Medieval Thought February Medieval Thought

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1 Medieval Thought The Rise of Scholasticism: In the thirteenth century, the rage over Aristotle, or the enthusiastic reception of his entire corpus of writings, caused a heightened concern over the realism versus nominalism problem. Aristotle held that both universals and particulars were real! As a result, Scholasticism emerged as the dominant force in the universities. Scholasticism was an intellectual movement that sought to use Aristotelian logic or inferential reasoning in order to better understand Christian truths. In the late Middle Ages it became particularly focused on reconciling or synthesizing Aristotle s corpus with Roman Catholic Teaching. Scholastics attempted to use Aristotelian inferential logic to prove Christian truths, or a least, to better understand them. It also represented an attempt to synthesize Judeo-Christian and Greek teachings (the synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens). Scholasticism was a movement to synthesize and reconcile ancient Greco- Roman idea systems, and especially Aristotle s, with the Christian understanding of God s two kingdoms or reality. 1

2 Thomas on the nature of reality: St. Thomas of Aquino ( ) attempted to synthesize Neoplatonism and Aristotelian teachings. As Ozment argues, 1 this caused many of the intellectual problems of the later Middle Ages. Epistemology--the nature of knowledge and learning: The rage over Aristotle threatened both Augustine s 2 and Neoplatonic views of epistemology. To reduce the perceived developing chasm between reason and faith as means of knowing in his time, Thomas used a simple bit of logic. There are not two kinds of knowledge, but two sources of knowledge. (1)Philosophical or Natural knowledge--here he followed Aristotle and rejected Anselm's famous ontological argument. God is not directly perceived within the human mind. But God can be perceived at work in the World. God can be seen by his work around us, in motion and in growth. He is the Prime Mover who draws the world by love according to his divine plan. 1 Rejecting Gilson s view, Ozment charges that Thomas wasn t normative and that the overturning of Thomas s teaching was not the cause of intellectual conflict: to the contrary, his synthesis itself was the cause of conflict. (Age of Reform, 20-21) 2 Augustine put a Christian stamp on it as "divine illumination," truth is in the mind of the Triune God and when one plumbs his own mind, he will find Christ there: Christ is truth and God enlightens one's mind so that he "may surely know." 2

3 This philosophical knowledge ascends from man to God. It is incomplete, however, not enough, especially for salvation. Still through reason, which is the mind exercising innate natural talents, one can learn even the so-called natural virtues: i.e. prudence, courage, and the like. (2) There is revealed knowledge which supplements the philosophical. This knowledge descends from God to man. It alone makes the world complete and whole. It brings the virtues unobtainable by natural knowledge: faith, grace, and salvation. It answers the questions about immortality and mortality which have contradictory answers when dealt with by reason. 3 Thomas justified the use of Aristotelian reasoning as the orthodox method of higher learning. It was a methodology of formal logic. Syllogisms were employed to deduce truths about individual things: e.g., Man is mortal (taken from authority, Aristotle). John is a man. Therefore, John is mortal. Major premise based on authority, minor premise, and deductive conclusion. 3 Thomas believed that perfect, beatific vision was only possible after death (hence rejecting the Platonic view). Hence, one could start 3

4 Following are two examples of a kind of syllogism used to find the truth: Omnis est creatura, Christus est homo, Ergo Christus est creatura. Every man is a creature. Christ is a man. Therefore Christ is a creature. Nulla imago est substantia, Christus imago Dei, No image is a substance. Christ is the image of God. Ergo non est substantia. Therefore He is not substance. Note that this kind of syllogism had a major premise, a minor premise and a conclusion. Students need to read S. Ozment s Age of Reform (particularly, chapter two) very carefully regarding the work and thought of William of Ockham ( ). Occam brought a dramatically different and dangerous answer to the question, how does man know. Occam's breakthrough is his insistence that individual things can be known as such, directly. A nominalist, he claimed there were no "universals" in things, only the things. Man, in turn, knows intuitively and abstractly. with sense perception to establish principles and major premises and move from there, by analogy, to all else in the cosmos, including God. 4

5 Occam's epistemology undermined the assumed "real" relationships between God, universals, and things found with Thomas. Thomas s connected sources were replaced with artificial relationships. The world became a contingent place, how it is, was not necessary. Only words and human concepts bind man to the world and represent man's understanding of it. In theology, only words and promises, or covenants bound man to God. Read Ozment and learn why this was not a viewpoint that led to security. 5

