What does that mean? I checked out the full article and still couldn’t figure out what she’s saying. Is she talking about whether the NATURAL or NORMATIVE necessity in animals and human beings? Or just “necessity” in general?Necessity has made quite a comeback in mainstream philosophy. With regard to necessity in general, the logical positivists who ignored or cut necessity out of symbolic logic were pretty much completely refuted by Saul Kripke’s “Naming and Necessity.” With regard to natural necessity there have been some powerful arguments in recent Virtue Ethics books that seem to prove that too- especially Philippa Foot’s “Natural Goodness.”

What either of those types of necessity have to do with the question of Faith and Reason as Shell claims, I don’t know. Maybe a Christian synthesis of faith and reason requires natural necessity, in its discussion of our souls?

Another thing I don’t get is Shell’s hang up with Ralph’s use of “analogy” as a description. She thinks Ralph is bringing that in from Aristotle (Categories?), but I’d be willing to bet that Ralph is using “analogy” in a Thomistic sense, and that’s where Shells’ criticism should have begun if there were a problem. As the other Ralph (McInerny) argued in “Aquinas and Analogy,” analogy is absolutely key to understanding metaphysics, the relationship of God to man, and the connections we draw between things using our common sense all the time. Though a Shell might not realize it, Straussians like herself explore analogies to do philosophy alot