Edward Feser

Edward Feser (b. 1968) is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College. Trained in analytic philosophy (PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1999), he initially identified as an atheist before converting to Catholicism in the early 2000s, a shift he attributes to engagement with Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics. He is among the most visible contemporary defenders of classical theism in the Anglophone world, working within the Thomistic revival associated with figures such as David Oderberg and the late Ralph McInerny. Feser's principal contributions include polemical and systematic defenses of natural theology and Scholastic metaphysics: 'The Last Superstition' (2008) attacks New Atheism (Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris) from an Aristotelian-Thomistic standpoint; 'Aquinas' (2009) and 'Scholastic Metaphysics' (2014) reconstruct Thomistic arguments for analytic audiences; 'Five Proofs of the Existence of God' (2017) reformulates Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, Augustinian, Thomistic, and rationalist proofs. He has also written on the philosophy of mind, defending hylemorphic dualism against materialism, and on natural law ethics, including a defense of capital punishment (with Joseph Bessette). Critics — including Graham Oppy, Paul Edwards, and various analytic naturalists — dispute his readings of Aquinas and the cogency of act-potency metaphysics in light of modern physics. His polemical tone has also drawn criticism, including from sympathetic Thomists.