Edward Feser's Blog, page 72

Reply to Mark Shea on capital punishment

Crisis magazine has reprinted the first of the two articles that political scientist Joseph Bessette and I recently wrote for Catholic World Report putting forward a Catholic defense of capital punishment.  (The articles merely summarize briefly some of the lines of argument we develop in detail and at length in our book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty, forthcoming from Ignatius Press.)Commenting on the article, Catholic writer Mark Shea says that he agrees with its central thesis that “the Church cannot reverse its teaching on the death penalty and say that what is not intrinsically immoral is intrinsically immoral.”  Apparently, he is also willing to admit that even opposition in practice to capital punishment is “not a binding dogma.”  Shea simply thinks that capital punishment nevertheless is in practice “unnecessary” and that “its abolition [is] the wisest thing to do in civil law” – a positon Joe and I certainly acknowledge is one that a good Catholic might take (as recent popes have), even if we do not share it.  As we noted in our article, then-Cardinal Ratzinger stated in 2004 that “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about … applying the death penalty,” so that even a good Catholic could be “at odds with the Holy Father” on that particular subject.

As Pope St. John XXIII once wrote:
The Catholic Church, of course, leaves many questions open to the discussion of theologians.  She does this to the extent that matters are not absolutely certain…
[T]he common saying, expressed in various ways and attributed to various authors, must be recalled with approval: in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.  ( Ad Petri Cathedram 71-72)
What Catholic could disagree with that?
Well, Mark Shea, apparently.  For no sooner does he acknowledge the truth of what Joe and I wrote than he proceeds bitterly to denounce Catholics who have the effrontery actually to exercise the right the Church herself has recognized to hold differing opinions on the topic of capital punishment.  After acknowledging the truth of our basic claim, he writes: “So what?” – as if Joe and I were addressing some question no one is asking.  This is followed by a string of remarks like these:
When it comes to taking human life, the right wing culture of death asks “When do we get to kill?”
The Church, in contrast, asks, “When do we have to kill?”
The death penalty supporter looks for loopholes and ways to enlarge them so that he gets to kill somebody.  The Magisterium urges us to look for ways to avoid killing unless driven to do so by absolute necessity…
The term for that is “prolife”. You know, from conception to natural death. It’s what we are supposed to actually mean when we say “All Lives Matter”. Even criminal ones.
So it comes back to this: If you stop wasting your time and energy fighting the guidance of the Church, searching for loopholes allowing you to kill some of those All Lives that supposedly Matter to you, you find that you have lots more time and energy for defending the unborn that you say are your core non-negotiable. Why not do that instead of battling three popes and all the bishops in the world in a struggle to keep the US on a list with every Islamic despotism from Saudi Arabia to Iran, as well as Communist China and North Korea? Why the “prolife” zeal to kill?
Be more prolife, not less…
“I want to kill the maximum number of people I can get away with killing” is, on the face of it, a hard sell as comporting with the clear and obvious teaching of the Church and perhaps there are other issues in our culture of death that might use our time and energy more fruitfully, particularly when the immediate result of such an argument is to spawn a fresh batch of comments from priests scandalously declaring the pope a heretic, wacked out conspiracy theorists calling the pope “evil beyond comprehension“, and false prophets forecasting that “Antipope Francis” will approve abortion.  This is the atmosphere of the warriors of the right wing culture of death.  It does not need more oxygen.
End quote. 
Well.  What on earth is all that about?  And what does it have to do with what Joe and I wrote? 
Let’s consider the various charges Shea makes.  As to the “So what?”,  Joe and I are by no means merely reiterating something everyone already agrees with.  On the contrary, there is an entire school of thought with tremendous influence in orthodox Catholic circles – the “new natural law theory” of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Robert P. George, and many others – that takes the position that capital punishment is always and intrinsically immoral and that the Church can and ought to reverse her ancient teaching to the contrary.  Many other Catholics, including some bishops, routinely denounce capital punishment in terms that are so extreme that they give the false impression that the death penalty is by its very nature no less a violation of the fifth commandment than abortion or other forms of murder are.
In our article we cited cases in which even Pope Francis himself has made such extreme statements.  We also suggested that the pope’s remarks should be interpreted as rhetorical flourishes, but the fact remains that they certainly appear on a natural reading to be claiming that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong – a claim which would reverse the teaching of scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and every previous pope who has addressed the topic.
Since Shea agrees that the Church cannot make such a change, to be consistent he would also have to admit that the more extreme rhetoric from the pope and some bishops and other Catholics is misleading and regrettable.  He should also agree that “new natural lawyers” and others who hold that the Church should completely reverse past teaching on capital punishment are taking a position that cannot be reconciled with orthodoxy. 
The late Cardinal Dulles, among the most eminent of contemporary Catholic theologians, has (in remarks quoted in our article) gone so far as to say that a reversal of traditional teaching on capital punishment would threaten to undermine the very credibility of the Magisterium in general.  Our primary motivation in writing our book was to show that the Church has not in fact reversed past teaching on this subject, and thereby to defend the credibility of the Magisterium.  Accordingly, Shea’s charge that Joe and I are in the business of “fighting the guidance of the Church” is unjust and offensive.  So too is Shea’s casually lumping us in with those who characterize Pope Francis as a “heretic” and “antipope.”  In fact we explicitly said that we do not believe that the pope wishes to reverse past teaching, and we proposed reading his statements in a way consistent with the tradition.
As to Shea’s other remarks, it is simply outrageous – to be frank, it seems as clear an instance as there could be of what moral theologians would classify as an instance of calumny – to suggest that Joe and I are really just “look[ing] for loopholes and ways to enlarge them so that [we get] to kill somebody,” that we “want to kill the maximum number of people [we] can get away with killing,” that we have a “zeal to kill,” etc.  There is absolutely nothing in what we wrote that justifies such bizarre and inflammatory accusations.
Like Shea, we agree that capital punishment should be administered only if necessary for saving innocent lives and achieving the common good.  We simply disagree with his prudential judgment that it is not necessary.  We believe, and argue at length in our forthcoming book, that capital punishment properly administered actually saves many innocent lives, and that its abolition would cost many innocent lives. 
(Shea casually asserts, as if it were uncontroversial, that capital punishment entails a significant risk of executing the innocent.   As we show in our book, though this claim is commonly made, the evidence does not in fact support it.  Regarding Shea’s specific remark, Joe responds:
[Shea’s] statement about "support for killing innocent people roughly 4% of the time” is a gross distortion of the study he cites.  There the authors claim that over time about 4% of all those sentenced to death would eventually be legally “exonerated,” not that 4% of all those executed in the United States in recent decades were actually innocent.  For the authors “exonerated” means being permanently removed from death row through the legal appeals process and either having the charges dropped or being acquitted at retrial — not necessarily that the defendant was actually innocent of the murder for which he was originally convicted. Indeed, the authors of the study explicitly deny that they are arguing that 4% of all those executed in the United States in the modern era were innocent:  “We do not believe that has happened.”  Did Shea bother to read the very study he cited?)
Regarding Shea’s remarks about being “more pro-life, not less,” their fallaciousness should be obvious.  Is someone who favors imprisoning kidnappers insufficiently “pro-freedom,” and merely “looking for loopholes to maximize the number of people whose freedom we can take away”?  Is someone who favors fining polluters or confiscating the money of drug traffickers insufficiently “pro-private property” and merely “looking for loopholes to maximize the number of people whose property we can take away”?  Obviously not.  Those guilty of serious enough crimes thereby lose their right to their freedom or their property.  To punish them by depriving them of these things is precisely to affirm the value of the freedom and property rights of the innocent, not to deny it.
Similarly, as Pope Pius XII taught, someone guilty of the gravest crimes “has deprived himself of the right to live.”  And as the Roman Catechism promulgated by Pope St. Pius V teaches, the execution of such a person therefore “far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder.”
Shouting the phrase “pro-life” – a slogan that has its origins in U.S. political discourse, not in Catholic moral theology – no more settles anything than shouting the slogan “pro-choice” does.  The trouble with “pro-choice” rhetoric is that the fact that choice is in general a good thing simply doesn’t by itself entail that one ought to be allowed to choose in the particular case of abortion, because special circumstances prevent that from being a legitimate choice.  To ignore the special circumstances that prevent a general rule from applying in a particular case is to commit what in logic is called a “fallacy of accident.”
Similarly, the trouble with Shea’s idiosyncratic use of “pro-life” rhetoric is that the fact that refraining from killing is in general a good thing simply doesn’t by itself entail that it is a good thing where the question is whether to execute mass murderers and the like.  Here too, to suppose otherwise is to commit a fallacy of accident.  One might as well claim that being “more pro-life, not less” requires a Catholic to become a vegan or a Jain.  Political rhetoric has its place, but its place is not in moral theology, where dispassionate analysis, careful distinctions, rigorous argumentation, etc. are what is called for.  And if anything, if the death penalty does indeed save innocent lives – as Joe and I argue it does in the book – then it is our position, not Shea’s, that is the one that is “more pro-life, not less.”
As to Shea’s grouping Joe and me in with “Islamic despotisms,” “Communist” tyrannies, the “right wing culture of death” (whatever that is), etc., this no more merits a response than do his unhinged comments about our allegedly “looking for loopholes” so as to “kill the maximum number of people we can get away with killing.” 
Suffice it to say that the position Joe and I defend is merely the one taken by St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Peter Canisius, St. Alphonsus Ligouri, St. Robert Bellarmine, Pope St. Pius V, Pope Pius IX, Pope Pius XII and (as the reader of our book will discover) many other saints, popes, and eminent moral theologians of the past, including the six popes of the 19thcentury who authorized more than 500 executions in the Papal States.  Indeed, ours is a milder position than the one they defended, since most of them would have allowed for capital punishment in more cases than we would.  Needless to say, it is not open to any faithful Catholic to accuse such men of being comparable to Islamic despots, Communist tyrants, promoters of a “culture of death,” etc.  And in defending their position we are, again, simply exercising the liberty that then-Cardinal Ratzinger – the Church’s chief doctrinal officer and later Pope Benedict XVI -- explicitly affirmed that Catholics have.
Here is something that is doctrine binding on all Catholics: In its commentary on the eighth commandment, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says (at sections 2477-2478):
Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury.  He becomes guilty:
- of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor…
- of calumnywho, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.
To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:
Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved. 
End quote.  Now, I would hate to jump to rash conclusions myself, but it does seem to me that someone who, on the basis of what Joe and I wrote, characterizes us as “want[ing] to kill the maximum number of people [we] can get away with killing,” lumps us in with Islamic despots and Communist tyrants, accuses us of “fighting the guidance of the Church,” associates us with the “culture of death,” etc. – someone who does all that is not plausibly “ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement,” is not plausibly showing “respect for the reputation of persons,” is “assum[ing] as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor,” and so on.

