Why Medieval Philosophy Matters

✍ Scribed by Stephen Boulter

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 217
• Series: Why Philosophy Matter
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Tackling the question of why medieval philosophy matters in the current age, Stephen Boulter issues a passionate and robust defence of this school in the history of ideas. He examines both familiar territory and neglected texts and thinkers whilst also asking the question of why, exactly, this matters or should matter to how we think now.

Why Medieval Philosophy is also provides a introduction to medieval philosophy more generally exploring how this area of philosophy has been received, debated and, sometimes, dismissed in the history of philosophy.

✦ Table of Contents

Title page
Copyright page
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Why philosophy matters
Introduction
Squaring up to the redundancy thesis
What is a philosophical question?
The human predicament and the social order
Tensions in the social order of the West
Medieval answers to modern questions
Chapter 1 Scholasticism and common sense
Introduction
What counts as a common sense belief?
The problem of universals
Any solutions?
The problem of change
Aristotelian essentialism
Chapter 2 Scholasticism and the sciences
Introduction
Medieval thought and the emergence of the modern sciences
Do the sciences need metaphysics?
The metaphysical background to the sciences
The design of scientific experiments
Conclusion
Chapter 3 The meta-philosophy of scholasticism
Introduction
Who were the scholastics?
Aristotle’s aporetic method
Descartes on method
Aristotle versus Descartes
The condemnations of 1277
Chapter 4 Scholasticism on the various kinds of distinction
Introduction
How to resolve contradictions
What philosophers used to know
How does one ‘know’ if a real distinction obtains between A and B?
Some modern cases
Chapter 5 The scholastics and arguments for the existence of God
Introduction
Religion or metaphysics?
What standards of evaluation should we employ?
Two naturalisms
The cosmological argument: Aquinas’s second way
Scotus’s version of the ontological argument
Chapter 6 Scholasticism and Western ‘disenchantment’
Introduction
How did we get into this fine mess?
A scholastic ethical theory
A scholastic response to objections
Notes
Introduction
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter six
Epilogue
Some useful latin terms and phrases for philosophers
Appendix 1 When were the Middle Ages?
Bibliography
Index