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HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY |
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Medieval philosophy designates the
philosophical speculation that occurred in western Europe during the Middle
Ages; i.e., from the fall of
the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries AD to the Renaissance of the 15th
century. Philosophy of the medieval period remained in close conjunction with
Christian thought, particularly theology, and the chief philosophers of the
period were churchmen, particularly churchmen who were teachers. Philosophers
who strayed from the close relation were chided by their superiors. Greek
philosophy ceased to be creative after Plotinus in the 3rd century AD. A century
later Christian thinkers such as Ambrose, Victorinus,
and Augustine began to assimilate Neoplatonism into Christian doctrine in order
to give a rational interpretation of Christian faith. Thus, medieval philosophy
was born of the confluence of Greek (and to a lesser extent of Roman) philosophy
and Christianity. Plotinus' philosophy was
already deeply religious, having come under the influence of Middle Eastern
religion. Medieval philosophy continued to be characterized by this religious
orientation. Its methods were at first those of Plotinus and later those of
Aristotle. But it developed within faith as a
means of throwing light on the truths and mysteries of faith. Thus, religion and
philosophy fruitfully cooperated in the Middle Ages. Philosophy, as the
handmaiden of theology, made possible a rational
understanding of faith. Faith, for its part, inspired Christian thinkers to
develop new philosophical ideas, some of which became part of the philosophical
heritage of the West. (see also Roman
Catholicism) |
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Toward the end of the Middle Ages, this
beneficial interplay of faith and reason started
to break down. Philosophy began to be cultivated for its own sake, apart from,
and even in contradiction to, Christian religion. This divorce of reason from
faith, made definitive in the 17th century by Francis Bacon and René
Descartes, marked the birth of modern philosophy. |
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The early medieval period, which
extended to the 12th century, saw the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire,
the collapse of its civilization, and the gradual building of a new, Christian
culture in western Europe. Philosophy in these troubled and darkened times was
cultivated by late Roman thinkers such as Augustine (354-430) and Boethius (c.
480-c. 525), then by monks such as Anselm (1033-1109). The monasteries
became the main centres of learning and education and retained their preeminence
until the founding of the cathedral schools and universities in the 11th and
12th centuries. |
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During these centuries philosophy was
heavily influenced by Neoplatonism; Stoicism and Aristotelianism played only a
minor role. Augustine was awakened to the philosophical life by reading Cicero,
but the Neoplatonists most decisively shaped his philosophical methods and
ideas. To them he owed his conviction that beyond the world of the senses there
is a spiritual, eternal realm of truth that is
the object of the human mind and the goal of all man's striving. This truth he
identified with the God of Christianity. Man encounters this divine world of
truth and beauty not through his senses but by turning inward to his mind, and
above his mind to the intelligible light, in which he sees the truth. The
Augustinian demonstration of the existence of God coincides with the proof of
the existence of necessary, immutable Truth. Augustine considered the truths of
both mathematics and ethics to be necessary, immutable, and eternal. These
truths cannot come from the world of contingent, changing, and temporal things,
nor from the mind itself, which is also contingent, mutable, and temporal. They
are due to the illuminating presence in man's mind of eternal and immutable
Truth, or God. Any doubt that man knows the truth with certainty was dispelled
for Augustine by the certitude that even if he is deceived in many cases, man
cannot doubt that he exists and knows and loves. |
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Augustine conceived of man
as a composite of two substances, body and soul, of which the soul is by far the
superior. The body, nevertheless, is not to be excluded from human nature, and
its eventual resurrection from the dead is assured by Christian faith. The
soul's immortality is proved by its possession of eternal and unchangeable
Truth. |
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Augustine's Confessions (c. 400) and De Trinitate (400-416;
On the Trinity)
abound with penetrating psychological analyses of knowledge, perception, memory,
and love. His De civitate Dei (413-426;
The City of God)
presents the whole drama of human history as a progressive movement of humanity,
redeemed by God, to its final repose in its Creator. |
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One of the most important channels by
which Greek philosophy was transmitted to the Middle Ages was Boethius. He began
to translate into Latin all the philosophical works of the Greeks, but his
imprisonment and death by order of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, cut short
this project. He translated only the logical writings of Porphyry (a
3rd-century-AD Neoplatonist) and Aristotle. These translations and his
commentaries on them brought to the thinkers of the Middle Ages the rudiments of
Aristotelian logic. They also raised important philosophical questions, such as
the nature of universals (terms that can be
applied to more than one particular thing). Are
