Philosophy – Page 2 – Anthony G. Flood

Philosophy before Christ: the case of an Athenian fence-sitter

In Colossians 2:8, Paul warns Christians not to be seduced by philosophy after (κατὰ, kata) “the elementary principles of the cosmos” (τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, ta stoicheia tou kosmou, i.e., demonic spirit-beings[1]) and not after Christ. This suggests the possibility of “philosophy after Christ,” a suggestion I pursued in a book with that title.[2]

“After” here doesn’t mean chronologically subsequent, but rather “in the manner or style of,” as one might paint after Rembrandt or after Picasso. When we philosophize, that is, pursue wisdom to help us lead rightly ordered lives, we ought to do so as Christ the Wisdom of God (σοφίᾳ τοῦ Θεοῦ, sophia tou Theou; 1 Corinthians 1:21) counsels. All philosophy that’s not “after Christ” (not only, say, Hermeticism) assumes a “neutral” posture toward God’s self-revelation in Scripture.[3]

Interestingly, twenty verses earlier, Paul taught not only that all things (τὰ πάντα, ta panta) cohere (συνίστημι, sunistēmi) in Christ, but also that He is “before all things (πρὸ τὰ πάντων, pro ta pantōn)” (Colossians 1:17). That is, He ranks above them because He created them: “. . . without Him nothing was made that was made” (John 1:3b). He decrees what is true about anything other than Himself: “All (כֹּ֤ל, kol) whatever (אֲשֶׁר, asher) pleases (חָפֵ֥ץ, hapes) the Lord (יְהוָ֗ה, Yahweh) does (עָ֫שָׂ֥ה asah)” (Psalm 135:6a). That includes the states of affairs we call “facts.”

Christ is not only “temporally” antecedent to (from “eternity past”[4]) His creation, but also pre-eminent over it. The set of “all things” includes His image-bearers: nothing has priority over Him—not even a philosopher’s mind. The thinker who gives epistemic authority to every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God (by which we are to live: Matthew 4:4) is different from the one who awards that status to something else. By “philosophy after Christ” I mean the pursuit of wisdom by practicing what Jesus preached, that is, answering Satan’s lies with Scripture; that is, putting Christ before that pursuit, not the other way around. Continue reading “Philosophy before Christ: the case of an Athenian fence-sitter”

AnthonyFlood.com: An Emerald Anniversary Retrospective

December 2004, Executive Assistant to William J. Ledger, M.D., Chairman Emeritus, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Weill Cornell Medical College. Note the Three Musketeers bar in the shirt pocket.

Twenty years ago today I launched this site’s ancestor: AnthonyFlood.com. (No middle initial.) Building it with Microsoft’s (no-longer-supported) FrontPage, made to order for this low-tech bookworm, I had swiped the look and feel of a color specialist’s site (how could I go wrong?), chose a font that conveys text to the brain with the least eyestrain (Verdana 10-pt Bold), slapped an image of the Owl of Athena in the upper left corner, and experimented with log lines. (An early mouthful was “Where Panentheism, Revisionism, and Anarchocapitalism Coalesce,” developed here; later, the terser “Philosophy against Misosophy.”)

A lifetime ago, I had it “all figured out”: Whitehead in philosophy, political economy via Rothbard, historical revisionism (e.g., Acton, Barnes). I scanned, in some cases typed from scratch, articles from my paper archives and formatted them for the site. Many global visitors (sometimes descendants of the authors) sent encouraging notes of appreciation for bringing the text of not easily accessible essays to their attention. The articles are worthless for citation purposes, of course, but readers hungry for their contents can consume them.

The site’s live, but dormant; I can no longer update it; it’s all I can do to maintain this one. Take a gander at the index. Behold its holdings for Blanshard, Langer, Lonergan, Hartshorne, Rothbard, Whitehead. My dear friend (and fellow Aptheker research assistant) Hugh Murray (an anthology of whose historical essays I’m editing) has his portal.

And, last but not least, this writer, roadkill in the fight to publish or perish outside of academia, at least had a platform for stuff he wrote that others might consider as he eked out a living in the “corporate world.”

Maverick Philosopher William F. Vallicella, Ph.D., in the hills of Gold Canyon, AZ

One of those others is Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, an analyst’s analyst and early (and continuing) source of encouragement and criticism. (An earlier version of his site is approaching its 2oth.) He thought enough of an essay of John Deck’s (posted because, I say, it “broke Thomism’s hold on me”—I was well on my way to that waste of time called panentheism) to critique my appreciation of Deck. This sparked a decades-long correspondence and a friendship that transcends our differences.

