edward feser five proofs of the existence of god

He doesn't so much defend Aristotle's views, he defends Aquinas's interpretation of them - or maybe it's actually Feser's interpretation of Aquinas's interpretation.

However, what Feser thinks of as Aristotelianism is actually Thomism. It is this, according to Feser, that led to such things as abortion rights, gay marriage, “scientism and hyper-rationalism” (whatever he means by the latter), and the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century that murdered people by the millions (51). The central argument of The Last Superstition is that the moderns made a fatal mistake in abandoning Aristotelianism, and in particular the kind of teleological explanations found in that philosophy. Feser really appears to find individualism repulsive.) (As Dave Barry used to say, I swear I'm not making this up. However, Kant's insistence on the autonomy of the individual and on treating persons as ends-in-themselves (as opposed to treating them as mere means), are, he says, “gruesome fortune-cookie expressions of modern man's self-worship” (219). He doesn't find everything about the old German professor bad: “His views on sexual morality and the death penalty, for example, are totally reactionary that is to say, they are correct” (216-7).

As one example of where he's coming from, consider what he says about Kant. Feser regards the Enlightenment and all that followed as a disaster for humanity, and actually seems to regret the fact that we no longer live in medieval times.

(The real reason I'm writing this, though, is that I haven't read Five Proofs, but just finished Superstition.) Billed as an answer to the New Atheism, Feser's earlier book is in reality a condemnation of pretty much all things modern - where by “modern” what is meant is everything since the days of Hobbes and Descartes. It might therefore be interesting to also consider an earlier work of his which covers some of the same ground, The Last Superstition. Lately, there's been quite a bit of talk here regarding Edward Feser's Five Proofs of the Existence of God.

Edward feser five proofs of the existence of god