scholasticism

Dictionary: scho·las·ti·cism   (skə-lăs'tĭ-sĭz'əm)

1. often Scholasticism The dominant western Christian theological and philosophical school of the Middle Ages, based on the authority of the Latin Fathers and of Aristotle and his commentators.
2. Close adherence to the methods, traditions, and teachings of a sect or school.
3. Scholarly conservatism or pedantry.

scholasticism, the methods and doctrines of the leading academic philosophers and theologians of the late Middle Ages in Europe. The schoolmen of the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries attempted to reconcile Christian theology with the Greek philosophy of Aristotle. The leading figures of scholasticism included Peter Abelard, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, and above all Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologica (mid‐13th century) is the most ambitious of scholastic works; his followers are called Thomists. During the Renaissance, the deductive logic of scholasticism was superseded by the inductive methods of modern science, while its theological concerns were challenged by the emergence of humanism.

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Although historians sometimes refer to ‘scholastic philosophy’, scholasticism is not a philosophical school or current of thought. Rather, it describes the methods of study characteristic of the medieval universities and also, in the view of some historians, the particular accommodation between Christian doctrine and rational investigation reached by scholars there.

1. Schools, Universities, and Scholasticism

Before about 1200 there were no universities in northern Europe. In the 8th, 9th, and 10th c. the leading centres of learning were the great monasteries. But by the late 11th c. it was in some of the schools attached to cathedrals, such as those at Chartres and Laon, that the most exciting intellectual developments were taking place. At this stage it was the fame of the individual teacher (usually a canon of the cathedral) which made a particular school popular. Over the next 50 years, however, Paris became pre-eminent as a centre of learning. In addition to the cathedral school of Notre-Dame, other schools opened there, so that by 1150 a whole variety of teachers—grammarians, logicians, and theologians—were competing for pupils.

The University of Paris—the oldest and most important of the north European universities—was, in its origins, simply an association of the various masters teaching in Paris. Its earliest charter dates, conveniently, from exactly 1200. The masters formed a tightly organized guild, and the requirements for degrees (which books were to be studied and for how long) were formalized. Paris, like other medieval universities, was divided into faculties of arts and the smaller but ‘higher’ faculties of law, medicine, and theology, which students could not enter without having completed the arts course or its equivalent. Statutes also regulated many other aspects of university life, ranging from academic dress to the lavishness of graduation celebrations. But the written regulations are likely to give a misleading impression of universities as centralized institutions, offering a highly uniform education. In fact, the masters were all private, each with his own students, on whose fees he depended for his living. The various orders, especially the Franciscans and the Dominicans, had their own private houses of study within the university, catering for their own members, and from the 13th c. students increasingly resided and studied in semi-autonomous colleges, the most famous of which was the Sorbonne. Moreover, the majority of students did not complete even the whole arts course, whilst for most masters university teaching was a passing stage in their career. University statutes were, then, an attempt to impose some framework on institutions never far from chaos. Perhaps the same characteristic—an apparent rigidity of organization which disguises heterogeneous variety—is also found in the scholastic method, which dominated university studies.

2. The Scholastic Method

Each faculty in the medieval university had its own textbooks, and study was centred on them. In the arts faculties from the mid-13th c. onwards the near-complete corpus of Aristotle's works (in Latin translation) provided most of the set texts. In theology the set texts were the Bible and the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, a mid-12th-c. work which provided a convenient guide to the range of theological problems. In lectures, set texts received two different sorts of exposition. First, in an effort to explain exactly the meaning of each text, they were systematically divided and subdivided until the most basic units of argument were reached. Secondly, ‘questions’ (quaestiones) were posed about the topics raised by each portion of the text. Especially in commentaries on the Sentences, these questions—and the discussions raised in answering them—range far beyond any of the matters actually raised by Peter the Lombard and reflect rather the intellectual interests of the university theologians of the time.

In their polished, written version, scholastic quaestiones have a standard structure. A problem is put in the form of a question which can be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The writer then puts a series of arguments, from reason or authority, for the answer with which he disagrees. There follows a brief statement, usually from an authoritative author, in favour of the opposing view, with which the author in fact agrees. Then comes the ‘body’ of the quaestio—the author's own arguments for the answer he favours (which sometimes involve modifying the terms of the original question). Finally, the arguments for the opposite answer set out at the beginning are answered in turn. Very often the rejection of these arguments, a large number of which are taken from the most authoritative Christian or classical authors, takes the form, not of a refutation, but of a demonstration that, though valid, they do not pertain to the matter at issue. The neatest example of the quaestio form is provided by Thomas Aquinas's famous Summa theologiae, written in the 1260s in an attempt (unsuccessful at the time) to provide a textbook to replace the Lombard's Sentences. In the 14th c., although the basic form of the quaestio was retained, there was a tendency for the ‘body’ section to grow into an independent essay, with its own divisions and subdivisions, and for the other parts to shrink into a mere formality.

