics who believe in real causal power in nature while having no truck with theism.)  Hence one can discuss efficient causality without getting into the question of whether there is a divine uncaused cause, just as one can discuss chess, or bourbon, or Steely Dan, without getting into the question of whether there is a divine uncaused cause.
Can it get any worse?  Dear reader, you know it can.  Wise reaches a climax of sorts with this gem of a paragraph:
Feser’s category of “philosophy of nature”… was new to me.  And I don’t think I am Miranda of The Tempest here, because Feser takes pains to define philosophy of nature himself.  It is his category.
End quote.  So, Wise, the guy who decided he was qualified to review a book about the philosophy of nature, thinks that “philosophy of nature” is something I came up with.
Well, here’s a word to Mr. Wise.  It would seem that you are, in fact, Miranda of The Tempest. 
But don’t worry, you can get up to speed.  There’s this new thing called Google.

Unwise book reviewing

Honestly, what runs through editors’ minds when they assign book reviewers?  The Claremont Review of Books has just run a review of Aristotle’s Revenge , by some fellow named J. Eric Wise.  And, heaven help us, it’s Glenn Ellmers’ review redivivus. 
Anyone who has read my book will be keen to learn what a reviewer might say about my views on topics like: embodied cognition and embodied perception; epistemic structural realism; causal powers and laws of nature; the A- and B-theories of time; presentism; reductionism in chemistry; primary versus secondary qualities; computational notions in natural science; biological reductionism; evolution and essentialism; neuroscientific reductionism; and so on.  You know, the stuff I actually discuss in the book. Wise has nothing to say about any of that.  Instead, he goes on at meandering length about (of all things) Machiavelli, Leo Strauss, and Harry Jaffa; about the views of physicist Carlo Rovelli; about the differences between Aristotle’s conception of God and those of the Scholastics; and other things that don’t actually have anything to do with my book.  Wise also laments that I defend broadly Aristotelian ideas and lines of argument rather than discussing the texts of Aristotle himself – never mind that the whole point of the book is to defend the broadly Aristotelian tradition rather than to do Aristotle exegesis.  As with Ellmers, it’s absolutely astounding how a “reviewer” could write so much and say so very little about the actual book under review.
One of the few remarks Wise does make about my book’s contents is a truly jaw-dropping piece of misrepresentation.  Here it is: “Only a few of Feser’s arguments, Aristotelian or otherwise, are likely to be compelling for anyone not already committed to an orthodox appreciation of Christian revelation.”  The title of the review also makes reference to “Christian science.”
Now, Wise offers no examples of any arguments I give in the book that rest on Christian theological premises, or any other theological premises.  The reason is that he could not have done so, because there are no such arguments in the book.
Wise’s rationale for his silly remark, as far as I can tell, is that since my understanding of the Aristotelian tradition is influenced by Aquinas and other Scholastics, and the Scholastics happened to be Christians, my arguments must rest on Christian revelation. 
Dear reader, if you really need it explained to you why this is a textbook non sequitur, please, please don’t review Aristotle’s Revenge.  I have little enough free time as it is, and I’d hate to waste any more of it replying to yet another inane book review that should have been assigned to someone competent to comment on the actual contents of the book.

The thread about nothing

It’s open thread time.  There is no topic, which means everything is on topic.  Now is the time finally to raise that issue that you keep bringing up out of left field in other threads – in comments I keep deleting while cussing you out under my breath.  From the Manhattan Project to the Manhattan Transfer, from Brian De Palma to Pachamama, from frontal lobotomies to Kantian autonomy – go ahead and hash it out.  As always, keep it civil, classy, and free of trolling and troll-feeding. Links to previous open threads can be found here.

Was Aquinas a property dualist?

