Medieval philosophy is a long period in the history of European philosophy which is directly related to Christian religion. (II-XIV centuries).
The entire spiritual culture of this period was subordinated to the interests and control of the church, the protection and justification of religious dogmas about God and his creation of the world. The dominant worldview of this era was religion, therefore the central idea of medieval philosophy is the idea of a monotheistic (one) God.
A feature of medieval philosophy is the fusion of theology and ancient philosophical thought. Theoretical thinking of the Middle Ages at its core theocentric. God, and not the cosmos, appears to be the first cause, the creator of all things, and his will is the undivided force dominating the world. Philosophy and religion are so intertwined here that philosophy Thomas Aquinas characterized only as “the handmaiden of theology.” The sources of medieval European philosophy were mainly idealistic or idealistically interpreted philosophical views of antiquity, especially the teachings Plato And Aristotle .
The main principles of medieval philosophy were:
- creationism- the idea of God creating the world out of nothing;
- providentialism- understanding of history as the implementation of a plan for the salvation of man, pre-provided by God;
- theodicy- as a justification for God ;
- symbolism- a person’s unique ability to find the hidden meaning of an object;
- revelation- the direct expression of God’s will, accepted by the subject as an absolute criterion of human behavior and cognition;
- realism- the existence of common things in God, in things, in people’s thoughts, words;
- nominalism- special attention to the individual.
In the development of medieval philosophy, two stages can be distinguished - patristics and scholasticism.
Patristics . During the period of the struggle of Christianity with pagan polytheism (from the 2nd to 7th centuries AD), literature of apologists (defenders) of Christianity arose. Following apologetics, patristics arose - the writings of the so-called church fathers, writers who laid the foundations of the philosophy of Christianity. Apologetics and patristics developed in Greek centers and in Rome.
This period can be divided into:
a) apostolic period (until the middle of the 2nd century AD);
b) the era of apologists(from the middle of the 2nd century AD to the beginning of the 4th century AD). These include Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, etc.;
c) mature patristics (IV-VI centuries AD). The most prominent figures of this period were Jerome, Augustine Aurelius and others. During this period, the center of philosophizing were the ideas of monotheism, the transcendence of God, three hypostases - God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit, creationism, theodicy, eschatology.
During this period, philosophy was already divided into three types: speculative (theological), practical (moral), rational (or logic). All three types of philosophy were closely related to each other.
Scholasticism(VII-XIV centuries). The philosophy of the Middle Ages is often called in one word - scholasticism (Latin scholasticus - school, scientist) - a type of religious philosophy based on a combination of dogmatics and rationalistic justification with a preference for formal-logical problematics. Scholasticism is the main way of philosophizing in the Middle Ages.
This was due Firstly, close connection with Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition, which, complementing each other, were an exhaustive, universal paradigm of philosophical knowledge about God, the world, man and history ; secondly, traditionalism, continuity, conservatism, dualism of medieval philosophy; thirdly, the impersonal nature of medieval philosophy, when the personal retreated before the abstract and general.
The greatest influence on philosophy was exerted by such Christian doctrines as the doctrines of creation, the Fall, salvation and revelation. According to the first doctrine of creation, the world was created God out of nothing and without any need. According to the doctrine of the Fall, the world was created perfect, but this also presupposes the freedom of created beings - angels and humans. First, some of the angels, then man, directed their free will against the Creator. For God this did not pose a danger, but the world lost its perfection - suffering and death entered it. However, God loves his creation and therefore does not destroy it, but gives time for the fallen angels and man to find the lost path to the Creator.
1) the nature of man has changed, he has become an animal, a kind of living being;
2) sin, i.e. a human crime requiring retribution and atonement;
3) death, time limitation.
A person cannot overcome any of these obstacles on his own. However, God loves man, so he sends his Son to him, and he consistently destroys all three barriers. Having been born as a man, he returns perfection to his nature; by dying on the cross, he bears the punishment for sin, i.e. a person’s crime, and by being resurrected after death, he destroys this last barrier - mortality, limited time. Having destroyed these barriers, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, thereby provides every person with the opportunity of salvation if he wants and is able to take advantage of it.
Thus, the goal and meaning of every person’s life is to reveal oneself to God. People who have realized this goal and are working to achieve it constitute the Church. This is the ark into which God gathers all people worthy of salvation. When the last person enters it, the Church will leave this world and the time will come for the Last Judgment, the Last Revelation, the Apocalypse, as a result of which this world of suffering will be destroyed, sinners will be destroyed, and the righteous will find eternal life in the perfect City of God.
These Christian doctrines permeate literally all sections of medieval philosophy, starting from the doctrine of being and ending with ethical and aesthetic ideas.
Questions:
The Middle Ages: the essence of the era. Origins of medieval philosophy.
Theocentrism. Medieval picture of the world.
Anthropological concept of the Middle Ages.
Philosophy of the Middle Ages: scholasticism, nominalism and realism.
Medieval theodicy.
An assessment of the philosophy of the Middle Ages.
Basic concepts: scholasticism, patristics, theodicy, providentialism, apologetics, universalism, nominalism, realism, polytheism, monotheism, creationism, scholasticism, monism.
1. Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of the era of feudalism (V - XV centuries). In the history of philosophy, this period is assessed as something negative: ten centuries of darkness, “the long, dark Middle Ages.” Historical memory has treated the Middle Ages unfairly. It was indeed a long period, and in it there was something that was not only dark, but also worthy of attention and continuity. However, in dictionaries and encyclopedias, the previous stage (antiquity) and the subsequent one (Renaissance) were characterized as the era of the heyday of human intellect and philosophical thought, and the Middle Ages as a break in the formation of spirituality. And only recently has the attitude towards this complex and unique phenomenon in the development of culture begun to be reconsidered.
The analysis of any historical period should be approached dialectically: to see the high and the low, worthy of both criticism and imitation. This period, like others, is characterized by contradictions, only here they appear most visibly. On the one hand, there is a process of formation of nations, languages, states, promoting progress, and on the other hand, religion extends its influence to all spheres of life, including the development of philosophical thought, trying to limit it to the framework of dogma, which led to regression. It is no coincidence that philosophy received the name scholasticism(Greek schole- school), because it was divorced from reality and put at the service of theology. Theology shackled thought, as well as school education, where learning was reduced to memorizing frozen dogmas.
This period did not appear suddenly. To understand the dynamics, it is important to see how the present is born from the past, and the future from the present. The formation of medieval culture and philosophy began already in the 1st – 4th centuries. as a synthesis of two traditions - Christian revelation and ancient philosophy. Christianity replaces the ancient and also pagan gods (“pagan” religions were the product of the creativity of a “given” people, i.e. they were religions of one “language”), in other words, monotheism (monotheism) replaces polytheism (polytheism) , which determines the foundations of the emerging picture of the world and the worldview corresponding to the era. With Christianity, the universalism of the worldview is established. To spread Christianity and turn it into a world religion, a justification for dogma was required, which was fully consistent with ancient Greek philosophy in its idealistic version (hence the appeal to the concepts of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle).
But Christianity also introduces new ideas unknown to antiquity: the recognition of one God as the creator of all things, the equality of all peoples before him, the finitude of the earthly world and the eternity of the heavenly world. The symbiosis of the ideas of ancient Greek philosophy and the dogmas of Christianity corresponding to the spirit of the times was patristics(lat. pater- father) - works of the church fathers of the first centuries of Christianity. Some of them advocated the need to turn to philosophy and rationalize dogma, others, on the contrary, called philosophers “patriarchs of heretics” and believed that philosophy destroys everything beautiful that is created by faith.
Thus, Tertullian (II – III centuries), a Christian theologian from Carthage, in his “Apologetics” said that “after Christ no curiosity is needed; after the Gospel there is no need for any research.” He openly contrasts Christianity with common human reason: “The Son of God was crucified; We are not ashamed of it, because it is shameful; the son of God died - we fully believe this, because it is absurd. And the buried one rose again; this is true because it is impossible.” Thus, a thesis was proclaimed that became immutable for theologians: “I believe because it is absurd.” The proclamation of absurdity as the highest indicator has been accepted for many centuries. But during the late Middle Ages, a different view was affirmed: it is inappropriate to discard the truths of reason; they are necessary insofar as they prove the truths of faith. Consequently, faith in reason (albeit limiting its capabilities) could not help but strengthen even in the Middle Ages. During this era, Augustine the Blessed, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas and representatives of freethinking - the English philosophers Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, William of Occam - created their works that had a huge impact on the development of theological thought; Arab philosophers - Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes).
2. Considering it more appropriate to consider the philosophy of the Middle Ages not in personalities (since individual systems here are not as original and significant as in ancient philosophy), but conceptually, we will highlight its main characteristics, problems and ways to solve them.
This philosophy was of a theocentric nature, in accordance with which the picture of the world was formed. In his understanding of the world, medieval man proceeds from the main postulate of theocentrism: the source of all things is God. It also lay at the basis of man’s knowledge of the world and himself. Without faith in God, a person simply could not imagine life, could not explain the world and orient himself in it. Belief in God acted as the highest truth around which all other ideas were grouped and all values were correlated. This belief determined the theory creationism(lat. creato– creation) – the creation of the world, living and inanimate nature in a single creative act.
Let us note the main difference in the interpretation of the universe between ancient and medieval thinkers. Ancient philosophers approached this problem from the position of dualism; they saw two principles: active and passive. Both Aristotle and Plato reflected precisely this understanding in their philosophical systems: for Aristotle, matter is passive, form is active, but for Plato, things are passive, ideas are active. The world was seen as consisting of opposites. In the Middle Ages it was asserted monistic principle (from Greek. monos– one, only) – recognition as the basis of one beginning. Dualism gives way to monism.
All theological concepts of the Middle Ages proceed from a single absolute principle, which declares God. Therefore, it is no coincidence that they develop various proofs of the existence of God: rational, intuitive, moral, mystical. One of the most important “proofs” of the existence of God is ontological. It was put forward in the 4th century. Augustine the Blessed and developed by Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century. Its meaning is as follows: man endows God with special qualities inherent only to him as an all-perfect being. Such an idea could not arise spontaneously. It must be determined by the actual existence of such a being who put such a thought about him into a person. Consequently, the existence of God with such an explanation is not proven, but is deduced from the thought of him: one cannot think of the all-perfect without thinking of it as existing. The inconsistency of such argumentation for a sane person is obvious: after all, thoughts can be both true and false - therefore it is unlawful to deduce the existence of God from thoughts.
The transition from thought to reality was the concept of rational proof of the existence of God, formulated by Thomas Aquinas (13th century). He puts forward the very fact of the existence of the world as a reliable source. The theologian's main work, Summa Theologiae, contains the system of evidence he developed.
First: recognition of the prime mover. Everything that moves must have a source of movement. Therefore, there is also an original source - God.
Second: recognition of the root cause. Everything in the world has its causes, but the chain of active causes cannot be endless; there must also be a first cause - God.
Third: recognition of absolute necessity. Everything in the world is random, but randomness depends on necessity, manifested through an external cause, which is God.
Fourth: recognition of absolute perfection. Since there are different degrees of perfection in the world, it is logical to assume the existence of the highest degree of perfection, which is God.
Fifth: recognition of global expediency. Everything in the world is harmonious, reasonable and expedient. This harmony could not arise without a foundation, without a source; God is such a super-intelligent principle that orders the world. The last proof is also called teleological.
There is no doubt that the evidence presented is based on a metaphysical understanding of the source of motion and causality (they are considered as something external to matter), on the denial of development and interaction in the material world (matter is passive), on the identification of God with necessity, as well as on the substitution of concepts: the internal source of movement is replaced by an external one, natural causes are replaced by supernatural ones, expediency is replaced by teleology.
3. Medieval ontology, like the ancient one, is two-layered: in Parmenides - authentic and inauthentic being, in Plato - the world of things and ideas; among medieval theologians - the earthly and otherworldly worlds, and these worlds are unequal (everything earthly is belittled for the sake of exalting the heavenly). The principles of ontology are projected onto anthropology. Two substances are defined in a person: body and soul, to which Christian consciousness adds another one - spirit. Thus, according to Christian dogma, spirit, soul and body are united in a person. But the spirit does not belong to man, it is given to him by God; spirit is participation in the divine. Consequently, man is a special kind of substance into which the divine essence is embodied. The medieval concept of man is based on two dogmas: incarnation and resurrection.
