An Exploration into Classical Theism, Part 5: Aristotle and Metaphysics

It’s hard to overstate the influence of Aristotle on Thomist philosophy. You can practically smell the Aristotelian metaphysics as it oozes from every orifice. Thomas Aquinas even refers to Aristotle himself by the reverent title of The Philosopher. In many respects, Thomism is basically just a reconciliation between Christian theology and the pagan philosophies of classical Greece. Every time you hear strange, esoteric terms like prime mover, efficient cause, or actualized potential, you are basically hearing Aristotle. It’s another gigantic red flag that demonstrates a total absence of serious intellectual rigor by classical theism.

It’s important to understand that Aristotle is not exactly well-respected in modern science or philosophy. We’re talking about a guy who believed in a geocentric solar system and the five elements of nature. He believed that women have fewer teeth than men, and that fully-formed organisms could spontaneously generate from non-living material. He believed that upward motion is superior to downward, and that forward is superior to backward. He believed the universe was perfectly spherical, and that celestial objects are continually being pushed along perfect circles around the earth. It was probably cutting-edge stuff back in the 13th century when Aquinas first encountered it, but science, philosophy, and logic have all moved on just a tad in the 800 years since.

Even the very word itself---metaphysics---has no official meaning in modern philosophy. It literally translates to “after the physics” in Greek, in that once you finish reading Aristotle’s books on the physical stuff, then apparently there’s this other collection of books you need to read after [1]. It’s basically just an arbitrary label that some random scribe happened to tack on to the documents a few centuries after the fact. Now, for whatever reason, the title just sticks, and the subject matter has exploded into an entire sub-discipline of its own. Yet to this very day, most self-identified experts in metaphysics will actually admit openly that it has no clear definition or scope [1, 2, 3]. Even when they do try to give a definition, it usually comes out as meaningless nonsense, like, “What is the nature of being?” It’s like a pretentious buzzword used only by pseudo-intellectual hacks who want to sound important without necessarily tying themselves down to any tangible claims.

Not many people realize this, but there is actually a very strong opposition within mainstream philosophy against metaphysics. These are not obscure movements, either, but powerful objections from highly influential figures throughout history. Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Francis Bacon, Voltaire, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper, and Rudolf Carnap all wrote extensively about the meaningless gibberish that permeates metaphysics. We’re talking about an entire philosophical tradition that has no idea what it even is. It has no official scope, it asks meaningless questions, it follows no recognizable methodology, and it solves no problems. Most of the time, it barely even qualifies as coherent, as any casual inspection of their literature will immediately reveal [4,5]. It’s so embarrassingly bad that I could probably write a separate 10-part series of essays just on the philosophical failures of metaphysics alone.

So once again, there is almost no point in entertaining Thomism as a serious philosophical tradition. Aristotelian metaphysics is riddled with things that are wrong, and they have been known to be wrong for hundreds of years. Yet if you listen to Thomist philosophers, they’ll have you believe that all progress in metaphysics essentially ended with Aristotle and Aquinas---as if a couple of armchair philosophers have conclusively solved everything we would ever need to know about the fundamental nature of space, time, causality, and even existence itself.

This is exactly why Christian apologists---and especially the classical theists---absolutely love metaphysics. It’s the philosophical security blanket all over again. It has all the allure of sophisticated academic inquiry without any of the accountability. They openly reject science as a means of investigating these kinds of questions, and they follow no axiomatic system of formal deduction. Thus, for all practical purposes, they can basically just say whatever they want and never have to worry about getting proved wrong. Furthermore, if anyone dares to criticize their brilliance, then they can just reject it all with another casual wave of their hands. Not only must you study the collective works of Thomas Aquinas and his modern interpretations, but now you apparently have to throw in the fourteen books of Aristotle as well. If you don’t appreciate the distinction between a formal cause and a final cause; or between act and potency; or between universal substance and substratum; then you’re just an uneducated peon who is unworthy of offering any substantial criticism of “serious” theology.

Notes/References

1. Metaphysics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007) [link]
2. It is difficult, if not impossible to come up with an adequate definition of Metaphysics---Moreland, J. P., and Craig, W. L., Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, ‎ IVP Academic (2003) [link]
3. Metaphysics, Britannica.com  [link]
4. Chalmers, D., Manley D., and Wasserman, R. (Editors), Metametaphysics, Oxford University Press (2009) [link]
   
5. Metaphysics is inquiry beyond or over beings, which aims to recover them as such and as a whole for our grasp---Heidegger, M., “What is Metaphysics?”