The 11th Century

The 11th c. is a period which sees the solidification of feudal organization and the evolution of the Latin world, characterized by phenomena like the expansionism of the Normans, the beginning of the Spanish Reconquest, and the first crusade; and it was then that the first stirrings of religious renewal appeared, eventually expressed through the reform of Benedictine monasticism, supported by the abbey of Cluny, and through the birth of new orders that follow the rule of St. Benedict but with a more radical notion of reform: the Carthusians and the Cistercians. This is also the century that gives birth to a proper medieval philosophy in the Latin language, starting with the application of dialectics to theological problems. Theology has not yet become an autonomous discipline, and the discussion among the so-called ‘dialecticians’ (Berenger of Tours: c. 1005-1088) and the anti-dialecticians (Peter Damian: 1007-1072; Lanfranc of Pavia: 1010-1089) does not turn so much on the legitimacy of the use of dialectics, but rather on how dialectics should be considered in relation to revelation: a way of rationalizing discussions of faith for Berenger, who denies the real presence of the body of Christ in the Eucharist on the basis of logical argumentation; it is an ‘ancella’ or servant for Peter Damian, who uses it to confront the problem of the absolute power of God. Responding to the question of whether the divine power can alter natural laws and the principle of non-contradiction, Damian argues that God, inasmuch as he is the source of natural laws, is not subject to them.

In the schools the use of the logical rules of Aristotle and Boethius and discussions of moral themes derived from Stoic philosophy by masters such as Fulbert of Chartres (c. 960-1028) and Abbo of Fleury (c. 945-1004) produce an embryonic philosophic culture. But the most original and innovative philosophic contribution of the epoch is not born in the environment of the schools, but rather in the monastic environment, and is the work of Anselm of Canterbury (1033/4-1109), disciple of Lanfranc of Pavia and author of numerous writings, among which the most important are the Monologion, the Proslogion, the Cur Deus homo, the De veritate, and the De grammatico. As the first original Christian thinker after Augustine, Anselm develops the semantic problems implied in the logic of Aristotle and uses dialectic arguments both to prove the existence of God and to reason about theological topics such as the incarnation of Christ. The intelligence of faith (fides quaerens intellectum) on which is based the ontological proof of the existence of God and which is explicated in the Proslogion is, from a formal viewpoint, analogous to the position of the followers of Kalam, present also in the dialecticians’ writings, that can be viewed as a kind of Christian Kalam.

In the Islamic world, the doctrines of Kalam, in the meantime split into two schools, Asharite and Mutazilite, and Sufism continued to change. But the most significant philosophy of the 11th c. is that of the Persian Avicenna (980-1037), who combined themes from the oriental wisdom tradition (ecstasy, prophecy) with Greek philosophy, thereby creating original metaphysical doctrines (the idea of pure or absolute being and the distinction between essence and existence), new psychological and gnoseological concepts (the soul as a spiritual substance and the valorization of the imagination), and linking emanation cosmology of Greek origin to Iranian angelology. al-Ghazali (1058-1111) worked out a non-Aristotelian logic, and confuted Avicenna and the positions of the Hellenizing philosophers in general, though in the West he was considered be just one of them. The diverse philosophic doctrines of the Islamic world are described in the Fihrist of al-Nadim and in the works of the theologian and jurist from Cordoba, Ibn Hazm (994-1064). Under the Omayyade caliphate of Cordoba (929-1031), the culture produced in the philosophic centers of oriental Islam was diffused throughout the Iberian peninsula (al-Andalus), where it bore its first important fruit in the work of the Jewish philosopher born at Malaga, Salomon Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron, 1021-1051). In his Fons vitae, Avicebron proposed a philosophic doctrine later (in the Latin world) called ‘universal hylemorphism’, and grounded it in a theory of emanation based on Neoplatonic notions and on the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form. Neoplatonic themes characterized Byzantine culture too and, in particular, the works of Michael Psellos (1018-1078): while other Aristotelian ideas (the intellect, mental happiness) stand at the center of the work of two intellectuals in the circle of the empress Anna Comnena, Eustratius of Nicea, and Michael of Ephesus whose commentaries on Aristotle's Ethics will be translated into Latin in the 13th c.