Man is a man-god. But the Middle Ages extracted from antiquity the idea of man as a “reasonable animal.” Therefore, it is natural to pose the problem: what is more in a person - animal or divine? And medieval thinkers transferred the solution to the problem to the level of the need to suppress the animal nature in man, to mortify the flesh as a means of self-restraint. Asceticism was elevated to the highest criterion of morality, and those qualities that antiquity proclaimed to be truly human - rationality, dignity, self-control - lost their significance. If ancient, and especially Stoic philosophy, as an ideal proclaimed a person rebellious to fate, courageous, striving to achieve noble goals, then the ideal of the Middle Ages was an ascetic who renounced all earthly goods and pleasures.
The cult of saints, dating back to the Middle Ages, has been preserved in Christianity to the present day. Renunciation of everything earthly is considered the highest manifestation of the nobility of the soul, the basis for comprehending the divine principle within oneself and fertile soil for the formation of true spirituality, which paves the way to resurrection.
Thus, the solution to the fundamental philosophical problems of ontology and anthropology was carried out during the Middle Ages in line with theology. The analysis of philosophical problems was essentially reduced to the analysis of religious problems. Philosophy was not supposed to address real facts. Natural scientific concepts that refuted religious dogma were declared heretical. The “oak of scholasticism” was strong. Philosophy becomes the “handmaiden of theology.” This role is theoretically justified by Thomas Aquinas. On the one hand, he recognized natural scientific truths that come from nature. On the other hand, there are revealed truths that come from God. And philosophy, according to his logic, should be a mediator, a connecting link between them. He was convinced that with the help of reason one can rise to the highest truths of revelation. But if the truths of reason contradict the truths of faith, then they should be discarded. This conclusion is nothing more than “suffocation by hugs.”
4. But one should not think that the Middle Ages period represents a degradation of human thought. The very formulation of philosophical problems was significant enough to improve the intellect. And even within the framework of theological issues, logic was sharpened. For example, the question of the Logos, by which the real world is created (according to the Bible, God created the universe with His Word). What is Logos, the Word? – this is already a philosophical problem. It affects the relationship between the categories of the general and the individual. Discussions in this regard were conducted not only about the essence of the divine Logos, but also about the relationship of this universal to specific things. This is how the line of struggle between nominalism and realism developed. Realists considered the only reality to be general concepts - universals coming from God. They explain the diversity of things, they give rise to everything. The general precedes the real things. Concrete things are only pale copies of the truly real. Realism, undoubtedly, largely repeats the ideas of Platonism. But the dialectic of concepts inherent in Plato was not aimed at comprehending religious truths, but at defining true beauty, goodness, and goodness. Realists openly pursue an objective-idealistic line.
The nominalists took the opposite position. They believed that universals - general concepts - are just names, noumena (lat. nomen– title, name) of things. The true reality is the things themselves. On the one hand, nominalism was undoubtedly associated with the materialistic interpretation of the primacy of being and the secondary nature of consciousness. The consistent pursuit of the nominalistic line that ideas arise from real things and do not come from God was progressive in the era of the dominance of religion and the church. On the other hand, when realists said that the real world is imperfect compared to the world of ideas, they questioned the omnipotence of God who created such a world. In other words, God cannot create something perfect. Therefore, the ideas of realists were often declared heretical.
5. Medieval scholastics, conducting discussions, came across insoluble contradictions. Interesting in this regard is the “paradox of the omnipotence of God,” expressed by them in the form of a question: “Can an omnipotent God create a stone that he cannot lift?” – If God is omnipotent, then he must create such a stone, but then he must also lift it...
The works of Augustine the Blessed (5th century) are devoted to the justification of God and the justification of divine providence. The starting point of his concept is borrowed from the “Holy Scripture”: having created man, God endowed him with free will. Therefore, a person can deviate from the righteous path, abandon obedience to the spirit and choose something base. God is relieved of responsibility not only for the imperfect actions of people, but also for the imperfection of the world. God created the world reasonable and harmonious, says the theologian, but evil is introduced into it by man because of the same free will. This conclusion underlies theodicies(Greek theos- god and dike– law, justice) – the concept of justification of God. The will can be truly free, according to Augustine, if it does not accept evil, and this is possible only if it is directed towards God. It turns out that the will is free only in its free submission to divine grace. On the one hand, this is no longer freedom, and on the other, the principle of divine predestination clearly contradicts the principle of free will: if God foresees everything in advance, then he could not help but know that, having freedom, a person will use it unreasonably.
Augustine projects the blessed dualism of soul and body onto social life. People, according to Augustine, are divided into two kinds: those who live according to human principles and those who live according to the divine will. Therefore, two types of state arise: “secular city” and “city of God”. The first is the kingdom of darkness and sin, the second - light and good. The task of humanity is to build an earthly city modeled after the “city of God.” World history is interpreted by him as the result of divine providence(lat. providentia- providence). In his work “On the City of God” he gives a religious philosophy of history. But even here one can see the philosophical meaning in solving the problem of divine predestination and human free will, which in the course of further development of philosophy will result in the problem of freedom and necessity. The idea of the absence of predetermination of human actions and social development arose as an antipode to the idea of providentialism. Therefore, when analyzing the basic concepts of the Middle Ages period, it is important to refer not only to apologetic(Greek apologetikos- defending) the provisions of the church fathers, but also to glimpses living thought that goes beyond the dogmas they proclaim. And in the works of theologians, certain periods of history are analyzed, real facts and historical figures appear, formal logic is honed, the opposition of which will be dialectical logic.
6. Medieval dialectics was not only a fundamental school of logical thinking, but also played an important role in the development of natural science. Trying to understand nature, medieval thinkers saw in it a certain order, high perfection, which gave rise to the idea of a goal-setting force. The image of nature as a book written by the hand of a creator will persist in subsequent eras, but another aspect will become dominant: the image of nature developing according to natural laws.
The opposition between science and religion, faith and knowledge, reason and revelation was also characteristic of the Middle Ages. Natural scientific thought developed quite fruitfully in the Middle Eastern countries. Thus, the Tajik experimental scientist Ibn Sina (Avicenna) in the X-XI centuries. and the Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) in the 12th century. they substantiated the objective existence of moving matter and the possibilities of its knowledge, opposed mysticism and superstition, and asserted the importance of only such science that has a practical orientation. Avicenna defended the principle of the unity of logical thinking and experience, philosophy and special sciences. Averroes, agreeing with his predecessor, advocated the emancipation of science. He formulated the theory of dual truth, according to which the truths of both science and religion have a right to exist because they have different fields of study. For the Middle Ages, this is a rather bold idea: science was declared independent of religion. He does not reject the idea of God standing above the world, but rejects the idea of matter created by God, affirming their “co-eternity” and mutual penetration.
The merit of these thinkers is their high assessment of human intelligence, the “universal mind,” which testifies to the continuity of the spiritual life of mankind.
The desire to appeal to reason and knowledge was characteristic of the late nominalists Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus (XIII - XIV centuries). D. Scotus considered thinking as a property of matter, forcing, in the words of Marx, “theology itself to preach materialism.” Bacon believed that the church prevented a person from thinking freely, forcing him to renounce the truth “in favor of God” and sought to find solid foundations of reliability in mathematics, physics and ethics. It was he who owned the saying: “Knowledge is power,” and he also believed that knowledge should be based on experience. This point of view was shared by William of Ockham (14th century), who proclaimed the idea of radical empiricism and formulated the principle of simplicity of scientific knowledge.
Thus, already during the Middle Ages, the conviction in the omnipotence of reason, the need for it to gain freedom from the shackles of scholasticism matured, prospects for the development of science opened up, which became a reality in the upcoming Renaissance.
Medievalism
The beginning of the Middle Ages is associated with the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476). Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of the era of feudalism of the V-XV centuries. The beginning of medieval philosophy is marked by the union of philosophy and theology and acts as a synthesis of two traditions: ancient philosophy and Christian revelation. In medieval philosophy two periods can be distinguished: formation and development. Since the philosophical teachings of this era began to take shape already in the 1st-5th centuries, and they were based on the ethical concepts of the Stoics, Epicureans and Neoplatonists, we can distinguish the following periods:
1) the period of apologetics and patristics (III-V centuries);
2) scholastic period (V-XV centuries).
A feature of medieval philosophy was its dependence on religion. “Philosophy is the handmaiden of theology”, “the threshold of the Christian faith” - this is how the place and role of philosophy in the public consciousness of that period were defined.
If Greek philosophy was associated with pagan polytheism (polytheism), then the philosophical thought of the Middle Ages is rooted in the religion of monotheism (monotheism). These religions included Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Thus, the philosophy of the Middle Ages was a fusion of theology and ancient philosophical thought (mainly the legacy of Plato and Aristotle).
Medieval thinking is essentially theocentric (from lat. theos- God). According to the principle of theocentrism, the source of all being, goodness and beauty is God. Theocentrism was the basis of medieval ontology - the doctrine of being. The main principle of medieval philosophy is the principle of absolute personality, the personality of God. The principle of absolute personality is the result of a deeper understanding of the subject than in antiquity, which, in fact, was embodied in theocentrism. The highest goal in life is to serve God. According to medieval thinking, God is the first cause and fundamental principle of the world. Idealism was the dominant trend throughout the Middle Ages: “In the beginning was the word. And that word was God.” The starting point of philosophical reflection was the dogmas of the Holy Scriptures. Preference was given to faith rather than knowledge; religion, not science.
The dogma of creation shifts the focus to the supernatural principle. |Unlike the ancient gods, who were related to nature, the Christian God stands above nature, on the other side of it and therefore is a transcendental God (otherworldly). The active creative principle is, as it were, withdrawn from nature and transferred to God. In this case, creation is the prerogative of God, and inventions on the part of people are considered blasphemy. This kind of idea was very widespread, which significantly hampered the development of engineering and scientific thought. According to Christian dogma, God created the world out of nothing, created it by an act of his will, thanks to his omnipotence. This worldview is called creationism (from lat. creatio), What does “creation”, “creation” mean?
Distinctive features of medieval philosophy were also providentialism - the belief that everything in the world happens according to the will of divine providence, and irrationalism - belittling the cognitive capabilities of the human mind, recognizing it as fundamental; the source of knowledge is intuition, insight, revelation, etc., forms that go beyond the limits of rational knowledge. Main features of medieval philosophy.
1. Close connection with the Holy Scriptures, which was comprehensive knowledge about the world and man.
2. Philosophy, based on tradition, the texts of the Holy Scriptures, was dogmatic and conservative, skepticism was alien to it.
3. Philosophy is theocentric because the defining reality of all things was not nature, but God.
4. Philosophical formalism, understood as a penchant for frozen, “petrified” formulas, was based on the art of interpretation, interpretation of the text.
5. Creationism is the main principle of ontology, and revelation is the main principle of epistemology.
Development of philosophical thought of the West and East until the 14th century. went in different ways: in the Arab East and in the part of Spain conquered by the Arabs, philosophy was less influenced by religion than in Europe and East Asia. Arabic and Arabic-language science in this first period went far ahead in comparison with European science. In China, science was also more advanced than in Europe, although the influence of religion was very strong. A number of Arab philosophers created their works in line with the scientific and philosophical traditions born of the ancient genius of Democritus - his doctrine of atoms, Pythagorean mathematics, the ideas of Plato, the philosophical and natural science heritage of Aristotle, especially his system of logic.
In European philosophy, materialism in the Middle Ages did not receive such distribution and influence on culture as in the East. The dominant form of ideology was religious ideology, which sought to make philosophy the handmaiden of theology.
The Middle Ages brought forward a galaxy of outstanding philosophers: Augustine (354-430), Boethius (480-524), Eriugena (810-877), Al-Farabi (870-950), Ibn Sina (980-1037), Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198), Pierre Abelard (1079-1142), Roger Bacon (1214-1292), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Oxnam (1285-1349), etc.
It should be remembered that the worldview and life principles of early Christian communities were initially formed in opposition to the pagan world. The medieval church was also hostile to the “pagan” philosophy of the ancient world, especially materialistic teachings. However, as Christianity gained wider influence, and therefore began to need a rational justification for its dogmas, attempts began to appear to use the teachings of ancient philosophers for this purpose. At the same time, the assimilation of the philosophical heritage of antiquity occurred in parts, biasedly, often they were given a new interpretation to reinforce religious dogmas. The main forms of development of philosophical thought during the early Middle Ages were apologetics and patristics. The fact is that the spread of Christianity in Europe, Byzantium, Western Asia and North Africa occurred in a stubborn struggle with other religious and philosophical movements.