Yeah, but is it actually actually infinite?

In response to my recent post about William Lane Craig’s kalāmcosmological argument, several readers noted that Craig has replied to an objection like the one I raised, in several places, such as a response to a reader’s question at his Reasonable Faith website, and in his article (co-written with James Sinclair) on the kalām argument in Craig and Moreland’s Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology .  Let’s take a look at what he has to say.First recall that examples like Craig’s famous Hilbert’s hotel thought experiment involve infinitely large collections of things (e.g. hotel rooms and guests) all of which exist at the same time.  Craig argues that various paradoxical consequences follow from these examples, which shows that the idea of an actually infinite collection of things is metaphysically suspect.   But a universe without beginning would entail an actually infinitely large collection – of days, years, or whatever other unit of time you care to take.  Hence (the argument concludes) the notion of a universe without a beginning is also metaphysically suspect.

My objection noted that Craig is (as I am) an adherent of presentism, i.e. the view that only present things and events exist, and thus that past and future things and events do not exist.  Given presentism, I argued, it is incorrect to say that a universe without beginning entails an actually infinite collection in the relevant sense.  For past things and events (including past days, years, etc.) do not exist.  Hence they do not form an infinite collection of things that exist all at once, as the hotel rooms and guests in the Hilbert’s hotel example do.  The only things and events that exist are present things and events, and they are not infinite in number.  The only day that exists is the current day, and a single day is obviously not an infinite number of days.  Something similar could obviously be said of weeks, months, years, etc.  Hence there is in the case of units of time nothing to parallel the rooms and guests of the Hilbert’s hotel example, so that the parallel fails even if we concede that the example succeeds in showing that an actually infinite collection is impossible.
As far as I can tell, Craig makes three points that might be thought to be relevant to my objection.  First, in both the Reasonable Faith Q & A and in the Blackwell Companion piece, he notes that the fact that past things, events, years, etc. do not exist does not prevent us from being able to count them.  We can correctly say, for example, that it has been fifteen years since 9/11, even though (given presentism) none of the years before the present one exist any longer.  And since we can count them (Craig seems to be saying) there must be a sense in which the years since 9/11 constitute a collection actually having fifteen members in it.  By the same token (so the argument seems to continue, if I understand it correctly) if the universe had no beginning, that would entail that there is an actually infinite collection of years.
Now, I’m not clear how this argument is supposed to constitute a reply to the objection.  No one denies that we can count past years even though they don’t exist anymore.  After all, we can count all sorts of things that don’t exist.  For example, Snow White knew seven dwarfs, and we can go through them, by name, and count them.  (First, Grumpy; second, Sleepy; etc.) But that we can count these dwarfs doesn’t entail that there is an actual collection with seven members in it, because the seven dwarfs, being fictional characters, are themselves not actual.  Similarly, that we can count past years – whether fifteen of them or an infinite number of them – doesn’t entail that they constitute an actual collection, since the past years themselves are also not actual in the relevant sense.
It seems to me that Craig’s argument here might be trading on an ambiguity between two claims:
1. The number of moments that have actually existed is infinite.
2. The number of moments that actually existis infinite.
A beginningless universe would entail 1, but it would not entail 2, certainly not if presentism is true.  Yet 2, it seems to me, is what Craig needs for a beginningless universe to be relevantly like the Hilbert’s hotel example.  In the Hilbert’s hotel example, it is because we have infinite collections of things all of which exist at once that we get weird results, like wave after wave of infinitely large groups of guests arriving at the hotel and being able to check in even though the hotel is already full.  Precisely because all the past years, days, etc. do not still exist, it is hard to see how they constitute an actual infinite in the same sense of “actual.”  The collection of guests in the Hilbert’s hotel example is “actual” in the sense that the members all do exist; the collection of years in the beginningless universe scenario is “actual” only in the different sense that the members all did exist. 
Here’s another way to look at the problem.  Craig would not deny that it is legitimate for mathematicians to talk about infinite series in various ways, e.g. the infinite series of natural numbers.  The reason this is okay is that numbers (unlike hotel guests, hotel rooms, etc.) are not concrete objects.  Hence when talking about numbers we don’t get the bizarre results we get when considering scenarios in which an infinite collection of concrete objects exist.  But is a collection of units of time (minutes, days, years, etc.) more like a collection of concrete objects like guests and rooms, or is it more like a collection of abstract objects like numbers?  For Craig’s argument to work, it seems that we’d have to say that it is more like the former.  But in fact, this seems false.  It seems instead to be more like the latter.
This is especially plausible if, like Aristotle and Aquinas, we deny that time exists apart from change and the concrete objects that undergo change.  To speak of time apart from change is a bit like speaking of a universal like rednessapart from actual red things—it is to engage in abstraction from the concrete conditions under which the thing in question (redness, or time) can actually exist.  Craig may be more inclined to think of units of time as relevantly analogous to concrete objects like hotel guests, etc. because he sympathizes instead with the Newtonian view that time can exist apart from concrete changing objects.
This brings me to a second remark Craig makes that might be thought relevant to my objection.  In the Blackwell Companion article, after developing the point about counting things that no longer exist, he asserts (contrary to what I just claimed) that “all the absurdities attending the existence of an actual infinite” do apply to a beginningless universe, despite past things and events no longer existing (p. 116).  For example, if the number of past events is infinite, he says, then the number of odd-numbered events is no smaller than the number of total events, since the series of odd numbers is of course infinite.  (He also rehearses other points along these lines.)
But the problem with this should be obvious from what has already been said.  Again, Craig does not have a problem with mathematicians talking about infinite series of natural numbers, despite the fact that the series of odd numbers is no smaller than the series of all natural numbers.  The reason is that numbers are abstract rather than concrete objects, whereas examples like Hilbert’s hotel are problematic because hotel rooms and guests are concrete rather than abstract.  A beginningless series of events will be problematic, then, only if it is more like the collection of rooms in Hilbert’s hotel than it is like the series of natural numbers.
But as I have said, the trouble with Craig’s position is that past things (whether events, years, or whatever) do not exist, at least not given presentism.  So they are not relevantly like the concrete objects which all exist together in the Hilbert’s hotel example.  Craig’s reply here thus seems to me to ignore the objection from presentism rather than answering it. 
A third remark from Craig which might be thought relevant to the objection I raised is also to be found on the same page of the Blackwell Companion article, where he cites Aquinas’s example of a blacksmith who has been working for an infinite amount of time and using one hammer after another.  The collection of hammers would constitute an actual infinite.  Now, Craig says that it would constitute an actual infinite even if the hammers did not still exist, and he cites the example only to illustrate his claim that past things need not continue to exist in order to constitute an actual infinite.  But it seems to me that what he should say, in order to try to make of this example a response to the objection from presentism that I have put forward, is this: Suppose such a blacksmith has been working for an infinite number of years, has used a new hammer each year, and haspreserved each of these hammers.  Then we would have a collection that is actually infinite even by the presentist’s own lights.  And it would thus be relevantly analogous to the Hilbert’s hotel example.  So wouldn’t this show that the idea of a beginningless universe is paradoxical and metaphysically suspect in just the way Hilbert’s hotel is?
Perhaps this could be developed into a promising reply, but as it stands it too seems to me to fail.  For the most it would show is that there couldn’t be an actually infinite collection of hammers, for the same reason there couldn’t be (if the Hilbert’s hotel argument works) an infinite collection of rooms or guests.  But it doesn’t follow that there couldn’t be an infinitely old universe, precisely because days, years, etc., unlike hammers, don't stick around and thus don't lead to the existence of an “actual” infinite in the relevant sense.  The most the hammer example would show is that even in an infinitely old universe, you couldn't amass an infinite collection of things.  Why not?  Maybe because, though time itself needn't have had a beginning, types of material objects like hammers must have had one.  Nor could Craig easily dismiss this separation of what's true of time from what's true of material things, because, again, like Newton (and unlike Aristotle and Aquinas) he thinks that time can exist apart from the material things that change in time.
So, though I hate to disagree with Craig – I have nothing but respect for him, and have profited much from his work over the years -- it doesn’t seem to me that he has successfully rebutted the objection from presentism.  But maybe there’s another way to do it.  And as I’ve said, I’m not convinced that an infinitely old universe really is possible in principle, and thus I’m agnostic about the kalāmargument.

