SCHOLASTICISM
greater degree of toleration. By the end
HISTORY OF SCHOLASTICISM
The Patristic Era
The period extending from the beginning
of Christianity through the time of St.
Augustine is known as the Patristic era
of philosophy and theology. The early
Fathers of the Church developed a
Christian philosophy based on Platonic
principles, using reason to support
revelation, and relying on spiritual
intuition rather than logical proof to
establish the truths which became the
doctrine of the Church. The Patristic era
ended in the fifth century, and between
the fifth and ninth centuries.
The Scholastic Period
In the ninth century, the Carolingian
revival of learning gave a new direction
to Christian thought. The masters of the
schools began to include discussions
of psychology, metaphysics, cosmology,
and ethics in their teaching of dialectic,
giving rise to the
Christian rationalism which
characterizes Scholastic philosophy. The
first original thinker in the Scholastic
era was John the Scot (Johannes Scottus
Eriugena). During the eleventh and
twelfth centuries conflict arose between
rationalists such as Roscelin, Abelard,
and Peter Lombard, and Christian
mystics such as St. Anselm, St. Peter
Damian, St. Bernard, and the Victorines,
who felt that they were threatening the
Christian faith. Gradually the rationalists
reconciled their methods with the
orthodoxy of the Church and
accommodated reverence for the
mysteries of faith. Eclectics, like John of
Salisbury, and Platonists, like the
members of the School of Chartres,
brought the Scholastic movement to a
of the twelfth century, rationalism was
dominant in the Christian universities,
but coexisted with mysticism.
The Formative Period of
Scholasticism
During its formative period, Scholastic
philosophy began to develop in an
atmosphere of Patristic thought and
under the influence of the thought of St.
Augustine. Only later, by the end of the
twelfth and at the beginning of the
thirteenth century did it separate itself
from the thought of the preceding age as
a result of the discussions occasioned by
the books of Aristotle, which at that time
began to circulate in the schools.
During the Augustinian period, granted
the fundamental prejudice of
illumination -- according to which the
intellect is considered unable, of itself,
to attain rational cognition and is made
capable of this only through a special
enlightenment -- it was impossible to
have a complete separation of reason
from faith, of the natural from the
supernatural.
The development of scientific discovery
and the humanism of the 1400s and
1500s, pushed scholastics into the
background, though there was a revival
in Spain at the School of Salamanca
under the Jesuit teachers, Toletus,
Vasquez, and Francisco Suárez.
The two basic problems, God and man,
remain during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, but they are
separated from one another and are
without an organic treatment or
solution; as a result they are also
opposed. The weakening of the medieval
faith suppressed one of the two
problems, God, and put man in His
place. But this is no longer Scholastic
philosophy, but modern philosophy.
Scholasticism will enter into crisis as a
prevailing philosophy in the West around
the fourteenth century, and gradually
give way to other trends and doctrines,
to the same extent that theology would
cease to be a science and its principles
of being true
Etymological meaning of
Scholasticism
The term "scholastic" is derived from
the Latin word "scholasticus" and
the Greek"scholastikos" (meaning
literally "devoting one's leisure to
learning" or "scholar") and the Greek
"scholeion" (meaning "school"). The
term "schoolmen" is also commonly used
to describe scholastics.
Scholasticism is best known for its
application in medieval Christian
theology, especially in attempts
to reconcile the philosophy of the
ancient classical
philosophers (particularly Aristotle) with
Christian theology.
Background and key proponents
Scholasticism is one of the forerunners
of experiential learning or learner-based
instruction as once the information has
been presented, then the learners have
to use various methods to judge and
arrive at the real meaning of the
evidence.