Apologetics and patristics (III-V centuries)
Apologetics (from Greek. apologia - defense) is an early Christian philosophical movement that defended the ideas of Christianity from the pressure of the dominant pagan ideology. Apologists substantiated the possibility of the existence of philosophy on the basis of Christian doctrine. Being persecuted by the authorities, Christianity in the first centuries needed theoretical protection carried out by apologetics. The most famous representative of apologetics was Justin Martyr.
Following apologetics, patristics appears (from Lat. pater- father) - the philosophical teaching of the “Church Fathers”. The writings of the “Church Fathers” set out the main provisions of Christian philosophy, theology, and doctrine of the church. This period is characterized by the development of integral religious-speculative systems. There are Western and Eastern patristics. The most prominent figure in the West is considered to be Augustine the Blessed; in the East - Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, and Maximus the Confessor. A distinctive feature of Byzantine (Eastern) philosophy is that it uses the Greek language and is thus more organically connected with ancient culture than the Latin West.
Augustine the Blessed had a profound influence on medieval philosophy. Augustine came to Christianity through Manichaeism (a religious and philosophical doctrine that appeared in the Middle East in the 3rd century, which considered good and evil to be equal principles) and Neoplatonism, under the influence of which he was in his youth. In his teaching, Augustine combined the foundations of Neoplatonic philosophy with Christian postulates. God, according to Augustine, is the cause of everything. God created the world and continues to create it. Based on the ideas of Neoplatonism, Augustine developed in Christian theology the philosophical problem of theodicy (from the Greek. theos - god and dike - justice) - the problem of the existence of evil in the world created by God. Good is the manifestation of God on earth, Augustine taught, evil is a lack of good. Evil on earth arises due to the distance of material existence from its ideal image. Embodying the divine image of objects, phenomena, people, matter, due to its inertia, distorts the ideal, turning it into an imperfect likeness.
In his theory of knowledge, Augustine proclaimed the formula: “I believe in order to understand.” This formula does not mean a rejection of rational knowledge in general, but asserts the unconditional primacy of faith. The main idea of Augustine’s teaching is the development of man from the “old” to the “new”, overcoming selfishness in the love of God. Augustine believed that human salvation lies primarily in belonging to the Christian church, which is the representative of the “city of God on earth.” Augustine considered two opposing types of human activity - the “earthly city”, i.e. statehood, which is based on self-love, brought to the absolute, contempt for God, and the “city of God” - a spiritual community, which is based on love for God, brought to the point of self-contempt. According to Augustine, God is the highest good, and the human soul is close to God and immortal, it is more perfect than the body. The superiority of the soul over the body requires that a person take care of the soul first, suppressing sensual pleasures.
Augustine raised the problem of individual freedom because he believed that subjectively man acts freely, but everything he does is done by God through him. Augustine's merit is that he was the first to show that the life of the soul, the life of the “inner man,” is something incredibly complex and hardly fully definable. “The great abyss is man himself... his hair is easier to count than his feelings and the movements of his heart.” He tried to find a philosophical basis for Christianity in the philosophy of Plato, noting that Plato’s ideas are “the thoughts of the creator before the act of creation.” Augustine is the founder of the Neoplatonist movement in Christian philosophy, which dominated Western Europe until the 13th century.
Philosophical ideas are presented in the works of Augustine: “On True Religion”, “On the City of God”, “Confession”, “On the Trinity”, etc., which became the theoretical basis of the ideology of Christianity.
Scholasticism (V-XV centuries)
The main philosophical movement of the era of the dominance of Christian ideology was scholasticism. Boethius is considered the “father of scholasticism,” who was perceived not so much as the first scholasticism, but as the “last Roman,” a follower of Cicero, Seneca, and the Platonists of the Roman era. Boethius's main work, the treatise “The Consolation of Philosophy,” is the result of his philosophical and logical research.
Scholasticism (from Greek. school- school), i.e. “school philosophy”, which dominated in medieval universities, combining Christian dogma with logical reasoning. The main task of scholasticism was to substantiate, defend and systematize religious dogmas in a logical way. Dogma (from Greek. dogma - opinion) is a position that is unconditionally taken on faith and is not subject to doubt or criticism. Scholasticism created a system of logical arguments to confirm the tenets of faith. Scholastic knowledge is knowledge that is divorced from life, based not on experienced, sensory knowledge, but on reasoning based on dogma.
Scholasticism did not deny rational knowledge in general, although it reduced it to the logical inquiry of God. In this, scholasticism opposed mysticism (from Greek. mystika- sacrament) - the doctrine of the possibility of knowing God exclusively through supernatural contemplation - through revelations, insights and other irrational means. For nine centuries, scholasticism dominated the public consciousness. It played a positive role in the development of logic and other purely theoretical disciplines, but significantly slowed down the development of natural, experimental sciences.
The largest representative of scholasticism during its heyday is Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), or Thomas Aquinas, who was later canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. He systematized theological teaching, creating a philosophical concept that became the basis of the official Catholic ideology. After his name, the orthodox philosophical teaching of Catholicism is called Thomism. The modern philosophical doctrine of the Vatican is called neo-Thomism. The most famous works of Thomas Aquinas are the so-called Summa of Aquinas - “Summa against the pagans” (also known as “Summa Philosophy”) and “Summa Theology”. In the teachings of Aquinas, the line between faith and knowledge, religion and science is clearly drawn. Religion gains knowledge through revelation. Science can logically prove the truth of revelations. This is the purpose of science. Scholasticism allowed the existence of only theoretical sciences. She considered experimental, sensory (natural-scientific) knowledge to be sinful.
According to Thomas Aquinas, only theology is knowledge of general causes. Knowledge about God is knowledge of two orders: 1) accessible to everyone; 2) inaccessible to the simple human mind. Therefore, the basic principle of theology is the principle of the preference of faith over reason. The main thesis: “I believe because it is absurd.” Thomas Aquinas substantiated the inconsistency of dual truth. There is only one truth - God.
Thomas Aquinas deduces five provisions of the cosmological proof of the existence of God.
He derives evidence not from the concept of God, but from the fact that every phenomenon has its own cause. Following from one cause to another, Thomas comes to the idea of the necessity of the existence of God as the supreme cause of all real phenomena and processes. F. Aquinas did a lot to substantiate the theoretical Catholic doctrine, for which he was awarded the title of “angelic doctor.”
In the 11th century a struggle unfolds in scholastic philosophy itself between nominalism and realism as a scientific discussion. The largest of them, which lasted for several centuries, was the so-called “dispute about universals.” Universals (from lat. universale- general) name general concepts (terms, names, names) in contrast to individual, specific objects. The discussion about universals was based on the following question: “Do general concepts exist objectively, or do only individual objects exist objectively (really)?”
Realism (from lat. realis- valid) recognized that general concepts exist objectively, really, independently of the mind cognizing them. Realists spoke about the real existence of general concepts - “universals” (“man in general”, “tree in general”, etc.) - as some kind of spiritual essences or prototypes of individual things. Universals, they argued, actually exist before things and give rise to things. This extreme realism had its source in Plato’s teaching about the “world of ideas” and the “world of things.”
Nominalism (from lat. potpep - name) recognized that only individual objects really, objectively exist, and general concepts - names are created by the subject who knows them, by abstracting signs, that universals exist not before, but after things. Only individual things are real, for example people, trees, but “man in general” or “tree in general” are just words or names with the help of which people generalize individual objects into a genus.
A type of nominalism was conceptualism, or moderate nominalism, which is sometimes defined as an intermediate direction between nominalism and realism. Conceptualism recognizes the reality of the existence of general concepts, but only in the mind of the cognizing subject.
Self-test questions
(first level of understanding of the material)
1. What are the characteristic features of medieval philosophy?
2. What philosophical movements arose during the Middle Ages?
3. What is the essence of the scholastic dispute about universals between realists and nominalists?
Philosophy of the Renaissance (XV-XVI centuries)
The Renaissance, or Renaissance (from French. renaissance - revival), received its name because of the revival of the most important principles of the spiritual culture of antiquity that began during this period.
The Renaissance as a whole was oriented towards art, and the cult of the artist-creator occupied a central place in it. The artist imitates not just God's creations, but divine creativity itself. A person begins to look for a fulcrum in himself - in his soul, body, physicality (cult of beauty - Botticelli, Leonardo, Raphael). Diversity of development and talent was especially revered in this era.
Medieval philosophy deeply and consistently thought through the principle of the Absolute, when everywhere and in everything they saw the primacy not of nature, not of man, but of God. This kind of philosophical worldview most organically corresponds to the entire social, economic and political structure of the Middle Ages, based on agriculture. With the transition to an urban lifestyle and the development of industry, the special significance of man and his creative activity is revealed. The focus of Renaissance philosophy is on man.
New economic relations contributed to the emergence of spiritual opposition to feudalism as a way of life and the dominant way of thinking. Technical inventions and scientific discoveries enriched labor with new, more effective methods of action (the spinning wheel appeared, the weaving machine was improved, blast furnace metallurgy was invented, etc.). The use of gunpowder and the creation of firearms revolutionized military affairs, which negated the importance of knighthood as a branch of the military and as a feudal class. The birth of printing contributed enormously to the development of humanitarian culture in Europe. The use of a compass significantly increased the possibilities of navigation, the network of water trade communications rapidly expanded, and it was especially intensive in the Mediterranean - it is not surprising that it was in Italian cities that the first manufactories arose as a step in the transition from crafts to the capitalist mode of production. Thus, the main prerequisites for the emergence of philosophy and culture of the Renaissance were the crisis of feudalism, the improvement of tools and production relations, the development of crafts and trade, an increase in the level of education, the crisis of the church and scholastic philosophy, geographical and scientific and technical discoveries. A feature of early bourgeois culture was an appeal to the ancient heritage (not a return to the past, but a conversion). As for philosophy, its separation from theology has now begun. Religion is separated from science, politics and morality. The era of the formation of experimental sciences begins, their role is recognized as the only one that provides true knowledge about nature. During the Renaissance, a new philosophical worldview was developed thanks to the work of a whole galaxy of outstanding philosophers: Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Lorenzo Balla ( 1407-1457), Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639), Thomas More (1478-1535), Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536), etc.
The main ideologist of this current of philosophy was Nikolai Kuzansky, the first outstanding representative of pantheistic philosophy of the Renaissance. Cusansky brings God closer to nature, the creator to creation, attributing to nature divine attributes, and above all infinity in space. For him, the Earth is not the center of the world. He expresses ideas in relation to the understanding of nature, the unity of opposites, one and many, possibility and reality, infinity and finitude in nature. N. Kuzansky expressed and substantiated the concept of the scientific method, the problem of creativity. He argued that human capabilities in the field of knowledge are limitless. His views influenced subsequent ideas in Renaissance philosophy.
The greatest genius of this period was Giordano Bruno. He, having rejected all church dogmas, developed the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus and discovered the existence of many worlds. Bruno wrote a lot about God, but his God was the Universe. He denied God dictating the laws of the world. For Bruno, man is part of nature. The love of knowledge and the power of reason elevate him above the world,
The works of Galileo Galilei were of great importance for the development of Renaissance philosophy. His discoveries in astronomy grew into a fierce polemic with the church, which defended the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic picture of the world. Galileo called for studying nature only experimentally on the basis of mathematics and mechanics. He believed that only scientific methods, including experimentation, can lead to truth. Galileo's scientific methodology, based on mathematics and mechanics, defined his worldview as mechanistic materialism. According to Galileo, God is the prime mover who imparted motion to the planets. Then “mechanism” in nature began to work independently and began to have its own laws that science should study. Galileo was one of the first to formulate a deistic view of nature.
The natural philosophical ideas of Renaissance thinkers had a decisive influence on the development of philosophy and natural science in modern times.
The main feature of the ideology of the Renaissance is humanism (from Lat. homo - man) is an ideological movement that affirms the value of man and human life. The poet Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) is considered the founder of the ideology of humanism. In Renaissance philosophy, humanism manifested itself, in particular, in anthropocentrism (from the Greek. anthropos - man) - a worldview that placed man at the focus of world existence.
Rationalism, which asserts the primacy of reason over faith, becomes a unique manifestation of humanism. A person can independently explore the mysteries of existence by studying the foundations of the existence of nature. During the Renaissance, scholastic, speculative principles of knowledge were rejected, and experimental, natural scientific knowledge was resumed. Fundamentally new, anti-scholastic pictures of the world were created: the heliocentric picture of Nicolaus Copernicus and the picture of the infinite Universe of Giordano Bruno.
