In this introduction
“Medieval philosophy” covers roughly a thousand years, from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, and its central question was posed at the start by Tertullian: what has Athens to do with Jerusalem? — what has Greek reason to do with revealed faith? The answers range from Tertullian’s defiance through Augustine of Hippo‘s “believe so that you may understand” to Thomas Aquinas‘s grand synthesis of Aristotle and Christianity.
The ages
- Late antiquity — Augustine (354–430) fuses Platonism with Christianity; Boethius (c. 480–524), in prison awaiting execution, writes The Consolation of Philosophy, in which Lady Philosophy teaches him that true happiness cannot be taken away by Fortune’s wheel.
- The early Middle Ages — monasteries preserve texts; John Scotus Eriugena builds a Neoplatonic system.
- The eleventh and twelfth centuries — the cathedral schools; Anselm’s ontological argument; Abelard’s logic and his ethics of intention (and his tragic love for Héloïse).
- The thirteenth century — the universities of Paris and Oxford; Aristotle’s works arrive via Arabic and Greek; Aquinas, Bonaventure, Albert the Great. See Scholasticism.
- The fourteenth century — Duns Scotus’s subtlety, Ockham’s razor and nominalism, the mystics (Eckhart, Julian of Norwich: “all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”).
The questions
- Can God’s existence be proved? Anselm’s ontological argument; Aquinas’s Five Ways.
- Faith and reason — see Faith vs. Reason.
- Universals — are “humanity” and “redness” real, or only names?
- Free will, foreknowledge and evil — if God knows what I will do, am I free? Boethius’s answer: God sees all time in an eternal present, as we see a man walking without making him walk.
- The soul — is it immortal? Is the intellect one for all (Averroes) or personal (Aquinas)?
Jewish philosophy
Medieval Jewish philosophers wrote mostly in Arabic within the Islamic world: Saadia Gaon, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah Halevi (The Kuzari), and above all Maimonides (1138–1204), whose Guide for the Perplexed reconciles the Torah with Aristotle and teaches that God can be described only by negation — what God is not.
Where to begin
- Augustine’s Confessions, Books I–IX.
- Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy.
- Aquinas’s Five Ways (Summa I, q. 2).
Map of Influence
who answered whom, inside this roomThinkers & Authors
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Tertullian
Fiery early Christian writer from Carthage, father of Latin theology, remembered for setting faith against philosophy — “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”
Augustine of Hippo
North African bishop, convert, and the most influential Christian thinker of the Latin West — inventor of the autobiography of the inner self.
Thomas Aquinas
Dominican friar and the greatest of the scholastics, who wove Aristotle’s philosophy and Christian theology into a single vast system — the Summa Theologiae — with five ways to prove God.
Works
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Schools & Movements
1Coming to the Library
13 pages being writtenVoices
quotations from this traditionYou have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te
What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I know not.
Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.
Grant me chastity and continence — but not yet.
da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo