Tag: christianity

[article] Theistic Creation and Natural Philosophy

Michael Tkacz has offered an insight that Avicenna’s emanationist position commits the cosmogonical fallacy of assuming a kind of prior potency outside of the act of creation; this assumption of a prior potency amounts to a denial of creation. Given that instrumental causes would be a sort of power that is prior to the act of creation, this is a useful insight. In thinking of creation as a production through intermediaries, Avicenna is thinking that in some way creation is a process. God creates the First Intelligence, which creates the first soul and first sphere and also the Second Intelligence; this process is repeated until the Ninth Intelligence, which creates our world and gives forms to bring about substantial change. In this sense, creation is a process and a kind of becoming (fieri). The insight here is that emanation is not just an alternate theory of creation; it implies something that is incompatible with creation ex nihilo.… Read More [article] Theistic Creation and Natural Philosophy

Editorial Team2 Comments

[essay] Civic Life and Home

To speak of the Christian roots of Europe, or the Puritan founding of America, should be approached with great prudence and a deep caution. The temptation that needs to be explicitly alluded to is that pertaining to a sort of “re-enchanted” nationalism. The City of God is not an attempt to undermine the need for the embodied realities of home and political life. Rather, the nuance or caveat is to say that the City of God offered by Christ as witnessed in…… Read More [essay] Civic Life and Home

Editorial Team

[review] Integralism

Catholic integralism, generally speaking, comprises a return to the past in order to move beyond the modern problem. In effect, its answer is to discard the political developments of modernity wholesale and return pick up where the Middle Ages left off. To many who do not hold this view, and who are not as familiar with the Integralist movement, such a suggestion appears strange to the point that this characterization may seem to be an uncharitable. To the contrary, however, it appears to us that the integralists themselves characterize the spirit of their philosophy in the same manner.… Read More [review] Integralism

Francisco Eduardo Plaza1 Comment

[review] Nihilism & Technology | Nihilism

Where, and how, do we bring meaning into the living of our lives? A movement from our assumed passive nihilism to a conscious active nihilism, Nolen Gertz argues. Despite this self-actualizing attempt at nihilism, it remains now as always a deleterious belief for any human being to adopt—the active no less, and perhaps quite a great deal more, than the passive.… Read More [review] Nihilism & Technology | Nihilism

Brian Kemple

[essay] The Conflict between Human Dignity and Abortion – Part II

Francisco Plaza, PhDCathedral High School, Houston TXEditor, Reality In the encyclical Evangelium vitae, Pope Saint John Paul II listed several crimes against human dignity, such as murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide, all of which are “opposed to life itself.”[1] Apart from harming the victims themselves, these are also understood to do violence against society… Read More [essay] The Conflict between Human Dignity and Abortion – Part II

Francisco Eduardo Plaza1 Comment

[essay] The Roots of Human Dignity & its Modern Dissolution – Part I

Francisco Plaza, PhDCathedral High School, Houston TXEditor, Reality As modern secularism strives to move further away from any sense of the religious, any principle which even suggests a possible theological basis rapidly comes under fire, even at the cost of human flourishing itself. Human dignity, an idea with Christian roots that has since been largely… Read More [essay] The Roots of Human Dignity & its Modern Dissolution – Part I

Francisco Eduardo Plaza1 Comment

[Issue] The Philosophy of Realism

From the Editorial Introduction: This first issue of Reality—The Philosophy of Realism—like most publications and especially those of a collaborative effort, signifies innumerable hours of effort.  The goal of our journal is simple: to reinvigorate an intelligent discussion about realism as a philosophical approach.  By a realist approach, we mean not simply as pertains to… Read More [Issue] The Philosophy of Realism

Editorial Team3 Comments