The 12th Century (B)

(Originally written July 27, 2006 in Book 5)

What a shitty day and week this has been.

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Chapter XI - The 12th Century

The crusades shifted culture beyond religion in Europe. The trade in the East, which had been a Jewish monopoly shifted to Christian merchants. The Crusades also facilitated learning of Constantinople to be translated from the Greek into Latin and thus transferred to the West.

Scholasticism began in the 12th century. Scholasticism has a number of distant characteristics:
1) It is confined by the limits of orthodoxy
2) Aristotelian doctrines within the limits of orthodoxy are supreme
3) Dialect and syllogistic reasoning
4) Universals become important

The dialectic approach of scholasticism hampered it by:
1) making it indifferent to science and facts
2) belief in reasoning over observation
3) too much emphasis on verbal distinctions and subtleties

The first strictly scholastic philosopher was Roscelin. Roscelin was born at Compiegne about 1050. He taught at Loches in Brittany, where he taught Abelard. He was accused of heresy at the council of Rheims in 1092.