The Engaged Thomist

The Aristotelian account of modality is an incredibly popular theory modality in contemporary analytic philosophy and has broad acceptance among philosophers. This is evidenced by the fact that atheists like Alex Malpass and Graham Oppy and theists like Alex Pruss and Rob Koons hold to this view of modality. An uncontroversial consequence of this view is that there is a necessary being, and this entailment has been admitted by atheists and theists alike (see here: https://www.amazon.com/Actuality-Possibility-Worlds-Alexander-Pruss/dp/1441142045 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0QRtp07TbQ ). I think that this conclusion can be pushed even further to show that this account of modality entails the existence of God. Here is a brief sketch of how this argument would run: X is possible if and only if x is actual or if there is some actual y which can initiate a causal chain resulting in x’s actuality. All causes must have more being than their effects. There beings which are actually finit...

Liberalism, as an ideology, has come under more and more scrutiny in the West over the past few decades. Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed is a recent book which enumerates a lot of the issues that the West is facing today and diagnoses these ailments of liberalism achieving its philosophical ends. While Deneen lists several problems of which he believes liberalism is the primary cause, Deneen’s criticism that liberalism is anticulture is his most salient. Deneen argues that liberalism is anticulture because it facilitates an environment where individuals tend to detach themselves from the communities from which they gain their cultural identity. My central thesis is that Deneen’s analysis of “liberalism as anticulture” is true and provides a serious objection to liberalism (Deneen et al. 64). In this essay, I will begin by explaining why Deneen thinks liberalism is anticulture. I will then supplement Deneen’s point by explaining how liberalism’s emphasis on individualism leads t...

Kant’s account of experience is incredibly famous and influential in philosophy. Central to his account is his claim that we cannot know things as they are in themselves, but only as they are represented to us. In the first of his Prolegomena , Kant explains his position. Kant begins with the question: “How Is Pure Mathematics Possible?” ( PTAFM , Page 23). He goes on to say that mathematics is a kind of “synthetic … a priori ” knowledge. With this, he ask the question: “How is it possible to intuit anything a priori?” ( PTAFM , Page 24). Kant then makes an important point: “If our intuition had to be of such a nature as to represent things as they are in themselves, there would not be any intuition a priori , but intuition would be always empirical. For I can only know what is contained in the object in itself if it is present and given to me” ( PTAFM , Page 24). Given this, it is clear why Kant does not think that a priori knowledge gives us access to things in themselves as a prior...

Hume’s view that it is irrational to believe in miracles is awfully famous and it is explained in section 10 of his Enquiry . Hume’s argument against the rationality of belief in miracles begins with the intuitive assertion that “a wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence” ( ECHU , Section X). Early on, Hume also speaks of how miracles are primarily supported by testimonial evidence and gives examples, such as “testimony of the apostles, who were eye-witnesses to those miracles of our Saviour, by which he proved his divine mission” ( ECHU , Section X). A central aspect of testimony is its fallibility since it is based on “past experience” ( ECHU , Section X). He then goes on to define a miracle as “a violation of the laws of nature” ( ECHU , Section X). This is an important definition for Hume as laws of nature are merely what human beings say are the regularities which characterize nature. Furthermore, Hume thinks that laws of nature are deduced from experience: “a ...

The liberal tradition has historically rejected that human beings have obligations to which they did not explicitly consent (Uzgalis, 2018). Despite this, the trajectory of the tradition has been away from its more libertarian members and towards thinkers like John Rawls who seem to flirt with the idea. The foundational, and incredibly famous, thought experiment for Rawls’ theory is the “Original Position” (Freeman, 2019). In this thought experiment, there are rational, self-interested persons, separated from their conditions in the world and they are supposed to create the rules of the society that they want to live in. Rawls concludes from this thought experiment that these persons will establish “ two principles of justice: the first guarantees the equal basic rights and liberties” and “the second principle provides fair equality of educational and employment opportunities” (Freeman, 2019). For Rawls, these ought to be the two fundamental principles of justice in society. In this es...