Medieval 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 ce to the Renaissance of the 15th century. Philosophy of the medieval period was closely connected to Christian thought, particularly theology, and the chief philosophers of the period were churchmen. Philosophers who strayed from this close relation were chided by their superiors. Greek philosophy ceased to be creative after Plotinus in the 3rd century ce. A century later, Christian thinkers such as St. Ambrose (339–397), St. Victorinus (died c. 304), and St. Augustine (354–430) 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’s philosophy was already deeply religious, having come under the influence of Middle Eastern religions. 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.
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 (1561–1626) in England and René Descartes (1596–1650) in France, marked the birth of modern philosophy.
The early Middle Ages
The early medieval period, which extended to the 12th century, was marked by the barbarian invasions of the Western Roman Empire, the collapse of its civilization, and the gradual building of a new, Christian culture in western Europe. Philosophy in these dark and troubled times was cultivated by late Roman thinkers such as Augustine and Boethius (c. 470–524), then by monks such as St. Anselm of Canterbury (c. 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.
Augustine
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 the Roman statesman Cicero (106–43 bce), 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 human striving. This Truth he identified with the God of Christianity. Human beings encounter this divine world not through the senses but through the mind—and, above the mind, through the intelligible light. Augustine’s demonstration of the existence of God coincides with his proof of the existence of necessary, immutable Truth. He considered the truths of both mathematics and ethics to be necessary, immutable, and eternal. These truths cannot come from the world of contingent, mutable, and temporal things, nor from the mind itself, which is also contingent, mutable, and temporal. They are due to the illuminating presence in the human mind of eternal and immutable Truth, or God. Any doubt that humans may know the Truth with certainty was dispelled for Augustine by the certitude that, even if they are deceived in many cases, they cannot doubt that they exist, know, and love.
Augustine conceived of human beings as composites 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.
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 humankind, redeemed by God, to its final repose in its Creator.
Boethius
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 finished translating only the logical writings of Porphyry 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 those concerning the nature of universals (terms that can be applied to more than one particular thing). Do universals exist independently, or are they only mental concepts? If they exist independently, 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; Consolation of Philosophy), however, he adopts the Platonic notion that they are innate ideas, and their origin is in the remembering of knowledge from 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.
The Greek Fathers of the Church and Erigena
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), St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c. 394), Nemesius of Emesa (flourished 4th century), Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (flourished c. 500), and St. Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662). In the 9th century John Scotus (810–c. 877), called Erigena (“Belonging to the People of Erin”) because he was born in Ireland, a master at the Carolingian court of Charles II the Bald (823–877), 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 Scotus, 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.
Anselm
Although the Carolingian empire collapsed in the 10th century and intellectual speculation was at a low ebb in western Europe, signs of revival appeared almost contemporaneously. Political stability was achieved by Otto I, who reestablished the empire in 963, and Benedictine monasteries were revitalized by reform movements begun at Cluny and Gorze. In the next century, reformers such as Peter Damian combined the ascetic and monastic traditions and laid the foundation for the vita apostolica. 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.
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 human beings 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 Monologion (1077; “Monologue”). 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, moving from an awareness of a multiplicity of beings that are more or less perfect to the recognition of that through which everything exists, which itself is supremely perfect.
Anselm’s later work, the Proslogion (1077/78; “Allocution” or “Address”), contains his most famous proof of the existence of God. This begins with a datum of faith: humans believe God to be the being than which none greater can be conceived. 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 conceived is one than which a greater can be conceived—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.
Bernard de Clairvaux and Abelard
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 St. Bernard de 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). He himself developed a doctrine of mystical love, the influence of which lasted for 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 (1096–1141) wrote his Didascalicon (c. 1127; “Teaching”; Eng. trans., Didascalicon), a monumental treatise on the theoretical and practical sciences and on the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy). During the same period the School of Chartres, attached to the famous Chartres Cathedral near Paris, was the focus of Christian Neoplatonism and humanism.
Urban development in the 12th century shifted the centre of learning and education from the monasteries to the towns. Abelard founded and taught in several urban schools near Paris. 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 (see nominalism and realism). His nominalist teacher Roscelin (c. 1050–c. 1125) 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 (c. 1070–1121) 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 human beings), but signify instead the individuals in their common condition, or status, of being in a certain species, which results from God having created them according to the same divine idea.