universals real or only mental concepts? If real, are they corporeal or
incorporeal; if incorporeal, do they exist in the sensible world or apart from
it? Medieval philosophers debated at length these and other problems relating to
universals. In his logical works Boethius presents the Aristotelian doctrine of
universals, that they are only mental abstractions. In his De
consolatione philosophiae (c. 525;
Concerning the Consolation of Philosophy),
however, he adopts the Platonic notion that they are innate ideas and their
origin is in the remembering of knowledge in a previous existence. This book was
extremely popular and influential in the Middle Ages. It contains not only a
Platonic view of knowledge and reality but also a lively treatment of
providence, divine foreknowledge, chance, fate, and human happiness. |
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Another stream from which Greek
philosophy, especially Neoplatonic thought, flowed into the Middle Ages was the
Greek Fathers of the Church, notably Origen (c.
185-c. 254), Gregory of Nyssa (c.
335-c. 394), Nemesius (c.
400), Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (c.
500), and Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-662). In the 9th century, John Scotus, called Erigena
("belonging to the people of Erin") because he was born in Ireland, a
master at the Carolingian court of Charles the Bald, translated into Latin some
of the writings of these Greek theologians, and his own major work, De
divisione naturae (862-866; On
the Division of Nature), is a vast synthesis of Christian thought organized
along Neoplatonic lines. For him, God is the primal unity, unknowable and
unnameable in himself, from which the multiplicity of creatures flows. He so far
transcends his creatures that he is most appropriately called superreal and
supergood. Creation is the process of division whereby the many derive from the
One. The One descends into the manifold of creation and reveals himself in it.
By the reverse process the multiplicity of creatures will return to their
unitary source at the end of time, when everything will be absorbed in God. (see
also patristic
literature, creation myth) |
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After the breakdown of the Carolingian
Empire in the 10th century, intellectual speculation was at a low ebb in western
Europe. In the next century some political stability was achieved by Otto I, who
reestablished the empire, and Benedictine monasteries were revitalized by
reformers such as Peter Damian. Like Tertullian,
a Christian writer of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Damian mistrusted secular
learning and philosophy as harmful to the faith. Other monks showed a keen
interest in dialectic and philosophy. Among the latter was Anselm, an Italian
who became abbot of the French monastery of Bec and later archbishop of
Canterbury. |
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Like Augustine, Anselm used both faith
and reason in his search for truth. Faith comes first, in his view, but reason
should follow, giving reasons for what men believe. Anselm's monks asked him to
write a model meditation on God in which everything would be proved by reason
and nothing on the authority of Scripture. He replied with his Monologium
(1077; "Monologue"; Eng. trans., Monologium),
the original title of which was "A Meditation on the Reasonableness of
Faith." It contains three proofs of the existence
of God, all of which are based on Neoplatonic thought. The first proof
moves from the awareness of a multiplicity of good things to the recognition
that they all share or participate more or less in one and the same Good, which
is supremely Good in itself, and this is God. The second and third proofs are
similar: beginning with their awareness of a multiplicity of beings that have
more or less of being, and more or less of perfection, men recognize that they
share in One who is supremely Being and perfect. |
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Anselm's later work, the Proslogium
(1077/78; "Allocution" or "Address"; Eng. trans., Proslogium),
also entitled "Faith Seeking Understanding," contains his most famous
proof of the existence of God. This begins with a datum of faith: men believe
God to be the being than which none greater can be thought. Some, like the fool
in the Psalms, say there is no God; but even the fool, on hearing these words,
understands them, and what he understands exists in his intellect, even though
he does not grant that such a being exists in reality. But it is greater to
exist in reality and in the understanding than to exist in the understanding
alone. Therefore it is contradictory to hold that God exists only in the
intellect, for then the being than which none greater can be thought is one than
which a greater can be thought, namely, one that exists both in reality and in
the understanding. Philosophers still debate the meaning and value of this
so-called ontological argument for God's
existence. |
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Anselm's inquiry into the existence and
nature of God, as also his discussion of truth, love, and human liberty, aimed
at fostering monastic contemplation. Other monks, such as the Cistercian Bernard
of Clairvaux (1090-1153), were suspicious of the use of secular learning and
philosophy in matters of faith. Bernard complained of the excessive indulgence
in dialectic displayed by contemporaries such as Peter
Abelard (1079-1142) and Gilbert de La Porrée. He himself developed a doctrine of
mystical love, the influence of which lasted through the centuries. The monks of
the Parisian Abbey of Saint-Victor were no less intent on fostering mystical
contemplation, but they cultivated the liberal arts and philosophy as an aid to
it. In this spirit, Hugh of Saint-Victor wrote
his Didascalicon (c.
