After reading selections from The Pope Emeritus's interview on Vatican II, it occurred to me that twentieth-century German theology and its antecedents in some ways seem to share the same faults as medieval German thought (with the exception of St. Albert.)  I was reminded of this text from De Wulf's Philosophy and Civilization in the Middle Ages:

"Endowmentof the personal worth of the individual with metaphysical support; devotion to clear ideas and their correct expression; moderation in doctrine and observance of a just mean between extremes;  the combination of experience and deduction,-these are the characteristics, or, if you will, the tendencies, of the scholastic philosophy as it was elaborated by Neo-Latins and Anglo-Celts.    But,  in the Neo-Platonic group of German thinkers in the thirteenth century,  all of this is replaced by very different characteristics,­ fascination for monism and pantheism; mystic communion of the soul with Deity;  craving for extreme deduction; predilection for the study of Being, and of its descending steps;  aversion to clarified intellectualism;  delight in examples and metaphors, which are misleading and equivocal; and above ail the want of balanced equilibrium, in exaggerating certain aspects and doctrines regardless of all else."

For interview selections, see http://www.onepeterfive.com/benedict-xvi-admits-qualms-of-conscience-about-vatican-ii/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Onepeterfive+%28OnePeterFive%29