If you found yesterday's talk a little difficult, that's okay because it is difficult.

We're just not used to looking at things with the expansive view that the ancients and the medibles have.

I mean, just in terms of the four causes, you know, the ancients and medibles were much more interested in things like form and finality than we tend to be.

You know, as moderns, we've been trained to focus simply on matter and efficiency. It's just kind of

stuff and energy. You know, that's what we are convinced is real. It's measurable. It's observable.

And if we can't see it and we can't measure it and can't put it under a microscope, then we tend to doubt that these things are real. So things

like form and finality. So to begin to move, to traffic in these categories can be challenging

for us because it does stretch the mind,

at least beyond the habitual kinds of thinking that we're given to undertake as just children

of our own age. Today we're going to continue a little bit in a metaphysical mode, but it'll

be more practical and tangible, observable things that we're going to continue a little bit in a metaphysical mode, but it'll be more practical

and tangible, observable things that we'll discuss today that might make at least immediately

a little bit more sense. It occurred to me after our discussion yesterday, and I could have been

a little bit more clear regarding the readings that I put before you. First, just as kind of our background

text, that which is really guiding our discussion is Deconic's essay, the primacy of the common

good. This is a copy of the original French. That I just asked that you read in kind of one fell swoop just to have that in the background.

And then as an aide, I assigned various chapters of the dissertation that I wrote,

put that together as a kind of commentary on Deconic's commentary of Aquinas' doctrine.

Because when you read Primacy, when you read DeConic,

you see that he's got such an economy of language. There's not a wasted word. There's not a wasted

sentence. And because he's writing for an already initiated audience in a political context,

I mean, he's presuming a whole lot, too. And so, like, just what we covered

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