Edward Feser's Blog, page 5

Trump’s Gaza proposal is gravely immoral

Today mycritique of Trump’s Gaza proposal appears at the National Catholic Register.  Friends,whether you agree or disagree, I urge you to allow your opinions on this gravematter to be molded only by dispassionate reason and moral principle ratherthan anger and partisanship.

Just war principles and the Mexican drug cartels

In mylatest article at Postliberal Order,I argue that under certain conditions, U.S. military intervention in Mexicoagainst the drug cartels would be justifiable according to the principles oftraditional just war theory.

Catholics and immigration on No Spin News (Updated)

Those who follow me on Twitter/X will know that Iposted there heavily last week about the controversy over Catholicism andimmigration.  This evening, I appear onBill O’Reilly’s No Spin Newsprogram to discuss the controversy.  O'Reilly Premium Members can watch the segment here.

UPDATE 2/5: You can now watch the interview here.

Catholics and immigration on No Spin News

Those who follow me on Twitter/X will know that Iposted there heavily last week about the controversy over Catholicism andimmigration.  This evening, I appear onBill O’Reilly’s No Spin Newsprogram to discuss the controversy.  O'Reilly Premium Members can watch the segment here.

More on Immortal Souls

The latest feedback on ImmortalSouls: A Treatise on Human Nature . At Twitter/X, theologian Ulrich Lehner writes: “Awonderful book. Sharply sharply argued, readable, and always illuminating.”  Szilvay Gergely kindly reviewsthe book in the Hungarian magazine Mandiner.  From the review: “Feser… can arguesurprisingly effectively and convincingly… If you considered the immortality ofthe soul (and the whole person) to be an unsupported myth, then Feser showsthat this is not the case.”

The ethics of invective

It’s often saidthat while sticks and stones can break our bones, words can never hurt us.  But it isn’t true.  Were we mere animals it would be true, butwe’re not.  We are rational social animals.  Hencewe can be harmed, not only in ways that injure the body, but also in ways thatbring distress to the mind and damage our standing with our fellow humanbeings.  These harms are typically not asgrave as those involving bodily trauma, but they are real harms all thesame.  Indeed, mockery and the loss ofone’s good name can even be felt by one who suffers them as worse than (atleast some) bodily harms. 

Ordinarily,of course, it is wrong to inflict bodily harm on someone.  But not always.  It can be permissible and sometimes evenobligatory to do so – for example, in self-defense or in punishment of a crime.  It is not inflicting bodily harm per se that is bad, but ratherinflicting it on someone who does not deserve it.  The difference between the guilty and theinnocent is crucial.  Bank robbers shootingat police and the police who fire back at them are inflicting the same sort ofharm on each other, but they are not morally on a par.  The robbers are doing something evil but thepolice are doing something good, namely defending themselves and others fromthe evildoing of the robbers.

Somethinganalogous can be said about the harm we inflict with words.  Ordinarily we should avoid this, but notalways.  Sometimes a person deserves suchharm, and in some cases we do good by inflicting it.  Thus Aquinas writes:

Just as it is lawful to strike a person, or damnify him inhis belongings for the purpose of correction, so too, for the purpose ofcorrection, may one say a mocking word to a person whom one has to correct.  It is thus that our Lord called the disciples“foolish,” and the Apostle called the Galatians “senseless.”  Yet, as Augustine says (De Serm. Dom. in Monte ii, 19), “seldom and only when it is verynecessary should we have recourse to invectives, and then so as to urge God'sservice, not our own.” (Summa TheologiaeII-II.72.2)

Naturally,there are some harms we inflict through words that are never permissible.  For example, calumny involves damaging someone’s reputation by spreadingfalsehoods about him.  This is always andintrinsically wrong.  But there areharmful words of other kinds that are not always and intrinsically wrong. 

Two kinds inparticular are especially relevant to public debate about matters of politics,philosophy, theology, and the like. There are, first of all, public insults and mockery of the kind that maydecrease the honor or esteem in which another person is held.  And second, there is the public disseminationof truths about another person that tend to damage his reputation.  When insults and mockery of the sort inquestion are not deserved, they amount to what moral theologians call the sinof contumely.   When such damage to a person’s reputation isnot deserved, it amounts to what is called the sin of detraction. 

