"One of the best contemporary writers on philosophy" National Review "A terrific writer" Damian Thompson, Daily Telegraph "Feser... has the rare and enviable gift of making philosophical argument compulsively readable" Sir Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement Selected for the First Things list of the 50 Best Blogs of 2010 (November 19, 2010)
This week, Massachusetts’ Democratic governor Maura Healey signed a law removing existing restrictions on late-term abortion, thereby legalizing it to the moment of birth. The move has prompted widespread outrage, as has the ghoulish signing ceremony in which the governor was surrounded by jubilant women applauding this license to murder children. Republican partisans have cited this episode as…
Sir Anthony Kenny died on August 3 . Of philosophers of his generation, Kenny was among those I most admired. He made important contributions to the philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and other areas of philosophy. He was also a formidable historian of philosophy, and his work on various problems in the field was greatly deepened by this historical perspective. He was especially…
Several new articles from David Oderberg: “Hylemorphism as a Generalized Research Programme” ; “In Defence of Panmoralism” ; and “Turning the Tables on the Table Deniers: Metaphysical Mythmaking About Ordinary Objects.” Celebrated writer-artist John Byrne delivers an old school comics last hurrah in X-Men: Elsewhen . Byrne is interviewed by The New York Times and at The Hollywood Reporter .…
President Trump has renewed his threats to destroy Iranian civilian infrastructure such as power stations and bridges, which could result in a humanitarian disaster . By longstanding principles of just war doctrine, this would be gravely immoral. The innocent do not lose the right to their property and capacity to get on with ordinary everyday life by virtue of living under an unjust and…
My essay “Misunderstanding “Human Dignity,’” which discusses some illuminating things Elizabeth Anscombe had to say about the subject, appears today at Postliberal Order .
My review of James K. A. Smith’s book Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing appears in the August/September issue of First Things .
In New Blackfriars , Br. Francis Dominic Nguyen kindly reviews my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature . From the review: “Feser engages in a fresh dialogue between ancient and modern philosophy. The result is spectacular… Many of [his] arguments appear to be original as well as invitingly readable… Feser has undertaken a laudable and courageous task making some first important steps in…
In his classic book Orthodoxy , G. K. Chesterton famously said that the doctrine of original sin is the part of Christian theology that can really be proved. What he had in mind, I think, is the part of that doctrine that holds that as a result of the Fall, our capacity to obey even the most obvious precepts of natural law has been gravely impaired. I think this impairment is indeed obviously…
The second issue of the new Journal of Natural Law is out soon. It includes, among other things, a debate between Melissa Moschella and Robert Koons on the New Natural Law Theory, and articles on Protestantism and natural law. The first issue included a symposium on Kevin Vallier’s All the Kingdoms of the World and several articles on natural law and the concept of intention (as well as my review…
Early modern philosophy and science are often said to have put a “mechanical” or “mechanistic” conception of nature at the center of Western thought. Robert Boyle referred to it as “the mechanical philosophy.” Historian of science E. J. Dijksterhuis characterized it as a “mechanization of the world picture.” Tim Crane calls it “the mechanical world picture.” But what does a mechanical or…
Last week, Pope Leo XIV issued Magnifica Humanitas , the first encyclical of his pontificate. It has received much attention, both positive and negative and in both Catholic and secular media. Much of the commentary so far strikes me as superficial. To judge from social media, you’d think the document is primarily devoted to artificial intelligence, with some irrelevant comments about slavery and…
Much of modern philosophy has been hypnotized by the idea that causality, necessity, and value are not features of objective reality but merely features the human mind projects onto reality. David Hume is, of course, the main hypnotist in this connection. In his important book Engagement and Metaphysical Dissatisfaction , Barry Stroud holds that the arguments for this skeptical attitude do not…
After the United States and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February of this year, the war’s defenders suddenly began to claim (and incessantly to repeat) that the U.S. has already been at war with Iran for 47 years. Evidently, the motivation for this newly minted talking point is to try to defuse two obvious objections to the war: that it is a war of aggression and therefore unjust, and that…
Scholastic thinkers like Cardinal Cajetan, St. Robert Bellarmine, and Francisco Suárez developed what is sometimes called a “transmission theory” of governmental authority. It holds that such authority ultimately comes from God, but is directly vested by him in the community as a whole, and then transmitted by it to some particular form of government (which may or may not be democratic). Yves…
In a recent article at First Things , I argued that the just war tradition holds that for a war to be justifiable, it must be morally certain that it meets just war conditions (not merely arguable or even probable that it meets them). Some readers have objected that some of the sources I cited require moral certainty only with respect to the “just cause” condition, not the other conditions. If so,…
In an article at First Things , I show that the standard view in the Catholic just war tradition is that for a war to be just, it is not enough that it be merely arguable or even probable that it meets all just war criteria. We must be morally certain that it meets them.
The first issue of The Journal of Natural Law has now been published. Among other things, it includes my review of Stephen Boulter’s book Natural Law Liberalism and the Malaise of Modernity .
At The Telegraph , John Haldane remembers the late Dominican theologian Fr. Fergus Kerr. At UnHerd , Sohrab Ahmari has had enough with Donald Trump’s “mad king” governing style, and sides with Pope Leo in his feud with the president. James Franklin’s new book The Necessities Underlying Reality: Connecting Philosophy of Mathematics, Ethics and Probability is available by Open Access . American…
My article “The New Neo-Scholasticism” appears in the Winter 2026 issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly . It is available for free download here . Here is the abstract: “The last quarter of a century has seen the rise of what can aptly be labeled a new Neo-Scholastic trend in philosophy and theology. After explaining what Scholasticism and Neo-Scholasticism are, the article…
Roger Scruton’s book Beauty contains an interesting brief treatment of addiction. Too much discussion of this topic today overemphasizes neurochemistry. That is by no means to deny that that aspect of the issue is real and important. But it addresses only what Aristotelians would call the material and efficient causes of habituation, and not the formal and final causes. The latter concern our…
From Twitter/X , on the president’s deranged post of this morning (which managed to top even his deranged Easter post):
From Twitter/X , on the comments made at the White House yesterday by Paula White and Franklin Graham :
“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots…and to make his implements of war…He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to…
On March 21, I delivered a lecture on “The Epistemology of Microphysics” at the 49 th Annual Meeting of the American Maritain Association at Loyola Marymount University. You can read the lecture here . The AMA also kindly presented me with its Scholarly Excellence Award for 2026. Many thanks to the AMA and all who participated.