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Scholasticism was a medieval European philosophical movement or methodology that was the predominant education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700.See Steven P. Marone, "Medieval philosophy in context" in A. S. McGrade, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). On the difference between scholastic and medieval monastic postures towards learning, see Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1970) esp. 89; 238ff. It is known for employing logically precise analyses and reconciling classical philosophy and Catholic Christianity.Grayling, A. C. (2019). The History of Philosophy. Penguin Press, pp. 146-7.
The Scholastics, also known as Schoolmen, used dialectical reasoning predicated upon Aristotelianism and the Ten Categories. Scholasticism emerged within the that translated medieval Judeo-Islamic philosophies, and "rediscovered" the collected works of Aristotle. Endeavoring to harmonize Aristotle's metaphysics and Latin Catholic theology, these monastic schools became the basis of the earliest European medieval universities, and thus became the bedrock for the development of modern science and philosophy in the Western world. The rise of scholasticism was closely associated with these schools that flourished in Italy, France, Portugal, Spanish Empire and England.Gracia, Jorge JE, and Timothy B. Noone, eds. A companion to philosophy in the middle ages. John Wiley & Sons, 2008, 55–64
Scholasticism is a method of learning more than a philosophy or a theology, since it places a strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference and to resolve contradictions. Scholastic thought is also known for rigorous conceptual analysis and the careful drawing of distinctions. In the classroom and in writing, it often takes the form of explicit disputation: a topic drawn from the tradition is broached in the form of a proposition on a question to be debated, oppositional responses are given, a counterproposal is argued and oppositional arguments rebutted. Because of its emphasis on rigorous dialectical method, scholasticism was eventually applied to many other fields of study.Patte, Daniel. The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity. Ed. Daniel Patte. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 11132-1133Grant, Edward. God and Reason in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 2004, 159
Scholasticism was initially a program conducted by medieval Christian thinkers attempting to harmonize the various authorities of their own tradition, and to reconcile Christian theology with classical and late antique philosophy, especially that of Aristotle but also of Neoplatonism.Particularly through Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, and Boethius, and through the influence of Plotinus and Proclus on Muslim philosophers. In the case of Aquinas, for instance, see Jan Aertsen, "Aquinas' philosophy in its historical setting" in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Jean Leclerq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1970). Prominent scholastic figures include Anselm of Canterbury ("the father of scholasticism"Grant, Edward. God and Reason in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 2004, 56), Peter Abelard, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas's masterwork, Summa Theologica (1265–1274), is widely considered to be the pinnacle of scholastic, medieval, and Christian philosophy. Important work in the scholastic tradition has been carried on well past Aquinas's time, such as with English scholastics Robert Grosseteste and his student Roger Bacon, by Francisco Suárez and Luis de Molina, and also among Lutheran and Reformed thinkers.
During this period, knowledge of Ancient Greek had vanished in the West except in Ireland, where its teaching and use was fairly common in its . Irish scholars had a considerable presence in the Frankish court, where they were renowned for their learning. Among them was Johannes Scotus Eriugena (815–877), one of the founders of scholasticism.: "Peter Abelard himself was ... together with John Scotus Erigena (9th century), and Lanfranc and Anselm of Canterbury (both 11th century), one of the founders of scholasticism." Eriugena was the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period and an outstanding philosopher in terms of originality. He had considerable familiarity with the Greek language and translated many works into Latin, affording access to the Cappadocian Fathers and the Greek theological tradition. Three other primary founders of scholasticism were the 11th-century archbishops Lanfranc and Anselm of Canterbury in England and Peter Abelard in France.
This period saw the beginning of the "rediscovery" of many Greek works which had been lost to the Latin West. As early as the latter half of the 10th century, the Toledo School of Translators in Al-Andalus had begun translating Arabic texts into Latin. After a successful burst of Reconquista in the 12th century, Spain opened even further for Christian scholars and, as these Europeans encountered Judeo-Islamic philosophies, they opened a wealth of Arab and Judaic knowledge of mathematics and astronomy.Grant, Edward, and Emeritus Edward Grant. The foundations of modern science in the Middle Ages: their religious, institutional and intellectual contexts. Cambridge University Press, 1996, 23–28 The Latin translations of the 12th century also included figures like Constantine the African in Italy and James of Venice in Constantinople. Scholars such as Adelard of Bath traveled to Spain and Sicily, translating works on astronomy and mathematics, including the first complete translation of Euclid's Elements into Latin.
At the same time, the School of Chartres produced Bernard of Chartres's commentaries on Plato's Timaeus and a range of works by William of Conches that attempted to reconcile the use of classical pagan and philosophical sources in a medieval Christian concept using the kludge of integumentum, treating the obviously heretical surface meanings as coverings disguising a deeper (and more orthodox) truth.. Abelard himself was condemned by Bernard of Clairvaux at the 1141 Council of Sens and William avoided a similar fate through systematic self-bowdlerization of his early work, but his commentaries and encyclopedic De Philosophia Mundi and Dragmaticon were miscredited to earlier scholars like Venerable Bede and widely disseminated. Anselm of Laon systematized the production of the gloss on Scripture, followed by the rise to prominence of dialectic (the middle subject of the medieval trivium) in the work of Abelard. Peter Lombard produced a collection of Sentences, or opinions of the Church Fathers and other authorities.