Needless tosay, the sins of contumely and detraction are extremely common in public debate– perhaps more common today than ever before, given the rise of theinternet.  But sometimes a person maydeserve to be spoken of in ways that dishonor him or damage his reputation, andsometimes the pubic good may even be served by such speech.  In these cases, such harmful words do notamount to contumely or detraction, any more than a policemen’s killing a bankrobber who shoots at him amounts to murder.

Hence, inhis treatment of detraction, Aquinas holds that “if it is for the sake of somethinggood or necessary that someone utters words by which someone else’s reputationis diminished, then, as long as the right circumstances are preserved, this isnot a sin and cannot be called detraction” (SummaTheologiae II-II.73.2, Freddosotranslation).  For example, “itis not detraction to reveal someone’s hidden sin by denouncing him for the sakeof his improvement or by accusing him for the sake of the good of public justice.”  Similarly, moral theologians John McHugh andCharles Callan note that “the public good is to be preferred to a falsereputation, for the public welfare is the ground for the right to suchreputation, the subject himself being unworthy of the good name he bears” (Moral Theology, Volume II, p. 243).  Hence, there is nothing wrong with revealingsomeone’s criminal behavior to authorities or to those who might be harmed byit, or with warning consumers of fraudulent business practices.

In general,though a good person has an absolute right to a good reputation, there is noabsolute right to such a reputation among those who do not deserve it.  As McHugh and Callan write:

The right to a false reputation is a relative and limitedright, one which ceases when the common good on which it rests no longersupports it (e.g. when it cannot be maintained without injustice).  Moreover, there is no right to anextraordinary reputation, if it is based on false premises, for the common gooddoes not require such a right, and hence it is not detraction to show that therenown of an individual for superior skill or success is built up onadvertising alone or merely on uninformed rumor. (p. 225)

For example,it is not detraction to point out that a commentator well-known for hisopinions about some topic (political, scientific, philosophical, theological,or whatever) in fact is not competent to speak about it and that his views havelittle value.  Even if this damages hisreputation, there is no sin of detraction, because no one has a right to a reputation for some excellencethat in fact he lacks.  It can even be obligatoryfor those who do have the relevant expertise to call attention to such aperson’s incompetence, lest those who don’t know any better are misled by him.

Similarly, asAquinas says in the first passage from the Summaquoted above, it is not always sinful, and indeed can even be necessary, todeploy insult or mockery.  McHugh and Callannote that “those are not guilty of contumely who speak words that are nothonorable to persons deserving of reproof” (p. 211).  Naturally, people who deserve it wouldinclude those who are themselves guilty of detraction or contumely.  McHugh and Callan hold that in self-defenseagainst such verbal attacks, “it is lawful to deny the charge, or by retort toturn the tables on the assailant” (p. 216). 

It is truethat in some cases it can be virtuous simply to remain humbly silent in theface of detraction or contumely.  Butthis is not always necessary or advisable. McHugh and Callan write:

One should repel contumely when there are good and sufficientreasons for this course, and hence Our Lord… refuted those who decried Him as ablasphemer, or glutton, or demoniac, or political disturber…

The good of the offender, in order that his boldness besubdued and that he be deterred from such injuries in the future, is asufficient reason.  Hence the words ofProverbs (xxvi. 5) that one should answer a fool, lest he think himself wise.

The good of others is another reason, in order that they benot demoralized by the vilification of one whom they have looked up to as anexample and guide, especially if silence will appear to be a sign of weaknessor carelessness or guilt.  Hence, St.Gregory says that preachers should answer detractors, lest the Word of God bewithout fruit.

