Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Metaphysics

[InevitableCheese]

What I see Feser doing here is what Christian apologists have been doing for centuries - picking and choosing whatever philosophical arguments that seem to support their cause and ignoring the logical premises or conclusions that go contrary to them.

Feser didn't agree with Plato's theory, but gave it so that we could understand where Aristotle was coming from. Feser believes Aristotle's "moderate realism". His views come from Aristotle, on which Aquinas also based his theology. In what ways would this philosophy be contradictory with the Christian faith?

In Feser's words:

"while it holds that universals considered in abstraction form other features exist only in the mind, it also holds that they exist in the extra-mental things themselves (albeit always tied to other features) and that the abstracted universals existing in the intellect derive from our sense experiences of these objectively existing things, rather than being the free creations of the mind."

He also gives reasons why the "immaterial nature of these things entails that the intellect which grasps them must itself be immaterial as well" (I suppose he would mean a soul here, or that rationality depends on it, as he later states, and as I mentioned in an earlier post):

Consider first that when we grasp the nature, essence, for form of a thing, it is necessarily one and the same form, nature, or essence that exists both in the thing and in the intellect. The form of triangularity that exists in our minds when we think about triangles is the same form that exists in actual triangles themselves; the form of "dogness" that exists in our minds when we think about dogs is the same form that exists in actual dogs; and so forth. If this weren't the case, then we just wouldn't really be thinking about triangles, dogs, and the like, since to think about these things requires grasping what they are, and what they are is determined by their essence or form. But now suppose that the intellect is a material thing - some part of the brain, or whatever. Then for the form to exist in the intellect is for the form to exist in a certain material thing. But for a form to exist in a material thing is just for that material thing to be the kind of thing the form is a form of; for example, for the form of "dogness" to exist in a certain parcel of matter is just for that parcel of matter to be a dog. And in that case, if your intellect was just the same thing as some part of your brain, it follows that that part of your brain would become a dog whenever you thought about dogs. "But that's absurd!" you say. Of course it is'=; that's the point. Assuming that the intellect is material leads to such absurdity; hence the intellect is not material.