ABSTRACT
Scholastic philosophy has by some historians been used as a term to cover all the conflicting philosophies, taught in the schools or universities, of the middle ages. By others it is used as the equivalent of Thomism, the philosophy of S.Thomas Aquinas. More strictly, it should be used of the philosophy which was taught by a group of leading western philosophers, from Anselm of Canterbury to Thomas Aquinas and William of Okham, who all used the same fundamental theories while adding their individual contributions to the whole structure. In the terms of their own day, and in opposition to the rival schools of philosophy which faced them, they were all “moderate realists.”
