[lbo-talk] Re: Ambigious Doug

C. G. Estabrook galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Fri Jun 27 10:15:51 PDT 2003


The Scholasticism of Aquinas' time (13th century) was of course based on Aristotle. It was far more rational than the philosophy of the following period (15-16th century), which (for strange historical reasons) we call the "Renaissance." The university culture of Aquinas' time had a very high opinion (higher than our own) of the ability of human reason to reach truth. The subsequent period abandoned this confidence and cast about for bases other than reason. That's why the Renaissance saw the rebirth of magic in the West and was the great age of witch-burning, which didn't occur in medieval Europe. The intellectual dislocation of the period is hardly surprising, given that it saw the collapse of the medieval mode of production. (Cf. the collapse of the ancient mode, a millennium earlier.)

BTW, the translation given of the technical argument of Summa theologiae 1.2.3 is from an old and literal Englishing. Much better ones are available (e.g., the Blackfriars translation from the 1960s, with Latin and English on facing pages). I'd be happy to send a different translation of this section to anyone who wants it. --CGE

On Fri, 27 Jun 2003, Chuck Grimes wrote:


> ...I accidently re-capitulated the historical pivot between medieval
> scholasticism and rational philosophy that followed the re-discovery
> of Aristotle...



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