Thursday, September 24, 2009

Aquinas, by Feser

Edward Feser, author of the outstanding The Last Superstition has a new book out on St. Thomas Aquinas, which offers an introduction to perhaps the greatest Christian thinker of all time.

Voices like Feser's--unapologetic in their defense of the basic insights of Aristotelianism--are, for some reason, either rare or drowned out in the modernist din. I suspect a little of both.

Feser reminds me in some respects of Henry Veach, who challenged the philosophical establishment to justify its rejection of traditional Aristotelian logic in favor of modern propositional and predicate logic. Veach took the field and dared the champions of symbolic logic to a contest of intellects, but, comfortably ensconced in their mostly publicly-funded offices, they to ignore him long enough so that he eventually went away.

I once went back and copied all the journal articles Veach used to pillory those who Jacques Maritain once called the "logisticians," looking for any responses in the process, but none could be found. Peter Kreeft once told me that they never did respond to Veach.

The professional consequences of what Feser is attempting are, I am sure, somewhat costly, although he seems to up the challenge. In any case, this is all the more reason to cheer him on.

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