It was pioneered by Pierre Abelard
(1079-1142) while at Notre Dame
cathedral school (now the University of
Paris). He presented the pros and cons
of theological and philosophical
propositions, leaving the formulation of
conclusions to his students. He allowed
any subject or thought to be reasonably
examined for the purpose of
understanding, verification, or
qualification. Thus he helped to
transform theology from the mere citing
of authorities into the interpretation of
Scripture. This shocked many of his
colleagues, who felt that Abelard gave
his students the freedom to arrive at
heretical conclusions. Today, this type of
learning often shocks the learner for
there is often no right answer — the
learners are responsible for much of
their learning, and the learners work
harder using this methodology.
While scholasticism later degenerated
into a cumbersome formalistic method, it
does not take away from Abelard's
contribution as one of the forerunners of
educational technology by breaking
away from traditional and irrational
doctrines. It also led the way for
scientific inquiry and experimentation
Above all the work of the latter remained
in force until the Renaissance , when
they were questioned by the studies of
Copernicus and Galileo Galilei .
Educational aims of Scholasticism
1. To develop power of
disputation;
2. To systematize knowledge; to
give individual mastery of this system of
knowledge. Scholastic training aimed to
develop the power of formulating beliefs
into a logical system and the power of
presenting and defending such
statements of beliefs against all
arguments that might be brought
against them.
The aim of scholastic education was to
systematize knowledge and, thus, give it
scientific form. But, to the scholastic
mind, knowledge was primarily of a
theological and philosophical character. book thoroughly and critically, the
The scientific form valued was that of scholars learned to appreciate the
deductive logic. theories of the auctor. Then other
documents related to the source
3. The third aspect of the
document would be referenced, such as
educational purpose of Scholasticism
Church councils, papal letters, ancient
was to give to the individual a mastery of
texts or commentaries. The points of
this knowledge, now reduced to
disagreement and contention among
propositions and syllogisms, all
these multiple sources would be written
systematized into a logical whole.
down as individual sentences or snippets
of text called sententiae. For example,
the Bible contains apparent
Curicular emphasis
contradictions for Christians, such as the
1. An acceptance of the laws regarding what foods are kosher,
prevailing Catholic orthodoxy. and these contradictions have been
2. Within this orthodoxy, an examined by scholars ancient and
acceptance of Aristotle as contemporary, so a scholastic would
a greater thinker than Plato. gather all the arguments about the
3. Recognition contradictions, looking at them from all
that Aristotle and Plato disagreed angles with an open mind.
about the notion of universals, and
Once the sources and points of
that this was a vital question to
disagreement had been laid
resolve.
4. Giving prominence to dialectical out, dialectic was used to reconcile the
thinking and syllogistic reasoning. two sides of an argument so that they
5. An acceptance of the distinction would be found to be in agreement. This
between "natural" and "revealed" t was done using two
heology. methods, philological analysis and
6. A tendency to dispute logical analysis. Words would be
everything at great length and examined and it would be argued they
in minute detail, often involving could have more than one meaning, and
word-play. that the author could have intended the
word to mean something else. The
ambiguous meaning of words could be
Scholastic Method of learning used to find common ground between
two otherwise contradictory statements.
The scholastics would choose a book by Logical analysis relied on the rules of
a renowned scholar, called auctor, as a formal logic to show that contradictions
subject of investigation, for example, the did not exist objectively, but were
Bible. subjective to the reader.
Common auctores included Aristotle ("T
he Philosopher") and commentaries
by Averroes ("The Character Development
Commentator"); Boethius and
his Consolation of Philosophy; Saint In the early half (5th -10th century) of
Augustine; Plato (Timaeus dialogue); Pet the Middle Ages (5th-15th century)
er Lombard (Sentences of Peter scholasticism’s focused on the learner’s
Lombard); and the Bible. By reading the attitude of unquestioned obedience to
authority; of receptivity to all doctrines,
statements or incidents sanctioned by
the Church; of dependence upon formal
truths dogmatically established; of an
antagonism to any state of doubt, of
questioning or of enquiry as wrong and
sinful in itself.
Roles of the teacher and learner
Scholastic schools had two methods of
teaching, the lectio and the disputatio.
