A Brief History of Medieval Philosophy

    It is generally agreed that European philosophy began in the Greek world with Thales in the 6^th century b.c.e. "Ancient Philosophy," as this period is called, is usually divided up into three periods: the Pre-Socratic period, from Thales to Socrates, the Classical Period, from Socrates to Plato and Aristotle, and then Hellenistic Philosophy, which lasts until Medieval Philosophy begins. These are all very rough, simplistic chunks, but they do help you to remember the history of philosophy a little more easily.

    To make a very complex story very short, Hellenistic Philosophy can be thought of as a time of intellectual diversity and cosmopolitanism. In the 5^th and 4^th centuries, there was really one place to be if you wanted to do philosophy: Athens. After Aristotle, Athens remained an extremely important center for intellectual activity, but there were others that were just as important, and at times, even more important. Most notably there was Rome in Italy, and Alexandria in Egypt.

    Intellectually, the philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle set the basic outline of the issues debated. Plato’s school, the Academy, pursued the study of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics, trying to adhere more or less to Plato’s own views. Aristotle’s school, the Lyceum pursued mostly empirical research. There were two other main schools: the Epicureans, followers of Epicurus; and Stoicism, the followers of Zeno of Citium. The history of the disputes between these schools is very complex, but roughly, the Epicureans argued that the best life was the life devoted to pleasure, while the Stoics argued that the best life was the life devoted to wisdom and virtue.

I’ll mention one final complication. With the increased cosmopolitanism of the Hellenistic age, Greek intellectuals not only we able to influence Mediterranean culture generally, Greek intellectuals were exposed to Egyptian thought, and thought from further east.

    Stoicism gained prominence in the first century b.c.e. and the first century c.e. Roman conservatives liked the emphasis stoics placed on virtue, and they seemed much more serious than the Epicureans. The military, and hence political and cultural dominance of Rome had another, quite unexpected result. Most philosophical work was done in the Greek language. If you wanted to do any serious philosophy, you had to learn Greek. This became increasingly difficult, especially as the Roman empire began to crumble.

    The other influence that led to the gradual loss of Greek philosophy was the increasing influence of Christianity. As the Christian hierarchy, and Christian theology gained dominance, the importance of Greek philosophy was called into question. The Greek philosophers were called "pagans," and their wisdom was called "worldly wisdom." In fact, the bible mentions an incident where St. Paul gave a sermon in Athens (Acts 17).

¹⁶Now while Paul waited for Silas and Timothy at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. ¹⁷Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the agora, daily with them that met with him. ¹⁸Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him. And some said, "What will this babbler say?" Others, "He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods;" because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection. ¹⁹And they took him, and brought him unto the Areopagus saying, "May we know what this new doctrine, of which thou speakest is?" ²¹For all the Athenians and strangers who were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing. [Paul’s sermon is recorded in verses 22-31. After his sermon, they Athenians responded as follows.] ³²And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; and others said, "We will hear thee again of this matter." ³³So Paul departed from among them. ³⁴Nevertheless, certain men joined him, and believed among whom were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

The idea seems to be that in the eyes of Christians, the Greek philosophers we so absorbed in their endless philosophical wrangling, that very few of them would recognize God’s truth. After all, if you believe that the bible is God’s Word, and that it contains all that humans need to know, then the study of Greek philosophy is at best a waste of time. At worst, it is a snare that will cause you to lose your immortal soul. So Christianity and Greek philosophy didn’t mix, at least not right away.

    This separation of philosophy and theology didn’t last long. Sometime in the 2^nd century c.e. there was a charismatic teacher in Alexandria named Ammonius Saccus. We have no first hand knowledge of what he taught; he was a somewhat mysterious figure, almost a cult-leader, with what seems to have been a mystical syncretism of Plato with Indian and Egyptian philosophy and theology. What we do know is that two of his pupils were extremely important and brilliant philosophers: Origen and Plotinus. Origen was a Christian and Plotinus was not. From the fact that the philosophies of both Origen and Plotinus were steeped in Platonic texts and views, we know that Ammonius Saccus must have been some kind of Platonist. But this new strain of Platonism was so distinctive that it has come to be called Neoplatonism.

