No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Autonomy of Mediaeval Philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
Extract
In an article entitled “Recent Tendencies in Roman Catholic Theology,” in the number of this Review for July 1922, Dr. George La Piana has criticised my interpretation of the history of mediaeval philosophy.
My fundamental thesis is that in the thirteenth century there is a distinction between philosophy and theology, and that philosophy has an autonomous value. For Dr. La Piana, on the contrary, there is properly speaking no “consistent and independent philosophical system” (p. 251). Philosophy is the handmaiden of theology, and a view such as mine is an artificial construction, abandoned by mediaevalists, and in process of disintegration.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1923
References
1 Not only the great writers of the thirteenth century, such as Thomas Aquinas, are explicit upon this distinction, but many other less known writers agree in making it. Such, for example, is the Summa Philosophica of an anonymous author of the thirteenth century, recently published by Baur — one of the most remarkable treatises of pure speculative philosophy. The results of the recent investigations of E. K. Rand and F. Klingner on Boethius indicate that the differentiation of philosophy from theology already appears in the De Consolatione Philosophiae.
2 Gilson, Étienne, Études de philosophie médiévale, Strasbourg, 1921.Google Scholar
3 L'art religieuse au 13e siècle: Étude sur l'iconographie du moyen âge et sur ses sources d'inspiration, Paris, 1910.
4 “Auch das ist richtig dass, wie die Geistesgebilde des Mittelalters überhaupt, so auch seine philosophischen Geistesprodukte eine weitgreifende Gleichförmigkeit zeigen,” etc. ‘Die Stellung des Alfred von Sareshel und seine Schrift de motu cordis in der Wissenschaft des beginnenden XIII. Jahrhunderts’ (Sitzungsberichte d. kön. Bayer. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, Abh. 9), München, 1913, p. 5.
5 “Wir können mit Cl. Baeumker dieses einheitliche formale und inhaltliche Gepräge als ‘Gemeingut der Scholastik’, mit M. de Wulf als ‘La synthèse scolaatique’ bezeichnen.” Geschichte der Philosophie III. Die Philosophie des Mittelalters (Sammlung Göschen), Berlin, 1921, p. 27.