In addition to lectures on set texts, the university year also included a number of disputations (quaestiones disputatae), either on a particular topic (such as the soul, evil, or truth) or else ‘quodlibetal disputations’, where any topic could be raised by a questioner. Although in their polished, written form disputations are hard to distinguish from quaestio-commentaries on texts, the organization of these disputations was complex, and they took place in two sessions, the first of which was probably far from orderly in its presentation of arguments and counter-arguments.

The way in which argument was conducted within the framework of a quaestio was deeply influenced by the intensive study of grammar and, especially, logic in the arts course. Not only did they often spell out arguments in explicitly syllogistic form, but also scholastic thinkers were skilled in the sophisticated analysis of logical form and of the different ways in which words could refer to their objects. In addition, the Aristotelian studies of the arts course were taken for granted among the theologians, and Aristotelian terms and ideas abound in their writings. It would be wrong, however, to imagine that scholastic thinkers were straightforward Aristotelians. In the arts faculties ‘Aristotle's’ views were, indeed, very often taken as a guide; but these were Aristotle's views as seen through a tradition of ancient and Arab commentaries, especially those of Avicenna (ibn Sina, 980-1037) and Averroes (ibn Rushd, 1126-98), and coloured by the inclusion of apocryphal works such as the Liber de causis (in fact a compilation based on the work of Proclus, a Neoplatonist) within the Aristotelian canon. For the theologians, Aristotle's views were, at best, examples of what human reason unaided by revelation, could achieve; and from the late 13th c. onwards the theologians became increasingly bold in analysing the deficiencies of such a perspective, even with regard to matters apparently within its scope.

3. Scholastic Thinkers

Understood as a method, scholasticism can only be said to have been established by the mid-13th c., when the universities of Paris and Oxford adopted an Aristotelian curriculum in the arts faculty. Already in the early 12th c., however, the pupils of Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux, most notably Peter Abélard, had begun to fashion the quaestio technique and to raise some of the theological problems which would preoccupy their successors. Theologians such as William of Auvergne, in the early 13th c., used a wide range of Aristotle's works, but they did not set out their work in the distinctively scholastic form. Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274), therefore, belonged to the first generation of properly scholastic thinkers. Although greatly respected, he did not enjoy in his own or the succeeding century the pre-eminence which he has been accorded by more recent historiography. The most influential figure of the next generation was Henry of Ghent (c.1217-1293). But it was Duns Scotus (c.1265-1308), a keen though admiring critic of Henry (and, less directly, of Aquinas), whose ideas became an inevitable point of reference for all his successors. The influence of William of Occam (c.1285-1347/9), once portrayed as the destroyer of the syntheses of Aquinas and Scotus, has been exaggerated. He is best seen as one of a set of brilliant Oxford scholars—among whom were Adam Wodeham and Walter Chatton—whose ideas influenced Parisian thought in the following decades. Although the great age of scholasticism had passed by about 1350, a number of outstanding scholastic thinkers worked in the late Middle Ages, such as John Wyclif (c.1330-1384) and Peter of Ailly (1350-1420/1). All these figures were theologians. But a few thinkers made their careers in the arts faculty. They include Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia in the 1260s and 1270s, and John Buridan in the 14th c.

4. The Idea of Scholasticism

Was scholasticism merely a set of methods, or did it also involve on a more abstract level a distinctive approach to intellectual life? Historians have been quick to point to the combination of faith and reason in the works of the scholastics. Scholastic thinkers, they say, neither relied uncritically on the authority of the ancients and Church Fathers, nor did they attempt to base their views on reason alone. Their independence from authorities marks them out from their early-medieval predecessors; their reliance on revelation distinguishes them from philosophers of the early-modern period and later.

