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Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change
Series I, Culture and Values, Volume 9

History of Western Philosophy

by George F. McLean and Patrick J. Aspell

Medieval Western Philosophy:
The European Emergence

By

Patrick J. Aspell

The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy

1

Copyright © 1999 by
The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy

Gibbons Hall B-20
620 Michigan Avenue, NE Washington, D.C. 20064

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Aspell, Patrick, J.
Medieval western philosophy: the European emergence / Patrick J. Aspell. p.cm. — (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series I. Culture and values ; vol. 9) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Philosophy, Medieval. I. Title. III. Series.
B721.A87 1997 320.9171’7’090495—dc21
97-20069 CIP

ISBN 1-56518-094-1 (pbk.)

2

Table of Contents

Chronology of Events and Persons Significant in and beyond the History of Medieval Europe

  • Preface
  • xiii

1

Part One: The Origins of Medieval Philosophy

  • Chapter I. Augustine: The Lover of Truth
  • 5

Chapter II. Universals According to Boethius, Peter Abelard, and Other Dialecticians Chapter III. Christian Neoplatoists: John Scotus Erigena and Anselm of Canterbury

Part Two: The Maturity of Medieval Philosophy Chronology

Chapter IV. Bonaventure: Philosopher of the Exemplar Chapter V. Thomas Aquinas: Philosopher of the Existential Act

Part Three: Critical Reflection And Reconstruction

Chapter VI. John Duns Scotus: Metaphysician of Essence Chapter VII. William of Ockham: Philosophy of Nominalism Epilogue
57 73 97 101 155 237 243 317 387

  • 391
  • Bibliography

Acknowledgements

3

Preface

"We are like dwarfs," wrote Bernard of Chartres, "seated on the shoulders of giants; we see more things than the ancients and things more distant, but this is due neither to the sharpness of our own sight, nor to the greatness of our stature, but because we are raised and borne aloft on that giant mass."1 In the search for truth, modern Western philosophers stand on the shoulders of the "giant mass" of ancient and medieval thinkers whose ideas they have inherited.
Western civilization lives by the ideas that animate it." This book is written for students

making their first acquaintance with these ideas in the history of philosophy. The author’s chief

purpose is to introduce students to the origin, development, and interconnection of philosophical ideas. To achieve this goal, emphasis has been placed upon making the major ideas of the medieval philosophers accessible to the reader in a direct, clear, and informative manner. This history of philosophy is intended, not as an end, but as a means of introducing the reader to a more extensive

and intensive study of the philosophers’ writings and of their interpretations by specialists in

various fields.
When the student is first acquainted with the myriad ideas of medieval thought, they may appear to him widely elusive, hopelessly incoherent, and even self-contradictory. It is the taunting, tantalizing challenge of the history of philosophy to discover the overall pattern of interrelated meaning. With this insight one can savor the distinctive contribution of each man or movement.
In understanding the meaning of philosophical ideas, one has not only factual information but an appreciation of what philosophizing meant for Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham. What better way is there to learn to philosophize than to observe the great philosophers of the past? This history of philosophy is intended as an introduction to the process of philosophizing itself. With adequate knowledge of the history of philosophy, one can share in the collective enterprise of philosophizing which has occupied the mind of Western man for twentyfive centuries.
To disclose effectively the pattern of meaning in the history of medieval philosophy, the historian of philosophy must keep in mind two aims. First, he must discover the spirit of an age by fathoming.

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Chapter I

Augustine: The Lover of Truth

Augustine "was, to a far greater degree than any emperor barbarian war lord, a maker of history and a builder of the bridge which was to lead from the old world to the new."1 He was the bridge between ancient and medieval thought and the founder of philosophy in the Middle Ages. In his passionate pursuit of truth and happiness, Aurelius Augustine’s life spiraled through three spiritual states: conversion, enlightenment, and unity.

