Thank you for this excellent exposition of the great and important metaphysical and theological problems of our day. I would note only two things where I might slightly disagree or three (the third really just a caveat.
1. I feel like though we cannot return to pre-modernity in some senses, I do tend to hope for a partial recovering of a more porous self. Obviously, as Charles Taylor and others have noted we have gained a number of things which we do not want to lose with modernity and in fact, in spite, of it's unwillingness to admit it, because the West will never fully escape it's heritage (just as the enlightenment, descartes, etc... was a reaction against scholasticism) and will never escape what frames it. 2. More importantly though I might challenge your exact exposition of not hylomorphism as much as formal causes as I don't know if we can adaquately say that Descartes and Galileo didn't both eliminate final and formal causes. Form with Aristotle and Acquinas I think is intricately tied up with the final cause, a things telos, the potency it actualizes, the end it tends toward, the purpose it is made for or which reflects the larger orderliness and significance of nature. I agree that science succeeds in moving to a mere chain of meaningless causes which empirical research can identify patterns of movement and change with quantitative measures and thus predict outcomes and learn how to deal with many practical problems as well as theoretical ones. But need this eliminate the final cause and formal cause? 3. I would add to the list here of who we need to consult, Maximus the Confessor, who Euregenia drew on, but did not surpass in my mind. His whole system not only accounts for development and becoming, but also he is the ultimate source of finding unity in diversity and diversity in unity or holding these two antithesis as reified paradoxes which I think is rather necessary.
Sorry for the length of this, but the post got me excited!
Your critique vis-a-vis formal and final causes is fair. When I suggested that modern physics had arrived at a sort of neo-hylomorphism, I meant that in only a very general way, but I don't think I was clear enough on that. But you are certainly right that modern physics-metaphysics does not include any kind of teleology, which is a marked difference from the earlier modes of Platonist/Aristotelian hylomorphism—and that is a crucial distinction.
And I would certainly agree that Maximus should be included. Also, Isaac of Ninevah! I kept coming back to Eriugena simply because he was a truly western thinker, and I was trying to show that we westerners have this metaphysical heritage within our own history. (I would regard Maximus as an "eastern" thinker, though not obviously in the same sense as an Indian or Chinese thinker, but in the sense of Greek-speaking and living in western Asia.)
Fair enough! I thought you might have been using him for that reason, though I tend to be more less prudent. I just end up yelling probably more than saying: "Look East! Look at Late-Antiquity. Look back at when Neo-Platonic metaphysics balanced scholasticisms over reliance on Aristotle and even drew in the insights of Stoicism., etc...." Partly it's because I'm Eastern Orthodox, but I also became Eastern Orthodox because of the notable differences between the more Eastern phronema or mindset at least ideally available to one entering the church and the modern secular framework I was raised in.
Anyway, don't get me talking about Isaac of Ninevah. He's a perpetual, boundless treasure. I can't pick up his homilies and even open to a random page and not receive some treasure if not the sense that the light of God himself is subtly but noetically illuminating the page (so to speak).
Sometime, if your up for it., I'd very like to chat or something a bit more!
I'd like that! I was actually thinking lately that it might be interesting to gather some folks on substack who are up to this "theo-monist" stuff and talk as a group with some regularity. It is only now dawning on me how many Christians—and many who have rejected Christianity—don't realize that theism does not *have* to mean believing in some kind of being living on the edges of the universe. I think the kind of philosophical theology we are trying to articulate is increasingly important.
Thank you for this excellent exposition of the great and important metaphysical and theological problems of our day. I would note only two things where I might slightly disagree or three (the third really just a caveat.
1. I feel like though we cannot return to pre-modernity in some senses, I do tend to hope for a partial recovering of a more porous self. Obviously, as Charles Taylor and others have noted we have gained a number of things which we do not want to lose with modernity and in fact, in spite, of it's unwillingness to admit it, because the West will never fully escape it's heritage (just as the enlightenment, descartes, etc... was a reaction against scholasticism) and will never escape what frames it. 2. More importantly though I might challenge your exact exposition of not hylomorphism as much as formal causes as I don't know if we can adaquately say that Descartes and Galileo didn't both eliminate final and formal causes. Form with Aristotle and Acquinas I think is intricately tied up with the final cause, a things telos, the potency it actualizes, the end it tends toward, the purpose it is made for or which reflects the larger orderliness and significance of nature. I agree that science succeeds in moving to a mere chain of meaningless causes which empirical research can identify patterns of movement and change with quantitative measures and thus predict outcomes and learn how to deal with many practical problems as well as theoretical ones. But need this eliminate the final cause and formal cause? 3. I would add to the list here of who we need to consult, Maximus the Confessor, who Euregenia drew on, but did not surpass in my mind. His whole system not only accounts for development and becoming, but also he is the ultimate source of finding unity in diversity and diversity in unity or holding these two antithesis as reified paradoxes which I think is rather necessary.
Sorry for the length of this, but the post got me excited!
Your critique vis-a-vis formal and final causes is fair. When I suggested that modern physics had arrived at a sort of neo-hylomorphism, I meant that in only a very general way, but I don't think I was clear enough on that. But you are certainly right that modern physics-metaphysics does not include any kind of teleology, which is a marked difference from the earlier modes of Platonist/Aristotelian hylomorphism—and that is a crucial distinction.
And I would certainly agree that Maximus should be included. Also, Isaac of Ninevah! I kept coming back to Eriugena simply because he was a truly western thinker, and I was trying to show that we westerners have this metaphysical heritage within our own history. (I would regard Maximus as an "eastern" thinker, though not obviously in the same sense as an Indian or Chinese thinker, but in the sense of Greek-speaking and living in western Asia.)
Fair enough! I thought you might have been using him for that reason, though I tend to be more less prudent. I just end up yelling probably more than saying: "Look East! Look at Late-Antiquity. Look back at when Neo-Platonic metaphysics balanced scholasticisms over reliance on Aristotle and even drew in the insights of Stoicism., etc...." Partly it's because I'm Eastern Orthodox, but I also became Eastern Orthodox because of the notable differences between the more Eastern phronema or mindset at least ideally available to one entering the church and the modern secular framework I was raised in.
Anyway, don't get me talking about Isaac of Ninevah. He's a perpetual, boundless treasure. I can't pick up his homilies and even open to a random page and not receive some treasure if not the sense that the light of God himself is subtly but noetically illuminating the page (so to speak).
Sometime, if your up for it., I'd very like to chat or something a bit more!
I'd like that! I was actually thinking lately that it might be interesting to gather some folks on substack who are up to this "theo-monist" stuff and talk as a group with some regularity. It is only now dawning on me how many Christians—and many who have rejected Christianity—don't realize that theism does not *have* to mean believing in some kind of being living on the edges of the universe. I think the kind of philosophical theology we are trying to articulate is increasingly important.
I very much agree.