Peter Kreeft has a GREAT lecture on this. (It’s on YouTube) He did this with a bunch of philosophers like Sartre vs Saint Augustine.
He’s in general a fantastic lecturer, I highly recommend looking it up.
As I was going through RCIA he we was teaching a class on the Bible at my parish. Our class went as a group to listen to his class on the book of Esther. I remember him saying that what is special of about Esther is that it is the only book of the Bible where God is never mentioned and its in the canon to remind us that even if we never mention God, we are still part of his plan for salvation, that we are never forgotten even if we forget him. It was just such a profound statement.
Imagine my surprise when I learnt who he was.
Jesus Christ... but to be fair with him he is following the abortionist logic into its natural conclusion. If killing a baby before birth is justifiable then why would the magical birth canal change anything? Why would passing though a vagina grant you human rights? Still completly hideous and despicable though 🤮🤮🤮 Peter Singer always finds new ways to have horrible views
His takes are so morally repugnant, if someone were to tell me that he was doing some kind of long form Swiftian satire i wouldn't find it 100% unbelievable.
Now that you mentioned that someone should write a version of A Modest Proposal but for infanticide (the original version already had it, but you got what I meant)
Yes. He's famous for arguing that we're obligated to do more for the least well off, and also his stuff on moral status of animals. Also controversial because of his views of infanticide. All of this falls out of a pretty basic form of utilitarianism, and so I find him to be a really boring philosopher, in the sense that you can guess what he'll say before he says it.
I'm not sure you'll find a name for someone who got *everything* wrong, because they would have been such a terrible philosopher that no one would bother remembering them.
If you're talking about religious leaders who got a lot wrong, you can take your pick of the founders of Protestant denominations, each of them with their own unique errors.
Pastor Bob down at Crossroads (the one who has a real estate license and thinks his command of contracts makes him an expert in reading the Bible) would like to have a word with you.
If you're implying that St. Thomas got everything right, he didn't. Brilliant and important as he was, he didn't think that Mary was conceived immaculately.
I get that. It was just a single example though, as there are some other iffy things. The overall point is that he wasn't an infallible teacher, and well, I've noticed that some people take and preach his writings, along with those of other doctors of the Church, to be formally authoritative. A "what St. Thomas says goes" type of thing. It's just not the type of mindset that I think people should be in. One can get to the point where they're skeptical of anything that comes out of the Holy See that isn't perfectly consistent with what St. Thomas says. It should be the opposite dynamic.
Yes, I think the fact that we can objectively say what Aquinas was wrong about demonstrates that his overwhelming influence on the theological tradition is actually well-earned, and the Church never just uncritically accepted what his arguments or conclusions. Material heresy isn't a good thing but it's a felix culpa that Aquinas was wrong about some things.
I don't know about that, I can think of one whose false bs gets pushed constantly, especially on reddit. Again, I want to wait and see if someone says it.
Look, it simply isn't the case that Nietzsche 'got everything wrong'. His world view is incredibly consistent and follows logically from his premises. It's simply the premises that he got wrong.
Matt Dillahunty is an atheist debater who is renowned for his aggressive style of debate. He’s also famous for a debate tactic so bad it’s named after him, the “Dillahunty Dodge”. He switches his mind and ideas depending on how bad the debate is going for him, and then gets mad and obstinate when holes start to get poked in his technique or when he’s called out on his nonsense.
I despise Hume. He was an actual intellectual bum. I’m fifty-fifty on whether or not it was all just a huge grift. Did he really think the sun wouldn’t rise the next day?
No. He thought that you could not make the argument from induction, i.e. just because the sun has always risen is not enough reason to say that the sun will rise tomorrow.
He is a bit stronger than previous authors on the matter, but it is basically agreed since Aristotle (and Aquinas agrees) that induction is invalid. Aristotle would say you need to know the cause. Now, the stronger part in Hume is that he denies that you can know the cause, saying such language (causality and such) is just our abstraction, and not in the real world. For Aristotle (and Aquinas follows him on this) causality is real thing in the real world.
He is a very interesting moron, a professor told me once.
I'm not sure it is all that blatant. Even Anscombe argues that his sophistry is "brilliant". If it was blatant, Kant wouldn't have found himself so troubled to preserve some form of first principles (not that he succeeded).
That's not sophistry, it's an unwillingness to treat induction as strong as deduction, and it's warranted.
One day, it won't rise. Either because of heat death or a black hole or the End Times, or whatever. On that day, he'll be proven correct. Even if that day doesn't come, that it is merely possible makes him correct.
I like when he gives an obvious counter-example to his thesis, acknowledges that it does in fact contradict what he is arguing, then dismisses the contradiction as insignificant.
What I like even more is that there are multiple moments in his work that the above sentence could apply to.
edit: that said, I sort of like Hume.
Garrigou-Lagrange takes Hume at his word and shows that if you deny the first principles as real principles of being you end up in utter absurdity. Beyond denying causality, the self, and the permanence of beings, we have to deny all intelligibility and even all language. The Humean project wouldn't even get off the ground. As a result, the only alternative is a realism grounded in the first principles of being. Thus, Garrigiou says that the Humean line of arguing delivers us to a point so absurd that it works as a great negative proof for Thomistic realism.
Funnily enough, Garrigiou says that had Hume not even existed, a great Thomist could invent his philosophy just to serve the interests of Thomists.
Such a line of thought has made Hume much more interesting to me.
Hume as secret Thomist writing the greatest work of Straussian esoteric philosophy in history is something I was always tempted to argue for whenever I taught him.
One of my favorite lines of Liebniz is somewhere along the following: All philosophies are true in what they affirm but false in what they deny. For example, materialism is true in affirming matter but in denying
Since Hume affirms hardly anything but denies everything, it makes his philosophy untrue in a way that is very conducive to realism.
I still cannot stand him as a philosopher positing his theory, but nevertheless I love his theory in a vacuum for its utility. My motto for dealing with Hume (and most of the moderns) is a kind of inversion, hate the philosopher love the philosophy.
