MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
(from: Ramos, Christine Carmela,2010, Introduction to Philosophy, 2nd ed. ch. 3, pp. 117ff.)
Living in the Stormy Middle Ages
The Middle Ages cover about 1,000 years from about 500-1500 A.D.. However, the
change from ancient ways to medical customs came so gradually. Some historians say that the
Middle Ages began in A.D. 476 when the barbarian Odoacer overthrew Emperor Romulus
Augustulus, ending the Western Roman Emperor; still others say about A.D. 800 pr even later.
Historians say that the Middle Ages ended with the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, with the
discovery of America, in 1492; or with the beginning of the Reformation in 1517.
German barbarians sacked and pillaged the declining Western Roman Empire. The
invaders, however, lacked the knowledge and skills to carry on Roman achievements in art,
literature, and engineering. In effect, highly developed systems of Roman law and government
gave way to the rude forms of the barbarians. Thus, the early Medieval Period is sometimes
referred to as the Dark Ages (Solomon & Higgins, 1996).
It was, nonetheless, a time of preparation, like working afield before planting seeds. For
instance, to the Romans, the State had been more important than the individual. From the
barbarians’ ideal of personal rights grew their respect for women, their “government by the
people,” and their crude but representative law courts where kings and chiefs were elected by
tribal councils (which also served as court of laws).
In the reign of Clovis, Christianity began to lift Europe from the Dark Ages. Many
barbarians had become Christians earlier though mostly hold the Arian belief, a doctrine that
holds the conviction that the Son of God is finite and created by God the Father and thus,
condemned as heresy by the Church. Christianity’s influence widened when the great
Charlemagne become the king of the Franks who founded schools in monasteries and churches
for both the poor and nobility.
The way of life in the Middle Ages is called feudalism, which comes from medieval
Latin feudium, meaning property or “possession.” Peasants, about nine-tenths of them, are
farmers or village laborers. All peasants—men, women, and children worked to support their
lord. Many peasants built their villages of huts near the castles of their lords for protection in
exchange of their services.
Besides labor, peasants had to pay taxes to the lord in money or produce. In addition, hey
had to give a tithe to the Church for instance, every tenth egg, wheat, etc. Famines were
frequent. Plagues cut down the livestock. Floods, frosts, and droughts destroyed the crops.
Burst of warfare ravaged the countryside as the lords burned each other’s fields and harvests.
1
, However, with the growth of commerce and towns, feudalism as a system of government
began to pass. As changes in business, government, and social customs steadily shaped a new
life in Europe, rising interest in artistic and intellectual achievements reached a peak in the
Renaissance—a revival of classical learning. An interest I beauty and culture was reborn. In 14th
and 15th centuries, leadership in art and literature returned to Western Europe.
Amid the turmoil of the Middle Ages, one institution stood for the common good—it was
the Roman Catholic Church. Many historians say that its spirit and its work comprised the
“great civilizing influence of the Middle Ages.” By the 13th century, the Church was the
strongest single influence in Europe. Everyone except Arabs, Jews, and the people in the
Byzantine Empire belonged to the Church and felt its authority.
A. The Biblical God and Humanity
In this section, new body of philosophical writings that sets forth new problems is
discussed. In the 5th century, Augustine’s writing is considered to be the most influential in the
early Medieval period (Hare er al, 1991). In Aquinas, new material is made fundamental and the
old assimilated to it. This chapter looks at the reasonableness of belief in God’s existence. In
doing so, we shall treat the statement. “God exists” as a hypothesis, which we call the theistic
hypothesis. This means we shall ask whether or not the existence of God provides the best
explanation of the existence of the world, as we know it. To treat the existence of God as a
hypothesis is to take a decidedly philosophical attitude toward the matter. It is to approach it
from the point of view of agnosticism, a claim of ignorance or the claim that God’s existence can
be neither proved nor disproved.
Religious people definitely do not treat God’s existence as a hypothesis, for God is a
constant presence, rather than a being whose existence is accepted as the best explanation of
available evidence. In neither the Jewish nor Christian Bibles is there any argument of God’s
existence. For the biblical writers, proving God’s existence would be as pointless as trying to
prove the existence of the air we breathe. The religious problem reflected in the Old Testament
narratives is not atheism but polytheism: not the denial of God but the worship of too many gods.
Likewise, in the New Testament, the reality of God is unquestioned due to the conviction that in
Jesus of Nazareth the eternal God became flesh and welt among human beings. In its earliest
missionary endeavors. Christians directed their preaching to Jews who accepted the reality of
God. It was only later when Christian missionaries confronted a variety of naturalistic
philosophy that they felt the need to argue philosophically for the existence of God. However,
even then, the task was not considered too formidable for the basic structure of the arguments
was already present in the writings of the Greek philosophers.
