The Return of the Philosopher

Aristotle is the ultimate Comeback Kid.

Suppose you could pick up a Universal Translator and have a conversation with an early modern philosopher. Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, pick your favorite. What could you tell them that would truly amaze?

Would you tell them about skyscrapers and airplanes? DNA? The first moon walk? The internet? I mean, whatever. Sure, they might think that stuff was cool. Then again, early modern thinkers like Francis Bacon explicitly expected that the world would keep hurtling forward across new technological horizons. I’m not sure it’d challenge any basic assumptions.

Here’s what I would tell them. In the 20th century, Christianity still covers the globe, and Aristotle is cool again. I guarantee they wouldn’t see that coming.

This week is about two things. I’m going to talk about Aristotle’s re-introduction to the modern world, and what an amazing thing that is. The early moderns chased teleology and hylomorphism right off the stage, and here they are, back in the spotlight. More people (and not just, say, Benedictine monks off in a monastery somewhere) are coming to appreciate why that organic order, that capacity for synthesis, the connections to real language and lived experience, the bridging of Being and Doing, really matter. Maybe reducing everything to inanimate matter isn’t such a good idea after all.

I’ll discuss that more tomorrow, and Thursday muse on real-world manifestations and applications. Does neo-Thomism or the return of virtue ethics actually matter to anyone who’s not an academic philosopher? Admittedly, this is a hard question. Hopefully the answer will bring us full circle, back to the question that started this whole series: What is philosophy for?

I’m not going to argue that we’re on the cusp of a new golden age. Anything’s possible, but we clearly have a lot of problems, and it’s not as though Aristotelianism has visibly remade the world; it’s still a minority view even within academic philosophy. I’m aware of this, of course. One shouldn’t make too much of the enthusiasms of one’s own circles, and yet… perhaps we shouldn’t make too little, either. To see The Philosopher revivified after two millennia is a remarkable thing. The lights are coming back on again. He did some amazing things the first time around. Who knows where this might go?