Rob Koons & Dan Bonevac On the Five Ways
In this episode of Reflections On What Matters, I speak with Professors Robert C. Koons and Daniel Bonevac (Rob and Dan to me, from my years as a graduate student at UT Austin) about their recently completed collaborative project on St. Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways — the classic arguments for the existence of God in the Summa Theologiae.
The project has yielded two forthcoming books. One is aimed at a broad audience, intended to present the Five Ways clearly and accessibly in the manner that Rob and Dan believe best captures Aquinas’s actual thought. The other is aimed at fellow scholars, making a more extended case for their interpretations over competing ones in the literature and engaging deeply with key technical debates.
This pair of books promises to be a landmark contribution to natural theology. I was deeply honored to get a sneak peek and the chance to discuss their ideas in this conversation.
For more on Rob and Dan, see their biographical information and relevant links below. (A note: Dan’s YouTube channel is legendary among philosophy enthusiasts, packed with outstanding lectures on a huge range of topics.)
Daniel Bonevac
Daniel Bonevac is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has taught for over four decades. His research and teaching span metaphysics, philosophical logic, semantics, ethics, and non-Western philosophy. He is the author of influential books including Reduction in the Abstract Sciences (winner of the Johnsonian Prize from The Journal of Philosophy), Deduction: Introductory Symbolic Logic, Today’s Moral Issues: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, and Introduction to World Philosophy (co-edited with Stephen H. Phillips). Bonevac is known for making complex philosophical ideas accessible through his popular courses, MOOCs, and online lectures. He is also a senior fellow at the Civitas Institute at UT Austin. His forthcoming book with Robert Koons, The Five Ways: A Fresh Interpretation and Defense of Aquinas’s Natural Theology, is currently under submission.
Links:
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PhiloofAlexandria
UT Austin profile: https://experts.utexas.edu/daniel_bonevac
Civitas Institute fellow page: https://www.civitasinstitute.org/fellows/daniel-bonevac
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=QFIVyvQAAAAJ&hl=en
Robert C. Koons
Robert C. Koons is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has taught since 1987. Holding degrees from Michigan State, Oxford, and UCLA, he specializes in metaphysics, philosophical logic, philosophy of religion, and the application of logic to longstanding problems in philosophy of mind and science. He is the author or co-author of several acclaimed books, including Realism Regained: An Essay on the Foundations of Truth and Objectivity, The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics (with Timothy Pickavance), and Metaphysics: The Fundamentals (with Timothy Pickavance). His recent work explores Aristotelian-Thomistic perspectives on contemporary science and classical theism.
Relevant links:
Personal website: https://robkoons.net/
Blog (The Analytic Thomist): https://analyticthomist.com/
UT Austin faculty page: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/philosophy/faculty/koons
Google Scholar and publications: https://robkoons.net/published-articles.html