More recently, Ulrich Leinsle, Alex Novikoff, and others have argued against the idea that scholasticism primarily derived from philosophical contact, emphasizing its continuity with earlier Patristic Christianity. This remains, however, a minority viewpoint.
university developed in the large cities of Europe during this period, and rival clerical orders within the church began to battle for political and intellectual control over these centers of educational life. The two main orders founded in this period were the Franciscans and the Dominican Order. The Franciscans were founded by Francis of Assisi in 1209. Their leader in the middle of the century was Bonaventure, a traditionalist who defended the theology of Augustine and the philosophy of Plato, incorporating only a little of Aristotle in with the more neoplatonist elements. Following Anselm, Bonaventure supposed that reason can only discover truth when philosophy is illuminated by religious faith.Hammond, Jay, Wayne Hellmann, and Jared Goff, eds. A companion to Bonaventure. Brill, 2014, 122 Other important Franciscan scholastics were Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol and William of Ockham.Evans, Gillian Rosemary. Fifty key medieval thinkers. Routledge, 2002, 93–93, 147–149, 164–169Gracia, Jorge JE, and Timothy B. Noone, eds. A companion to philosophy in the middle ages. John Wiley & Sons, 2008, 353–369, 494–503, 696–712
By contrast, the Dominican order, a teaching order founded by St Dominic in 1215, to propagate and defend Christian doctrine, placed more emphasis on the use of reason and made extensive use of the new Aristotelian sources derived from the East and Moorish Spain. The great representatives of Dominican thinking in this period were Albertus Magnus and (especially) Thomas Aquinas, whose artful synthesis of Greek rationalism and Christian doctrine eventually came to define Catholic philosophy.
Aquinas's masterwork, Summa Theologica (1265–1274), is considered to be the pinnacle of scholastic, medieval, and Christian philosophy. It began while Aquinas was regent master at the studium provinciale of Santa Sabina in Rome, the forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas placed more emphasis on reason and argumentation, and was one of the first to use the new translation of Aristotle's metaphysical and epistemological writing. This was a significant departure from the Neoplatonism and Augustinian thinking that had dominated much of early scholasticism. Aquinas showed how it was possible to incorporate much of the philosophy of Aristotle without falling into the "errors" of the Commentator, Averroes.Hannam, James. The genesis of science: How the Christian Middle Ages launched the scientific revolution. Simon and Schuster, 2011, 90–93
"Thomistic scholasticism" or "scholastic Thomism" identifies with the philosophical and theological tradition stretching back to the time of St. Thomas Aquinas. It focuses not only on exegesis of the historical Aquinas but also on the articulation of a rigorous system of orthodox Thomism to be used as an instrument of critique of contemporary thought. Due to its suspicion of attempts to harmonize Aquinas with non-Thomistic categories and assumptions, scholastic Thomism has sometimes been called, according to philosophers like Edward Feser, "Strict Observance Thomism". A discussion of recent and current Thomistic scholasticism can be found in La Metafisica di san Tommaso d'Aquino e i suoi interpreti (2002) by , which includes such figures as Sofia Vanni Rovighi (1908–1990), Vanni Rovighi, Sofia. Treccani Encyclopedia./ Accessed 17 August 2013 Cornelio Fabro (1911–1995), Carlo Giacon (1900–1984), GIACON, Carlo. Treccani Encyclopedia./ Accessed 9 April 2013 Tomas Tyn O.P. (1950–1990), Abelardo Lobato O.P. (1925–2012), Leo Elders (1926– ) and Giovanni Ventimiglia (1964– ), among others. Fabro in particular emphasizes Aquinas' originality, especially with respect to the actus essendi or act of existence of finite beings by participating in being itself. Other scholars such as those involved with "Il Progetto Tommaso" seek to establish an objective and universal reading of Aquinas' texts.See
Thomistic scholasticism in the English speaking world went into decline in the 1970s when the Thomistic revival that had been spearheaded by Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, and others, diminished in influence. Partly, this was because this branch of Thomism had become a quest to understand the historical Aquinas after the Second Vatican Council.
The scholasticists would choose a book by a renowned scholar, Author (author), as a subject for investigation. By reading it thoroughly and critically, the disciples learned to appreciate the theories of the author. Other documents related to the book would be referenced, such as Church councils, papal letters and anything else written on the subject, be it ancient or contemporary. The points of disagreement and contention between multiple sources would be written down in individual sentences or snippets of text, known as sententiae. Once the sources and points of disagreement had been laid out through a series of , the two sides of an argument would be made whole so that they would be found to be in agreement and not contradictory. (Of course, sometimes opinions would be totally rejected, or new positions proposed.) This was done in two ways. The first was through philology analysis. Words were examined and argued to have multiple meanings. It was also considered that the auctor might have intended a certain word to mean something different. Ambiguity could be used to find common ground between two otherwise contradictory statements. The second was through logical analysis, which relied on the rules of formal logic – as they were known at the time – to show that contradictions did not exist but were subjective to the reader.Colish, Marcia L. Medieval foundations of the western intellectual tradition, 400–1400. Yale University Press, 1999, 265–273
Questions to be disputed were ordinarily announced beforehand, but students could propose a question to the teacher unannounced – disputationes de quodlibet. In this case, the teacher responded and the students rebutted; on the following day the teacher, having used notes taken during the disputation, summarised all arguments and presented his final position, riposting all rebuttals.
The quaestio method of reasoning was initially used especially when two authoritative texts seemed to contradict one another. Two contradictory propositions would be considered in the form of an either/or question, and each part of the question would have to be approved ( sic) or denied ( non). Arguments for the position taken would be presented in turn, followed by arguments against the position, and finally the arguments against would be refuted. This method forced scholars to consider opposing viewpoints and defend their own arguments against them.
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