1127; "Teaching"; Eng. trans., Didascalicon),
a monumental treatise on the theoretical and practical sciences and the trivium
(grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry,
astronomy). During the same period the School of
Chartres, attached to the famous cathedral near Paris, was the focus of
Christian Neoplatonism and humanism. |
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Urban development in the 12th century
shifted the centre of learning and education from the monasteries to the towns.
Abelard founded several urban schools near Paris and taught in them. A
passionate logician, he pioneered a method in theology that contributed to the
later Scholastic method. His Sic
et non (1115-17; Yes and No) cites the best authorities on both sides of theological
questions in order to reach their correct solution. In philosophy his main
interest was logic. On the question of universals he agreed with neither the Nominalists
nor the Realists of his day. His Nominalist teacher Roscelin
held that universals, such as "man" and "animal," are
nothing but words, or names (flatus vocis).
Abelard argued that this does not take into account the fact that names have
meaning. His Realist teacher William of Champeaux
taught that universals are realities apart from the mind. For Abelard, only
individuals are real; universals are indeed names or mental concepts, but they
have meaning because they refer to individuals. They do not signify an essence
common to individuals, as the Realists maintained (e.g., the essence "humanity" shared by all men), but
signify instead the individuals in their common condition, or status, of being
in a certain species, which results from God's creating them according to the
same divine idea. (see also realism) |
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In the 12th century a cultural
revolution took place that influenced the whole subsequent history of Western
philosophy. The old style of education, based on the liberal arts and
emphasizing grammar and the reading of the Latin classics, was replaced by new
methods stressing logic, dialectic, and all the scientific disciplines known at
the time. John of Salisbury, of the School of
Chartres, witnessed this radical change: (see also education, history of ) |
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Behold, everything was being renovated:
grammar was being made over, logic was being remodeled, rhetoric was being
despised. Discarding the rules of their predecessors, [the masters] were
teaching the quadrivium with new methods taken from the very depths of
philosophy. |
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In philosophy itself, there was a
decline in Platonism and a growing interest in Aristotelianism.
This change was occasioned by the translation into Latin of the works of
Aristotle in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Until then, only a few of
his minor logical treatises were known. Now his Topica, Analytica
priora, and Analytica
posteriora were rendered into Latin, giving the schoolmen (the
teachers of Western Christian philosophy in the 13th and 14th centuries) access
to the Aristotelian methods of disputation and science, which became their own
techniques of discussion and inquiry. Many other philosophical and scientific
works of Greek and Arabic origin were translated at this time, creating a
"knowledge explosion" in western Europe. |
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Among the translations from Arabic were
some of the writings of Avicenna (980-1037).