The good of self is a third reason for replying to contumely,for to enjoy the respect and esteem of others helps many a good person to actworthily of the opinion in which he is held, and it restrains many a sinnerfrom descending to worse things than those of which he is guilty. (pp. 215-16)

It is nosurprise, then, that scripture and Church history are full of saints whodeployed verbal attacks when engaging with their enemies.  Elijah mocked the priests of Baal (1 Kings18:27).  St. John the Baptist called thePharisees and Sadducees a “brood of vipers” (Matthew 3:7).  Christ Himself condemned the scribes andPharisees as “whitewashed tombs” whose false outward piety disguised an inner“filthiness” (Matthew 23:27).  St. Paulpilloried Elymas the magician as a “son of the devil, enemy of allrighteousness, full of all deceit and villainy” (Acts 13:10).  St. Jerome was well-known for his invective.  St. Thomas More criticizedMartin Luther with vituperation so extreme that some of it could notbe quoted in a family publication.  Andso on.

Of course,by no means does this entail that “anything goes.”  Again, calumny is absolutely ruled out, nomatter who the target is.  And even whendeployed against wrongdoers, verbal attacks that are excessive or motivated bya vengeful spirit rather than defense of the good would amount to detraction orcontumely and thus be sinful.  The point,though, is that it would be a mistake to suppose that those who fight invectivewith invective are necessarily nobetter than those they are responding to. That would be like supposing that police who return fire at bank robbersare no better than the bank robbers.  Itignores the crucial distinctions between the guilty and the innocent, andbetween the aggressor and the defender.

It can beespecially appropriate to employ insulting and otherwise harsh language whendealing with those who both promote bad ideas and are themselves gratuitouslyabusive in their dealings with others.  Andthat is not merely because they deserve such tit-for-tat.  It is because a softer approach is oftensimply ineffective in countering their errors. Sometimes a bully will not be stopped by anything but a punch in thenose.  And when the bullying takes theform of invective, the punch in the nose should take the same form.

Consider theNew Atheist movement, now pretty much dead but once very influential.  As I showed in my book The Last Superstition: A Refutation ofthe New Atheism, the arguments of New Atheist writers like RichardDawkins and Sam Harris were laughably sophomoric.  But they were presented with supremeself-confidence, and dripped with condescension and contempt for the religiousthinkers who were their targets.  Hence,though the New Atheism’s intellectual content was extremely thin, its polemicalstyle gave it a rhetorical force that could be intimidating to many. 

Whenresponding to such polemics, it is insufficient politely to point out fallaciesand errors of fact.  For it isn’t the intellectualquality of the arguments that is doing the main work in the first place, butrather the aggressive and self-assured tone. To leave that unrebutted is to leave the façade largely intact.  No matter how carefully you explain why anargument is no good, many readers will still retain the impression that if itis presented with such arrogant self-confidence, it must have something going for it.  A weak case can convince many simply on thestrength of the unearned prestige of the person presenting it.  Hence that prestige must be lowered bydeploying against it the same sort of rhetoric that created it. 

Note thatthis does not involve any ad hominemfallacy.  An ad hominem fallacy involves attacking a person instead of attacking some claim or argument the person made, while atthe same time pretending that one has thereby refuted the claim or argumentitself.  That is not what I am talkingabout.  Of course one must, first andforemost, refute the claims and arguments themselves.  What I am saying is that in addition to doing that, one must sometimes attack the credibilityof the person, when that credibility is illusory but will lead his listenerswrongly to take his views seriously.  (Isay more hereabout what an ad hominem fallacy isand what it is not.)

Hence, myapproach in The Last Superstition wasto deploy against the New Atheists superior intellectual firepower coupled withequal and opposite rhetorical force.  Ihave over the years dealt with various other sophists, blowhards, and bulliesin the same fashion.  I make no apologiesfor that, because such treatment is justifiable in light of the principles I’vebeen setting out here.  But by no meansdo I, or would I, take this approach with others with whom I disagree.  Mostly it’s uncalled for and unnecessary.

OccasionallyI’m nevertheless accused of being too frequently aggressive in style.  That this is not true is something for whichthere is some objective evidence.  Of thefourteen books I’ve written, co-written, or edited, exactly one is written in the polemical style inquestion – namely, The Last Superstition.  Of the over 250 articles I’vepublished (academic and popular articles, book reviews and the like), only about15% are in that style.  I’ve also writtenwell over 1500 blog posts, and while it would take more time than I’m willingto spend to determine the percentage of polemical articles among them, I’dwager that it’s about the same.