Life2 and Works3

- Conversion. Augustine was born in Tagaste (modern Souk Ahras, Tunisia), A.D. 354, of a
Christian mother, Monica, and a pagan father, Patricius. An offspring of the dying ancient civilization and the emerging Christian culture, he experienced a powerful inner conflict of values. During his studies of literature and grammar at Madaura and his higher education in rhetoric at Carthage, he reveled in "the ways of Babylon" and enjoyed the Circes of sensuality. For fifteen years he lived with a mistress by whom he had a son Adeodatus. He taught rhetoric and eloquence at Tagaste, Carthage, and Milan. Outwardly, he was pleased with the ensuing fame, but inwardly, he was discontented as his mind searched for enlightenment.
He embraced the Manichean dualistic teaching that there are two ultimate principles, one responsible for good and for the human soul, the other for evil and matter, including the body.4 Dissatisfied with the materialism of Manichaeism and unable to find a basis for certitude in his experience, he adopted the skeptic attitude of the Platonic New Academy. On reading some "Platonic treatises" in the Latin translation of Victorinus, Augustine overcame his doubt about the possibility of a spiritual reality and found his way toward reconciling the presence of evil in the world with the Christian teaching of divine creation.5
- Enlightenment. Enlightened by the writings of St. Paul and the holy life of St. Anthony of
Egypt, Augustine experienced a strong desire to improve his way of life. To that end he retreated for a year (3861387) with some friends to Cassiciacum outside Milan where he underwent a religious conversion and wrote Against the Academics — a justification of truth and certitude

— On the Happy Life, On Order, the Soliloquies — a discourse on God and the soul — On the

Immortality of the Soul, and On Music. After his spiritual seclusion, Augustine and Adeodatus were baptized by St. Ambrose.
- Union. While residing at Rome (387-388), Augustine composed two philosophical

dialogues, On Free Choice and On the Magnitude of the Soul — on the operations of the soul.

After returning to Tagaste (388), he sold all his inheritance and established a small monastic community. Not long after writing On the Teacher — a study of knowledge — he was ordained a priest (391), and later, by popular acclaim, was consecrated Bishop of Hippo (395/396). His numerous sermons against the Manichaeans, Donatists,6 and Pelagians,7 his many theological treatises and letters, testify to his unceasing concern for the faith of his fellow Christians.
Notwithstanding his pressing episcopal duties, Augustine wrote three magna opera: the
Confessions (400) — an autobiography of his personal relationship to God — On the Trinity (400- 416), and the City of God (413-426) — a defense of Christianity and an exposition of the meaning of history. His work On the Nature of the Good responds to Manichaeism, his treatise On the Soul and Its Origin replies to Donatism. Toward the end of his life, he critically scrutinized his earlier

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writings in the Retractions which chronologically enumerates his ninety-four works, explaining their purpose and making revisions. Appropriately, his last complete opus was On the Gift of

Perseverance (428), expressing his mind’s and heart’s unceasing search for truth and happiness

which he found ultimately in union with God. Augustine died in 430 as Genseric and his Vandals laid siege to Hippo.

Encounter

Within the cultural crisis of the Roman Empire, Augustine encountered spiritual problems concerning God and the soul, faith and reason, Christianity and history.

Problems

I. Emergence of Problems

The cultural crisis which the Roman Empire experienced during the time of Plotinus intensified in the fourth and fifth centuries as the barbarians increased their pressure on the feeble frontiers and political discontent grew among peoples subjugated by Rome. As the political and

economic order deteriorated, imperial authority became more dictatorial to stabilize the empire’s

vast structure, and the populace in turn lost its time1honored freedoms and civic concern. Military might rather than law bound the body politic together.
The religious element in ancient culture, which had been the inspiration of civic patriotism in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C., had almost disappeared from the cosmopolitan civilization of the imperial age. The temples and gods remained, but they had lost their spiritual significance and had become little more than an ornamental appendage to public life and an occasion for civic ceremonial.8
As the old ideals retrogressed, the new spirit of Christianity emerged to revivify classical civilization.

