What is Medieval Philosophy like?

For many people, talking about medieval philosophy is mentioning something almost paradoxical. And the thing is that in our collective imagination the cliché is too present that in the Middle Ages “we only prayed.” But the truth is that there was a thought in the Middle Ages, which, although it changed over the centuries, had its own well-defined characteristics.

Human beings have always asked questions and sought to provide them with answers. It is unthinkable that, for practically a thousand years, men and women abstained from doing so. And, in fact, medieval philosophy was an extraordinary synthesis of reason and faith; a time in which, with the help of Scholasticism, scholars of the stature of Saint Anselm of Canterbury or Saint Thomas Aquinas tried to justify, through reason, the precepts of faith.

Not only that. Because the philosophy of the last centuries of the Middle Ages, at the hands of the recently recovered Aristotle (in part, thanks to the Arab commentators), laid the foundations of what would be the first empirical schools, which would emerge in circles such as that of the University of Oxford and which would give way, a few centuries later, to the Scientific Revolution of the Modern Age. Almost nothing.

Medieval philosophy: the thought of an entire era

Although the Middle Ages is a period that is too long to summarize (although some authors to do it), it is true that, in matters of thought, there are two elements that are crucial. On the one hand, and as it could not be otherwise, the Christian doctrine, which permeated all medieval culture and laid the foundations of Europe. On the other hand, Greco-Roman philosophy, which not only was not forgotten during the medieval centuries, but was merged with Christianity and gave rise to philosophical currents as inherent to the Middle Ages as the Neoplatonism.

From Saint Paul to Saint Augustine: the genesis of medieval philosophy

To trace the origins of medieval European thought we must delve into the first centuries of Christianity. Specifically, in the preachings of Saint Paul, the true architect of the Christian religion.

And Christianity as we know it is not born with the death of Christ. Initially, the followers of the messiah were Jews, and Gentiles, that is, non-Jews, were not admitted within the new religion. It is commonly accepted that the moment of universal and definitive opening of Christianity came with the apostle Paul, and, with him, the entry of the rest of the citizens of the Roman world into the doctrine. To facilitate the understanding of the new religion, the Pauline Christians approached classical philosophy, specifically, Platonism. Thus, God was assimilated to the idea of ​​One and the ideas of Beauty and Good. Some authors, such as Origen (184-253), tried to synthesize Plato's ideas with Christianity, although Other thinkers, such as Tertullian (160-220), refused to accept pagan philosophy within the new religion.

Be that as it may, the field was already fertilized and, in the following centuries (and, especially, after Augustine of Hippo) the Christianity would definitely be impregnated with classical philosophy, a fusion that would already be a constant during the Medieval. Precisely Saint Augustine (354-430) represented a key figure in this sense, since he laid the foundations of what would be the future medieval Scholasticism; in other words, the will to define and justify faith through reason.

In fact, many authors place the beginning of medieval philosophy with the distinguished bishop of Hippo, who developed his work between the 4th and 5th centuries, just when the foundations were shaking. of the ancient Roman Empire, and arranged its end with William of Ockham (1287-1347), the famous architect of “Ockham's razor”, the theory that definitively and abruptly separated reason from faith. In this sense, and although we already know the danger of placing temporal borders too drastically, it is fair to say that Saint Augustine, as well as that of his (almost) contemporary Boethius, are truly key figures to understand the birth and development of philosophy. medieval.

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“Understand to believe, believe to understand”

If there is a maxim that can be applied to medieval thought, it is this. For the medieval scholar, faith and reason do not disagree, but rather collaborate with each other to facilitate human beings' achievement of absolute knowledge, that Truth with capital letters that the medieval Neoplatonists assimilated with God. Specifically, the maxim describes very well Augustinian thought, whose work The City of God (of the which we will talk about later) was one of the most copied and studied books during the centuries medieval.

For the Bishop of Hippo, it is impossible to believe something that is not understood, so, before believing, it is essential to understand. This does not mean, however, that once the gift of faith has been received, the human being should stop searching; Quite the contrary, his obligation is to move forward, with the objective of understanding what he believes. Very close to Saint Augustine is Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), for whom fides quaerem intellectum (faith seeks to understand itself). Thus, similar to his predecessor, Saint Anselm assures that the believer needs to use reason to justify what he believes in.. It is evident that both Saint Augustine and Saint Anselm, as well as all the other medieval scholastics, had an unwavering faith in human reason that, even so, aroused some criticism in its time, since does reason truly have the capacity to understand God?

Medieval Scholasticism, that is, the method of philosophical learning followed in schools and universities, was based on this trust in reason. And the process of understanding clearly followed a classical process, based on dialectics. Boethius already used dialectic in his works; That is to say, he used rational discussion to access a series of judgments that were solid enough to be considered true.

