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Philosophy in the Middle Ages > Historic Development> The 14th and the 15th Centuries

The 14th and the 15th Centuries

The last two centuries of the Middle Ages were centuries of conflict: conflict between political power and ecclesiastical power in the 14th c.; in the 15th c., wars exploded between nation-states (the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, 1339-1423); and inside the Church, a split opened up between an ecclesiologic concept of power concentrated around the pope and the papal curia, and a spiritual and communitarian concept, starting with the move of the papacy to Avignon and lasting into the first decades of the 15th c., the age of antipopes and of conciliarism (the councils of Constance, 1414-18 and of Basle, 1431-49). The 14th c. is a century of intense intellectual activity, innovation, and criticism which saw the evolution of positions on universals, with various forms of realism (bound to the Platonic ideas) and of nominalism; different kinds of relations between logic, physics, and theology, in particular on the notion of divine omnipotence; the rise of ideas about nature which are different from Aristotle’s: the theory of impetus elaborated by nominalist students of physics at Paris; the articulation of counterfactual hypotheses by the Calculatores of Oxford; the alchemical notion of integration between the creation and transformation of the world, which made use of Raymond Lull’s logic of correlatives. The most interesting thinkers of the epoch developed their systems after the crisis produced by the condemnation of 1277, which revealed the non-definitive and unstable status of the Christian-Aristotelian synthesis proposed by the Scholastics and codified by St. Thomas. In Germany Dominican masters who had studied at Cologne under the direction of Albert the Great proposed original concepts relative to the intellect: Thierry of Vriberg (1270-1320) identified it with the abditum mentis (the ‘bottom’ or ‘core’ of the soul), and he conceives of it as a dynamic substance insofar as it acts; on this line one can also place Eckhart (c. 1260-1328), who further elaborated the idea of divine being as ‘pureness of being,’ thereby putting it in relation with the Neoplatonic and Dionysian notions of negative theology. Having encountered the work of the beghina Marguerite Porete (d. 1310), Eckhart proposed a philosophic interpretation of the concept of the ‘annihilated soul’ (a soul freed from the limits of individuality through mystical experience), understanding it in the light of the ‘core of the soul’ doctrine and connecting it to Aristotle’s ethical ideal of the happy life in the new figure of the ‘noble man,’ an idea of nobility close to Dante’s. The themes of Neoplatonic philosophy are cultivated in Berthold of Moorsburg’s commentary on the Elementation theologica of Proclus. In Paris, the Franciscan John Duns Scotus (1265-1308), though belonging chronologically to the previous century, distinctly surpassed Thomist positions by putting at the center of his work ideas on the unity of being, individual knowledge, and the absolute power of God. William of Ockham (c. 1285-1349), also a Franciscan, never obtained a position as master of the University of Oxford, due to the harsh opposition raised by his philosophic ideas: contingency and individuality replaces the ontological chain of beings; the link between the absolute power of God and the order of creation (as a guarantee that the human intellect can recognize order in nature) in the notion of a ‘pact’; complete nominalism in logic, according to which the universal is a pure mental concept (or intentio) which stands for the individual and the species; and the concept of intuitive knowledge. With respect to intuitive gnoseology, a broad discussion unfolds, in which Peter Auriol, Gregory of Rimini, and Nicholas of Autrecourt stand out. The political doctrine that the emperor is not subject to papal authority, articulated by Ockham after fleeing from the papal prison at Avignon together with the spiritual Franciscan Michael of Cesena, found intellectual sympathizers in the figures of Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275-1342) and Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). Both created arguments at variance with the traditional discourse on the relationship between the powers Church and empire, by drawing on ideas in Aristotle’s Politics and theoretically reformulating the idea of power itself in the context of profound European political change; at the same time, however, they distinguished themselves from Aristotle by paying close attention to the empirical reality of their time. Other specialist disciplines concerning nature and the human body evolved and slowly loosened the universalizing tendencies characteristic of Aristotelian philosophy during the course of the 14th c., above all medicine and physiognomics. Astrology and alchemy, were still a part of the shared intellectual heritage, though their central matrix concerning the interaction and transformation of nature were not Aristotelian physics, but rather Hermetism.