One must always be cautious when trying to relate Aquinas’s position on some philosophical issue to the options familiar to contemporary academic philosophers.  Sometimes he is not addressing quite the same questions they are, even when he seems to be.  Sometimes he does not use key terms in the same ways they do.  And he is working with a general metaphysical picture of the world – in particular, a picture of the nature of substance, essence, causation, matter, and other fundamental notions – that is radically different from the options familiar to contemporary philosophers, in ways the latter often do not realize. Having said that, let me propose tentatively that there is a way that contemporary philosophers of mind might naturally fit Aquinas’s position on the mind-body problem into the framework of options they are familiar with – a way that is surprisingly neglected by them, even though it is pretty clearly implied by the way they tend to classify the options.
The usual classification goes something like this.  Descartes got the modern discussion of the mind-body problem going by putting forward his famous version of substance dualism.  For Descartes, there are two irreducibly different kinds of substance.  One of them is matter, conceived of as res extensa or extended substance.  The other is mind, conceived of as res cogitans or thinking substance.  The nature of each is entirely exhausted by extension and thought, respectively, and neither has any of the attributes of the other.  Res extensa doesn’t merely haveextension, but just is pure extension, utterly devoid of thought or consciousness.  Res cogitans doesn’t merely havethought, but just is pure thought, utterly devoid of extension.
Either one of these substances could exist in the absence of the other.  (That’s why each counts as a substance.  Each has an independent or freestanding existence relative to the other.)  A res extensa by itself and in the absence of a res cogitans would, even if it had all the physical and behavioral characteristics of a human body, be as devoid of thought and consciousness as a stone or a table.  It would be a “zombie,” in the sense familiar in contemporary philosophy of mind.  A res cogitans by itself and in the absence of a res extensa would be essentially like an angelic intellect.  A human being is a composite of these two kinds of substance, the result of their getting into a relation of efficient causal interaction.
Later modern philosophers do not all entirely agree with Descartes’ characterization of matter or of mind, but, to oversimplify a bit, they can be understood as essentially beginning with Descartes’ bifurcation and then modifying it in different ways.  One way to modify it is to keep res cogitans but deny that res extensa is real.  All that exist, on this view, are minds and their ideas, and tables, chairs, rocks, trees, and the like are really just collections of ideas.  Only mental substances and mental attributes are real, and physical objects are real only in the sense that they can be reduced toideas, which are mental attributes.  This is the idealism spelled out in different ways by thinkers like Leibniz and Berkeley.
Another way to modify Descartes’ picture is to keep res extensa instead and get rid of res cogitans.  On this approach, all that exist are material substances and material attributes, and thoughts, experiences, and the like are, if they are real at all, really just material attributes of some sort (neurological attributes, or computational attributes, or behavioral dispositions).  Minds are real only insofar as they can be reduced to, or shown entirely to supervene upon, matter.  This is the materialism spelled out in different ways by behaviorists, identity theorists, functionalists, and (in the most extreme version, which denies the reality of the mind altogether) eliminativists.
A third alternative to Descartes is to reject both res extensa and res cogitans, and hold instead that there is some thirdkind of substance that is the only kind that really exists.  What we think of as res extensa or res cogitansis really just this third kind of substance conceived of under different descriptions.  One way to spell this out is the dual aspect theory of Spinoza, and another is the neutral monism of Bertrand Russell.
Then there is the view developed in recent philosophy of mind according to which there is only one kind of substance – namely material substance – but that at least some material substances have two irreducibly different kinds of attributes, namely material attributes and non-material mental attributes.  On this view, materialism is right to deny a dualism of substances and to insist that material substances alone are real, but Descartes was right to insist on a dualism of attributes.  This view is sometimes called attribute dualism or, more commonly, property dualism.
Now, Aquinas certainly would not agree with any of these views.  He was an Aristotelian hylemorphist, and thus would reject the desiccated mathematicized conception of matter that Descartes and his successors put in place of hylemorphism.  He would reject Descartes’ substance dualism as too similar to the Platonic conception of the soul’s relationship to the body, which he was keen to reject.  He would reject the claims that only mind is real, or that only matter is real, or that only some third kind of thing that is neither mind nor matter is real.  And he would reject the property dualist claim that only material substances are real, albeit some of them have non-material properties.  (Into the bargain, he does not use the term “property” the same way that contemporary philosophers do, but that is a secondary point.)