Yet it is questionable whether such a characterization amounts to more than saying that the scholastic thinkers were, indeed, thinkers, and that most of them did their most important work as theologians. No thinker relies blindly on the authority of his predecessors, and scholastic writers differed from their early-medieval predecessors not by being independent from authorities, but in the methods by which they achieved this independence. Within the arts faculties scholars were not merely encouraged, but required to discuss only what reason could construct on the basis of self-evident premisses. In the theology faculties Christian doctrine provided the basic material for study, although this did not prevent theologians from spending much of their time analysing concepts, logical connections, and language. The relationship between what could be known without Christian revelation and what could not was a matter for constant sophisticated debate, in which no single solution became the accepted one. Scholasticism is, therefore, best regarded as a set of methods and, in a transferred sense, as the name for the large and various body of surviving logical, philosophical, scientific, legal, and theological texts which exemplify them.

[John Marenbon]

Bibliography

• N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny, and J. Pinborg (eds.), The Cambridge History of Later medieval Philosophy (1982)
• A. de Libera, La Philosophie médiévale (1989)
• J. Marenbon, Later Medieval Philosophy (1150-1350): An Introduction, 2nd edn. (1992)

The philosophy taught in the church schools and theological training-grounds in the medieval period. Scholasticism was the dominant philosophical approach in Europe from perhaps the 11th until the 16th century, or the time of Abelard to that of Suárez. It combined religious doctrine, study of the Church fathers, and philosophical and logical work based particularly on Aristotle and his commentators, and to some extent on themes from Plato. Prominent scholastics included Aquinas, Buridan, Duns Scotus, and Ockham.

In the early modern period the term "Scholasticism" denoted the systematization of learning in schools and universities, mainly in philosophy and theology, occasionally extended to law and medicine. It may be characterized by its distinctive method and language and by its elaboration into competing systems of thought.

Scholastic Method

What is called "scholastic method" started with the disputations that were held in the schools of the Middle Ages. A disputation began with the posing of a question that could be answered either affirmatively or negatively. It involved two interlocutors, one on each side, and the method of arguing was basically that explained in the Topics of Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.). The topics or problems were drawn from a teaching text, usually in philosophy or theology, and expressed in Latin. The rules of reasoning were those concerned with concepts, propositions, and arguments and contained in other logical works of Aristotle. The proponent of the affirmative, called the defendant, stated his thesis in the form of a proposition, and then proceeded to develop arguments that supported his thesis. In response, the proponent of the negative, called the objector, developed counterarguments that disproved the defendant's thesis. To these counterarguments the defendant then replied by reformulating his initial arguments, introducing distinctions of meaning to meet the opponent's objections. The argument went back and forth in this form until either the objector was convinced that his difficulties had been met and he conceded the thesis, or the defendant was unsuccessful in his defense of the thesis and conceded defeat.

Scholastic method grew out of this procedure. Its basic instruments were definition, distinction, and argumentation, and its ideal goal was certain truth, although frequently it could reach only probable conclusions. By the time of the Renaissance a stylized format had been developed for meeting these objectives. First the thesis was stated, usually as a universal affirmative proposition. Then three steps were commonly envisaged, consisting of prenotes, proofs, and difficulties that might be brought against the thesis. In the prenotes the proponent provided definitions of the terms in the thesis, distinctions relating to them, and different positions being held on the thesis. Then various proofs were offered, first from authority, such as the Bible or a noted philosopher, then from reason, using varieties of argument. Finally, objections against the thesis were restated and resolved, usually on the basis of distinctions introduced earlier in the presentation.

Medieval Schools

The development of Scholasticism coincided with the founding of universities in the late twelfth century and of religious orders such as Dominicans and Franciscans in the early thirteenth century. In the universities newly translated texts of Aristotle provided the basis for a system of thought known as Aristotelianism. Additionally, religious orders had their favorite doctors, whose teachings were also systematized. Dominicansfollowed Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), whose system was called Thomism, and Franciscans followed Duns Scotus (1266?–1308) and William of Ockham (c. 1285–1347), whose systems were called Scotism and Ockhamism, respectively. A feature of medieval universities was public disputations in which doctors of these schools debated before the student body. Different though their systems were, the discourse was made possible by the participants' reliance on Aristotle's method of logic.

The language of Scholasticism was a technical Latin, with specialized vocabularies suited to particular subject matters. Geographically, Scholasticism flourished in Italy and on the Iberian Peninsula, in France, Germany, the Low Countries, and in the British Isles. The leading schools were the University of Oxford, noted for philosophy, the University of Paris, for theology, and the University of Bologna, for law and medicine.