A difficulty for Craig’s kalām cosmological argument?

Most versions of the cosmological argument, including those favored by Thomists, are not concerned with trying to show that the universe had a beginning.  The idea is rather that, whether or not the universe had a beginning, it could not remain in existence even for an instant were God not sustaining it in being.  The kalām cosmological argument, however, does try to show that the universe had a beginning.  Most famously associated with thinkers like Al-Ghazali, Bonaventure, and William Lane Craig, it was also famously rejected by Aquinas.  But it is defended by some contemporary Thomists (including David Oderberg).I’ve long been agnostic about it myself.  Among the reservations I have is one I briefly addressed in my article “Natural Theology Must Be Grounded in the Philosophy of Nature, Not in Natural Science” (which you can find in Neo-Scholastic Essays ).  I argued there that natural theology cannot get to the God of classical theism unless it brings into the picture something like the Aristotelian theory of actuality and potentiality.  But the kalām argument, at least as Craig presents it, makes no use of such Aristotelian notions.  (Which is not to say that it is entirely un-Aristotelian.  More on that presently.)

Another reservation I have is that the argument, at least as Craig presents it, in my view puts way too much emphasis on results in modern scientific cosmology.  As I have argued many times, the chief arguments for God’s existence rest not on empirical science but rather on deeper principles of metaphysics and philosophy of nature which cannot be overturned by – and indeed must be presupposed by – any possible empirical science.  Heavy emphasis on current physical theory thus threatens to muddy the waters and to give the false impression that cosmological arguments stand or fall with what the physicists happen to be saying this week.  (I have, of course, criticized contemporary design arguments on similar grounds.)
A third reservation – the one I will discuss here -- has to do with the question of whether one really can demonstrate that an infinitely old universe is metaphysically impossible, and in particular whether one can demonstrate that an accidentally ordered series of causes (as opposed to an essentially ordered series) cannot be infinite.  (This is, of course, the traditional bone of contention for Thomists.)  I am not convinced that this cannot be demonstrated.  But I’m not sure that Craig’s metaphysical arguments for that conclusion (e.g. the well-known appeals to Hilbert’s hotel and similar examples) work.
Recall that the basic kalām argument says:
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. So the universe has a cause.
That’s the easy part, and the main work in defending the argument involves (a) defending the second premise, and (b) showing that the cause of the universe must be a divine cause.  It is in defending the second premise that Craig appeals to examples like Hilbert’s hotel.
The basic idea of such arguments is this.  We can draw a distinction between an actual infinite and a merely potential infinite.  A potential infinite is a collection that is actually only finitely large, but can be added to without limit.  For example, suppose there are ten chairs in some particular room.  We could always add an eleventh, a twelfth, and so on, and (if we knock out some of the walls and expand the room) can in principle add any number of further chairs ad infinitum.  A potential infinite never is actually infinitely large, but can still always be added to in theory, as long as time and resources permit.  An actual infinite, by contrast, already is infinitely large.  An actually infinite collection of chairs, for example, would be one that already includes an infinite number of chairs, all at once and at the same time. 
This is a distinction Craig borrows from Aristotle, even if in other respects his argument is not particularly Aristotelian.  The use he makes of it is this.  The notion of a potential infinite is unproblematic, but the notion of an actual infinite is fraught with paradox.  For instance, if we imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and an infinite number of guests checking in and checking out, we will, if we work out the implications, find them to be utterly bizarre.  So bizarre, in Craig’s view, that we should conclude that such a hotel could not possibly exist in reality.  (Those familiar with Craig’s argument will know how the details of examples like these go – I won’t rehearse them here.)  And this shows, Craig argues, that the idea of an actual infinite is in general very fishy.  There just can’t be an actually infinite collection of things.  Now, an infinitely old universe would constitute an actual infinite, Craig argues.  It would amount to an actually infinitely large collection of hours, days, years, or whatever other unit of time you pick.  Hence, since there cannot be an actual infinite of any sort, there cannot be an actual infinite of this particular sort.  So, the universe cannot be infinitely old. 
Now, one problem here is that it will not do to show merely that an actual infinite like the one described in the Hilbert’s hotel scenario is bizarre.  To show that something is bizarre does not suffice to show that it is impossible.  For that you need to show that it involves some outright contradiction or incoherence.  But perhaps that can indeed be shown.  That isn’t the issue I’m concerned with here.  So, for present purposes let’s concede for the sake of argument that scenarios like Hilbert’s hotel really are strictly metaphysically impossible.  The problem is this: How does this show that an infinitely old universe is impossible?  In particular, how does this show that there could not have been in the past an infinite series of hours, days, or years? 
The reason this is a problem is that Craig is a presentist.  That is to say, he thinks that it is present things and events alone that exist.  Past objects and events don’t exist anymore, and future objects and events don’t yet exist.  (This contrasts with theories of time like the “growing block” theory, which holds that past and present things and events exist, with the present being the growing edge of a block universe; and with the eternalist view that all things and events, whether past, present, or future, all equally exist.) 
Now, his commitment to presentism is not itself the problem; in fact I agree with Craig about that.  (I will have much more to say about that subject in forthcoming work.)  The problem is rather this.  If the present alone is real, then how can an infinite series of events in time count as an actual infinite?  Past moments of time are not actual; they no longer exist.  Hence an infinite series of past moments is not relevantly analogous to Hilbert’s hotel.  In the Hilbert’s hotel scenario, all of the hotel rooms in the infinite collection of rooms, all of the guests in the infinite collection of guests, etc. exist together all at once, at the same time.  But (for a presentist) past moments, and past things and events in general, no longer exist.  They don’t exist together, all at once and at the same time, because they don’t exist at all.  Hence there really is even prima facie (again, if one is a presentist) no such thing as an infinite collection of past moments of time, as there might at least prima facie be an infinite collection of rooms and guests.  So, an infinitely old universe scenario is simply not relevantly analogous to scenarios like Hilbert’s hotel – in which case, it seems Craig’s argument will fail even if it is conceded that an actual infinite is impossible.  For an infinitely old universe just wouldn’t be an actual infinite in the relevant sense.
To be sure, many naturalist critics of Craig would be reluctant to accept his presentism, in which case this sort of criticism wouldn’t be open to them.  But I think the difficulty indicates why Thomists have sometimes been wary of the kalāmargument.
So, that’s the “worry” (as analytic philosophes like to say).  Discuss.

