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Week 1
Foundations 1: Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius and Boethius
Augustine (4th-5th Century)
(a) the ascent to truth and the goal of the Christian journey (Confessions)
(b) free will and grace (?)
(c) Trinity as divine mind
Pseudo-Dionysius (4th-5th Century)
(a) hidden God
(b) heavenly hierarchy
Boethius (6th Century)
Week 2
Foundations 2 : Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Maimonides, al-Ghazali, al-Razi (11th-13th Centuries)
Ibn Sina
(a) Necessary being and the agent intellect
(b) The flying man and knowledge of scientific truth
Al Ghazali: Everything is possible for God
Maimonides: The eternity of the world
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
(a) Creation, eternity and atoms
(b) what do we know? Sceptical challenges
Ibn Rushd
(a) recovering Aristotle
(b) comments on the ideal state
Week 3
Topics 1: The slow death of the forms
Universals and names – logic and the Platonic heritage. Things in the world and things in the mind: reason, knowledge and the science of nature.
Week 4
Topics 2: Soul, mind and God
What is the human? Knowing reality. Knowing God. Arguments about the nature of the soul, human embodiment, human destiny. Paths to attaining the knowledge of God. Arguments about essence and existence.
Week 5
Topics 3 Law, virtue and Politics
Christian tradition, Medieval Power-Play and Integrating Aristotle. The sources of law, and its application: virtue and personal decision-making. Divine command and divine goodness. Monarchies, aristocracies and the voice of the people in the ideal state.
Dear all,
Welcome to our Medieval Philosophy introduction. Please find below a selection of texts for the first two weeks.
Do not be alarmed! Read the introduction for each week and choose one text to focus on for yourself that you find interesting. In the course of each session we will be breaking into groups to present to one another some of the texts that we have looked at, sobe prepared to share what you have found.
Ask yourself the general questions to guide you:
What is the author trying to say?
Why is it important to them?
What does this text say to me?
See you next Wednesday.
John M sj
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Dear All,
Herewith a copy of the texts we shall be looking at over weeks 3-5 of this part of the course. I have also put up an introductory chapter from the Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, which gives amore thorough sense of context than we will be able to explore in our sessions.
The texts are broken down into three topic areas, each with their own introduction, and with some notes to guide you through each selection. Do not try to read each text in detail before the relevant weekly session, because that will probably cause unnecessary pain and suffering. However, please scan through all of them and select one(or two if there are texts that make a pair) and focus on trying to understand that text, using these questions to guide you:
What does the author seem to be saying?
Why does the author think this matters?
How does this relate to other philosophical ideas we have looked at?
How does this relate to other philosophical ideas I am familiar with?
Does this make me think differently about anything?
Be prepared to say something about your chosen text in our small group sessions.
Good luck!
John M sj
John Moffatt SJ works at the London Jesuit Centre. His first degree was in Classics. He taught in London secondary schools intermittently between 1985 and 2016 and has worked briefly in University Chaplaincy. He has been involved with teenage and adult faith education in Britain and South Africa and has recently completed a doctorate in medieval Islamic philosophy.
