The Twelfth Century

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Ch. XI The Twelfth Century

Let me start by saying that I find the word, "Twelfth" to be one of the strangest in the English language. It takes a lot of concentration for me to say it without sounding a lot younger than I was on my twelfth birthday.

Four aspects of the 12th century that are especially interesting
1) The continued conflict of empire and papacy
2) The rise of the Lombard cities
3) The Crusades
4) The growth of scholasticism

The papacy continued to grow stronger in the 12th century, generally defeating the emperor and the kings of England and France and also having more strength over bishops, who were on the whole, more virtuous than prior to the reforms of the 11th.

The Italian, Lomabard cities of Northern Italy were able to fight off the Emperor. Their independence allowed the papacy to grow stronger as well as there was a buffer between Rome and the Germans.

The power of the popes was increased by the religious zeal and propaganda of the Crusades.

The first scholastic philosopher was Roscelin, born around 1050. He disappeared around 1120.

Abelard is a more well known scholastic whose writings have survived more in tact than the barely knowable Roscelin.

Abelard's most famous works, "Yes and No" show he loved disputation itself as he gave dialectical arguments for and against a variety of topics. His works being regarded as heretical might have arisen from his love of disputation as he was generally hostile to a lot of other thinkers. His lapses into actual heretical doctrine were fixed in his lifetime.

In addition to the rise of scholasticism there was a rise in mystical expressions as evident by the rise of Bernard of Clairvaux.

"The whole of early scholasticism may be viewed, politically, as an offshoot of the Church's struggle for power" (Russell, 441). The earliest scholastics were primarily French, which the papacy used as a counterbalance to the power of the Emperor.

Notes on John Scotus and Abelard

(Originally Written December 13, 2006 in Book 11)

Medieval Realism

John Scotus Erigena was a medieval realist in that he believed universals to be real in their own right.
Erigena distinguished between 3 real entities:
1) The independently real universe
2) The sense object
3) The Memory image

Erigena's solution seemed plausible for the 11th and 12th century thinkers like Odo of Tournai, Anselm of Canterbury and William of Champeaux. It helped solve problems like Original Sin in Christian doctrines. But it has a pantheistic element that is incompatible with Christianity.

Nominalism

Extreme nominalism is no solution to the problem of universals. Nominalism has difficulties explaining the doctrine of the Trinity. Either there are three Gods or God is one in nominalism, which is heresy.

Conceptualism

Neither realism (independent universals) nor nominalism (no objective of universals) was adequate.

Aristotle was a compromise between the two and the medieval compromise was strikingly similar to Aristotle.

Abelard

Peter Abelard devised conceptualism, which is the nominalist theory that universals are mental concepts, but have objective value because they are conceived by multiple human minds.

Abelard was born in 1079 in Nantes, France. He was educated in Paris by the realist of William of Champeaux.

Abelard became a rival and set up a rival school of William of Champeaux.

Abelard had an affair with he daughter of the Canon of Notre Dame. The affair led to Abelard's de-nutting and he retired to St. Denis.

But Abelard continued to stir up trouble wherever he went. He was finally condemned in 1142. He never fell out of love with Heloïse, the Canon's daughter.

Abelard was a prototype for the scholastic method.

Abelard would attack and ridicule his rival's views and philosophically beat them into submission or frustration.

A universal is an abstraction and it is real as it is abstracted.

Abelard shifted the emphasis of the problem of universals from metaphysics to logic and psychology.

A universal exists in two ways:
1) It exists in the individual particulars as a common likeness.
2) It exists in the human intellect as a concept formed as a result of the intellect's shaving focused it attention on the likeness.

The Faith-Reason Controversy

At first faith and reason can be supposed to not be in conflict, they yield the same results.

John Scots Erigena held their optimistic view, but the churchmen began to see faith as being threatened by reason.

Final Exam Study!

Augustine
1. Epistemology and philosophy of mind

Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Universals

(Originally written December 7, 2006 in Book 7)

History of Philosophy I notes

Duns Scotus (1265-1308)

-Prefers univocal regarding language applied to God

Scouts maintained that not only does God's essence play a role in his existence, but individual men's essences play a role in their existence.