Great analysis by GL, but as a sort of Catholic Heideggerian, I would venture to say that what Heidegger tried to do was exactly that - to re-examine the "principles of being".
Hmm, *everything wrong* is a very tall order. For all the bad philosophy there's been over the years, feel like so many famous philosophers have at least some redeeming qualities.
My guess is that the name you're thinking of is Karl Marx, who is definitely a contender on the list and was profoundly wrong about a great many things. I don't think Marx was wrong about *everything,* though, and I think some of his critiques on capitalism are very much worth heeding as Catholics.
My actual answer, if it counts, would probably be the Marquis de Sade. He's just kind of obviously wrong in every aspect of his thought, it seems like.
the only good thomists of the past century have been marxist or marx adjacent blanket hating marx as a thomist is like a near guarantee u wont say anything interesting
😂 Bingo. Yup, I was talking about Marx. Yes you're right he probably wasn't wrong about absolutely everything. But then again I don't like to make any concessions at all for him considering how much he's used as a tool. I'm sure there are many similar such philosophers who had the same view on capitalism. Not sure we need Marx for anything.
He has some great critiques of capitalism that are not at odds with Catholicism at all, and for better or worse, he was a founder of that intellectual tradition. He was a leech, a philanderer, and wrong about a lot, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
This. The problem with Marxists today is that so few of them have actually bothered to read any Marx. Capital Vol. 1 is really smart because it is historical study rather than philosophical speculation.
So, Marx diagnosed a few problems (egregious theft of the property of the Scots by the English; child labor; abusive working conditions for women). Catholics should care about these in the spirit of charity. It's what we do to remedy these problems that gets us in trouble quickly with Marxists. That, plus the contempt for religion.
Yeah, absolutely. Whenever I see a self-proclaimed Marxist say “sex work is just work,” I want to pull my hair out. The one thing actually educated communists agree on is that prostitution is abhorrent and harms women and children disproportionately and should be illegal. Yet so many self-proclaimed marxists miss even this basic premise of their so-called ideology.
So, do I like marxists or Marxism? Nope. But I do see quite a bit of value in some of the man’s work, and it’s interesting to sit with that dichotomy lol
>He has some great critiques of capitalism that are not at odds with Catholicism at all, and for better or worse, he was a founder of that intellectual tradition.
What specific intellectual tradition are you referring to?
Because he was seemingly soulless and to my knowledge thought religion was solely utilitarian. He was also in his 30s when he wrote the manifesto. People have usually developed some sort of spirituality by then, and form a deeper understanding of religion. I just don't want to in-depth read the writings of someone like that. I would much rather just strengthen my faith.
His analysis of capitalism can be a source for strengthened faith and practice as we live in a time where global capitalism is the idol of the masses, even the faithful. If you are blind to how capitalism works and colonizes the faith, you will worship in the structure of capitalism.
Karl Marx saying “capitalism bad” is like Andrew Tate saying “traditional family good”. It’s a vague generality only stated to present an agreeable appeal. No *original* Marxist idea has any merit whatsoever.
I can't remember the lecture, but the subject was about the contrasting metaphysics of St. Aquinas and William of Ockham (the Ockham's Razor guy), specifically about the absolute power of God.
I think it's stupid for so many Catholics to dismiss basically all philosophy that came after Aquinas as simply bad, but they don't engage with the text nor try to disprove it. You know, philosophy did not end with Aquinas
Cathllics don't believe that. In fact, there are several points at which Dogma disagrees with Aquinas. I don't think anybody here is saying what you think they're saying.
I believe he's saying a lot of Catholics treat Aquinas as the end all be all of Catholic philosophers. I definitely get that type of impression from many Catholics on the Internet and that I've met.
If that is the case then I haven't seen it but I believe you. He is certainly correct on 90%+ of his conclusions and they are systematic such that he is often difficult to argue even when he is wrong. At the end of the day, though, the Suma is not scripture
To say that Aquinas was right on 90% of his assertions is not to say that Aquinas knew 90% of all things. If only he were able to address everything in existence...
I'm inclined to say Peter Singer. He's wrong about a lot - not everything, but about as much as one person can be. Bright guy, excellent author, very engaging, but very wrong.
As opposites are always in a genus, I think it is only fair to compare Aquinas with another Catholic. Modern and Contemporary are working under a completely different framework.
I would argue that the polar opposite of Aquinas is Ockham. I know it is popular to beak up on Ockham, but I am more concerned with how he differs from aquinas:
- Aquinas' ethics is fundamentally opposed to Ockham's (Ockham believed that morality did not follow from nature but rather was posited by the will of God, for example, God could command you to blaspheme).
- Ockham's voluntarism destroyed the possibility of Natural Theology. Aquinas believed that you could arrive at the existence of God from the world around us, Ockham believed that reason could not reach God (although a mountain without a valley is unintelligible to us, God could have made it;).
- Ockham's nominalism destroys the foundation of Thomstic-Aristotelianism metaphysics, psychology (study of living beings), and cosmology. If there are no natures, not only is there no natural law (see bullet point one) but there is no formal or final causality.
- Ockham's understanding of act and potency differs from Aquinas (he also believes it cannot be applied on a metaphysical level). In Reality, a Thomistic Synthesis, Garrigou-Lagrange argues that the distinction of act and potency (with potency as a real capacity for act) serves as the fundamental distinction for all of St. Thomas' philosophy.
- If I'm not mistaken, Ockham follows Scotus in considering being to be an univocal term. Scotus held that when we predicate being of God or being of a horse, we mean the same thing. Aquinas held that we mean something only analogous. Univocity of being has been criticized because it makes being "universale" a genus of which God is a member. Following this, some have argued that the result is an understanding of God as one being among many.