    For a very brief introduction to Neoplatonism, begin by thinking about Plato’s famous three analogies (in the middle books of the Republic) of the Sun, the Line and the Cave. There are four stages: (1) Eikasia (imagination), in which you naively accept appearances; (2) Pistis (belief), in which you distinguish appearance from reality, but have no solid basis for determining what is real and what is not; (3) Dianoia (thought), in which you have a defensible scientific theory to determine what is real and what is not; and (4) Nous (intelligence) in which your scientific theory is made knowledge. According to the Cave analogy, these four stages describe the journey of a person out of the cave and into the sunlight where he finally sees the ultimate cause and source of everything: the Sun, which metaphorically stands for the form of The Good.

    Plotinus takes this together with Plato’s theory of the Ascent of Eros in the Symposium, and argues for a kind of immaterial monism: really there is only one object in the universe: The Good. All other alleged beings are mere appearances or "emanations" from The Good. Probably as an inheritance from the obscure Ammonius Saccus, Neoplatonists tended towards mysticism. Our innate desire to love and know Beauty, Goodness and Truth, and be aided by reason and argument, but not satisfied. Eventually we must be united with The Good, the distinction between subject and object must be obliterated, or, more precisely, seen to be an illusion. Our discursive, inferential rationality must give way to a non-temporal kind of intellectual grasp of things. Plotinus, and other Neoplatonists, like to use images of light and vision here. Instead of plodding through things scientifically, true knowledge and love come in a non-temporal flash of intuitive insight.

    Origen takes this theory and tries to harmonize it with Christianity. He interprets The Good as being God. God created us in His image in the sense that we are all "emanations" from God. The story of salvation through Jesus Christ is a metaphor for our eventual return to God. One verse that could easily be interpreted in favor of Origen is 2 Corinthians 5:19, "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." According to Origen, in the fullness of time, absolutely everyone is "saved." For this, Origen’s views were explicitly condemned in 400, and again in 553 just for good measure.

    St. Augustine (354-430), who became the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hippo (in North Africa), was, prior to his conversion to Christianity, a Neoplatonist. In a way he was the first truly Christian philosophy, using philosophy first as a weapon against philosophers, but also in the service of theology, to help clarify important church doctrines.

    This duality of Christian Neoplatonism vs. Pagan Neoplatonism soon ended. Proclus (410?-455?) was one of the last of the Classical Greek philosophers. He was the head of Plato’s Academy, and his writings were extremely influential. However, his was perhaps the last of the pagan Neoplatonists, because in 529, the Christian Roman Emperor Justinian ordered all of the pagan schools closed. After eight centuries of research, Plato’s Academy was closed because it wasn’t Christian.

    But the influence and popularity of Neoplatonism continued unabated. Somewhere around the beginning of the 6^th century, several Christian Neoplatonist texts showed up claiming to have been written by Dionysius the Areopagite, the one mentioned in the bible as having been converted by St. Paul when he preached in Athens. We still don’t know who wrote these texts, but we know for sure they weren’t written by Dionysius the Areopagite. So we call the author Pseudo-Dionysius. The philosophy seems to have been influenced by Proclus’ version of Neoplatonism. It carries on the basic program of identifying the Platonic Good with God, and defending an immaterial monism, all apparently separate entities being manifestations of, or emanations from, God. The Irish theologian John Scotus Eriugena (810?-877?) followed along the same lines. There is a lot of metaphorical and mystical language in Neoplatonist texts, which doesn’t make them very "reader friendly" and doesn’t invite rational scrutiny or debate.

    Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the religion of Islam had been created by the prophet Mohammed (570-632). Muslim intellectuals produced two of the most brilliant and influential philosophers of the Medieval period: Al-Farabi and Avicenna. They were crucial in the intellectual development of Islamic theology, but they were also crucial in transmitting texts of Aristotle to the Arabian world, and ultimately, back into the Western world. As if this weren’t enough, they were also Neoplatonists, and their thought had a huge impact on the development of Scholastic philosophy.