Learn it, live it, link it

The Best Schools has posted its list of the 50 most influential living philosophers.
New from R. R. Reno: Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society .  A podcast with Reno about the book at National Review, a video interview at YouTube, and a print interview at Christian Post.
Is the brain a computer?  Philosopher of biology John Wilkins answers “No.” And physicist Edward Witten doesn’t think science will explain consciousness.  Scientific American reports .Henri de Lubac, Thomas Aquinas, and the debate over “Pure Nature”: The blog.

William Lane Craig recently gave a pair of lectures at Mundelein Seminary.  Video of the lectures is available at Brandon Vogt’s website.
Science fiction writer Michael Flynn has been blogging the Crusades.  (No, not live-blogging.  At least, I don’t think so…)
Daniel Dennett is not keen on much of contemporary philosophy.
Toto’s David Paich on the inspiration behind the song “Rosanna.” 
Nick Bottom at Catholic World Report asks: What if Pope Francis approached the issue of economic injustice the way he approaches adultery? 
Standpoint on Scruton on Wagner.
The Chronicle of Higher Education on Tom Wolfe on Chomsky.
At The Hollywood Reporter: Roy Thomas, Stan Lee’s successor as editor-in-chief, recounts what life was like at Marvel Comics in the 1960s.
I’ll give you four nickels for a paradigm.  NPR’s Cosmos and Culture blog reflects on Thomas Kuhn’s key concept. Then there’s the recently published anthology Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions at Fifty , edited by Robert J. Richards and Lorraine Daston.
At Commentary, Terry Teachout asks: Is Rock’n’roll here to stay?
Born that way?  A new study indicates otherwise, reports Ryan Anderson at The Stream.  Meanwhile, John Skalko discusses homosexuality and bad arguments at Public Discourse.
The Atlantic on the debate over the physics of time. 
Cardinal Raymond Burke argues that Islam is not politically compatible with Western society.  And at The Catholic Thing, philosopher Howard Kainz compares Islamic moral teaching to the Ten Commandments. 
Then, at Public Discourse, philosopher Joseph Trabbic offers a Thomistic perspective on Muslim immigration.
The New Atlantis on the enduring legacy of The Twilight Zone.
A two-part article by Sherif Girgis on Catholicism and contraception, also at Public Discourse (here and here). 
Not unrelated: At The Federalist, David Harsanyi argues that having lots of children is good for the planet.
At National Review, Andrew Stuttaford on Clive James on Mad Men.

Is Islamophilia binding Catholic doctrine?

Catholic writer Robert Spencer’s vigorous criticisms of Islam have recently earned him the ire of a cleric who has accused him of heterodoxy.  Nothing surprising about that, or at least it wouldn’t be surprising if a Muslim cleric were accusing Spencer of contradicting Muslim doctrine.  Turns out, though, that it is a Catholic priest accusing Spencer of contradicting Catholicdoctrine. 
Cue the Twilight Zone music.  Book that ticket to Bizarro world while you’re at it.The priest in question is Msgr. Stuart Swetland, a theologian and president of Donnelly College.  The occasion was a radio exchange about Islam between Spencer and Swetland and a print follow-up, the details of which are recounted at Spencer’s website.  Swetland, it is important to note, is not a theological liberal and is known for his loyalty to the magisterium of the Church.  In the interests of full disclosure I might also add that I have met Msgr. Swetland and found him to be a decent and pleasant fellow. 

All the same, his remarks are in my opinion deeply confused, unjust to Spencer, and even damaging to the Church.  And that is putting it charitably. 
In a statement that reads a little like a disciplinary notice from the CDF (and which is reproduced by Spencer at the link above), Swetland cites a number of positive remarks about Islam to be found in Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate and in the statements of several recent popes.  These include remarks by Pope Francis to the effect that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”  Arguing that faithful Catholics ought to agree with such remarks, Swetland writes:
[W]e owe to their teaching a “religious submission of mind and will” …
Robert Spencer’s positions seem to be at odds with the magisterial teachings on what authentic Islam is and what Catholic are called to do about it (accept immigrants, avoid hateful generalizations, show esteem and respect, etc.) At least in the area of morals, Robert seems to be a dissenter from the papal magisterium…
It is very important for all believers that the authentic teaching of the Church be clear so that we may know the truth and attempt to live it to the full.  I submit that there is a serious difference between the repeated magisterial teachings of the Church and the teaching of Robert Spencer in this area. (emphasis added)
End quote.  Now, Msgr. Swetland is certainly correct to urge a fair-minded and dispassionate evaluation of Islam.  I myself have argued (hereand here), contra some hotheaded critics of Islam, that it is simply not plausible to deny that Muslims and Christians refer to the same deity when they use the word “God,” or to allege that Muslims worship some pagan tribal deity.  At the same time, it is naïve and dishonest to insist a priori that a fair-minded and dispassionate evaluation of Islam simply must result in the conclusion that on any “authentic” interpretation, Islam is peaceful and compatible with the modern Western political order.  Indeed, I have also argued (hereand here) that there are serious reasons to doubt such a conclusion.
Msgr. Swetland is certainly also correct to emphasize, as he does in his statement, that the assent Catholics owe the teachings of the popes and the Church extends beyond merely those that are proposed infallibly.  He is right to reject the erroneous minimalist view that holds that as long as a teaching is not proposed infallibly, Catholics are free to dissent from it.  However, there is also an opposite extreme error of a maximalist sort, according to which Catholics are bound to assent to virtually anything a pope says that is even remotely connected with matters of faith and morals.  That is simply not the case.  As I noted in a recent post on papal fallibility and infallibility, there are five basic categories of magisterial statement, and it is only the first three which require assent from Catholics.  Hence it is no good merely to pull a remark out from some papal speech or even from a magisterial document of higher authority, and then declare peremptorily that all Catholics are obliged to assent to it.  One must carefully determine to which of the five categories of magisterial statement the remark belongs.  This is especially true where the remark seems to put forward some novel view, where there are contingent historical circumstances or empirical claims involved, and so forth. 
It is bad enough when political pundits and other theological amateurs engage in the intellectually sloppy procedure in question.  But a professional theologian like Msgr. Swetland should know better.  And in my judgment, his comments on Spencer exhibit exactly this failing.  Other critics of Swetland have pointed out various specific problems with his argument.  For example, William Kilpatrick has pointed out that Pope Benedict XVI himself acknowledged that Nostra Aetate’s remarks on non-Catholic religions are problematic.  Fr. John Zuhlsdorf notes that Nostra Aetate was in any case intended to have merely pastoral rather than doctrinal import. 
But the deeper problem is that Swetland’s suggestion that there is or could be such a thing as “magisterial teaching on what authentic Islam is” is, not to put too fine a point on it, as preposterous as the suggestion that there is or could be magisterial teaching on what authentic jazz is, or magisterial teaching on what the authentic interpretation of Heidegger is.  It simply badly gets wrong the range of the competence the Church’s magisterium claims for itself (as Swetland critic John Zmirak has pointed out). 
This should be obvious from Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, which Swetland himself cites in his own defense but a crucial detail of which he ignores.  The document says that Catholics are obliged to assent, specifically, to teaching concerning “matters of faith and morals” (emphasis added).  The Code of Canon Law, which Swetland also quotes, makes exactly the same qualification. 
Now, “matters of faith” concern the body of Catholic theological doctrine inherited from scripture and tradition and interpreted by councils and popes.  This includes teachings concerning the Trinity, the nature of Christ, original sin, nature and grace, justification, the sacraments, and so forth.  It also includes historical claims very closely connected with these theological teachings, such as claims about the Resurrection of Christ, Peter’s status as the first pope, and so on.  Matters of “morals” concern the body of Catholic ethical teaching inherited from scripture and tradition and interpreted by councils and popes.  It also includes matters of natural law, of which the Church claims to be an authoritative interpreter.
Questions about the nature of Islam and the content of its doctrines simply do not fall into either one of these categories.  Islam is not only a religion distinct from Catholicism, but arose six centuries after what Catholicism regards as the close of public revelation at the time of the apostles.  In no way, then, from the point of view of Catholicism, can Islam represent a genuine revelation from God.  Hence determining what counts as “authentic Islam” is in no way a part of the Church’s task of handing on or interpreting the deposit of faith.  How Islam arose, what it teaches, its political and cultural implications, etc. are empirical questions on a par with questions such as what the causes of World War II were, whether Lao Tzu really existed, what the chemical composition of salt is, what the basic tenets of Georgist economic theory are, and so forth.  Since they lie outside the domain of Catholic faith and morals, the Church has no special expertise on such matters and thus cannot pronounce authoritatively on them. 
What a pope or ecclesiastical document has to say about Islam thus seems obviously to fall into what, in the post linked to above, I labeled category 5 statements, i.e. statements of a prudential sort on matters about which there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion among Catholics.  A Catholic ought seriously and respectfully to consider statements of this category which concern Islam, but is under no obligation to assent to them.  Hence, questions such as whether Islam is inherently more prone to generate terrorism than other religions are, whether Islam is compatible with liberal democracy, how many Muslim immigrants ought to be allowed into a country and under what circumstances, etc. are in the nature of the case questions about which good Catholics can legitimately disagree.  Even the question of whether Christians and Muslims refer to the same thing when they use the word “God” -- and I certainly believe that they do -- cannot be a matter of orthodoxy.  There is nothing contrary to binding Catholic doctrine in claiming that Muslims worship some pagan tribal deity, even if (I would argue) this claim is false, ungrounded, and too often driven by emotion rather than clear thinking.
(A critic might say: “But hasn’t the Church pronounced on all sorts of non-Catholic doctrines, such as socialism and communism, various heresies, etc.?  So why can’t she pronounce on what counts as authentic Islam?”  But such an objection rests on confusion.  When (for example) Pope Leo XIII condemned what socialists say about private property, he wasn’t saying “Every Catholic is obligated to believe that one of the tenets of socialism is the rejection the institution of private property.”  Rather, he was saying “Every Catholic must accept the institution of private property.”  His point was not authoritatively to define what counts as authentic socialism but rather authoritatively to condemn certain errors which happen to have been widely associated with socialism and which are at odds with Catholic teaching.  If it somehow turned out that socialists don’t really reject private property after all, that wouldn’t affect Leo’s teaching, because the point of his teaching was to tell Catholics that they ought to uphold private property, not to give a lesson in political science about the history and tenets of socialism.)
So, while it is perfectly legitimate for Msgr. Swetland to disagree with Spencer’s analysis of Islam, it seems to me manifestly unjust, and indeed outrageous, for him to label Spencer a “dissenter” -- as if Spencer ought to be lumped in with the likes of Hans Küng and Catholics for Choice! 
But it is worse than that.  When a prominent orthodox Catholic theologian and churchman like Msgr. Swetland confidently (but falsely) asserts that taking a positive view of Islam and rejecting opinions like Spencer’s are nothing less than matters of binding Catholic doctrine, he threatens to give grave scandal.  For some Catholics who sincerely think that Spencer’s views are well-supported might mistakenly conclude that the Church requires the faithful to accept falsehoods, and may for that reason even consider leaving the Church.  And some non-Catholics otherwise attracted to Catholicism might refrain from entering the Church, on the mistaken supposition that doing so would require them to assent to something they sincerely believe to be false.  (Judging from the YouTube combox discussion the radio debate between Spencer and Swetland has generated, some people are drawing exactly these sorts of conclusions.)
I have no doubt that Msgr. Swetland is sincere and only means well.  But in my opinion he owes Spencer a retraction and apology.

