"The Dark Ages was the stepchild of Plato. The Great Awakening, or the Renaissance, was the rediscovery of Aristotle."
Huh? Actually I think it was the Persians, Huns, Visigoths and Vandals who brought about the Collapse of the Roman Empire and thereafter, the Dark Ages. As for the Renaissance, that came about after the fall of the Byzantium empire in the 14th century (to the muslims). Aristotle wasn't 'rediscovered' per se it was simply that the Byzantine scholars (mostly of Constantanople) who relocated to other European cities spread knowledge of the classics among W. Europeans. Aristotle (like most classical literature) had been 'in' among the Byzantiums and as the W. Europeans gained access to classical literature they 'caught on'. It was still a 'church thing' though since Rome had been separate from the E. Orthodox church for about 800 yr.s. Ergo, classical literature was 'their stuff' and not accepted by the (under-read) Church at the time. We know they Roman church had good reason to fear Plato, Aristotle in hindsight. Kinda eroded the Church's power (like in Byzantium). We're still waiting for Plato's other shoe to drop, i.e., deductive reasoning leading to multi-secularism, then moral relativism and finally, the collapse of civilization. Perhaps this is what you mean by the 'Dark ages being the stepchild of Plato?
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