6 The University: These centers of instruction, learning and study, which first emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, were dedicated to the use of Aristotelian method. In the North, they were also dedicated to the Thomistic synthesis of Aristotelian reason with Christian beliefs. Universities had four faculties: theology, law, medicine, and arts or philosophy, the latter representing something like the faculty for general education resulting in the B.A. degree. Students then took advanced degrees in the other three faculties. University instruction comprised two forms: 1) lectura, continuous reading and exposition of a standard text. The reading of lectures, legere, derived from the practice of reading aloud a major text in a given subject field. It did not mean, however, passive assimilation of the text as the modern term reading does. The lecturer also expounded the text. Indeed, there were two kinds of lectures: a) cursorie, which comprised a brief presentation of the sense of a text, the basically literal meaning, without raising major problems of interpretation and understanding, and b) ordinarie, which comprised exploring new as well as old problems found in the interpretation or meaning of a text. 2) disputatio, public discussion of a proposed thesis with the help of formalized arguments. University disputations used the Quaestio or inquiry (question) method; arguments for and against a position or a thesis were explored. There were two forms of 6

7 disputation: a) the ordinary, in which students in a specific class exercised on a master s thesis, and b) the quodlibetal, usually held once a quarter and open to the entire university. Anyone could present a thesis at a quodlibetal disputation. We need to look further at the quaestio method. The quaestio or inquiry (arguments for and against, pro & con, a position) was surely developed first in the disputation. In the quaestiones ordinariae, or ordinary disputations, for example, the master would provide weekly theses for debate. Master and students met in two sessions to deal with the thesis or theses of the week. In the first session, the students conducted most of the debate. Some students acted as objectors (opponens or quarens) providing arguments against the thesis. Then the responders (respondens) countered the objectors arguments. The respondens was required to provide create his own thesis before actually responding to the objectors. The Master attempted to bring it all to a fruitful conclusion in the second session. The truth of the matter is that the quaestio method became the major method in lectura and in writing books too, and increasingly so as the Aristotle controversy raged. In readings, after the 1250s, masters became fond of using quaestiones in lecturing their set-texts or major textbooks. They gave detailed expositions of the text, moving section 7

8 by, section. Then they provided a series of quaestiones on the problems raised by the text. Writers called their works sentences or summae, as well as quaestiones. Sentences were statements of doctrine or explanations of teaching. A summa was a comprehensive collection of propositions or problems of dogma, that were presented in an orderly way. Quaestiones presented the opposing views of authorities that seemed to contradict one another. These three forms were really quite similar and became more so after Lombard combined them in his Sentences. Lombard set out the authorities, the Bible passages, the pro and con arguments and explanations, and he presented it all in an orderly and comprehensive manner. [John Marenbon, in Late Medieval Philosophy, p , is probably correct when he says that the quaestio method was really more an invention of the medieval scholastics than it was the child of Aristotle. The only Aristotelian book that deals with a quaestio method is the Topics and it was not very popular with the scholastics (John of Salisbury not withstanding). And then, Aristotle's quaestio method was very different. What caused the method was the problem of contradicting authorities, of course. That's why the scholastics invented it.] Some standard texts, or set-texts, that were used included the Bible and Lombard s Sentences in theology, 8

9 Justinian s Corpus Juris and Gratian s Decretum in law, and Galen s and Aristotle s works in medicine. Aristotle s many works on logic, natural science, ethics and metaphysics dominated in the arts faculty. VI. Scriptures (and all texts): Augustine taught that all of the Bible is edifying. Hence, even those parts which Christians might find contradictory or offensive must be taken into account. Most important, Hebrew Scriptures, the "Old Testament," must be understood as allegory and metaphor. Scholars followed this approach through the whole medieval period. Basically, Holy Scriptures could be treated in several ways: I. Literal--the prosaic II. Spiritual--the poetic A. Tropological (from Tropus or "way of life") moralistic, platitudes or moral lessons. B. Typological (from Typus or figures, image) 1) allegorical (extended metaphors, figures of speech, simile) 2) anagogical (mystical understanding, ultimate spiritual sense) This was all caught in John Cassian's (c ) little poem (hermeneutical rhyme): Littera gest docet, Quid creas allegoia Letter shows what God & People do allegory shows where our faith is hid 9

10 Moralis quid agas Quo tendas anagogia moral meaning gives rules of life anagogy shows where we end our strife Example: Psalm 76. "In Judah God is known, his name is great in Israel:" This refers: I. Literally to the southern and northern kings: little value II. Spiritually or poetically A. morally to the heart, mind, and soul of Christian where God is known in prayer and reflection B. Typologically 1) allegorically to church a and Jesus where God is known by revelation 2) Anagogically, directs Christian to heaven and Last judgement where God's greatness and will shall be known in full. St. Thomas favored beginning all use of Scripture with the literary meaning. He undoubtedly did so because of his emphasis on the sensory world and its importance. [After Thomas, two thinkers represented the extremes. Nicholas of Lyra ( ), Franciscan and Aristotelian defended the literal-historical sense more than any other medieval scholar. Jacques Lefevre d'etaples (ca ) took the extreme spiritual point of view. He was a neo- Platonic thinker of the neoplatonic model as well as a humanist and this led him to believe that the best interpretation was a "literal-spiritual" one.] 10