In views on nature in Renaissance philosophy, pantheism dominated (from Greek pan - everything and theos - God) is a doctrine that identifies nature and God. In the ethics of the Renaissance, some principles of pre-Christian moral teachings (Epicureanism, Stoicism, skepticism) were restored. New concepts have appeared in social philosophy, directed towards individualism and secularization (secularization, weakening of church influence in all spheres). The most important achievement of the Renaissance was that the dictatorship of the church was broken.
The basis of human relations, humanists believed, is mutual respect and love. Renaissance philosophy was dominated by the aesthetic (which in Greek means pertaining to feeling), and thinkers were more interested in the creativity and beauty of the human person rather than religious dogma. The foundations of the anthropocentrism of the Renaissance lie in the change in economic relations. The separation of agriculture and crafts, the rapid development of manufacturing production marked the transition from feudalism to early capitalism.
Directions in Renaissance philosophy:
1) humanistic (XIV-XV centuries) - human problems were solved, his greatness and power were affirmed, the dogmas of the church were denied (F. Petrarch, L. Balla);
2) Neoplatonic (XV-XVI centuries) - from the standpoint of idealism they tried to understand natural phenomena, the Cosmos, human problems, developed the teachings of Plato (N. Kuzansky, P. Mirandola, Paracelsus);
3) natural philosophy (XVI - early XVII centuries) - relying on scientific and astronomical discoveries, they made an attempt to change the idea of the structure of the Universe, the Cosmos and the basis of the universe (N. Copernicus, G. Bruno, G. Galileo);
4) reformation (XVI-XVII centuries) - an attempt to revise church ideology and the relationship between people and the church (E. Rotterdamsky, J. Calvin, M. Luther, T. Münzer, Usenlief);
5) political (XV-XVI centuries) - associated with problems of government (N. Machiavelli);
6) utopian-socialist (XV-XVII centuries) - the search for an ideal society based on the regulation of all relationships by the state in the absence of private property (T. More, T. Campanella).
Let's summarize some results. We have already said earlier that the philosophers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance became the successors of the philosophers of antiquity. Comparing the paradigmatic features of the philosophy of these eras, we can highlight their differences.
MAIN PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Introduction.
In historical science, the Middle Ages in Western Europe are dated to the 5th–15th centuries. However, in relation to philosophy, such dating is not entirely correct. Medieval European philosophy is Christian philosophy. Christian philosophy began to take shape much earlier. The first Christian philosophers developed their ideas in the 2nd century AD. The philosophy of early Christianity was called apologetics, and its representatives were called apologists, since their writings were aimed at defending and justifying Christian doctrine.
The boundaries between antiquity and the Middle Ages are blurred and unclear. Therefore, paradoxically, medieval philosophy began earlier than ancient philosophy ended. For several centuries, two methods of philosophizing existed in parallel, mutually influencing each other.
If ancient philosophers saw essence and existence in an indissoluble unity, then, according to Christian philosophy, essence can take place without being (without existence). To become an existent (being), an entity must be created by God.
Medieval philosophical thought went through three stages in its development:
1. Patristics(from the Latin pater - father) - works of the church fathers. Initially, the “father of the church” was a spiritual mentor with recognized teaching authority. Later this concept was clarified and began to include four features: 1) holiness of life; 2) antiquity; 3) orthodoxy of teaching; 4) official recognition of the church.
2. Scholasticism- a type of religious philosophy characterized by a fundamental subordination to the primacy of theology, a combination of dogmatic premises with rationalistic methodology and a special interest in formal logical problems.
3. Mysticism- a philosophy that comprehends the religious practice of the unity of man with God, the immersion of the contemplating spirit in the ocean of divine light. If the speculative-logical aspect prevailed in scholasticism, then in mysticism the contemplative aspect prevailed. All mystical teachings tend toward irrationalism, intuitionism, and deliberate paradoxicality; they express themselves not so much in the language of concepts as in the language of symbols.
In subsequent chapters we will take a closer look at the two main stages, and try to identify the problems of that time.
Representatives of medieval philosophy
Before moving on to the main problems of medieval philosophy, it is necessary to know the philosophers of that time and their philosophical views.
| Albert the Great | It was through his works that the philosophy and theology of medieval Europe adopted the ideas and methods of Aristotelianism. In addition, Albert's philosophy was greatly influenced by the ideas of Arab philosophers, with many of whom he polemicized in his works. Albert left a gigantic written legacy - his collected works number 38 volumes, most of which are devoted to philosophy and theology. Among the main works are the Summa on Creations, On the Soul, On the Causes and Origin of Everything, Metaphysics, and the Summa of Theology. | |
 | Tertullian | Tertullian had an excellent knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and Greek authors. Thirty-one works of Tertullian have reached us; all of his works are devoted to topics of practical importance: the attitude of Christians to paganism, issues of Christian morality and the refutation of heresies. 14 works known by title have not survived. Initially, Tertullian was engaged in apologetics, writing the Apologeticus and To the Gentiles in 197 and developed a code of Christian morality in the treatises On Spectacles, On Idolatry, On Women's Attire and To the Wife, instructing catechumens in the treatises “On baptism”, “On prayer” and “On repentance”, explained in the treatise “On the recusal of the objections of heretics”. The author of Tertullian’s biography, Blessed Jerome, therefore called him “ardens vir” - “frantic man.” |
 | William of Ockham | According to Occam, the absolute freedom of the Divine will means that in the act of creation it is not bound by anything, not even by ideas. Ockham denies the existence of universals in God; they do not exist in things either. The so-called ideas are nothing other than the things themselves produced by God. There are no ideas of species, only ideas of individuals, for individuals are the only reality that exists outside the mind, both Divine and human. The starting point for understanding the world is knowledge about individuals. |
 | Thomas Aquinas | The works of Thomas Aquinas include: · two extensive treatises in the summa genre, covering a wide range of topics - Summa Theologica and Summa against the Gentiles (Summa Philosophy) · discussions on theological and philosophical problems (Debatable Questions and Questions on various topics") · comments on: - several books of the Bible - 12 treatises of Aristotle - "Sentences" of Peter of Lombardy - treatises of Boethius, - treatises of Pseudo-Dionysius - anonymous "Book of Causes" · a number of small works on philosophical and religious topics · several treatises on alchemy · poetic texts for worship, for example the work “Ethics” “Debatable Questions” and “Commentaries” were largely the fruit of his teaching activity, which, according to the tradition of that time, included debates and reading authoritative texts accompanied by commentaries. |
 | Meister Eckhart | Author of sermons and treatises, which were preserved mainly in the notes of his disciples. The main theme of his thoughts: Divinity is the impersonal absolute standing behind God the Creator. The Deity is incomprehensible and inexpressible, it is " complete purity of the divine essence", where there is no movement. Through its self-knowledge, the Divine becomes God. God is eternal being and eternal life. According to Eckhart's concept, man is able to know God because in the human soul there is " divine spark", a particle of the Divine. A person, having muffled his will, must passively surrender to God. Then the soul, detached from everything, will ascend to the Divine and in mystical ecstasy, breaking with the earthly, will merge with the divine. Bliss depends on the inner activity of a person. |
 | Peter Abelar | According to Abelard, dialectics should consist of questioning the statements of authorities, the independence of philosophers, and a critical attitude towards theology. Abelard's views were condemned by the church at the Council of Suassois (1121), and according to his verdict, he himself threw his book “Divine Unity and Trinity” into the fire. (In this book, he argued that there is only one God the Father, and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are only manifestations of his power.) In accordance with these beliefs, Abelard believed that the pagans who persecuted Christ did not commit any sinful actions, since these actions were not in conflict with their beliefs. The ancient philosophers were not sinful either, although they were not supporters of Christianity, but acted in accordance with their high moral principles. Abelard questioned the statement about the redemptive mission of Christ, which was not that he removed the sin of Adam and Eve from the human race, but that he was an example of high morality that all humanity should follow. Abelard believed that humanity inherited from Adam and Eve not the ability to sin, but only the ability to repent of it. According to Abelard, a person needs divine grace not to carry out good deeds, but as a reward for their implementation. All this contradicted the then widespread religious dogmatism and was condemned by the Council of Sana (1140) as heresy. |
 | Duns Scotus | Duns Scotus is considered the most important philosophical theologian of the High Middle Ages. He had a significant influence on ecclesiastical and secular thought. Among the doctrines that made Scotus famous are: “univocity of existence,” where existence is the most abstract concept applicable to everything that exists; formal distinction - a way of distinguishing different aspects of the same thing; the idea of concreteness - a property inherent in each individual person and giving it individuality. Scotus also developed a set of arguments for the existence of God and arguments for the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. |
 | Bonaventure | Bonaventure believed that Plato's ideas existed. However, in his opinion, perfect knowledge of ideas is given only to God. Bonaventure had great respect for Saint Augustine. He also supported Anselm of Canterbury's ontological proof of the existence of God. Attempts to synthesize Christianity with the teachings of Aristotle Bonaventure considered hostile to Christianity. Theology is for Bonaventure the mistress of all secular sciences, which he unites under the general concept of philosophy, and unity with God, to which love leads a person through six stages of knowledge, is the greatest good. He substantiates this in detail in the scholastic work “The Soul’s Guide to God” and in the mystical work “On the Reduction of Sciences to Theology.” The choice of problems in philosophy is determined by theology and there are only three metaphysical problems: creation, exemplarism (individuation) and reunion with God through illumination (illumination). According to the teachings of Bonaventure, a person has three eyes: bodily, mental and contemplative; the latter is developed by self-absorption into the soul as a reflection of God, self-abasement, self-denial and sincere prayer. Just as there were 6 days of creation, so there are 6 degrees of contemplation, followed by the highest good, merging with the Divine. |
The main problems discussed in medieval philosophy include the problem of faith and reason, the proof of the existence of God, and the problem of universals.
The problem of the relationship between faith and reason was solved by the authors in different ways. Three options (thesis) of this problem can be formulated:
1. Thesis of Aurelius Augustine: I believe in order to understand. Here the dogma of faith becomes the foundation for rational conclusions.
2. Pierre Abelard's thesis: I understand in order to believe. Here the truths of faith must receive rational justification and philosophical interpretation. This position leads to the absorption of theology by philosophy.
3. Tertullian's thesis: I believe because it is absurd. This option presupposes a divergence between reason and faith and leads to the concept of two truths. This position leads to a gap between philosophy and theology. Tertullian puts forward a position of pure faith, rejects the need for philosophical knowledge, since there is no need for research after Christ. The maxim is attributed to him: “I believe because it is absurd.”
Justin - philosophy is the sister of religion and can, in its best examples, pose the same problems as religious teaching.
Scholasticism
The main problems of scholasticism include:
a) the problem of the relationship between knowledge and faith;
b) the problem of the relationship between essence and existence;
c) the problem of the nature and essence of general concepts (“universals”).
Three approaches to solving one of the main problems of scholasticism - relationship between knowledge and faith.
1. Knowledge and faith are irreconcilable enemies. They are antipodes, incompatible with each other. Philosophy, reason, knowledge are the enemies of religion and faith. Faith does not need any knowledge, no reason. It has its own nature, its own basis - “revelation” and “holy scripture”. Tertullian speaks directly about this: “After Christ, we do not need any curiosity; after the Gospel there is no need for any research.”
Faith is faith because it does not need any reasonable justification or evidence. “The Son of God was crucified; We are not ashamed of it, because it is shameful; the son of god died - we fully believe this, because it is absurd. And the buried one rose again; this is true because it is impossible.” Hence Tertullian’s famous credo: “I believe because it is absurd.” With this approach, philosophers are not only not needed by religion, but on the contrary, “philosophers are the patriarchs of heretics.” Where the philosopher appears, where he poses rational questions, heretics also appear.
This concept was developed by Tertullian (160-240) and Peter Damiani (1007-1072). It is expressed in apophatic theology, which denies the possibility of knowing God and his manifestations in the real world.
2. Union of knowledge and faith. This concept is represented in cataphatic theology. According to it, knowledge of God is possible through the fruits of his creation and the results of intervention in the affairs of the world, therefore, a union of faith and knowledge is possible. However, the union itself was understood differently. Some gave primacy in this union to faith - “I believe in order to understand” (St. Augustine, A. of Canterbury), others - to knowledge, “I understand in order to believe” (P. Abelard).
3. The theory of dual truth. Its most famous representatives are Averroes (1126-1198) and Siger of Brabant (about 1235-1282). Its essence is that philosophy and theology have different objects of study (one is nature, the other is God), different sources of knowledge (philosophy - reason, religion - revelation) and therefore they have different knowledge and different truths. One truth is philosophical, the other truth is theological. These two truths are equivalent and independent of each other.
