Nicomachean Ethics
The Nicomachean Ethics is the name given to Aristotle's best-known work on ethics. The work, which plays a pre-eminent role in defining Aristotelian ethics, consists of ten books separate scrolls, is understood to be based on notes from his lectures at the Lyceum; the title is assumed to refer to his son Nicomachus, to whom the work was dedicated or who may have edited it. Alternatively, the work may have been dedicated to his father, called Nicomachus; the theme of the work is a Socratic question explored in the works of Plato, Aristotle's friend and teacher, of how men should best live. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle described how Socrates, the friend and teacher of Plato, had turned philosophy to human questions, whereas pre-Socratic philosophy had only been theoretical. Ethics, as now separated out for discussion by Aristotle, is practical rather than theoretical, in the original Aristotelian senses of these terms. In other words, it is not only a contemplation about good living, because it aims to create good living.
It is therefore connected to Aristotle's other practical work, the Politics, which aims at people becoming good. Ethics is about how individuals should best live, while the study of politics is from the perspective of a law-giver, looking at the good of a whole community; the Nicomachean Ethics is considered one of the most important historical philosophical works, had an important impact upon the European Middle Ages, becoming one of the core works of medieval philosophy. It therefore indirectly became critical in the development of all modern philosophy as well as European law and theology. Many parts of the Nicomachean Ethics are well known within different fields. In the Middle Ages, a synthesis between Aristotelian ethics and Christian theology became widespread, in Europe as introduced by Albertus Magnus. While various philosophers had influenced Christendom since its earliest times, in Western Europe Aristotle became "the Philosopher"; the most important version of this synthesis was that of Thomas Aquinas.
Other more "Averroist" Aristotelians such as Marsilius of Padua were controversial but influential. A critical period in the history of this work's influence is at the end of the Middle Ages, beginning of modernity, when several authors such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, argued forcefully and successfully that the medieval Aristotelian tradition in practical thinking had become a great impediment to philosophy in their time. However, in more recent generations, Aristotle's original works have once again become an important source. More recent authors influenced by this work include Alasdair MacIntyre, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martha Nussbaum and Avital Ronell; the English version of the title derives from Greek Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, transliterated Ethika Nikomacheia, sometimes given in the genitive form as Ἠθικῶν Νικομαχείων, Ethikōn Nikomacheiōn. The Latin, commonly used, can be Ethica Nicomachea or, De Moribus ad Nicomachum; the Nicomachean Ethics is often abbreviated "NE", or "EN", books and chapters are referred to by Roman and Arabic numerals along with corresponding Bekker numbers.
In many ways this work parallels Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics, which has only eight books, the two works can be fruitfully compared. Books V, VI, VII of the Nicomachean Ethics are identical to Books IV, V, VI of the Eudemian Ethics. Opinions about the relationship between the two works—for example, written first, which contained the three common books, are divided. Many believe that these works were not put into their current form by Aristotle himself, but by an editor sometime later; the first philosopher to write ethical treatises, Aristotle argues that the correct approach for studying such controversial subjects as Ethics or Politics, which involve discussing what is beautiful or just, is to start with what would be agreed to be true by people of good up-bringing and experience in life, to work from there to a higher understanding. Taking this approach, Aristotle begins by saying that the highest good for humans, the highest aim of all human practical thinking, is eudaimonia, a Greek word translated as well-being or happiness.
