Idealsm vs. empiricism …

… Everything That Rises - History With a Moral. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… there is plenty to learn along the way. Take the chapter on Aristotle’s greatest exponent. He was a nobleman, the son of a count. He was of German, not Italian, origin. He was a Benedictine before he was a Dominican. He was offered the abbacy of Monte Cassino outside Rome, but turned it down. He was named by the pope to head up a council exploring Catholic-Orthodox reunion. He was the author of “a seminal treatise on the nature of evil and another on building aqueducts and military siege operations.” He was Tommaso d’Aquino, a k a St. Thomas Aquinas – a philosopher I thought I knew something about, but who appears as new in Herman’s vivid, incisive portrait.