Philosophy – Thinking Thought Out

Existential Inertia: A Thomistic Appraisal

April 21, 2025

Metaphysics, Philosophy

The intuitions that might draw us to existential inertia are tracking something real, but deeper analysis shows that there is an extra dimension that needs to be considered. The argumentation in the De Ente shows that essence is really distinct from esse in all but one thing, so that while substantial form is a principle… →
Causing the perpetuity of an accidentally ordered series

March 11, 2025

Metaphysics, Natural Theology, Philosophy, Philosophy of Nature

Does Aquinas’s First Way conclude with an immovable first mover? The answer depends on whether we interpret the First Way as an exercise in natural philosophy or metaphysics. Either could work, and will produce philosophical fruit, but the resulting arguments grow ever different. →
Indeterminacy, infinity, and participation

October 2, 2024

Metaphysics, Philosophy

My recent “three principles” post arose from a lengthy discussion I had with reader StructureOfTruth in the comments of an earlier post on limitation. Thankfully, StructureOfTruth continues to keep me honest, and has raised the following concern in the comments on my “three principles” post: The greatest difficulty I have with your line of thought in this post →
Three principles about act and potency

August 17, 2024

Metaphysics, Philosophy

A while ago I wrote a series of blog posts on potentiality, change, and limitation. I am always on the lookout for better ways of articulating the act-potency distinction, since it serves as a foundation for much of the Aristotelian-Thomistic framework that I find so useful in philosophy and theology. The original post, from two years ago, was →
Potentiality, diversity, and limitation

February 28, 2023

Metaphysics, Philosophy

Over on my post introducing potentiality from first principles, a reader raises some important questions that I thought would be worth answering in a separate post. If you haven’t read that post yet, I would encourage you to before continuing here. This idea of “relative non-being” is the best explanation I have come across of the →
Potentiality underlying change

February 6, 2023

Philosophy, Philosophy of Nature

In my previous post I explained how we arrive at the notion of potentiality from reflection on two different phenomena, resulting in two equivalent accounts of potentiality: potentiality is relative non-being as well as the passive capacity for act. The second of these accounts arises from considerations of causation and change, but it doesn’t actually end up →
Potentiality from first principles

June 7, 2022

Metaphysics, Philosophy

In his gigantic post on existential inertia (section 7.13), Joe Schmid gives an argument against the act-potency distinction which can be roughly summarized as follows: the act-potency distinction commits us to pluralism about being, but pluralism about being is false, therefore we should reject the act-potency distinction. I had not heard of pluralism about being before, but →
God causes evil actions without causing the evil in actions

December 8, 2021

Natural Theology, Systematic theology

On a recent episode of Unbelievable?, William Lane Craig and James White discussed whether Molinism or Calvinism provide the better approach to God’s providence in light of the reality of evil. Craig is a proponent of Molinism, which seeks to reconcile libertarian freedom with divine providence by positing a special kind of knowledge in God called middle knowledge. White, →
Happiness as a common good

November 14, 2021

Ethics, Philosophy, Politics

Suppose you’re wandering through a desert wasteland, outside of the borders of any political community, and you come across another person. Why should you care about their well-being rather than attack them or forcibly take their possessions for yourself? The aim of this post is to briefly outline an Aristotelian approach to this question.[1] As →
God’s act of choosing

July 21, 2021

Metaphysics, Natural Theology, Philosophy, Systematic theology

Classical theism holds that God is absolutely simple, which is to say that there is no absolute distinction within him, sometimes summarized by the phrase “all that is in God just is God.” For Thomists, this entails that God must be purely actual, which is to say that there is no mixture of potentiality and →

Category: Philosophy