For the first thousand years of the existence of the faith, Christian writers found the most
useful philosophical framework within the philosophy of Plato. Indeed, the ontological
argument is highly compatible with the Platonic view of reality, about which more will be said
2
, later. Most of the works of Aristotle, in contrast, had been lost to Western scholars, and what
was known of his philosophy was through the work of such Arabic commentators as Avicenna
and Averroes. In the mind of most Christian scholars in the 13th century. Plato was the Christian
philosopher, Aristotle the pagan philosopher. In such a climate of opinion, Thomas Aquinas
nonetheless found in Aristotle a better set of categories for communicating the Christian faith to
the world. He was so successful in his use of Aristotelian thought that Thomistic became the
official doctrinal framework of the Roman Catholic Church and has remained so throughout
most of the 20th century. Thomas’s [integration of philosophy and theology] was no small
achievement: he single-handedly transformed the perceptions of Aristotle as a pagan philosopher
into the perceptions of him as the Christian philosopher.
Religious thinkers such as Aquinas have offered various arguments for the existence of
God and they have existed these arguments to be evaluated on their own merits. To suspend the
influence of faith is not to ignore it. Indeed, after we evaluate Aquinas’s arguments for God’s
existence, we shall turn to another justification for belief in God, which refuses to divorce God
from the life of faith. This section shall also provide necessary readings for the arguments of St.
Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine of Hippo, and finally Blaise Pascal.
B. Anselm’s God
What do we mean by “God” in our question? The medieval theologian, St. Anselm, has
captured this conception best. According to Anselm, God is the being so great that we cannot
conceive of any greater being. That is, God is great that he has every conceivable perfection.
Five perfections are particularly important (Anselm, 1996):
1. God is perfectly good, in the sense that he does no evil.
2. God is omniscient (knows all there is to be known).
3. God is omnipotent (has infinite power).
4. God is a personal God. That is, he is a being capable of acting in the world, of
coming into personal relations with human beings, and of loving us, and being loved
by us.
5. God is a necessary being. He is the one being in the universe that must exist.
Although it is conceivable that that there might have been a universe without human
beings, trees, the earth, our sun, and so forth, according to Anselm’s conception of
God, it is inconceivable that there might have been a universe without God. God’s
nonexistence, according to Anselm, is impossible. God is the one necessarily existing
thing.
Anselm thought that God’s existence follows necessarily from our conception of him. As
long as we can think of God as a being so great that we can conceive of no greater being, we
cannot deny that God exists without involving ourselves in a hopeless contradiction. Anselm’s
3
(from: Ramos, Christine Carmela,2010, Introduction to Philosophy, 2nd ed. ch. 3, pp. 117ff.)
Living in the Stormy Middle Ages
The Middle Ages cover about 1,000 years from about 500-1500 A.D.. However, the
change from ancient ways to medical customs came so gradually. Some historians say that the
Middle Ages began in A.D. 476 when the barbarian Odoacer overthrew Emperor Romulus
Augustulus, ending the Western Roman Emperor; still others say about A.D. 800 pr even later.
Historians say that the Middle Ages ended with the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, with the
discovery of America, in 1492; or with the beginning of the Reformation in 1517.
German barbarians sacked and pillaged the declining Western Roman Empire. The
invaders, however, lacked the knowledge and skills to carry on Roman achievements in art,
literature, and engineering. In effect, highly developed systems of Roman law and government
gave way to the rude forms of the barbarians. Thus, the early Medieval Period is sometimes
referred to as the Dark Ages (Solomon & Higgins, 1996).
It was, nonetheless, a time of preparation, like working afield before planting seeds. For
instance, to the Romans, the State had been more important than the individual. From the
barbarians’ ideal of personal rights grew their respect for women, their “government by the
people,” and their crude but representative law courts where kings and chiefs were elected by
tribal councils (which also served as court of laws).
In the reign of Clovis, Christianity began to lift Europe from the Dark Ages. Many
barbarians had become Christians earlier though mostly hold the Arian belief, a doctrine that
holds the conviction that the Son of God is finite and created by God the Father and thus,
condemned as heresy by the Church. Christianity’s influence widened when the great
Charlemagne become the king of the Franks who founded schools in monasteries and churches
for both the poor and nobility.
The way of life in the Middle Ages is called feudalism, which comes from medieval
Latin feudium, meaning property or “possession.” Peasants, about nine-tenths of them, are
farmers or village laborers. All peasants—men, women, and children worked to support their
lord. Many peasants built their villages of huts near the castles of their lords for protection in
exchange of their services.
Besides labor, peasants had to pay taxes to the lord in money or produce. In addition, hey
had to give a tithe to the Church for instance, every tenth egg, wheat, etc. Famines were
frequent. Plagues cut down the livestock. Floods, frosts, and droughts destroyed the crops.
Burst of warfare ravaged the countryside as the lords burned each other’s fields and harvests.