II. God and the Soul

Like Plotinus, Augustine saw that the core issue of the Roman Empire was not military, or political, or economic, but spiritual, and that the ultimate question concerns God and the soul. "God and the soul, I desire to know. Nothing more? Nothing whatever."9 Augustine added to the ancient Greek maxim, "Know thyself," to make it, "Know God and thyself."

III. Faith and Reason

To gain a deeper insight than ancient philosophy into the spiritual problems surrounding God and the soul, Augustine shifted the philosophical perspective from the purely natural level of Plotinus to the supernatural framework of Christian thought.11 Within this religious context, he was confronted with the relation of faith and reason: Can pure reason operate on its own or does it need faith to relate man to God? Can faith without the companionship of reason pursue wisdom?

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IV. Truth

Intent on refuting the skepticism of the New Academy, Augustine investigated all the truths

necessary for the soul’s pursuit of God. At the outset, he attempted to determine whether certitude

is possible and what truths the mind can know without doubt. Secure on the arch of certitude, he could inquire into the structure of the universe in which the soul finds itself. Central to his concern was the nature, origin, and destiny of the soul, the conclusions to which would affect his attitude toward the mystery of God and his relation to the world. Underlying all these problems is the metaphysical question of how mutable, temporal, contingent beings are related to God, the unchangeable, eternal, necessary being. How can creatures which are continually becoming "other" in time be related to God who remains unceasingly the same in eternity?

V. History

Viewed historically, the metaphysical problem becomes a question of whether the continually changing phenomena of history show a constant intelligible meaning. The event that occasioned

this historical problem was Alaric the Goth’s sacking (410 A.D.) of Rome, the "eternal city." This

catastrophe shook the western world and demoralized the pagans who blamed the Christians for turning citizens from service by teaching renouncement of the world and for weakening patriotism by inculcating forgiveness of enemies. Besides, the God of Christianity, unlike the traditional gods who have been abandoned, has failed to protect Rome. In the face of this indictment, Augustine became attorney for the defense of Christianity.

Themes

In his encounter with these problems, Augustine unfolded three basic themes: God and soul, knowledge of truth, and love.

I. God and Soul

In developing a Christian philosophy as a plan for the renewal of western thought, he centered human existence around the soul and God. Analysis of his own experience revealed three unfailing drives of existing, knowing, and willing, for being, truth, and goodness — in fine, for happiness. Within this context, philosophy is love of wisdom for the attainment of happiness.11 The soul’s unceasing search for knowledge and love is, in reality, the journey to beatitude in God. As Augustine put it in his response to God, "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."12

II. Knowledge of Truth

The quest for happiness reveals two ways of knowledge, perception and understanding. So mutable and temporal are the outer objects of the senses in the Neoplatonic world of Augustine that the soul finds it better to turn within itself to the intelligible realm where it discovers unchangeable, eternal, necessary truths in which it enjoys certitude. Since "no creature, howsoever rational and intellectual, is lighted of itself, but is lighted by participation of eternal Truth,"13 the soul finds itself illumined by God in its quest for truths.

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III. Love

By willing the truths which he discloses in knowledge, man attains true wisdom and happiness. However, weak human will wavers from seeking the good it ought to pursue. Mutable man cannot seek unchangeable moral truths, unless his will freely submits to the moral illumination of virtue streaming from the immutable and eternal light of divine virtue in God. All

ethical truths, such as "live virtuously," or "live according to God’s law," are reducible to one truth:

love God. Happiness consists of sharing in the unchangeable, eternal love of God.

Method

Augustine developed his themes according to a religious, affective, personal, introspective, synthetic approach. His approach in general, combines the rational way of Hellenistic philosophy with the volitional way of Judaeo-Christian tradition.