In the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries Augustinianism, a theological form of Neoplatonism advanced by Augustine of Hippo (354–430), was influential. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Latin Averroism, a teaching of Averroës (Ibn Rushd; 1126–1198) that denied the immortality of the human soul, assumed importance, mainly at the University of Padua. Ockham's insistence that universal natures cannot be known in things, but only their names (nomina), led to his system's being known as nominalism. The opposing systems, which held that natures could be known to be real (realia), were then seen as various forms of realism. Debates between realists and nominalists were frequent in university disputations.

The Renaissance

Scholasticism reached its highest state of development during the Renaissance, roughly from about 1450 to about 1650. The first phase, to the mid-sixteenth century, was focused in Italy and Spain and is known to historians as "Second Scholasticism." The second phase saw its development by the Jesuits and its extension to the schools of northern Europe, Protestant as well as Catholic.

In the first phase Thomism, Scotism, and nominalism developed extensively. Thomism was advanced mainly by Dominicans, of whom the most significant were the Italians Tommaso de Vio Cajetan (1469–1534) and Giovanni Crisostomi Javelli (1470–c. 1538), and the Spaniards Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1486–1546) and Domingo de Soto (1495–1560). Cajetan was the most profound synthesizer of St. Thomas's theology, whereas Javelli is best known for his teaching manuals in philosophy. Vitoria and Soto worked extensively on social and political thought, arguing that natives in America had souls and therefore had the same rights as Europeans.

Scotism was largely the preserve of the Franciscans, who adopted Scotus as their order's doctor in 1539. Before that, a revival of Scotist teachings had been promoted by the French Peter Tartaretus (d. c. 1532), and the Italian Antonio Trombetta (1436–1517). Trombetta was a critic of Cajetan and is known especially for having combated Averroism at Padua.

A nominalist revival radiated out from the University of Paris to other countries, including Spain and the Low Countries. Its chief promoters were Gerard of Brussels (d. 1502) and the Scot John Major (1469–1550), both teaching at Paris, and Johannes Eck (1486–1543), whose career was mainly in Germany. Among Major's students were Pedro Ciruelo (1470–1554) and Gaspar Lax (1487–1560), the latter well known for his manuals in logic. Major's school made significant contributions to the study of motion and prepared the way for the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century.

The second phase of the Renaissance began with the founding of the Jesuit order in 1540. Jesuits blended humanism with Scholasticism and introduced methods of teaching that had profound effects throughout Europe. In general, they subscribed to Thomism but introduced variations within that system. Their most important school was the Collegio Romano, located in Rome, which was staffed initially by Iberians, notably Franciscus Toletus (1532–1596) and Gabriel Vázquez (1549–1604), who wrote influential textbooks. Their most outstanding teacher was Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), whose version of Thomism is referred to as Suarezianism.

Although Martin Luther (1483–1546) held a disputation against Scholasticism in 1517, it came to occupy a central place in Protestant universities within a hundred years. This was true whether the universities leaned to Calvinism, as in Heidelberg and Marburg, or to Lutheranism, as in Wittenberg, Altdorf, and Helmstedt. The basic approaches were those of Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), who composed textbooks on physics, psychology, and ethics at Wittenberg, and Jacob Schegk (1511–1587), who commented on Aristotle's logic and natural philosophy at Tübingen.

For metaphysics, Jesuit textbooks, particularly Suarez's, were used initially but were later replaced by Protestant manuals. Johannes Caselius (1535–1613), working at Helmstedt, wrote early texts in the Aristotelian tradition pioneered by Schegk. Works showing Suárez's influence include those of Jakob Martini (1570–1649) at Wittenberg and Christoph Scheibler (1589–1653) at Giessen, the latter called the Protestant Suárez. For systematic thought, notable works are those of Bartholomaeus Keckermann (1571–1608), who taught at Heidelberg and Gdańsk and wrote manuals for all of philosophy and science. Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638) followed Keckermann's teachings with his own Encyclopediae in 1620 and 1630. At Leiden, Franco Burgersdijk (1590–1635) wrote similar compendia for Scholastic philosophy that were widely used throughout Protestant Europe.