    This mention of Aristotle should make you notice that so far, of two most important authors of the Classical period (i.e. Plato and Aristotle), I’ve focused on Plato. The reason is that the study of the Greek language had died out, and European intellectuals didn’t have any Latin translations of Aristotle except for what had been translated for them by Porphyry (232?-305?, a pupil of Plotinus’) and Boethius (475?-524?). Both of these philosophers were Neoplatonists (but Boethius was an important Roman politician who served as consul). However, they are responsible for what little knowledge the early Medievals had of Aristotle. For some unknown reason, the early Medievals had only Porphyry’s Isagoge (introduction to Aristotle’s Categories), and Boethius’ translations of the Categories and De Interpretatione. Boethius had translated much more of Aristotle, but the rest of his translations were not recovered until the 12^th century. These two works were called the Logica Vetus (Old Logic).

    Although this is very little Aristotle, it is extremely important Aristotle. It’s purpose is to provide a complete ontological inventory of the cosmos. For non-christians like Porphyry and Boethius, who were very influenced by Neoplatonism, the main issue was to understand to what extent Aristotle agreed or disagreed with Plato on the metaphysical status of forms or universals. For Christians, like Origen, Pseudy-Dionysius and Eriugena, as well as for Muslims like Al-Farabi and Avicenna, this was a problem, but more pressing was the problem of reconciling what reason said about the nature of the cosmos, with what scripture and theology said about the nature of the cosmos.

    With St. Anselm, something very new explodes onto the scene. For the first thousand years or so of Christianity, rational philosophy was either shunned as a stumbling block to religious faith, or it was used in very moderate amounts with almost the sole purpose of responding to attacks made on the faith from unbelievers. Any Christian who used philosophy too much could be in danger of saying something heretical, and dire consequences could follow. St. Anselm dared to bring reason forward to make it virtually a full partner with faith. His slogan for the point of doing philosophy was: Faith Seeking Understanding. Instead of using philosophy simply to point out errors in the arguments of unbelievers, St. Anselm used philosophy to plumb the depths of theology. He deeply and sincerely believed in the incarnation, but he wanted also to understand the incarnation. So he wrote Cur Deus Homo, Why God Became Man. He even went so far as to write two philosophically systematic accounts of the essence of Christian philosophy, proving not only the existence of God, but also deriving a great many of His characteristics. St. Anselm, virtually single-handedly, invented "Scholasticism."

    With Anselm, Christian philosophy was not limited to the mysticism of Neoplatonism or to poking holes in the arguments of pagans, Christian philosophy could pick up were Classical philosophy left off, and simply supply the missing elements which God had so graciously given by giving us the Bible. Very quickly, theologians and philosophers began a grand project to complete philosophy. It was a very exciting time, for they thought that humanity was finally on the verge of having a completely spelled out, rational account of the entire cosmos, including epistemology and ethics. The philosophy just gets better and better in this period, and culminates in the three giants of philosophical theology: Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham.

    With this renewed interest in philosophical argument came a renewed interest in the logical works of Aristotle. Soon there were Latin translations of the rest of Aristotle’s logical treatises, often referred to using the Greek word "Organon," which means "tool" or "instrument." It was thought of as a tool or instrument to rational thought. As a complement to the "Logica Vetus" it was also referred to as the "Logica Nova." These had a significant impact not only on the content of Scholastic philosophy (they spent a tremendous amount of time studying logic), but also on the manner in which Scholastic philosophy was done. In particular, Aristotle’s logic was the basis for the practice of "Disputation."

    Although Anselm can be credited with being the first Scholastic philosopher, the character of scholasticism was really developed by his younger contemporary Peter Abelard, and also by Peter Lombard. Instead of writing in mystical metaphors, or doing a scriptural exegesis, Abelard collected important quotations from scripture, early Church Fathers and other important authorities, and put them together with summaries of arguments that could be made for or against various philosophical or theological claims. Peter Lombard was very influenced by Abelard’s style, and he patterned his most famous work, the "Book of Sentences" after it. Lombard’s work was an instant classic and very soon it became a requirement for all doctoral candidates in theology to write a commentary on it. Studying the Sentences of Peter Lombard became so important and central to Scholastic activity that Roger Bacon objected in 1267 that the Sentences was replacing the Bible as the primary text for the theology faculty. The practice of commenting on Lombard’s Sentences continued for three to four hundred years. You will get a taste not only of the style of Scholastic argumentation, but also of the organization of topics of Lombard’s Sentences, by looking through Aquinas’ Summa Theologica.