I. Religion

As Augustine wandered from one philosophy to another (Manichaeanism, skepticism, and
Neo-Platonism), he became personally aware of the limitations of human reason. Reason and faith

need to cooperate intimately in the soul’s quest for God. Belief is natural and necessary for intellectual activity which assents to many opinions solely on another’s testimony. "We believe

the things which are not present to our senses, if the evidence offered for them seems sufficient,"14 and the authority "of who may be believed is being considered."15 Religious belief and understanding are complementary: "Understand my word in order to believe, but believe God’s word in order to understand."16 Belief enlightened by understanding becomes a reasoned faith. On account of his close correlation of faith and reason, Augustine often made philosophical reflections in the course of theological inquiry and scriptural exegesis. Within this framework of

philosophy and religion, Augustine’s Christian faith was open to whatever insights Greek and

Roman thinkers had to offer.

II. Affectivity

Like Plato’s integration of love (eros) with wisdom (phronesis) in the pursuit of good,

Augustine’s method is highly affective as well as intellective. Love moves the soul to believe and

to know: "Love it is that asks, love that seeks, love that knocks, love that reveals, love, finally, that assures the permanence of what is revealed."17 Love of God brings the soul’s understanding of faith to fruition in a good life. The vision of truth is the prerogative of him who lives well, prays well, and studies well,18 for God shows himself only to one who seeks truth "piously, chastely and diligently.19 Since the wisdom of man is sanctity," it needs love inasmuch as "no good can be perfectly known unless it be perfectly loved."20

III. Person

Augustine is more concerned about the person than problems of the cosmos. Augustine’s disclosure of the soul’s quest for God is highly personal in its starting point, procedure, and

termination. He often begins by unfolding the evil and misery of the individual human condition

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to stress the need of turning to God. The Augustinian pattern of the soul’s itinerary to God advances

"from the outer to the inner" forum of the soul and "from the lower to the higher"21 personal center of the Divine. The guiding principle in this far-reaching flight of the Augustinian mind is the causal relation of the mutable to the unchangeable. For instance, Augustine reasoned that immutable Truth or God is the sole sufficient reason for eternal truths in temporal human existence. Augustine’s philosophy is an I-Thou encounter between the self and God.

IV. Interiority

Augustine’s personal approach to truth is a profoundly interior way akin to the route of

Plotinus. "Do not go abroad," he wrote, "return within yourself. Truth dwells in the inward man."22 The outer sensible world is changeable and uncertain. Clarity of thought, depth of understanding, and ardor of heart lie in the inner intelligible realm of the soul.
Thus admonished to return unto myself, I entered into my innermost parts under Thy guidance. I was able, because Thou didst become my helper. I entered in and saw with the eye of my soul the Immutable Light.23
As the Plotinian mind ascends inwardly through three degrees of cognition — discursiveness, intuition and ecstasy, so the Augustinian mind rises through inferior reasoning, superior reasoning, and the beatific vision to God. The similarity is striking, yet there is a world of difference between the climax of these two approaches. For Plotinus, ecstasy is a natural outcome of what precedes whereas, for Augustine, the vision of God is a pure gift of God to which man has no natural claim.

V. Synthesis

Augustine’s method, notwithstanding his genius for analyzing human experience in the Confessions, is generally synthetic in purpose, procedure, and perspective. With the soul’s

quest for God as his guiding principle. Augustine stressed the unity of reality rather than its multiple aspects by collecting his concepts into a unified structure. His eminently theocentric orientation inclined him towards organizing all beings under God rather than in specializing in a detailed analyses of creatures in themselves. Deeply concerned about the meaning of human existence rather than a detached analysis, Augustine communicated the living unity of his own personality by synthesizing his thoughts within the single Christian framework of a believer seeking understanding.

Influences

As he reflected on the relation between the human and the Divine, Augustine was influenced by both philosophical and Christian ideas.

