A series of articles presenting the foundations of realist philosophy and classical theism. These principles are not imposed dogmas, but demands of reason itself, once it accepts to look at reality all the way through.
We must begin with something extremely simple, almost trivial, and yet massively rejected by modern thought: reality is there before we think anything about it. This principle is not yet theological. It is not even properly philosophical in the technical sense. It is more basic t…
Read more →Sometimes, after conceding the existence of reality, one admits that this reality might be fundamentally absurd. It would be there, certainly, but without reason, without structure, without intrinsic intelligibility. The world would be a brute fact, an opaque given, and any searc…
Read more →Before speaking of real distinctions, we must dispel a tenacious confusion, maintained both by certain popular science accounts and by lazy modern metaphysics: the idea that something could spring from nothing. The principle ex nihilo nihil fit—"from nothing, nothing comes"—is of…
Read more →Once it is admitted that reality exists independently of the mind, and that it is not absurd, a new requirement immediately imposes itself: reality must be intelligible through distinctions. To understand is never to grasp an indistinct whole. To understand is to distinguish with…
Read more →Change is one of the most evident facts of experience. And yet, it is one of the most formidable metaphysical problems there is. For change seems to require the impossible: that a thing be and not be, under the same respect. It is precisely for this reason that philosophy, very e…
Read more →The distinction between act and potency has an immediate consequence, which one can try to ignore but cannot suppress without ruining everything that precedes: What is in potency cannot actualize itself. This is not a theological thesis. It is not an arbitrary metaphysical postul…
Read more →The principle of hierarchical causality has left reality in a very precise situation: change exists, it is intelligible, it is real, and it depends at every instant on actualizing principles. Not in a vague or historical way, but actually. Yet this imposes a consequence that cann…
Read more →Having arrived here, many still make one last error, understandable but fatal: they imagine the principle of pure actuality as an extremely powerful being, very great, very stable, very ancient—but still a being, somewhere in the inventory of reality. This is precisely what reali…
Read more →People commonly speak of "proofs of God's existence." The expression is convenient but profoundly misleading. It suggests that these would be demonstrations in the ordinary sense: a reasoning that would start from neutral premises to arrive, by deduction, at a new conclusion—God'…
Read more →It had to come up. Every time metaphysical realism is taken seriously, the same objection arises, often with a knowing smile: "Yes, but quantum physics has shown that reality doesn't really exist like that..." This sentence, despite its learned airs, is almost always false, and a…
Read more →The word chance is one of the most used, and one of the least defined, whenever it comes to avoiding metaphysical conclusions. It is invoked as an ultimate explanation, when in reality it is never an explanation. To understand why, we must start by doing what is too rarely done: …
Read more →Realism is not one philosophical option among others. It is the price of entry for thinking anything at all. Before all theory, all critique, all negation, there must already be something. Before all method, all science, all deconstruction, intelligence must already be caught up …
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