ABSTRACT
Scholasticism, the period between say Charlemagne and the Renaissance, is aptly called the Age of Schools. The beginnings of Scholasticism are to be found in the schools of Charlemagne. The technical, scholastic side is taken for granted without being especially cultivated, and the purpose of all Scholasticism is revealed in all its splendour: the spiritual life at its purest, even when it sometimes reaches the limits of the possible, for example in Joachim of Flora. Paris and Oxford together mark the beginning of High Scholasticism. At Oxford the old Platonic-Augustinian tradition was very much alive. To view Thomas Aquinas, for example, from the sole view-point of Aristotle's influence, as the phrase Thomist-Aristotelian philosophy suggests, is to overlook an essential part of Thomas' outlook. The Scholastics were introduced to Aristotle's physics, metaphysics, psychology, ethics and politics as well as his logic. In ethics as in psychology, Aquinas' greatest achievement lies in his contribution to an understanding of man's concrete life.
