Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Brad Gregory's New Book

You remember Brad Gregory, Notre Dame's golden boy.  Well he has a new book out.  Generating lots of buzz, probably awards in the offiing.  But it doesn't look like he learned his lession.  Here's a quote from the introduction, p.5, of The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society

Finally, until Funkenstein's Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (1986), no one would have suspected any connection between late medieval metaphysics and contemporary neo-Darwinian atheism. But the metaphysical and epistemological assumptions of modern science and of antireligious, scientistic ideologies are clearly indebted to the emergence of metaphysical univocity that Funkenstein identified in medieval scholasticism beginning with John Duns Scotus.

Some more from his 2009 Logos article:

Funkenstein showed both that there was a deep affinity between theology and science among major intellectual figures in the seventeenth century and why this symbiosis proved fleeting: the underlying ontology— God “is” just like creation “is”—meant that God had to beat a progressive retreat as science explained more and more about the natural world. Scotus’s initial move is anything but an arcane curiosity from the distant past because it led through an unanticipated series of intellectual developments that include the scientific revolution, Isaac Newton’s physics and post-Newtonian deism, Immanuel Kant’s metaphysics and his sharp distinction between phenomena and noumena, the philosophical framework of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism, and eventually the neo-Darwinian, scientistic atheism of the New Atheists.

And it turns out that Scotus believed in a different God than did the Biblical authors, Church Fathers, Aquinas, and millions of Christian lay people.

Well, of course, it will be argued—what “other” ontological framework could there be? One in which God is not conceptually domesticated, but is rather regarded as radically distinct from and noncompetitive with his creation, as the traditional doctrine of creation ex nihilo implies.


[...]


God conceptualized in this manner is not an “entity or being” at all; he cannot be conceived or visualized; he cannot be represented directly in any human categories whatsoever, whether visual, verbal, or conceptual. This is the same God written about with acuity by contemporary Catholic philosophers such as Robert Sokolowski and theologians such as Robert Barron. This is the same God in whom faithful Catholics believe today, whatever their level of explicit philosophical or theological awareness (my ninety-five-year-old grandmother, with her eighth-grade education, believes in, worships, and prays to this God).


We really ought to take away all that NEH money for the edition, burn all works of Scotus, and excommunicate  anyone who says his name aloud.  Because in the end, we all know that  Aquinas was right about everything (except the immaculate conception...).


Update:


In leafing through Funkenstein's book, I came across a discussion of univocity on p. 26 that claims that existence is a divine attribute for Scotus (assuming, like the Thomists, that Scotus holds the same view on essence and existence as Aquinas). He cites as his proof for this and univocity generally the spurious Expositio in Metaphysicam, known since at least the 1920's to be spurious. But Funkenstein, like Brad Gregory, is an historian, which means they don't need to worry about such matters.


So it looks like the intellectual giants of our time are agreed and we have a common opinion: Scotistic univocity is bad and is the root of all evil in the world, and we know this because of all its bad effects on society. It is in fact so obviously bad and stoopid we do not need to make a single argument against it.  Thus say the philosophers, theologians, and historians of our time.

52 comments:

Anonymous said...

So everyone just keeps getting Scotus wrong? This sounds like a no true scotusman fallacy.

:-)

Anonymous said...

Perhaps writing an article and clearing up the matter? You could try and have it posted on First Things and other Catholic sites? Call out the worst offenders to get their attention so they correct their accounts and redirect their animus to Ockham?

It's better than grousing on an obscure blog every time this happens.

Lee Faber said...

There's really no point. Cross already wrote a solid article that destroyed radical orthodoxy. Why repeat it? All of these sorts of claims are rooted in Thomism, so to refute one is to refute them all.

Anyway, I have better things to do with my time than correct idiots. Such as edit Scotus. Or at least learn how.

I won't rule an article out. I have to get a job first and whatnot, but if I survive I might do so. Think of posts such as this as my notes for that article.

Anonymous said...

Alright, but it's more than just the Neo-Orthodox, including a good number of people who just have the details on Scotus wrong, but are not nearly as, shall we say, "loose" with the facts as the Neo-Orthodox. For example, Edward Feser, listed under "Blogs We Read" on this site, has made such errors in his books, but he largely gets Ockham right.

MPB said...

Though I agree with you on Scotus being severely misrepresented and effectively slandered; I can see why they find this need to view Scotist thought as conniving or pernicious.