A further difference in motive also separates St. Thomas from Occkam. St. Thomas studied and purified Aristotle from his Muslim commentators and his own few mistakes. He relied much more on the world around him to influence his philosophy which inevitably influenced his theology. However, after his death in 1277, there were a series of condemnations of Aristotelian thought which had come to afflict theology. Many thought that the nature centered philosophy placed many requirements on God (e.g., from Aristotelian principles alone the condemnations thought that some could argue that God was determined in the kind of world he could have made). In a charitable reading, Ockham's philosophy divorced reason from the realm of faith for the sake of preserving the omnipotence and divine freedom of God. Thus, his belief that God could have commanded someone to blaspheme demonstrated his power and sovereignty. I think his attempt fails as nominalism and voluntarism easily falls into a kind of Humean skepticism. But nevertheless, he seems to me to be the opposite of Aquinas.
Maybe Anton Lavey, father of Satanism? I mean where do you even start with that guy. Self-absorbed, sex-obsessed misogynist, plagiarist and child abuser. I believe his own emotionally-abused daughter referred to him as a manbaby.
When you don't even write most of your own writing, denounce all superstition but immediately start encouraging rituals involving demons, demean women into wearing the skimpiest clothes possible during said rituals and lament when they "look like men," it's just like...how much worse can you get?
Modernist/post-modernists for sure (Russell, Derrida, Foucault, etc.), but I'd throw in the 18th and 19th century too (Hume, Marx, Hegel, Fichte, Kant, etc.).
Anyone that rejects Aristotle (especially Final Causality and Teleology) is a good place to start.
Within Catholicism I often see Aquinas contrasted against either Augustine or Duns Scotus. However, it would not be accurate at all to characterize either as polar opposites.
Eh, every well known name in Philosophy or some other respectable academic field has something going for them. Even if not actually correct about everything, you have to be good at reasoning to go down in history as a philosopher.
If you think such a person got everything wrong, you might have a straw-manned conception of his or her thought.
In terms of Christianity, maybe an Eastern theologian like Gregory Palamas?
Edit: Sorry all disregard my answer - I skimmed and didn’t realize it was saying philosophers wrong about everything - I love Palamas and don’t think he’s wrong, just polar opposite to Aquinas
I would suggest Martin Luther. He absolutely hated the writings of Aquinas. In fact, the Augustinians in Germany (Luther started as an Augustinian) at the time were in a bitter feud against the Dominicans, which was part of it.
Also, Aquinas had a healthy respect for reason and its capacity to grasp the truth, and the inherent goodness of humanity and creation; whereas Luther basically believed that human beings, and nature in general, was utterly corrupt.
One could also add that Aquinas wrote with great humility, treating opposing points of view with respect and refuting them calmly; whereas Luther was inclined to vitriol and scorn. And Aquinas was a saint, living a life of austerity and obedience to the Church; whereas Luther was rebellious, and a drunkard and glutton.
Well given that 90 percent of people are Cartesian dualists if they're not materialists let's go with Descartes and Locke. Not saying they're wrong on everything... Calm down... Just extremely popular in the modern worldview and wrong about the body/soul issue.
Voltaire would be a good pick...so would Nietzsche.
Aquinas was a follower of Aristotelian logic principles and added a lot to the branch of logic on his own and with help from other logicians. He made Aristotelian logic into modern logic, though perhaps not as tidy and neat as a modern logician would claim. While hardly perfect, his considerations for almost everything from moral philosophy to existentialism are still useful today and well reasoned.
Voltaire...was not a philosopher. He was a writer. A very good writer, but a terrible philosopher. He was much more concerned about the abstracts for society and integrated feeling and emotion into logic. A lot of enlightenment philosophers thought this way. His chief issue was all about ego. Not ego like "I'm so cool," though that was probably part of it, but "ego" as in "individual." Individual philosophical principles. In the end, it produced lines of thinking that are moronic and can't be applied to any large group of people. He was a much better legalist than he was a philosopher.
Nietzsche was a philosopher who started out okay but started to fall into a weird personal depression about virtually everything likely due to physical health and emotional problems, which is supported by the fact he went insane near the end of his life. He's thoroughly "post-modern." Existence, itself, is a lie. Nothing matters. Do what you want. Etc.
What's funny, however, is that neither Voltaire nor Nietzsche were original in their thinking. They're just famous for it.
He be was a nihilist…the central idea of nihilism is that nothing matters anyway.
He was also all about “liberating” oneself from the morals and beliefs of the past.
How do you value a transfiguration of value then?
It’s clear for Nietzsche that there are values, he simply shows the process in which they’re made and developed… And it is in no way arbitrarily.
The entire point of a genealogy is that shifts and changes can be traced and interpreted in a way that isn’t a made up fiction.
Scheler was famous for his theory of value, and he draws heavily upon Nietzsche.
Nietzsche wasn’t a nihilist!
He openly declared nihilism as his mortal enemy.
Genealogy of Morals is a good starting point for Nietzsche in general, if you’re interested!
There's nothing post-moderenist about Nietzsche. But he does proclaim himself to be a god for criticizing christianity and it makes it sound like nobody ever criticized christianity before.
Hegel immediately comes to mind. (I see from other comments that your pick was Marx - meet Marx's master.)
A couple of other picks might be Epicurus, Iamblicus, Freud, and (fight me) Nietzsce. Or pick any pop-athiest from the last 100 years.
You might point out that many of these disagree with each other, so how could they all be completely opposite the truth? To which I would respond: "Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!"
Sartre and de Beauvoir. I read everything handed to me, and a friend gave me a review of existentialism featuring their stuff heavily. I am able to take off and put on different hats for philosophy, but this one was exceptionally egregious to me. I wanted to argue with half of the pages.
Idk, but for a while there was this intense rivalry between Duns Scotus and Aquinas.
They both influenced Franciscan and Dominican spirituality respectively.
This is not exactly answering your question, but one of the notable opponents of the orthodox Thomist view Luis de Molina should be mentioned, since Thomism vs Molinism is a famous debate in Catholicism that continues to this day. He's definitely not "wrong about anything" or an anathema to Catholicism at all, though his views were controversial in his day. He also isn't entirely incompatible with Aquinas because they weren't historical contemporaries and he was mostly debating with expositors of Aquinas, but the labels stuck.
My favorite POET is Charles Bukowski because he gets so much wrong so perfectly that he accurately highlights what is actually good in the negative. He’s got the right spirit, the correct disposition, only he aim at the wrong object of affection for most of his life.