Later Period

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Scholasticism had run its course. The way of thought it had spawned, with its many "-isms," had become overburdened and toppled of its own weight. Disputations that had earlier held great interest had by then degenerated into making subtle distinctions and quibbling endlessly over terms. Scholastic method continued to be employed in religious houses of study and in universities, however, though in the latter it gradually gave way to new methods based on experimentation and mathematical reasoning. This transition is seen graphically in the early writings of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Galileo's Latin notebooks on logic and natural philosophy, written at Pisa between 1588 and 1592, were couched in the language of Scholastic disputations. The same can be said of Newton's Trinity notebooks, written at Cambridge in the early 1660s.

Scholasticism was transplanted to the New World by religious orders in time for the founding of institutions of higher learning in North and South America and the Philippines. Those in Mexico and the Philippines followed the teachings of Spanish Scholastics, mainly from Salamanca and Alcalá, whereas American colleges, such as Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary, reflected teachings current in Protestant universities in England, Scotland, Germany, and the Low Countries.

Bibliography

Marthaler, Berard, et al., eds. "Scholastic Philosophy," "Scholastic Terms and Axioms," and "Scholasticism." In New Catholic Encyclopedia. 2nd ed. Vol. 12, pp. 749–779. New York, 2003. Very complete treatment.

Nauert, Charles G., Jr. Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe. Cambridge, U.K., 1995.

Rummel, Erika. The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1995.

Wallace, William. "Newton's Early Writings." In Newton and the New Direction in Science: Proceedings of the Cracow Conference, 25 to 28 May 1987, edited by George V. Coyne et al., pp. 23–44. Vatican City, 1988.

——. "Scholasticism." In Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, edited by Paul F. Grendler, vol. 5, pp. 422–425. New York, 1999. See also the same author's entries on "Aristotle and Aristotelianism," vol. 1, pp. 107–113, and "Logic," vol. 3, pp. 443–446.

Wallace, William, trans. Galileo's Early Notebooks: The Physical Questions. Notre Dame, Ind., 1977.

Wallace, William A. "Aristotle in the Middle Ages." In Dictionary of the Middle Ages, edited by Joseph R. Strayer, vol. 1, pp. 456–469. New York, 1989.

—WILLIAM A. WALLACE

For other uses, see Scholastic (disambiguation).

Fourteenth century image of a school.

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Scholasticism is derived from the Latin word scholasticus (Greek: σχολαστικός)^[1], which means "that [which] belongs to the school", and was a method of learning taught by the academics (or school people) of medieval universities circa 1100–1500. Scholasticism originally started to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers with medieval Christian theology. Scholasticism is not a philosophy or theology in itself but a tool and method for learning which places emphasis on dialectical reasoning. The primary purpose of scholasticism is to find the answer to a question or to resolve a contradiction. It is most well-known for its application in medieval theology, but was eventually applied to classical philosophy and many other fields of study.

Scolasticism gets its start with late ancient figures like (early church fathers) St.Ambrose and St. Augustine who attempt to use Philosophy and Philosophical reason to help explain the doctrine and mysteries of the church. Ambrose and Augustine were among the first Church fathers to marry Christian sensabilities to Greek philosophy. The synthesis of Greek Philosophy and Christian Doctrine is the heart of scholasticism. (see also Christian Apologetics)

The main figures of scholasticism were Peter Abelard, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Bonaventure and, above all, Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologica is an ambitious synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian doctrine. Echoing the increasing influence of Aristotle above Plato in the 13th century, the deductive and a priori aspects of scholastic reasoning were to some extent displaced by the inductive reasoning of modern science.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Early scholasticism 1.2 High scholasticism 1.3 Late scholasticism 1.4 Lutheran scholasticism 1.5 Neo-scholasticism 2 Scholastic method 3 Scholastic instruction 4 See also 5 References 6 Bibliography 7 External links

History

Early scholasticism

The first significant renewal of learning in the West came with the Carolingian Renaissance of the Early Middle Ages. Charlemagne, advised by Peter of Pisa and Alcuin of York, attracted the scholars of England and Ireland, and by decree in AD 787 established schools in every abbey in his empire. These schools, from which the name scholasticism is derived, became centres of medieval learning.

The period of early scholasticism coincided with the growth of early Islamic philosophy (in the works of Alkindus, Alfarabi, Avicenna, Algazel and Averroes) and Jewish philosophy (especially in the case of Maimonides and Gersonides. From the 8th Century, the Mutazilite school of Islam, compelled to defend their principles against the more orthodox Ash'ari school, looked for support in philosophy. They were among the first to pursue a rational theology, Ilm-al-Kalam, which can be seen as a form of scholasticism. Later, the philosophical schools of Avicennism and Averroism exerted great influence on scholasticism (see Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe).

