tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-922889245639375694.post3454707916280535377..comments2023-12-22T06:41:41.831-08:00Comments on strong reading: The Five Ways, 1969, Anthony KennyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-922889245639375694.post-12574998064533406902014-05-30T11:58:09.220-07:002014-05-30T11:58:09.220-07:00Thanks.
Sincerely,
James TaddeoThanks.<br /><br />Sincerely,<br />James TaddeoAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-922889245639375694.post-37239292933153231782014-05-30T11:54:19.094-07:002014-05-30T11:54:19.094-07:00Dear LFC,
I am doing some independent research on ...Dear LFC,<br />I am doing some independent research on Thomistic Philosophy and I recently read some of your writing on this subject and it fascinates me; I am wondering if you might have the time to add some perspective to a couple of questions I have in this area? My email is james_taddeo@yahoo.com <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-922889245639375694.post-76655133365811549732009-07-08T08:49:22.209-07:002009-07-08T08:49:22.209-07:00Sorry to be so slow; I was away this weekend.
I t...Sorry to be so slow; I was away this weekend.<br /><br />I think that what I don't like about Kenny is the way in which he seemed so willing to be finished with Aquinas. There was this mentality that one could systematically run through the text, strike out the bad arguments, and at the end we're done with Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God, if not Aquinas as a whole. Maybe that is the most respectful way to read Aquinas, or anyone, but it's certainly not an approach I consider sufficient or even particularly fruitful. What's the goal behind that? At 70 to have a acquired a patchwork of arguments and philosophical distinctions that strike on as logically sound? Schopenhauer, no, Kant's Copernican revolution, yes? Schopenhauer contradicted himself, so we don't need to read him, but Kant didn't, so we can study him? It seems such a narrow and limited way to engage with any thinker. <br /><br />It also strikes me as a deeply arbitrary. I think, for me, the question is at what point does it become personally necessary to stop engaging with a text. The 70s feminist will say at the moment at which Rousseau becomes misogynistic, a certain sort of person will say it's the moment Heidegger joined the Nazi party, someone like Kenny will say it's the moment Aquinas's argument fails. They all strike me as defensible but equally arbitrary. There's always something else to ask or do or say after that moment. But I'm not sure Kenny recognizes that. <br /><br /><br />I'll confess that proofs for the existence of God have always bored me, so, in that respect, I might be poorly positioned to appreciate the enterprise.lfchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17737181737572097625noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-922889245639375694.post-29326341359577424362009-07-03T07:15:30.636-07:002009-07-03T07:15:30.636-07:00On to Kenny's jerkiness. While I agree that Ke...On to Kenny's jerkiness. While I agree that Kenny's tone sometimes seem malicious, what actually struck me about this book was its earnestness. Thomas offers arguments for God's existence, presumably he took them seriously. Kenny, in turn, takes them seriously and evaluates them. Most of the time he tries to evaluate them within a context that Thomas would accept, hence his medieval kitchen comments. He does sometimes use contemporary knowledge, but when he does this I think it is because he is really talking to neo-Thomasians. They too, I would argue, mean their arguments seriously and should get a serious response.<br /><br />I think its important to note that it is believers, including Thomas, who have started this conversation. Thomas and other religious philosophers have thought it important to offer proofs for God's existence. I don't think its wrong to take their efforts seriously. They seemed to have taken them seriously as evidenced by the give and take over the various proofs among believers themselves. Gaunilo, as a monk, probably believed in God but he still argued against Anselm's proof because he thought it was wrong. Similarly Crescas gave Maimonides hell for some of his proofs, not because he thought faith was a matter of the heart, but because he thought the arguments were bad. <br /><br />While I feel myself fortunate to come from a tradition that has not reified philosophical theology, I think it is important to realize that it was an essential part of religion for the intellectual class of a number of religions from the medieval period on to today. Additionally, while it may not play a big role in contemporary believers daily lives, in the sense that they are not personally trying to work out proofs, one can get a sense that they think its important that such 'proofs' exist by the ubiquity of books like "Permission to Believe" and the presence of 'Proofs of God Existence' as one of the most frequently accessed articles on the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy website. <br /><br />While Kenny definitely comes off as a bit of a pedantic jerk, I sometimes think it might be more respectful to a thinker to engage directly with their thought and arguments than to constantly step behind them. <br />Thoughts?Yonatan Brafmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15164803707479739579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-922889245639375694.post-64594011522948181152009-07-03T07:15:20.600-07:002009-07-03T07:15:20.600-07:00Great post! You really helped to summarize and ana...Great post! You really helped to summarize and analyze what was definitely a difficult book to work through.