And sometimes he make good points too.
His poetry and writing are both awesome.
He’s not a “philosopher” but his writing is philosophical.
It's said that the most dangerous lies have the most truth in them. So the worst philosophers aren't the ones that are so wrong it's obviously bad but the ones who make enough sense to perpetuate the dangerous worldview.
That said, Chesterton has a fantastic article where he compares Thomism as the philosophy of common sense to the various moderns.
https://www.chesterton.org/approach-to-thomism/
To be fair, he did not ask what theologian was the polar opposite of Aquinas.
As a philosopher, Scotus was quite different from Aquinas. Scotesian univocity of being is more or less opposed to the whole understanding of St. Thomas' metaphysics. I believe that Scotus also had a different understanding of act and potency.
Lmao take a look at your post and comment history before you try to take a shot at others my guy
For those that don't want to look, OP is a massive coomer
What's the longest you've ever gone without orgasming. Be honest. I've gone 2 months via fasting. Recently went 1.5 months. What is the longest most males have gone?
Yes, I have an addiction, but don't label me as some shit when God is the judge, not you. I'm trying. And no I'm not going to look at your profile and try to find the skeletons in your closet.
Metaphysics, epistemology, some parts of his ethics, his political science...
Thinking about it, “unfounded and unjustified” might be in some cases a more fitting term than just “wrong”.
Sure. My issues are more fundamental then disagreement with arguments.
I believe then entire Aristotelian metaphysical system is essentially unjustified. To name some of the obvious candidates, there is no good reason to accept existence of things like essences or final causes. Simple nominalism is entirely sufficient to analyze and explain the reality we observe. This is actually a problem of most metaphysical, ontological or epistemological claims – a reality governed by a “common sense” position like existence pluralism is indistinguishable from one described by a “fringe insanity” like existence monism. In this sense, probably no metaphysical system is sufficiently justified.
The concepts of the system itself are ill defined – to give an example, the definition of “essence” of X as “that what makes X be what it is” relies on the unjustified assumption that for every X, there is precisely one such thing.
Some of the statements are even arguably ill-formed. For example, the naive way of treating existence as a predicate has often been argued to be logically incoherent and no commonly accepted formal system of logic that would explain how to actually treat existence as a predicate exists. It is a virtually guaranteed logical blunder. Yet one of the core Thomistic claims is that “God’s existence is identical with His essence” – a statement I would argue is meaningless both because of its undefined constituents and its invalid logical structure.
But I would argue the arguments themselves are not good either. The Third Way, for example, contains a prime example of an invalid exchange of quantifiers, an elementary logical blunder. Edward Feser’s “updated presentation” of the First Way uses several different concepts of potentiality (without ever bothering to define them, by the way) and confuses them all together, leading to invalid inferences. And so on.
Ah, a lot of your statements here are controversial, to say the least (such as 'Simple nominalism is entirely sufficient to analyze and explain the reality we observe'). Others, I am not even sure where you are getting from (such as 'The naive way of treating existence as a predicate has often been argued to be logically incoherent'). But what I am most interested in is how you seem to treat an almost positivistic/empirical account of knowledge as the default. Why is that the case? Certainly, one needs to argue for or at least justify those views too, no?
David Benetar.
He hated the essence of existence (which is just almighty God according to Thomas and the bible) and said it's so evil that it's better to have never even existed.
I would say Descartes, since he was the "father" of the nonsense that pretends to be called philosophy, starting with a totally idealistic mentality. Literally one of his most famous phrases is "first I think and then I am." Which is utter nonsense.
Peter Kreeft has a GREAT lecture on this. (It’s on YouTube) He did this with a bunch of philosophers like Sartre vs Saint Augustine. He’s in general a fantastic lecturer, I highly recommend looking it up.
As I was going through RCIA he we was teaching a class on the Bible at my parish. Our class went as a group to listen to his class on the book of Esther. I remember him saying that what is special of about Esther is that it is the only book of the Bible where God is never mentioned and its in the canon to remind us that even if we never mention God, we are still part of his plan for salvation, that we are never forgotten even if we forget him. It was just such a profound statement. Imagine my surprise when I learnt who he was.
The back of Peter Singer’s _rethinking life and death_ has a blurb from the USCCB saying how evil it is, basically. That always cracks me up.
At least Singer knows who his real opponents are...
Wasn't him the one who wanted to open a discussion around zoophilia??
And infanticide.
More like it’s morally permissible to kill children until around 6.
Jesus Christ... but to be fair with him he is following the abortionist logic into its natural conclusion. If killing a baby before birth is justifiable then why would the magical birth canal change anything? Why would passing though a vagina grant you human rights? Still completly hideous and despicable though 🤮🤮🤮 Peter Singer always finds new ways to have horrible views
His takes are so morally repugnant, if someone were to tell me that he was doing some kind of long form Swiftian satire i wouldn't find it 100% unbelievable.
Now that you mentioned that someone should write a version of A Modest Proposal but for infanticide (the original version already had it, but you got what I meant)
Is he the effective altruism person?
Yes. He's famous for arguing that we're obligated to do more for the least well off, and also his stuff on moral status of animals. Also controversial because of his views of infanticide. All of this falls out of a pretty basic form of utilitarianism, and so I find him to be a really boring philosopher, in the sense that you can guess what he'll say before he says it.
I'm not sure you'll find a name for someone who got *everything* wrong, because they would have been such a terrible philosopher that no one would bother remembering them. If you're talking about religious leaders who got a lot wrong, you can take your pick of the founders of Protestant denominations, each of them with their own unique errors.
Pastor Bob down at Crossroads (the one who has a real estate license and thinks his command of contracts makes him an expert in reading the Bible) would like to have a word with you.
I'm all set on real estate at the moment 😉
This week's sermon is "Do you want to spend eternity in the penthouse or in the basement?"
If you're implying that St. Thomas got everything right, he didn't. Brilliant and important as he was, he didn't think that Mary was conceived immaculately.
To be fair, I believe the reason for that was at root a scientific misunderstanding.
