Philosophy of Plan: General characteristics of Middle Ages

Philosophy of

Plan: General characteristics of Middle Ages The Basic Philosophical Ideas in the period of Patristics. Argumentation on the Universals. The Nominalists and Realists. Scholasticism in Western Europe.

The idealist orientation of most mediaeval philosophical systems was prompted by the dogmas of Christianity, of which the most important was the dogma of the personal form of the one God the Creator, which rejected out of hand the atomistic doctrines of antiquity. Then there appeared the dogma of the creation of the world by God out of nothing. The whole truth was believed to have been given in the biblical texts. The key word for that period is monotheism

The Idea of the Trinity or believing God as the Creator, Savior and Holy Spirit. God is Havens Father who created subsequently the world and man. The Idea of Free Choice between Good and Evil. The idea of after death recompense and Devine Mercy. The idea of repentance is a sort of the bridge between God and man. The idea of Apocalypses of human history, it shows the history of mankind not as a cycle, but as a line, which got its beginning and end, that in its turn is the transmission into some other being. There are 5 main Christian worldview ideas which expose the very essence of the concepts of God, man and the world in Mediaeval philosophers’ speculations:

Main peculiarities of the Mediaeval Philosophy: Creationism, meaning that God created everything out of nothing. Theocentrism, meaning that any problem in philosophy including the problem of man is solved via God. Theodicy solves the contradiction between the idea of God as Absolute Good and the existence of Evil in the world. Providentialism (from Geek “foresight”) means that everything is developing according to God’s purport and is supposed to achieve it at last. Personalism, meaning that God is the Absolute Personality and derivative from him is the personality of man, who is able to cognize God only through deep and mystic communication of personalities, by means of prayer, confession and penance. Revelationism, meaning that God is the ultimate truth, the knowledge of which is contained in the Bible, so everybody should learn this Divine knowledge.

The history of the Mediaeval philosophy can be divided into 2 periods: Patristics with Apologetics (II-VIII c.) Scholasticism (IX-XV c.) These periods are closely connected with the ways of philosophizing of religious philosophers. During all the periods it was the interpretation and commentaries of Holy Scripture.

Main problems investigated in the mediaeval period The nature of the universals. Correlation of will and consciousness. The problem of free will, the choice between good and evil. Correlation of soul and body Correlation of nature and blessings. Correlation of faith, consciousness and will.

Patristics (II-VIII c.) Patristics is a body of Christian doctrines developed before the VIII century AD. Basic problems: Monotheism, Trinity of God, God is the Absolute Personality, Creationalism, Eschatology.

Philo of Alexandria Philo of Alexandria (b.c.25BC). He anticipated some later Neo-Platonist motifs, and pioneered the allegorical method. He was thus able to show that the teachings of the Hebrew Bible were consonant with philosophy as he understood it. Faithfulness to the Law could accompany an exalted sense of the transcendent. There are quite a number of original ideas in Philo. First, he held that we can know God directly by mystical intuition as well as by reasoning from the world. But in knowing God directly we do not know his essence but only his existence. This distinction was later vital in Christian writings; he held, moreover, that God in his own nature is unnamable, ineffable and ungraspable. Second, he modified Aristotle’s cosmological argument to establish a Prime Changer or Mover, so that it started from the existence of the cosmos rather than its containing motion or change.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430), Bishop of Hippo Regius, also known as St. Augustine, was a Berber philosopher and theologian, one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity. He played a notable role in systematizing the thought of Christendom, since he wrote on psychology, the Trinity, ethics, the philosophy of history, and so on. Augustine Aurelius Augustine’s philosophy basic items: He created a synthesis between the revelatory and the philosophical ideas. He saw the human being as created out of a fusion of soul and body which is a model of the hypostatic union of Christ’s own divine and human natures. He suggested the notion of free will. He framed the concepts of original sin and just war. He was a prime pioneer of the doctrine of predestination. He developed the concept of the Church as a spiritual City of God (in a book of the same name) distinct from the material City of Man. His thought profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. Augustine's City of God was closely identified with the church, and was the community which worshipped God.

