Edward Feser — “How significant is Aristotle?"

“How significant is Aristotle? Well, I wouldn't want to exaggerate, so let me put it this way: Abandoning Aristotelianism, as the founders of modern philosophy did, was the single greatest mistake ever made in the entire history of Western thought. More than any other intellectual factor – there are other, non-intellectual factors too, of course, and some are more important – this abandonment has contributed to the civilizational crisis through which the West has been living for several centuries, and which has accelerated massively in the last century or so. It is implicated in the disintegration of confidence in the rational justifiability or morality and religious belief; in the widespread assumption that a scientific picture of human nature entails that free will is an illusion; in the belief that there is a “mind-body problem” and that the only scientifically and philosophically respectable solution to it is some version of materialism; in the proliferation of varieties of relativism and irrationalism, and also of scientism and hyper-rationalism; in the modern world’s corrosive skepticism about the legitimacy of any authority, and the radical individualism and collectivism that have followed in its wake; and intellectual and practical depersonalization of man that all of this has entailed, and which in turn led to mass-murder on a scaled unparalleled in human history. Its logical implications can also be seen in today’s headlines: in the abortion industry’s slaughter of millions upon millions of unborn human beings; in the judicial murder of Terri Schiavo (as Nat Henthoff aptly labeled it) and the push for euthanasia generally; in the mostly pointless and certainly point-missing debate between Darwinians and “Intelligent Design” advocates; in the movement for “same-sex marriage” and the sexual revolution generally; and a thousand other things besides.”

~Edward Feser: The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. 51-52.

■ Amazon