PHIL 2510: Early Middle Ages

Early Middle Ages

Medieval Mysticism
- NeoPlatonic Sources: Proclus (d. 485 C.E.)
  - pantheistic tendencies
  - world as an emanation (PROODOS; cp. "proceedeth" in the Church creeds)
- [Pseudo-]Dioysius the Areopagite
  - earliest reference: 532 C.E.
  - chief theme: absolute incomprehensibility of God
  - cp. 3 ways:
    1. affirmative theology: names for God from Scripture
    2. negative theology: denial of all predicates to God; approach God through "learned ignorance"
    3. symbolic (superlative) theology
      - God is a suoper-being, with super attributes
      - god s the source; the world as symbolic manifestation
      - creation proceeds by hierarchy down through the ranks (the great chain of bein from top down); model is the Trinity
      - proceeding (PROODOS is from the excess of God's goodness (superfluity)
      - endless procession from, indwelling of, & return to the Godhead (source)
      - evil is a lack
  - Pseudo-Dionysius exerted an enormous influence, from John Soctus Eriugena to St Thomas Aquinas and beyond
- John Soctus Eriugena
  - b. Ireland c. 810 C.E.
  - scholar of Latin & Greek
  - invited to France by Charles the Bald (840-47)
  - wrote On Predestination (851), refutation of the heretical views of the Monk Gottschalk. Eriugena's views themselves later condemned by Pope Honrius III (1225) perhaps in relation to the Albigensian resistance
  - his great work: On the Division of Nature
  - main feature of his philosophy: rationalization of Scripture
    Isaiah 7:9(b) "If ye will not believe, surely ye will not be established" is interpreted by Eriugena as meaning "If you had not believed, you would not have understood."
  - true reason & true authority do not conlfict; both proceed from Divine Wisdom (LOGOS)
  - Godhead utlimately incomprehensible; can be approaced only symbolically
  - highest affirmation of god is negation, since affirmation logically entail limitations
  - God reveals himsefl in &auot;epiphanies"
  - Two problems posed by Eriugena:
    - how can God be both transcendent & immanent?
    - how can we explain the freedom of the individual?
Early Scholasticism
- Two defining issues:
  - the nature of dialectic & disputation: can logical argument & rules be brought to bear on religious dogma?
  - the problem of Universals. Problem derived from Aristotle. What is knowlable is general ("universal") But the particular always escapes what can be known
- Anselm of Canterbury (b. Piedmont 1033)
  - We believe in order to understand
  - Understanding can provide necessary reasons for our beliefs through dialectic (logic, often reductio arguments)
  - typology of truths:
    1. truths in judgment (affirmation, denial)
    2. truths of opinion and thought
    3. truths of will (what is right)
  - common to all these vies of truth: correctness (conformity to standard)
  - the so-called Ontological Argument
    God is, by definition, that being greater than which nothing can be conceived. But such a being necessarily exists, becuase any being that might possibly not exist is obviously not the greatest conceivable being. Hence from the possibility of God (from our faith, our idea) the necessity of God's existence is established.
  - Guanilo's objections:
    1. why can't the same argument etsablish the necessary existence of the most perfect island?
    2. God is beyond comprehension. Therefore, we don not really have the concept of "that being greater than which nothing can be conceived," hence no conclusion follows from that concept.
    3. Anselm's argument in the history of philosophy

revised December 10, 1996

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