This Islamic philosopher had an extraordinary
impact on the medieval schoolmen. His interpretation of Aristotle's notion of
metaphysics as the science of ens qua ens ("being
as being"), his analysis of many metaphysical terms, such as
"being," "essence," "existence," and his
metaphysical proof of the existence of God were often quoted, with approval or
disapproval, in Christian circles. Also influential were his psychology, logic,
and natural philosophy. His al-Qanun fi
at-tibb (Canon
of Medicine) was an authority on the subject until modern times. The Maqasid
al-Falasifah (1094; "The Aims of the Philosophers") of the
Arabic theologian al- Ghazali, known in Latin as
Algazel (died c. 1111), an exposition
of Avicenna's philosophy written in order to criticize it, was read as a
complement of Avicenna's works. The anonymous Liber de causis ("Book of
Causes") was also translated into Latin from Arabic. This work, excerpted
from Proclus' Stiocheiosis theologike (Elements
of Theology), was often ascribed to Aristotle, and it gave a Neoplatonic
cast to his philosophy until its true origin was discovered by Thomas Aquinas. |
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The commentaries of the Arabic
philosopher Averroës were translated along
with Aristotle's works. As Aristotle was called "the Philosopher" by
the medieval philosophers, Averroës was dubbed "the Commentator."
These two taught the Scholastics philosophy as a purely rational discipline,
divorced from revealed religion. The Christian schoolmen often attacked Averroës
as the archenemy of Christianity for his rationalism and his doctrines of the
eternity of the world and the unity of the intellect for all men; i.e., the doctrine that intellect is a single, undifferentiated form
with which men become reunited at death. This was anathema to the Christian
schoolmen because it contravened the Christian doctrine of individual
immortality. |
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Of considerably less influence on the
Scholastics was medieval Jewish thought. Ibn Gabirol,
known to the Scholastics as Avicebron or Avencebrol, was thought to be an Arab
or Christian, though in fact he was a Spanish Jew. His chief philosophical work,
written in Arabic and preserved only in a Latin translation entitled Fons
vitae (c. 1050; Fountain of Life), stresses the unity and simplicity of God. All
creatures are composed of form and matter, either the gross corporeal matter of
the sensible world or the spiritual matter of angels and human souls. Some of
the schoolmen were attracted to the notion of spiritual matter and also to Ibn
Gabirol's analysis of a plurality of forms in creatures, according to which
every corporeal being receives a variety of forms by which it is given its place
in the hierarchy of being--for example, a dog has the forms of a corporeal
thing, a living thing, an animal, a dog. (see also Judaism) |
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Maimonides,
or Moses ben Maimon, was known to Christians of the Middle Ages as Rabbi Moses.
His Dalalat al-ha`irin (c.
1190; Guide of the Perplexed) helped them
to reconcile Greek philosophy with revealed religion. For Maimonides there can
be no conflict between reason and faith because both come from God; an apparent
contradiction is due to a misinterpretation of either the Bible or the
philosophers. Thus, he showed that creation is reconcilable with philosophical
principles and that the Aristotelian arguments for an eternal world are not
conclusive because they ignore the omnipotence of God, who can create a world of
either finite or infinite duration. |
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While Western scholars were assimilating
the new treasures of Greek, Islamic, and Jewish thought, universities
that became the centres of Scholasticism were being founded. Of these the most
important were Paris and Oxford (formed 1150-70 and 1168, respectively).
Scholasticism is the name given to the theological and philosophical teachings
of the schoolmen in the universities. There was no one Scholastic doctrine; each
of the Scholastics developed his own, which was often in disagreement with that
of his fellow teachers. They had in common a respect for the great writers of
old, such as the Fathers of the Church, Aristotle, Plato, Boethius, the
Pseudo-Dionysius, and Avicenna. These they called "authorities." Their
interpretation and evaluation of the authorities, however, frequently differed.
They also shared a common style and method that developed out of the teaching
practices in the universities. Teaching was done by lecture
and disputation (a formal debate). A lecture consisted of the reading of a
prescribed text followed by the teacher's commentary on it. Masters also held
disputations in which the affirmative and negative sides of a question were
thoroughly argued by students and teacher, before the latter resolved the
problem. (see also Paris I-XIII, Universities of,
Oxford, University of) |
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The newly translated Greek and Arabic
treatises had an immediate effect on the University of Oxford. Its first
chancellor, Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168-1253), commented on some of Aristotle's works and translated
the Ethica Nichomachea (Nicomachean
Ethics) from Greek to Latin. He was deeply interested in scientific method,
which he described as both inductive and deductive. By the observation of
individual events in nature, man advances to a general law, called a
"universal experimental principle," that accounts for these events. Experimentation
either verifies or falsifies a theory by testing its empirical consequences. For
Grosseteste the study of nature is impossible without mathematics. He cultivated
the science of optics (perspectiva),
which measures the behaviour of light by mathematical means. His studies of the
rainbow and comets employ both observation and mathematics. His treatise De luce (1215-20; On Light)
embodies a metaphysics of light, presenting light as the basic form of all
things and God as the primal uncreated light. |
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Grosseteste's pupil Roger Bacon (c.