During this period, knowledge of the Greek language had vanished in the west except in Ireland, where it was widely dispersed in the monastic schools.^[2] Irish scholars had a considerable presence in the Frankish court, where they were renowned for their learning.^[3] Among them was Johannes Scotus Eriugena, one of the founders of scholasticism.^[4] Eriugena was the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period, and an outstanding philosopher in terms of originality.^[3] He had considerable familiarity with the Greek language, and translated many works into Latin, affording access to the Cappadocian Fathers and the Greek theological tradition.^[3]

The other three founders of scholasticism were the 11th century scholars Peter Abelard, Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury and Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury.^[4] Anselm is sometimes misleadingly called the "Father of scholasticism", owing to the prominence accorded to reason in his theology. Rather than establish a position by appeal to authority, he used argument to demonstrate why what he believed on authority must be so.

The period also saw the beginning of the 'discovery' of many Greek works which had been lost to the Latin West. As early as the 10th century, scholars in Spain had begun to gather translated texts, and in the latter half of that century began transmitting them to the rest of Europe.^[5] After the Reconquista of the 12th century, however, Spain opened even further for Christian scholars, who were now able to work in 'friendly' religious territory.^[6] As these Europeans encountered Islamic philosophy, they opened a wealth of Arab knowledge of mathematics and astronomy.^{[7][citation needed]}

At the same time Anselm of Laon systematised the production of the gloss on Scripture, followed by the rise to prominence of dialectic (the middle subject of the medieval trivium) in the work of Abelard, and the production by Peter Lombard of a collection of Sentences or opinions of the Church Fathers and other authorities.

High scholasticism

The 13th and early 14th centuries are generally seen as the high period of scholasticism. The early 13th century witnessed the culmination of the recovery of Greek philosophy. Schools of translation grew up in Italy and Sicily, and eventually in the rest of Europe. Scholars such as Adelard of Bath travelled to Sicily and the Arab world, translating works on astronomy and mathematics, including the first complete translation of Euclid’s Elements.^[8] Powerful Norman kings gathered men of knowledge from Italy and other areas into their courts as a sign of their prestige.^[9] William of Moerbeke's translations and editions of Greek philosophical texts in the middle half of the thirteenth century helped in forming a clearer picture of Greek philosophy, and particularly of Aristotle, than was given by the Arabic versions they had previously relied on, and which had distorted or obscured the relation between Platonic and Aristotelian systems of philosophy.^[10] His work formed the basis of the major commentaries that followed.

The universities developed in the large cities of Europe during this period, and rival clerical orders within the church began to battle for political and intellectual control over these centers of educational life. The two main orders founded in this period were the Franciscans and the Dominicans. The Franciscans were founded by Francis of Assisi in 1209. Their leader in the middle of the century was Bonaventure, a traditionalist who defended the theology of Augustine and the philosophy of Plato, incorporating only a little of Aristotle in with the more neoplatonist elements. Following Anselm, Bonaventure supposed that reason can only discover truth when philosophy is illuminated by religious faith. Other important Franciscan writers were Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol and William of Ockham.

By contrast, the Dominican order, founded by St Dominic in 1215 placed more emphasis on the use of reason and made extensive use of the new Aristotelian sources derived from the East, and Moorish Spain. The great representatives of Dominican thinking in this period were Albertus Magnus and (especially) Thomas Aquinas, whose artful synthesis of Greek rationalism and Christian doctrine eventually came to define Catholic philosophy. Aquinas placed more emphasis on reason and argumentation, and was one of the first to use the new translation of Aristotle's metaphysical and epistemological writing. This was a significant departure from the Neoplatonic and Augustinian thinking that had dominated much of early scholasticism. Aquinas showed how it was possible to incorporate much of the philosophy of Aristotle without falling into the "errors" of the Commentator Averroes.

Late scholasticism

Main article: Second scholasticism

Lutheran scholasticism

Main article: Lutheran scholasticism

Neo-scholasticism

Main article: Neo-scholasticism

Scholastic method

The scholastics would choose a book (say, the Bible) by a renowned scholar, auctor (author), as a subject for investigation. By reading it thoroughly and critically, the disciples learned to appreciate the theories of the author. Other documents related to the book would be referenced, such as Church councils, papal letters and anything else written on the subject, be it ancient or contemporary. The points of disagreement and contention between multiple sources would be written down in individual sentences or snippets of text, known as sententiae.

