Fr. James Brent recently gave a talk at the Thomistic Institute entitled, "Responding to Contemporary Atheism." There he argues that contemporary atheism, rather than being simple adherence to a single proposition, is a complex phenomenon. To paraphrase him:
Here I give only the first sentence of his short descriptions of each of these views. The book itself is devoted to explaining the positions in more detail, but the terms materialism, mechanism, nominalism, relativism, and skepticism are common currency in philosophical discourse.
According to Gerson, the conjunction of these five views is not only Ur-Platonism, but also antinaturalism. This means in turn that naturalism is defined as the conjunction of materialism, mechanism, nominalism, relativism, and skepticism. What's important here is that Gerson is attempting to draw a clean line in the sand through the entire history of philosophy. In the end there are only two consistent positions: Ur-Platonism and purebred Naturalism. There have existed Platonists and naturalists who have not gone all-in in affirming each of the five positions, but this is only because they did not see their position through to its logical conclusion.
Although Gerson doesn't talk directly about atheism, Fr. James Brent makes the connection between contemporary atheism and naturalism as defined by Gerson. According to Brent contemporary atheism is grounded in naturalism, especially materialism, mechanism, and watered down versions of nominalism and relativism.
Sources:
"If you've ever gotten into a conversation with someone who advocates the atheist position, or takes some kind of agnostic position, you start to get the feeling as you go along that you're up against something much bigger than just a commitment to a particular proposition, such as, "God doesn't exist." And in fact that's correct. What you're confronting when you're confronting atheism is a large-scale, deep philosophical matrix. So the contemporary atheism is deeply embedded in this large-scale philosophical matrix." (Fr. James Brent)
In defining this "atheist philosophical matrix," Brent relies upon the work of Platonist scholar Lloyd Gerson. In his book, From Plato to Platonism, Gerson attempts to give a loose definition of the Platonic tradition as a whole. His name for the broad Platonic tradition is 'Ur-Platonism', or UP (which Brent refers to as 'Big tent Platonism'). As a conjunction of five negative positions, Gerson tells us that "UP is a via negativa to Plato's philosophy." Ur-Platonism is thus constituted by the following five elements:
- Antimaterialism ("is the view that it is false that the only things that exist are bodies and their properties...")
- Antimechanism ("is the view that the only sort of explanations available in principle to a materialist are inadequate for explaining the natural order...")
- Antinominalism ("is the view that it is false that the only things that exist are individuals, each uniquely situated in space and time...")
- Antirelativism ("is the denial of the claim that Plato attributes to Protagoras, that 'man is the measure of all things, of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not...'")
- Antiskepticism ("is the view that knowledge is possible...")
Here I give only the first sentence of his short descriptions of each of these views. The book itself is devoted to explaining the positions in more detail, but the terms materialism, mechanism, nominalism, relativism, and skepticism are common currency in philosophical discourse.
According to Gerson, the conjunction of these five views is not only Ur-Platonism, but also antinaturalism. This means in turn that naturalism is defined as the conjunction of materialism, mechanism, nominalism, relativism, and skepticism. What's important here is that Gerson is attempting to draw a clean line in the sand through the entire history of philosophy. In the end there are only two consistent positions: Ur-Platonism and purebred Naturalism. There have existed Platonists and naturalists who have not gone all-in in affirming each of the five positions, but this is only because they did not see their position through to its logical conclusion.
Although Gerson doesn't talk directly about atheism, Fr. James Brent makes the connection between contemporary atheism and naturalism as defined by Gerson. According to Brent contemporary atheism is grounded in naturalism, especially materialism, mechanism, and watered down versions of nominalism and relativism.
Sources:
- Responding To Contemporary Atheism | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
- From Plato to Platonism, by Lloyd Gerson
- Gerson's chapter, "Platonism versus Naturalism," in Defining Platonism
- What is Platonism? by Lloyd Gerson
- Edward Feser: Join the Ur-Platonist alliance!