Aristotle in turn argues that happiness is properly understood as an ongoing and stable dynamic, a way of being in action appropriate to the human "soul", at its most "excellent" or virtuous. If there are several virtues the best and most complete or perfect of them will be the happiest one. An excellent human will be a person good at living life and beautifully. Aristotle says that such a person would be a serious human being, in the same sense of "serious" that one contrasts serious harpists with other harpists, he asserts as part of this starting point that virtue for a human must involve reason in thought and speech, as this is an aspect of human living. From this starting point, Aristotle goes into discussion of what ethics, a term Aristotle helped develop, means. Aristotelian Ethics is about what makes a virtuous character possible, in turn necessary if happiness is to be possible, he describes a sequence of necessary steps to achieve this: First, righteous ac
Earth (classical element)
Earth is one of the classical elements, in some systems numbering four along with air and water. Earth is one of the four classical elements in science, it was associated with qualities of heaviness and the terrestrial world. Due to the hero cults, chthonic underworld deities, the element of earth is associated with the sensual aspects of both life and death in occultism. Empedocles of Acragas proposed four archai by which to understand the cosmos: fire, air and earth. Plato believed the elements were geometric forms and he assigned the cube to the element of earth in his dialogue Timaeus. Aristotle believed earth was the heaviest element, his theory of natural place suggested that any earth–laden substances, would fall straight down, towards the center of the cosmos. In Classical Greek and Roman myth, various goddesses represented the Earth, seasons and fertility, including Demeter and Persephone. In ancient Greek medicine, each of the four humours became associated with an element. Black bile was the humor identified with earth, since both were dry.
Other things associated with earth and black bile in ancient and medieval medicine included the season of fall, since it increased the qualities of cold and aridity. In alchemy, earth was believed to be dry, secondarily cold. Beyond those classical attributes, the chemical substance salt, was associated with earth and its alchemical symbol was a downward-pointing triangle, bisected by a horizontal line. Prithvi is the Hindu mother goddess. According to one such tradition, she is the personification of the Earth itself; as Prithvi Mata, or "Mother Earth", she contrasts with Dyaus Pita, "father sky". In the Rigveda and sky are addressed as a duality indicated by the idea of two complementary "half-shells." In addition, the element Earth is associated with Budha or Mercury who represents communication, business and other practical matters. Earth and the other Greek classical elements were incorporated into the Golden Dawn system. Zelator is the elemental grade attributed to earth; the elemental weapon of earth is the Pentacle.
Each of the elements has several associated spiritual beings. The archangel of earth is Uriel, the angel is Phorlakh, the ruler is Kerub, the king is Ghob, the earth elementals are called gnomes. Earth is considered to be passive. Many of these associations have since spread throughout the occult community, it is sometimes represented by its Tattva or by a downward pointing triangle with a horizontal line through it. Earth is one of the five elements that appear in most Pagan traditions. Wicca in particular was influenced by the Golden Dawn system of magic, Aleister Crowley's mysticism, in turn inspired by the Golden Dawn. In East Asia, metal is sometimes seen as the equivalent of earth and is represented by the White Tiger, known as 白虎 in Chinese, Byakko in Japanese, Bạch Hổ in Vietnamese and Baekho in Korean. Earth is represented in the Aztec religion by a house. Gaia Mother goddess Mother nature Pherecydes of Syros Different versions of the classical elements
Metaphysics (Aristotle)
Metaphysics is one of the principal works of Aristotle and the first major work of the branch of philosophy with the same name. The principal subject is "being qua being," or being insofar, it examines what can be asserted about any being insofar as it is and not because of any special qualities it has. Covered are different kinds of causation and matter, the existence of mathematical objects, a prime-mover God; the Metaphysics is considered to be one of the greatest philosophical works. Its influence on the Greeks, the Muslim philosophers, the scholastic philosophers and writers such as Dante, was immense, it is a reconciliation of Plato's theory of Forms that Aristotle acquired at the Academy in Athens, with the view of the world given by common sense and the observations of the natural sciences. According to Plato, the real nature of things is unchangeable. However, the world we observe around us is and perpetually changing. Aristotle’s genius was to reconcile these two contradictory views of the world.
The result is a synthesis of the naturalism of empirical science, the rationalism of Plato, that informed the Western intellectual tradition for more than a thousand years. At the heart of the book lie three questions. What is existence, what sorts of things exist in the world? How can things continue to exist, yet undergo the change we see about us in the natural world? And how can this world be understood? By the time Aristotle was writing, the tradition of Greek philosophy was only two hundred years old, it had begun with the efforts of thinkers in the Greek world to theorize about the common structure that underlies the changes we observe in the natural world. Two contrasting theories, those of Heraclitus and Parmenides, were an important influence on both Plato and Aristotle. Heraclitus argued that things that appear to be permanent are in fact always changing. Therefore, though we believe we are surrounded by a world of things that remain identical through time, this world is in flux, with no underlying structure or identity.
