Philosophy in the Latin World

Between the 6th and 7th c., the collapse of teaching institutions and a general climate of instability stimulated an awareness in various intellectuals that it was necessary to safeguard and transmit the cultural heritage of antiquity in new forms adequate to the times. For these reasons Boethius planned to translate antique philosophical texts, a project he completed only partially; Cassiodorus articulated an educational curriculum focused on the tradition of the liberal arts in the context of monasticism; and Isidore of Seville constructed a new type of container for the transmission of knowledge, the encyclopedia. In the early Middle Ages it is theology and the rise of new theological problems that create a new space for philosophy. Both in the monasteries and in the schools born during the Carolingian reform (9th c.), Augustine of Hippo is the principal author and guide for the relationship between the liberal arts and Sacred Scripture and for reflection on theological problems; the various phases of his thought influenced the authors who participated in the intellectual debates of the time (on predestination, on the Eucharist, and on the soul). Only one of these writers, John Scotus Eriugena, created a real and true systematic philosophy, but in its own time it won few followers. In the 11th c., from the debate between those for (Berenger of Tours) and against (Peter Damian and Lanfranc of Pavia) the use of dialectics in theology, a real medieval philosophy began to take shape in Latin, and with Anselm of Canterbury we see the beginnings of rational argumentation applied to the doctrines of the faith, as well as the first medieval meditations on language. In the 12th c. the study of logic gained even more currency and new fields of research were created: Abelard was an innovator in the disciplines of logic, theology, and ethics, while the masters of Chartres, making use of new philosophic and scientific texts translated from Arabic, developed a philosophic interpretation of the creation, comparing the Biblical narrative with Plato’s Timaeus. In this way, a new space was opened up also for natural philosophy. The monastic culture underwent important internal changes with the work of the masters of St. Victor and Hildegard of Bingen, while Bernard of Clairvaux was strongly opposed to the masters of philosophy who taught in the schools. It was, however, the new philosophy that would emerge from the conflict victorious: the universities themselves are proof of this process of transformation, insofar as they were structured around a philosophic curriculum based on the interpretation of Aristotle, that changed the relationship between philosophy and theology. After an initial phase of mistrust and prohibition, with Albert the Great the assimilation of Aristotelian philosophy began, grounded in an Arabic interpretative framework and integrated with Neoplatonic elements. The teaching of Albert produced various results: the radical Aristotelianism of the Latin Averroists, the Christian Aristotelianism of St. Thomas, and the valorization of Platonism in German students, most important among whom is Eckhart. The inescapable confrontation with Aristotle had a different turn in the thought of Bonaventure of Bagnorea, who developed the Franciscan notion that the created world is a sign of the creator into a philosophical reflection, beginning a line of thought that we find also present in the scientific work of Robert of Lincoln and Roger Bacon; while the Catalan Ramon Lull followed an original philosophic route, working out a method of demonstration inspired by the logic of al-Ghazali. At the end of the 13th c., the belief that Aristotelianism and Christianity could be completely integrated gave way to the search for new approaches bythinkers like Duns Scotus and William of Ockham; and in late-Scholasticism all philosophical approaches developed in the confrontation with Aristotle's thought would become fixed in the schools and different ‘viae’.