I. Platonism

From the vantage point of faith, Augustine took a definite stance toward Greek and Hellenistic philosophy: he rejected skepticism and Epicureanism, accepted some Stoic teachings,24 admired Aristotle as "a man of eminent abilities, yet unequal to Plato,"25 whom he extolled as "the wisest

and most erudite man of his day . . ."26 Most of Augustine’s acquaintance with the essentials of

Plato’s thought was via Christian Platonists and Neo-Platonists such as Plotinus who exercised an

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intensive and extensive influence on the content and technique of Augustine’s philosophy.27 No

Father of the Church proved more courageous in Christianizing Platonism and more prudent in Platonizing Christianity than Augustine.

II. Plotinus

Like Plotinus, Augustine centered his thought around God and the soul. Whereas Plotinus reflected upon his own personal religious views, Augustine philosophized within a Christian framework. While the Plotinian mind had moved on the natural order with a rightful claim to reach the divine reality, Augustinian reason, to escape skepticism and to understand Judaeo1Christian

revelation, adopted Plotinus’ interiorism and progressed inwardly and surely within the

supernatural order of divine life gratuitously established by God and manifested by faith. This

drive toward God came from Augustine’s indomitable desire for truth, an enthusiasm inspired by his reading of Cicero’s Hortensius.28

Response

The influences that came to play in Augustine’s development of his main themes as a response

to the problems of creatures and God, were conditioned by his notion of philosophy.
For Augustine, the goal of philosophy is happiness. Since man has been impressed with the natural desire for happiness,29he philosophizes like Socrates to find happiness in the possession of truth. That is why Augustine investigated truth in its different dimensions: knowledge of truth, the existence of divine truth, created truth, love of truth, and the history of the love of truth. "O Truth, Truth — how deeply even then did the marrow of my mind long for Thee, when they sounded Thy Name to me, . . ."30 Whereas Plotinus was concerned with the unity of reality, Augustine focused on its truth.

Knowledge of Truth

Augustine’s theory of knowledge, which refutes Pyrrhonic Skepticism and justifies the soul’s

point of departure to God, progresses through four basic stages: sensation and intellection, inferior and superior understanding, knowledge of truth, and illumination.

I. Sensation and Intellection

In the Platonic tradition, Augustine held that sensation reaches only changing, temporal, contingent phenomena,31 and yields no more than opinion, whereas intellection attains unchanging, eternal necessary objects. Dreams and illusions confirm the limited value of the senses and their powerlessness in distinguishing between reality and its false images. The "judgment of truth" is the work, therefore, not of the senses, but rather of the mind.32

II. Inferior and Superior Understanding

In view of its different objects, Augustine distinguished between inferior and superior intellection. Inferior reason is "rational knowledge of temporal things,"33 whereas superior understanding is "rational knowledge of eternal things."34Lower reason relies on the senses in its

12

orientation towards action, while higher reason operates independently of sensation ln its contemplation of truth. "There is a difference between the contemplation of eternal things and the action by which we use temporal things well; the former is called wisdom, the latter science."35 Augustine preferred contemplating wisdom of divine things to the scientific use of corporeal objects, though the latter is necessary for life.

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  • St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Mind, Body, and Life After Death

    St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Mind, Body, and Life After Death

    The University of Akron IdeaExchange@UAkron Williams Honors College, Honors Research The Dr. Gary B. and Pamela S. Williams Honors Projects College Spring 2020 St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Mind, Body, and Life After Death Christopher Choma [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/honors_research_projects Part of the Christianity Commons, Epistemology Commons, European History Commons, History of Philosophy Commons, History of Religion Commons, Metaphysics Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Please take a moment to share how this work helps you through this survey. Your feedback will be important as we plan further development of our repository. Recommended Citation Choma, Christopher, "St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Mind, Body, and Life After Death" (2020). Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects. 1048. https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/honors_research_projects/1048 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by The Dr. Gary B. and Pamela S. Williams Honors College at IdeaExchange@UAkron, the institutional repository of The University of Akron in Akron, Ohio, USA. It has been accepted for inclusion in Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects by an authorized administrator of IdeaExchange@UAkron. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. 1 St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Mind, Body, and Life After Death By: Christopher Choma Sponsored by: Dr. Joseph Li Vecchi Readers: Dr. Howard Ducharme Dr. Nathan Blackerby 2 Table of Contents Introduction p. 4 Section One: Three General Views of Human Nature p.
  • History of Philosophy Outlines from Wheaton College (IL)