Adventures in the Old Atheism, Part II: Sartre

Having surveyed the wreckage of modern Western civilization from the lofty vantage point of Nietzsche’s Superman, let’s now descend to the lowest depths of existential angst with Jean-Paul Sartre.  So pour some whiskey, put on a jazz LP, and light the cigarette of the hipster girl dressed in black reading Camus at the barstool next to you.  Let’s get Absurd.Our theme in this series is how starkly the gravitas of many “Old Atheist” writers contrasts with the glib banality of the New Atheism.  Consider the ritual appeal to Hume in critiquing First Cause arguments for the existence of God.  There are insuperable problems with Humean views about causality, as I have argued in many places (e.g. here).  But put that aside for now.  The New Atheist forgets all about such views almost as soon as he has deployed them.  They amount to little more than a debating tactic or talking point, intended merely to stymie an opponent and block an unwelcome conclusion.  The New Atheist has no interest in thinking through their wider implications or ultimate defensibility.  But suppose someone seriously believed with Hume that causes and effects are all “loose and separate,” so that any effect or none might with equal likelihood follow upon any cause, and so that a thing or event might, as likely as not, pop into existence with no cause or explanation whatsoever?

Sartre imagines just this in his novel Nausea , and nausea is what he thinks such a person would experience, as surely as if he’d been riding an especially violent rollercoaster.  For reality is on the Humean empiricist view something of a rollercoaster, with unpredictable turns and drops awaiting us, in principle, at every moment.  Sartre has his protagonist say:
I went to the window and glanced out… I murmured: Anything can happen, anything…
Frightened, I looked at these unstable beings which, in an hour, in a minute, were perhaps going to crumble: yes, I was there, living in the midst of these books full of knowledge describing the immutable forms of the animal species, explaining that the right quantity of energy is kept integral in the universe; I was there, standing in front of a window whose panes had a definite refraction index.  But what feeble barriers!   I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day.  Today it seemed to want to change.   And then, anything, anything could happen…
Sometimes, my heart pounding, I made a sudden right-about-turn: what was happening behind my back?   Maybe it would start behind me and when I would turn around, suddenly, it would be too late… I looked at them as much as I could, pavements, houses, gaslights; my eyes went rapidly from one to the other, to catch them unawares, stop them in the midst of their metamorphosis… Doors of houses frightened me especially.  I was afraid they would open of themselves. (pp. 77-78)
(Bas van Fraassen quotes some of these lines in his essay “The world of empiricism,” to give a sense of the flavor the world must have on a consistent empiricism.) 
But it is not in the external, material world that Sartre locates the most disorienting aspect of atheism.  That is to be found instead in the inner world of the conscious, acting subject.  In Being and Nothingness , Sartre famously draws a distinction between being-in-itself and being-for-itself.  By being-in-itself Sartre has in mind a mere thing or object, a physical phenomenon as it exists objectively or independently of human consciousness.  Being-in-itself exhibits “facticity” insofar as it is simply given or fixed.  As opposed to what?  As opposed to being-for-itself, which is the human agent, conceived of as consciousness projecting forward toward an unrealized possibility.  Being-for-itself exhibits “transcendence” insofar as it is not fixed or given in the way that a mere thing or object is, but is rather dynamic and constantly making itself.  It might therefore be said to amount, in a sense, to a kind of “nothingness” rather than a being.
Well, what does all that mean?  And what does it have to do with atheism?  Let’s slow down a bit and work through Sartre’s position carefully.  The first thing to note is that action is for Sartre always intentional or directed towards an end, and seeks to remedy some objective lack, something missing, some non-being.  For example, you order French fries because you want them but don’t have them.  Your action aims or is directed at the state of affairs of eating French fries, a state of affairs which, before the action takes place, does not exist.  Now, for this reason, Sartre thinks that no factual state can suffice to generate an action, since an action is always projected toward something non-existent.  Again, before you carry out the action of ordering the fries, the state of affairs of your eating French fries does not exist, is not among the facts that make up the world.  And yet that non-existent state of affairs is in some sense the cause of your action.
Defenders of free will are in Sartre’s view therefore mistaken in trying to uphold their position by looking for examples of actions without a cause, since acts are intentional or directed toward an end, and this non-existent end is itself a kind of cause.  But by the same token, Sartre thinks that critics of the idea of free will are wrong to deny its existence on the grounds that our actions are caused, because these critics have too narrow a conception of cause.  They look for all causes in the realm of factual states, and ignore the crucial role of non-existent states of affairs like that of your eating the French fries.  In effect, they fallaciously try to reduce being-for-itself (which cannot be understood except in terms of directedness toward what is as yet non-existent) to being-in-itself (which is entirely intelligible in terms of existent facts).  Yet even the attempt at such a reduction itself undermines the reduction, since before one undertakes the action of interpreting being-for-itselfas a kind of being-in-itself, that interpretation does not itself yet exist and thus is not within the realm of the factual or the in-itself.
What Sartre is doing here, I would suggest, is noting (in a somewhat idiosyncratic, obscure, and potentially misleading jargon) that action is irreducibly teleological or intelligible only in terms of the notion of final cause -- of which the intentionality or directedness of thought is a specific instance -- whereas those who deny free will typically want to analyze human action in exclusively efficient-causal, non-teleological, and non-intentional terms.  And the very attempt to eliminate teleology or intentionality from the story is self-defeating, since such an attempt qua action will itself aim at a certain outcome (and thus exhibit teleology) and will involve representing the world in a certain way (and thus involve intentionality).  Sartre, I would suggest, is essentially calling attention to the incoherence problem that is fatal to eliminative materialism and related doctrines.
But Sartre’s preferred mode of expression is much more melodramatic (and unfortunately, much less precise).  For example, he famously speaks of the “nothingness [which] lies coiled at the heart of being -- like a worm,” and which is the source of our freedom (Being and Nothingness, p. 56).  The idea is that we cannot avoid acting, but in acting are always projecting ourselves toward some end or outcome that does not yet exist and precisely for that reason cannot fix or determine what we do.  Even the attempt to interpret ourselves as cogs in a deterministic machine is itself an opting for but one possible interpretation among others, and thus is not forced upon us.  No sooner has one entertained that interpretation than it dawns upon him that he could in the very next moment instead reject it and adopt another.  It is as if we are, in acting, always trying vainly to plug a black hole which simply sucks up anything we throw into it and perpetually remains as open as it ever was.  This is precisely what our freedom consists in: the absence of anything in the realm of facticity, of being-in-itself, of the objective world beyond consciousness, which can possibly fix, determine, or settle how one shall act. 
