Nach längerer Zeit hat der Verlag editiones scholasticae wieder ein Buch des bekannten US-Philosophen und Thomisten Edward Feser veröffentlicht. Der Titel: Immortal Souls A Treatise on Human Nature. Es ist das mit Abstand dickste Buch des Autors mit 548 Seiten. Thema des neuen Buches ist die Philosophische Psychologie, ein Thema, von dem in der Gegenwartsphilosophie nur noch die Frage nach dem Leib-Seele Verhältnis übriggeblieben ist. Mit diesem Buch legt Edward Feser eine umfassende Studie zur scholastischen Philosophischen Psychologie vor. Der Autor schreibt dazu:
Immortal Souls
provides as ambitious and complete a defense of Aristotelian-Thomistic
philosophical anthropology as is currently in print. Among the many topics covered are the reality
and unity of the self, the immateriality of the intellect, the freedom of the
will, the immortality of the soul, the critique of artificial intelligence, and
the refutation of both Cartesian and materialist conceptions of human
nature. Along the way, the main rival
positions in contemporary philosophy and science are thoroughly engaged with
and rebutted.
Es gibt bereits einige kurze Stellungnahmen, bzw.
Rezensionen zu dem Buch von prominenten Philosophen:
"Edward
Feser's book is a Summa of the nature
of the human person: it is, therefore, both a rather long – but brilliant –
monograph, and a valuable work for consultation. Each of the human faculties
discussed is treated comprehensively, with a broad range of theories considered
for and against, and, although Feser's conclusions are firmly Thomistic, one
can derive great benefit from his discussions even if one is not a convinced
hylomorphist. Every philosopher of mind would benefit from having this book within
easy reach."
Howard
Robinson, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Central European University
“Feser
defends the Aristotelian and Thomistic system, effectively bringing it into
dialogue with recent debates and drawing on some of the best of both analytic
(Kripke, Searle, BonJour, Fodor) and phenomenological (Heidegger,
Merleau-Ponty, Dreyfus) philosophy. He deftly rebuts objections to Thomism,
both ancient and modern. Anyone working today on personal identity, the unity
of the self, the semantics of cognition, free will, or qualia will need to
engage with the analysis and arguments presented here.”
Robert
C. Koons, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
Und für alle, die Wissen wollen, welche Themen im Buch
diskutiert werden, hier das Inhaltsverzeichnis:
Preface
Part I:
What is Mind?
1. The Short Answer
2. The Self
3. The Intellect
4. The Will
Part II:
What is Body?
5. Matter
6. Animality
Part III:
What is a Human Being?
7. Against Cartesian Dualism
8. Against Materialism
9. Neither Computers nor Brains
Part IV:
What is the Soul?
10. Immortality
11. The Form of the Body
Auch
das Vorwort (Preface) will ich Ihnen
nicht vorenthalten:
The title of this
book is bound to bring to mind two philosophers who are explicitly mentioned
only here and there in what follows, but nevertheless loom large in the
background throughout. The first is
Plato (427-347 B.C.), whose dialogue Phaedo
is the great work on the soul and its
immortality in the history of Western philosophy. My longtime readers will not be surprised to
find that the names of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274
A.D.) appear with greater frequency in the book, and that I favor their
position where it differs from Plato’s.
All the same, though he was mistaken on crucial matters of detail, it
was Plato who first got right the most
important things – that the highest part of human beings is the intellect, that
the intellect is incorporeal, that this entails that the soul survives death
and is indeed immortal, that it will be rewarded or punished after death, and
that all of this can be arrived at by philosophical reasoning independently of
any special divine revelation.[1] It would be potentially misleading to
describe the book’s aim as that of vindicating Plato, but I’ll risk doing so
anyway (albeit with the qualifications one would expect a Thomist to make).[2] The truth is dearest, but Plato is still dear
to me.
