Pater Edmund Waldstein presents his lecture "Universal Predicates and Universal Causes" Friday, October 28, 2022,, in the Great Hall.
The Platonic dialogues describe philosophy as a search that begins with asking what something is. The question is answered by seeing that the thing belongs to a more universal kind. But that more universal kind is itself comprehended by an even more universal kind. Thus, the path of philosophy is a path that ascends towards ever greater universality. Wisdom would seem to consist in finding the most universal of all forms, which, like the sun (Republic VII), can illuminate all more particular forms. But how can this be? Is not the most universal the most abstract and vague? In order to think through this question it is helpful to distinguish (as Aristotle does) between two kinds of universal: universal predicates and universal causes.
Pater Edmund is a theologian and a lecturer in moral theology at Phil.-Theol. Hochschule Benedikt XVI as well as a guest instructor at the International Theological Institute in Austria.
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