    But this style of pitting arguments for and against was deeply ingrained in university students in another extremely important way. Periodically throughout the school year a "Disputation" would be held. There are still a number of unanswered questions we have about how Disputations were conducted, but roughly, many of them would go like this. A Master would schedule a Disputation to occur on two separate days, and publish the dates and topics. Disputations were open to the public, but faculty were required to attend (well, all the Bachelors; many Masters also attended, bringing some of their students). On the first day, he would give a brief introduction to the topics to be discussed, perhaps suggest the order in which they should be discussed, and then one of his students would entertain arguments from the audience and would have to reply to them as best he could. On occasion the Master might help him out. This could last for up to three hours. A secretary would record the arguments and replies. On the next day of the Disputation, the Master would then summarize the arguments that had been advanced, and give his solution to the problem together with his replies to the arguments opposed to his view. Again, by reading Aquinas’ Summa Theologica you will have some sense of how this went.

    One final note before I move on to philosophy after this Scholastic period. Because Scholastic philosophy is so indebted to Aristotle, I should help you with a bit of terminology. What we today simply call arguments, were called by the Scholastics "syllogisms." Syllogistic logic is different from modern logic in many ways. You don’t need to worry about it for this course, but there is some terminology that is used often in the works we will read, and so it will help you if you know how to understand it. Consider, for example, the following argument.

Following Aristotle, the Scholastics identified three "terms" in this argument: a "major term" a "minor term" and a "middle term."

In addition, they would refer to a "major premise" and a "minor premise." The major premise is the premise in which the major term occurs. In the argument above, premise 2 is the major premise. The minor premise is the premise in which the minor term occurs. In the argument above, premise 1 is the minor premise.

    But the old worry about philosophy didn’t go away. In 1277, the Bishop of Paris (Stephen Tempier) issued a Condemnation of various opinions. The Condemnation was written in 219 articles, and it declared that this or that view was unacceptable to orthodox doctrine. For example, Article 147 condemned the opinion that God could not violate the laws of nature. The impact of the Condemnation was most pronounced in metaphysics, especially cosmology. Theologians had to be careful that their published views tow the line.

    I interpret the Condemnation of 1277 as being a sign both of the strength and the weakness of the Roman Catholic church. First, it is clearly a sign of strength and influence because the threat of being labeled a heretic was still significant, and the Condemnation caused many philosophers to re-think their positions, and in many cases, change them.

    But it is also a sign of the weakness of the Roman Catholic church because the church saw it necessary to issue a Condemnation. That show that people were beginning to take philosophy and rational inquiry so seriously that they would hold positions because they were rationally compelling, independently of what the Bible or the Church had to say about it. John Wyclif of England is an omen of things to come. His published views were the targets of numerous condemnations because he increasingly questioned the philosophical basis for the legitimacy of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. In fact, later in life he actually came to the conclusion that the pope was unnecessary, and that the King of England was sufficient to head the Church in England. The history of philosophy after Wyclif is the history of philosophers being increasingly willing to pursue philosophy independently of, and even contrary to, the teachings of the Church. This is, of course, most dramatic in the case of Martin Luther, who broke away from the Church altogether.

    Perhaps the last gasp of the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church was the Condemnation in 1633 of Galileo. This is a suitable place to call an end to the Renaissance and the beginning of the Modern era. Condemning Galileo’s defense of a cosmology that was directly in conflict with the teachings of the church, and what the church saw as biblical authority, was the last time the Church was able to assert the kind of power it wielded over the freedom of thought.

    By most accounts, Francisco Suarez was the last of the Scholastic philosophers. The Disputational method had been given up, and the era of the individual treatise began. Instead of dealing systematically with a set of philosophical problems that had been handed down from generation to generation, philosophers were to philosophy what the religious reformers were to the Roman Catholic Church. Just as every reformer felt he had the right to come up with his own novel interpretation of the Bible, and even to establish his own church, so also each philosopher felt he had the right to come up with his own philosophy, starting at whatever starting point he felt appropriate, and dealing with whatever issues he thought were important, in whatever way he thought best. These philosophers almost unanimously rejected Scholastic philosophy, and very often criticized it as being absolutely, and literally worthless, empty. They treated it as if for over a thousand years, no philosophy had ever been done. This was clearly an extreme reaction, and we have since learned that in fact the Medieval and Renaissance periods produced some of the best, most original, and most important philosophy Europeans have ever produced.