1220-c. 1292) made the mathematical and experimental methods the key to
natural science. The term experimental science was popularized in the West
through his writings. For him, man acquires knowledge through reasoning and
experience, but without the latter he can have no certitude. Man gains
experience through the senses and also through an interior divine illumination
that culminates in mystical experience. Bacon was critical of the methods of
Parisian theologians such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. He strove to
create a universal wisdom embracing all the sciences and organized by theology.
He also proposed the formation of a single worldwide society, or "Christian
republic," that would unite all men under the leadership of the pope. |
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At the University of Paris, William of
Auvergne (c. 1180-1249) was one of the
first to feel the impact of the philosophies of Aristotle and Avicenna. As a
teacher, and then as bishop of Paris, he was concerned with the threat of pagan
and Islamic thought to the Christian faith. He opposed the Aristotelian
doctrine of the eternity of the world as contrary to the Christian notion of
creation. His critique of Avicenna centred around the latter's conception of God
and creation. The God of Avicenna, who creates the universe eternally and
necessarily, through the mediation of 10 Intelligences, was opposed by William
of Auvergne with the Christian notion of a God who creates the world freely and
directly. Creatures are radically contingent and dependent on God's creative
will. Unlike God, they do not exist necessarily; indeed, their existence
is distinct from their essence and accidental to
it. God has no essence distinct from his existence; he is pure existence. In
stressing the essential instability and noneternity of the world, he attributed
true existence and causality to God alone. William of Auvergne was a follower of
Augustine, but, like others at the time, he was compelled to rethink the older
Augustinian notions in terms of the newer Aristotelian and Avicennian
philosophies. |
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The Franciscan friar Bonaventure (c.
1217-74) reacted similarly to the growing popularity of Aristotle and his Arabic
commentators. He admired Aristotle as a natural scientist, but he preferred
Plato and Plotinus, and, above all, Augustine, as metaphysicians. His main
criticism of Aristotle and his followers was that they denied the existence of
divine ideas. As a result, Aristotle was ignorant of exemplarism
(that is, God's creation of the world according to ideas in his mind) and also
of divine providence and government of the world. This involved Aristotle in a
threefold blindness: he taught that the world is eternal, that all men share one
agent intellect (the active principle of understanding in man), and that there
are no rewards or punishments after death. Plato and Plotinus avoided these
mistakes, but, because they lacked Christian faith, they could not see the whole
truth. For Bonaventure, faith alone enables men to avoid error in these
important matters. |
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Bonaventure did not confuse philosophy
with theology. Philosophy is the knowledge of
the things of nature and the soul innate in man or acquired by his own efforts,
whereas theology is the knowledge of heavenly things based on faith and divine revelation.
Bonaventure, however, rejected the practical separation of philosophy from
theology. Philosophy needs the guidance of faith; far from being
self-sufficient, it is but a stage toward the higher knowledge that culminates
in the vision of God. |
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For Bonaventure, every creature to some
degree bears the mark of its Creator. The soul has been made in the very image
of God. Thus, the universe is like a book in which the triune God is revealed.
