A Lecture by Dr. Howard Resnick
Dr. Howard Resnick began his lecture by clarifying the title: “Fancy” is used in its older literary sense of mere imagination. His central question was whether good and evil are objective realities or simply products of human opinion. To explore this, he turned first to metaphysics.
Metaphysics, Resnick explained, comes from Aristotle’s “first philosophy.” Aristotle saw that logical reasoning can push us into an infinite regress of proofs, and the only escape is to take something as self-evident. “Since it doesn’t require extrinsic evidence, it therefore stands alone and can serve, in modern epistemological terms, as the foundation of a system of knowledge.” For Aristotle, this meant positing God as the “unmoved mover,” along with the reality of the soul. Resnick then gave his own working definition: “real things that are not empirical, or that are not physical.” This category includes not only God and souls but also morality. “Any sentence, for example, in English, like ‘you should do this’ or ‘you should not do that,’ or ‘you must do this’ or ‘you must not do that,’ is basically a metaphysical claim. Because empirically, there’s nothing you should or shouldn’t do—things just happen.”
From this foundation, he argued that civilization itself rests on metaphysics. Laws, justice, equality, and even traffic rules are based on value claims that cannot be derived from empirical data. To say that one should not endanger others by driving recklessly is a moral claim. Empirically, all that can be observed is that one person drove quickly and another person died. The moral force comes from values, and “values are metaphysical.” Science and empiricism serve these values but cannot ground them. “Physical science is just instrumentalized—utilized, engaged—to pursue metaphysical goals.”
This poses a difficulty for atheist philosophers, who often want to reject God while retaining moral obligations. Resnick compared this to using a single scientific instrument, like a thermometer, and then concluding that reality contains nothing but temperature. “To insist that only empirical facts are objective and valid,” he argued, “is a type of epistemological blindness that is breathtaking.”
The challenge is especially acute with morality. Few are willing to say, for example, that the rape and murder of a daughter is not objectively wrong. Yet this is the logical consequence of strict physicalism. Philosophers through history have grappled with this, from Plato’s dialogue with Callicles—who asserted there are no objective moral principles and that tyrants should simply do as they wish—to Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch, rejecting Christian humility as “slave morality.”
Turning to modern philosophy, Resnick focused on compatibilism, a position held by over half of academic philosophers. Compatibilists claim that determinism and moral responsibility are compatible: even if all thoughts and actions are predetermined from the Big Bang, the mere subjective feeling of choosing counts as free will. Resnick criticized this as absurd: “Free will doesn’t require actual freedom—it just requires the illusory belief that it’s free.” He likened this to scholastic philosophy under medieval church control: brilliant thinkers working within irrational boundaries. Today, he suggested, similar boundaries are enforced by professional risks in academia.
He then discussed John Rawls, described by many as one of the most influential moral philosophers of the 20th century. Rawls argued that individuals are required to honor their social contracts when institutions are just and when they have accepted the benefits of those institutions. Resnick compared this reasoning to Socrates, who chose to flee Athens but to drink the hemlock, seeing himself as bound by the benefits he had received from the city. Yet Resnick questioned whether such arguments truly establish moral obligation: without God or metaphysics, a person can simply say, “I don’t believe that moral principles are objective,” leaving no binding reason to act morally.
This, he noted, reflects the persistence of sophistry. Protagoras famously claimed, “Man is the measure of all things,” placing human opinion at the center of truth. Plato, however, dedicated his life to defeating the sophists, recognizing their corrosive influence. For Resnick, the survival of this view in modern philosophy indicates that, despite intellectual brilliance, the foundation is weak.
Against this background, he defended natural law theory. Following Aristotle and Aquinas, natural law holds that God is the self-evident foundation of morality. “Anyone who actually understands that there is a God who is the source and foundation of objective morality will simply say, ‘That is my foundational assumption.’” He drew parallels to Lord Caitanya’s statement that revealed scripture is svataḥ pramāṇa, or self-evident. The Bhagavad-gītā repeatedly invokes Dharma as objective law, from Arjuna’s bewilderment in chapter 2 to Kṛṣṇa’s declaration that He descends when Dharma declines.
He then addressed the Euthyphro dilemma: are actions good because God loves them, or does God love them because they are good? Resnick answered that goodness flows from God’s very nature. In the highest realization, one acts not out of fear of rules but from spontaneous love, as in rāgānugā-bhakti. “Certain principles are objectively good because they come from the nature of God… God is the infinite goodness, and all good things come from God.”
In closing, he noted that science, when free of hostility toward God, can glorify divine creation and improve human life. Telescopes that reveal the grandeur of the cosmos, he suggested, are reminders of Kṛṣṇa’s statement in the Bhagavad-gītā: “Anything you see in this universe which is incredible, extraordinary, powerful, beautiful—it’s a spark of My splendor.”