It seems to me, however, that there is a sense in which Aquinas might arguably be classified as a property dualist, though certainly not a property dualist of the usual kind.  Again, contemporary property dualists hold that only material substances exist.  Aquinas disagrees with that, in part because he thinks that there are purely immaterial intellectual substances (namely angels).  But I think he would also reject the suggestion that a material substance could have non-material properties.  For Aquinas, the world exhibits an ontological hierarchy, from purely material things at the bottom to God at the top.  Things higher up in the hierarchy can be the source of things lower down, but not vice versa.  And a material substance with immaterial properties would seem to violate that principle.  It would be like an inorganic substance with vegetative properties.  Such a thing simply wouldn’t really be inorganic, and a material substance with immaterial properties simply wouldn’t really be a material substance.
But what about human beings, you ask?  Doesn’t Aquinas think of them as material substances with immaterial properties?  I’m inclined to say that that is not quite his view, or not quite what his view should be, given his broader metaphysical principles.  This is where the neglected option that contemporary philosophers of mind might have seen, but seem not to, comes in.  The idea of a material substance with both material and non-material properties is only one of two possible ways of spelling out property dualism.  Another way of doing so would be in terms of the idea of an immaterial substance with both material and non-material properties.  And that, I suggest, is essentially what Aquinas took a human being to be.
As I have argued elsewhere, most recently in an essay for the Blackwell Companion series, the Thomistic thesis that the soul is the form of the body is often misunderstood.  Many people read it as saying that the soul is the form of a substance that is entirely bodily, just as the soul of a dog or a tree is the form of a substance that is entirely bodily.  Then they find it puzzling that Aquinas could go on to say that the human soul subsists after death.  For how could the human soul continue after death if it is the form of the body and the body is gone, any more than the soul of a dog or of a tree could subsist after death?
But this misunderstands the Thomistic thesis.  The human soul is the form of a substance which has both bodily operations (like breathing, walking, seeing, etc.) and non-bodilyones (like thinking).  Because it is what gives the substance in question the bodily operations in question, it is, naturally, the form of the body.  But it doesn’t follow that the substance in question is entirely bodily, the way that a dog or a tree is.  It is not.  Even when alive, part of what we do (thinking and willing) isn’t entirely tied to the body in the first place.  That’s why the death of a human being does not entail his annihilation.  He carries on in a highly truncated state, reduced to his intellect and will – as an incomplete substance, as Aquinas says. 
And what kind of incomplete substance is that?  An immaterial one, naturally, since the body is gone.  As Aquinas writes:
It must necessarily be allowed that the principle of intellectual operation which we call the soul, is a principle both incorporeal and subsistent…
[T]he intellectual principle which we call the mind or the intellect has an operation per se apart from the body. Now only that which subsists can have an operation "per se." For nothing can operate but what is actual: for which reason we do not say that heat imparts heat, but that what is hot gives heat. We must conclude, therefore, that the human soul, which is called the intellect or the mind, is something incorporeal and subsistent.
End quote.  Now, a human being is one substance, not two.  Again, Aquinas rejects the Platonic view of the soul and would reject the Cartesian substance dualist view as too similar to it.  But a human being is not an angel, because angels have no bodily properties or operations at all and human beings do.  The implication seems clearly to be that a human being is an immaterial substance that has material or bodily operations and properties as well as immaterial ones.  In which case Aquinas is a property dualist of a sort.  And notice here that “property” in Aquinas’s sense of that term (and not just in the contemporary analytic philosopher’s sense of the term) is indeed the right word, because our bodily activities (again, breathing, walking, seeing, etc.) are indeed proper to us.  They are proper accidents of a human being rather than merely contingent ones.  A human being in his mature and healthy state will exhibit these bodily properties, which is why death is for Aquinas not a liberation (as it is for Plato).  It is, as I have put it elsewhere, something like a “full body amputation” – the loss of all of the bodily properties that a complete and fully functioning specimen of our kind would exhibit, leaving only the non-bodily properties.
Again, I say this tentatively.  Aquinas was not addressing precisely the issues contemporary philosophers are, and he does not use the relevant terminology in exactly the same way.  So a claim like “Aquinas was a kind of property dualist” is bound to be easily misunderstood.  It is bound to raise in some people’s minds connotations that I do not intend and that Aquinas would not accept.  But it seems to me that, suitably qualified, there is a sense in which it is true.
Further reading:
Was Aquinas a dualist?
Was Aquinas a materialist?
What is a soul?
So, what are you doing after your funeral?