Continue reading “AnthonyFlood.com: An Emerald Anniversary Retrospective”

On the Centennial of James Sadowsky, SJ: Philosophical Theologian, Libertarian Ethicist, Dearly Missed Friend

My friend James A. Sadowsky, SJ (December 28, 1928-September 7, 2012) would have turned 100 today. I’ve appended the obituary by Mises Institute Senior Fellow David Gordon. My first of many lunches with Jim was at the Brasserie (1958-2015) in the Seagram’s Building in 1983 when he was a youthful 59 years old. Following Dr. Gordon’s tribute is a list of articles whose content you may access on my old website (which will reach its emerald anniversary on January 17, 2024).

James A. Sadowsky, SJ

No one who met Jim Sadowsky could ever forget him. I first saw him at a conference at Claremont University in California in August 1979; his great friend Bill Baumgarth, a political science professor at Fordham, was also there. His distinctive style of conversation at once attracted my attention. He spoke in a very terse way, and he had no patience with nonsense, a category that covered much of what he heard. If you gave him an argument and asked him whether he understood what you meant, he usually answered, “No, I don’t.” He once said to a fellow Jesuit, “that’s false, and you know it’s false.”

Behind that gruff exterior was a very kind and warm person, with a delight in humor. I knew I would get along with him at that conference when he said to a small group of people, “I may not look like a cup of coffee, but I certainly feel like one.” I was the only one who laughed, and he said to me, “You have a discerning sense of humor.” We were friends from then on.

He delighted in paradoxical remarks, such as “The word philosophy comes from the Greek word philosophia, which means philosophy.” “We wouldn’t have the concept of free will, unless we had it.” “A student of mine once objected to Ockham’s razor, on the grounds that it’s unnecessary.”

He told me that a student in one of his philosophy classes at Fordham wore a tee-shirt that said, “I don’t need your drugs.” He said that he asked him, “Does this mean you get enough of your own?” The student answered, “Drugs are a very serious subject; you shouldn’t tell jokes about them.” He said to me, “I don’t understand. If he didn’t think it was funny, how did he know it was a joke?” After he told me that he sometimes played contract bridge, I asked him whether he was a good player. “Yes,” he answered, “but I play with better players.” One of my favorites among his comments was, “I like to get to the desserts first, ahead of all the greedy and selfish people.”

Continue reading “On the Centennial of James Sadowsky, SJ: Philosophical Theologian, Libertarian Ethicist, Dearly Missed Friend”

Criticism of Presuppositional (Worldview) Apologetics

I welcome it, and recently got some from William Vallicella, Ph.D., a rejoinder to my response to him. Unfortunately for me, however, it’s part of a long series that bears on what I tried to do in Philosophy after Christ, and I haven’t yet been able to give the series’ members the study they deserve.

What I’m focusing on is Bill’s helpful distinction between a rationally acceptable argument and a rationally compelling one. I think my Van Til-inspired transcendental argument can be formulated so that it’s not merely acceptable, but also one that “coerces” rational assent (at least by those who value rational standards). Bill charges me with conflating, if not confusing, epistemic and ontic possibility, a serious matter, one I will confess if I must. How one coordinates one’s metaphysics (which determines ontic possibility) with one’s epistemology has its own presuppositions.[1]

I can “live with” a “merely” rationally acceptable argument that can defeat any candidate, alternative to the Christian worldview, for the status of transcendental condition of intelligible predication, that my interlocutor might suggest. Of course, such serial refutation, however successful for however long, falls short of proof. To be able, however, to pre-emptively rule out the possibility of there being any successful candidate remains for me a desideratum. I’ll let others speculate about what psychological type that confession betrays.

Note

[1] See, e.g., Greg Bahnsen, “The Necessity of Coordinating Epistemology with Metaphysics,” Section 1 of Chapter 3, “Neutrality & Autonomy Relinquished,” Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended. Joel McDurmon, ed. American Vision Press, 2010. See also Bahnsen’s magisterial exposition of Cornelius Van Til:

Van Til did not address specific disputes between philosophers or contemporary debates regarding possibility, but he realized that Christians are committed to hold certain beliefs about possibility that unbelievers will reject. “It is today more evident than ever before that it is exactly on those most fundamental matters, such as possibility and probability, that there is the greatest difference of opinion between theists and antitheists.” To put it simply and memorably: “Non-believers have false assumptions about their musts.”

Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Reading and Analysis. Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 1998, 281. The internal quotations are from Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology. Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 1974, 36, 264. To the latter footnote Bahnsen appended:

That is, they [antitheists] utilize a false philosophical outlook regarding “necessity,” “possibility,” etc.