The 15th c. saw the multiplication of universities, the diffusion of the culture developed in the traditional venues of teaching, and a crystallization of Scholastic positions opposed to the viae, i.e. the most representative philosophic systems created between the 13th and 14th c.: the via of Thomas, the 'via moderna' (the followers of Ockham, among whom Gabriel Biel and Paul of Venice are the most significant), the 'via antiqua' (the followers of Albert the Great such as Heimeric van de Velde, 1395-1460), and the humanist movement, already begun in the previous century by laymen like Francis Petrarch (1304/1374). The diffusion of philosophic concepts even outside the schools, especially in the courts and humanistic environments, influenced in France the work of Christine de Pizan (c. 1363-1430), a writer of central importance in the emerging debate on gender equality or difference, which will later continue into the modern period with the so-called ‘querelle des femmes.’ The university became the third power after the Church and the states (sacerdotium, regnum, studium); this can be understood in relation to the other two powers in two ways, organic and critical. First, intellectual power can be considered as an organic extension of one of the other two: of ecclesiastical power, according to the theocratic position of Giles of Rome (13th c.), who utilized a theological concept of hierarchy; or of royal power, according to the position of the jurists in the court of Philip the Beautiful, who used among other things the organic metaphor of comparing the state to the human body, fully developed by Marsilius of Padua, who argued for a non-hierarchical and metaphorical understanding of the two powers based on the equality of heart and brain. Secondly, it can assume a critical stance: for example, in the problem of ecclesiology, as is demonstrated both by the distinction between the Greater Holy Church and the Lesser Holy Church in the mystical proposition of Marguerite Porete, shared by other exponents of the Beguinal world and of speculative mysticism, and by the emerging ideas of lay spirituality and of a national church, first with John Wycliffe (1330-1384), and then with Jan Hus (1372-1415). The most representative philosopher of the century is Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), who is usually considered as the first ‘modern’ philosopher for his arguments on the relationship between the finite and infinite, the relationship between God and the world, and for his original ideas on knowledge as ‘learned ignorance.’ Nicholas conducted his philosophical investigations outside of the universities, immersed in problems raised by conciliarism and more generally by the political moment. His work entitled De pace fidei, a dialogue between various religions about the idea that modernity would call ‘tolerance,’ was written in 1453, right after the Turks sacked Constantinople. One of the outcomes of this event was that it drove many philosophers and theologians of Byzantine origin into Italy, and encouraged the resumption of contact between the East and West already begun with the presence of eastern scholars at the councils of Florence and Ferrara (1433-34). George Gemistus Plethon, George of Trebizond, Johannes Bessarion introduced the works of Plato and the philosophic need to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, which would have been attempted by many writers gathered together in the Platonic Academy, founded at Florence in 1440. Thus Renaissance philosophy begins, and its developmentwill also be influenced by Hebraic philosophic writings produced in Latin by authors such as Hazdai Crescas (d. 1410), Isaac Abrabanel (1437-1508), and Elias Delmedigo (1460-1497), all of whom reintroduce Kabbalistic themes into philosophic discussions.

Philosophically speaking, the end of the Middle Ages is marked by the rupture with late-Scholastic logic and Aristotelianism, the trends begun in the 12th c. The Renaissance will construct its own philosophical identity starting with programmatic anti-Scholastic polemics (Garin, Renaissances and Revolutions). But with respect to other forms of thought—for example scientific knowledge: nominalist physics, medicine, and Hermetic-practical doctrines—the break between the Middles Ages and Renaissance is neither so clear nor contemporaneous with the humanist critique of Scholasticism. Scholasticism will continue in the universities for centuries, and its contents will change at an almost imperceptible pace: between the 16th and 17th c., in fact, we find the resumption of Scholastic thought, the so-called ‘Second Scholasticism,’ which is expressed in the Aristotelian commentaries of Coimbra (Conimbricenses).

14th-15th c.
University of Siena - Facoltà di lettere e filosofia
Handbook of Medieval Philosophy

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