Western European scholasticism. What it is?

This word has become common, and probably no one who has not heard of it. Scholasticism ... What it is, however, not everyone will tell you exactly. Now we have the opportunity in all this to understand in more detail. The very word originated in the era of establishing feudal relations and the so-called "Carolingian Renaissance". In those days, the philosophy of patristic and scholasticism dominated. The first discipline was concerned with justifying established Christian dogmas. However, it has almost exhausted itself, because the Roman Catholic Church has established itself as the ruling one. And Scholasticism? What is this in the described epoch? Then so called the commentaries on these dogmas and work on their systematization.

This direction in the history of Christian thought became dominant in the medieval era. The very word comes from the Greek "cleavage" ("school"). At first, the art of commenting and systematizing developed in monastic schools, and then in universities. Its history is divided into three periods. The first is the time when scholasticism was born. This period, as a rule, begins with Boethius and ends with Thomas Aquinas. The second stage is the philosophy of the "angelic doctor" himself and his followers. And, finally, the late period - the fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries - when scholasticism began to become obsolete as a basic discipline, and especially in relation to the natural sciences. It was then that she caused a fire of criticism towards herself.

If we ask ourselves: "Scholasticism - what is it? What problems did she raise? ", Then the answer will be as follows. Philosophers at that time were not at all involved in counting the number of devils at the tip of the needle, as they often joke about, but were interested in the relationship between knowledge and faith, reason and will, and also essence and existence. In addition, one of the hottest topics for discussions at the time was the reality of the so-called universal categories. Representatives of different views on this issue were called realists and nominalists.

One of the first great scholastics is John Scotus Eriugen, who was well known at the court of Charlemagne. He even dared to answer a famous ruler witty and risky joke. When he asked the philosopher what a difference between the cattle and the Scot (a play of words based on the Latin origin of the thinker), he replied that it was the length of the table. The fact is that Eriugena and Carl were sitting opposite. The Emperor understood the insult of his hint and did not continue. John Scott put forward the idea that between real religion and philosophy there are no contradictions, and the criterion of truth is the mind.

In the XII century - in the era of the crusades and the formation of universities - the most outstanding scholastics were John Rossellyn and Anselm of Canterbury. The latter began to express ideas that thinking must be subordinated to faith. The era of the heyday of scholasticism falls on a very turbulent period in the life of Western Europe. Then Christian philosophers, through Arabic translations from Greek, discovered Aristotle and began to systematize comments on sacred texts on the basis of the system and the logic of the latter. Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great are considered thinkers who have created the most consistent and complete theories of this kind. They subordinated the philosophy of theology.

Do not forget that in those days opponents of the dominant tendencies in Christian theology - especially the so-called Cathars - also wrote many treatises and commentaries. They, in turn, used the same scholastic arguments, categories and logical inferences, using the Neoplatonists and Aristotle. But the destruction of this trend in theology as a result of the brutal ideological struggle did not leave us the opportunity to fully appreciate the philosophical level of the opponents of Catholicism.

In the XIV century, scholasticism opened for itself the so-called "Via modern" - a new way. We owe this to the Oxford school (Ockham, Duns Scotus), who preferred to make the object of knowledge an exceptionally real thing, than opened the way to modern methods of natural and mathematical sciences. However, the whole previous philosophy has formed the basic principles of the scientific approach, characteristic of university education, including such concepts as references and scientific apparatus. So the question: "Scholasticism - what is it?" - we can quite easily answer that. This is a very important period in the history of philosophy, without which there would be neither modern science, nor the main approaches to its methodology.