Comments on: See you in Seattle?

By: HT

HT — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:22:04 +0000

Thanks for getting the point, jack. May I remark that Stump, who has basically devoted her adult life to studying Thomas, does a fair bit of *contrasting* Locke with Aquinas on private property, e.g.? What is Peter’s argument against her, I should like to know? Locke is not a philosopher with whom I find myself in much agreement (his Bear-eats-a-berry argument for the naturalness of private property is risible–I suppose when the bear sh*ts the berry it ceases to be his private property anymore–which may have a ‘bearing’ on some of our modern real estate practices), but at least he was concerned with the full breadth of philosophy — do Pomophilosocons and rock critics ever actually stoop to thinking about…*philosophical* questions?

By: jack

jack — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 04:29:30 +0000

(expresses reserved agreement with HT.) Why accidental Thomism? Based on your interpretation of Locke, why couldn’t the fusion of elements in the Declaration tend more toward, e.g., Duns Scotus? He would have been closer to Locke on the answer to the question of universals but still believe in a personal God.

By: Peter Lawler

Peter Lawler — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 22:05:41 +0000

Carl, after all, I meant on the exact issue before us!

By: HT

HT — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:26:03 +0000

There’s a lot of perhaps warmish air and vague arm-waving in these precincts about how this or that post-Enlightenment figure was really a closet “Thomist”, or that he “thom’ed better than he knew”, so to speak. E.g. Tocqueville or the Founders. But I have seen no evidence that Peter or any of the other regular correspondents here has actually done any close sustained reading of *any* texts by Aquinas, or even of the important secondary literature, such as recent Analytic Thomism. I would be happy to be wrong about this, if I might be pointed to some serious exegesis and philosophizing along these lines. Re Thomas’s actual social philosophy, to the extent that there is one (based on what he plainly says in the Summa, not some tortured neo-Scalian tendentious hermeneutic thereof) I recommend Eleonore Stump’s chapter “Justice” in her magisterial book on Aquinas (it was called such by a reviewer in “Mind”, not just me). It’s not that long and can be read in isolation from the rest of the excellent text. –Btw, “most Catholic president ever”: LOL, howling.

By: Carl Eric Scott

Carl Eric Scott — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:10:33 +0000

Well, Peter as the one b/t the extremes should hold for this set (Ceaser, Lawler, Deneen), but it seems sort of funny to apply the label “extreme,” in any manner, to our Jim, the man who wants to bring various conservatives together(albeit with his distinctively modest type of natural rights championship in the driver’s seat), the man who’s not sure if there’s any bankable difference between postmodern and regular ol’ conservatives. If Reaganesque big-tent conservatism has a philosopher, it’s him; that is, if its tendencies as a “persuasion” are consistent enough to merit a philosophic analysis, he’s the one who’s done/doing it.

Enjoy Seattle, y’all!

By: Peter Lawler

Peter Lawler — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:48:44 +0000

By: jack

jack — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:35:43 +0000

Have you published anywhere your thoughts on the new natural law theory of Grisez, Finnis, etc.?