Quotes from Edward Feser

1.2.2 Hylemorphism In change, there is, again, both the potential that is to be actualized and the actualization of that potential.

The determinable substratum of potentiality is what in Aristotelian philosophy of nature is meant by the term "matter," and a determining pattern that exists once the potential is actualized is called a "form.

Hence there must not only be something by virtue of which the thing you've drawn is triangular, but also something by virtue of which it is triangular in precisely the imperfect way that it is. There must also be something by virtue of which triangularity exists in this particular point in time and space.

Every one of these claims embodies a metaphysical assumption, and science, since its very method presupposes them, could not possibly defend them without arguing in a circle. Their defense is instead a task for metaphysics, and for philosophy more generally; and scientism is shown thereby to be incoherent.

Third, as Brian Davies has emphasized, much discussion of the problem of evil seems to presuppose that God is a kind of moral agent who has certain duties which (so it is alleged) he has failed to live up to. But this way of thinking simply makes no sense given Aquinas's conception of God.

For example, given that we depend on other people for our well-being and they depend on us, we have certain obligations towards each other; given that we have certain potentials the realization of which is good for us, potentials which require a certain amount of effort to realize, we have a duty to make that effort; and so forth.

That God is very remote indeed from the things of our experience is nowhere clearer than in Aquinas's account of divine simplicity, which is perhaps the most controversial aspect of his teaching on the divine attributes. For Aquinas, God is "simple" in the sense of being in no way composed of parts (ST I.3).

apart from the few who make a professional specialty of arguing about religion, secularist thinkers are generally unacquainted with anything but absurd caricatures of traditional religious ideas and arguments, are utterly unaware that anything other than these caricatures exist, and thus don't bother to look for anything but straw men to attack.

attributes. For Aquinas, God is "simple" in the sense of being in no way composed of parts (ST I.3).

it is very hard for a liberal to maintain his smug pose of moral and rational superiority over traditional religious believers and other non-liberals if he admits that his ideals are just one set of ungrounded prejudices among others

One famous implication of this doctrine is that though we distinguish in thought between God's eternity, power, goodness, intellect, will, and so forth, in God himself there is no distinction between any of the divine attributes. God's eternity is his power, which is his goodness, which is his intellect, which is his will, and so on. Indeed, God himself just is his power, his goodness, and so on, just as he just is his existence, and just is his essence.

smugness is half the fun of being a liberal (the other half being the tearing down of everything one's ancestors, and one's betters generally, worked so hard to build).

For example, whereas the natural sciences are concerned with various specific kinds of material substances Ã¢â'¬â€œ stone, water, trees, fish, stars, and so on Ã¢â'¬â€œ metaphysics is concerned with questions such as what it is to be a substance of any kind in the first place. (Is a substance a mere bundle of attributes, or a substratum in which attributes inhere? Are material substances the only possible sort? And so on.) Similarly, the natural sciences are concerned with

Malcolm Muggeridge famously said that "without God we are left with a choice of succumbing to megalomania or erotomania."3 The court's majority, in declaring by sheer judicial fiat the equal dignity under law of the family and sodomy, would appear to have gone Muggeridge one better by succumbing to both at once.

For faith, properly understood, does not contradict reason in the least; indeed...it is nothing less than the will to keep one's mind fixed precisely on what reason has discovered to it.

As Alfred North Whitehead once put it, "those who devote themselves to the purpose of proving that there is no purpose constitute an interesting subject for study.

If the Canadian parliament, say, should declare that in light of evolving social mores, triangles should be regarded as sometimes having four sides, and decree also that anyone who expresses disagreement with this judgment shall be deemed guilty of discriminatory hate speech against four-sided triangles, none of this would change the geometrical facts in the least, but merely cast doubt on the sanity of Canadian parliamentarians.

How significant is Aristotle? Well, I wouldn't want to exaggerate, so let me put it this way: Abandoning Aristotelianism, as the founders of modern philosophy did, was the single greatest mistake ever made in the entire history of Western thought.

If you make the effort to work through the ideas I'll be setting out in this book, then even if you do not end up agreeing with me that the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the natural law conception of morality are rationally unavoidable, you will understand how reasonable people could be convinced of this.

What Hitchens should have written is: "I wouldn't know the difference between conceptualism and realism, essentially and accidentally ordered causal series, Aristotle and Hume, etc., even if I were intellectually honest; but then, neither will the book reviewer at the New York Times, so who cares?

without God we are left with a choice of succumbing to megalomania or erotomania.

These books are all refreshingly clear-headed and unfashionable, free of cant and free of Kant;

Liberalism is like this: Purporting to offer a middle ground between radical individualism and collectivism, what it really gives us is a diabolical synthesis of the two, a bureaucratically managed libertinism.

Overall, then, Aristotle just isn't as "sexy" as Plato. His only advantage is being right.