From my own speculation, I think the problem is less about how "wrong" the blessed Duns Scotus was but trying to determine and convey what went wrong in the transition from medieval to modern philosophy for Christians. The general transition took place while Scotism was most popular: codified into a school and taught by the Franciscans, Servites and Jesuits alike.

In other words, when you are at the scene of the crime while the crime took place, you are going to be viewed suspiciously.

This is what needs to be changed.

Lee Faber said...

I've looked at one or two of Feser's books and all I've seen there is a brief comment lumping Scotus in with Ockham. It was posted in the comments on an earlier post a few months back. It's incorrect, sure, but just represents Feser's adherence to modern Thomism. And at least he is up front about it, instead of the sly approaches of Radical orthodoxy, Brad Gregory, and fr. Barron all of whom give exegesis of Scotus. Feser just lumps Scotus with ockham and then talks about ockham, so there doesn't seem to be much point in attacking him.

And as MPB points out, none of these people care at all about what Scotus actually might have said. Their interest is in the present, the present state of Christianity face to face with militant atheism and secularism. Scotus is just a stepping stone.

When it comes it Scotism, there are probably only ten people in the world who study trends in Scotism and among the Franciscans after Scotus. That is where my academic research interests lie. Such work will never make it to the popular level, however; the ideas are just too hard and complicated. The fr. Barron's and Brad Gregory's will never bother with reading Mastrius or Petrus Thomae for themselves.

Anonymous said...

MPB, part of the problem is who is largely doing the investigating in this case: philosophers and theologians. They are naturally going to look for the theological and philosophical contributions, but are likely to miss the other contributions: the power struggles between monarchs and the popes, the emergence of early forms of capitalism, the centralization of power in kingdoms that presaged the modern state, the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the rediscovery of hermetical texts and their influence upon scientific thinking, the calcification and break down of the scholastic system, the Plague, the Crusades, etc., etc.

Of course, the combination of nominalism and voluntarism in Ockham's work contributed to the story: it shaped Luther's thinking, it dislodged Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian political and ethical frameworks, it changed the way God was understood, it changed conceptualizations of sovereign authority, it influenced Descartes, and the metaphysical picture it offered was very much in line with the new science, etc. But to say that this single development caused modernity is really stretching credulity.

The good news is that there are a number of people who get this and get Scotus right, even when they only reference him in passing, such as David Bentley Hart's Beauty of the Infinite.

MPB said...

Well Anonymous December 8, 2011 12:06 AM,

I agree. Which, for me, makes this website so invaluable even if its only "an obscure blog."

Too much time is wasted establishing narratives today; narratives which are too large in scope to cover everything. Nothing gets accomplished when you have to spend a lifetime's work trying to justify why you think this work is important. So, someone like Mr.Faber is invaluable.

Instead, I've been to lectures where Gilson and Thomas are treated as if they were the Church. One I found it scandalous that this very bright professor went on a rant that left Saint Augustine excommunicated, the Franciscans heretics (especially Duns Scotus) and barely stopped short of saying that Saint Thomas's Summa was more valuable than the Resurrection itself.

I am an amateur when it comes to scholasticism. I've read Thomas and Sic and Non and some Anselm and some Scotus, but I do not personally have the time to pursue all avenues of thought. My own background is actually in Rabbinic Jewish thought and the Hellenistic world, and while Saint Thomas's Summa is great in response to classical pagan thought; I find him to be less insightful when applied to modern philosophies. From what I've apprehended of Scotus, his subtlety may hold a cogent response to that present crisis these people are so worried about.

I know, for me, this has been the case and has brought me a better understanding of the faith than I previously held. Which, in the end, is the most important narrative to share.

Bubba said...

Go easy on Dr. Funkenstein. So is he citing Antonius Andreae as Scotus? Do their views of univocity differ in a way that in itself would falsify the view he presents of Scotus? Or is Antonius here cut-and-pasting in parts of Scotus?

The thing historians shouldn't have to worry about is whether a view is right or wrong. Trying to use history to figure out "where we went wrong" is a dead end. If you know that Thomas "Got it right", then everyone after him who is not a Thomist "Got it wrong". If you don't like Thomas, then you stop at Bonaventure.

Similarly, if Scotus "got it right", Antonius Andreae and Petrus Thomae can only "get it wrong".

