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MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY RECAP

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MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY RECAP

AUGUSTINE I. [the Christian will & God’s causality]:
4th-5thC 354-430

  • the pear; evil not as Platonic unknowing
  • ACTION THEORY: objective & subjective aspects of the will
  • gradual theory of perfection
  • the soul transmits a God-ordained causal order into the body
  • willing with God can help us reach perfection
  • you choose to enslave yourself to sin

AUGUSTINE II. [from signs to knowledge & illumination]:
4th-5thC 354-430

  • the teacher transmits signs
  • signs aren’t knowledge, but point us to it
  • ILLUMINATION, like Christ showing us the truth
  • knowledge: a proposition is true, and you know it is (internal illumination)
  • natural & social signs; things [objects of knowledge]
  • signs are only tools for reaching true illumination
  • believe in order to understand; BELIEF is the first step of knowledge

BOETHIUS [the problem of foreknowledge]:
5th-6thC 480-525

  • De Interpretacione: future is contingent (not t/f)
  • God knows everything necessarily (even the future)
  • we are free, our will is contingent
    1. Mode of Cognition (different forms of cognition)
    2. God’s eternity (not perpetual, but always now & absolute)
    3. Necessity of the present (present is known necessarily)
  • God exists in an absolute present, our future is contingent, his knowledge isn’t

ABELARD [ethics of intention/consent & hero ethics]:
11th-12thC 1079-1142

  • virtue ethics + divine command
  • INTENT & CONSENT (motivation & commitment, even if impossible)
  • morals: dispositions of the mind
  • hero ethics: overcoming the great odds of vices
  • 3 virtues: moral/intellectual (Aristotelian) + Godly (proper relation to God)
  • sins of omission and commission (not doing good, doing bad)
  • we don’t only will sins, we TOLERATE them
  • Will → Consent → Deed → Consequences
  • removal of luck (via consent) and deed (against Anselm of Leon)
  • only God can truly judge us, not human law

AL-FARABI [Emenation, from One, to Active Intellect, to The Perfect State]
9th-10thC 870-950

  • SUPRALUNAR WORLD: eternal, stable cosmos; first unmoving Neoplatonic principle
  • necessary emenations resulting in the ACTIVE intellect (thinks itself and the One)
  • via Active Intellect we bridge our becoming and Formal being
  • SUBLUNARY WORLD: formal emenations, body & soul (mater & form)
  • our knowledge is the emenation of prior intellects
  • REPRESENTATIVE FACULTY: memory bank of sensibles & associations
  • FIRST INTELLIGIBLES: principles making us aware of good, evil, existents, first causes
  • happiness is an intellectual fusion with eternity, nothing corporeal
  • eudaimonia: closeness to Active Intellect
  • religion (any religion) is a path to eudaimonia and salvation
  • Perfect State: rulers pushing people towards eudaimonia and perfection, mixed with religion
  • rulers order the perfect state like a first principle, making an ideal body
  • perfect ruler has reached Act. Int. oneness, all perfect rulers are the same
  • ruler helps all learn natural necessities, they reach eudaimoina
  • in imperfect states religion is merely a deception

AL-GHAZALI
11th-12thC 1058-1111

  • citique of conformity, a time of schisms in Islam, also & Christianity, Judaism & falfasa tradition
  • conformity is blindness, antitethical to revelation and insight; conformity cannot be a certain belief, it cannot be knowledge (epistemic problem)
  • cannot trust the senses, intellect overrules them
  • God’s illumination can guide us to first principles and irrefutables
  • Theology: based on tradition, dialectic arguments on common grounds
  • Philosophy: mostly compatible with, or running parallel to Islam (Maths, Logic, Politics, Ethics)
  • Metaphysics is the issue
  • Issue of Rejection: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater (gold and fake gold example)
  • Issue of Acceptance: accepting Aristotle’s metaphysics, because of his Maths or Logic
  • Sufism: not proving, but tasting, illumination of good, no need to evaluate each claim anymore

AQUINAS [the soul is a calculator, the body is its inputs]:
13thC 1225-1275

  • Plato-Aristotle soul: our mover, gradated, seperable from the body, immaterial, immortal
  • why have a body? its part of our animal essence
  • soul = first order actuality, disposition; body = second order actuality, activity proper; hylomorphic; action structure & action
  • considered in itself the soul is complete, but nevertheless lacking corporeality
  • intellect helps us realize our fundamental species differentiate
  • the intellectual functions of the soul are immaterial & universal calculations (so it can exist on its own)
  • the soul still needs particular bodily inputs [the soul is like a calculator that needs external input]

DUNS SCOTUS [common natures & haecceitas]:
13th-14thC 1265-1308

  • Realism (res, universals, things) vs Nominalism (nomen, concepts)
    ABELARD: first nominalist; against MER (material essence realism); if Plato & Rex both have the material essence of an animal, then this essence is both rational and irrational.
  • common natures: a plurality of overlapping universal concepts (corporeality, irrationality, rationality, animality…)
  • haecceitas (thissness-es): Socreitas, Platonitas; that which makes one individual
  • so numerically less than one (via common natures) & numerically one (via haecceitas)
    OCHAM: individuation via extrinstic or intrinsic non-universal causes; are there really common natures? could it be we are just misunderstanding haecceitas?

MARSILIUS OF PADUA [the good, peacful city]:
13th-14thC 1275-1342

  • critique of hierocratic papal model (complete authority over secular & spiritual domains)
    WILLIAM OF OCKHAM: dualistic system = two domains, secular/emperor & spiritual/pope; entirely seperate [the temporal & the spiritual]
  • Defender of Peace: argues for rational, Aristotelian form of government
  • man is born contrary to himself, only the city and partnership can help him
  • state emerges from people themselves, its goal is giving people the good/sufficient life; its interest is the people and it exists with their consent
  • peace is an equilibrium of civic parts/sections
  • city has judicial, military, clerical and other parts
  • Aristotelian governmental chart (monarchy, aristocracy, polity, etc…)
  • laws express political reasoning & have coercive force; only the most important of the civic body can make laws

JEAN BURDAIN [Medieval science, impetus, surpassing Aristotle]:
14thC 1301-1358
DUHEM: 1277 Condemnation gave way to non-dogmatic Aristotelian thought

  • 2 Aristotelian Motions: Natural (smt’s innate tendency) & Violent (compelled)
  • violent motion happens via opening and closing of vacuum behind the object being propelled
  • Burdain: it is rather IMPETUS
  • an imprint into the object that persist within it, more force is more impetus
  • acceleration and deacceleration are simply the strengthening or diminishing of impetus
  • impetus is a quality predisposed to moving a body, an accidental form
  • Burdain rejects the Earth moving around its axis, because we don’t feel air moving around us (doesn’t understand inertia)

CHRISTINE DE PIZAN [complimentary theory of gender]:
14th-15thC 1364-1431

  • Medieval tradition saw women as fundementally vice-full
  • she wants a virtious city for all: we can all, men and women, be virtious
  • God couldn’t have created something imperfect, i.e. women
    4 arguments against sexism: philosophers are wrong sometimes; bad faith sexism; individual examples; men are not immune to vice
  • all universal statements need only 1 counterexample
  • men & women are COMPLIMENTARY, possessing different virtues, each with their own tasks
  • unequal in natures (specific kinds of virtue); equal in essence (fundamental capacity for virtue)

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