In anyevent, usually the people who fling the accusation are themselves routinely vituperative,or are fans of some vituperative writer to whom I’ve responded in kind.  Though the “sticks and stones” cliché isn’ttrue, another well-known saying certainly is: Those who like to dish it out oftencan’t take it.

A report from the Great Los Angeles Fire

On the extent,causes, and lessons of the disaster, in my latest articleat Postliberal Order.

The thread you’ve been waiting for

Let’s closeout 2024 and begin 2025 with a long overdue open thread.  Now’s your chance to get that otherwise off-topiccomment posted at last.  From platetectonics to Hooked on Phonics, from substanceabuse to substance dualism, from Thomism to Tom Tom Club, everything is on-topic. Trolls still not welcome, though, sokeep it sane and civil.

Previous openthreads archived here.

Boczar on Immortal Souls

At The Review of Metaphysics, philosopherJack Boczar kindly reviewsmy book ImmortalSouls: A Treatise on Human Nature .  From the review:

“The book's title is an homage to David Hume, and Feser hascertainly taken Hume to task, giving cogent arguments for the reality of theself (chapter 2), freedom of the will (chapter 4), immateriality of theintellect (chapter 8), and more…

It is with contemporary developments in the philosophy ofmind where Feser is at his best, and readers will not be disappointed with hiscritique of positions such as Buddhism's no-self doctrine (chapter 2)…

Feser again is at his best in cogently establishing theimmateriality of the intellect.  He putsforth various arguments.  His mostpowerful argument is a modified version of James Ross's argument from theindeterminacy of the physical (chapter 8)… One of the unique contributions thatFeser makes to contemporary literature is his defense of the immateriality ofthe intellect from its simplicity (chapter 8).  Readers should pay close attention to thispowerful argument.”

End quote.  Boczar alsooffers two lines of criticism.  First, hesuggests that I could say more to explain how disembodied human souls areindividuated after death.  He notes thatI hold, as Aquinas does, that the fact that they were associated with distinctbodies before death issufficient to individuate them.  However,says Boczar, “this should be spelled out more, as it is well known that the LatinAverroists at Paris held that the individual ceases to exist after death, eventhough the intellect is immaterial and immortal.”

This is aview Aquinas addressed in several places, and the philosophical anthropology heappealed to in answering it is essentially the same as the one I defend in thebook.  Start with the fact that any twohuman beings, such as Socrates and Plato, are distinct substances of the kind rational animal.  Part of what this entails is that they arenot fewer than two substances.  When Socrates walks or talks and Plato walksor talks, there are two numerically distinct things carrying out twonumerically distinct activities.  Thereis Socrates and his walking, and Plato and his walking.  And there is Socrates and his talking, andPlato and his talking.  There is notsomehow one substance here that is doing all the walking and talking.  We know this from experience, as surely as weknow from experience that two trees or two stones are numerically distinct thingswith numerically distinct properties.

Another partof what it entails is that Socrates and Plato are not more than two substances. With Socrates, for example, it is one and the same substance that bothwalks and talks.  It is not that Socratesis an aggregate of two substances, one which does the walking and one whichdoes the talking.  Now, as a rationalanimal, among the many other things a human being like Socrates does arethinking, willing, seeing, hearing, thirsting, and digesting.  And again, it is one and the same substancethat does all of these things.  This toowe know from experience, as surely as we know in the case of a tree or a stonethat it is one and the same substance that does the things characteristic ofthe tree and that has the properties characteristic of a stone. 

What thesefacts rule out are, first, the Averroist view that it is a single, commonintellectual substance that is really doing all the things of an intellectual kindthat we attribute to different human beings; and, second, the Cartesian viewthat there are, in the case of any human being, two substances doing what humanbeings do, a res cogitans doing the intellectualthings and a res extensa doing thecorporeal things.  Contra the Averroist,there are as many distinct substances with intellects as there are humanbeings.  Contra the Cartesian, each of thesesubstances not only does intellectual things but also bodily things likewalking, seeing, and digesting.