<br /><br />To start with I in principle agree with everyones' criticisms of this book. Kenny does definitely come off as a jerk. I will, however, modify this assessment at the end of my comment.<br /><br />Additionally, I thought that it wasn't well structured at all. Most importantly, I thought that the key to Kenny's whole method was buried in the third chapter, partially in logical symbols. Basically, as Liane points out, Kenny believes that each of Thomas's Ways can be mapped on to one of the Aristotelian Causes, with the the first two Ways both being about efficient causality.<br /><br />Most importantly though, he notes that each argument has the same formal structure. There is a relationship (R) between two things A and B and that this relationship is irreflexive and transitive. In each Way the relationship is defined differently depending on the Cause being discussed, but the two features of irreflexibility and transitivity are held stable. Thomas then argues that in order for this relationship to hold over a series the series will have to be either an infinite set or if the set is finite then there must be one variable in the series that does not stand in R to any other variable.<br /><br />Kenny notes that the the form of this argument is strong. He then discusses how, if that is the case, one must go about arguing against the Ways. It cannot be done by picking on the basic form of the argument but must proceed by showing how the details of the argument fail in a variety of other ways. These various other ways (showing that un-R-ed variable doesn't fit the characterization of God, a stable billiard ball as the unmoved mover, or that the R does not hold of anything at all among others) are what Kenny does in each chapter. This would have been much clearer if Kenny had said at the outset what his evaluation of Thomas's formal argument was and how, consequently, he was going to attack it.Yonatan Brafmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15164803707479739579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-922889245639375694.post-63855691979643080812009-07-02T08:07:18.308-07:002009-07-02T08:07:18.308-07:00Thanks Liane. I obviously share your frustrations...Thanks Liane. I obviously share your frustrations, but the take away formula of reducing 1&2 to efficient causality, 3 to material, 4 to formal and 5 to teleological is helpful, I guess. <br /><br />I'm unqualified to and incapable of responding to any of Kenny's arguments, but the book did give me more time to reflect on this framework of Nietzschean slave revolt that I mentioned in a previous comment. If Nietzsche is right, we should be able to see a re-valuation occurring in all of the books we are reading now. That said, I want to discuss two ideas that seem to structure all five ways and that also have a starring role in early modern philosophy.<br /><br />The first is the idea of infinity. In both of the first two ways, it is just assumed by Aquinas that there cannot be an infinite regress (again, what Hegel and Schelling would call a "bad infinity"). But as Kenny asks, "Newton's law will not explain how motion began; but how do we know that motion had a beginning?" (28). Kant's contribution was that we can't know, but we are rationally justified in believing so. But in the wake of critical philosophy, the door was opened again to pondering the idea of infinity. Fichte's subject of "infinite striving" would come to be associated with the same kind of "nightmarish" endless regress that Aquinas rejects. So the first idea is this need to "properly" conceive of infinity.<br /><br />The second idea is implied in the Platonic idea of the One: that there is a hierarchy that flows from it, and thus a natural order. In the second way, Kenny talks about there being an "order of efficient causes" (41), and in the fourth, "a scale of ascending cognitive powers" (80). But the order is not a natural idea in itself; it only follows from the One. Hierarchical order and the Platonic One are reciprocally determined.<br /><br />There is a very good discussion of competing conceptions of the One in this book I'm reading at Mark's suggestion, Dieter Henrich's "Between Kant and Hegel." Briefly, Henrich talks about two competing concepts of the One: a Platonic-Christian one of emanation (Aquinas' One) and Spinoza's immanent ensoph, a one that is not different from its emanations but entirely in the world. Both concepts imply a certain order, but only the first implies a rigidly hierarchical one. <br /><br />In conclusion, I just want to mention a line of thought that entertained me for a few minutes the other day: all of Aquinas' five ways are based on these binary oppositions (motion/inertia, possibility/necessity, etc.). As Kenny mentions, the problematization of the motion/inertia distinction in science wreaks havoc on the first way. But what if, as in Hegel, the distinction at work in all of the binaries is questioned: if inertia is inherently motion and possibility inherently necessity, either God's existence cannot be proven or we arrive back at Spinoza's immanent ensoph, in which case the only thing Hegel cannot be is a Christian.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08622262093442738585noreply@blogger.com