1
, However, with the growth of commerce and towns, feudalism as a system of government
began to pass. As changes in business, government, and social customs steadily shaped a new
life in Europe, rising interest in artistic and intellectual achievements reached a peak in the
Renaissance—a revival of classical learning. An interest I beauty and culture was reborn. In 14th
and 15th centuries, leadership in art and literature returned to Western Europe.
Amid the turmoil of the Middle Ages, one institution stood for the common good—it was
the Roman Catholic Church. Many historians say that its spirit and its work comprised the
“great civilizing influence of the Middle Ages.” By the 13th century, the Church was the
strongest single influence in Europe. Everyone except Arabs, Jews, and the people in the
Byzantine Empire belonged to the Church and felt its authority.
A. The Biblical God and Humanity
In this section, new body of philosophical writings that sets forth new problems is
discussed. In the 5th century, Augustine’s writing is considered to be the most influential in the
early Medieval period (Hare er al, 1991). In Aquinas, new material is made fundamental and the
old assimilated to it. This chapter looks at the reasonableness of belief in God’s existence. In
doing so, we shall treat the statement. “God exists” as a hypothesis, which we call the theistic
hypothesis. This means we shall ask whether or not the existence of God provides the best
explanation of the existence of the world, as we know it. To treat the existence of God as a
hypothesis is to take a decidedly philosophical attitude toward the matter. It is to approach it
from the point of view of agnosticism, a claim of ignorance or the claim that God’s existence can
be neither proved nor disproved.
Religious people definitely do not treat God’s existence as a hypothesis, for God is a
constant presence, rather than a being whose existence is accepted as the best explanation of
available evidence. In neither the Jewish nor Christian Bibles is there any argument of God’s
existence. For the biblical writers, proving God’s existence would be as pointless as trying to
prove the existence of the air we breathe. The religious problem reflected in the Old Testament
narratives is not atheism but polytheism: not the denial of God but the worship of too many gods.
Likewise, in the New Testament, the reality of God is unquestioned due to the conviction that in
Jesus of Nazareth the eternal God became flesh and welt among human beings. In its earliest
missionary endeavors. Christians directed their preaching to Jews who accepted the reality of
God. It was only later when Christian missionaries confronted a variety of naturalistic
philosophy that they felt the need to argue philosophically for the existence of God. However,
even then, the task was not considered too formidable for the basic structure of the arguments
was already present in the writings of the Greek philosophers.
For the first thousand years of the existence of the faith, Christian writers found the most
useful philosophical framework within the philosophy of Plato. Indeed, the ontological
argument is highly compatible with the Platonic view of reality, about which more will be said
2
, later. Most of the works of Aristotle, in contrast, had been lost to Western scholars, and what
was known of his philosophy was through the work of such Arabic commentators as Avicenna
and Averroes. In the mind of most Christian scholars in the 13th century. Plato was the Christian
philosopher, Aristotle the pagan philosopher. In such a climate of opinion, Thomas Aquinas
nonetheless found in Aristotle a better set of categories for communicating the Christian faith to
the world. He was so successful in his use of Aristotelian thought that Thomistic became the
official doctrinal framework of the Roman Catholic Church and has remained so throughout
most of the 20th century. Thomas’s [integration of philosophy and theology] was no small
achievement: he single-handedly transformed the perceptions of Aristotle as a pagan philosopher
into the perceptions of him as the Christian philosopher.
Religious thinkers such as Aquinas have offered various arguments for the existence of
God and they have existed these arguments to be evaluated on their own merits. To suspend the
influence of faith is not to ignore it. Indeed, after we evaluate Aquinas’s arguments for God’s
existence, we shall turn to another justification for belief in God, which refuses to divorce God
from the life of faith. This section shall also provide necessary readings for the arguments of St.
Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine of Hippo, and finally Blaise Pascal.
B. Anselm’s God
What do we mean by “God” in our question? The medieval theologian, St. Anselm, has
captured this conception best. According to Anselm, God is the being so great that we cannot
conceive of any greater being. That is, God is great that he has every conceivable perfection.
Five perfections are particularly important (Anselm, 1996):
1. God is perfectly good, in the sense that he does no evil.
2. God is omniscient (knows all there is to be known).
3. God is omnipotent (has infinite power).
4. God is a personal God. That is, he is a being capable of acting in the world, of
coming into personal relations with human beings, and of loving us, and being loved
by us.
5. God is a necessary being. He is the one being in the universe that must exist.
Although it is conceivable that that there might have been a universe without human
beings, trees, the earth, our sun, and so forth, according to Anselm’s conception of
God, it is inconceivable that there might have been a universe without God. God’s
nonexistence, according to Anselm, is impossible. God is the one necessarily existing
thing.
Anselm thought that God’s existence follows necessarily from our conception of him. As
long as we can think of God as a being so great that we can conceive of no greater being, we
cannot deny that God exists without involving ourselves in a hopeless contradiction. Anselm’s
3
