Scholasticism

By Aldinette C. Esto BSED III – Math The Teaching Profession

Scholasticism in 11th century • Sought to integrate the secular understanding of the ancient world with the dogma implicit in the revelations of Christianity. • A synthesis of learning in which theology surmounted the hierarchy of knowledge. • Peter Abelard, St. Anselm of Canterbury, St. Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon

Scholasticism in 13th century • Writings and doctrines of St. Thomas Aquinas

Scholasticism in 14th century

• Declined, but laid the foundations for many revivals and revisitations in later centuries, particularly under Pope Leo XIII (1897)

Disciplines in the 12th century • Philosophy • Theology • Medicine • Law (canon and civil)

Constitute d the medieval universitie s beginning in Bologna, Paris and Oxford

• Basic Philosophy: Aristotelian • Theology: Bible was variously interpreted depending on the kind of philosophy used to understand the Christian faith systematically. • Important Scholastic Theologies: >> Thomism - St. Thomas Aquinas >> Augustinism - St. Augustine >> Scotism - John Duns Scotus

SCHOLASTIC SYSTEM

• A system of:  Moderate Realism  Moderate Intellectualism

• Avoids: Innatism Sensism Subjectivism

Nature of Man • Augustinians >>Soul is the spiritual and the principle of thought-activity, and that the exercise of the senses is a process from the soul through the body. • 13th century Scholastics >>Soul as the principle of life, not of thought merely.

Scholastic Philosophers and Theologians • Saint Anselm of Canterbury • Peter Abelard • Peter Lombard • Saint Albertus Magnus • John Duns Scotus • Roger Bacon

• Anselmo d’Aosta • One of the most influential thinkers of medieval Europe and Christianity • “credo ut intelligam” • “Monologium” and “Prosologium” • Ontological Argument • Laid the foundations of scientific knowledge • “Father of the Scholastics”

• Pierre de Abaelardus • Most famous and controversial figure in the Western church of the first half of the 12th century • Fierce debater with radical views • Sic et Non >>multiple significations of a single word >>an exercise book in applying dialectic to

• “Master of the Sentences” • Four Books of Sentences >Trinity, Creation, Jesus and Sacraments >>Quaestiones *list of disputed statements *author’s ‘respondeo’ *answers to the list >>collection of glosses and left many questions open

• Saint Albert the Great • Greatest German philosopher and theologian • Writings collected went to 38 volumes • The first to apply Aristotle’s philosophy to Christian thought • Digested, interpreted and systematized Aristotle’s works in accordance with Church doctrine. • Honored as a ‘Doctor of

• Johannes Duns Scotus • Founded “Scotism” • The Subtle Doctor • Theology and philosophy represent two different approaches to the same truth • Reason and Revelation • Primacy of the will in both God and man

• “Doctor Mirabilis” • A point of connection between Scholasticism and the Physical Science of our day. • “Without experience nothing is known” • 2 modes of knowing: >by argument >by experience

Scholasticism in Education • Scholastic = academic, bookish, formalistic, literary, pedantic >> narrow concern for book learning and formal rules, without knowledge or experience of practical matters Dominant principle: “Faith seeking

Educational purposes • To develop the power of disputation • To systematize knowledge • To give individual mastery of this system of knowledge, now reduced into a logical whole.

Scholastic Instruction • 2 methods of teaching:

>> Lectio >> disputatio >>> “ordinary” >>> “quodlibetal”

Scholastic Method • 3 steps envisaged during the disputatio: > “prenotes”, The proponent provided definitions of the terms in the thesis, distinctions relating to them and different positions being held on the thesis > various proofs were offered, first from the authority then from reason

Scholastics and their textbooks • “The Sententiae” and • “Summa Theologica” • Limitations: > interest in argument > abstract and metaphysical character > discussion which possessed no reality

By Aldinette C. Esto BSED III – Math The Teaching Profession