Edward Feser, Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature

I want to thank Ed Feser for sending me a copy of his latest contribution to Thomistic Studies.  

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.

Like all of Feser's books, Immortal Souls is a model of expository clarity and analytic precision informed by an extensive knowledge of the contemporary literature.  You may order a copy of this (physically and intellectually) weighty tome from Amazon for a mere 31 USD.  

A non-technical effort of mine saw the light in August, Life's Path: Some Trail Notes. 

In this collection of aphorisms, observations, maxims, and mini-essays, a professional philosopher quits the ivory tower and hits the road of life. Here are some of his trail notes. They offer guidance and insight in a non-dogmatic spirit while encouraging in the reader the development of a critical attitude. While philosophical, these writings focus on the existential and practical aspects of philosophy rather than on the technical or theoretical. This is not academic discourse but life-philosophy with an edge that cuts against the grain of our contemporary decadence.

Topics include happiness and ambition, youth and old age, body and soul, love and lust, money and its uses, manners and morals, and the last things.

The price is right: $2.99 for Kindle, $20 for paperback, $28 for hardbound.  I have mailed six free copies to friends and I have four more free copies to distribute locally to Kid Nemesis, Biker Mike, Medico, and The Great Navigator when our paths next cross.  So if you are one of these characters, don't buy it. There's a copy with your name on it.

Comments

[Dmitri]

Ordered my copy of Life's Path. Thanks for mentioning it!

[BV]

And thank you for ordering it, Dmitri. By the way, I am still working on that response to Cottingham.

[BV]

Dave Lull writes,

Hi Bill,

Here’s a search for “in terms of” in the Google Books preview of the brilliant Ed Feser’s new book (some of the 60 uses might be quotations; can’t tell for sure from the snipped view of the pages):

Immortal Souls. https://books.google.com/books?id=X-ceEQAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PA39&dq=9783868386059&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q=%22in%20terms%20of%22&f=false

Of course, I’m still going to get a copy even though my admonitions to Ed about the phrase I guess had no effect or (assuming that most of the book was written before my e-mail exchange with him) the effort to replace occurrences of it was thought not worth doing (perhaps because he thinks the readers will do the work to figure out just what is meant, or since all the readers of the MS apparently had no problem with the phrase, it must not be as bad as one eccentric, not very smart, reader thinks it might be (even though based on the strictures of the pretty smart Jacques Barzun)).

https://web.archive.org/web/20190715204812/http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/i.html#intermsof:~:text=interesting%3A%20show%20it.-,In%20Terms%20of.,-Often%20useless%20padding">http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/i.html#intermsof:~:text=interesting%3A%20show%20it.-,In%20Terms%20of.,-Often%20useless%20padding">https://web.archive.org/web/20190715204812/http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/i.html#intermsof:~:text=interesting%3A%20show%20it.-,In%20Terms%20of.,-Often%20useless%20padding

Best,
Dave

[BV]

Hi Dave,

You are a gentleman and a scholar, and I am indebted to you for your help over the years. And let me thank you once more for recommending Roger Forseth's Alcoholite at the Altar: The Writer and Addiction. It makes me want to re-read Sinclair Lewis and one or more of the biographies about him. A side-interest of mine these days is what has been called 'literary pathography.'

As for 'in terms of,' while it is often misused these days by TV pundits and politicos, I don't agree that Feser misuses it to any degree that deserves attention, let alone censure. You will agree, I hope, that the phrase is not objectionable sans phrase.

Consider the first example cited in the first link you provided. "To his credit, Churchland sees that the properties in terms of which thought is typically characterized -- propositional content, truth and falsity, logical interrelationships, and so forth -- simply cannot intelligibly be ascribed to the brute physiological processes he is interested in." (Immortal Souls, 330, first full paragraph)

To me that is perfectly clear, and importantly true to boot. I see your point, but it is pedantic (ostentatiously fastidious in matters scholarly). Your point is that properties are not terms, i.e., words and phrases, and so are not what is being ascribed by Churchland to the physiological processes; what is being ascribed are properties. But of course Ed is well aware of that.

To satisfy your pedantry, I would re-write the sentence as follows:

. . . Churchland sees that such properties as propositional content, . . . cannot be ascribed intelligibly to the physiological processes he is interested in.

