Scholasticism

Classification

Period

c. 1100-1500 CE

Regions

Europe (origin)

Domains

Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion

Overview

Scholasticism was a tradition of teaching and inquiry carried by medieval European schools and universities. Its thinkers used textual exposition, structured disputation, logical analysis, and deduction to address questions across philosophy and theology. Thomas Aquinas built an influential synthesis in which natural reason and divine revelation were complementary paths to truth.

Key figures

Thomas Aquinas · Anselm of Canterbury · Peter Abelard · Duns Scotus · William of Ockham

Methods used

• Deductive Reasoning · Open in Methods
• Scholastic Disputation · Open in Methods
• Syllogistic Analysis · Open in Methods
• Textual Exegesis · Open in Methods

Positions held

• Moderate Realism

  Question scope: The Problem of Universals

• Theism

  Question scope: The Existence of God

Influenced by

• Peripatetic School

  The twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin recovery of Aristotle's works gave the schools the framework they worked in — hylomorphism, the four causes, and demonstration from prior premises — and theological questions were then posed in those terms.

• Medieval Islamic Philosophy

  From about 1230 Latin masters read Aristotle through Averroes's commentaries, which became the principal secondary literature of the universities once the Paris arts faculty made all of Aristotle's known works required reading in 1255.

• Medieval Jewish Philosophy

  Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed shaped Aquinas's handling of faith and reason and of proofs for God's existence.

• Patristics

Reacts to

• Averroism

  The engagement is that of thirteenth-century theologians with the Paris arts masters: Aquinas's De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas (1270) rebutted Siger of Brabant's thesis of one intellect shared by all humans, and Bishop Étienne Tempier's condemnations of 1270 and 1277 censured it along with the eternity of the world.

Later connections

• Continental Rationalism Influenced by this tradition
• Renaissance Humanism Reacted to this tradition

  The humanists defined their programme of eloquence and classical learning against scholastic dialectic and its Latin, from Petrarch's attack on the schoolmen to Valla's assault on scholastic logic, though, as Kristeller showed, the two remained parallel strains with different subjects.

References

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy, §§2.2,2.5 — Formation: the monastic and cathedral schools of Latin Europe, with the competing Paris schools central in the twelfth century.
• Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, ch. 3
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part I, Question 2, Article 3 (the Five Ways)
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Influence of Arabic and Islamic Philosophy on the Latin West, §1 'Transmission' (Latin translations of Averroes available about thirty years after his death; the 1255 Paris statutes and the rise of his commentaries as the principal secondary literature of Latin university culture)
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Maimonides
• Thomas Aquinas, De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas (1270)
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Influence of Arabic and Islamic Philosophy on the Latin West, §4.1 'Eternity of the World' (the eternity of the world condemned in 1270 and 1277 by the Parisian bishop Étienne Tempier) and §5.4 'Averroes' Unicity Thesis' (Siger of Brabant's adoption of the thesis, the first appearance of the term averroista in Aquinas's De unitate intellectus, and the thesis's condemnation in 1270 and 1277)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.2, a.3
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Literary Forms of Medieval Philosophy, §2.6 'Disputation, Quaestio, Quodlibetal Question'
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Medieval Theories of the Syllogism
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy, §1.1 'Text and Commentary Traditions' (the lectio on authoritative texts)
• Summa Theologiae — Thomas Aquinas
• Proslogion — Anselm of Canterbury