Philosophy after Christ: First US Amazon review

From a friend, John Lancaster

A Fascinating Read.

Let me first preface this review by mentioning the following:

I was initially introduced to the author via his blog AnthonyGFlood.com. Coming from an Austrian economics background, I gravitated towards the posts covering political economy, history, civics, and individualism. While I also enjoyed Flood’s work in philosophy and theology, I’m not as well versed in those fields. Even though the quality of his work is uniform across his different ventures, my connection to the formerly mentioned topics was far stronger than my connection to the latter.

That being said, as a Christian and eclectic thinker, I jumped at the chance to read Philosophy After Christ. Having already reviewed [Herbert] Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness, I was looking forward to another insightful, concise, and engaging read.

Insightfulness, conciseness, and engagement are in spades with this book. Don’t let the sub-200 page count fool you, this is not a light read.

Flood argues the Christian worldview as “the only worldview that makes possible what philosophers do . . . [and] that everyone, even those who claim to be anti-Christian, operates implicitly in terms of the Christian worldview.”

He supports this stance through rigorous logical deductions while constantly referencing Scripture. Flood’s ability to sequentially link his chains of logic is truly a masterful display.

Along with unraveling the philosophical components of his claim, Flood sharply addresses opposing arguments from distinguished intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell, Cornelius Van Til, and Gordon Clark.

For anyone looking to bolster their understanding of Christian philosophy, look into different theistic interpretations, or enjoy quality cerebral jousting, this is the perfect read for them.

Thanks, John. I hope it will have successors. That’s up to other readers.

“Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?” A Systematically Misleading Expression.

This was first published in 2002 on Pathways in Philosophy (link now dead) and then on my old site probably in 2005. One “answers” the question by dissolving it.* I republish my dissolution without prejudice to the view that doing so has little (if anything) to do with philosophizing after Christ, apart from Whom it makes no sense to essay an answer to this question or any other. For those in a hurry: “something” stands in for “everything.” The answer to “Why?,” the explanans, must lie outside everything, the explanandum. But there is nothing apart from everything. The universe could be otherwise than the way it is and therefore need not be at all: one may sensibly ask why it exists one way rather than another. Pre-creation, however, God eternally is all there eternally is. Nothing answers to the question, “Why is God the way He is?” There being nothing contingent about Him, one could never sensibly ask “Why does God exist?”

The word “something” needs clarification. We ordinarily use “something” to refer to an unidentified particular in a general way (e.g., “I just heard something; what was that?”). The question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?,” however, seems to ask in a general way about the totality of things.

The grammatical form of a question can be misleading. “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is grammatically similar to “Why is there salt in the soup rather than pepper?” or “Why are there swallows in Capistrano rather than bald eagles?,” but they are logically quite different from our question. The other questions can be answered by investigating other parts of the world (culinary practice and the nature of certain birds, respectively). The explanation in each case lies outside the thing to be explained. But the question, “Why is there everything [‘something’] rather than nothing at all?,” logically does not permit any such investigation. There is nothing “outside” everything that could yield an explanation.

In The Mystery of Existence, Milton K. Munitz argues that, unlike “Why is there something rather than nothing?,” the question “Why does the observed world exist?” is well-framed, but unanswerable. (A genuine mystery, according to Munitz, is a question that can be neither dismissed nor answered.) He rejects the theistic answer, i.e., the observed world exists because God created it, but that rejection does not affect what we have said above. The mystery of existence is neutral with respect to theism. Whether or not God exists, there is nothing outside the totality of existing things (including or excluding a God) and therefore nothing that can yield an explanation for its existence. That is, whether the totality equals “just the observed world” or “God plus the observed world,” there is—there can be—nothing outside that totality which explains it. Even when, according to theism, God was all that existed, there was no explanation for that fact, for there were no other facts than his existence to which possible explanatory appeal could be made.

As Paul Edwards put it in his (also highly recommended) essay, “Why?,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

. . . the word ‘why’ loses its meaning when it becomes logically impossible to go beyond what one is trying to explain. This is a matter on which there need not be any disagreement between atheists and theists or between rationalists and empiricists.

* Partly in response, William F. Vallicella blogged “Two Forms of the Ultimate Explanation-Seeking Why-Question”

The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God Revisited: Toward a Response to Bill Vallicella

The length of this post might suggest otherwise, but I’m not going to reproduce my book, Philosophy after Christ, here but Maverick Philosopher and friend William “Bill” Vallicella (the subject of several posts, e.g., here, here, and here) recently posted essays on theistic argumentation, and I thought it deserved a response.