Note that for economy of expression -- a desideratum in this hyperkinetic age -- I deleted 'simply' and ''brute,' and more importantly, moved the adverb 'intelligibly' to the outside of the verbal phrase.

'Cannot intelligibly be ascribed' conveys exactly the same meaning as 'cannot be ascribed intelligibly' to any charitable reader; but, to be painfully precise, the adverbial modifier modifies the sense of 'cannot be ascribed,' but not 'the sense of 'cannot.'

[Dave Lull]

The second link that you copied from my e-mail doesn’t work right as is. It’s supposed to be a link from the word “bad” to an entry in Jack Lynch’s “Guide to Grammar and Style.” Let’s try this shortened URL:

https://tinyurl.com/493ke8um

The following is to provide your readers with a little background from previous e-mail I sent you:

When I was an undergraduate I ran across this (for me, influential) passage in an earlier edition of the book that I quote from here:

[Begin quotation]

To remember the mood and the menace of jargon, remember its typical product, the all-purpose connective in terms of. A book review once commended a book as “the best in terms of the Church of England.” The enigma here is to find what “in terms of” signifies. Is it: the best book about the Church; the best in the opinion of the Church; or the best for believers in the Church? It is no small matter to take one interpretation rather than another. And the point is worth laboring because everyone meets such sentences every day without stopping to wonder what they really mean: “The general thinks in terms of army corps; the housewife plans her day in terms of dirty dishes; the child dreams in terms of electric trains.”The trouble with the little phrase is that it fails to tell us how the action of the verb is related to its object. We want to know what the terms are.12 We have to guess that perhaps the general thinks on no less a scale than that of army corps. The housekeeper plans her day so as to allow time for washing dishes. The child dreams that he has been given the promised train. But these “translations” are pure surmise.  The meanings might just as easily be: “The general thinks that he wants at least one army corps.” “The housewife makes her day revolve around dishwashing.” “The child’s dream depicts his playing with trains.”
      And this does not exhaust the possibilities. What the guessing game shows is that the capable writer begins by being a searching reader, a questioner of texts, who uses his imagination to squeeze all the meaning out of what has been well said and to solve the riddles of what has been only half said. In this role the alert writer is identical with the trained researcher. Reading and writing are correlative acts of the mind; both engage the full resources of one’s knowledge and attention upon the medium of words.
      [. . .]

    12The original use of the phrase in the physical sciences is logical and justified: there are terms.  For example, one can measure force in terms of acceleration imparted to a resistant mass, because the terms in which we express the acceleration—say, centimeters per second per second—are the terms in which we express the force.

[End quotation]

From:  Jacques Barzun & Henry F. Graff, The Modern Researcher, Revised Edition (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, ©1970), pages 288-289.

https://tinyurl.com/4ejxpxuv

=========================

Jacques Barzun:

[Begin quotation]

 “In terms of” used to refer to things that had terms, like algebra. “Put the problem in terms of a and b.” This makes sense. But in educational circles today “in terms of” means any connection between any two things. “We should grade students in terms of their effort” — that is, for or according to their effort. The New York Public Library Bulletin prints: “The first few months of employment would be easier . . . and more efficient in terms of service ...” — that is, would yield more efficient service. But no one seems to care how or when or why his own two ideas are related. The gap in thought is plugged with “in terms of.” I have been asked, “Will you have dinner with me, not tonight or tomorrow, but in terms of next week?” A modern Caesar would write: “All Gaul is to be considered in terms of three parts.”4 

4The objectionable phrase is now to be found in newspapers, business reports, and private correspondence. It is a menace in terms of the whole nation. 

[End quotation]

From Teacher in America (Little, Brown, 1945) pages 57-58.

https://tinyurl.com/mr72veh2

========================

For more expansive coverage see Modern American Usage: A Guide (Macmillan, 1966) page 155:

https://tinyurl.com/bdf6uu5a

[Dave Lull]

PS:  An editor named Stan Carey has a different take on this phrase here:

https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/when-i-find-myself-in-terms-of-trouble/

I still think Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff are right.  In any event, I think it’s better at least for me just not to use it.

[Sinawi]

Bill, what do you think of the following Avicennian critique of Thomistic psychology - specifically, their view that the human soul is both a form and subsistent? I know you've objected to it as well but here's my take as an Avicennian:

https://mashshai.wordpress.com/2024/10/11/a-problem-in-thomistic-psychology/#more-1898