Principle of individuation
-Aquinas claimed that matter was what gave individual things their individuality
-Scotus believed it was an individual essence or a "haecceity" that distinguished us from all other things, not mere matter

Natural Theology
- Far less confident in the power of reason to teach us about God then Aquinas was
- Scotus' standards of proof are much more rigorous than Aquinas' standards

Problem of Induction
-First to identify the problem
- His solution was to focus on the cause and effect and state that there is a certain necessity in causal relations
-His solution was satisfactory until David Hume

Freedom of the Will
-Aquinas held that the intellect was primary, not the will
-Scotus held that the will is primary

The will is:
1. Contingent - has the power of contrary choice
2. Self-caused - the will has no other cause than itself (like God

The self-caused will is an early version of the libertarian doctrine of the will

William of Ockham (ca. 1285 - 1349)

-Born in London
-Franciscan, just like Scotus
-Even more negative regarding natural theology than Scotus
-Faith contradicts reason, but we must follow faith
-Regarded omnipotence as God's power to do literally anything
-God could produce the world in such a way that he made it without any matter
-The object of our knowledge is particulars, but we use universals
-Generally he is regarded as a nominalist, but he could be called a conceptualist
-What is explained on X number of principles is needless explained by more (Ockham's razor)
-Other things being equal, the simpler explanation is better or preferred (Ockham's razor)
-Ockham's Razor was useful in the history of Philosophy and the history of Science

Summary of the thoughts on Universals

Schools of thought on Universals

1. Realism (Plato, Anselm, Augustine) - there are eternal ideas, otherwise we couldn't know general things.
Problem: Where are the ideas

2. Nominalism (Stoics, Sophists) - there are no universals, only particulars
Problem: Can't account for use of general terms or general ideas

3. Conceptualism (Peter Abelard, Locke, Berkeley) - Universals exist as mental concepts

The 12th Century (C)

(Originally written July 29, 2006 in Book 5)

Roscelin recanted the heresy at Rheims then fled to England. While in England he attacked Anselm, then fled to Rome.

Roscelin's writings are all lost except for a letter to Abelard on the Trinity. Roscelin mocks Abelard in the letter.

Ueberweg describes Roscelin as not a very nice man.

Roscelin's teachings are known through the writings of Abelard and Anselm.

Anselm states that Roscelin believed universals are "breath of voice" or that they physically occur when we speak them. Russell contends that Roscelin would not have believed something so foolish. Anselm states that Roscelin also believed man is not a unity, but a collection under a common name. Anselm stated that Roscelin believed reality is what is sensible. Roscelin believed (according to Anselm) that a whole is merely a word, but reality rests in the parts of a whole. He was led by this view to extreme atomism and troubles in dealing with the Trinity.

He held that the Godhead was three distinct substances and thus there are three Gods. He stated this because if they are one substance then all three had been incarnate in Jesus Christ. He couldn't accept that. But this is what he recanted in Rheims.

Abelard was Roselyn's pupil. He was born near Nantes in 1079. He first studied under the realist William of Champeaux in Paris. He taught at the Paris cathedral school where he argued against William's realism and compelled his former teacher to change his views. He left Paris to study theology under Anselm of Leon then returned to Paris in 1113. Upon returning he became widely popular as a teacher and became the lover of Heloïse, niece of Canon Fulbert. Canon Fulbert castrated him and he joined the monastery at St. Denis.

Abelard was vain, disputatious and tempts. After being castrated he was angry and humiliated. (Linehan - what a shock!)

He was condemned for an unorthodox book on the Trinity in 1121.

He then became the abbot of Saint Gildas in Brittany for four years. He hated it because he saw the monks as uncivilized.

In 1141 he was again condemned at the insistence of St. Bernard. He retired to Cluny and died in 1142.

Abelard's most famous book is "Yes and No". It is a dialectical argument for and against many theses. It did not however produce any conclusions.

Abelard held that, apart from Scriptures, dialectic is the sole road to truth.

He considered logic to be the chief science.

He is best known for logic and theory of knowledge.

Universals - "what can be predicated of many different things" (Russell, 430).

Abelard held that we do not predicate a thing, but only a word. He was a nomalist in this sense.

He fought realism.

He regards Platonic Ideas as the pattern of creation in the mind of God.

St. Bernard charged him without fully understanding Abelard's teachings. The heresies Bernard charged him with are:
1) Treating the Trinity like an Arian
2) Treating grace like a Pelagian
3) Treating the Person of Christ like a Nestorian
4) Being a heathen by making Plato to be a Christian
5) Destroying Christianity by maintaining that God can be understood through reason alone.

In all reality it was his hostile disposition towards clergy that caused his heretical label and not his teachings.

Abelard was more dialectical than any others at his time.

1) The school of Chartres was a humanistic movement
2) Abelard of Bath translated Euclid due to a renaissance of mathematical learning
3) There was a strong mystical movement headed by St. Bernard.

St. Bernard was not an intellectualist, but was extremely influential.

1) His father was a knight in the first Crusade
2) He was a Cistercian monk
3) He was the abbot at Clairvaux
4) He was influential in ecclesiastical politics
5) He fought antipopes
6) he combatted heresy in Northern Italy and Southern France
7) He brought philosophers down with the weight of orthodoxy
8) He set into motion the second Crusade

"Although a politician and a bigot, he was a man of genuinely religious temperament" (Russel, 439).

Bernard's reverence of the Papacy increased the power of the Pope.

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.