    History of Philosophy Outlines from Wheaton College (IL)

    Property of Wheaton College. HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 311 Arthur F. Holmes Office: Blanch ard E4 83 Fall, 1992 Ext. 5887 Texts W. Kaufman, Philosophical Classics (Prentice-Hall, 2nd ed., 1968) Vol. I Thales to Occam Vol. II Bacon to Kant S. Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre (McGraW Hill, 3rd ed., 1982, or 4th ed., 1988) For further reading see: F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy. A multi-volume set in the library, also in paperback in the bookstore. W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy Diogenes Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology A. H. Armstrong & R. A. Markus, Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy A. H. Armstrong (ed.), Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy Encyclopedia of Philosophy Objectives 1. To survey the history of Western philosophy with emphasis on major men and problems, developing themes and traditions and the influence of Christianity. 2. To uncover historical connections betWeen philosophy and science, the arts, and theology. 3. To make this heritage of great minds part of one’s own thinking. 4. To develop competence in reading philosophy, to lay a foundation for understanding contemporary thought, and to prepare for more critical and constructive work. Procedure 1. The primary sources are of major importance, and you will learn to read and understand them for yourself. Outline them as you read: they provide depth of insight and involve you in dialogue with the philosophers themselves. Ask first, What does he say? The, how does this relate to What else he says, and to what his predecessors said? Then, appraise his assumptions and arguments.
  • Haecceities, Quiddities, and Structure∗

    Haecceities, Quiddities, and Structure∗

    compiled on 18 December 2015 at 14:00 Haecceities, quiddities, and structure∗ Wolfgang Schwarz Draft, 18 December 2015 Abstract. Suppose all truths are made true by the distribution of funda- mental properties and relations over fundamental particulars. The world is then completely characterized by stating which fundamental properties and relations are instantiated by which fundamental particulars. But do we have to mention the fundamental particulars by name? Arguably not. Arguably, all truths – or at least all truths we can ever know – are made true by the pattern in which fundamental properties and relations are instantiated by fundamental particulars, irrespective of the identity (“haecceity”) of those particulars. Parallel arguments suggest that the identity (“quiddity”) of fundamental properties and relations can be omitted. It would follow that all truths (or all knowable truths) are made true by the abstract structure of the world, the pattern in which fundamental properties and relations are instantiated by fundamental particulars, irrespective of the identity of the properties, relations, and particulars. I argue that this is almost correct: while not all truths are made true by the abstract structure of the world, the remaining truths are (in a certain sense) not made true by the world at all. 1 Introduction Most truths can be explained by other, more fundamental truths. That salt dissolves in water, for example, can be explained by the chemical composition of salt and water together with the general laws of physics. Explanations of this kind plausibly come to an end. At some point we reach a bottom level of fundamental facts that are not explainable in terms of anything more basic.
  • Medieval Philosophy