The concept of the union of knowledge and faith has become most widespread. However, this concept turned out to be internally contradictory and difficult to implement in practice.
The idea of relying on reason in resolving theological issues was expressed back in the 9th century by John Scott Erigena. He considered reason as the criterion for the correct interpretation of “sacred scripture” and thereby laid the foundations of religious rationalism. Its essence is that “everything that is reasonable must be provable by reason.” Since God and his activities are rational, they must be demonstrable using reason. Hence the task of religious rationalism is to prove, with the help of reason, the reasonableness of religious dogmas.
However, this thesis in a hidden form contained its continuation - “everything that cannot be proven by reason is unreasonable.” From this it turned out that dogmas that cannot be proven by reason are unreasonable. Therefore, when it became clear that the dogmas of religion cannot be proven with the help of reason, scholasticism faced a dilemma - either admit that religious dogmas are unreasonable, which is impossible, or find some way out. And this solution was found - religious dogmas were recognized as “super-reasonable”, i.e. it was argued that these dogmas were reasonable in their divine nature, but inaccessible to human reason.
Thus, in order to avoid accusations that religious dogmas are unreasonable, scholasticism was forced to gradually abandon reliance on reason and move on to justifying their “super-reasonable” nature.
In this regard, the history of scholasticism can be considered as a history of the gradual demarcation of knowledge and faith. And the scholastics themselves carry out this demarcation. Albertus Magnus recognized the impossibility of rational proof of the dogmas about the unity and trinity of God, about the incarnation and resurrection. Thomas Aquinas added to them the dogmas about creation in time, about original sin, about sacrament and purgatory, about the Last Judgment and retribution, Duns Scotus recognized the dogma about “creation from nothing”; and finally, William of Ockham recognized the impossibility of rational proof of the existence of God and the unity of his nature. As a result of all this, the union of reason and faith did not take place.
The problem of the relationship between essence and existence is posed and solved in scholasticism as a theological problem, i.e. as a problem of the existence of God and knowledge of his essence. However, the philosophical essence of this problem remained the same. How do the existing world (the visible, sensory world, the world of phenomena, “the world for us”) relate to the essence of this world, i.e. a world that is not sensually perceived, a world that is comprehended only by the mind (the noumenal world, “the world in itself”), but which alone is the true world, forming the essence, the basis of the visible world.
The scholastics solved the problem posed from the standpoint of religious dogmatics. The existing world (things) is the creation of God. Therefore, the essence of the world (things) is that it (they) is the creation of God.
There was no debate about the fact that God is the cause and essence of the world. The debate was about whether it is possible to know God himself?
Some believed that by cognizing the existing world as the creation of God with the help of feelings and reason, we cognize the essence of this world and thereby cognize God. Therefore, knowing God through reason is quite possible. Others, on the contrary, believed that knowledge of the essence of God by man is impossible and that everything we know about God we receive directly from him, through revelation. This scholastic debate is important in two respects.
Firstly, on its basis, two main ways of proving the existence of God have emerged. The first is proof from “revelation,” when the existence of God is deduced from the authority of “holy scripture” and the works of the “church fathers.” This is holy proof of the existence of God. The second way is natural. The existence of God is inferred and proven based on the characteristics of the existing world. These characteristics supposedly give us evidence for the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas follows this path, proving the existence of God: God as the “prime cause”, as the “prime mover”, God as the absolute goal, as absolute perfection and as absolute necessity.
Secondly, more than a thousand years of scholasticism’s search for the “essence” of things has become part of the flesh and blood of European philosophy and philosophical thinking. The search for “essence” has acquired an “innate” character. Clarification of the “essence” and ways of knowing it has become the central task of European philosophy. Hence the “phenomenal and noumenal” world of I. Kant, hence the “Absolute Idea” and “existent being” of Hegel, hence, as a reaction to the endless search for “essence,” phenomenology, hence “essence and existence” in existentialism.
William Ockham proposed a fundamentally new approach to solving the problem of essence and existence. The thesis known as Occam's razor states that “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” This means that if science, relying on reason and experience, can explain the essence of a thing, then there is no need to introduce another “speculative” essence to explain it. Thus, if the law of conservation of energy proves that it neither arises nor disappears, then there is no need to assume “first causes” and “prime movers” to explain the nature and essence of the world. For the old dilemma of knowledge or faith, this meant that as the sphere of knowledge expanded, the sphere of faith would shrink. The separation of knowledge and faith became inevitable.
The problem of the nature and essence of general concepts (“universals”) with is presented as a theological problem. How to rationally explain one of the dogmas of Christianity - the dogma of the unity and trinity of God? The scholastics find out how the one God relates to his three separate hypostases (God - God the Son - God the Holy Spirit).
However, the philosophical essence of this problem is old - the relationship between the general and the separate (individual). The problem of the origin and nature of general concepts; the problem of the relationship between the sensory and rational in knowledge; problem: how and why do general concepts give us true knowledge about the world?
In answering this question, two main directions emerged in scholasticism: realism and nominalism. The first direction was based on the ideas of Plato, who believed that the general exists really before things in the form of an “idea”, the second - on the ideas of Aristotle, according to whom the general exists in the things themselves.
Nominalists believed that only isolated things really exist. The general either does not exist at all (Roscelin, for whom the general is only a word, a name (nomina), to designate homogeneous individual things), or exists, but only in thought, in the concept. The general exists after things and represents abstract knowledge about individual things. In the words of William Ockham, it is a generality - “the knowledge of something general that can be abstracted from many things.” This abstracted knowledge is fixed in general concepts (concepts). Hence the conceptual theory of universals.
The strength of nominalism is the recognition of the existence of separate material things accessible to our knowledge. Its weakness lies in the fact that it cannot explain the process of formation of general concepts that provide true knowledge about the world and things.
Realists believed that only the general really exists. Everything individual, separate only seems to exist (John Scott Erigena). Extreme realism (Anselm of Canterbury) understood the nature of this generality in the Platonic spirit. The general as the “ideas” existing in the mind of God, before and beyond individual things. These are some ideal “prototypes”, standards according to which God creates individual things. This explains the closeness of realism to idealism. Moderate realism leaned towards Aristotle's concept and believed that the general exists in the things themselves and is known through reason.
An attempt to unify existing views on the nature of universals was made by Thomas Aquinas. He essentially reproduced the point of view of Avicenna (980 - 1037), according to which universals exist in three ways: before things as “ideas”, as ideal prototypes in the divine mind; in the things themselves, since the universal is the essence of the individual thing; after things in the human mind, which abstracts the general from individual things and fixes it in a concept. But this is more of a mechanical combination of different points of view than their synthesis. Currently, the problem of universals has acquired practical significance in connection with the development of artificial intelligence.
Patristics
A characteristic feature of medieval philosophical thinking, characteristic of patristics, will be that thinkers, in order to confirm their ideas turn to the most authoritative and ancient source - the Bible.
One of the main generic features of patristics as a specific way of philosophizing is decisive change of orientation. The ancient sages, Plato or Aristotle (with all due respect to them) could not remain the highest authority for a Christian. The starting point for any theorizing is the text of Holy Scripture (the canon of which was finally formed in the 4th century). The authority of Scripture immeasurably exceeds the significance of any philosophical text. Scripture is the source of truth and at the same time the final explanatory authority. Therefore, Christian philosophizing can be understood as philosophical exegesis of a sacred text, and the method of such philosophizing can be understood as a set of ways of interpreting this text. The results of interpretation, in turn, constitute the real content of the philosophical constructions of patristics. The fundamental thesis of patristics (and any Christian philosophizing) states: the truth is contained in Scripture, and the task of the theologian (“true philosopher”) is to correctly understand and explain it. It was on these paths that Christian theology took shape, first of all, as religious and philosophical hermeneutics.
Patristics will be the direct successor of the apostolic tradition, which has the highest authority after the Old Testament. The philosophy created by the apostolic tradition is the first in Christianity. And due to the traditionalism of thinking of the representatives of patristics, it is considered as a prototype of any future philosophizing and its classic example. Based on this, they construct their works as explanations of individual provisions of the Old and New Testaments.
A special feature of the writings of the church fathers of the patristic period is that, along with knowledge of the texts of the Holy Scriptures, they reflect all the richness and diversity of ancient philosophy. This is explained by the fact that the creators of patristic philosophical literature were the most educated people of their time. Patristics created a tradition that found its continuation in scholasticism. This makes it possible to consider patristics and scholasticism as phenomena of the same order, firstly, due to their common method of philosophizing, and secondly, due to their reliance on the same principles that mediate the content of philosophical works. These principles include:
· theocentrism- recognition of God as the source of all things;
· creationism- recognition that God created everything from nothing;
· providentialism- recognition that God rules over everything;
· personalism- recognition that man is a “person”, created by God in his own likeness and endowed with a conscience;
· revolutionism- recognition that the most reliable way of knowing the most important truths for a person is to comprehend the meaning of the Holy Scriptures.
At the stage of patristics, a great contribution to the development of philosophy was made by such fathers of the Christian church as:
· Tertullian (160 - 220)
· Origen (about 185 - 253/254)
· Cyprian of Carthage (after 200 - 258)
· Eusebius Pamphilus (about 260 - 339)
· Athanasius the Great (295 - 373)
· Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen) (329/330 - 390)
Don't forget that
· Basil the Great (about 330 - 379)
Ambrose of Milan (333/334 - 397)
· Gregory of Nyssa (335 - after 394)
· Jerome of Stridon (347 - 419/420)
· Augustine the Blessed (354 - 430) and others.
The range of problems that interested representatives of patristics was wide. In fact, all the problems of ancient philosophy were, to one degree or another, comprehended by the fathers of the Christian Church. And yet, the problem of man and his structure in the world remained in the foreground. Moreover, if representatives of Cynicism, Epicureanism and Stoicism placed the responsibility of ordering the world on the individual and saw in his activity a means for this, then Christian philosophers made the organization of man in the world dependent on God. Human activity and freedom were subordinated to the will of the Almighty. The volitional efforts of people and their activities began to be viewed through the prism of their compliance with divine institutions. Responsibility for what happens in the world is transferred outside the world. “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” we read in the Bible. Responsibility to people is mediated by responsibility to God. It is before God that sinners will have to answer.
Solving the basic problem of man's relationship to the outside world, to God and other people required philosophical analysis and other problems. Essential here was the problem of the relationship between knowledge and faith.
It is clear that knowledge is the acceptance of something by virtue of justification and evidence, that is, indirectly and out of necessity, while faith is the acceptance of something apart from any justification and evidence, that is, directly and freely. Believing and knowing are completely different things. Religion is based on faith, philosophy is based on knowledge, and therefore the difference between them is also obvious. Since the Middle Ages was the era of unconditional ideological dominance of Christianity in Europe, the problem was the possibility of applying philosophical knowledge to religious faith. There could be no talk of any priority for philosophy, since the primacy of religion was a given. Therefore, it was only necessary to find out whether philosophy can be at least to some extent compatible with religion and therefore it should be left, making it a support of faith, a “handmaiden of theology” or, on the contrary, it is necessary to discard any philosophizing altogether, as a harmful and ungodly activity.
Priority was given to faith. At the same time, the authority of knowledge was quite high. At the same time, knowledge was often seen as a means to strengthen faith. Another important problem discussed during the patristic period and later was the problem of free will. At the same time, some medieval philosophers denied free will, others allowed it, but limited it to the possible intervention of God, and others defended the idea that people are free in their will, but the world is not free from the will of God. People who do not fully comprehend the world can be mistaken and sin. Free will is seen as the source of sin. Knowledge of the world created by God can save you from sin..
Aurelius Augustine is the largest Christian thinker of the patristic period. In his works, he passionately condemns various heretical teachings - Gnosticism, Manichaeism and others. Augustine made God the center of philosophical thinking. God is primary, hence it follows that the soul is superior to the body, the will is superior to the mind. God is the highest essence, only his existence follows from his own nature, everything else necessarily does not exist. He is the only one whose existence is independent; everything else exists only thanks to the divine will. According to Augustine, the world, as a free act of God, is a rational creation. God created it based on his own idea. Christian Platonism was an Augustan version of Plato's doctrine of ideas, which was understood in a theological and personalistic spirit. The ideal model of the real world is hidden in God. Both Plato and Augustine had 2 worlds: the ideal in God and the real in the world and space.
1). Time was created by God.
2). God dwells in eternity, which is the absence of time.
3). The past and future, as such, do not exist, and the present has no duration.