Scholasticism (ІХ -ХV c.) Scholasticism – the Mediaeval religious philosophy which generalized rationally religious worldview. Basic Problems: Correlation of knowledge and faith, philosophy and theology; The nature of general notions - “universals"; Correlation of essence and existence.

Realism Realism is the theory supported by some representatives of a scholastic philosophy that physical objects continue to exist whether they are perceived or not. It was represented by: Anselm of Canterbury, and Thomas Aquinas.

Nominalism Nominalism is the philosophical theory that the variety of objects to which a single general word applies have nothing in common but the name. It was represented by: William of Ockham, Duns Scotus and Roscelin.

John Scotus Eriugena produced a highly original synthesis between Neo-Platonist and Christian ideas. For him nature means everything - the total universe including God, and not just nature as we might conceive of it. There is a fourfold division of nature into: nature which creates and is not created (God); nature which both creates and is created; nature which does not create but is created; nature which neither creates nor is created.

Anselm of Canterbury Anselm of Canterbury lived from 1033 to 1109, and at the age of 60 became Archbishop of Canterbury. In theology he was chiefly known for his explication of the doctrine of Christ's atonement for the sin of human beings. He also developed two arguments for God's existence which have attracted a lot of attention.

Thomas Aquinas elaborates and uses his famous theory of analogy to give five proofs to the existence of God. He suggested highly original doctrine of creation out of nothing. He also gives a differing slant on the idea of God as final cause, who attracts creatures back to himself. He divided knowledge into scientific, philosophical and religious with the primacy of the latter, One of the 33 Doctors of the Church, he is considered by many Catholics to be the Church's greatest theologian and philosopher. In 1323 he was canonized as a saint and his doctrine was accepted as the official version of Catholic Church. Thomas Aquinas, (1225-1274) was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in the Dominican Order from Italy, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus and Doctor Communis. He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology, and the father of the Thomistic school of philosophy and theology. He created a new and original crossing between Christian dogma and tradition on the one hand, and Greek philosophy, chiefly Aristotelian, though not exclusively so, on the other.

Five proofs or ways to the existence of God The problem of motion and change (there must be a first unmoved mover, and “All understand this to be God”) The problem of efficient cause (a thing cannot be the cause of itself, since to be a cause it would have to exist, and so it would have to exist before it did) The idea of contingency (things can either exist or not. But we need to explain why it is that contingent beings do exist. Ultimately they must owe their being to the existence of a Necessary Being — some being which cannot be) The idea of degrees of perfection (contingent beings must derive their perfections from the supreme example of perfection) The ideological argument (there must be an intelligent being by whom all natural things are directed to an end)

John Duns Scotus Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308) was one of the most important theologians and philosophers of the High Middle Ages. He was nicknamed Doctor Subtilis for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought. Scotus has had considerable influence on Roman Catholic thought. The doctrines for which he is best known are: the primary object of the intellect is being, the most abstract concept applicable to everything that exists; the formal distinction between different aspects of the same thing; the idea of haecceity, the property supposed to be in each individual thing that makes it an individual. Scotus also developed a complex argument for the existence of God.

William of Ockham William of Ockham (also Occam, Hockham) (1288-1348) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher, from Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered — along with Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus — to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the fourteenth century. Although commonly known for Occam's razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, William of Ockham also produced significant works on logic, physics, and theology.

Conclusions: Mediaeval philosophy made a significant contribution to further development of epistemology by working out and clarifying all the logically possible versions of the relations between the rational, the empirical, and the “a priori”— the relations which later became not just the theme of scholastic arguments but the basis for natural-scientific and philosophical knowledge.

Questions for express-control 1.What is the key word for the Middle Ages philosophy? 2. What is the worldview principle according to which the world was created by God out of nothing? 3. The name of the period when the system of Christian dogmatic was created by “Fathers of Church”? 4. The type of philosophizing characterized by speculativeness and predominance of logical-gnosiological problems is called… 5.What philosopher suggested five proofs to the existence of God?