Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature: Feser, Edward: 9783868386059: Amazon.com: Books

Immortal Souls – A Treatise on Human Nature by Edward Feser is a masterpiece. It provides the reader with the essential of human nature in accordance with Thomistic philosophy, and does so in a clear and convincing manner. The book defines and explains the essential features of the mind, the self, the intellect, the human will, the human being, and the immaterial, immortal soul. What makes this book excellent is that philosopher Edward Feser provides cogent arguments that will convince the intelligent reader that the Thomistic philosophy of human nature is true.

First, Feser provides many superb insights about philosophy and human nature. He outlines how philosophers have accepted realist, reductionist and anti-realist views of reality. A realistic account of a phenomenon takes it to be real and to have precisely the nature it appears to have. A reductionist account doesn’t quite deny the phenomenon’s reality, but holds that its true nature is different from what it seems to be. An anti-realist account takes the phenomenon to be altogether illusory, denying that it corresponds to anything in reality. The realist account is demonstrated to be the correct view of reality.

Secondly, he points out that concepts and minds have intentionality, which means they aim at, are directed toward, or are about something. This agrees with the Thomistic philosophy of mind, but materialist philosophies of mind exclude teleology or directedness towards an end from nature, and there is no way to fit intentionality into the materialist worldview.

Third, Aquinas states that free will involves knowing what you are doing, and knowledge is immaterial, so free will can be influenced by events in the physical world but it will always remain free to choose.

Fourth, living things are substances, and all rational beings are alive. Thus, computers and robots will never be rational nor alive because they are not substances, and they are not alive because they are not capable of immanent causation.

Fifth, one argument in favor of the mind being immaterial is known as the “storage problem”. As Feser puts it: “There just is no intelligible way in which the brain could be said to store concepts. In particular, features of concepts differentiate them from anything in the brain (or anywhere else in the physical world, for that matter). Concepts are abstract, unextended, and universal, whereas material things are concrete, extended and particular. Some concepts are simple, but any remotely credible candidate material location for them would be composite. Concepts and the mind are intentional – they aim at things and are about things – but matter is not intentional, so concepts and the mind are immaterial.”

Sixth, Aquinas holds that there must be one ultimate end toward which all our actions are directed, and he holds that that end is happiness. And Aquinas states that what alone can bring happiness is to know and love God.

Seventh, Feser states that “Virtues are habits of action that facilitate the realization of the true end of human life, and vices are habits that frustrate the realization of that end.” That’s is a good way of defining virtues in vices in terms of their teleology.

Eighth, philosophers have tried to solve the problem of how an immaterial soul could interact with a material body. The answer is that the soul and body are not two substances that interact through efficient causes, but rather the soul and body are one substance where the causation is formal causation. That is a plausible way of viewing how the mind relates to the body.

The above summaries of some of the main points of Immortal Souls should be enough to demonstrate that Edward Feser has written a real masterpiece of a treatise on human nature. Aristotle said that “All men by nature desire to know” and the ancient Greek philosophers said “Know thyself”. This excellent book will help interested readers to achieve those goals.