4). Three times exist only in our soul: the present of the past is memory; the present of the present is immediate contemplation; the present of the future is its expectation
5). We also measure time only in our soul
Another widely discussed set of issues related to data. It is important to note that one of them was the problem of good and evil in the world. Many Christian philosophers of the patristic period believed that evil in the world has its source in the deeds of people, which are the realization of their free will, affected by errors. Other thinkers saw the source of evil in the machinations of the devil.
It is important to know that Christian philosophers of the patristic period paid great attention to the promotion of the commandments of religious morality. The works devoted to this amaze with the depth of penetration into the spiritual world of man, the knowledge of human passions and desires. It is worth saying that these works are characterized by pervasive humanism.
In their writings, the church fathers sought to give specific recommendations to those who sought to avoid sin and be saved from the wrath of God.
Anthological issues and problems of the theory of knowledge were touched upon in the works of Christian philosophers of the patristic period. Christian thinkers do not doubt the reality of the existence of the world and recognize the usefulness of its knowledge, since in the course of knowledge the greatness of the Creator will awaken.
Mysticism
A consideration of medieval philosophy will not be complete if we ignore another direction of Christian thought - mysticism . As already noted, its origins go back to the spiritual quest of the church fathers, who believed that the highest being can be known only on the basis of mystical experience, i.e. direct and immediate contact with God.
A prominent representative of the mystical branch of medieval philosophy was Bernard of Clairvaux (1091 – 1153), who rejected the rational ways of comprehending the deity inherent in scholasticism, giving preference to feeling and intuition. Being a well-educated man, familiar with ancient culture and the works of St. Augustine, he nevertheless emphasized his indifference to philosophy, considering the Holy Scripture the main source of his ideas.
Since communication with God requires not reason, but love, humility and attachment of the human soul to the Creator, the abbot of the monastery in Clairvaux elevated asceticism and asceticism to the rank of a way of life. The first step on the path to God is humility and submission, with the help of which a person realizes his imperfection and limitations before the Creator. The second is sympathy, the third is contemplation of truth, which leads him to a state of mystical ecstasy, complete self-forgetfulness and likeness to God.
The most significant mystic of the 13th century was Giovanni Fidanza (1217 - 1274), better known as Bonaventure (“Good Coming”) In his most famous work, “The Soul’s Guide to God,” a member of the Franciscan monastic order, a teacher at the University of Paris, who after his death was canonized and declared one of the five greatest teachers of the Catholic Church, wrote that knowledge of God is achieved not through the study of the external world, but by knowledge of one's own soul. As it moves towards the goal, the soul must work, performing repentance, prayers, and merciful deeds. Under this condition, the human spirit, consisting of memory, reason and will, is able to see the “trace of God” in every feature of the universe and approach Him. Thus, for Bonaventure, faith acts as a teacher of reason.
The crisis of scholastic thought in the 14th – 15th centuries was accompanied by an increased influence of mystical teachings, which, like heresies, expressed a kind of protest against the prevailing orders in society and the church.
The most famous mystic of this period was a Dominican friar who taught in Paris, Strasbourg and Cologne Johann Eckhart (c.1260 – 1327), nicknamed “Meister”, i.e. "master". He asserted the impossibility of knowing God by means of reason, contrasting the latter with the “spark of God” located in the human soul, which is the organ of mystical contemplation. In order for the latter to become possible, a person must renounce the external: “...detachment is the best, for it cleanses the soul, clears the conscience, ignites the heart and awakens the spirit, gives speed to desires; it surpasses virtues: for it gives us the knowledge of God; separates from creation and unites the soul with God.”
The goal of the mystical life, Meister believes, is to unite with God, which requires sincere repentance and cleansing from sins. At the same time, evil and sin are interpreted by the thinker in a unique way. God deliberately tempts man, plunging into sin those for whom he has destined great deeds. The Fall fosters humility, and forgiveness ties us more closely to God. Thus, according to Eckhart's views, evil does not exist in the absolute sense, for it serves the fulfillment of divine purposes.
Since God is not a person for him, but is dissolved in the world, present at every point of it, there is no need to turn to him in prayer, perform rituals and sacraments. And the church, as a cumbersome structure that has lost its spirituality, becomes superfluous. Such unorthodox views of the mystical philosopher caused a negative reaction from the official authorities, and after the death of Meister Eckhart, his teaching was declared false by a papal decree.
Conclusion
Medieval theological philosophy was distinguished by self-containment, traditionalism, a focus on the past, isolation from the real world, belligerence, dogmatism, edification, and teaching.
The following main features of medieval theological philosophy can be distinguished:
· theocentrism (the main cause of all things, the highest reality, the main subject of philosophical research was God);
· little attention was paid to the study of space itself, nature, and the phenomena of the surrounding world, since they were considered the creation of God;
· dogmas (truths that do not need proof) about creation (of everything by God) and revelation (of God about Himself - in the Bible) dominated;
· the contradiction between materialism and idealism is smoothed out;
· man stood out from nature and was declared a creation of God, standing above nature (the divine essence of man was emphasized);
· the principle of human free will within the framework of divine predestination was proclaimed;
· the idea was put forward about the resurrection of a person from the dead (both soul and body) in the future with godly behavior;
· the dogma was put forward about the salvation of the surrounding world and humanity through the incarnation of God in the human body - Jesus Christ (incarnation) and Jesus Christ taking upon himself the sins of all humanity;
· the world was considered knowable through the concept of God, which can be realized through faith in God.
The significance of medieval theological philosophy for the subsequent development of philosophy is that it:
· became a link between ancient philosophy and the philosophy of the Renaissance and modern times;
· preserved and developed a number of ancient philosophical ideas, since they arose on the basis of the ancient philosophy of Christian teaching;
· contributed to the division of philosophy into new spheres (in addition to ontology, which completely merged with ancient philosophy, epistemology emerged);
· contributed to the division of idealism into objective and subjective;
· laid the foundation for the emergence in the future of empirical (Bacon, Hobbes, Locke) and rationalistic (Descartes) directions of philosophy as a result of the practice of nominalists, respectively, to rely on experience (empiricism) and increased interest in the problem of self-consciousness (I am a concept, rationalism);
· awakened interest in understanding the historical process;
· put forward the idea of optimism, expressed in faith in the victory of good over evil and in resurrection.
Dictionary
Apologetics- 1) a learned exposition of the proofs of the truth and divine source of the Christian religion, written by Tertullian. 2) science, the task of which is to prove the truth of Christian teaching and its divinity, as well as to protect the Christian faith.
Apophatic theology- a theology that seeks to adequately express the transcendence of God by consistently negating all of his attributes and designations, eliminating one after another the ideas and concepts related to him ( For example , O God it is forbidden say Not only That , What his No , But And That , What He There is , for He By that side being ) . Apophatic theology was developed by Pseudo-Dionysius Areo-pagite; V average century complemented by catalytic theology.
Epistemology– Theory of knowledge; engaged in the study of the origin, composition and boundaries of human cognition.
Dogmatism- in a broad sense - the tendency to follow dogmas and the inability to question what you believe in.
Cataphatic theology
Catechumens– In the ancient church, catechumens received instruction in the form of a summary of the doctrine, formulated in a creed, which they learned by heart. The assimilation of the symbol of faith was the final moment in the preparation of catechumens, preceding their acceptance of baptism, after which they were admitted to the sacrament of communion. Usually, the first communion was timed to coincide with the Easter holiday, when the catechumens put on white robes, which they did not take off throughout the entire Easter week. Those who had fallen away from the Christian faith also underwent the announcement; in this case, the catechumens had to prove the sincerity of their repentance in order to return to the bosom of the church.
Cynicism- one of the most significant Socratic philosophical schools.
Mysticism– Science that sought the hidden meaning in the Holy Scriptures and rites of faith; taking into account the mysterious, enigmatic, supernatural; a special disposition of the soul to the impressions of the mysterious; a doctrine that recognizes religious objects as accessible to external senses.
Ontology– the doctrine of being as such, a section of philosophy that studies the fundamental principles of being.
Scholasticism– a type of religious philosophy characterized by a fundamental subordination to the primacy of theology, a combination of dogmatic premises with rationalistic methodology and a special interest in formal logical problems; received its most complete development and dominance in Western Europe in the Middle Ages.
Theology- a speculative doctrine about God, based on Revelation, that is, the divine Word, embodied in the sacred texts of theistic religions (in Judaism - the Torah, in Christianity - the Bible, in Islam - the Koran).
Theocentrism- a theological concept according to which God, understood as absolute, perfect being and the highest good, is the source of all being and good. Imitation and assimilation to God are considered as the highest goal and main meaning of human life, and honoring God and serving him is the basis of morality.
Empiricism- one of the most important trends in the philosophy of modern times, which asserts that the source of reliable knowledge is sensory experience alone, and thinking and reason are only capable of combining material supplied by the senses, but do not introduce anything new into it.
Renaissance) – (French Renaissance, Italian Rinascimento), an era in the cultural and ideological development of a number of countries in Western and Central Europe, as well as some countries in Eastern Europe.
References
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Introduction 3
1. The Middle Ages in theses 5
2. Features of medieval philosophy 6
3. Characteristics of the historical period 9
4. Basic principles of medieval philosophy 11
4.1. Theocentrism 11
4.2. Creationism 12
4.3. Providentialism 12
5. Stages of formation of medieval philosophy 13
5.1. Patristics (II-VI century AD) 13
5.2. Scholastica 14
6. Ideas of medieval philosophy 16
7. The debate between nominalists and realists 17
Conclusion 19
Literature. 21
Introduction
Each period of human history had its own characteristics in the development of science, culture, social relations, style of thinking, etc. All this left an imprint on the development of philosophical thought, on what problems in the field of philosophy came to the fore.
The Middle Ages occupies a long period of European history from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the Renaissance (XIV-XV centuries).
The emergence of medieval philosophy is often associated with the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 AD), but such dating is not entirely correct. At this time, Greek philosophy still reigns, and from its point of view, the beginning of everything is nature. In medieval philosophy, on the contrary, the reality that determines all things is God. Therefore, the transition from one way of thinking to another could not happen instantly: the conquest of Rome could not immediately change either social relations (after all, Greek philosophy belongs to the era of ancient slavery, and medieval philosophy belongs to the era of feudalism), nor the internal worldview of people, nor religious beliefs built over centuries . The formation of a new type of society takes a very long time. In the 1st-4th centuries AD, the philosophical teachings of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Neoplatonists competed with each other, and at the same time, pockets of new faith and thought were formed, which would later form the basis of medieval philosophy
The philosophy that took shape during this period had two main sources of its formation. The first of these is ancient Greek philosophy, primarily in its Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. The second source is Holy Scripture, which turned this philosophy into the mainstream of Christianity.
The idealistic orientation of most philosophical systems of the Middle Ages was dictated by the basic dogmas of Christianity, among which the most important were the dogma of the personal form of God the creator, and the dogma of God’s creation of the world “out of nothing.” In the conditions of such a cruel religious dictate, supported by state power, philosophy was declared the “handmaiden of religion”, within the framework of which all philosophical issues were resolved from the position of theocentrism, creationism, and providentialism. 1
The roots of the philosophy of the Middle Ages lie in the religion of monotheism (monotheism). Such religions include Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and it is with them that the development of both European and Arab philosophy of the Middle Ages is associated.
Structurally, my work is written as follows: first there is an introduction containing preliminary information on the topic of the work, the relevance of this topic, then comes Chapter 1, in which the philosophy of the Middle Ages is briefly described in abstracts, Chapter 2 focuses on the features of the Middle Ages, Chapter 3 does emphasis on the characteristics of the historical period, the main principles of philosophy are revealed in the fourth chapter, the fifth contains a description of the stages of the formation of philosophy, the sixth contains multiple fundamental ideas that prevailed during the Middle Ages, the last chapter describes the confrontation between the ideas of nominalists and realists. The conclusion contains the results of the work and at the end of the work there is a list of references used.
1. The Middle Ages in abstracts
Until the 14th century, the clergy had a real monopoly in the field of philosophy, and philosophy was accordingly written from the point of view of the church.
Philosophy is monotheistic, God is understood as one and unique. Medieval thought is always theocentric God determines everything that exists.
The idea of creationism: The source of all things is God, He created the world out of nothing. The whole world is a free gift from God.
The principle of anthropocentrism. The Greeks were dominated by the principle of cosmocentrism; man was important as a part of the whole. In Christianity, man is created in the image and likeness of God, must become like God, and at the same time he is the ruler of what God has created. The Bible states that man is capable of accepting God's will as his own. (The Greeks also had the idea that a person, embodying a good goal, through the intellect becomes like a higher being).
