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Scholasticism
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One of the principal methods of Scholasticism was the use of the logic and philosophic vocabulary of Aristotle in teaching, demonstration, and discussion. Another important method was the practice of teaching a text by means of a commentary by some accepted authority. In philosophy, this authority was usually Aristotle. In theology, the principal texts were the Bible and the Sententiarum Libri Quatuor (Four Books of Sentences) by the 12th-century Italian theologian and prelate Peter Lombard, a collection of the opinions of the early Fathers of the Church on problems of theology. The early Scholastics began by adhering closely to the text on which they were commenting. Gradually, as the practice of critical reading developed their own powers of thinking, they began to introduce many supplementary commentaries on points, known as disputed questions, which either were not covered or were not adequately solved by the text itself.
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The answer that Scholasticism was "school" philosophy and, in fact, "Christian" school philosophy can be understood only by examining the historical exigencies that created the need for schools. The search ... leads the inquirer back to the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages--a point which, according to Hegel, was marked by the symbolic date AD 529, when a decree of the Christian emperor Justinian closed the Platonic Academy in Athens and sealed "the downfall of the physical establishments of pagan philosophy." In that same year, however, still another event occurred, which points much less to the past than to the coming age and, especially, to the rise of Scholasticism, viz., the foundation of Monte Cassino, the first Benedictine abbey, above one of the highways of the great folk migrations. This highly symbolic fact not only suggests the initial shift of the scene of the intellectual life from places like the Platonic Academy to the cloisters of Christian monasteries, but it marks even more a change in the dramatis personae. New nations were about to overrun the Roman Empire and its Hellenistic culture with long-range effects: when, centuries later, for example, one of the great Scholastics, Thomas Aquinas, was born, though he was rightly a southern Italian, his mother was of Norman stock, and his Sicilian birthplace was under central European (Hohenstaufen) control.
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The development of Scholasticism coincided with the founding of universities in the late twelfth century and of religious orders such as Dominicans and Franciscans in the early thirteenth century. In the universities newly translated texts of Aristotle provided the basis for a system of thought known as Aristotelianism. Additionally, religious orders had their favorite doctors, whose teachings were ... systematized. Dominicansfollowed Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), whose system was called Thomism, and Franciscans followed Duns Scotus (1266?–1308) and William of Ockham (c. 1285–1347), whose systems were called Scotism and Ockhamism, respectively. A feature of medieval universities was public disputations in which doctors of these schools debated before the student body.
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Scholasticism in the widest sense ... extends from the 9th to the end of the 14th or the beginning of the 15th century - from Erigena to Occam and his followers. The belated Scholastics who lingered beyond the last mentioned date served only as marks for the obloquy heaped upon the schools by the men of the new time. Erigena is really of the spiritual kindred of the Neoplatonists and Christian mystics rather than of the typical Scholastic doctors, and, in fact, the activity of Scholasticism is mainly confined within the limits of the 11th and the 14th centuries. It is divisible into two well-marked periods - the first extending to the end of the 12th century and embracing as its chief names Roscellinus, Anselm, William of Champeaux and Abelard, while the second extended from the beginning of the 13th century to the Renaissance and the general distraction of men's thoughts from the problems and methods of Scholasticism. In this second period the names of Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus represent (in the 13th century and the first years of the 14th century) the culmination of Scholastic thought and its consolidation into system.
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Scholasticism was concurrent with movements in early Islamic philosophy (in the works of Alkindus, Alfarabi, Avicenna, Algazel and Averroes) and Jewish philosophy (especially in the case of Maimonides). From the Eighth Century, the Mutazilite school of Islam, compelled to defend their principles against the more orthodox Ash'ari school, looked for support in philosophy. They are among the first to pursue a rational theology, Ilm-al-Kalam, which can be seen as a form of scholasticism. Later, the philosophical schools of Avicennism and Averroism exerted great influence on Scholasticism.
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In speaking of the origin of Scholasticism - name and thing - it has been already noted that medieval speculation takes its rise in certain logical problems. To be more precise, central theme of Scholastic debate (see Nominalism, Realism). This is the case almost exclusively during the first period, and only to a less extent during the second, where it reappears in a somewhat different form as the difficulty concerning the principle of individuation. The controversy was between Nominalists and Realists; and, exclusively logical as the point may at first sight seem to be, adherence to one side or the other is an accurate indication of philosophic tendency. The two opposing theories express at bottom, in the phraseology of their own time, the radical divergence of pantheism and individualism - the two extremes between which philosophy seems pendulum-wise to oscillate, and which may be said still to await their perfect reconciliation. First... we must examine the form 'which this question assumed to the first medieval thinkers, and the source from which they derived it. A single sentence in Porphyry's Isagoge or " introduc tion " to the Categories of Aristotle furnished the i o ,s text of the discussion.
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Scholasticism