    Medieval Philosophy

    | 1 Course Syllabus Medieval Philosophy INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION Dr. Wm Mark Smillie, Professor, Philosophy Department 142 St Charles Hall Email: [email protected]; Ph: 447 - 5416 Office Hours Spring 2017 : MW, 3:30 - 4:30; Th, 2:30 - 4:30; Fri, 2:00 - 3:30; & by appointment. For issues about this course, students can contact me before/after class, at my office hours (posted above), by phone or email (either Carroll email or through moodle email). I will respond to email and phone inquiries within one busine ss day (Saturdays and Sundays are not business days). I will post notifications about the course in the Moodle News Forum. Students should also be aware of the Moodle Calendar that announces assignment deadlines. COURSE INFORMATION PHIL202, Medieval Phil osophy Meets: Tuesday and Thursdays, 9:30 - 10:45, 102 O’Connell; 3 credit hours Course Description This course is an introductory survey of medieval philosophical thought. We will consider some philosophical questions and issues that were central to medieval discussion, including the relationship between faith and reason, the problem of evil, our abili ty to know God’s nature and describe it in human language, the implications of believing in God as a creator, and the famous “problem of universals.” Significant medieval philosophers studied in this course include St. Augustine, Boethius, Peter Abelard, St. Anselm, Avicenna, St. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. An effort will be made to convey general medieval life and values and their connection to medieval philosophy, as well as to relate the thought of the middle Ages to the philosophy of other historic al periods.
  • The Catholic Intellectual Tradition Scholarship, Faith, and Higher Education

    The Catholic Intellectual Tradition Scholarship, Faith, and Higher Education

    ISSN 1941-8450 Journal of Religion & Society Supplement Series The Kripke Center Supplement 6 (2011) The Catholic Intellectual Tradition Scholarship, Faith, and Higher Education Edited by John J. O’Keefe, Gina Merys, and Bridget Keegan The Catholic Intellectual Tradition Medieval Lessons Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Loyola University Maryland Introduction [1] Whatever else a tradition is, it is something that connects us to a past, and not simply to a past fondly remembered, but one that continues to inform our present. So it seems not implausible that we might look to the past in order to gain insight into what it means to be engaged in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition today. And because Catholicism seems, for good or for ill, to have a particular connection to the Middle Ages – the “Age of Faith” – we might look to that particular past to see what lessons we can learn about what we mean when we speak of a Catholic Intellectual Tradition, about what challenges are posed to and posed by this tradition, and about how we foster and further this tradition. I will proceed by first making and exploring a distinction, and then proposing some points for consideration. 10 The Catholic Intellectual Tradition [2] Medieval scholastic thought proceeded largely by the making of distinctions, and thus it would warm the heart of our scholastic forbears if we begin with a distinction. I suggest we might distinguish between what we mean materially by the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, and what we mean formally. In other words, when we speak “materially” about the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, we mean those texts, works of art, figures, concepts, and so forth that are indispensable in preservation, transmission, and extension of that tradition.
  • The Opening of the Atlantic World: England's

    The Opening of the Atlantic World: England's

    THE OPENING OF THE ATLANTIC WORLD: ENGLAND’S TRANSATLANTIC INTERESTS DURING THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII By LYDIA TOWNS DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Arlington May, 2019 Arlington, Texas Supervising Committee: Imre Demhardt, Supervising Professor John Garrigus Kathryne Beebe Alan Gallay ABSTRACT THE OPENING OF THE ATLANTIC WORLD: ENGLAND’S TRANSATLANTIC INTERESTS DURING THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII Lydia Towns, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Arlington, 2019 Supervising Professor: Imre Demhardt This dissertation explores the birth of the English Atlantic by looking at English activities and discussions of the Atlantic world from roughly 1481-1560. Rather than being disinterested in exploration during the reign of Henry VIII, this dissertation proves that the English were aware of what was happening in the Atlantic world through the transnational flow of information, imagined the potentials of the New World for both trade and colonization, and actively participated in the opening of transatlantic trade through transnational networks. To do this, the entirety of the Atlantic, all four continents, are considered and the English activity there analyzed. This dissertation uses a variety of methods, examining cartographic and literary interpretations and representations of the New World, familial ties, merchant networks, voyages of exploration and political and diplomatic material to explore my subject across the social strata of England, giving equal weight to common merchants’ and scholars’ perceptions of the Atlantic as I do to Henry VIII’s court. Through these varied methods, this dissertation proves that the creation of the British Atlantic was not state sponsored, like the Spanish Atlantic, but a transnational space inhabited and expanded by merchants, adventurers and the scholars who created imagined spaces for the English.