Medieval Philosophy (Meaning and Explanation)

We tell you what medieval philosophy is, its history and its thinkers. Also, its influence on the emergence of the Renaissance.

Saint Augustine was one of the most important philosophers of medieval philosophy.

What is medieval philosophy?

Medieval philosophy is the philosophy produced between the 5th century, with the patristics and the fall of the Roman Empire in 476, and the 16th century, with the rise of the Renaissance.

Although he addressed different philosophical problems, it is generally considered that During this period there was an attempt to reconcile the dialogue of the three great religions (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) with Greek and Roman philosophy..

This dialogue occurred, mainly, with the emergence of Christianity in the West. The Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion, and this forced philosophy to take a backseat, in some cases, or even (and this happened on a large scale) to integrate with the various monotheistic thoughts of both Christianity and Islam. and Judaism.

However, this integration did not result in obscurantism, as many thinkers maintain, but rather the period was illuminated with the appearance of great thinkers and theologians from Latin and other parts of the West. Among them we can name figures such as Saint Augustine, Saint Anselm or Saint Thomas, as well as other equally significant characters necessary to understand the current development of philosophy.

History of medieval philosophy

The rise of Christianity brought many changes to the Western world. Its emergence onto the political scene forced the Roman Empire to accept Christianity as its official religion, and this meant that philosophy was relegated to the background and, in many cases, to total banning.

Despite this, The Christian religion used philosophy to explain and defend the faith. This can be seen in some antecedents of Late Antiquity, for example, from the link between philosophy and Christianity given in Alexandria by philosophers such as Justin, Tertullian, Clement and Origen, and also in the works carried out by some Neoplatonic philosophers.

Many of these works, attributed to a group of thinkers usually called “fathers of the Church”, attempted a conciliation between both forces by rejecting different philosophical schools. Examples of this are skepticism, irreconcilable with the truth of faith, or Epicureanism, opposed to Christian austerity and sacrifice.

Saint Augustine

Augustine of Hippo (354-430), better known as Saint Augustine, is the most representative of the patristic thinkers. He incorporated into his thought many elements of the Platonic and Neoplatonic currents, as well as different refutations of other schools in force at his time, such as Manichaeism.

In his thinking, intellectual intuition predominates over scientific reasoning.and is considered a wise man by many of his contemporaries and even later disciples. He wrote numerous works of unquestionable relevance and relevance, such as Confessions and City of God.

Bishop of Hippo and prolific author, during his life he worked on many topics. Among them we can find beauty, good, evil, order, love of God, time and memory.

He returned to Plotinus, one of the founders of Neoplatonism, to develop a theory of time as a dimension of the soul and embarked on different theological-intellectual controversies of the time, as can be seen in his letters to the Manichaeans, Arianism or the Pelagians.

Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite

The figure of Pseudo Dionysius Areopagite is a controversial mystery of the 5th and 6th centuries. For a long time it was believed that his work actually belonged to Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, an Athenian bishop and martyr who appears in the accounts of the Acts of the Apostles, in the Christian New Testament.

Today it is known that these works were written by a Byzantine theologian identified as Pseudo Dionysius and who probably lived in Egypt between the 5th and 6th centuries.

However, and despite all the confusion generated around the biographical figure of Pseudo-Dionysius, His work was widely read and commented on throughout the period of medieval philosophy.l. His influence on medieval scholasticism is especially notable.

Many of the ideas professed by negative theology (or mystical theology) are attributed to Pseudo-Dionysius, which is a branch of theology that denies the possibility of accessing any positive knowledge of God, that is, being able to preach some attribute of God. . On the contrary, negative theology only affirms what it's not God.

Saint Severinus Boethius

Saint Boethius (480-524) was a Roman philosopher and poet who translated several works of Greek philosophy and wrote various treatises on music, arithmetic and astronomy. He studied the ideas of Aristotle, the Stoics and the Neoplatonists in Athens.

In addition to reading and translating Aristotle, He dedicated himself to the thought of Porfirio, especially around the problem of universals. (whether or not there is a universal linguistic entity for each concept), and to the thought of Cicero.

His most famous work is Of consolation through philosophywhich he wrote in prison after being accused of treason by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, an accusation from which he was saved by renouncing his Catholic faith.

Of consolation It is a work in which a lady, associated with philosophy, helps Boethius understand that happiness lies in wisdom and the contemplation of God. In it, providence appears characterized, an element that made Boethius famous, especially among the philosophers who followed him in the history of philosophy.

Juan Scoto Eriúgena

Juan Scotus Eriúgena (810-877) was a Christian philosopher of the Carolingian Renaissance. Of Irish origin (his name can be translated as “John the Irishman of Ireland”), he translated the work of Pseudo-Dionysius and Gregory of Nyssa. He was a philosopher of the Augustinian Neoplatonic school, as well as of apophatic theology (of the negative route).

His best known work is Of the division of naturebetter known as Periphyseonconsidered by many thinkers as the last great work of ancient philosophy. The work is anchored in the idea that everything follows from physis or nature, which structures, in an integral way, reality.

His work is known for its high level of speculation and for having set a precedent, as a transitional stage, for the first part of medieval philosophy, that is, of patristics to the scholasticism.

Saint Thomas and scholasticism

Saint Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 in Naples and died in 1274 in Fossanova Abbey. His work was influenced by Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Plato and Socrates.

The Renaissance

The Renaissance is a period of transition between medieval philosophy and modern philosophy that occurred between the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Renaissance humanism emerged.

At this time, humanist studies, university professors of rhetoric, and the resurgence of classical Roman culture gave rise, especially in relation to its laws, grammar, rhetoric, and oratory. Also in the printing press was created, which led to the Renaissance heyday.

The greatest representatives of the Renaissance were Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Leonardo Bruni, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Thomas More, Niccolo Machiavelli and Michel de Montaigne.