Once the sources and points of disagreement had been laid out through a series of dialectics, the two sides of an argument would be made whole so that they would be found to be in agreement and not contradictory. This was done in two ways.

The first was through philological analysis. Words were examined and argued to have multiple meanings. It was also considered that the auctor might have intended a certain word to mean something different. Ambiguity could be used to find common ground between two otherwise contradictory statements.

The second was through logical analysis, which relied on the rules of formal logic to show that contradictions did not exist but were subjective to the reader.

Scholastic instruction

Scholastic schools had two methods of teaching. The first was the lectio: a teacher would read a text, expounding on certain words and ideas, but no questions were permitted; it was a simple reading of a text: instructors explained, and students listened in silence.

The second was the disputatio, which goes right to the heart of scholasticism. There were two types of disputationes: the first was the "ordinary" type, whereby the question to be disputed was announced beforehand; the second was the quodlibetal, whereby the students proposed a question to the teacher without prior preparation. The teacher advanced a response, citing authoritative texts such as the Bible to prove his position. Students then rebutted the response, and the quodlibetal went back and forth. Someone took notes on what was said, allowing the teacher to summarise all arguments and present his final position the following day, riposting all rebuttals.

See also

• Actus primus
• Aristotelianism
• Medieval philosophy
• History of science in the Middle Ages
• List of scholastic philosophers
• Neo-Scholasticism
• Renaissance of the 12th century
• Scotism
• Thomism
• Nominalism

References

1. ^ The word Scholasticism is derived from the Latin word scholasticus, the Latinized form of the Greek σχολαστικός (scholastikos), an adjective derived from σχολή (scholē), "school". Online Etymology Dictionary; H.G. Liddell & R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon
2. ^ MacManus, p 215
3. ^ ^{a b c} "John Scottus Eriugena". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University. 2004-10-17. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/. Retrieved on 2008-07-21. 
4. ^ ^{a b} Toman, p 10: "Abelard himself was… together with John Scotus Erigena (9th century), and Lanfranc and Anselm of Canterbury (both 11th century), one of the founders of scholasticism."
5. ^ Lindberg (1978), p. 60–61.
6. ^ Lindberg (1978), p. 62–65; Palencia, p. 270.
7. ^ Watt
8. ^ Clagett (1982), p. 356.
9. ^ Lindberg (1978), p. 70-72.
10. ^ Fryde

Bibliography

• Clagett, Marshall (1982). "William of Moerbeke: Translator of Archimedes". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 126 (5): 356–366. doi:10.2307/986212. 
• Gallatin, Harlie Kay (2001). "Medieval Intellectual Life and Christianity". http://users.sbuniv.edu/~hgallatin/ht34632e18.html#res. 
• Gracia, J. G.; Noone, T. B. (2003). A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages. London: Blackwell. ISBN 0631216723. 
• Hyman, J.; Walsh, J. J. (1973). Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. ISBN 0915144050. 
• Kretzmann, N.; Stump, E. (2001). The Cambridge Companion to Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521650186. 
• Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert. "A Greek-English Lexicon". Perseus. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%23101956. 
• Lindberg, David C. (1978). Science in the Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226482324. 
• MacManus, Seumas (1985). Tudor Ireland: Crown, Community, and the Conflict of Cultures, 1470-1603. Great Britain: Longman. ISBN 0582493412. 
• Maurer, Armand A. (1982). Medieval Philosophy (2nd ed.). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. ISBN 0888447043. 
• McGavin, John J. (2000). Chaucer and Dissimilarity: Literary Comparisons in Chaucer and Other Late-Medieval Writing. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 0838638147. 
• Schoedinger, Andrew B. (1996). Readings in Medieval Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195092937. 
• Toman, Rolf (2007). The Art of Gothic: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting. photography by Achim Bednorz. Tandem Verlag GmbH. ISBN 978-3-8331-4676-3. 

External links

• Scholasticon by Jacob Schmutz
• Medieval Philosophy Electronic Resources
• "Scholasticism". In Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
• Etext of 1908 document about Scholasticism
• [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13548a.htm
• Yahoo! directory category: Scholasticism
• The genius of the scholastics and the orbit of Aristotle, article on the influence of scholasticism on later thought
• The Fathers, the Scholastics, and Ourselves by von Balthasar
• Medieval Philosophy, Universities and the Church by James Hannam

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