FURTHER READING
If you would like to read further into the (neoscholastic) philosophy we use to interpret video games, please consult the following resources:
Jacques Maritain, “Art and Scholasticism”
Jacques Maritain, “The Degrees of Knowledge”
(“It is only too true that metaphysics does not fit in with the modern mind, or more exactly that the latter does not fit in with the former. Three centuries of mathematical empiricism have so bent the modern mind to a single interest in the invention of engines for the control of phenomena — a conceptual network, which procures for the mind a certain practical domination over and a deceptive understanding of nature, where thought is not resolved in being but in the sensible itself. Thus progressing, not by adding fresh truths to those already acquired, but by the substitution of new engines for engines grown out of date; manipulating things without understanding them; gaining over the real, pettily, patiently, conquests which are always partial, always provisional; acquiring a secret relish for the matter which it seeks to trap, the modem mind has developed in this lower order of scientific demiurgy, a form of multiple and MARVELOUSLY SPECIALIZED sensitiveness, and admirable hunting instincts. But, at the same time, it has become miserably enfeebled and defenseless in regard to the proper objects of the intellect which it has basely renounced, and has become incapable of appreciating the universe of rational evidence otherwise than as a system of well-oiled cogs. Hence it must necessarily be opposed to all metaphysics — the old positivist game — or take up with some pseudo-metaphysic — the new form of positivism — one of those metaphysical counterfeits where the experimental method, in its grossest form, as with the pragmatists and the pluralists, or more subtly, as in Bergsonian intuition, or more religiously, as in the integral action of the Blondelians with their attempt to experience everything mystically, invades the domain of pure intellection.”)
J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories” (Art as Sub-Creation)
(“The Primary World, Reality, of elves and men is the same, if differently valued and perceived… Enchantment [fantasy] produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic [method in contrast to enchantment/art] produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World. It does not matter by whom it is said to be practised, fay or mortal, it remains distinct from the other two; it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in this world, domination of things and wills. To the elvish craft, Enchantment, Fantasy aspires, and when it is successful of all forms of human art most nearly approaches. At the heart of many man-made stories of the elves lies, open or concealed, pure or alloyed, the desire for a living, realized sub-creative art, which (however much it may outwardly resemble it) is inwardly wholly different from the greed for self-centred power which is the mark of the mere Magician”)
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., “Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought”
(“Thomism accepts both the inductive method of empiricism and the deductive method of intellectualism. But Thomism insists further that the first principles from which deduction proceeds are not mere subjective laws of the mind but objective laws of reality. Without, say, the principle of contradiction, the principle of Descartes ["I think, therefore I am"] may be a mere subjective illusion… Perhaps, finally, the word "I" stands for a mere transient process, unsupported by any individual permanent and thinking subject.”)
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., “A Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic Antinomies” [God: His Existence & Nature] Volume 1 and Volume 2
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., “The Essence & Topicality of Thomism”
(“As [St.] Pius X observed in the Encyclical Pascendi, the evil of which the modern world suffers is first of all a malady of the intellect: agnosticism. It, whether it be under the form of empirical positivism or under that of idealism, puts in doubt the ontological value of the primordial notions and even of the first principles of reason… Modern philosophy proposes a subjective logic and criticism which do not enable us to arrive at truth, namely, to know extra-mental being. Ontology is suppressed or reduced to the statement of first principles, which are no longer immutable laws of being, but only laws of the mind that evolves, laws of mental, volitional, or sentimental becoming. Thereby we arrive at a psychology lacking a soul, which only understands phenomena, namely, the becoming that is at the base of the status of changeable knowledge.”)
Henri Grenier, “Manual of Thomistic Philosophy”; Volume 1 (Logic & Philosophy of Nature), Volume 2 (Metaphysics), Volume 3 (Moral Philosophy)
Joshua P. Hochschild, “What’s Wrong with Ockham?” [Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West (“a straight line from nominalism to relativism, skepticism, nihilism, hyperpluralism, and the death camps?”)]
W.F. Vallicella, “A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated”
(a not quite thomistic, but enlightening survey of “the past century and a half of philosophizing about the problem of existence”)
David S. Oderberg, “Real Essentialism” (“a comprehensive defence of neo-Aristotelian essentialism”)
Edward Feser, “Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science”
(“Attempts to banish intrinsic teleology and substantial form and replace them with fundamental particles in motion doesn’t really banish them at all, but simply relocates them. the fundamental particles become the true substances, possessed of substantial rather than accidental forms, and the directedness of their causal powers toward certain characteristic effects constitute an ineliminable residue of intrinsic teleology”) (P51)
Library OF [TRANSLATED] ARISTOTELIAN/THOMISTIC TEXTS
Collected Works OF THOMAS AQUINAS [Latin/English]