Ø  Jim Given asks: “how to make such a concept [the notion that essences are ‘emergent like ecological niches’] fill the demands we inherit from Plato and Aristotle?”

My answer: we need to rework Plato’s Doctrine of Participation, especially, as it applies to the Transcendentals, but Aquinas has already set us on the path. His notion of Universal Good does not really mean the same thing it meant in Plato’s system. It is the good which trumps all others, but it need not be a static form. Thanks to our recursive intellect, we have what I’d call an nth-order ranking faculty that is capable of responding to an eternally unfolding revelation of higher and higher goods, and that will be our experience of Goodness, Truth and Beauty in heaven.

James Barham, Jim Given’s passion is the topic of Free Will; mine is eschatology. I believe that ontology without eschatology is a fool’s errand.