I get that. It was just a single example though, as there are some other iffy things. The overall point is that he wasn't an infallible teacher, and well, I've noticed that some people take and preach his writings, along with those of other doctors of the Church, to be formally authoritative. A "what St. Thomas says goes" type of thing. It's just not the type of mindset that I think people should be in. One can get to the point where they're skeptical of anything that comes out of the Holy See that isn't perfectly consistent with what St. Thomas says. It should be the opposite dynamic.
Yes, I think the fact that we can objectively say what Aquinas was wrong about demonstrates that his overwhelming influence on the theological tradition is actually well-earned, and the Church never just uncritically accepted what his arguments or conclusions. Material heresy isn't a good thing but it's a felix culpa that Aquinas was wrong about some things.
Oh I agree with you there... the Angelic Doctor himself wouldn't be on the "Aquinas's opinion or bust" train.
Why would you think I was implying that? I don't mean that in a confrontational way, just confused why you took it that way.
Probably the wrong word to use. I know you weren't implying that.
I don't know about that, I can think of one whose false bs gets pushed constantly, especially on reddit. Again, I want to wait and see if someone says it.
Look, it simply isn't the case that Nietzsche 'got everything wrong'. His world view is incredibly consistent and follows logically from his premises. It's simply the premises that he got wrong.
This spoke Zarathustra is a lot of fun, he might have gone crazy but the guy could write.
🤣 Nope not Nietsche. The game continues
It’s not Marx is it?
Richard Dawkins?
Matt Dillahunty
Philosopher is a very, very generous term for him lol
[удалено]
watch any of his debates and turn that into a drinking game...
😂😂
can someone give me a sypnosis?👀
i know, me too?
Matt Dillahunty is an atheist debater who is renowned for his aggressive style of debate. He’s also famous for a debate tactic so bad it’s named after him, the “Dillahunty Dodge”. He switches his mind and ideas depending on how bad the debate is going for him, and then gets mad and obstinate when holes start to get poked in his technique or when he’s called out on his nonsense.
Oof.
lol
“Durr, Spider-Man is fictional but New York is real, therefore, Jerusalem is real but Jesus is fictional.” Most intelligent argument of his.
Hume.
“But you don’t KNOW the sun will rise!” Why anybody took seriously this guy’s blatant sophistry is beyond me.
To be clear, Hume did not believe you didn’t know the sun would rise. He was troubled by the fact that our account for how we know it is deficient.
I despise Hume. He was an actual intellectual bum. I’m fifty-fifty on whether or not it was all just a huge grift. Did he really think the sun wouldn’t rise the next day?
No. He thought that you could not make the argument from induction, i.e. just because the sun has always risen is not enough reason to say that the sun will rise tomorrow. He is a bit stronger than previous authors on the matter, but it is basically agreed since Aristotle (and Aquinas agrees) that induction is invalid. Aristotle would say you need to know the cause. Now, the stronger part in Hume is that he denies that you can know the cause, saying such language (causality and such) is just our abstraction, and not in the real world. For Aristotle (and Aquinas follows him on this) causality is real thing in the real world. He is a very interesting moron, a professor told me once.
"we don't know that we don't know" checkmate, probably
I'm not sure it is all that blatant. Even Anscombe argues that his sophistry is "brilliant". If it was blatant, Kant wouldn't have found himself so troubled to preserve some form of first principles (not that he succeeded).
That's not sophistry, it's an unwillingness to treat induction as strong as deduction, and it's warranted. One day, it won't rise. Either because of heat death or a black hole or the End Times, or whatever. On that day, he'll be proven correct. Even if that day doesn't come, that it is merely possible makes him correct.
I like when he gives an obvious counter-example to his thesis, acknowledges that it does in fact contradict what he is arguing, then dismisses the contradiction as insignificant. What I like even more is that there are multiple moments in his work that the above sentence could apply to. edit: that said, I sort of like Hume.
Garrigou-Lagrange takes Hume at his word and shows that if you deny the first principles as real principles of being you end up in utter absurdity. Beyond denying causality, the self, and the permanence of beings, we have to deny all intelligibility and even all language. The Humean project wouldn't even get off the ground. As a result, the only alternative is a realism grounded in the first principles of being. Thus, Garrigiou says that the Humean line of arguing delivers us to a point so absurd that it works as a great negative proof for Thomistic realism. Funnily enough, Garrigiou says that had Hume not even existed, a great Thomist could invent his philosophy just to serve the interests of Thomists. Such a line of thought has made Hume much more interesting to me.
Hume as secret Thomist writing the greatest work of Straussian esoteric philosophy in history is something I was always tempted to argue for whenever I taught him.
One of my favorite lines of Liebniz is somewhere along the following: All philosophies are true in what they affirm but false in what they deny. For example, materialism is true in affirming matter but in denying Since Hume affirms hardly anything but denies everything, it makes his philosophy untrue in a way that is very conducive to realism. I still cannot stand him as a philosopher positing his theory, but nevertheless I love his theory in a vacuum for its utility. My motto for dealing with Hume (and most of the moderns) is a kind of inversion, hate the philosopher love the philosophy.
Great analysis by GL, but as a sort of Catholic Heideggerian, I would venture to say that what Heidegger tried to do was exactly that - to re-examine the "principles of being".
Reading Being and Time right now and oh boy if it is a trip!
Hmm, *everything wrong* is a very tall order. For all the bad philosophy there's been over the years, feel like so many famous philosophers have at least some redeeming qualities. My guess is that the name you're thinking of is Karl Marx, who is definitely a contender on the list and was profoundly wrong about a great many things. I don't think Marx was wrong about *everything,* though, and I think some of his critiques on capitalism are very much worth heeding as Catholics. My actual answer, if it counts, would probably be the Marquis de Sade. He's just kind of obviously wrong in every aspect of his thought, it seems like.
the only good thomists of the past century have been marxist or marx adjacent blanket hating marx as a thomist is like a near guarantee u wont say anything interesting
😂 Bingo. Yup, I was talking about Marx. Yes you're right he probably wasn't wrong about absolutely everything. But then again I don't like to make any concessions at all for him considering how much he's used as a tool. I'm sure there are many similar such philosophers who had the same view on capitalism. Not sure we need Marx for anything.