The book is also intended to refute
the other thinker its title will evoke, namely David Hume (1711-1776). Hume’s essay “On the Immortality of the Soul”
is perhaps the most eloquent expression in Western thought of the falsehood
that belief in life after death can find no rational support short of a special
divine revelation (which, of course, he did not think has ever been given
us). Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, from which I borrow my subtitle, is the
most influential source of the errors concerning substance, the self, the
intellect, and the will that have led modern man radically to misunderstand his
own nature. Clearing away this
intellectual rubbish is a prerequisite to establishing that Plato was right and
Hume wrong.
As my
subtitle indicates, the immortality of the soul is far from the only topic to
be treated in the pages that follow.
Indeed, immortality is addressed only at the end, in the last two
chapters. Even the word “soul” will
rarely be used until then. That is
deliberate. Nothing I have to say in the
first ten chapters strictly requires using the word. Also, “soul” has many connotations, not all
of them relevant to the topic of a particular chapter, and some of them
unfortunate in any case. Rather than repeatedly
and needlessly risking misunderstanding and having to make tiresome
qualifications, it seemed better to avoid the word until absolutely
necessary. This is not the way
discussions of the soul usually proceed.
But given the word’s ambiguity, my view is that the least potentially
confusing approach is first to give as thorough an account of human nature as
is possible without using the word, and only then to explain where the notion
of the soul fits in.
The book
is, then, a general treatment of the metaphysics of human nature. It addresses the main philosophical
controversies concerning the self and personal identity, the nature of
concepts, the relationship between thought and language, the freedom of the
will, embodiment, animal intelligence, perceptual experience, innatism versus
empiricism, dualism versus materialism, the philosophical implications of
neuroscience and computer science, transhumanism, and so on. To be sure, the book is not exhaustive. Certain matters could have been treated in
greater depth. For example, much more
could be said about the nature and classification of the sensory powers and the
appetites. Certain matters are not
treated at all. For example, I say
nothing about the distinction between the sexes, which is no small part of
human nature. (I will treat that at
length in a later book.) I had to draw
the line somewhere. But the guiding
criterion was to address every topic that needed to be addressed in order to
defend the sober Aristotelian-Thomistic middle ground position between
Cartesianism on the one hand and materialism on the other.[3] For that reason, the book’s length was
unavoidable. Because human nature is
complex, the ways we can go, and have gone, wrong about it are multifarious. I have tried to refute the errors that are
most prevalent today.
The book’s
eleven chapters are grouped into four parts.
Part I addresses the question “What is mind?” Chapter 1 gives a brief overview of what I
will argue is the correct answer, which is that a mind is a self or persisting
substance having, as its essential attributes, intellect and will. The next three chapters are then devoted to
expounding and defending this answer in depth.
Chapter 2 defends the reality and irreducibility of the self; chapter 3
explains the nature of the intellect and its irreducibility to any of the powers
we share with other animals; and chapter 4 explains the nature of the will and establishes
its freedom.
Part II is
devoted to the question “What is body?”
Chapter 5 explains the nature of the material world in general and shows
that the Aristotelian theory of form and matter not only has not been refuted
by modern science, but is if anything vindicated by modern science. Chapter 6 addresses the nature of living matter, specifically, and in
particular discusses what it is to be an animal.
The book
defends the traditional Aristotelian view that human beings are by nature rational animals, and these first two
parts are essentially devoted to explaining what “rationality” and “animality”
each amount to. Part III, which is
labeled “What is a human being?”, refutes the two main modern misconceptions
about the relationship between rationality and animality. Chapter 7 is a critique of Cartesian dualism,
which radically sunders the human mind from the physical world, making the body
something entirely extrinsic and inessential to us. Chapter 8 refutes materialism, establishing
that though we are indeed bodily by nature, we are not entirely so, and that the intellect in particular is incorporeal or
non-physical. Chapter 9 refutes currently
popular claims to the effect that neuroscience has vindicated materialism, and
that the mind is a kind of computer program implemented in the hardware of the
brain.
