Maverick Philosopher

Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

I am presently re-reading The Paradoxical Structure of Existence (University of Dallas Press, 1970) in preparation for the existence chapter of my metaphilosophy book.  Wilhelmsen's book is sloppy in the manner of the 20th century Thomists before the analytic bunch emerged, but rich,  historically informed, and fascinating.  Poking around on the 'Net for Wilhelmsen materials, I found this by one William H. Marshner, and I now file it in my Wilhelmsen category.

Avicenna's God and the Queen of England

For a long time now I have been wanting to study Frederick D. Wilhelmsen's hard-to-find The Paradoxical Structure of Existence.  Sunday I got lucky at Bookman's and found the obscure treatise for a measly six semolians.  I've read the first five chapters and and they're good.  There is a lack of analytical rigor here and there, but that is par for the course with the old-school scholastic philosophers.  They would have benefited from contact with analytic philosophers.  Unfortunately, most of the analysts of Wilhelmsen's generation were anti-metaphysical, being  logical positivists, or fellow travellers of same, a fact preclusive of mutual respect, mutual understanding, and mutual benefit  Imagine the response of a prickly positivist to one of Jacques Maritain's more effusive tracts.  But I digress.

Wilhelmsen (1923-1996) must have been a successful teacher: he has a knack for witty and graphic comparisons.  To wit:

Avicenna's God might be compared to the Queen of England, to a figurehead monarch.  No law in England has validity unless it bears the Queen's signature.  Until that moment the law is merely "possibly a law."  But Parliament writes the laws and the Queen signs them automatically.  Avicenna's order of pure essence is the Parliament of Being.  Avicenna's God gives the royal signature of existence; but this God, like England's majesty, is stripped of all real power and liberty of action.  (Preserving Christian Publications, 1995, p. 43.  First published in 1970 by U. of Dallas Press.)

 

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