Now, onAquinas’s account, matter individuates members of a species, so that the factthat there are distinct bodies associated with different human beings sufficesto make them distinct individual members of the same species rational animal.  But because the intellectual powers areincorporeal, each individual member of this particular species can carry onafter the death of the body, as an incomplete substance whose operations are reducedto those of its intellectual powers. 

Why, Boczarwonders, wouldn’t the fact that they can carry on after death make them comparableto angels, each of whom is the unique member of its own species?  The answer is that it is normal for an angelto be disembodied, but not normal fora human being to be disembodied.  Anangelic intellect without a body is nevertheless a complete substance, but ahuman intellect without a body is nota complete substance.  Even when itpersists beyond the death of its body, it is by nature ordered to its body, whereas an angelic intellect is in no wayordered to a body. 

Boczaroverlooks this natural ordering.  Henotes that I hold that “the fact that all human beings start out with distinctbodies is sufficient to individuate them,” but wonders why this would be sufficient. This would indeed be a mystery if the intellect were related to the bodythe way the Cartesian supposes, because that sort of relationship is entirelycontingent.  But again, the intellect isnot related to the body in that way.  Itis not a complete substance that is only contingently related to (some distinctsubstance with) corporeal powers; rather, the intellect is an incorporeal powerof a substance which in its complete state also has corporeal powers.

The otherpart of Immortal Souls that Boczartakes issue with is my discussion of the fixity of the will after death.  Like Aquinas, I argue that while the ultimateend toward which the will is oriented is not fixed while the intellect isembodied, it becomes fixed with the loss of the body at death.  Why, Boczar wonders, would it not becomechangeable again when the body is restored at the resurrection?

Here itseems to me that Boczar has not paid sufficient attention to the details of mydiscussion of this issue.  As I argue inmy New Blackfriars article “Aquinas on theFixity of the Will After Death” and repeat in chapter 10 of Immortal Souls, it is not embodiment as such that entails the changeabilityof the will.  What is going on is,rather, this.  An end can be changed onlyby reference to some further end.  Forexample, if my goal is to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco as efficientlyas possible and I intend to buy a train ticket in order to realize this end, Imight change my mind and go by airplane instead if I find that that would be amore efficient way to realize it.  And ifmy reason for wanting to get to San Francisco is that I believe that anAmerican Catholic Philosophical Association meeting is being held there, Imight change my mind about going to San Francisco if I find out that my beliefwas mistaken and that the meeting is actually going to be in San Diego.

But when wecome to the ultimate end toward whichall my actions are ordered (whatever it might be), that cannot be changed,precisely because it is ultimate.  Thereis, in the nature of the case, no higher end by reference to which it might be changed.  Now, in the case of an angel, its highest endis fixed immediately after its creation. Its will comes to be ordered most fundamentally to whatever itsintellect first judges to be the highest good, and anything else it might willever afterward will be willed only insofar as it conduces to that perceived highestgood.  That perceived highest good cannotitself be changed, because there is nothing higher by reference to which itmight be changed.

The reasonthis does not happen immediately upon the creation of a human being does indeedhave crucially to do with the body, but not quite in the way Boczar (like many otherreaders of Aquinas) supposes.  Becausehuman beings are embodied, they, unlike angels, have passions and sensory appetitesthat influence the will in a way that prevents it from becoming fixed on anyparticular end as highest.  It is only whenthese passions and sensory appetites disappear with the death of the body thatthe will, now relevantly like that of an angel (insofar as it is free of thesedistracting influences), becomes fixed on a perceived highest end.  And as with an angel, once this happens, thereis no way for that end to be changed, for in the nature of the case there is nohigher end by reference to which it might be changed.

As others dowhen first becoming familiar with this position, Boczar wonders why therestoration of the body at the resurrection would not open the door to thisperceived highest end being changed.  Themistake they are making is that they suppose that Aquinas’s claim is that, thoughthe will can become fixed on some ultimate end during a human being’s lifetime,the body makes it possible for it to become unfixed from that end and fixedinstead on some other ultimate end.  Andin that case, why wouldn’t the restoration of the body allow it once again tobecome unfixed?

