Talk:Peter Kreeft

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claim of greatness[edit]

Removed the claim that he is considered by some to be the best catholic philosopher because of a lack of sources and obvious bias. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.19.181.195 (talk) 07:54, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop vandalizing this page. Marax 04:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The line about Kreeft's apple argument being popular in prolife circles has not been substantiated any where. I have removed it as such.

There are no sources and poor use of syntax and language in this article. I have removed the "especially know" portions of this article as there is no source to substantiate this.

I note from the (apparently very old, given that he is now 79) photo of the subject that is attached to this article, the following text requesting permission for use:

Dear Sir:

I have been editing the Wikipedia article on Peter Kreeft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kreeft I have been one of your readers and "disciples", so I feel obliged in a way to help out there. The page has been vandalized recently, thus I have been putting in more material-- academic career and conversion story. Sorry it is just volunteer work, and am doing it in my spare time. Would you mind to send Wikipedia a photo which can be used for your article? I think a photo will also help give the article more meaning and perhaps more respectability.

Sending it to Wikipedia means the photo can now be used by anybody, and modified.The photo will be under the GNU Free Documentation Licensing (GFDL).

So this entry is largely the work of the subject's 'disciples' - in fact, the person who refers to others 'vandalizing' the page (Marax). I suggest, Marax, that you should step away from this page given your clear and stated inability to be objective.Ambiguosity (talk) 08:31, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject class rating[edit]

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 01:57, 28 August 2007 (UTC) Who the fuck are you to edit anything in this or any other article. Tend to your own lies and deceits before you find fault with others.[reply]

Neutral Point of View, Citation and Rewrite Tags[edit]

I do not doubt Kreeft's notoriety but as previous posters have already noted, much of this article reads like self-promotion -- opinions are asserted as fact ("Kreeft handily won the debate") and the sources that do appear are from Kreeft's own website or university home page. This article is also unorganized and could benefit from a substantial rewrite.Darthoutis (talk) 00:57, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Did some serious cleanup -- deleting long lists, deleting material that had been fact-tagged for long enough (and didn't really seem to be encyclopedic in any event), a lot of wp:peacockery. Removed ref & neutrality tags. DavidOaks (talk) 22:14, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This sycophantic and hilariously biased page is a great example of why Wikipedia is seen as a joke. The whole "Conversion Story" section is pure garbage. Why on Earth should Wikipedia be focused on why a philosophy professor converted to Catholicism? Can we please clean up the fawning and Catholicism-promoting and Kreeft-promoting nonsense? Ianbrettcooper (talk) 15:48, 18 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

File:Peter-kreeft boston-college.jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion[edit]

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External Links to Amazon[edit]

Is it really appropriate to have everything in his bibliography as well as the list of his audio recordings linked to an Amazon.com page where they can be purchased? I do not think this is characteristic of most Wikipedia pages, and it seems as though they were linked in an attempt to sell his products rather than because doing so has any encyclopedic worth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.172.218.222 (talk) 02:20, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Quotes"?[edit]

Don't get me wrong, there are many figures that I find eminently quotable, perhaps not Kreeft, but I understand the general instinct.

However that's what wikiquotes is for. Not wikipedia. Those additions give the article an amateurish tone, and add very little of substance to the conversation - I might suggest a section on his philosophical contributions, then those topics can be brought up there. That said, it is a large part of the article, a large edit, and so I mention it here first so as not to be accused of vandalism. I'll give it a few days and in the absence of any detractors I will make the edit.--Ollyoxenfree (talk) 03:25, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I did it, if anybody has a problem with it, discuss it here before reverting it please.--Ollyoxenfree (talk) 02:38, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A Philosophical Contributions Section?[edit]