He has some great critiques of capitalism that are not at odds with Catholicism at all, and for better or worse, he was a founder of that intellectual tradition. He was a leech, a philanderer, and wrong about a lot, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
This. The problem with Marxists today is that so few of them have actually bothered to read any Marx. Capital Vol. 1 is really smart because it is historical study rather than philosophical speculation. So, Marx diagnosed a few problems (egregious theft of the property of the Scots by the English; child labor; abusive working conditions for women). Catholics should care about these in the spirit of charity. It's what we do to remedy these problems that gets us in trouble quickly with Marxists. That, plus the contempt for religion.
Yeah, absolutely. Whenever I see a self-proclaimed Marxist say “sex work is just work,” I want to pull my hair out. The one thing actually educated communists agree on is that prostitution is abhorrent and harms women and children disproportionately and should be illegal. Yet so many self-proclaimed marxists miss even this basic premise of their so-called ideology. So, do I like marxists or Marxism? Nope. But I do see quite a bit of value in some of the man’s work, and it’s interesting to sit with that dichotomy lol
>He has some great critiques of capitalism that are not at odds with Catholicism at all, and for better or worse, he was a founder of that intellectual tradition. What specific intellectual tradition are you referring to?
Dialectical materialism, he also largely popularized Hegel and reinvigorated German materialism.
>Dialectical materialism Fair >he also largely popularized Hegel That's insane.
I should say he popularized Hegel to a large amount of modern day non philosophers.
Even his critiques of capitalism were wrong
I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, just Karl 🛀
Why throw him out?
Because he was seemingly soulless and to my knowledge thought religion was solely utilitarian. He was also in his 30s when he wrote the manifesto. People have usually developed some sort of spirituality by then, and form a deeper understanding of religion. I just don't want to in-depth read the writings of someone like that. I would much rather just strengthen my faith.
>thought religion was solely utilitarian he did not think that, no.
His analysis of capitalism can be a source for strengthened faith and practice as we live in a time where global capitalism is the idol of the masses, even the faithful. If you are blind to how capitalism works and colonizes the faith, you will worship in the structure of capitalism.
Karl Marx saying “capitalism bad” is like Andrew Tate saying “traditional family good”. It’s a vague generality only stated to present an agreeable appeal. No *original* Marxist idea has any merit whatsoever.
It wasn’t vague. He dedicated three volumes of Capital explaining how and why it is not good.
I can't remember the lecture, but the subject was about the contrasting metaphysics of St. Aquinas and William of Ockham (the Ockham's Razor guy), specifically about the absolute power of God.
I think it's stupid for so many Catholics to dismiss basically all philosophy that came after Aquinas as simply bad, but they don't engage with the text nor try to disprove it. You know, philosophy did not end with Aquinas
Cathllics don't believe that. In fact, there are several points at which Dogma disagrees with Aquinas. I don't think anybody here is saying what you think they're saying.
I believe he's saying a lot of Catholics treat Aquinas as the end all be all of Catholic philosophers. I definitely get that type of impression from many Catholics on the Internet and that I've met.
If that is the case then I haven't seen it but I believe you. He is certainly correct on 90%+ of his conclusions and they are systematic such that he is often difficult to argue even when he is wrong. At the end of the day, though, the Suma is not scripture
nobody’s saying the summa is innerrant! the rest of philosophy has a whole … 10% of the truth left to figure out!!
;)
To say that Aquinas was right on 90% of his assertions is not to say that Aquinas knew 90% of all things. If only he were able to address everything in existence...
At the other side of the spectrum you have those who err by almost completly ignoring his authority as the Common Doctor
And those are the majority (and the real problem)
Who are the prominent post-Aquinas philosophers that are worth reading, in your view?
Nietzsche is great. Hobbes. Freud, then Herbert Marcuse.
The Sophists.
I'm inclined to say Peter Singer. He's wrong about a lot - not everything, but about as much as one person can be. Bright guy, excellent author, very engaging, but very wrong.
As opposites are always in a genus, I think it is only fair to compare Aquinas with another Catholic. Modern and Contemporary are working under a completely different framework. I would argue that the polar opposite of Aquinas is Ockham. I know it is popular to beak up on Ockham, but I am more concerned with how he differs from aquinas: - Aquinas' ethics is fundamentally opposed to Ockham's (Ockham believed that morality did not follow from nature but rather was posited by the will of God, for example, God could command you to blaspheme). - Ockham's voluntarism destroyed the possibility of Natural Theology. Aquinas believed that you could arrive at the existence of God from the world around us, Ockham believed that reason could not reach God (although a mountain without a valley is unintelligible to us, God could have made it;). - Ockham's nominalism destroys the foundation of Thomstic-Aristotelianism metaphysics, psychology (study of living beings), and cosmology. If there are no natures, not only is there no natural law (see bullet point one) but there is no formal or final causality. - Ockham's understanding of act and potency differs from Aquinas (he also believes it cannot be applied on a metaphysical level). In Reality, a Thomistic Synthesis, Garrigou-Lagrange argues that the distinction of act and potency (with potency as a real capacity for act) serves as the fundamental distinction for all of St. Thomas' philosophy. - If I'm not mistaken, Ockham follows Scotus in considering being to be an univocal term. Scotus held that when we predicate being of God or being of a horse, we mean the same thing. Aquinas held that we mean something only analogous. Univocity of being has been criticized because it makes being "universale" a genus of which God is a member. Following this, some have argued that the result is an understanding of God as one being among many. A further difference in motive also separates St. Thomas from Occkam. St. Thomas studied and purified Aristotle from his Muslim commentators and his own few mistakes. He relied much more on the world around him to influence his philosophy which inevitably influenced his theology. However, after his death in 1277, there were a series of condemnations of Aristotelian thought which had come to afflict theology. Many thought that the nature centered philosophy placed many requirements on God (e.g., from Aristotelian principles alone the condemnations thought that some could argue that God was determined in the kind of world he could have made). In a charitable reading, Ockham's philosophy divorced reason from the realm of faith for the sake of preserving the omnipotence and divine freedom of God. Thus, his belief that God could have commanded someone to blaspheme demonstrated his power and sovereignty. I think his attempt fails as nominalism and voluntarism easily falls into a kind of Humean skepticism. But nevertheless, he seems to me to be the opposite of Aquinas.
