Philosophy Professor | thomasmward

T H O M A S M. W A R D

5 days ago
4 min

AI Doppelgängers

I had a prophetic idea the other day which I haven't seen anywhere before. I write it here as a warning, but some people will think it's...

Apr 1
6 min

Thick Being, Thin Being, and God

“Tu es verum esse; tu es totum esse” --Duns Scotus There is an old tradition which associates God with being or existence. Duns Scotus...

Mar 24
9 min

Fortifying the Intellectual Life

I recently read Zena Hitz's book, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (Princeton, 2020). I highly recommend it....

Nov 16, 2020
1 min

Two Recent Podcasts

Over the last few months I've had the privilege to talk about things I love on two podcasts. Earlier this month I was on Mere Fidelity,...

Oct 6, 2020
3 min

C.S. Lewis on Nature and Reasoning about God

In the Introduction to The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis tells us the reasons he used to give when people would ask him why he was an...

Oct 2, 2020
2 min

Something Must Exist

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" Here is one of the biggest of the Big Questions. But for the all deep philosophizing done...

Aug 26, 2020
2 min

How Much Can I Love My Hat?

Sometimes I think that a saint is someone who is capable of loving a hat more than I currently love anything. You get to a strange...

Aug 17, 2020
2 min

Divine Ideas

When I hear the words "creation" and even "creationism," I don't usually think of the old debates about "creation vs evolution." Instead...

Jun 10, 2020
5 min

Joy, Discipline, and Sacrifice

Sometimes the good life demands sacrifice. It is written, Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends....

Jun 1, 2020
4 min

Rightly Ordered Loves and Intensity of Feeling

What it means for a virtue to regulate an appetite has nothing to do with diminishing appetite as such. It has to do with ordering an...

May 25, 2020
4 min

Disability and Medieval Philosophy?

Yes. My friend, Scott Williams, has put together an excellent book bringing the academic field of disability studies into dialogue with...

May 20, 2020
1 min

One Wine is Left in the Broken Bowl

What is left for the cold grey soul That moans like a wounded dove? One wine is left in the broken bowl 'Tis, to love, and love, and...

May 20, 2020
1 min

What Forms Will Your Loves Call Forth?

Here is an audio file of some commentary I gave on Charles Williams' novel, The Place of the Lion. I originally recorded this for my...

May 11, 2020
3 min

Conformity to the Real

Philosophy is an activity and all activities aim at the good. What good does Philosophy aim at? Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding. These...

Apr 28, 2020
11 min

The Two Gandalfs

The title of this essay is not quite as apt as the titles of my earlier essays on the two Aragorns, Faramirs, and Treebeards. This is...

Apr 27, 2020
11 min

The Two Aragorns

Last week I posted essays on Treebeard and Faramir, two noble characters from the Lord of the Rings whom, I argued, Peter Jackson...

Apr 27, 2020
5 min

Reading Religion in Lord of the Rings

The Ainulindalë is the name of the first part of Silmarillion. It is the creation story of Tolkien's Middle Earth, and demonstrates that...

Apr 21, 2020
5 min

The Two Faramirs

In an earlier post I compared the character Treebeard as we meet him in The Lord of the Rings, with movie-Treebeard as we meet him in...

Apr 20, 2020
4 min

The Two Treebeards

For those whose first love is Tolkien's original novel, some of the changes made in Peter Jackson's films are bound to be disappointing....

Apr 16, 2020
1 min

What it is Like to do Philosophy

What is it like to do philosophy? Here is an image. Imagine a rock on a calm sandy beach. The waves slowly wash up, caressing the rock,...

Apr 9, 2020
3 min

Practicing Gratitude

By the practice of gratitude I mean a lot more than observing all rules of etiquette about when and how to express gratitude to another...

Apr 7, 2020
4 min

Sheltering Courageously

The Scythians fight by flying. This is what Socrates tells us, anyway, in Plato’s Laches. He asks Laches himself what courage is, and...

Apr 2, 2020
1 min

Love for God, Hope for Me

Duns Scotus tells us that the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love perfect us as "wayfarers" on our way to heaven. Faith...

Nov 12, 2019
4 min

Labor and Money

My main conviction about money is that it is a way of expanding the effectiveness of labor. I mean that it ought to be seen this way. I...

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