Medieval philosophy is philological in its essence, since the world of the Middle Ages is based on the Bible - a dualistic world (the clergy is opposed to the laity, the kingdom of God is opposed to the kingdom of this world). The medieval world, if compared with the world of antiquity, is characterized by various forms of dualism. It was the dualism of the clergy and the laity, the dualism of the Latin and Teutonic principles, the dualism of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world, the dualism of spirit and flesh. And each of them is reproduced in the dualism of popes and emperors. (this is a problem: Augustine in The City of God) 2
2. Features of medieval philosophy
Unlike antiquity, where the truth had to be mastered, the medieval world of thought was confident in the openness of truth, in the revelation in the Holy Scriptures. The idea of revelation was developed by the church fathers and enshrined in dogma. Truth understood in this way itself sought to take possession of man and penetrate him. Against the background of Greek wisdom, as H. Ortega y Gasset said, this idea was completely new. It was believed that a person was born in the truth, he must comprehend it not for his own sake, but for its own sake, for it was God. It was believed that the world was created by God not for the sake of man, but for the sake of the Word, the second Divine hypostasis, the embodiment of which on earth was Christ in the unity of Divine and human nature. Therefore, the lower world was initially thought of as built into a higher reality, and accordingly the human mind was built into it, partaking in this reality in a certain way - due to man’s innateness in the truth. Sacramental reason is the definition of medieval reason; the functions of philosophy are to discover the correct ways for the implementation of the sacrament: this meaning is contained in the expression “philosophy is the handmaiden of theology.” Reason was mystically oriented, since it was aimed at identifying the essence of the Word that created the world, and mysticism was rationally organized due to the fact that the Logos could not be represented otherwise than logically.
2. Because of this, the foundations of medieval philosophy were theocentrism, providentialism, creationism, and traditionalism. Reliance on authorities, without which a turn to tradition is unthinkable, explains the ideological intolerance towards heresies that arose within orthodox theology. In conditions of given truth, the main philosophical methods were hermeneutic and didactic, closely related to the logical-grammatical and linguistic-semantic analysis of the word. Since the Word lay at the basis of creation and, accordingly, was common to everything created, it predetermined the birth of the problem of the existence of this common thing, otherwise called the problem of universals (from the Latin universalia - universal). Three philosophical movements are associated with attempts to solve the problem of universals: conceptualism (the existence of the general outside and inside a specific thing), realism (the existence of the general outside and before the thing) and nominalism (the existence of the general after and outside the thing). At a time when medieval philosophy was presented as the custodian of ancient traditions (with one of the main ideas being the existence of eidos, images of things before things), realism was considered the only correct approach to understanding what being is; the emergence of nominalism indicated the collapse of medieval thinking, and conceptualism was a combination of moderate realism with moderate nominalism.
Attempts to resolve the problem of universals opened up the possibility of discovering procedures for the involvement of the earthly and heavenly worlds. In the context of a theologically oriented culture, logic, which was both an instrument of philosophy and philosophy itself, represented special ways of contemplating God, which made it possible to build a subject-subject relationship between Him and man. In essence, such logic certainly became theology.
3. The medieval word, depending on where and where it was directed, underwent a double transformation: incarnation (of the Divine word) and disincarnation (when the word was directed from man to God). The word was the highest reality precisely because of its existence in two modes. The world was thought to exist because it was said that it exists. The legend led to existence, but at the same time any created being, remaining Communicated with the Creator, could not be passive: the thing began to broadcast about itself, the Middle Ages did not know any other thing. Any thing, by virtue of the act of creation by God - the supreme subject, was subjective and, accordingly, personal.
4. The ideas of subjectivity and personality are in the closest relationship with the meaning of the incarnate Word, which had no analogues in any of the previous religions and philosophical speculations. Incarnation (embodiment) is not the indwelling of God into the body. The appearance of gods in human form, known among the Greeks, did not mean their becoming human. By inhabiting the body, the gods fully retained their superhuman essence. In Christianity, the incarnation of God includes a sacrifice accepted by the crucified Son of Man, that is, it presupposes internal mysterious divine-human relationships, theological interpretation of which is the doctrine of the Trinity. The incarnation of the Word, the acquisition by the spirit of its final reality, means that the logos is freed from its spiritualistic character. The uniqueness and uniqueness of the act of redemption led to the inclusion of the historical in the sphere of European thought; this gives a very special status to medieval philosophy as a philosophy of history.
The idea of the incarnation of the Word meant that vision and hearing became the most important sense organs, while vision as speculation became a condition for philosophizing.
5. The principle of creationism, which lies at the basis of the Christian attitude to the world, assumed that universally necessary knowledge belongs only to God, therefore, the logic that arose in antiquity, designed to identify true and false judgments, ceases to be equal to the logic of dispute. At the human level, the role of universally necessary knowledge begins to be played by ethics, the purpose of which is to search for regulations for the implementation of the idea of salvation. They are expressed in the ideas of self-awareness, action, conscience. as a moral attitude towards an action, the intention of awareness of the action, personal responsibility. The path to achieving salvation lay through questioning one’s own soul, directly placing a person before God, that is, self-knowledge is understood as knowledge of God, but accomplished in a certain way: With such self-knowledge, the foundations of thinking and the foundations of faith are mentally laid out. Therefore, confession is not only a procedure for communion with God, but it is philosophizing, an example of which is the “Confession” of Aurelius Augustine (354-430), where the personal, questioning, doubting position of philosophy regarding the certainty of faith is most obvious.
6. By virtue of the act of creating man in the image and likeness of God, by virtue of the ability of rational communion with God given to man, man is for the first time considered as a person whose activity is based on free will. The question of free will is closely related to the question of the Supreme Good, which is God, evil, which is interpreted as a lack of good, and predestination (the exponents of this idea were Augustine, John Scotus Eriugena and others. The idea of predestination, however, did not become an orthodox idea). The meaning of free will was associated not with the subordination of necessity, but with the determination of actions by conscience and the free choice of a person (Boethius, Abelard, Bernard of Clairvaux, Albert von Bolstedt, Thomas Aquinas, etc.). The Creator of the world took a pledge for testing the spirit by the experience of the world in the form of love or hatred, which was closely related to the possibility of knowledge: the greater the love for God, the more accurate the knowledge.
7. The revelation of truth in the Holy Scripture presupposed the need for its commentary, which is a verbal meeting of the meanings of Divine revelation and human comprehension. In the verbal dialogue, which took the form of a dispute, the possibility of forming such a dialectic was created, the concepts of which were simultaneously - ambiguous - directed towards the sacred and the secular, forming a special way of cognition. Human gaze, directed towards God, is perfected in His vision. The Divine, directed at man, highlights his mortality and finitude. Philosophizing occurs at the moment of reading an authoritative text or at the moment of commenting on it, that is, it is always in the present, where the eternal touches the temporary. This is not endless improvement in speculation, but an instant response to a thought, this thought simultaneously continuing and stopping, cognizing and revealing complete ignorance. Philosophy through commentary discovered a theological essence in itself, understanding the doubling of existence as common to the world of people and as the Divine universal, which is why the problem of universals was the center of medieval philosophy.
3. Characteristics of the historical period
Social heterogeneity, the emergence of lumpen people
Economic chaos resulting from barbarian raids
The empire needed a religion capable of uniting different social strata (all are equal before God). Throughout the period, there was a mood of deep despair among thinking people regarding the affairs of this world, and the only thing that reconciled it was the hope of a better world in the future. This feeling of despair was a reflection of what was happening elsewhere in Western Europe.
Icentury: a time of unrest and tyrant emperors. Under Nero, to inspire the emperor, the fire of Rome was set, persecution of Christians was carried out, their mass beatings were carried out, the first Christian martyrs appeared, which led to the sympathy of many citizens. In total, the persecution continued for 250 years until the reign of Emperor Constantine. Christians were persecuted not for preaching social equality, not for disobedience to authorities, but for an ideological principle: Christians placed the church above the state and refused to worship the emperor as a deity. By the end of the 1st century, the church had acquired a strict organization, with elders and bishops increasingly separated from ordinary believers.
IIcentury: time of rest - emperors Trojan and Marcus Aurelius. The Church is growing significantly, and basic dogmas are being formed.
3rd century: The reign of Diocletian begins the period of the later Roman Empire. Under Constantine, the capital was moved to Constantinople, Christianity became the state religion (the persecution of pagans gradually began, and under Theodosius the Olympic Games were cancelled).
The process of growth of Christianity before Constantine, as well as the motives for Constantine's conversion, have been explained differently by different authors. Gibbon gives five reasons:
"I. The unshakable and, if we may be allowed to express it this way, the zeal of Christians that does not tolerate contradiction, borrowed, it is true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from that spirit of isolation and quarrelsomeness which, instead of attracting the pagans under the law of Moses, repelled them from it.
2. The doctrine of the future life, improved by all kinds of additional considerations capable of giving weight and effectiveness to this important truth.
3. The ability to perform miracles, which was attributed to the primitive church.
4. Pure and strict morality of Christians.
5. The unity and discipline of the Christian republic, which little by little formed an independent and constantly expanding state in the very center of the Roman Empire."
This period was characterized by a crisis of slave production. Large landowners begin to rent out land the beginning of feudalism, cities decline, money disappears, and the village rises. A new type of power emerges, close to eastern despotism: the emperor relies on the army, bureaucracy and church (!). The church becomes more hierarchical, and the change in the character of the church leads to an increase in disagreement, a desire to return to the pure apostolic church, heresies and schisms arise. A peculiar feature that distinguishes the period from Constantine to the Council of Chalcedon (451) is that theology acquired political significance. Two questions, one after another, agitated the Christian world: first about the nature of the Trinity, and then about the doctrine of the incarnation. 325 – Council of Nicaea – the Creed is developed.
IVcentury: the final triumph of Christianity, baptism becomes mandatory for the entire population of the empire. After the death of Theodosius, the Roman Empire splits into western and eastern, since Theodosius bequeathed it to his two sons Gnoria and Arkady, who begin to quarrel. On August 24, 410, the Visigoths led by Allaric, sent by Arcadius from Byzantium, invaded Rome. By this time, the Visigoths were Christians and formed the first barbarian kingdom in Spain. The Western Empire is declining, while the Eastern Empire is strengthening and expanding its borders. However, in the 7th century, the Arabs began to disturb her. By the 10th century, relations with Russia flourished, the baptism of Rus' began, but in the 14th century, Byzantium perished under the onslaught of the Turks, and the Ottoman Empire was formed. In the western part, the crisis in the 10th century gave way to genuine prosperity with the advent of the empire of Charlemagne (the Kingdom of the Franks). 3
4. Basic principles of medieval philosophy
Theocentrism - (Greek theos - God), such an understanding of the world in which God is the source and cause of all things. He is the center of the universe, its active and creative principle. The principle of theocentrism also extends to knowledge, where theology is placed at the highest level in the system of knowledge; Below it is philosophy, which is in the service of theology; even lower are various private and applied sciences.
Creationism - (Latin creatio - creation, creation), the principle according to which God created living and inanimate nature out of nothing, corruptible, transitory, in constant change.
Providentialism - (Latin providentia - providence), a system of views according to which all world events, including history and the behavior of individual people, are controlled by divine providence (providence - in religious ideas: God, a supreme being or his actions).
4.1. Theocentrism
Medieval philosophy was inextricably linked with Christianity, therefore general philosophical and Christian ideas are closely intertwined in it. The main idea of medieval philosophy is theocentrism.
Theocentrism - (Greek theos - God), such an understanding of the world in which God is the source and cause of all things. He is the center of the universe, its active and creative principle. The principle of theocentrism also extends to knowledge, where theology is placed at the highest level in the system of knowledge; Below it is philosophy, which is in the service of theology; even lower are various private and applied sciences.
Christianity develops the idea of one God, the possessor of absolute goodness, absolute knowledge and absolute power, which matured in Judaism. All beings and objects are his creations, all created by a free act of divine will. The two central dogmas of Christianity speak of the trinity of God and the incarnation. According to the first, the inner life of the deity is the relationship of three “hypostases,” or persons: the Father (the beginningless principle), the Son or Logos (the semantic and formative principle), and the Holy Spirit (the life-giving principle). The Son is “born” from the Father, the Holy Spirit “proceeds” from the Father. Moreover, both “birth” and “procession” do not take place in time, since all the persons of the Christian Trinity have always existed - “pre-eternal” - and are equal in dignity - “equal in honor”.
4.2. Creationism
According to Christian dogma, God created the world out of nothing, created it through the influence of his will, thanks to his omnipotence, which at every moment preserves and supports the existence of the world. This worldview is characteristic of medieval philosophy and is called creationism. (creatio - creation, creation).
