Nominalism and modern radical dualism and sundry monisms

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Does anyone know if there are any texts that relate Scholastic Nominalism to Protestant radical transcendentalism and the tendency of modern philosophy towards either radical dualism or skeptical monism?
Fr. Bouyer’s book, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism has much good material on it, but I know of nothing else that takes the false set of presuppositions found in Nominalism and shows their relation to those of modern philosophical and religious thought.
thanks,
Tom Ridenour
 
No I haven’t and thanks for the reference.

With that in mind, as a means of clarification let me say that underlying what I am asking in my question is the presupposition that western monism is the unintended bastard child of the radical dualism principally expressed and formalized by Ocamist Nominalism.
The roots of western monism, therefore, are born of this form of skepticism. I understand it to be the fruit of the final dissolution of the radical transcendence characteristic of nominalism into an evanescent fiction; God made so heavenly He’s of no earthly account,yhr paranormal events recorded in Scripture as a mere fairly tale, like Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.

The reason I have for asking about this whole matter is to point to the foundational conceptual roots of Protestantism and post reformation philosophy; radical dualism as formalized by Nominalist thought. Few Protestants are even remotely aware of the conceptual sources of many of their most cherished ideas, and those sources are NOT,as they erroneously suppose, from Scripture, but from heretical, abstract, speculative philosophy wrought purposely to over throw St. Thomas and the analogia entis.
Fr. Bouyer is the only one who has pointed to this I know of. Surely, some one has to have taken up such an important issue and expanded upon it.
thanks,
Tom
 
Few Protestants are even remotely aware of the conceptual sources of many of their most cherished ideas, and those sources are NOT,as they erroneously suppose, from Scripture, but from heretical, abstract, speculative philosophy wrought purposely to over throw St. Thomas and the analogia entis.

There are some Catholic scholars that would argue that the original Protestant reformers weren’t very knowledgeable about Aquinas. They could hardly be accused of trying to overthrow Aquinas when they were barely aware of what he taught.

For example, Luther was arguing against Erasmus, not Aquinas, when he wrote “De Servo Arbitrio” (Bondage of the Will). If Luther had been aware of what Aquinas had written, I wonder if he would have made as many egregious theological errors in his screed against free-will.
 
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tomridenour:
The reason I have for asking about this whole matter is to point to the foundational conceptual roots of Protestantism and post reformation philosophy; radical dualism as formalized by Nominalist thought.
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well, although I might be inclined to deny the strength of the connection you see, nonetheless you may wish to check out these two books which expand quite a bit on Ockham, his theories and their relation to later thought. The first book in particular deals quite a bit with the relation between reformational thought and the preceeding catholic nominalism.

See if you can get ahold of these:
  1. The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism
    amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801020379/qid=1088020733/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/002-2738989-7544828?v=glance&s=books
  2. William Ockham
    amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0268019401/qid=1088020901/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-2738989-7544828?v=glance&s=books
ken
 
Ooops….

I think that I have misread your post. I certainly agree that the Protestant Reformers were influenced by ”heretical, abstract, speculative philosophy”, and that at least some of the authors of that heretical philosophy may have indeed been aware of the writings of Aquinas.

My point is that Calvin and Luther were poor theologians, and I think that comes from their not being knowledgeable in the writings of Aquinas.
 
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tomridenour:
Does anyone know if there are any texts that relate Scholastic Nominalism to Protestant radical transcendentalism and the tendency of modern philosophy towards either radical dualism or skeptical monism?
Fr. Bouyer’s book, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism has much good material on it, but I know of nothing else that takes the false set of presuppositions found in Nominalism and shows their relation to those of modern philosophical and religious thought.
thanks,
Tom Ridenour
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Obviously I don’t read enough. I have no idea what you are talking about. But it sure sounds good! 👍

Blessings
 
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OhioBob:
Obviously I don’t read enough. I have no idea what you are talking about. But it sure sounds good! 👍
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I’m with you OhioBob, but I am reading with interest. Maybe I’ll learn something. Back to stand-by mode.:tiphat:
 
Hi!

It seems to me that with the Leonine revival of interest in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, we saw a number of authors try to make such connections. I have in mind specifically Etienne Gilson and those of his company, at least in the sense of connecting modern philosophy with nominalism. The Unity of Philosophical Experience is good. So is Being and Some Philosophers, though this one is a bit heavy to get through. Also, see Gilson’s commentary on Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. Going down this route, following Gilson, to Joseph Owens to Armand Mauer would probably be fruitful since they are very critical of modern philosophy and of William of Ockham.

The great American philosopher C.S. Peirce also noted this connection, though more with the empiricist tradition of modern philosophy. He says in one of his more famous articles that (something to the effect of) “Hobbes himself was a student of Ockham, as Berkeley admits to being a student of Hobbes.” The thrust of the idea there is that one can see the nominalistic line running from Ockham straight into modern philosophy culminating finally in the rather wild philosophy of Bishop Berkeley.

Does that help?
 
I was going to make some witty remark about “ism-ology,” but I am clearly out of my depth. I am frequently humbled by others on these boards. We have some very well read participants.
 
Fr. Bouyer’s book is amazing! Thank you for mentioning him, you’ve reminded me that I need to read that one over again.

While I don’t have a lot of ideas or references for you, I have some remedial sources that seek the healing of these divisive philosophies through phenomenology. My favorite source is none other than our Papa John Paul II, more focused on the Marriage covenant in his Theology of the Body, but he also had critiques of some of the phenomenologists he build on (Edmund Husserl, Scheler,etc) and their inability to tie Ethical Norms (or Ultimate Truth as I prefer to call it) to the experience of humans and make this universal norm something universal in experience. (Note: This wasn’t in his TOTB, but in his pre-Pope days.)

This article by Fr. Richard M. Hogan was very helpful for me in anylysing the philosophical groundwork behind the Pope’s Theology, you may be interested in it:

nfpoutreach.org/Hogan_Theology_%20Body1.htm

Christopher West is also an expert on the TOTB, and may be able to direct you to other sources that deal with dualism and it’s prevalence in Western Thought, as he has used some material in his expounding on TOTB.

Christopher West’s Site
Theology of the body site ← Not the best site in the world, but lots of links to good articles.

I know this isn’t exactly what you are looking for :rolleyes: , but once I understood the problem (as you seem to be persuing), this was the solution (not only for me, but for the World). 👍

God Bless you in your pursuits! 👍
 
Matt16_18 said:
Few Protestants are even remotely aware of the conceptual sources of many of their most cherished ideas, and those sources are NOT,as they erroneously suppose, from Scripture, but from heretical, abstract, speculative philosophy wrought purposely to over throw St. Thomas and the analogia entis.

There are some Catholic scholars that would argue that the original Protestant reformers weren’t very knowledgeable about Aquinas. They could hardly be accused of trying to overthrow Aquinas when they were barely aware of what he taught.

I think that is true. But I guess I wasn’t clear. It was not the reformers Iwas referring to who sought to displace Aquinas’ proportional vision of the cosmos, but Occam himself.
There was, as I understand it, always this tension between Franciscans and Dominicans, and Occam really wanted to hold up him nominalistic framework over the analogia entis; they are, of course, logically exclusive of one another. Both could be false, but both cannot be true.
thanks for your comment.
Tom
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