ABSTRACT
This chapter is an introduction to the diverse, complex and exciting world of medieval thought and learning. It aims to provide a sketch of the historical development of philosophy and to give some specific examples of philosophical reasoning in that period. Medieval intellectuals were as active in philosophy as their classical counterparts and there is no good reason for the current neglect of this period in the undergraduate philosophy curriculum. On the other hand, it is not easy to read medieval texts; one needs considerable background historical knowledge of the classical philosophical tradition, familiarity with scripture, contextual awareness and linguistic expertise – not just in Greek, Latin or Arabic, but also modern European languages – in order to penetrate fully into the nature of medieval thought. Moreover, even with huge growth in our knowledge of medieval philosophy in the past 150 years, the extant corpus of medieval philosophy – by no means fully identified or complete – is far more vast than the entire classical legacy. Critical editions of the central writers (even those of Aquinas and Duns Scotus) are incomplete, and there is a paucity of English translations. Due to the neglect of medieval philosophy in the Anglophone world, most of the best scholarship is in German, French, Italian, or other European languages. Finally, there is no longer a single model of approach to medieval philosophy. 1 We can no longer categorise it in terms of a few central themes – Christian philosophy, the problem of universals, the revival of Aristotle, and so on. Medieval philosophy is as diverse as contemporary philosophy. In this chapter, therefore, we can only scratch the surface of the medieval philosophical heritage.