By contrast, Parmenides argued that we can reach certain conclusions by means of reason alone, making no use of the senses. What we acquire through the process of reason is fixed and eternal; the world is not made up of a variety of things in constant flux, but of one single Truth or reality. Plato’s theory of forms is a synthesis of these two views. Given, any object; the form of each object we see in this world is an imperfect reflection of the perfect form of the object. For example, Plato claimed a chair may take many forms, but in the perfect world there is only one perfect form of chair. Aristotle encountered the theory of forms when he studied at the Academy, which he joined at the age of about 19 in the 360s B. C. Aristotle soon expanded on the concept of forms in his Metaphysics, he believed that in every change there is something which persists through the change, something else which did not exist before, but comes into existence as a result of the change. To explain how Socrates comes to be born Aristotle says that it is ‘matter’ that underlies the change.
The matter has the ‘form’ of Socrates imposed on it to become Socrates himself. Thus all the things around us, all substances, are composites of two radically different things: form and matter; this doctrine is sometimes known as Hylomorphism. Subsequent to the arrangement of Aristotle's works by scholars at Alexandria in the first century CE, a number of his treatises were referred to as τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά; this is the origin of the title for collection of treatises now known as Aristotle's Metaphysics. Some have interpreted the expression "τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά" to imply that the subject of the work goes "beyond" that of Aristotle's Physics or that it is metatheoretical in relation to the Physics, but others believe that "τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά" referred to the work's place in the canonical arrangement of Aristotle's writings, at least as old as Andronicus of Rhodes or Hermippus of Smyrna. Within the Aristotelian corpus itself, the metaphysical treatises are referred to as τὰ περὶ τῆς πρώτης φιλοσοφίας.
It is notoriously difficult to specify the date at which Aristotle wrote these treatises as a whole or individually because the Metaphysics is, in Jonathan Barnes' words, "a farrago, a hotch-potch", more because of the difficulty of dating any of Aristotle's writings. In the manuscripts, books are referred to by Greek letters; the second book was given the title "little alpha," because it appears to have nothing to do with the other books or, although this is less because of its shortness. This disrupts the correspondence of letters to numbers, as book 2 is little alpha, book 3 is beta, so on. For many scholars, it is customary to refer to the books by their letter names, thus book 1 is called Alpha. It is possible that Aristotle did not write the books in the order in which they have come down to us
Poetics (Aristotle)
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory in the West. This has been the traditional view for centuries. However, recent work is now challenging whether Aristotle focuses on literary theory per se or whether he focuses instead on dramatic musical theory that only has language as one of the elements. In it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry", they are similar in the fact that they are all imitations but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes: Differences in music rhythm, harmony and melody. Difference of goodness in the characters. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out. In examining its "first principles", Aristotle finds two: 1) imitation and 2) genres and other concepts by which that of truth is applied/revealed in the poesis, his analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion. Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions".
The work was lost to the Western world for a long time. It was available in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance only through a Latin translation of an Arabic version written by Averroes. Aristotle's work on aesthetics consists of the Poetics and Rhetoric; the Poetics is concerned with drama. At some point, Aristotle's original work was divided in two, each "book" written on a separate roll of papyrus. Only the first part – that which focuses on tragedy and epic – survives; the lost second part addressed comedy. Some scholars speculate that the Tractatus coislinianus summarises the contents of the lost second book; some other scholars indicate that "tragedy" is a misleading translation for the Greek tragoidos, which seems to have meant "goat-song" originally. The reason is that Aristotle says three times in the treatise that the protagonist can go from fortune to misfortune or misfortune to fortune; the table of contents page of the Poetics found in Modern Library's Basic Works of Aristotle identifies five basic parts within it.