Given that the man is self-identified as a philosopher, it would be worthwhile to include a section specifically on what he's presumably spent most of his life actually doing. He is a moral absolutist, he wrote an article on it that might be worth mentioning, other than that he seems to mostly be a theologian. Forgive the lapse in neutrality but he doesn't have much particularly new or interesting to say on the topic. It could say something along the lines of how he attempted to approach philosophy from a Catholic basis, that he defended absolutism and in doing so was in opposition to a lot of late 20th century mainstream philosophy, and he tried to combine his apologism with philosophical rigour (I'm trying to consider how that might be worded to not sound either blatantly biased against him or to sound uncritically praiseful). This time, because I will be changing the article in a meaningful way, in a way that isn't just fixing an irrelevant addition, I'm going to wait until someone stops by this page and comments, I will be watching. --Ollyoxenfree (talk) 03:10, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The man is a full professor in a Philosophy department at a university with a two billion dollar endowment. "Self-identified" is ridiculous - he's obviously a professional philosopher. Your distaste of his worldview is of no consequence. If your bias is too much of a problem to edit the article fairly, then you should not edit it at all. --Praider83 (talk) 21:40, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have refrained for precisely that reason from doing anything other than removing the utterly pointless quotes section. I don't measure philosophers by how much money their universities have, but by their influence and their publishing record. I've examined his CV and his "featured writings" on his website, the closest he's come to a purely philosophical book is "Socratic Logic" for the (according to his CV) "do-it yourselfers" and a "Summa of the Summa" a summary of Aquinas' famous work. There are no publications listed in philosophical journals, a search of philpapers finds one article published in a philosophy journal with 2 citations total. That is not the mark of a great philosopher. As a point of comparison, my first philosophy teacher ever in university has been teaching for less time, his philpapers page includes at least 50 papers published in various philosophical journals, they all have 2 citations, sometimes much more, our endowment is approximately (converting to USD) $451 million which is much less so presumably we should have, by your standards, less qualified professors.--Ollyoxenfree (talk) 05:09, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's exactly what I'd presume, particularly in the USA. The fact that you would take into account number of articles but not the prestige and reputation of where he teaches belies your bias - again. I doubt your first professor has written 75 books, despite the articles and citations. It's perfectly reasonable - and a commonly accepted practice - to consider the endowment at universities when assessing their overall importance and capacity to attract the best faculty. Obviously, this is only one of many considerations, but it can hardly be dismissed like you try to do here. It's apparent that you don't like that he, as a philosopher, focuses on philosophy of religion, theology and Christian apologetics. Ok, we get it. Point taken. That is why I think it may be prudent to simply recuse yourself from this particular job. If you do continue, perhaps you could make the section about his many "_________ Contributions" in the more specific areas of expertise I mention above, instead of narrowly applying your personal measure of what constitutes "Philosophical Contributions" and concluding he has made none.Praider83 (talk) 16:53, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem with philosophy of religion, Plantinga, William James, Aquinas, and Kierkegaard, among others are some of the best philosophers of all time. Extending that to include quasi-religious philosophers such as Plato and Plotinus the reputation of the field only increases in esteem in my books. The problem is that what Kreeft is doing does not engage with the philosophical community, which is the mark of doing philosophy.

Alvin Plantinga by the way, one of the leading apologists and philosophers of our time, works at a college with an endowment of $123.6 million, even less than my school. He has about 200 publications, mostly with between 50-150 citations. Evidence I think of how irrelevant endowments really are. I am not acting to change the article because I realize my bias, if you have suggestions though I would be prepared to give constructive criticism of any sort of _____ Contributions section. -- Ollyoxenfree (talk) 23:13, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Is this Wikipedia, conversionopedia, or bibliopedia?[edit]

1,331 characters, on the subject's academic career. 2,166 characters regarding his religious conversion, almost all of which uses one (currently broken) source that is apparently devoted to stories of Protestant pastors and laymen discovering the Catholic Church. The other source for this section is an interview with the subject on a Roman Catholic website.

Finally we get to the author's bibliography; 2,972 characters, in what feels like a never-ending list of repetition and boredom.

There is no biography of the subject; no discussion of his life, family, interests outside of his career, controversies, humanity. The references are clearly not objective, and there is no discussion of any 'problems' encountered by the subject. This is not a Wikipedia page, it is a bookseller's 'about the author'! What, exactly, is its purpose here - and if this is the 'quality' of information that can be produced about the subject, does it merit a place in Wikipedia? Ambiguosity (talk) 08:18, 21 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Bibliography[edit]

I have commenced a tidy-up of the Bibliography section using cite templates. Capitalization and punctuation follow standard cataloguing rules in AACR2 and RDA, as much as Wikipedia templates allow it. ISBNs and other persistent identifiers, where available, are commented out, but still available for reference. This is a work in progress; feel free to continue. Sunwin1960 (talk) 07:04, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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