Anselm’s inquiry into the existence and nature of God, as also his discussion of truth, love, and human liberty, aimed at fostering monastic contemplation. Other monks, such as the Cistercian St. Bernard de Clairvaux (1090–1153), were suspicious of the use of secular learning and philosophy in matters of faith. Bernard complained of the excessive indulgence in dialectic displayed by contemporaries such as Peter Abelard (1079–1142). He himself developed a doctrine of mystical love, the influence of which lasted for centuries. The monks of the Parisian abbey of Saint-Victor were no less intent on fostering mystical contemplation, but they cultivated the liberal arts and philosophy as an aid to it. In this spirit, Hugh of Saint-Victor (1096–1141) wrote his Didascalicon (c. 1127; “Teaching”; Eng. trans., Didascalicon), a monumental treatise on the theoretical and practical sciences and on the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy). During the same period the School of Chartres, attached to the famous Chartres Cathedral near Paris, was the focus of Christian Neoplatonism and humanism.
Urban development in the 12th century shifted the centre of learning and education from the monasteries to the towns. Abelard founded and taught in several urban schools near Paris. A passionate logician, he pioneered a method in theology that contributed to the later Scholastic method. His Sic et non (1115–17; Yes and No) cites the best authorities on both sides of theological questions in order to reach their correct solution. In philosophy his main interest was logic. On the question of universals, he agreed with neither the nominalists nor the realists of his day (see nominalism and realism). His nominalist teacher Roscelin (c. 1050–c. 1125) held that universals, such as “man” and “animal,” are nothing but words, or names (flatus vocis). Abelard argued that this does not take into account the fact that names have meaning. His realist teacher William of Champeaux (c. 1070–1121) taught that universals are realities apart from the mind. For Abelard, only individuals are real; universals are indeed names or mental concepts, but they have meaning because they refer to individuals. They do not signify an essence common to individuals, as the realists maintained (e.g., the essence “humanity” shared by all human beings), but signify instead the individuals in their common condition, or status, of being in a certain species, which results from God having created them according to the same divine idea. The transition to Scholasticism
In the 12th century a cultural revolution took place that influenced the entire subsequent history of Western philosophy. The old style of education, based on the liberal arts and emphasizing grammar and the reading of the Latin classics, was replaced by new methods stressing logic, dialectic, and all the scientific disciplines known at the time. John of Salisbury (c. 1115–1180), of the School of Chartres, witnessed this radical change:
Behold, everything was being renovated: grammar was being made over, logic was being remodeled, rhetoric was being despised. Discarding the rules of their predecessors, [the masters] were teaching the quadrivium with new methods taken from the very depths of philosophy.
In philosophy itself, there was a decline in Platonism and a growing interest in Aristotelianism. This change was occasioned by the translation into Latin of the works of Aristotle in the late 12th and the early 13th century. Until then, only a few of his minor logical treatises were known. Now his Topica, Analytica priora, and Analytica posteriora were rendered into Latin, giving the Schoolmen access to the Aristotelian methods of disputation and science, which became their own techniques of discussion and inquiry. Many other philosophical and scientific works of Greek and Arabic origin were translated at this time, creating a “knowledge explosion” in western Europe. Arabic thought
Among the works to be translated from Arabic were some of the writings of Avicenna (980–1037). This Islamic philosopher had an extraordinary impact on the medieval Schoolmen. His interpretation of Aristotle’s notion of metaphysics as the science of ens qua ens (Latin: “being as being”), his analysis of many metaphysical terms, such as being, essence, and existence, and his metaphysical proof of the existence of God were often quoted, with approval or disapproval, in Christian circles. Also influential were his psychology, logic, and natural philosophy. His Al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb (Canon of Medicine) was authoritative on the subject until modern times. The Maqāṣid al-falāsifah (1094; “The Aims of the Philosophers”) of the Arabic theologian al-Ghazālī (1058–1111; known in Latin as Algazel), an exposition of Avicenna’s philosophy written in order to criticize it, was read as a complement to Avicenna’s works. The anonymous Liber de causis (“Book of Causes”) was also translated into Latin from Arabic. This work, excerpted from Proclus’s Stiocheiōsis theologikē (Elements of Theology), was often ascribed to Aristotle, and it gave a Neoplatonic cast to his philosophy until its true origin was discovered by St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224–1274).
Avicenna, as painted during the 16th or 17th century.Photos.com/Thinkstock
The commentaries of the Arabic philosopher Averroës (1126–98) were translated along with Aristotle’s works. As Aristotle was called “the Philosopher” by the medieval philosophers, Averroës was dubbed “the Commentator.” The Christian Schoolmen often attacked Averroës as the archenemy of Christianity for his rationalism and his doctrine of the eternity of the world and the unity of the intellect for all human beings—i.e., the doctrine that intellect is a single, undifferentiated form with which individuals become reunited at death. This was anathema to the Christian Schoolmen because it contravened the Christian doctrine of individual immortality. Jewish thought
Of considerably less influence on the Scholastics was medieval Jewish thought. Ibn Gabirol (c. 1022–c. 1058), known to the Scholastics as Avicebron or Avencebrol, was thought to be an Arab or Christian, though in fact he was a Spanish Jew. His chief philosophical work, written in Arabic and preserved in toto only in a Latin translation titled Fons vitae (c. 1050; The Fountain of Life), stresses the unity and simplicity of God. All creatures are composed of form and matter, either the gross corporeal matter of the sensible world or the spiritual matter of angels and human souls. Some of the Schoolmen were attracted to the notion of spiritual matter and also to Ibn Gabirol’s analysis of a plurality of forms in creatures, according to which every corporeal being receives a variety of forms by which it is given its place in the hierarchy of being—for example, a dog has the forms of a corporeal thing, a living thing, an animal, and a dog.
Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), or Moses ben Maimon, was known to Christians of the Middle Ages as Rabbi Moses. His Dalālat al-hāʾirīn (c. 1190; The Guide for the Perplexed) helped them to reconcile Greek philosophy with revealed religion. For Maimonides there could be no conflict between reason and faith because both come from God; an apparent contradiction is due to a misinterpretation of either the Bible or the philosophers. Thus, he showed that creation is reconcilable with philosophical principles and that the Aristotelian arguments for an eternal world are not conclusive because they ignore the omnipotence of God, who can create a world of either finite or infinite duration.