Philosophy of the middle ages

The purpose of the theme is: to show specific character of Medieval philosophy problems, consideration of the basic stages of its development and its place in European philosophy and culture.

Key words of the theme: re

3.1. Historical and Social-Cultural Grounds for the Development of Mediaeval Philosophy, Its Characteristic Features and Problems of Research

The Middle Ages cover a long stretch of the history of Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance – more than a whole millennium. In the early Middle Ages, Christian dogmas evolved along with the formation of the European states after the collapse of the Roman Empire (V century A.D.), while the later Middle Ages (beginning with the XI century) are associated with the spreading of feudalism, which used Christianity as its ideological basis, clarifying and deepening the details of this worldview in accordance with its own demands.

The idealist orientation of most mediaeval philosophical systems was prompted by the dogmas of Christianity, of which the most important were the dogma of the personal form of one God the Creator, which rejected out of hand the atomistic doctrines of antiquity (this dogma was primarily worked out by St. Augustine); and the dogma of the creation of the world by God out of nothing; this last dogma erected an insurmountable barrier between the ideal world of God the Creator and the material world of earthly life, it asserted the latter’s derivative origin from the ideal will of the Supreme Being and, moreover, it also assumed the limitedness of the world in time (the beginning and the end of the world).

Subject to these harsh dictates of religion supported by state authority, philosophy was declared to be the maidservant of theology (St. Pietro Damiani’s formula) expected to use the power of the rational apparatus to confirm the dogmas of Christianity. This philosophy came to be known as scholasticism (fr. L. scholasticus "learned", fr. Gk. schole "school"). All truth was believed to have been given in the biblical texts, so it was necessary to apply a system of correctly constructed syllogisms to actualize that truth by deriving the entire fullness of logical consequences. Naturally, scholasticism relied in this respect on the heritage of antiquity, particularly on Aristotle’s formal logic. Since the biblical texts and the symbols of faith were mystical or allegoric in character, their unambiguous interpretation demanded sophisticated logic, a kind of scholastic rationalism, which treated, for example, the dogma of the Trinity, i.e. of the three hypostases of the one God, as a model of logical prob­lems. The content of scholastic debates had no serious impact on philosophy, but in terms of the technique of reasoning scholasticism proved very useful for the development of logic.

There are 4 main ideas of Christian worldview which expose the very essence of the concepts of God, of man and the world in Mediaeval philosophers’ speculations:

1. The Idea of the Trinity or believing in God as the Creator, Savior and Holy Spirit. God is Havens’ Father who created subsequently the world and man. The latter was the sort of perfection as God created him similar to himself, but man fell away from God because of his primordial transgression.

God is the Savior Christ who is in the same time both the son of God and the Human son, who takes off the burden of the primordial sin from Human. He manifests in himself both Divine and human character. God Father and God Son are linked by the Holy Spirit. He also links them both with Human.

2. The Idea of Free Choice between Good and Evil. According to Christian dogmas the world is divided into 3 realms: the Divine - Heavens, the earthly one and the Devil’s – the hell. Man makes his choice on the Earth and comes at last either to God or to Devil. (They accepted this though Christianity suggested absoluteness of Good and relativity of Evil).

3. The idea of afterdeath recompense and Divine Mercy. In Christianity we have additionally the idea of Divine grace and absolution. The most attractive expression of such absolution is the act of crucifixion of the Christ, who liberated mankind from the primordial sin. In Christianity an important role got the idea and practice of penance (repentance) when man opens his feelings and consciousness to God and then gets salvation. The idea of repentance is a sort of the bridge between God and man. The one who forgives is approaching the Christ. From this follows the deepest Christian principle of non-resistance to evil.

4. The idea of Apocalypses (from Greek revelation) of human history, it shows the history of mankind not as a cycle, but as a line, which got its beginning and end, that in its turn is the transmission into some other being.

The main peculiarities of the Mediaeval Philosophy:

1. Creationism, meaning that God created everything out of nothing

2. Theocentrism, meaning that any problem in philosophy including the problem of man is solved via God.

3. Theodicy solves contradiction between the idea of God as Absolute Good and the existence of Evil in the world.

4. Providentialism (fr. Greek meaning “foresight”) means that everything is developing according to God’s purport and is supposed to achieve it at last.

5. Personalism, meaning that God is the Absolute Personality and derivative from him is the personality of man, who is able to cognize God only through deep and mystic communication of personalities, by means of prayer, confession and penance. Man should not justify himself to anybody but God. Only God knows all his deeds, thoughts and actions and is responsible to judge him.

6. Revelationism, meaning that God is the ultimate truth, the knowledge of which is contained in the Bible, so everybody should learn this Divine knowledge.

The history of the Mediaeval philosophy can be divided into 3 periods: Patristics with Apologetics, Early Scholasticism and the Late Scholasticism. These periods are closely connected with the ways of philosophizing of religious philosophers. During the whole period Holy Scripture was interpreted and commented.

As the whole truth is contained in the Bible, everybody should learn this Divine knowledge. But this knowledge was symbolic, mysterious and figurative, so the aim of philosophers was to interpret, explicate, clear out the Holy Writ. This process passed through three stages:

• etymological analysis ;

• conceptual analysis;

• the text of Holy Writ became the base for further development of philosophical ideas by religious philosophers themselves.

In the history of Mankind there is no any exact line which divides it into different parts. New ideas are usually born within the actual philosophical systems; they are being developed and then become profound. In the West philosophy admiration of nature had been changed into admiration of spirit.

The main problems investigated in the Mediaeval period are as following:

1) The nature of the universals. During the whole Mediaeval period there was a hot discussion between realism and nominalism attempting to solve this problem.

2) Correlation of will and consciousness.

3) The problem of free will, the choice between good and evil.

4) Correlation of soul and body (Origen: man is spirit, which is given by God and directed to good and truth; soul is of dual nature: high and low (passions); body manifests nature. So evil comes from abuse (breach) of freedom. The Mediaeval asceticism was not to restrain the nature (body), but to bring up flesh to bendle it to the spiritual grounds.

5) Correlation of nature and blessings.

6) Correlation of faith, consciousness and will.