His Itinerarium mentis in Deum (1259; The
Soul's Journey into God) follows Augustine's
path to God, from the external world to the interior world of the mind, and then
above the mind from the temporal to the eternal. Throughout this journey, men
are aided by a moral and intellectual divine illumination. The mind has been
created with an innate idea of God, so that, as Anselm pointed out, man cannot
think that God does not exist. In a terse reformulation of the Anselmian
argument for God's existence, Bonaventure states that if God is God, he exists. |
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The achievement of the Dominican friar
Albertus Magnus (c. 1200-80) was of
vital importance for the development of medieval philosophy. A man of immense
erudition and intellectual curiosity, he was one of the first to recognize the
true value of the newly translated Greco-Arabic scientific and philosophical
literature. Everything he considered valuable in it, he included in his
encyclopaedic writings. He set out to teach this literature to his
contemporaries and in particular to make the philosophy of Aristotle, whom he
considered to be the greatest philosopher, understandable to them. He also
proposed to write original works in order to complete what was lacking in the
Aristotelian system. In no small measure, the triumph of Aristotelianism in the
13th century can be attributed to him. |
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Albertus' observations and discoveries
in the natural sciences advanced botany, zoology, and mineralogy. In philosophy
he was less original and creative than his famous pupil Thomas Aquinas. Albertus
produced a synthesis of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism, blending together the
philosophies of Aristotle, Avicenna, and Ibn Gabirol, and, among Christians,
Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius. |
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Albertus Magnus' Dominican confrere and
pupil Thomas Aquinas (1224/25-1274) shared his master's great esteem for the
ancient philosophers, especially Aristotle, and also for the more recent Arabic
and Jewish thinkers. He welcomed truth wherever he found it and used it for the
enrichment of Christian thought. For him reason and faith cannot contradict each
other because they come from the same divine source. In his day conservative
theologians and philosophers regarded Aristotle with suspicion and leaned toward
the more traditional Christian Neoplatonism. Thomas realized that their
suspicion was due, in part, to the fact that Aristotle's philosophy had been
distorted by his Arabic commentators; so he wrote his own commentaries on
Aristotle to show the essential soundness of his system and to convince
contemporaries of its value for Christian theology. |
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Thomas' own philosophical views are best
expressed in his theological works, especially his Summa theologiae (1265/66-1273; Eng.
trans., Summa theologiae) and Summa
contra gentiles (1258-64; Summa
Against the Gentiles). In these works he clearly distinguishes between the
domains and methods of philosophy and theology. The philosopher seeks the first
causes of things, beginning with data furnished by the senses; the subject of
the theologian's inquiry is God as revealed in sacred Scripture. In theology,
appeal to authority carries most weight; in philosophy, it carries least. |
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Thomas found Aristotelianism and, to a
lesser extent, Platonism useful instruments for Christian thought and
communication; but he transformed and deepened everything he borrowed from them.
For example, he took over Aristotle's proof of the existence of a primary unmoved
mover, but the primary mover at which Thomas arrives is very different
from that of Aristotle; it is in fact the God of Judaism and Christianity. He
also adopted Aristotle's teaching that the soul is man's form and the body is
his matter, but for Aquinas this does not entail, as it does for the
Aristotelians, the denial of the immortality of the soul or the ultimate value
of the individual. Thomas never compromised Christian doctrine by bringing it
into line with the current Aristotelianism; rather, he modified and corrected
the latter whenever it clashed with Christian belief. The harmony he established
between Aristotelianism and Christianity was not forced but achieved by a new
understanding of philosophical principles, especially the notion of being, which
he conceived as the act of existing (esse). For him, God is pure being, or the
act of existing. Creatures participate in being according to their essence; for
example, man participates in being, or the act of existing, to the extent that
his humanity, or essence, permits. The fundamental distinction between God and
creatures is that creatures have a real composition of essence and existence,
whereas God's essence is his existence. |
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A group of masters in the Faculty of
Arts at Paris welcomed Aristotle's philosophy and taught it in disregard of its
possible opposition to the Christian faith. They wanted to be philosophers, not
theologians, and to them this meant following the Aristotelian system. Because
Averroës was the recognized commentator on Aristotle, they generally
interpreted his thought in an Averroistic way. Hence, in their own day they were
known as "Averroists"; today they are often called "Latin
Averroists" because they taught in Latin. Their leader, Siger
de Brabant, taught as rationally demonstrated certain Aristotelian
doctrines that contradicted the faith, such as the eternity of the world and the
oneness of the intellect for all men. They were accused of holding a "double
truth"--of maintaining the existence of two contradictory truths:
one commanded by faith, the other taught by reason. Although Siger never
proposed as true philosophical conclusions contrary to faith, other members of
this group upheld the right and duty of the philosopher to follow human reason
to its natural conclusions, even when they contradicted the truths of faith. |
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This growing rationalism confirmed the
belief of theologians of a traditionalist cast that the pagan and Muslim
philosophies would destroy the Christian faith. They attacked these philosophies
in treatises such as Giles of Rome's Errores
philosophorum (1270; The Errors of the
Philosophers). In 1277 the Bishop of Paris condemned 219 propositions based
on the new trend toward rationalism and naturalism. These included even some of
Thomas' Aristotelian doctrines. The same year, the Archbishop of Canterbury made
a similar condemnation at Oxford. These reactions to the novel trends in
philosophy did not prevent the Averroists from treating philosophical questions
apart from religious considerations. Theologians, on their part, were
increasingly suspicious of the philosophers and less optimistic about the
ultimate reconciliation of philosophy and theology. |
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In the late Middle Ages earlier ways of
philosophizing were continued and formalized into definite schools of thought.