Ultimately, the reason why "everyone keeps getting Scotus wrong" is because only Scotus can get Scotus right, and only Lee Faber and get Lee Faber right. Proximately, however, the problem here is that a Scotus-villain conforms to an ideological history created in the nineteenth century, and it's easier to cite the lie than investigate the underlying thought.

Screaming, calling people to the carpet, and so on, won't help much. Ridiculing them for being ignorant ideologues repeating the same lies from the nineteenth century might. Academics love controversy, but fear ridicule (cf. rostrum anseris).

These are common opinions that are not to be taken seriously, along the lines of "St. Thomas Aquinas, defender of the Immaculate Conception."

Speaking of which, happy holiday.

Anonymous said...

MPB,

Narratives may be an overindulgence today, but pace Mr. Faber and yourself, I think it is an error to dismiss their importance. One of the transgressions of modernity was a denial of human particularity and limitedness. In our postmodern state, we are more aware of our contingency and historical particularity. So, there is a use for narrative and historical investigation in philosophy and theology -- to vindicate or dismiss certain ideas and to trace their evolution. Mr. Faber does this himself, as Bubba just did as well. Both tell a critical narrative about the marginalization of Scotus at the hands of Thomists. Another good example in the field of ethics is MacIntyre's After Virtue, which is a narrative investigation of the abandonment of teleological ethical frameworks based upon Aristotelianism for modern ones. It was a landmark work and gave Aristotle new legs in the field.

Of course, you are right to suggest that too much time is probably wasted on them. Very little good work in metaphysics is being done today, for instance, but that is a function of the times we live in, unfortunately. But don't be so quick to dismiss narrativization in philosophy; it doesn't need to be a matter of either/or -- either metaphysics or historical narrativization -- it can be both/and. Of course, this doesn't excuse sloppy narratives and histories -- or ideologically slanted ones.

(I have a feeling that this argument may solicit some critical responses.)

On another point, MPB, what do you mean that Aquinas is better suited to addressing pagan thought and Scotus the modern crisis? I ask not to disagree or challenge your argument, but because I don't understand it.

Anonymous said...

Let me contextualize that a bit more on the issue of narratives. Most of the philosophical work done on this blog is in metaphysics, where narratives are, admittedly, of little use. However, in moral and political philosophy, the field in which I primarily labor, that is not the case. Virtue ethics, which Aristotelians and Scholastics tend to propound along with natural law, requires one to be historically conscious and critical because it requires addressing contingent ethical situations. In this, a good critical narrative can even serve a prophetic function.

Of course, this isn't philosophy proper, but narratives can be made to serve philosophy for salutary ends beyond the historical activity of simply recording ideas.

UncleMeat said...
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Michael Sullivan said...

"UncleMeat",

It's okay not to know what you're talking about. But ignorance combined with arrogance, incoherence, and offensiveness will be deleted.

UncleMeat said...

No, Paddy it's just a bit irreverent (and featuring scoundrels such as ..Bertrand Russell and Hegel) and that a Thomist can't stand. I know more about it than thou--and the errors thereof. Scotus is not a thomist. And...Hegel's comments on the scholastics are hardly trivial.

As Hegel wrote, The Aristotelian philosophy is quite opposed to (the Scholastic procedure), but it became therein alienated from itself. The fixed conception of the supersensuous world with its angels and so on was a subject which the Scholastics elaborated without any regulating standard, in barbaric fashion, and they enriched and embellished it with the finite understanding and with the finite relationships of the same. There is present no immanent principle in the thinking itself, but the understanding of the Scholastics got into its possession a ready-made metaphysic, without the need of making it relate to the concrete; this metaphysic was killed, and its parts in their lifelessness were separated and parcelled out.

Bad news for the flying saints biz (that said, there are a few authentic catholics worthy of respect. Alas that's not the Smithy)

Michael Sullivan said...

Sir,

I'm strongly considering simply deleting all of your comments from here on out. I honestly don't see what you have to gain from gratuitously insulting strangers, but you are not welcome to continue. I will give only this one response:

1) We are not Thomists. We are well aware of the many differences between Thomism and Scotism; these differences have been a major theme of this blog over the past few years, as a very little looking around would make clear.

2) I have no objection to quoting or referring to Russell or Hegel. But if you think you're adding something to the conversation by informing us that, according to Russell, Thomas was more Aristotelian and Scotus more Platonist, then I'm afraid you don't know who you're talking to and are severely out of your depth. And if you think it's useful or interesting to suggest that Hegel might have compared Aquinas to a child molester, then I'm not sure you belong here.