Time-sensitive Turkey Day tweets (Updated)

UPDATE 12/10: I'm told that the Gordon-Carrier debate has been cancelled and may be rescheduled for another date.

Palgrave Macmillan announces a Cyber Week Sale until December 3.  Good time to pick up that copy of Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics you’ve been pining for.
Readers in the Los Angeles area might be interested to know that there will be a debate on December 13 at 7 pm between Catholic writer Timothy Gordon and atheist Richard Carrier, at St. Therese Catholic Church in Alhambra.

Time-sensitive Turkey Day tweets

Palgrave Macmillan announces a Cyber Week Sale until December 3.  Good time to pick up that copy of Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics you’ve been pining for.
Readers in the Los Angeles area might be interested to know that there will be a debate on December 13 at 7 pm between Catholic writer Timothy Gordon and atheist Richard Carrier, at St. Therese Catholic Church in Alhambra.

The Last Superstition in French

My book The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism is now available in a French translation.  The book is also available in Portugueseand German. 
While we're on the subject of translations, I suppose I might offer a reminder that Five Proofs of the Existence of God and Philosophy of Mind are also available in German, and that a book of some of my essays is available in Romanian.

Against candy-ass Christianity

The Mr. Rogers biopic, with Tom Hanks in the starring role, comes out this week and has been getting a lot of positive attention – in some cases, embarrassingly rapturous attention.  This might seem surprising coming from Hollywood types and secular liberals, given that Rogers was a Presbyterian minister.  But of course, Rogers’ adherence to Christian teaching has nothing to do with it.  Commenting on the movie, Angelus magazine reports that “Hanks mentions that Rogers was indeed an ordained minister but seems to take comfort that Rogers ‘never mentioned God in his show.’”  In the movie’s trailer, a man says to Mr. Rogers “You love broken people, like me,” to which Rogers replies “I don’t think you are broken” – never mind the doctrine of original sin. So, why the adulation?  The movie poster reminds us that “we could all use a little kindness.”  The Daily Beast story linked to above tells us that Rogers was America’s “one true hero” and that “Hanks could very well be a living saint,” all because of their extraordinary… “niceness.”  Indeed, “Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers may save us all,” because the movie reminds us that “the world we live in now still does have niceness in it.”
Niceness.  Well, it has its place.  But the Christ who angrily overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, who taught a moral code more austere than that of the Pharisees, and who threatened unrepentant sinners with the fiery furnace, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, was not exactly “nice.”
Now, my point is not to criticize Rogers himself, who I’m sure was a decent fellow, and who was, after all, simply hosting a children’s program.  I don’t know anything about his personal theological opinions, and I don’t know whether the movie accurately represents them or even refers to them at all.  The point is to comment on the idea that an inoffensive “niceness” is somehow the essence of the true Christian, or at least of any Christian worthy of the liberal’s respect.  For it is an idea that even a great many churchmen seem to have bought into. 
This is evident from the innumerable vapid sermons one hears about God’s love and acceptance and forgiveness, but never about divine judgment or the moral teachings to which modern people are most resistant – and which, precisely for that reason, they most need to hear expounded and defended.  And it is evident in the tendency of modern Catholic bishops to emphasize dialogue and common ground rather than conversion, orthodoxy, and doctrinal precision, and to speak of the Church’s teachings on sexual morality, if at all, only half-apologetically, in vague and soft language, and in a manner hedged with endless qualifications. 
Such “niceness” is in no way a part of Christian morality.  It is a distortion of the virtues of meekness(which is simply moderation in anger – as opposed to too much or too little anger), and friendliness(which is a matter of exhibiting the right degree of affability necessary for decent social order – as opposed to too little affability or too much). 
As always, St. Thomas illuminates where modern churchmen obfuscate.  Where meekness is concerned, Aquinas notes that just as anger should not be excessive or directed at the wrong object, so too can one be deficient in anger, and that this too can be sinful.  For anger is nature’s way of prodding us to act to set things right when they are in some way disordered.  The absence of anger in cases where it is called for is, for that reason, a moral defect, and a habit of responding to evils with insufficient anger is a vice.  Thus, as Aquinas writes in Summa Theologiae II-II.158.1:
Chrysostom says: “He that is angry without cause, shall be in danger; but he that is angry with cause, shall not be in danger: for without anger, teaching will be useless, judgments unstable, crimes unchecked.” Therefore to be angry is not always an evil…
[I]f one is angry in accordance with right reason, one's anger is deserving of praise …
It is unlawful to desire vengeance considered as evil to the man who is to be punished, but it is praiseworthy to desire vengeance as a corrective of vice and for the good of justice.
And as he adds in Summa Theologiae II-II.158.8:
[As] Chrysostom says: “He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins.  For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but even the good to do wrong.” …