As the harrowing talk of “nothingness” being “coiled… like a worm” implies, this freedom is not for Sartre a cause for relief or celebration.  Nor is his insistence on the reality of free will (contra Sam Harris and other New Atheists) a wish-fulfilling attempt to salvage some shred of human specialness in the face of atheism and the advance of science.  On the contrary, Sartre regards the denial of free will as itselfan instance of “bad faith” or intellectual dishonesty.  For the denial of free will is simply incoherent, while the exercise of free will is -- when one truly understands what it entails -- frightening, and something we have an obvious motive for wanting to avoid.  There is absolutely nothing for which one is not ultimately in some sense responsible, in Sartre’s view.  If I say that my actions are all the result of heredity, bad upbringing, stress, or what have you, then it is nevertheless the case that I have opted for this interpretation, could have chosen another instead, and might yet choose another in the next moment.  It is in this sense that Sartre famously holds that one even chooses one’s own birth and the events that took place before one’s birth.  For one always opts for some interpretation of exactly how one’s birth and those other events led to one’s current circumstances, and could choose some alternative interpretation instead.  That is to say, what significance to give one’s birth and the other events that were outside one’s control is always up to one.  One is never able finally to say: “This is just the way these things have affected who I am and what I do, and that’s out of my hands.”
Given how deep our responsibility goes, and how vertiginous it is relentlessly to be faced with the need to choose, there is constant temptation to try to find some escape by locating something beyond consciousness that is the “true” source of one’s actions -- deterministic laws of physics, genes, familial and other social influences, the movement of history, or what have you.  But there is no escape, and the free-will-denying atheist is for Sartre no less engaged in self-deception than the religious fundamentalist.  Moreover, unlike the religious believer or the traditional metaphysician, the modern atheist has nothing to look to for guidance in how to choose -- no God, no Platonic realm of Forms, no Aristotelian natures of things. 
This is the force of Sartre’s famous slogan “existence precedes essence.”  For the theist and the traditional metaphysician, what a human being is is metaphysically prior to the fact that any particular human being exists.  There is a fact of the matter about what it is to be human, a nature or essence -- being a rational animal, say, or being made in God’s image -- that is independent of any actual human being’s existence and choices, and what is good or bad for a human being is to be defined in terms of these pre-existing facts about his nature.  But if one rejects all such theistic and metaphysical assumptions, and also follows out the implications of Sartre’s analysis of free will, then there is a sense in which this order of things is reversed.  That is to say, a human being’s existence is prior to his essence -- he must choose what he is to be, and this choice is never fixed once and for all but must be revisited constantly.  Nor, given the lack of any metaphysical grounding for such choices, do any of them have any ultimate rationale or justification.  An air of absurdity inevitably surrounds the human condition.  To look at the world this way just is to be a Sartrean existentialist. 
So, no Richard Dawkins-style happy talk for Sartre about enjoying one’s life in the absence of God.  “I am condemnedto be free,” Sartre famously writes (p. 567, emphasis added), indeed “abandoned” to a harsh reality in which responsibility cannot be evaded (p. 569) -- cannot be passed on either to God or to the naturalistic forces the atheist would put in place of God.  “I am without excuse,” Sartre says, “for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without anything or any person being able to lighten it” (p. 710).  For Sartre, it is not the delusional optimism of the Atheist Bus Campaign but the ennui of the existentialist hero that is the mark of true authenticity. 
Though, famously, this ennui had for him its compensations.  Sartre’s Old Atheism is world-weariness, whiskey, a smoky bar, and a beautiful French woman lighting your cigarette while Miles Davis plays in the background.  The New Atheism, meanwhile, is goofy bus advertisements, pimply combox trolls live-blogging a Reason Rally, and Richard Carrier making a crude pass at you.  Why the hell would anyone ever want to be a NewAtheist?

Review of Harris on Hume

Just back from a very enjoyable week at the Thomistic seminar in Princeton.  Regular blogging will resume shortly.
In the meantime, my review of Hume: An Intellectual Biography by James A. Harris appears in the Summer 2016  issue of the Claremont Review of Books . 

Shinkel on Neo-Scholastic Essays

At The University Bookman, Ryan Shinkel reviews my book Neo-Scholastic Essays .  Titling his review “Last Scholastic Standing,” Shinkel writes:
Early modern philosophers such as René Descartes and Francis Bacon rejected… the teleology of the Scholastics…
Against this degeneration stands the Thomist philosopher Edward Feser… He has taken a route in metaphysics (the study of ultimate causes) similar to that of MacIntyre in moral philosophy…
[Feser’s] method… works well in a wide range of areas including cosmological arguments for the existence of God, the hard problem of consciousness, and property rights… [The book is] recommended [as an] introduction to Feser’s larger [body of] work… [and] would particularly benefit graduate philosophy students who aspire to the older framework of Aristotle and Aquinas.
End quote.  Shinkel also raises an objection to what I have to say in the book about questions of ethics.  Appealing to the Aristotelian distinction between theoretical and practical reasoning, Shinkel notes that while an Aristotelian approach to ethics does indeed make use of theoretical knowledge about human nature, it also holds that practical reasoning is of a different kind than theoretical reasoning.  Hence (to use Shinkel’s example), while theoretical reasoning might ask “What is justice?”, practical reasoning asks “What is the just action for this situation?”  Accordingly, Shinkel says, “theoretical reasoning is necessary but not sufficient: insights from human experience also prove necessary.”  However, he also suggests, “[Feser] suppos[es that] Thomist metaphysics are exclusively sufficient” for ethics, so that I do not (he thinks) provide an adequate account of the Aristotelian approach to ethics.

But Shinkel has here confused a difference in emphasiswith a difference in principle.  It is true that in the articles in the book that are concerned with moral questions (about property rights and sexual morality, for example) I have a lot to say about general principles and about the relevant theoretical considerations concerning human nature, but less to say about how contingent circumstances determine how to apply the general principles to particular cases.  But that is only because (a) these are essays rather than book-length treatments of their subject matters, and (b) it is the general principles and background metaphysical considerations about human nature that are the most widely misunderstood today, and thus in most immediate need of discussion and defense.  I nowhere claim to be answering every question that might arise about these subjects,  and I certainly never say (and never would say) that every such question can be answered by way of a priori deduction from general theoretical principles.
All the same, Shinkel raises an important issue, and I thank him for his kind review.  (Earlier reviews of Neo-Scholastic Essays are discussed hereand here.)

