Honestly, what runs through editors’ minds when they assign book reviewers? The Claremont Review of Books has just run a review of Aristotle’s Revenge, by some fellow named J. Eric Wise. And, heaven help us, it’s Glenn Ellmers’ reviewredivivus.
Anyone who has read my book will be keen to learn what a reviewer might say about my views on topics like: embodied cognition and embodied perception; epistemic structural realism; causal powers and laws of nature; the A- and B-theories of time; presentism; reductionism in chemistry; primary versus secondary qualities; computational notions in natural science; biological reductionism; evolution and essentialism; neuroscientific reductionism; and so on. You know, the stuff I actually discuss in the book.
Wise has nothing to say about any of that. Instead, he goes on at meandering length about (of all things) Machiavelli, Leo Strauss, and Harry Jaffa; about the views of physicist Carlo Rovelli; about the differences between Aristotle’s conception of God and those of the Scholastics; and other things that don’t actually have anything to do with my book. Wise also laments that I defend broadly Aristotelian ideas and lines of argument rather than discussing the texts of Aristotle himself– never mind that the whole point of the book is to defend the broadly Aristotelian tradition rather than to do Aristotle exegesis. As with Ellmers, it’s absolutely astounding how a “reviewer” could write so much and say so very little about the actual book under review.
One of the few remarks Wise does make about my book’s contents is a truly jaw-dropping piece of misrepresentation. Here it is: “Only a few of Feser’s arguments, Aristotelian or otherwise, are likely to be compelling for anyone not already committed to an orthodox appreciation of Christian revelation.” The title of the review also makes reference to “Christian science.”
Now, Wise offers no examples of any arguments I give in the book that rest on Christian theological premises, or any other theological premises. The reason is that he could not have done so, because there are no such arguments in the book.
Wise’s rationale for his silly remark, as far as I can tell, is that since my understanding of the Aristotelian tradition is influenced by Aquinas and other Scholastics, and the Scholastics happened to be Christians, my arguments must rest on Christian revelation.
Dear reader, if you really need it explained to you why this is a textbook non sequitur, please, please don’t review Aristotle’s Revenge. I have little enough free time as it is, and I’d hate to waste any more of it replying to yet another inane book review that should have been assigned to someone competent to comment on the actual contents of the book.
UPDATE 12/12: Round two.
UPDATE 12/12: Round two.