Preamble: if the God of the Bible, who created human beings in his image to know and love him and to know, value, and rule the rest of creation under him (hereafter, “God”), exists, then we know one way that the conditions of intelligible predication (IP) can be met. The preceding sentence includes key aspects of the Christian worldview (CW)—the Theos-anthropos-kosmos relationship—expressed on the pages of the Bible.

If no alternative explanation for IP is possible, then Biblical theism is necessarily true (which is what the CW predicts).

Knowing whether IP has conditions and that they’re met is a “big deal.” It underlies everything one does, not something one can take for granted. And yet virtually every thinker, yea, every philosopher, takes the satisfaction of those conditions, which must obtain, for granted. This taking is arbitrary, and being arbitrary does not comport with philosophizing.

If no worldview other than the Christian (CW) can account for IP, if (as I now hold) an alternative to the CW when it comes to accounting for IP cannot even be conceived, then to hold out for an alternative, as though doing so were an expression of rational exigency (“demandingness”)—that to reserve judgment somehow accords with epistemic duty—models only dogmatic stubbornness, not tolerant liberality.

Referring to the transcendental argument (TA) laid out in Chapter 13 of my book, I will call Bill’s bluff. After reading it, he may still say, “Well, Tony, I remain unconvinced”; if my argument goes through, however, then I will interpret such a response as an expression of his commitment to what he calls his “characteristic thesis” (CT). To paraphrase Brand Blanshard, it wrong to leap to a conclusion that argument’s premises don’t entail, but it is no less wrong to fail to draw an inference that they do entail.

Continue reading “The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God Revisited: Toward a Response to Bill Vallicella”

On arguing for one’s “sense of life”: Vallicella, Alain, Rand, and Bahnsen

In “Alain on Monasticism,” a stimulating Substack offering, my friend and philosopher extraordinaire Bill Vallicella (“Maverick Philosopher”) asked about the fruitfulness of arguing for or against a sense of life. The occasion was his recent re-reading of On Happiness by Émile-Auguste Chartier (1868-1951), whose nom de plume was Alain. My interest is not in Alain’s antipathy toward monkish existence but rather in Bill’s (apparent) ambivalence toward mere attitudes that imply (or entail) philosophical claims. Since I’ve probably misunderstood the problem Bill was cornering, I’m hoping that what I’ve written below will move him to set me straight. He writes:

Alain . . . frankly expresses his sense of life or sense of reality. I don’t share it, but can I argue against it? Does it even make sense to try to argue against it? Probably not. In a matter such as this, argument comes too late. Alain feels it in his guts and with his “whole being” that the religion of the mournful monks, the religion Alain himself was raised in, is world-flight and a life-denying sickness.

For a worldling such as Alain, the transient things of this world are as real as it gets, and all else is unreal. The impermanence of things and the brevity of life do not impress or shock him as they do someone with a religious sensibility.

In a Schlitz ad from yesteryear Bill finds this mood summed up:

. . . in the words of a 1970 beer commercial:

You only go around once in life
So you have to grab for all the gusto you can.

He continues:

The worldling’s attitude is a matter of sensibility and it is difficult and probably impossible to argue with anyone’s sensibility. I cannot argue you out of your sense of reality. Arguments come too late for that. In fact, arguments are often little more than articulations on the logical plane of a sensibility deep in the soul that was already in place before one attained explicit logical skills. Continue reading “On arguing for one’s “sense of life”: Vallicella, Alain, Rand, and Bahnsen”

To “Remake the World”: The Perennial Dream of the Left, Old, New, and Woke

On the 84th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland I find myself embarking on a study that will be roughly equal parts philosophical, historical, theological, and personal. It will immerse me in the writings of 20th century American Marxists who, despite the path they took, have fascinated me. They thought, wrote, and fought in a world that headed inexorably toward the Second World War, was embroiled in it, and then emerged from it, knocked for a loop. It seemed that, directly or indirectly, these writers were always trying to make sense of the conflagration and its aftermath.

This project will involve me in the risky business of imputing motives to people who claimed to know how the world worked, how it ought to go, and where history was heading. I want to be fair to people I deem mistaken, for I was once mistaken (if that’s not a euphemism) in just the way they were. Some American revolutionaries will admit the failures of their revolutions, but never reevaluate the conceit that human beings can “remake the world.” The day I gave up that conceit is the day I ceased to be a revolutionary.