Liberalism and the five natural inclinations

By “liberalism” I don’t mean merely what goes under that label in the context of contemporary U.S. politics.  I mean the long political tradition, tracing back to Hobbes and Locke, from which modern liberalism grew.  By natural inclinations, I don’t mean tendencies that that are merely deep-seated or habitual.  I mean tendencies that are “natural” in the specific sense operative in classical natural law theory.  And by natural inclinations, I don’t mean tendencies that human beings are always conscious of or wish to pursue.  I mean the way that a faculty can of its nature “aim at” or be “directed toward” some end or goal whether or not an individual realizes it or wants to pursue that end -- teleology or final causality in the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) sense.Aquinas famously identifies what he takes to be the basic human inclinations in Summa Theologiae I-II.94.2.  Commentators often summarize these in a list of five items.  For example, the Dominican moral theologian Servais Pinckaers lists them as follows:

1. The inclination to the good
2. The inclination to self-preservation
3. The inclination to sexual union and the rearing of offspring
4. The inclination to knowledge of the truth
5. The inclination to live in society
(See Pinckaers’s books Morality: The Catholic View , at pp. 97-109, and The Sources of Christian Ethics , chapter 17, for his detailed treatment of each of these.)
Some comments on each: Our inclination to the good is the most fundamental of the inclinations.  It is what Aquinas is talking about in his famous first principle of natural law, viz. that good is to be pursued and evil avoided.  The idea is that in acting we always pursue what we taketo be good in some way or other.  Aquinas doesn’t mean that everyone always chooses to do what he thinks is morallygood, or that everyone believes that there is such a thing as an objective standard of moral goodness in the first place.  He is well aware that people sometimes do what they know to be morally wrong, that there are people who reject the very idea of morality, etc.  His point is that even these people still regard the object of their action as good in the thin sense that it provides some benefit, would be worthwhile to pursue at least in some respects, etc.  Given this very rudimentary inclination to the good together with complete rationality and knowledge of what is in fact good, we would do what is morally right.  But of course, these latter conditions often do not hold.  (See my paper “Being, the Good, and the Guise of the Good” in Neo-Scholastic Essays for detailed discussion and defense of Aquinas’s first principle.) 
Pinckaers emphasizes that there is a special connection between this basic inclination and love, since to love something is, for the A-T tradition, to will the good of that something.  The less perfect is one’s orientation toward what is in fact good, the more deficient will be his love, as I noted in a recent post. 
The inclination to self-preservation is obvious enough, though some may think that the existence of suicidal people is counterevidence.  It is not, and Aquinas is of course well aware that there are such people.  A suicidal person is not someone who lacks this inclination, but rather someone who intentionally frustrates it.  (And even then, not perfectly.  Even a suicidal person will initially tend to duck if you fire a gun at him, will struggle if you try to drown him, etc.  He has to work to overcome these spontaneous tendencies.)  As always, we must keep in mind that by “inclinations” Aquinas does not primarily have in mind the conscious desires we happen to have, but rather the deeper level of natural teleology or final causality which exists below the level of consciousness.  To be sure, our conscious desires generally track that deeper level; we usually do consciously want to preserve ourselves.  But as with everything else in the world of changeable, material things, imperfections and disorders are bound to occur, and our conscious desires sometimes come apart from the natural teleology of our various faculties.
That is certainly true of the third natural inclination, toward sexual intercourse and the child-rearing that is its natural sequel.  In general, people want to have sexual intercourse with someone of the opposite sex, and also want to have children.  But of course, there are exceptions -- people with homosexual desires, people who lack any interest in sex, people who don’t want children, and so on.  That is not counterevidence to Aquinas’s claim, because, again, he isn’t in the first place making a claim about what people all consciously desire, but rather a claim about the natural ends of our faculties.  As with suicidal people, conscious desires in this case too can come apart from natural teleology.  (See my essay “In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument,” also in Neo-Scholastic Essays, for detailed exposition and defense of the A-T account of the natural ends of our sexual faculties.  See also some relevant earlier blog posts.)
Similar remarks can be made about the natural inclination toward knowledge of the truth.  Here, though, it seems to me that it is even more difficult for natural teleology and conscious desire to come apart.  It might seem otherwise given that there are people who claim not to believe in objective truth, people who engage in even overt self-deception, and so forth.  But even cognitive relativists and other anti-realists about truth think that it really is the case that there is no such thing as objective truth and that those who suppose otherwise are mistaken.  (This is why such views at the end of the day simply cannot be coherently formulated.)  And someone who wants to avoid knowing certain truths, who won’t let himself dwell on uncomfortable evidence, etc. thinks that it really is the case that it would in some way be bad to know those truths or dwell on that evidence.  In these ways, our inclination toward truth is operative even in the very act of trying to frustrate it. 
Aquinas makes special note of knowledge of the truth about God as being among the ends of this fourth of our natural inclinations.  The idea is that as rational animals we are naturally oriented toward finding the explanations of things.  God qua First Cause, knowable by way of philosophical arguments, is the ultimate explanation of things, and thus knowledge of God and his nature is the ultimate fulfillment of our intellectual powers.
The fifth inclination is what Aristotle and Aquinas have in mind when they say that man is a social and political animal.  We are oriented by nature to organize into families, extended families, villages, and the like, and to set up institutions with the authority to govern these social organizations.  And for the A-T natural law tradition, this political authority derives not from any social contract but from the natural law itself, which preexists any contract.  Moreover, our social nature is not reducible to the herd behavior of non-rational animals, but participates in our rationality.  It is manifest in language, culture, religion, science, and the other social activities and institutions that other animals lack because they lack intellects.  The good we realize by virtue of being social animals is also a common good in the sense that it is not reducible to the sum of private goods of the individuals who make up society.  The good of one’s country (say) is not just the aggregate of the private good of this particular citizen, the private good of that particular citizen, etc.  Being an organic part of the larger social whole is itself a good over and above the private goods each individual could enjoy on his own.
The ordering of the five inclinations is not accidental.  At least in a rough way, the list moves from inclinations we share with many things to inclinations more specific to us.  The first inclination, toward the good, is one shared in a sense by all things.  For goodness or badness, on the A-T analysis, is defined in terms of how well or badly a thing manifests its nature, and everything manifests its nature to some extent (otherwise it wouldn’t be the kind of thing it is in the first place) and is in that sense and to that extent good.  The second inclination, toward self-preservation, is found in living things specifically, and thus also in man as one living thing among others.  The third, toward sex and child-rearing, is even more specific, limited to certain kinds of animals.  The fourth, toward truth, is (among animals, as opposed to angels, who are incorporeal) limited to us as rational animals, where rational animality is our essence.  The fifth, toward sociality of the higher, rational sort we exhibit involves a property or proper accident that flows from our essence as rational animals (in the A-T sense of the word “property”).
Because they are natural to us, these five inclinations cannot be extinguished.  They are always present in human beings and always manifest themselves in some way and to some extent.  However, and as has already been indicated, their manifestation can be frustrated and distorted in various ways.  Intellectual error can lead us to deny one or more of them, and moral vice can make us reluctant to affirm or consistently to pursue one or more of them.  Historical and cultural circumstances can also obscure our view of them and distort their manifestation.
This brings us to liberalism -- again, in the broad sense of the tradition extending back to Hobbes and Locke and represented today by positions as diverse as the egalitarian liberalism of Rawls, the classical liberalism or libertarianism of Nozick, and so forth.  The characteristic thesis of liberalism is that society and government are not natural to us, but artificial.  They arise out of a contract or agreement of some sort (what sort depending on what version of liberalism we’re talking about), between individuals who do not have any preexisting obligations to one another or to any larger social whole.  Indeed, there is no social whole of which the individuals are naturally a part, and thus no common good.  There are only the private goods of the individuals, and if they decide to form some larger whole it is only for the sake of facilitating those private goods.  Moreover, for the liberal, unless the individuals in some way consent to there being a political authority (via a Lockean social contract, bargaining in Rawls’s original position, an initial group of clients signing on with a Nozickian dominant protective agency, or what have you) then there simply cannot be such an authority, and the individuals have no obligation whatsoever to recognize any purported authority.