In the Dominican order, Thomism (theology and
philosophy of Thomas Aquinas) was made the official teaching, though the
Dominicans did not always adhere to it rigorously. Averroism, cultivated by
philosophers such as John of Jandun (died c.
1328), remained a live, though sterile, movement into the Renaissance. In
the Franciscan order, the Englishmen John Duns Scotus
and William of Ockham developed new styles of theology and philosophy that vied
with Thomism throughout the late Middle Ages. |
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John Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308) opposed the rationalists' contention that philosophy
is self-sufficient and adequate to satisfy man's desire for knowledge. In fact,
he claimed, a pure philosopher, such as Aristotle, could not truly understand
the human condition because he was ignorant of the Fall of man and his need for
grace and redemption. Unenlightened by Christian revelation, Aristotle mistook
man's present fallen state, in which all his knowledge comes through the senses,
for his natural condition, in which the object of his knowledge would be
coextensive with all being, including the being of God. The limitation of
Aristotle's philosophy is apparent to Duns Scotus in the Aristotelian proof of
the existence of God as the primary mover of the universe. More adequate than
this physical proof, he contended, is his own very intricate metaphysical
demonstration of the existence of God as the absolutely primary, unique, and
infinite being. He incorporated the Anselmian argument into this demonstration.
For Duns Scotus, the notion of infinite being, not that of primary mover or
being itself, is man's most perfect concept of God. |
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In opposition to the Greco-Arabic view
of the government of the universe from above by necessary causes, Duns Scotus
stressed the contingency of the universe and its total dependence on God's
infinite creative will. He adopted the traditional Franciscan voluntarism,
elevating the will above the intellect in man. |
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Duns Scotus' doctrine of universals
justly earned him the title "Doctor Subtilis." Universals, in his
view, exist only as abstract concepts, but they are based on common natures,
such as humanity, which exist, or can exist, in many individuals. Common natures
are real, and they have a real unity of their own distinct from the unity of the
individuals in which they exist. The individuality of each individual is due to
an added positive reality that makes the common nature to be this individual;
for example, humanity to be Socrates. Duns Scotus calls such a reality an
"individual difference," or "thisness" (haecceitas).
It is an original development of the earlier medieval realism of universals. |
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In the late 14th century, Thomism and
Scotism were called the "old way" (via antiqua) of philosophizing in contrast to the "modern
way" (via moderna) begun by such
men as William of Ockham (c. 1285-1347).
Ockham, no less than Duns Scotus, wanted to defend the Christian doctrine of the
freedom and omnipotence of God and the contingency of creatures against the
necessitarianism of Greco-Arabic philosophy. But for him the freedom of God is
incompatible with the existence of divine ideas as positive models of creation.
God does not use preconceived ideas when he creates, as Duns Scotus maintained,
but he fashions the universe as he wishes. As a result, creatures have no
natures or essences in common. There are no realities but individual things, and
these have nothing in common. They are more or less like each other, however,
and on this basis men can form universal concepts of them and talk about them in
general terms. |
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The absolute freedom of God was often
used by Ockham as a principle of philosophical and theological explanation.