Anger… [is] a simple movement of the will, whereby one inflicts punishment, not through passion, but in virtue of a judgment of the reason: and thus without doubt lack of anger is a sin…
Hence the movement of anger in the sensitive appetite cannot be lacking altogether, unless the movement of the will be altogether lacking or weak.  Consequently lack of the passion of anger is also a vice, even as the lack of movement in the will directed to punishment by the judgment of reason…
The lack of anger is a sign that the judgment of reason is lacking.
End quote.  On the subject of friendliness or affability, Aquinas notes that just as one can be deficient in this trait and thus difficult for others to get along with, it is also possible to go too far in the other direction.  In Summa Theologiae II-II.114.1he writes:
[F]or the sake of some good that will result, or in order to avoid some evil, the virtuous man will sometimes not shrink from bringing sorrow to those among whom he lives… For this reason we should not show a cheerful face to those who are given to sin, in order that we may please them, lest we seem to consent to their sin, and in a way encourage them to sin further.
And in Summa Theologiae II-II.115.1he describes such excess as a vice opposed to genuine friendliness:
[A]lthough the friendship of which we have been speaking, or affability, intends chiefly the pleasure of those among whom one lives, yet it does not fear to displease when it is a question of obtaining a certain good, or of avoiding a certain evil.  Accordingly, if a man were to wish always to speak pleasantly to others, he would exceed the mode of pleasing, and would therefore sin by excess.  If he do this with the mere intention of pleasing he is said to be “complaisant,” according to the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 6).
To be “complaisant” in this sense is to be agreeable, amiable, or keen to please.  It is, in short, to be Mr. Rogers-like.  And that is not only not per se Christ-like, it can, as Aquinas says, even be sinful if what is called for is talk that is bracingly frank and displeasing.
What is the root of these vices masquerading as the pseudo-virtue of “niceness”?  I would suggest that it is twofold, in part an error of the intellect and in part a malady of the will.  The intellectual error is the one that Pope Leo XIII referred to as “Americanism” – in particular, the
principle… that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions.  Many think that these concessions should be made not only in regard to ways of living, but even in regard to doctrines which belong to the deposit of the faith.  They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them. 
End quote.  This is essentially the mentality that has come to prevail in the decades since Vatican II.  Eternal damnation, the necessity of conversion to the Catholic faith, the immorality of contraception, and many other unpopular doctrines are simply not much talked about, and are hedged and softened and deemphasized on the rare occasions when they are talked about.  By contrast, the rhetoric of freedom, human dignity, dialogue and ecumenism, and other themes and jargon congenial to the liberal mindset are trumpeted as if they were somehow at the very heart of Catholicism.  The stern gravitas of the Fathers, Doctors, and saints has with many churchmen been replaced by a back-slapping, glad-handing affability. 
Predictably, this has resulted, not in people being drawn to the Church in greater numbers, but rather in a massive decline in observance and orthodoxy among Catholics, and a general assumption among Catholics and non-Catholics alike that the unpopular doctrines are not really important after all and will inevitably be abandoned.
The malady of the will that underlies the contemporary Christian fetish for “niceness” is the one Aquinas labeled effeminacy, by which he meant a softness in the face of even relatively mild difficulties.  In Summa Theologiae II-II.138.1, he explains:
[F]or a man to be ready to forsake a good on account of difficulties which he cannot endure… is what we understand by effeminacy, because a thing is said to be “soft” if it readily yields to the touch.  Now a thing is not declared to be soft through yielding to a heavy blow, for walls yield to the battering-ram.  Wherefore a man is not said to be effeminate if he yields to heavy blows… [P]roperly speaking an effeminate man is one who withdraws from good on account of sorrow caused by lack of pleasure, yielding as it were to a weak motion.
End quote.  Effeminacy in this sense is rife among modern churchmen, who seem to fear controversy above all things, and especially controversy that might earn them the disdain of the secular liberal intelligentsia.  And for most of the last few decades, the worst they would have faced is some bad press.  The way Western culture is turning now, they will probably face far worse than that in the not too distant future – and will face it precisely because they did not speak and act boldly and consistently enough when bad press was all they had to fear.  Appeasement only ever breeds contempt among those appeased, and spurs them to greater evil.
In the end, pseudo-Christian “niceness” will only doom both those who practice it and those they fear to offend.  In the book of Ezekiel, God famously warns those placed as “watchmen” over his people:
If I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.  But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way; he shall die in his iniquity, but you will have saved your life. (Ezekiel 33: 8-9)
Churchmen take note: A little more harshness might just save your soul, and the souls for which you are responsible – but nice guys finish last.