In short, liberalism essentially rejects the fifth of the basic natural inclinations and is therefore to that extent fundamentally at odds with the A-T natural law tradition.
To forestall misunderstandings, note that I am not here talking about questions such as whether it can be legitimate to resist or overthrow an unjust government, whether popular elections are the least bad way to determine who holds office, etc.  An A-T natural law theorist certainly could answer (and many A-T theorists in fact have answered) such questions in the affirmative.  But those are essentially questions about which specific persons get to exercise political authority, who gets to hold office and how to determine that, etc.  What is at issue here is the more fundamental question of whether the consent of the individuals is the ultimate foundation of there being any such thing as political authority, any such thing as offices of government, in the first place.  The liberal tradition says Yes, the A-T natural law tradition says No.  Again, for the A-T tradition, society is natural to us rather than artificial and political authority (as a general, background condition of the existence of society, as distinct from some particular concrete form that that authority might take) derives from natural law rather than consent. 
Nor is its rejection of the idea that man is a social animal (as A-T understands that claim) the only characteristic feature of liberalism.  The other characteristic feature is its insistence not only on the distinctionbetween church and state (which Christianity has always affirmed) but on a sharp separation in principle between church and state, so that the state can in no way favor or be influenced by the doctrine of any particular religious body.   (Traditional Christian doctrine holds that such a rigid separation cannot be absolutely required as a matter of principle, even if it is sometimes necessary or advisable in practice.)  In Locke, this separation did not rule out a generic philosophical theism as something the state ought to favor, but the subsequent liberal tradition has tended to exclude even this.  (I discussed the nature of the traditional Christian view of the relation between Church and state and how liberalism departed from it in some detail in an earlier post.) 
Associated in the liberal tradition with this exclusion of religion from politics has been a tendency toward skepticism about the possibility of genuine knowledge where theological matters are concerned.  For if we really could have such knowledge, it would seem unreasonable for government not to take account of it in setting policy, any more than it would be reasonable for government to ignore scientific knowledge.  Locke’s contemporary Jonas Proast noted the skeptical implications of Locke’s doctrine of religious toleration.  A more thoroughgoing and emphatic skepticism about the possibility of religious knowledge has become ever more deeply ingrained in the liberal tradition in the centuries since, to the point where contemporary liberals tend to think it self-evident that religion as such is a matter of “faith” understood as an irrational commitment, which for that reason ought to have no influence whatsoever on public policy.  (I discuss Locke’s position and Proast’s criticisms of it in chapter 5 of my book Locke .) 
Now, as I’ve noted, Aquinas held that knowledge of God was the ultimate fulfillment of our natural inclination toward knowledge of the truth.  To the extent that liberalism presupposes skepticism about the possibility of theological knowledge -- and indeed tends to promote such skepticism as a way of making sure that religion will be kept out of politics -- it is incompatible with the fourth of our natural inclinations.
There is another respect in which liberalism is at least in tension with this fourth inclination.  Hobbes had an extremely “thin” conception of the moral law.  In Hobbes’s state of nature, everyone is at liberty to do whatever he likes, not only legally but morally.  It is the chaos that this inevitably generates that leads individuals in the state of nature to give up their absolute liberty and form civil society.  The tendency of Hobbesian contractarian thinking about morality, though, is in a decidedly libertine and minimalist direction.  If the individual does not consent to some restriction on his liberty of action -- not just a legal restriction, but even a moral restriction -- then he cannot be bound by such a restriction.  Locke’s conception of morality is much “thicker,” even if not nearly as thick as the A-T conception.  In Locke’s state of nature, we are not at liberty to do whatever we like.  Even if we are not yet obliged to submit to any government, we are still obliged even in the state of nature to submit to a moral law that is in no way the product of human convention or contract and is knowable by reason apart from special divine revelation.  Hence, though Locke would not permit any but the most generic religious belief to influence government policy, there is nothing in Lockeanism per se that rules out letting various moralconsiderations influence government policy.  For example, there is nothing in Lockeanism per se that would prevent the outlawing of abortion.
However, the liberal tradition has tended over the centuries to follow Hobbes rather than Locke on this particular matter (even if it has of course preferred Locke’s limited state to Hobbes’s absolutist state).  That is to say, just as the liberal tradition has over the centuries tended toward increasing skepticism about the possibility of theological knowledge, it has also tended toward increasing skepticism about the possibility of moral knowledge of anything more than a very ”thin” or minimalist “live and let live” sort.  That is why it has tended increasingly to insist that matters of “personal morality” (e.g. concerning abortion, homosexuality, etc.) not be allowed to influence public policy.  It is why Rawls will not only not permit any sort of religious doctrine to influence the basic structure of society, but will not permit any other “comprehensive doctrine” (of even a secular moral or philosophical sort) to do so. 
As in the case of religion, the skepticism and the attitude toward public policy go hand in hand.  If it were admitted that we really could have genuine knowledge where “personal morality” is concerned, then it would be hard to justify letting government ignore this knowledge any more than it could ignore scientific knowledge.  Hence, just as the liberal has a strong incentive to insist that theological claims are merely matters of irrational commitment, so too does he have a strong incentive to insist that beliefs about “personal morality” are matters of taste, subjective emotional reaction, etc.
In this way too, then, liberalism, at least in its dominant contemporary manifestations, is at odds with the fourth of our fundamental natural inclinations, as it is understood in the A-T tradition.  For of course, the A-T natural law tradition holds that there is a great deal of genuine knowledge to be had where matters of “personal morality” are concerned.
Now, the matters of “personal morality” about which contemporary liberalism exhibits such skepticism have largely to do with sex, so that there is an obvious sense in which liberalism tends to be at odds also with the third of our natural inclinations as A-T natural law theorists understand it.  But there is another and more specific source of tension between liberalism and this third natural inclination.  The family is the most obviously natural form of social organization.  It is also the context within which we are most obviously obliged to submit to an authority we never consented to, viz. parental authority.  Accordingly, the family sits uneasily with the core liberal ideas that society is artificial and that there can be no authority over an individual to which he has not in some sense consented.   There is thus bound to be a strong temptation in liberalism to extent its analysis of society on the large scale to the small scale case of the family.  The modern attitude toward marriage and family as essentially about individual personal fulfillment, toward the having of children as an option which a couple may or may not wish to exercise (rather than the reason why the institution of marriage exists in the first place), easy divorce in the name of personal fulfillment, the redefinition of marriage to fit current attitudes about homosexuality, etc. all clearly reflect this tendency to try to make of family something approximating an artificial and contractual arrangement.
The current push for the legalization of assisted suicide indicates that liberalism is not fully consistent even with the second of the five natural inclinations.  And the prevalence within liberal societies of moral minimalism, moral skepticism, subjectivism about value, and moral relativism is evidence that liberalism sits poorly even with the first and most basic of the natural inclinations.
This is not to say that all forms of liberalism are in every way, and to the same extent in the case of each inclination, at odds with the five on the list.  Much less is it to say that all individual liberals are personally hostile to the general conception of moral life summarized in the A-T account of the five inclinations.  All the same, liberalism’s emphasis on individual autonomy has over the centuries been taken in increasingly extreme directions, in ways increasingly at odds with the A-T understanding of the five inclinations.
In recent decades, some Catholics have thought that concepts like “human rights” and the “dignity of the human person” might provide conceptual common ground between liberalism and Catholic moral thinking (the latter having, of course, been deeply influenced by the A-T natural law tradition).  This is naïve, because such expressions bear radically different meanings in the minds of liberals on the one hand and Catholic and A-T natural law theorists on the other.  For the latter, our dignity lies precisely in our capacity as rational animals to pursue the five natural inclinations, and the function of rights is to safeguard the possibility of pursuing them.  For contemporary liberalism, by contrast, our “dignity” and “rights” entail that we may if we wish be indifferent to these inclinations or even opposed to them. 

The Last Superstition in Brazil

My book The Last Superstition , having appeared a few years back in a German translation, will soon be available in Brazilian Portuguese.  The publisher is Edições Cristo Rei, and the book is being kicked off by way of a crowdfunding campaign.  The book cover can be seen above.  (Yes, that’s me they’ve drawn in front of the blackboard.  You can guess who the other guys are.)