What was the purpose of scholasticism?

Answer 1

It can be looked at in different ways, depending on your purpose in knowing, viewpoint and who you accept as an authority. The early philosophers and theologians saw a broader inquiry as very useful and sought to bring science and religion more in line. Aristotle and the early Greeks saw a correspondence between all the philosophies of the world as a rational inquiry so don't have the bias of assuming that all in the past were blind and ignorant of reason. Reason has been about forever. Scholasticism degenerated into scholars arguing about who was right. I guess that's easier. The idea of bringing philosophies together was a good one. We are in need of less conflict and more understanding today as well. Perhaps we can learn from errors in the past.

Philosophy is the study of all knowledge and belief. Science is not a body of knowledge, but rather based on the larger principle of inquiry, and testing of 'knowledge' that is used in every discipline. Aquinas didn't see science and religion being overly at odds. Scholasticism really involved rational inquiry into belief and wisdom of the past and present, but included intuition and revelation. Now science is saying, supporting Aristotle, that the vision logic of the whole brain is far superior to the 50 bit, 50 cycles per second of the conscious mind. We have also lost a lot of understanding that the ancients had already worked out and we are only rediscovering it now.

Knowledge and universities were attached to the church, but became separated into secular universities, whether by the printing press or the Churches inability to control the people, when they became more informed. Today, with the internet people have even more access to unbiased reporting and information. This time it is not just scholars, but anyone who is interested, every man a scholar, if they will.

Scholasticism today is about arguing out our differences also, hopefully to find some degree of synthesis. I guess the purpose was to bridge the gap between religion and the new secularism. It's an attempt to give a name to a time in history that indicates the state of knowledge at that time and that still has influence today. Maybe it's an attempt to bring order out of confusion.

Some schools of Neo-Scholasticism are emphasizes using reason on issues that were thought of as matters of faith, intuition and even esoteric thought. Is faith really meant to mean blind faith or belief to be in the irrational? I don't think so.

I hope that is of some little help. You might just type in Scholasticism in the green ask box above. There are several reprints from encyclopedias that may help.