3) Again, you're welcome to quote Hegel, but your quote adds nothing but the unsurprising fact that Hegel doesn't like the scholastics. There's not exactly an argument there. I could offer up some nasty jibes at Hegel from famous philosophers too, but what would be the point?

UncleMeat said...
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01010101 said...

No, Russell understands that Scotus was an immaterialist, at least. He says form exists apart from matter--there are incorporeal substances. Unlike Aristotelian tradition (Aquinas is not pure Aristotle either). So yr wrong, as usual

Michael Sullivan said...

Perhaps it would help you to know that I wrote my doctoral dissertation on this precise issue, namely the existence of finite forms apart from material substrates, in Aquinas, Scotus, and many others. It is the largest and most comprehensive treatment of the issue in any language. So I am very well aware of the positions of both Aquinas and Scotus and the differences of each from Aristotle. This is why I say that referencing Russell is not exactly earth-shattering for me.

Michael Sullivan said...

By the way, on the small chance that anyone is interested, my dissertation is available online:

http://aladinrc.wrlc.org/bitstream/1961/9233/1/Sullivan_cua_0043A_10097display.pdf

01010101 said...

Then..according to Scotus do substantial forms exist apart from matter, or not?

They do. Being exists, even without matter for Scotus. And matter itself in some odd, insubstantial forms as well said John the Scot. Those are platonic views.

Michael Sullivan said...

Did I contest these points? What are you trying to prove?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the dissertation!!

And apparently Aquinas and Scotus are bad for not aping Aristotle exactly instead of building on and enriching the tradition? Who knew? What a devastating critique? It's not like they were consciously synthesizing the Neo-Platonic thought of the Patristic Fathers with Aristotelianism, or anything like that.

01010101 said...
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UncleMeat said...
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UncleMeat said...
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Michael Sullivan said...

I don't know when I've ever seen such a boorish, uncivil troll. I am interested in conversation, including vigorous disagreement; I have no use for mere sneering incivility. You will continue to be summarily deleted as long as you keep it up.

Michael Sullivan said...

By the way, Faber, I'm sorry this nonsense has hijacked your post. This guy followed me here from Occam's blog, where he's been doing this shtick for weeks.

Lee Faber said...

Michael, you should add the diss. to our "bibliotheca scotistica" menu, if you don't mind.

Agains the ones and zeros, I don't know what it means to say "being exists". Sounds redundant. Certainly Scotus thinks there are immaterial substantial forms. He also thinks there are substial forms that actualize matter, and both of these kinds of substantial forms admit of accidents. Matter has no 'insubstantial' form, but it does have being in the sense of being an underlying substrate that survives through a sucession of substantial forms. But I don't see the value of labeling such a view 'Platonic". Plato never held such a view, nor did the neo-platonists. Once can call Scotus Platonic, Aristotelian, Augustinian etc. but who really cares? What is interesting is the actual argument he makes. Simply saying it is platonic doesn't help us to determine if it's false. And given the near-infinite distance between the term 'platonist' as used by say contemporary analytic philosophers and the actual views of Plato, I see little value in applying such terms to other thinkers.

Anonymous said...

"This guy followed me here from Occam's blog, where he's been doing this shtick for weeks."

Weeks?

Years, sir. Years. He's mentally unstable, and on meds. Pity him more than anything.

Anonymous said...
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01010101 said...
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Anonymous said...

These guys have been popping up on all the philosophy oriented Christian blogs. I've seen them on Dangerous Idea, Feser's blog, and elsewhere. This must take quite a bit of concerted effort and time on their part since their net is so wide.

Anonymous said...

Back to the main topic, where did the type of univocity come from that Brad Gregory and others ascribe to Scotus? Spinoza? The mechanistic and materialist new science of the 16th and 17th centuries? Can it be traced back to Ockham?

Michael Sullivan said...

Empedocles? Parmenides? Really, why do we want to find a definitive terminus a quo for every idea? I'm sympathetic to what Bubba says above: "Trying to use history to figure out "where we went wrong" is a dead end." Deal with a particular claim, a particular thinker. Is it true or false? What insights or arguments do we have for or against it?

