1. Scholastics seems to deal with the correlation of ideas. The main goal of Scholasticism seems to me to be making everything fit without contradictions. As we read in the Wikipedia article, disagreements about texts were laid out and broken down until the two arguments were made into agreements. If we stayed in the scholastic period we would not have the science based on empirical evidence that we have today. Scholasticism trys to correlate too many ideas to the bible, when not all ideas can necessarily correlate with it. What happens is everything is broken down into meaningless non-sense that is debated upon for days by the scholars until an agreement is made. If Scholastics will still a major form of thought, progress would be non-existent, and in it's place we would have stagnation.
2. Scholastics saw faith and reason to be two sides of the same coin. Scholastics like Aquinas believed that reason was a divine gift that allows us to understand the world around us and see truth. He called in natural revlation, but Aquinas says this is one side to understanding the the truth of the world. The other side is faith which allows us to see beyond what is in front of us in the physical world and transcend into the relm of pure truth. It seems that the Scholastics believed faith to be the objective truth while reason to be a lesser form of truth that is more subjective. It seems to be remisent of plato's idea of the forms in that there are two ideas of reality, the one we have to reason and the one we transcend to attain pure truth.
3. The Church seemed to not adhere to a strict rule of what consents dissent. It seems with the case of Tommaso Capanella his rejection of Aristotelian lead to his estrange meant with the Church and his temperament with offensive views lead to his imprisonment by the Church. While still believed in the word god his views of faith were different. The same problems arose with Giordano Bruno, his ideas of faith were not congruent with church doctrine. Galileo also caused uproar with his ideas, but it wasn't just the ideas them selves, it was the way in which he presented them to society. He would attack anyone who raised opposetion to his views with searing pen strokes. Galileos ideas though went against common belief and his attitude to those who raised opposetion caused him to not have alot of friends inside the church. Church seemed to question philosophical and common belief dissent during the Scholastic period, but what really links these three philosophers was their attitudes towards the church at the time.
4. Universals are the abstract idea of objects, I.E. John, Steve, and Hamid are all humans. Humanity is the universal that ties the tree together. The problems of universals deals with there status, whether they exist independently from the object or if they are just a convenient way of correlating objects together. There are two schools of thought that go into the problem of universals, first is realism meaning that universals are real and they exist outside of the context of the object. Second is nominalism is the correlating of objects stating that universals don't exist. Scholastics thought that the world was made up of universals, that god had a independent set of cateogories that each object or concept falls into. The modern thought on the concept of univerals seemed to come to frutiation at the end of scholastism with Ockham's razor, which by shaving off the compliacted thoughts of reasoning of realism favors nominalism.
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Commentary on question 1.
ReplyDelete"What happens is everything is broken down into meaningless non-sense " Since the existance of man, men have tried relentlessly to make peace with the world they see, and the god(s) they believe in. To call their efforts nonsense, you mean that their efforts to combine religion and the world they see to be illogical, but nonsense hints at the connotation of ridiculousnesss. Let us not discredit their efforts.
"If Scholastics will still a major form of thought, progress would be non-existent, and in it's place we would have stagnation"
I believe you are referring to the use of the scholastic method, the effort to synthesize God and the works of logic and reasoning. I believe you are saying that if men, philosophers, and people still tried to make the idea of God and the world they see coexistable. "progress would be non-existent, and in it's place we would have stagnation"
That is interesting to note, for yes if we look at the past and the way people believed in God and lived life and made sense of life according to what they knew of God we would not have come to the advancements of civilization and thought that we have today. But to say that continuing to strive on the endeavor of making peace with God and Science is fruitless is a risky statement. You may see why this is so if you are knowledgable about Anselms teological argument, that the very brilliance and perfection of the system of the world we live in attests to the presence of an intelligent designer that is real, thus proving God's existance. This argument was made in the medieval period where not much was known about the mechanisms and systems of the world we live in. The online reading notes that as civilization continues to advance and the more knowledge we accumulate and discover about the mechanisms and systems of the universe, the stronger Anselms argument grows. What we have learned so far from science shows that indeed the world we live in is astronomically, and brilliantly operational. All random chance? maybe, but back to the issue that you have stated that to continue with the scholastic method we would have stagnation. I refute this point, science, progress, and knowledge will continue as long as humans live for it is all uphill from here on out. Trying to synthesize the existance of God, or intelligent designer with what we know today may not work out perfectly, but as time passes, if we do not quit in this endeavor, we may come to the ultimate truth. That there may be a God.
to help you understand what I meant by "meaningless non-sense" on question 1 Jakestuhh, I was referring to the way the scholastic method was implemented as a form of learning and understanding. They were first and foremost trying to strive to make the unknown known. The Scholastics were all about correlating data. They weren't using empirical evidence and trying to prove or disprove something. They were using the bible to logically correlate different texts together. In a way they were trying to make every idea fit together with their idea of god and the world. This lead them to misinterpret things and make everything break down into meaningless non-sense in hopes of trying to make everything perfect.
ReplyDeleteFrom reading the wikipedia and your post side by side as to why you see the scholastics works as "meaningless non-sense" and their works subject to misinterpretation, a few points come to mind, Johnathon. It seems that you see their works to be meaningless misinterpreted nonsense of the bible and greek text because "They weren't using empirical evidence and trying to prove or disprove something". I am not quite sure what you mean by the something, but if they were trying to prove anything it would be that Christian doctrine and Aristotles empirical views on the world would rather reinforce each other then destroy each other. Thus I don't know what you mean't by they weren't using empirical evidence on God, how would they? But they were using Aristotelean views of the world derived from empiricism and deductive reasoning in combination of critically reading christian doctrine to find how logic can reinforce their faith. They were actually breaking away from the traditional christian approach of accepting everything without thought, but were trying to prove that their faith wasn't just meaningless non-sense like Hercules, Xena, or the spiritual ninjas that skip along glowing rice cake paddies just outside my house when the clock strikes 8:03am est, but that it actually did make--sense. And that the empirical views of Aristotle only reinforced their faith.