Join the Ur-Platonist alliance!

What’s in a name?  I’m an unreconstructed Thomist, but I would be the last to deny that it is a mistake to think that one man, Thomas Aquinas, somehow got everything right all by himself.  Aquinas was, of course, part of a much larger tradition that extends back to the ancient Greek philosophers.  Much of his achievement had to do with synthesizing the best elements from the different strands of thought he inherited from his predecessors, especially the Platonic-Augustinian and Aristotelian traditions.  And of course, his successors added further important elements to the mix.  Hence in some contexts, it is useful to employ a label that captures this breadth more clearly than “Thomism” does – such as “Aristotelico-Thomism” or, more broadly still, “Scholasticism.”  Indeed, I’m especially fond of the “Scholastic” label, and would urge its widespread adoption by young Catholic philosophers and theologians – in part for substantive reasons, but also in part as a way of showing solidarity with a group of thinkers who were the greatest the Church has produced, yet who have for too long been unjustly maligned even by some of their fellow Catholics.
However, especially where the issues do not have to do with specifically Catholic theology, but are of broader philosophical concern, even the “Scholastic” label can sometimes be too narrow.  There is a set of ideas and arguments that have their origin in Plato and Aristotle and are the common possession of later pagan thinkers like Plotinus, Jewish thinkers like Maimonides, and Muslim thinkers like Avicenna and Averroes, as well as the Church Fathers and the great Scholastics.  The label “classical theism” captures the shared philosophical theology of this diverse group, and “classical natural law” captures their shared ethical perspective.  But there are yet other philosophical themes that aren’t captured by these labels.
The 19thcentury Neo-Scholastic Josef Kleutgen suggested another label in the title of his important and recently translated book Pre-Modern Philosophy Defended .  Yet other labels sometimes used during the Neo-Scholastic era include “classical realism” and “the perennial philosophy.”  The trouble with these last two labels is that they are somewhat vague, and have been deployed by others in very different contexts to connote ideas that have nothing essentially to do with the thinkers mentioned above.
Now, there is another way to think about the tradition I’m describing, which has been developed by Lloyd Gerson in his important books Aristotle and Other Platonists and From Plato to Platonism (soon to be joined by a third volume titled Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy ).  In an excellent recent talk at the Thomistic Institute’s Student Leadership Conference at the Dominican House of Studies, Fr. James Brent proposed adopting Gerson’s framework as a way of understanding contemporary secularism.  Fr. Brent suggests that the conflict between secularism and traditional religious believers isn’t merely a dispute over the existence of God, but amounts to a larger conflict between philosophical naturalism on the one hand and what Gerson calls “Ur-Platonism” or “big tent” Platonism on the other.
As the title of the first of his books referred to above indicates, Gerson sees Aristotle as part of the Platonist tradition broadly construed, and that is in fact how many of the ancients also saw him.  Of course, Aristotle disagreed with Plato on some important points, but this disagreement took place against a background of agreement on the philosophical fundamentals.  Gerson also argues for a return to the ancient view that the thinking of so-called “Neo-Platonists” like Plotinus (who thought of themselves as simply Platonists full stop, and who also regarded Aristotle as part of the Platonist club) was in fact continuous with that of Plato, rather than marking some break or novelty.  Gerson proposes a couple of ways of spelling out the nature of the broad agreement that existed between these thinkers.