The upshot
of this part of the book is that a human being is a single psychophysical
substance with both corporeal and incorporeal properties and powers. Part IV turns finally to the question “What
is the soul?” Chapter 10 argues that,
since the intellect is an incorporeal part of a human being, it carries on
beyond the death of the body, and that indeed on careful analysis this entails
all the main elements of the traditional doctrine of the immortality of the
soul. Chapter 11 explains how the
position defended in the book relates to the Aristotelian thesis that the soul
is the form of the body, and its implications for the origins of the soul and
the prospects for its reunion with the body by way of a resurrection of the
dead.
Again,
many other topics are treated along the way.
Many of these are also topics I have addressed in earlier work, such as
my book Philosophy of Mind, which
first appeared almost twenty years ago.[4] They are addressed in greater depth here, and
in some cases my views have changed. For
example, that earlier book is much too sympathetic to Cartesianism, especially
in its treatment of perception. The
approach of this book is much more consistently Aristotelian-Thomistic. Having said that, though Aristotle and St.
Thomas are by far the greatest influences on my own views, this book is not
concerned with exegesis of their work.
The claims and arguments I defend in this book are mine, and not always
necessarily theirs. If, on some topics,
I say something that sounds very much like what they say, that is because I
think they were right about it. If, on
other topics, I say something that is different from anything they say, or even
conflicts with what they say, that is because I think my approach is
better. Like other Thomists, I am often
accused of following Aquinas too closely, but also of not following him closely
enough. In reality, I try only ever to
follow an argument wherever it leads.
I also
emphasize, again, that this book is concerned only with what philosophy can, all by itself, tell us
about its subject. It is not about
theology, highly relevant though it is to theology. Many are bound to be surprised at just how
much can be established by purely philosophical arguments where the existence
and nature of the soul are concerned – just as, as I have shown in my book Five Proofs of the Existence of God,
much can be established by purely philosophical arguments where the existence
and nature of God are concerned.[5] Immortal
Souls, like Five Proofs, is
intended as a contribution to understanding the praeambula fidei or “preambles of faith” – that is to say, the
philosophical premises in light of which it can be rationally established that
a special divine revelation really has occurred (though exactly how that can be
established is a topic for another time).
In this
connection I will acknowledge one final lacuna that I think is unavoidable in a
philosophical book with the particular purposes this one has, but has been
increasingly palpable to me all the same.
I refer to the absence of any treatment of the moral and spiritual
ramifications of being a creature with an immortal destiny, yet deeply enmeshed
in the material world, with the suffering and liability to death that that
entails. The years during which I have
worked on this book have been especially dark ones, personally as well as for
the world in general. Working on the
book has played no small part in my own dealing with this darkness, and it is
my fervent hope and prayer that my readers will find in it something that is
helpful to them.
My usual
debts to my beloved wife Rachel and our dear children Benedict, Gemma, Kilian,
Helena, John, and Gwendolyn remain, and I thank them for their love and help as
I labored over this book. And I’d like
to acknowledge a further debt. In the
face of the deaths of our father and our sister and the ailments of our mother,
my brother Dan Feser has been an exemplar of loyalty and service. I dedicate this book to him, with love and
affection.
[1] This is not to forget the Pythagorean influences on Plato, but
rather to emphasize that it is in Plato that we get the first systematic
philosophical articulation and defense of these claims about the soul. For a brief discussion of the Pythagorean
background, see David Bostock, Plato’s
Phaedo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 11-14.
[2] A “Thomist” being, of course, someone who adheres to Thomism, the
system of thought deriving from Thomas Aquinas.
[3] “Cartesianism” is the conception of the mind and its relationship
to the body and to the rest of the material world associated with Rene
Descartes, the father of modern philosophy.
[4] Edward Feser, Philosophy of
Mind: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006). This is a slightly revised version of Edward
Feser, Philosophy of Mind: A Short
Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005).
[5] Edward Feser, Five Proofs of
the Existence of God (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017).
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