Because the order of nature has been freely created by God, it could have been
different: fire, for example, could cool, as it now heats. If he wishes, he can
give us the sight, or "intuitive knowledge," of a star without the
reality of the star. The moral order could also have been different. God could
have made hating him meritorious instead of loving him. It was typical of Ockham
not to put too much trust in the power of human reason to reach the truth. For
him, philosophy must often be content with probable arguments, for example, in
establishing the existence of the Christian God. Faith alone gives certitude in
this and in other vital matters. Another principle invoked by Ockham is that a
plurality is not to be posited without necessity. This principle of the economy
of thought, later stated as beings are not to be multiplied without necessity,
is called "Ockham's razor." |
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Ockhamism was censured by a papal
commission at Avignon, Fr., in 1326, and in 1474 it was forbidden to be taught
at Paris: it spread widely in the late Middle Ages, nevertheless, and rivaled
Thomism and Scotism in popularity. Other Scholastics in the 14th century shared
Ockham's basic principles and contributed with him to skepticism and probabilism
in philosophy. John of Mirecourt (c.
1345) stressed the absolute power of God and the divine will to the point of
making him the cause of man's sin. Nicholas of
Autrecourt (c. 1347) adopted a skeptical attitude regarding such matters as
man's ability to prove the existence of God and the reality of substance and
causality. Rejecting Aristotelianism as inimical to the Christian faith, he
advocated a return to the Atomism of the ancient Greeks as a more adequate
explanation of the universe. |
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The trend away from Aristotelianism was
accentuated by the German Dominican Meister Eckehart (c. 1260-1327/28), who developed a speculative mysticism of both
Christian and Neoplatonic inspiration. Eckehart depicts the ascent of the soul
to God in Neoplatonic terms: by gradually purifying itself from the body, the
soul transcends being and knowledge until it is absorbed in the One. The soul is
then united with God at its highest point, or "citadel." God himself
transcends being and knowledge. Sometimes Eckehart describes God as the being of
all things. This language, which was also used by Erigena and other Christian
Neoplatonists, leaves him open to the charge of pantheism (the doctrine that the
being of creatures is identical with that of God); but for Eckehart there is an
infinite gulf between creatures and God. Eckehart means that creatures have no
existence of their own but are given existence by God, as the body is made to
exist and is contained by the soul. Eckehart's profound influence can be seen in
the flowering of mysticism in the German Rhineland in the late Middle Ages. |
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Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64) also
preferred the Neoplatonists to the Aristotelians. To him, the philosophy of
Aristotle is an obstacle to the mind in its ascent to God because its primary
rule is the principle of contradiction, which denies the compatibility of
contradictories. But God is the "coincidence of opposites." Because he
is infinite, he embraces all things in perfect unity; he is at once the maximum
and the minimum. Nicholas uses mathematical symbols to illustrate how, in
infinity, contradictories coincide. If a circle is enlarged, the curve of its
circumference becomes less; if a circle is infinite, its circumference is a
straight line. As for man's knowledge of the infinite God, he must be content
with conjecture or approximation to the truth. The absolute truth escapes man;
his proper attitude is "learned ignorance." |
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For Nicholas, God alone is absolutely
infinite. The universe reflects this divine perfection and is relatively
infinite. It has no circumference, for it is limited by nothing outside of
itself. Neither has it a centre; the Earth is neither at the centre of the
universe nor is it completely at rest. Place and motion are not absolute but
relative to the observer. This new, non-Aristotelian conception of the universe
anticipated some of the features of modern theories. |
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Thus, at the end of the Middle Ages,
some of the most creative minds were abandoning Aristotelianism
and turning to newer ways of thought. The philosophy of Aristotle, in its
various interpretations, continued to be taught in the universities, but it had
lost its vitality and creativity. Christian philosophers were once again finding
inspiration in Neoplatonism. The Platonism of the Renaissance was in direct
continuity with the Platonism of the Middle Ages. |
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(A.A.Ma.) |
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