In From Plato to Platonism, he suggests that the common core of “Ur-Platonism” can be characterized in negative terms, as a conjunction of five “antis”: anti-materialism, anti-mechanism, anti-nominalism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism.  Together these elements make up a sixth “anti-,” namely anti-naturalism.  Thinkers in the Ur-Platonist tradition spell out the implications of this conjunction of “antis” in ways that differ in several details, but certain common themes tend to emerge, such as the thesis that ultimate explanation requires positing a non-composite divine cause, the immateriality of the intellect, and the objectivity of morality.  In his talk, Fr. Brent follows this approach to characterizing the tradition.
In Aristotle and Other Platonists, Gerson proposed a positive characterization of the tradition, as comprising seven key themes: 1. The universe has a systematic unity; 2. This unity reflects an explanatory hierarchy and in particular a “top-down” approach to explanation (as opposed to the “bottom-up” approach of naturalism), especially in the two key respects that the simple is prior to the complex and the intelligible is prior to the sensible; 3. The divine constitutes an irreducible explanatory category, and is to be conceived of in personal terms (even if in some Ur-Platonist thinkers the personal aspect is highly attenuated); 4. The psychological also constitutes an irreducible explanatory category; 5. Persons are part of the hierarchy and their happiness consists in recovering a lost position within it, in a way that can be described as “becoming like God”; 6. Moral and aesthetic value is to be analyzed by reference to this metaphysical hierarchy; and 7. The epistemological order is contained with this metaphysical order.
If Gerson and Fr. Brent are right, then arguably the two main competing visions in the history of Western thought are represented by Ur-Platonists on the one hand, and on the other hand those who defend the positions that Ur-Platonists are against (namely materialism, mechanism, nominalism, relativism, and skepticism), and especially philosophical naturalists.  (I don’t mean to deny that there are thinkers who don’t unambiguously fall into either of these camps.  Of course there are.  But I think it can be argued that these are the main tendencies, and that even thinkers that don’t clearly fall into one or the other at least tend in the direction of the one or the other.)
The main downside to the “Ur-Platonist” label is that the term “Platonism” is these days usually used by academic philosophers to refer to the thesis that there are abstract objects (such as Platonic Forms and mathematical objects) existing in a “third realm” distinct from either the material world or any mind.  But as Gerson argues, historically speaking that is in fact much too narrow a way of using the term.  For example, it isn’t what the Church Fathers mean when they talk about Platonism, and it isn’t what the so-called “Neo-Platonists” mean when they talk about Platonism.  Consider also that when naturalist thinkers like Nietzsche and Richard Rorty use “Platonism” as a pejorative term to describe what they are fundamentally against, they don’t mean merely the thesis that there are abstract objects.  Rather, what they mean to oppose is precisely the broad tradition that Gerson calls “Ur-Platonism.”
If the naturalists are the bad guys, then “Ur-Platonists” is as good a label as any for the good guys.  I recommend giving Fr. Brent’s talk a listen, and all serious students of philosophy and theology are well-advised to study Gerson’s work.