Hey all, I’m in a class this semester and am going through the first 44 questions of Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. I figured that I’d just put some thoughts on the text in this one document as a running commentary for you to read. Over the semester I’ll add in a table of contents. By no
Author: ReluctantPhilosopher
The Ideas as Thoughts of God The divine ideas have a notorious history in philosophy. They are commonly spoken of as the ‘thoughts of God,’ and utilized in arguments for God’s existence, e.g., Edward Feser’s ‘Augustinian Argument.’ Their history is pretty nuanced, and provides an interesting area for investigation. Prior to the Platonic Successors we
For those who aren’t familiar, the transfiguration (Matthew 17.1-13, Mark 9.2-13, and Luke 9.28-36) is an event recorded in the gospels where Christ, Peter, James, and John go up onto a mountain and Christ is “transfigured.” The event is clearly meant to indicate the divine approval of Christ’s mission on earth. But there seems to be
What follows is a brief guide to current discourse surrounding gender along with the arguments put forth by those who attack a ‘traditional conception.’ I then respond briefly to the arguments. This post shouldn’t be read all at once and then relegated to the trash bin; it can function as a handout to which one
“Fun” What is the appeal behind spending thirty or more dollars to buy an old book, opening it up to find the language verbose, dense, and placid? And then to sink hours and hours into the text with little to nothing to show for it? Well, when put like that, reading sounds more like torture
David was a good guy most of the time. But so was Ted Bundy. After all, both mostly treated people in a decent manner, and most days, they weren’t out murdering or assassinating. Okay, it might be a bit unfair to make that comparison, but the point is that people cannot be judged on the
Just some brief thoughts on quantum physics and Aristotle as I learn more about the field…
A fallacious, or arbitrary starting point is weak, as it can be objected to and then the whole argument falls apart. But consider that that is exactly what will be provided in any case of trying to define philosophy – philosophy itself is notoriously difficult to define, and few agree on exactly what it is.
What’s so interesting about a bunch of Greek guys from 2500 years ago? As one of my friends back home put it so succinctly, “Why should I care about a bunch of old dead white dudes?” After all, they didn’t even have access to the technology we have today. They didn’t have the ability to
Roger Scruton was a controversial figure. Despite being a British philosopher who specialized in Kant and aesthetics, he was famous for his founding of the right-wing political magazine The Salisbury Review, along with his now infamous book Thinkers of the New Left (republished as Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands) where he critiques Lacan, Badiou, Zizek, and
The Reluctant Philosopher 