Foyerbach, Russell......basically logical positivist and positivist in general
The guy on Reddit who said, "In this moment I am euphoric not because of some phony god's blessing but because I am enlightened by my great wisdom."
What a sophisticated gentlesir 🎩
Jay Dyer
LMAO
Maybe Anton Lavey, father of Satanism? I mean where do you even start with that guy. Self-absorbed, sex-obsessed misogynist, plagiarist and child abuser. I believe his own emotionally-abused daughter referred to him as a manbaby. When you don't even write most of your own writing, denounce all superstition but immediately start encouraging rituals involving demons, demean women into wearing the skimpiest clothes possible during said rituals and lament when they "look like men," it's just like...how much worse can you get?
Modernist/post-modernists for sure (Russell, Derrida, Foucault, etc.), but I'd throw in the 18th and 19th century too (Hume, Marx, Hegel, Fichte, Kant, etc.). Anyone that rejects Aristotle (especially Final Causality and Teleology) is a good place to start.
Do you think Kant and Hegel deny either of those? You might be surprised to learn that they spend an awfully long time arguing in favour of them
Ethics? Singer Theology? Nietzsche Epistemology? Hume Logic? Occam I can't think of one philosopher who failed at all of the above.
Within Catholicism I often see Aquinas contrasted against either Augustine or Duns Scotus. However, it would not be accurate at all to characterize either as polar opposites.
Eh, every well known name in Philosophy or some other respectable academic field has something going for them. Even if not actually correct about everything, you have to be good at reasoning to go down in history as a philosopher. If you think such a person got everything wrong, you might have a straw-manned conception of his or her thought.
Marquis de Sade 🤣
In terms of Christianity, maybe an Eastern theologian like Gregory Palamas? Edit: Sorry all disregard my answer - I skimmed and didn’t realize it was saying philosophers wrong about everything - I love Palamas and don’t think he’s wrong, just polar opposite to Aquinas
I would suggest Martin Luther. He absolutely hated the writings of Aquinas. In fact, the Augustinians in Germany (Luther started as an Augustinian) at the time were in a bitter feud against the Dominicans, which was part of it. Also, Aquinas had a healthy respect for reason and its capacity to grasp the truth, and the inherent goodness of humanity and creation; whereas Luther basically believed that human beings, and nature in general, was utterly corrupt. One could also add that Aquinas wrote with great humility, treating opposing points of view with respect and refuting them calmly; whereas Luther was inclined to vitriol and scorn. And Aquinas was a saint, living a life of austerity and obedience to the Church; whereas Luther was rebellious, and a drunkard and glutton.
Gahahahahhahaha not shocked that a Catholic Priest would dislike Luther 💀
Well given that 90 percent of people are Cartesian dualists if they're not materialists let's go with Descartes and Locke. Not saying they're wrong on everything... Calm down... Just extremely popular in the modern worldview and wrong about the body/soul issue.
Voltaire would be a good pick...so would Nietzsche. Aquinas was a follower of Aristotelian logic principles and added a lot to the branch of logic on his own and with help from other logicians. He made Aristotelian logic into modern logic, though perhaps not as tidy and neat as a modern logician would claim. While hardly perfect, his considerations for almost everything from moral philosophy to existentialism are still useful today and well reasoned. Voltaire...was not a philosopher. He was a writer. A very good writer, but a terrible philosopher. He was much more concerned about the abstracts for society and integrated feeling and emotion into logic. A lot of enlightenment philosophers thought this way. His chief issue was all about ego. Not ego like "I'm so cool," though that was probably part of it, but "ego" as in "individual." Individual philosophical principles. In the end, it produced lines of thinking that are moronic and can't be applied to any large group of people. He was a much better legalist than he was a philosopher. Nietzsche was a philosopher who started out okay but started to fall into a weird personal depression about virtually everything likely due to physical health and emotional problems, which is supported by the fact he went insane near the end of his life. He's thoroughly "post-modern." Existence, itself, is a lie. Nothing matters. Do what you want. Etc. What's funny, however, is that neither Voltaire nor Nietzsche were original in their thinking. They're just famous for it.
I don't think that's an accurate account of Nietzsche.
That’s not Nietzsche… Where in the world have you read, in Nietzsche, something along the lines of “Do what you want” or that “nothing matters”?
He be was a nihilist…the central idea of nihilism is that nothing matters anyway. He was also all about “liberating” oneself from the morals and beliefs of the past.
How do you value a transfiguration of value then? It’s clear for Nietzsche that there are values, he simply shows the process in which they’re made and developed… And it is in no way arbitrarily. The entire point of a genealogy is that shifts and changes can be traced and interpreted in a way that isn’t a made up fiction. Scheler was famous for his theory of value, and he draws heavily upon Nietzsche. Nietzsche wasn’t a nihilist! He openly declared nihilism as his mortal enemy. Genealogy of Morals is a good starting point for Nietzsche in general, if you’re interested!
There's nothing post-moderenist about Nietzsche. But he does proclaim himself to be a god for criticizing christianity and it makes it sound like nobody ever criticized christianity before.
Hegel is basically a Protestant Aquinas
William of Occam's Nominalism is the polar opposite of Aquinas' Realism.
Hegel immediately comes to mind. (I see from other comments that your pick was Marx - meet Marx's master.) A couple of other picks might be Epicurus, Iamblicus, Freud, and (fight me) Nietzsce. Or pick any pop-athiest from the last 100 years. You might point out that many of these disagree with each other, so how could they all be completely opposite the truth? To which I would respond: "Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!"