ReplyDeleteyour post -"In a way they were trying to make every idea fit together with their idea of god and the world."
More precisely, they critically went over biblical and other related christian texts, seeking to find sound agreement with Aristotelean reasoning rather than contradictions.
your post -"This lead them to misinterpret things and make everything break down into meaningless non-sense in hopes of trying to make everything perfect."
On what grounds may I ask that they have "misinterpreted" things into "meaningless nonsense"? If that is so then you are saying the conclusions of the following philosophers "Peter Abelard, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Bonaventure and, above all, Thomas Aquinas" are full of nonsense. What "things" are we talking about here and more importantly what "misinterpretations" did you mean? This is how a scholastic would have talked to you in the dark ages. Critically. You say that they made everything break down. But something broken must have once been whole. Then that must mean what they had believed in before was whole to begin with. (I am using Aristotelean deductive reasoning here just as the scholastics would have done) Then what you seem to be saying is that if they had not tried to apply Aristotelean reasoning to their faith, then they wouldn't have misinterpreted "things" and broken down their own religion to a more unwholesome nonsense version of christian doctrine backed by deductive reasoning, rather then by thoughtless faith.
yourpost -"If we stayed in the scholastic period we would not have the science based on empirical evidence that we have today."
I believe the question was what if we all remained scholastics? That could not possibly happen for scholastics needed Aristotelean counterparts in order to be who they were. But if we were all scholastics with one step in faith and the other in reasoning, whose to say there wouldn't be scholastic scientists. Im sure theres scientists out there that believe in christian docttrine.
yourpost "progress would be non-existent, and in it's place we would have stagnation"
??? Scholastics paved the road for christian europe to come to grips with reasoning, they introduced them to the drug called logic, and ultimately science.
i think what johnathon is trying to say is that they simply took it to far. they got caught up in what they were doing and tried to dissect the whole bible when they could have got their points across in a much simpler manner.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read their actual works yet or have a clue about it so I wouldn't know if they took it too far. But from the summary of Aquinas proof of Gods existence, it seems simple enough.
ReplyDeleteBut too far wouldn't be an issue for a people, a society, the whole christendom of europe to defend their faith which has become inseparable from their culture and politics from what seems to be at first, an antiphilosophy towards their God. Too far isn't enough for these philosophers. God for them is perfect and without error, therefore they must come into agreement with everything said about him, from him, and the actual empirical observations of the world they lived in.
ReplyDeleteCommentary on question 2.
ReplyDeletelead blog excerpt
"It seems that the Scholastics believed faith to be the objective truth while reason to be a lesser form of truth that is more subjective."
Quite true, but only in the first half of scholasticism no? The other half of scholasticism, lead by Aquinas, put reason over faith and believed that reason was the objective truth that can lead a person into faith, a faith greater and more complete then just faith without reason. As a student from the 21st century, putting blind faith superior to reasoning sounds ridiculously absurd in stark contrast to the anachronistic medieval man's mind. But I guess not too absurd if the rule of law was ruled by faith, kingdoms by faith, and such n such
Jakestuhh I see what point you are trying to make, you think that Scholatics did a wonderful job paving way to the modern era by making use of the bible and Aristotle's text, allowing people to use logic that never would have in the first place. This is were the problem I see is, they weren't trying to think out of the box. They were thinking in. The Scholastics were trying to make the bible fit with logic and reason, and to a certain existent they did. This lead to a problem that Ockham who really is the birth of modern philosophy broke free of. What happened with Scholastics is everyone would gather in a room argue, stop, then come back and argue over the texts. They broke down arguments like sophist until all arguments either A.) work with each other or B.) meant the same thing. This is what I meant by "meaningless non-sense" and "stagnation" could imagine a world were all we did was argue about how to make the bible work with everything? Nothing would ever be a accomplished. We would still be in the "Dark Ages"
ReplyDeletefrom the professors email regarding scholasticism
ReplyDelete" To the scholastics, accepted
authorities could not be wrong. The Bible could not be wrong. Works by
important and venerated Christian scholars could not be wrong, and so
on. The only problem was that these texts appeared to contradict each
other at various points. Since all of the texts were completely true,
and true texts do not contradict each other, these apparent
contradictions could not possibly be real."
I see through this method when there are obvious contradictions, scholastics would have stumbled and produced propaganda in skewing their views that there is universal truth from all of these texts.
BUT.
when reading through this
"St. Thomas Aquinas saved
Aristotle from the flames by producing work that appeared to show that
Aristotle did not in fact contradict the Bible. Aquinas was a brilliant
man, and his work was historically very important, especially in
shaping the doctrines of the Catholic Church"
it shows that although there has been propaganda made up in order to defend christianity and all the works associated with it, not all of it was meaningless junk. Although alot of "AUTHORITATIVE" works on christianity may be contradictory, I was just defending that the mission to defend the rationale of a intelligent creator in conjunction with the views of Aristotle that Aquinas set on is one to be acclaimed, not dismissed as meaningless nonsense.
not to be dismissed as meaningless nonsense*
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