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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....
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
Why Some People Think God is Beyond Being and Why They are Wrong
In an effort to get God out of the Laplacean problem of being merely a quasi-scientific hypothesis which may be accepted or rejected on...
What Metaphysics Is and Why It Matters
What is Metaphysics? Metaphysics is not what is represented by the esoterica on display in some bookstores. It is not the subject you...
Why Care about the Theory of Divine Ideas? Part 2 of 2
Yesterday I shared some notes about why I think a theory of divine ideas is important for theology. Today I’m sharing some notes about...
Why Care about the Theory of Divine Ideas? Part 1 of 2
Here is a sketch of some of the theological motivation for a theory of Divine Ideas. I also say something about what I take such a theory...
Duns Scotus on Natural Law and Divine Freedom
I have a new paper out today, "A Most Mitigated Friar: Scotus on Natural Law and Divine Freedom." It shows how Scotus reconciles the...
Scotism about Possible Natures
My latest journal article is now published by The Philosophical Quarterly. The title is "Scotism about Possible Natures," and it develops...
Divine Simplicity and the Division of Being
On a more or less standard Christian understanding of the world, God is the creator of everything that exists, other than himself. This...