Series Of Causes Research Articles

The Five Ways. St. Thomas Aquinas’ Proofs of God’s Existence by Anthony Kenny, and: The Cosmological Argument. A Reassessment by Bruce R. Reichenbach

BOOK REVIEWS 721 The Five Ways. St. Thoma8 Aquina8' Proofs of God's Existence. By ANTHONY KENNY. Studies in Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion. General Editor, D. E. Phillips. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. Pp. 139. The Cosmological Argument. A Rea8sessment. By BRUCE R. REICHENBACH . Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 197~. Pp. 164. $8.75. With the renewal of interest in natural theology prompted by the publication of Flew and Mcintyre's Neu> Essays in Philosophical Theology (1955), attention has been directed once again to rational arguments for God's existence. The ontological argument was the first to benefit from this resurgence of interest, but in the two books under review cosmological argumentation and its various formulations come in for their share of attention. Kenny's work, which shows more the negative influence of Flew, stresses the difficulty involved in separating Aquinas's five ways from the medieval cosmology in which he sees them as imbedded. Reichenbach's work is more positive in spirit, the author's major concern being to reformulate St. Thomas's first three ways so as to meet the objections of Hume and Kant and contemporary critics in the analytical tradition. Both works merit a brief exposition and critique, if only because they consider much the same subject matter and yet come to contrary conclusions. After a brief introduction wherein he allows that " the criticisms of Kant are certainly still the most effective obstacle any rational theism has to meet" (p. 3), Kenny devotes a chapter each to the five proofs for God's existence offered by Aquinas in Summa Theologiae, I, q. ~.a. 3. In the case of each via he attempts a rather complete exegesis of the text, supplementing this with St. Thomas's arguments in parallel places and with elucidations supplied by commentators, mainly recent, including Roberto Masi, Joseph Owens, and Peter Geach. In each instance Kenny raises objections drawn from modern science and from Humean, Kantian, and more recent philosophies to show not only that the ipsa verba of St. Thomas are unacceptable to the modern mind but also that " scholastic modernizations " must share the same fate (cf. p. 4). With regards to the prima via Kenny experiences special difficulty with the principle "omne quod movetur ab alio movetur," and so sides with Suarez's evaluation of the proof that it is impotent " to prove that there is anything immaterial in reality, let alone that there is a first and uncreated substance " (p. 33) . The chapter has some interesting material on the chains of movers involved in inertial and gravitational motion, particularly when the author attempts to explain these in terms of Newtonian and Einsteinian mechanics, but unfortunately his discussion here comes to no conclusive results. Kenny's examination of the secunda via focuses on the principle of efficient causation, which he formulates in mathematical logic BOOK REVIEWS following Salamucha and others. His difficulty here is with essentially subordinated series of causes, which he sees as intelligible in terms of medieval astrology, as thus based on an "archaic fiction" (p. 44), and hence unacceptable in the light of modern science. The discussion of the tertia via, admittedly one of the most difficult proofs to make sense of, permits Kenny to range through contemporary discussions of possiblity, necessity, and contingency. His evaluation is that the proof concludes as well to the "everlasting existence of matter with a natural indestructibility" (p. 69) as it does to God's eternal existence. In analyzing the quarta via the author dwells at some length on Platonic Forms, predicates, and existence, using Geach as a foil for much of the discussion; his own conclusion, predictably, is that " the notion of lpsum Esse Subsistens, ... so far from being a profound metaphysical analysis of the divine nature, turns out to be the Platonic Idea of a predicate which is at best uninformative and at worst unintelligible" (p. 95). His critique of the quinta via, finally, allows Kenny to discourse on contemporary problems relating to teleological explanation and the philosophy of mind, again coming to the negative result that the argument from design has no more claim to validity than the other theistic arguments. Kenny's book is clear and well...

Ibn Khaldūn on Attributes and Predestination

IBN KHALDfUN opens his sketch of the science of the Kalam with a discussion of two topics, the of God and the power of God. His purpose is to show that the belief in the of God is not incompatible with the belief that attributes are real incorporeal beings, eternally subsisting in God, and that the belief in the power of God, that is, in predestination, is not incompatible with divine justice in its holding man responsible for his actions. These were two distinct problems in Muslim religious philosophy. He combines these two problems and tries to solve them by one common argument. The one common argument by which he tries to solve these two problems may be briefly stated. Throughout the history of philosophy, the and power of God were treated as corollaries deducible from the proofs of the existence of God. So Ibn Khalduin says to himself: Let us examine the proofs for the existence of God and see what kind of of God and what kind of power of God are established thereby, and then let us see whether that kind of is compatible with divine attributes and whether that kind of power is compatible with divine justice. Accordiingly, at the very beginning of his discussion of the Kalam, after stating that the unity of God is the core of the articles of faith and after declaring that he was going to prove the of God in a method and manner which is most direct,' he proceeds to prove not the of God but the existence of God. Let us study Ibn Khaldtin's proof of the existence of God. In Arabic philosophy, by the time of Ibn Khalduin (1332-1406), the proofs used for the existence of God were mainly of two types. Both of these types were of the cosmological kind. We may characterize them, with reference to their ultimate philosophical origin, as the Platonic type of argument and the Aristotelian type of argument. The Platonic type of argument starts with the assumption that the world came to be (-yvyvo,yevov) after it had not been,2 or as the Muslim theologians have come to express this view, the world was created (makhliiq). Then, adding the principle that everything created must have a creator, it directly infers that there must be a Creator. The Aristotelian type of argument starts with the assumption that the world is eternal. Then, by an empirical study of the world, it arrives at the conclusion, first, that every form of coming into being within the world is effected by a cause and, second, that since the world is eternal, the series of causes and effects would have to be infinite. Then, adding

Prenatal Influences on Character

THE popular belief that prenatal influences on the mother affect the offspring physically, producing moles and other birth-marks, and even malformations of a more or less serious character, is said to be entirely unsupported by any trustworthy facts, and is also rejected by physiologists on theoretical grounds. But I am not aware that the question of purely mental effects arising from prenatal mental influences on the mother has been separately studied. Our ignorance of the causes, or at least of the whole series of causes, that determine individual character is so great, that such transmission of mental influences will hardly be held to be impossible or even very improbable. It is one of those questions on which our minds should remain open, and on which we should be ready to receive and discuss whatever evidence is available; and should a primâ facie case be made out, seek for confirmation by some form of experiment or observation, which is perhaps less difficult than at first sight it may appear to be.