The lectio was a simple reading of a text
by a teacher who would expound on
certain words or ideas, but no questions
were allowed.
The disputatio was at the heart of the
scholastic method.
There were two types of disputatio. The
first was the "ordinary," in which the
question to be disputed was announced
beforehand. The second was
the quodlibetal in which the students
would propose a question to the teacher
without any prior preparation, and the
teacher would respond, citing
authoritative texts such as the Bible to
prove his position. Students would then
rebut the response and the debate would
continue back and forth. During the
exercise notes would be taken, and the
teacher would then summarize the
arguments from the notes and present
his final position the next day, answering
all the rebuttals.
Purpose of Scholastic Thought:
The purpose of Scholasticism was to
bring reason to the support of faith; to
strengthen the religious life and the
church by the development of
intellectual power. It aimed to silence all
doubts and questionings through
argument. Faith was still considered
superior to reason. Church doctrines had
long been formulated; they were now to
be analyzed, defined, systematized.
Implication to education
Scholasticism is a Medieval school of
philosophy (or, perhaps more accurately,
a method of learning) taught by
the academics of medieval universities
and cathedrals in the period from
the 12th to 16th Century. It
combined Logic, Metaphysics and seman
tics into one discipline, and is generally
recognized to develop our understanding
of Logic significantly.
One purpose of scholasticism is to find
an answer to a question, or to show that
a contradiction can be resolved. It also
led the way for scientific inquiry and
experimentation.
Merits and Demerits of Scholastic
Education:
1. The first great limitation of the
Schoolmen is that they never stopped to
inquire about the validity of the material.
They were mainly interested in
argument, not in the validity of
conclusion.
2. A second and related limitation is that
the material they dealt with was abstract
and metaphysical and was not
supplemented by any knowledge of the
concrete and physical. The truths they
reached possessed only formal value.
The character of their conclusion was
formal.
3. One further decided limitation of the
Schoolmen was the fact that much of
their discussion possessed no reality, not
only no reality in the concrete world of
everyday life, but also no validity in say more clearly
thought. by conceptual argumentation (Averroës,
Hegel); that, on the other hand, reason
But most of the modern criticisms
is not a “prostitute” (Luther), but is the
against scholastic thought was due to
natural human capacity to grasp the real
misunderstanding.
world; that since reality and truth,
though essentially inexhaustible, are
basically one, faith and reason cannot
Enduring Features
ultimately contradict one another.
First , Modern historical investigations
have clearly shown that the classical
modern philosophers Descartes, John https://www.lorecentral.org/2018/09/10-
Locke, Benedict de Spinoza, characteristics-of-scholasticism.html
and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz owed
https://www.philosophybasics.com/move
much to medieval ideas. Of Descartes,
ments_scholasticism.html
for instance, it has been said, contrary to
the usual view, that he could quite well https://www.lorecentral.org/2018/09/10-
have been “included with the later characteristics-of-scholasticism.html
Scholastics”; and even Charles Sanders
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/e
Peirce, the originator of
ntry/Scholasticism
American pragmatism, referred not too
rarely to Scholastic maxims. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Schola
sticism/Enduring-features
http://www.theradicalacademy.org/adiphi
Secondly, there have been explicit
lscholasticismessay.html
attempts to go back to Scholastic
thinkers and inspire a revival of their
basic ideas. Two chief movements of this
kind were the Scholasticism of the
Renaissance (called Barockscholastik)
and the Neoscholasticism of the 19th
and 20th centuries, both of which were
primarily interested in the work
of Aquinas.

The third and most important aspect of

the enduring significance of the
Scholastic movement implies the
acceptance of the following fundamental
tenets: that there exist truths that
humans know, and also revealed truths
of faith; that these two kinds of truth are
not simply reducible to one another; that
faith and theology do not, by means of
symbols and sensuous images, merely
say the same as what reason and science