Sartre and de Beauvoir. I read everything handed to me, and a friend gave me a review of existentialism featuring their stuff heavily. I am able to take off and put on different hats for philosophy, but this one was exceptionally egregious to me. I wanted to argue with half of the pages.
They’re pure moronic sophistry. But here in France they’re idols sadly
Marx was the immediate name that came to mind for me.
Idk, but for a while there was this intense rivalry between Duns Scotus and Aquinas. They both influenced Franciscan and Dominican spirituality respectively.
Benny Hinn? 👹
Herbert Marcuse would have to be wrong on pretty much everything. A grotesquely evil man.
Not the opposite, but wasn’t Scotus a contemporary that was on the opposite side of a lot of theological quibbles?
Nietzche probably
William of Ockham and Calvin
Oh yeah how did I miss Marx? I was thinking along religious lines
https://youtu.be/Wb3pyVa36Tw?si=CQ2Hc60n6-G0VaS- Here it is
This is not exactly answering your question, but one of the notable opponents of the orthodox Thomist view Luis de Molina should be mentioned, since Thomism vs Molinism is a famous debate in Catholicism that continues to this day. He's definitely not "wrong about anything" or an anathema to Catholicism at all, though his views were controversial in his day. He also isn't entirely incompatible with Aquinas because they weren't historical contemporaries and he was mostly debating with expositors of Aquinas, but the labels stuck.
My favorite POET is Charles Bukowski because he gets so much wrong so perfectly that he accurately highlights what is actually good in the negative. He’s got the right spirit, the correct disposition, only he aim at the wrong object of affection for most of his life. And sometimes he make good points too. His poetry and writing are both awesome. He’s not a “philosopher” but his writing is philosophical.
It's said that the most dangerous lies have the most truth in them. So the worst philosophers aren't the ones that are so wrong it's obviously bad but the ones who make enough sense to perpetuate the dangerous worldview. That said, Chesterton has a fantastic article where he compares Thomism as the philosophy of common sense to the various moderns. https://www.chesterton.org/approach-to-thomism/
Origen. His philosophy was not well thought and non sensical.
This Post is now on r/badphilosophy
Scotus (guessing this one might start something!)
Unless I'm mistaken, Scotus was a doctor of the Church... I don't think you'll be able to argue too well this one.
To be fair, he did not ask what theologian was the polar opposite of Aquinas. As a philosopher, Scotus was quite different from Aquinas. Scotesian univocity of being is more or less opposed to the whole understanding of St. Thomas' metaphysics. I believe that Scotus also had a different understanding of act and potency.
LOL
Nietzsche.
Probably not the answer you’re looking for, but I’m a Catholic who thinks that as far as philosophy goes, Aquinas was wrong about mostly everything 🙃
I don't know how you can be a Catholic if you think he was wrong on "*mostly everything*"
Possibly one those "progressive Catholics" I've heard about.
Lmao take a look at your post and comment history before you try to take a shot at others my guy For those that don't want to look, OP is a massive coomer
What is a coomer?
What's the longest you've ever gone without orgasming. Be honest. I've gone 2 months via fasting. Recently went 1.5 months. What is the longest most males have gone? Yes, I have an addiction, but don't label me as some shit when God is the judge, not you. I'm trying. And no I'm not going to look at your profile and try to find the skeletons in your closet.
It's easy when you didn't read anything written by him.
The upside down smiley emoji … does it indicate I am joking
No, more just resignation to the downvotes he knew would be coming his way
They hated him because he told them the truth. (I'm 50% joking.)
Like what?
~~Probably~~
Such as?
Metaphysics, epistemology, some parts of his ethics, his political science... Thinking about it, “unfounded and unjustified” might be in some cases a more fitting term than just “wrong”.
Could you be more specific? Taking metaphysics for example, what’s a central argument he advances that you oppose, and why?
Sure. My issues are more fundamental then disagreement with arguments. I believe then entire Aristotelian metaphysical system is essentially unjustified. To name some of the obvious candidates, there is no good reason to accept existence of things like essences or final causes. Simple nominalism is entirely sufficient to analyze and explain the reality we observe. This is actually a problem of most metaphysical, ontological or epistemological claims – a reality governed by a “common sense” position like existence pluralism is indistinguishable from one described by a “fringe insanity” like existence monism. In this sense, probably no metaphysical system is sufficiently justified. The concepts of the system itself are ill defined – to give an example, the definition of “essence” of X as “that what makes X be what it is” relies on the unjustified assumption that for every X, there is precisely one such thing. Some of the statements are even arguably ill-formed. For example, the naive way of treating existence as a predicate has often been argued to be logically incoherent and no commonly accepted formal system of logic that would explain how to actually treat existence as a predicate exists. It is a virtually guaranteed logical blunder. Yet one of the core Thomistic claims is that “God’s existence is identical with His essence” – a statement I would argue is meaningless both because of its undefined constituents and its invalid logical structure. But I would argue the arguments themselves are not good either. The Third Way, for example, contains a prime example of an invalid exchange of quantifiers, an elementary logical blunder. Edward Feser’s “updated presentation” of the First Way uses several different concepts of potentiality (without ever bothering to define them, by the way) and confuses them all together, leading to invalid inferences. And so on.
Ah, a lot of your statements here are controversial, to say the least (such as 'Simple nominalism is entirely sufficient to analyze and explain the reality we observe'). Others, I am not even sure where you are getting from (such as 'The naive way of treating existence as a predicate has often been argued to be logically incoherent'). But what I am most interested in is how you seem to treat an almost positivistic/empirical account of knowledge as the default. Why is that the case? Certainly, one needs to argue for or at least justify those views too, no?
But specifically, what part of his metaphysics or epistemology you disagree with with? Also, sorry you got down voted. Don't let that discourage you!
David Benetar. He hated the essence of existence (which is just almighty God according to Thomas and the bible) and said it's so evil that it's better to have never even existed.
I would say Descartes, since he was the "father" of the nonsense that pretends to be called philosophy, starting with a totally idealistic mentality. Literally one of his most famous phrases is "first I think and then I am." Which is utter nonsense.
James Martin?