But that isnot what is going on at all.  It’s notthat, during life, the presence of the body allows the will successively to becomefixed on different ultimate ends.  Rather,the presence of the body prevents itfrom ever becoming fixed on anyultimate end.  The will, while the bodyis present, is not like an arrow that reaches a target but can somehow beremoved from that target and fired at another. Rather, it is like an arrow that has not yet reached any target atall.  The target is reached only atdeath.  But it is reached then.  That iswhy restoring the body would in no way allow the will to change its ultimateend.  It could do so only if the willwere still at that point like an arrow that had not yet reached any target. 

To take adifferent analogy, the will before the death of the body is like wet clay thatis being molded into a series of successive shapes but has not yet fixed on anyof them.  Death is like the furnace thatdries the clay into some one determinate shape, such as a pot.  Once that happens, the clay cannot ever againtake on any other shape.  And in the sameway, once the will has at last fixed on some ultimate end at death, it cannotbecome fixed on another, no matter what happens.  To ask “Why wouldn’t the restoration of thebody allow the ultimate end to be changed?” is like asking “Why wouldn’t pouringsome water into the pot make the clay once again malleable?”

This, in anyevent, is what I would say is the correct way to understand Aquinas’s position,or at least what he should say giventhe relevant principles he is reasoning from. Naturally, there is much more to be said, and I address the subject indetail in Immortal Souls (and I havemore to say about the exegetical issues surrounding the relevant texts fromAquinas in the New Blackfriarsarticle).

Gilson on philosophy and its history

You mightsuppose from the title of Etienne Gilson’s TheUnity of Philosophical Experience that it is a book about philosophyin general.  And ultimately it is.  But its bulk is devoted to detailed accountsof the ideas of thinkers Gilson regards as having gotten things badly wrong,such as Abelard, Ockham, Descartes, Malebranche, Kant, and Comte.  There is relatively little about thinkersGilson regards as having gotten things largely right, such as Aristotle andAquinas.  This might seem odd.  For the sympathetic reader might suppose thatthe experience of philosophers like Aristotle and Aquinas should surely countas least as much as (indeed, more than) that of more wayward thinkers, whenelucidating the nature of philosophy.

But such areaction would reflect a misunderstanding of the book’s title.  “Philosophical experience,” as Gilson usesthe phrase, has nothing to do with some way of life or psychological profile thatphilosophers share in common.  He’s notconcerned with “what it’s like to be a philosopher,” as Thomas Nagel might say.  A clue to what he does mean is provided by the titles he gives the book’s first threeparts, viz. “The Medieval Experiment,” “The Cartesian Experiment,” and “TheModern Experiment.”  The “experience” referredto in Gilson’s title is analogous to the experience on which empirical sciencerests.  It has to do with a kind of experimentation to which certainphilosophical ideas have, in a way, been put.

What way isthat?  Gilson holds that “the history of philosophyis to the philosopher what his laboratory is to the scientist” (p. 95).  The theories of empirical science entailpredictions which can be tested by observation. By contrast, metaphysical theories, which concern matters that transcendwhat can be observed, cannot be tested that way.  All the same, such theories also have theirentailments, and if a metaphysical theory leads to conclusions that areincoherent or otherwise known to be false, then we have grounds for rejectingit.  Now, given the limitations of theindividual human intellect, not all the implications of a metaphysical theoryare ever worked out or understood by the individual thinker who came up withit.  We need to look to what hissuccessors had to say in developing further the thinker’s premises, taking themin new directions, criticizing them, and so on. Hence it is to the history of philosophy, rather than to the laboratory,that we must look in order to test metaphysical theories.  The “experiments” to which such a theory is putare, essentially, embodied in the historical record of what happened as thetheory was developed and criticized in this way.