The dogma of creation shifts the center of gravity from the natural to the supernatural. Unlike the ancient gods, who were akin to nature, the Christian God stands above nature, on the other side of it, and therefore is a transcendental God. The active creative principle is, as it were, withdrawn from nature, from the cosmos, and transferred to God; in medieval philosophy, the cosmos is therefore no longer a self-sufficient and eternal being, is not a living and animate whole, as many of the Greek philosophers considered it.
In ancient philosophy, certain approaches had already been developed to solve the problem of overcoming the dualism of the world and its essence. The Pythagoreans, Plato and his followers laid down the basic methodological principles of the doctrine of the spiritual unity of the world. But neither the classics of ancient philosophy nor the Neoplatonists created the concept of God as a person. They interpreted the One as some kind of original, which produced all being from itself, as an absolutely abstract and impersonal individuality. The personal understanding of God was first given by Philo of Alexandria.
The characterization of God as a person was a significant step forward in the direction of the Christian worldview, but it did not completely bridge the gap between God and the world. To bridge this gap it was necessary to introduce mediating forces. For this purpose, Philologist uses one of the central concepts of ancient philosophy - the concept of Logos.
But unlike ancient philosophy, Philo’s Logos appears as a spirit created by God, which is originally the divine mind. Philo's idea of the Logos lacked only its identification with the messiah - Christ.
4.3. Providentialism
Providentialism - (Latin providentia - providence), a system of views according to which all world events, including the history and behavior of individual people, are controlled by divine providence (providence - in religious ideas: God, a supreme being or his actions).
5. Stages of formation of medieval philosophy
In medieval philosophy, one can distinguish at least two stages of its formation - patristics And scholasticism, a clear boundary between which is quite difficult to draw.
Patristics - a set of theological and philosophical views of the “church fathers” who set out to substantiate Christianity, relying on ancient philosophy and, above all, on the ideas of Plato.
Scholasticism - is a type of philosophizing in which, by means of the human mind, they try to substantiate ideas and formulas taken on faith.
5.1. Patristics (II-VI century AD)
Patristics got its name from the Latin word “patris”, meaning “fathers of the church”. Accordingly, this is the period of the Christian church fathers, who laid the foundations of Christian, and, consequently, medieval philosophy. Patristics can be divided into several periods:
The Apostolic period (until the middle of the 2nd century) is the time of activity of the apostolic evangelists.
Apologetics (mid-II century - early IV) - Apologists were the name given to educated Christians who defended Christianity from pagan philosophy. To defend Christianity, apologists resorted to the help of ancient and Greek philosophy, using allegory and logical evidence, trying to show that the beliefs of the pagans are absurd, their philosophy has no unity and is full of contradictions, that Christian theology is the only philosophy that brings people the same truth for everyone. The most prominent works that have survived to this day were the apologies of Justin, Tatian, and Tertullian.
Mature patristics (IV-VI) – There are eastern (Greek) and western (Latin) patristics. Thanks to the Greek language, Eastern patristics is more closely connected with ancient philosophy than Western philosophy. The most famous figures of Eastern patristics: Gregory the Theologian, Athanasius of Alexandria, John Chrysostom and others; western: Aurelius Augustine, Ambrose of Milan, Jerome. The main problems of patristics: the formation of creeds, the problem of three hypostases, Christology, creationism and others.
5.2. Scholasticism
Scholasticism (from Greek“schole” - quiet activity, study) - medieval learning. It is closely connected with the emerging from the VIII-IX centuries. education system in the West. At the same time, this is new stage in the development of the spiritual culture of Europe, which replaced patristics. It was based on patristic literature, representing at the same time a completely original and specific cultural formation.
The following periodization of scholasticism is accepted. The first stage is from the 6th to the 9th centuries. - preliminary. The second stage is from the 9th to the 12th centuries. - a period of intensive formation. Third stage - XIII century. - “the golden age of scholasticism.” The fourth stage - XIV-XV centuries. - fading of scholasticism.
Scholastic learning in practice was a series of steps, climbing which the student could reach the highest. The “seven liberal arts” were studied in monastic and church schools. The latter were divided into “trivium” (from the number “three”) and “quadrivium” (from the number “four”). The student had to first master the trivium, i.e. grammar (Latin), dialectics, rhetoric. The Quadrivium, as a higher level, included arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Universities were educational institutions that provided an even higher level of training.
Medieval philosophy entered the history of thought under the name of scholasticism, which has long been used in the common sense as a symbol of empty debate divorced from reality. And there are undoubtedly reasons for this.
The main distinctive feature of scholasticism is that it consciously views itself as a science placed at the service of theology, as a “handmaiden of theology.”
Beginning around the 11th century, interest in the problems of logic, which in that era was called dialectics and the subject of which was work on concepts, increased in medieval universities. The logical works of Boethius, who commented on Aristotle’s Categories and created a system of subtle distinctions and definitions of concepts with the help of which theologians tried to comprehend the “truths of faith,” had a great influence on the philosophers of the 11th-14th centuries. The desire for a rationalistic justification of Christian dogma led to the fact that dialectics turned into one of the main philosophical disciplines, and the dissection and subtle distinction of concepts, the establishment of definitions, which occupied many minds, sometimes degenerated into ponderous multi-volume constructions. The passion for dialectics understood in this way found expression in debates characteristic of medieval universities, which sometimes lasted 10-12 hours with a short break for lunch. These verbal disputes and intricacies of scholastic scholarship gave rise to opposition. Scholastic dialectics was opposed by various mystical movements, and in the 15th - 16th centuries this opposition received form in the form of humanistic secular culture, on the one hand, and Neoplatonic natural philosophy, on the other.
6. Ideas of medieval philosophy
In addition to the above provisions and features, it is equally important to outline the following ideas of medieval philosophy:
The idea of the commandments: The commandments are an agreement between God and man, the first list of crimes that a person can commit. A person who violates these commandments will be judged not by the ruler or the state, but by God himself. Only faith, and not fear of punishment, prevents a person from violating them.
The idea of original sin: Adam and Eve violated God's prohibition and tasted the forbidden fruit. For this they were expelled from Eden, but became free and independent. By committing the first sin, man proved his right to self-determination.
The idea of the resurrection of the soul: In place of faith in the transmigration of souls comes faith in the resurrection of the soul - now having died, a righteous person will find himself again not on mortal earth, but in a better world - the Kingdom of God. Life is considered only as a short stay on earth, compared to eternal life in paradise, and death is only a departure from it.
The idea of the holiness of the body: Not only the soul is holy, but also the body. Christ is made of flesh and blood, just like man.
The idea of universal equality: All people are equal, since God created them equal, and in heaven people are also equal. For God and religion there is no peasant or king - there is only a Christian.
Hermeneutics: Explanation and interpretation of biblical texts.
7. The debate between nominalists and realists
In medieval philosophy there was an acute dispute between spirit and matter, which led to a dispute between realists and nominalists. The dispute was about the nature of universals, that is, about the nature of general concepts, whether general concepts are secondary, that is, a product of the activity of thinking, or whether they represent the primary, real, exist independently.
The transition to a feudal social system was marked by the decline of the independent significance of philosophy. It was accompanied by the displacement of polytheism by monotheism. Christianity became the dominant form of religion in Europe, according to which the world was created by one God. The triumph of Christianity was explained by the fact that it most fully corresponded to the social, political and cultural needs of feudal society. In the fight against the remnants of paganism (polytheism), Christianity needed a philosophical method of reasoning and proof, so it partly assimilated elements of ancient culture, science and philosophy, subordinating them, however, to the justification and justification of the Christian religion. Philosophy became the handmaiden of theology for almost a millennium. Theologians placed God and man as his creation at the center of the new picture of the world. If the ancient worldview was characterized by cosmocentrism, then the medieval one was characterized by theocentrism.
Medieval philosophy is characterized by a new approach to understanding nature and man. According to Christian dogma, God created the world out of nothing, created it by an act of his will, thanks to his omnipotence. Divine omnipotence continues to preserve and support the existence of the world. This worldview is called creationism (from the Latin word creatio, which means “creation”).
The dogma of creation shifts the center of gravity from the natural to the supernatural. Unlike the ancient gods, who were, as it were, akin to nature, the Christian god stands above nature, on the other side of it. The active creative principle is, as it were, withdrawn from nature, from space and from man and transferred to God. In medieval philosophy, therefore, the cosmos is not a self-sufficient and eternal being, as many of the Greek philosophers considered it.
Medieval philosophy entered the history of mankind under the name of scholasticism, which has long acted as a symbol of empty debate divorced from reality. The main distinctive feature of scholasticism is that it consciously views itself as a science, divorced from nature, from the world and placed at the service of theology.
Medieval scholastics in Western Europe saw the task of philosophy in the interpretation and formal justification of religious dogmas. In the 13th century, the theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) systematized Catholic doctrine. Acting as a theorist of the spiritual dictatorship of the papacy, Thomas Aquinas in his system likened the power of the pope on Earth to the power of God in heaven. The Catholic religion and the theological teaching of F. Aquinas served as the main ideological weapon of the spiritual and secular feudal lords. 4
There were serious differences among medieval philosophers on certain issues. These differences revealed the struggle between materialistic and idealistic tendencies in a unique way. The dispute between the scholastics was about what constituted general concepts (“universals”). The so-called realists argued that general concepts exist in reality, before things, that they exist objectively, independently of consciousness in the mind of God. The realists were opposed by the nominalists, who taught that general concepts are just names of things, and that they thus exist “after things” and do not have an independent existence. Their views revealed a materialistic tendency in the philosophy of the Middle Ages.
It would be wrong to think that complete stagnation reigned in medieval philosophy. After a number of centuries, during which the economic and social devastation caused by the invasion of Germanic tribes and the destruction of the Roman Empire really hindered the development of culture, economic and creative ties, and communication between peoples, in the 11th-12th centuries. a gradual rise in economics, culture and philosophical thought begins; the works of ancient Greek authors are translated into European languages; mathematics develops; works appear in which the idea is put forward of the need to study not only the essence of God and the human soul, but also the essence of nature. Within the framework of medieval philosophy, the first, albeit weak, shoots of a new approach to the world begin to emerge.
So, it is characteristic of medieval philosophy that it had a pronounced religious, theocentric character, and along with this, the fact that scholasticism dominated in it. 5
Conclusion
Medieval philosophy made a significant contribution to the further development of epistemology, to form the foundations of natural science and philosophical knowledge. XIII century - a characteristic feature of this century is the slow but steady increase in the bosom of feudalism, its decomposition, the formation of the rudiments of a new, capitalist system 6.
The development of the commodity-money economy in Western European countries caused significant economic recovery. Changes in production relations inevitably caused certain transformations in the ideological superstructure. As a result, at the end of the 12th century. and the first half of the 13th century. feudal cities begin to strive to create their own intellectual and cultural atmosphere. The urban bourgeoisie strives for the development of urban schools and the emergence of universities.
The philosophical expression of the awakening of this life and the expansion of scientific knowledge was the perceived Aristotelianism. In Aristotle's philosophy, they tried to find not so much practical recommendations that could be used in economic and socio-political life. This philosophy was the impetus for scholars of the time, who were forced to admit that Augustinianism was no longer relevant to the current intellectual situation. After all, Augustinianism, based on Platonic traditions, was directed against natural science research. Augustine argued that knowledge of the material world does not bring any benefit, because not only does it not increase human happiness, but it absorbs the time necessary for contemplating much more important and sublime objects. The motto of Augustine's philosophy: “I want to understand God and the soul. And nothing more? Absolutely nothing!” 7.
The medieval dispute about the nature of universals significantly influenced the further development of logic and epistemology, especially on the teachings of such major philosophers of modern times as Hobbes and Locke. Elements of nominalism are also found in Spinoza, and the technique of nominalistic criticism of the ontology of universals was used by Verkley and Hume in the formation of the doctrine of subjective idealism. The thesis of realism about the presence of general concepts in human consciousness subsequently formed the basis of idealistic rationalism (Leibniz, Descartes), and the position about the ontological independence of universals passed into German classical idealism.
So, medieval philosophy made a significant contribution to the further development of epistemology, developing and clarifying all logically possible options for the relationship between the rational, empirical and a priori, a relationship that would later become not only the subject of scholastic debate, but the foundation for the formation of the foundations of natural science and philosophical knowledge.
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Chanyshev A.N. Course of lectures on ancient and medieval philosophy. -M.: Higher School, 1991. – 603 p.
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