Professor Alexander Riley, Bucknell University

I distinguish the merely mistaken from those who compound their mistakes with crimes enabled by the power (governmental, academic, and cultural) they wield. Such social outlaws are to be defeated, not refuted. I’m therefore concerned that what’s called “Wokeism” marks, not a break with Marxism, but an organic outgrowth thereof. What would allay my apprehension is a Marxist condemnation of Wokeism. Until I find one, I must take comfort in the writings of Bucknell University sociology professor Alexander Riley, especially his illuminating “Why Wokeism is Not Marxist” and his scorched-earth discrediting of Mark Levin’s American Marxism, “Marxism Misunderstood.” (Please also consider taking a look at my “Marksism Levinism,” an earlier review that complements Riley’s.)

A Marxist critique of the so-called “1619 Project,” which Riley adduces as evidence for his antithesis, is only implicitly against Wokeism. I’ve been amazed to find attacks on the weaponization of the Department of Justice against Donald Trump on the front page, not of The Wall Street Journal, but of The Militant, organ of the Castroist Socialist Workers Party. (Here’s the latest; friends will attest that it’s not the first such article I’ve forwarded to them.) My mental jury’s still deliberating.

Exhibit A in my study is Marxist educator George Novack (1905-1992) under whose influence by God’s grace I did not fall. Alan Wald, whom I mentioned the other day, befriended Novack and began corresponding with him in the late 1960s and would visit him in New York City—my city—and in the end eulogize him warmly and at length, facts I learned only yesterday. (This originally appeared in the magazine In Defense of Marxism in 1992 and anthologized in 2016 here.) I now know exactly where he lived in his last years and how easy it would have been for me to look him up.

Poster announcing symposium for Alan M. Wald on the occasion of his retirement from UMichigan in 2013. https://events.umich.edu/event/12956

The life of Marxist revolutionaries, especially intellectuals, has a negative theological or atheological dimension. They are almost never unsocialized “village atheists,” but unbelief is ever in the background, or under the floorboards, of everything they think, even it only implicit or taken for granted. (It’s impolite, even beneath their dignity, to argue against religion.) In the case of the Novack, the philosophical writer, however, it had to surface sooner or later. I will foreground the fundamental question of worldview, which foregrounding will have a Christian-apologetical purpose.

Worldview is a topic to which Wald adverts every so often, but so far I haven’t caught him exploring it philosophically. That’s not his patch. He suggests that what marks off people he admires from the rest is commitment to remaking the world. Not to improving what they can, but to overhaul the whole.

But that God’s patch (Revelation 21:1).

The First Esthetic Judgment

James T. Farrell (1904-1979), ex-Catholic, ex-Trotskyist novelist and social theorist, a quintessential “New York Intellectual” (by way of Chicago).

Immersed as I now am in the world of American Marxist creatives in the ’20s, ’30s, and beyond (e.g., James T. Farrell, his friend George Novack, their rival [my professor] Sidney Hook, et al.), I’m struck by their appeal to philosophical naturalism (materialism) to anchor their work in reality, thereby giving their work ultimate meaning. That’s their touchstone. This presupposition is rarely laid bare and argued for; when it is, its rationale wears its inadequacy on its face. I’ll explore this in future posts.

They all wanted, as I once did, to bring about a more just, more beautiful world, one of peace and prosperity for all, even though they and their revolutionary projects, according to their metaphysics, bore no more significance than the bathroom insect I crushed this morning. As an event, neither its crawling nor my crushing was less significant than, say, Beethoven’s composition of his Ninth Symphony or any performance thereof. When leftists achieve anything they deem success, they crush, not insects, but human beings, by the dozens, hundreds, thousands, and millions.

Created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), however, they know in their hearts that they’re divine intentions, not byproducts of a cosmic explosion, the extrapolation to which their veneration of Received Scientific Opinion drives them and constrains them to honor.

Their symbol-making and -using nature, without which neither science nor art is possible, is just a “lucky accident”; the very effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences, the “fit” of number and matter, is admitted to be “unreasonable” on naturalistic terms.

They’d go mad if they believed they were accidents. To inoculate themselves against this cosmic nightmare, they tell themselves stories, including one about how man became a storyteller. These “scientific materialists” project romantic images of themselves in every sentence they dream, utter, or write. In so doing they suppress what they know, wickedly (Romans 1:18).

Before Moses wrote a word of Genesis, God had beheld “every thing that he had made” and said “it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). The first esthetic judgment was divine. Human esthetic judgment, if untethered to that primordial truth, may tickle the fancy of its hearers or readers, but it inevitably floats back into in the void from which it emerged—which evacuates it of any noble sentiment it may have borne for a cosmic split-second.