Posted on 09/25/2006 4:42:01 PM PDT by baseball_fan
Modern reason is materialist. It throws up its hands in the face of the metaphysical or spiritual. I wasn't knocking the importance of Socrates, whom the Pope did indeed emphasize in his talk. But one of the keys is Aristotle's concept of universals.
It's impossible to think except in universals, but modern materialists tend to think in terms of individual objects. Yes, science still speaks of species and genuses, but even there finds some difficulties in defining these terms. Whether two animals can have viable progeny tends to be the definition of species. Aristotle, on the other hand, was extending the concept of the Platonic Idea or Ideal in a new direction.
Benedict didn't really need to talk much about Aristotle, because he is already worked into the Scholastic tradition.
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