What's wrong with Ockham, for instance, as far as I'm concerned, is that he's wrong about universals (for instance). I don't particularly want to blame him for what came after, except insofar as he thought the same thing as later blameworthy thinkers or insofar as they were working out the logical consequences of his principles. The whole genealogy of ideas method is a kind reverse genetic fallacy: because Protestants, atheists, etc. were descended from Ockham in this or that regard, therefore Ockham is responsible for them and we should throw our hate at him. This seems wrong to me. The sins of the father are not visited upon the sons, except insofar as he wrongs them directly by depriving them of their inheritance, etc. (as Descartes did). So the sins of the sons are not visited upon the father, except insofar as they learned their vices from him. As Aristotle says in the Ethics, a man can be posthumously unhappy in his children, and this is a misfortune for him, but that's another matter. He can't in general be responsible for what they do with his work when he's dead if they don't use it as he did or intended.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I was asking not to construct a grand narrative, but because I am interested in the metaphysics of this period and the Patristic Age for its own sake, not to appropriate it for a historical project.

But since you addressed narratives and history, I'll have to respectfully disagree. Philosophy, while it certainly includes a good deal of technical argumentation -- and in this capacity, I would even call it a science in the scholastic sense -- is also much more than that. It involves a love of wisdom and to be wise as a human involves an awareness of one's contingency and thus one's development and past, whether it be the individual reflecting upon himself or the a society on itself. Further, while I think that you are right to suggest that some use of "genealogies" is to cast blame, unfairly, and results in a fallacious dismissal, by all means, not all of them are like that. One can trace the lineage of ideas without the silly finger-pointing being done to Scotus by Thomists, for instance. One can, as Alasdair MacIntyre does in After Virtue, provide a much needed narrative in order to describe present behavior and illuminate baseless practices and contextualize moral and political pathologies, almost even prophetically.

But then, I still think this disagreement is more a function of our different fields than anything else. You work in the highly technical and exact world of medieval scholastics. Propositional arguments rule the day and narratives have little place there. I labor in the fields of ethics and political philosophy, which is much more historically oriented. And it's not that my work focuses exclusively on narratives, or even a majority of it, either, but that narratives are provided alongside arguments. It does not have to be a matter of either/or -- either narratives or good arguments -- but it can be very much both.

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Credo In Unum Deum said...

WOW! This has really sparked a debate! Dr. S, your link did not work.
I am always humored by my úber-Thomist friends who critique Scotus from Thomistic first principles and then freak out when it leads to heresy, etc, and accuse the Blessed of such. It's also very irritating.

Credo In Unum Deum said...

über-Thomist....wrong Alt+**** combination... it's 0252....I typed 0250 and the type is so small I missed it until I saw it published. sorry.

Credo In Unum Deum said...

And, Dr. S, the link does work, just not from this part where you leave comments. It's appears incomplete here.

Michael Sullivan said...

Credo, I've also (on Faber's suggestion) added the disseration to the "Biblioteca Scotistica" section on the sidebar, so it should be easy to access.

Michael Sullivan said...

Other Anonymous,

Thanks for your stimulating comment. I'm thinking of writing another post on the subject, which might suggest that narrative in the history of philosophy too often ends up becoming the search for propter quid explanations in matters for which only per accidens causes exist. It'll have to wait for another evening, however.

Pesadillo said...
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Anonymous said...

Thank you for the reply. I'm looking forward to that post.

Credo In Unum Deum said...

I think there are more deleted posts than not! (not really) I have never seen this kind of thing here before.

Michael Sullivan said...

It's never happened before. This guy just showed up and started causing trouble. I've seen him recently on Ockham's and Feser's blogs. I really don't understand the appeal of that kind of behavior, but there it is.

Crude said...

Alright. Maybe this is the thread to ask this question.

If someone - a non-specialist like myself - wanted to learn more about Scotus' thought, what would be a good book to do it with? Are there any books that are to Scotus what Feser's Aquinas is to Aquinas?

Lee Faber said...

Crude,

I suppose it depends on how much of a non-specialist you are. Here are four suggestions:

Richard Cross, "Duns Scotus."

Richard Cross, "Duns Scotus on God" [hard]

Allan Wolter, "The Transcendentals and their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus"

Antonie Vos, "The Philosophy of JOhn Duns Scotus" [see the sidebar for the pdf]

Crude said...

Thanks, I'll pick one of them up for myself soon and see what I can make sense of.

J said...
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Anonymous said...
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