What aboutthe “unity” referred to by Gilson in his title? Gilson is speaking here of the way that, as he argues, a number ofphilosophical theories from the Middle Ages to the present have made a similartype of opening move and been led thereby into the same problematicoutcome.  The opening move in question isessentially that of trying to transform metaphysical questions into questionsof some other type.  The problematicoutcome is skepticism about metaphysics. But this skepticism always turns out to be intellectuallyunsatisfactory, so that it is always followed by a renewed attempt atmetaphysics – but often one that makes a new opening move of the same generaltype, so that the cycle begins again.  Thelesson this series of experiments teaches us is that it is a mistake to make anopening move of the type in question.

Examples ofthis sort of move that are discussed by Gilson include the attempt to reducemetaphysical questions to questions of logic, which Gilson associates withPeter Abelard.  There is also the attemptto resolve metaphysical questions by way of theology, which Gilson associateswith thinkers like Bonaventure.  Ockham,Gilson argues, essentially tries to resolve metaphysical questions by appeal tohuman psychology.  Descartes does so bymodeling all knowledge on mathematics. Kant, Gilson says, modeled it on Newtonian physics, and Comte on sociology.  Such views (which Gilson calls logicism, theologism, psychologism,mathematicism, physicism, and sociologism,respectively) essentially try to turn metaphysics into something else.  They do so by taking one part of reality (such as mathematical truth, or physical reality,or the human mind) and modeling the wholeof reality on it. 

Butmetaphysics by its nature is concerned precisely with the whole – with being qua being – so that attempts to makeit about a part of the whole, thereby distorting it, will inevitably fail.  Critics of metaphysics conclude from thisseries of failures that there is something wrong with metaphysics itself, butthis is a non sequitur.  For the failuresreflect the distortion of metaphysics rather than anything in the nature of metaphysicsitself.  And that metaphysical inquirykeeps reviving even in the wake of these failures reflects the fact that thereare real questions that it alone can address – questions that go deeper thanthose addressed by the other branches of human knowledge that too manymetaphysicians have mistakenly tried to model metaphysics on.

This is thecontext in which Gilson makes his famous remark that “philosophy always buriesits undertakers” (p. 246).  This, hesuggests, is a “law” established by the philosophical “experiments” he hasdescribed in the book (in a way analogous to the manner in which physical lawsare established by physical experiment). And there are further laws that are so established, such as the law that“by his very nature, man is a metaphysical animal” (p. 248) and the law that “asmetaphysics aims at transcending all particular knowledge, no particularscience is competent either to solve metaphysical problems, or to judge theirmetaphysical solutions” (p. 249).  Hetakes “philosophical experience” thereby to have vindicated the approach ofthinkers like Aristotle and Aquinas (though he emphasizes that this does notentail that they have given us the last word).

Gilson’saccount suggests the following analogy (mine, not his).  Heresy, in the strict theological sense,involves plucking some element of Christian doctrine out from its largerdogmatic context and thereby distorting it. (The word “heresy” comes from the Greek hairesis, which connotes “taking” or “choice.”)  For example, monophysitism so emphasizesChrist’s divinity that it destroys his humanity, thereby distorting the thesisthat Jesus is God.  Modalism soemphasizes divine unity that it destroys the distinctness of the three divinePersons, thereby distorting the doctrine of the Trinity.  And so on. The metaphysical errors Gilson describes are analogous to this, insofaras they involve “taking” or “choosing” some part of reality (mathematics,physics, mind, or whatever) and erroneously modeling the whole on it, therebydistorting both the whole and the part. 

We canextend the analogy further.  Pope St.Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, famouslycharacterized modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies.”  Philosophy since the time of Ockham has hadan analogous character, so that it is no accident that most (though, admittedly,not all) of what Gilson recounts in TheUnity of Philosophical Experience occurred after his time, and during thepost-medieval period especially.  Modernphilosophy can therefore be characterized as a kind of “synthesis of all metaphysicalerrors.”  It has recapitulated errorsseen previously in the history of philosophy (such as in the Pre-Socraticperiod) but ramified and exacerbated them, and in a relatively short historicalperiod.  And because the moral andpolitical errors characteristic of the modern world have followed from these metaphysicalerrors, Gilson’s book is a key text for understanding not just modernphilosophy, but modernity in general.