All this removes the cliché that in the Middle Ages faith was blind. If something precisely characterizes this period, it is its iron will to justify the revealed truth through reasoning. This does not mean, of course, that he doubted that revelation; It started from the certainty of the word of God, and then tried to explain it through the most precious gift that divinity had given to human beings: reason. And, to achieve this, medieval scholars did not hesitate to use Greco-Roman praxis, in a never-before-seen fusion of reason and faith that is the basis of the thought of the Middle Ages.

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Medieval Platonism

It took Saint Augustine no less than fourteen years to write his greatest work, The city of God, which consists of several books in which the dichotomy between the earthly city and the celestial city is shown in detail. It is a work that ardently defends Christianity, as well as the city of God. (identified by the wise man with Jerusalem), where, unlike the temporal city, Justice and Peace. To that city, which exists in parallel with that of the earth (the one made up of men and women and identified with Babylon) can only be definitively accessed with the end of time, when the kingdom of God looms over the humanity.

The Augustinian city of God is a clear Platonic reflection. Let us observe that the philosopher opposes the ideal city (that is, the divine city) to the earthly one (the one created by men), so the Christian civitas, which is governed by and for God, is the ideal towards which the civitas of the world must tend. Obviously, this is a clear comparison between the pagan world, in which Augustine still moved, and Christianity; Only from this can the human being find true happiness.

But what interests us most for this section is to observe how present Plato's philosophy was in these first thinkers of the Middle Ages. The world is a reflection of the pure ideas from “above”, and in the heavens there exists the ideal version of what is below. Thus, during the Middle Ages there was a platonization of Christianity; on the one hand, because medieval Europe draws from the classical world and, on the other, because Plato's theories regarding an ideal world were easily assimilated to the precepts of Christianity.

If we want to go further, we can analyze the relationship between Christian Neoplatonism and The city of God Augustinian with the quarrel that peppered the entire Middle Ages: the one that was established between temporal power (identified with the emperor) and spiritual power (related to the Pope and the Church). Which of these two powers should have greater prominence on earth? If the city of God would not hover over men until the end of time, then the spiritual power had no power over the world until this end came. In other words, the Pope's attempts to interfere in earthly government were illegitimate, since he was in the wrong city. The dispute was a constant in the medieval centuries and spread the seeds of what would later become the Protestant Reformation, among other things. But this is another story.

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Ockham's Razor and the end of Scholasticism

The medieval world began to change course in the 12th century, where a great renaissance of cities, commerce and knowledge took place. It is the time of universities and urban schools, impregnated with the Christian Platonism so characteristic of the time. It is also the time of the so-called “quarrel of universals”, a discussion that dealt with the existence of universals., that is, whether the names that indicated a condition ("man", "chicken", "table") truly existed (in the manner of Platonic ideas) or if, on the other hand, only individual entities existed. Pedro Abelard (1079-1142), one of the greatest scholars of the time (along with his companion Heloise, one of the most famous figures of medieval philosophy) established a “solution” to the dichotomy through a combination of both currents.

In all centers of knowledge, Scholasticism is the absolute queen, the vehicle through which studies are developed. Let us remember that Scholasticism had begun with Saint Augustine and Saint Anselm, and that it was based on the attempt to reconcile reason and faith. We have a very clear example in the Proseligion of the latter, where Saint Anselm tries to demonstrate the existence of God through deductions. Among the ideas he exposes, we find the famous ontological argument which, later, authors such as Emmanuel Kant will discuss.

We can summarize it more or less as follows: If all humanity knows the word God and its meaning, it makes no sense for there to be those who deny the existence of him, since a perfect being (and God, by definition, is) cannot exist only in the minds of those who exist. they imagine.

Some centuries later, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) takes up the theme again in his five theses, through which he attempts to demonstrate the existence of God through causality.. In this sense, we see the influence that Aristotle exerts on the philosopher. We are now in the 13th century, and the work of the Greek has begun to penetrate Europe through Arab philosophers such as Averroes (1126-1198). This is a true revolution, since, unlike Platonism, Aristotelian philosophy emphasizes experience and observation of reality. Consequently, medieval philosophy begins to move away from reason to embrace experience as a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge. This is not a small revolution, if we look at its consequences. Because children of this new way of seeing the world (much more empirical) are the scholars of the Oxford circle, with Roger Bacon (1220-1292) and Duns Scotus (1266-1308) at the head. In Paris, seeing the “danger” it posed to Scholasticism, reading Aristotle was prohibited in 1210.

But censorship will be of no use. Around 1250, Greek theories were assimilated, and the Paris Faculty of Arts, almost entirely Aristotelian, became the Faculty of Arts. of Philosophy, laying the foundations for the emancipation of the discipline and its separation from Theology, until then the studies considered superiors. Finally, William of Ockham (1287-1347) delivers the final blow: his famous “razor” cuts the old Scholastica in two. The medieval dream of reconciling faith and reason was over; From then on, both will walk separately.