A. Preliminary discourse on tragedy, epic poetry, comedy, as the chief forms of imitative poetry. B. Definition of a tragedy, the rules for its construction. Definition and analysis into qualitative parts. C. Rules for the construction of a tragedy: Tragic pleasure, or catharsis experienced by fear and pity should be produced in the spectator; the characters must be four things: good, appropriate and consistent. Discovery must occur within the plot. Narratives, stories and poetics overlap, it is important for the poet to visualize all of the scenes. The poet should incorporate complication and dénouement within the story, as well as combine all of the elements of tragedy; the poet must express thought through the characters' words and actions, while paying close attention to diction and how a character's spoken words express a specific idea. Aristotle believed that all of these different elements had to be present in order for the poetry to be well-done. D. Possible criticisms of an epic or tragedy, the answers to them.
E. Tragedy as artistically superior to epic poetry: Tragedy has everything that the epic has the epic meter being admissible; the reality of presentation is felt in the play as read, as well as in the play. The tragic imitation requires less space for the attainment of its end. If it has more concentrated effect, it is more pleasurable than one with a large admixture of time to dilute it. There is less unity in the imitation of the epic poets and this is proved by the fact that an epic poem can supply enough material for several tragedies. Aristotle distinguishes between the genres of "poetry" in three ways: Matterlanguage and melody, for Aristotle, make up the matter of poetic creation. Where the epic poem makes use of language alone, the playing of the lyre involves melody; some poetic forms include a blending of all materials. These points convey the standard view. Recent work, argues that translating rhuthmos here as "rhythm" is absurd: melody has its own inherent musical rhythm, the Greek can mean what Plato says it means in Laws II, 665a: " ordered body movement," or dance.
This conveys what dramatic musical creation, the topic of the Poetics, in ancient Greece had: music and language. The musical instrument cited in Ch 1 is not the lyre but the kithara, played in the drama while the kithara-player was dancing if that meant just walking in an appropriate way. Moreover, epic might have had only literary exponents, but as Plato's Ion and Aristotle's Ch 26 of the Poetics help prove, for Plato and Aristotle at least some epic rhapsodes used all three means of mimesis: language and music. SubjectsAlso "agents" in some translations. Aristotle differentiates between tragedy and comedy throughout the work by distinguishing between the nature of the human characters that populate either f
Aristotle
Aristotle was a philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, the founder of the Lyceum and the Peripatetic school of philosophy and Aristotelian tradition. Along with his teacher Plato, he is considered the "Father of Western Philosophy", his writings cover many subjects – including physics, zoology, logic, aesthetics, theatre, rhetoric, linguistics, economics and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him, it was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry; as a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion. Little is known about his life. Aristotle was born in the city of Stagira in Northern Greece, his father, died when Aristotle was a child, he was brought up by a guardian. At seventeen or eighteen years of age, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven.
Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication; the fact that Aristotle was a pupil of Plato contributed to his former views of Platonism, following Plato's death, Aristotle developed an increased interest in natural sciences and adopted the position of immanent realism. Aristotle's views on physical science profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, their influence extended from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics. Some of Aristotle's zoological observations found in his biology, such as on the hectocotyl arm of the octopus, were disbelieved until the 19th century.
His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and John Buridan. Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century He influenced Islamic thought during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher" and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as "The Philosopher", his ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics, such as in the thinking of Alasdair MacIntyre and Philippa Foot. In general, the details of Aristotle's life are not well-established; the biographies written in ancient times are speculative and historians only agree on a few salient points. Aristotle, whose name means "the best purpose" in Ancient Greek, was born in 384 BC in Stagira, about 55 km east of modern-day Thessaloniki.
His father Nicomachus was the personal physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Both of Aristotle's parents died when he was about thirteen, Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. Although little information about Aristotle's childhood has survived, he spent some time within the Macedonian palace, making his first connections with the Macedonian monarchy. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy, he remained there for nearly twenty years before leaving Athens in 348/47 BC. The traditional story about his departure records that he was disappointed with the Academy's direction after control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus, although it is possible that he feared the anti-Macedonian sentiments in Athens at that time and left before Plato died. Aristotle accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. After the death of Hermias, Aristotle travelled with his pupil Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island and its sheltered lagoon.
While in Lesbos, Aristotle married Hermias's adoptive daughter or niece. She bore him a daughter, whom they named Pythias. In 343 BC, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander. Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During Aristotle's time in the Macedonian court, he gave lessons not only to Alexander, but to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander. Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest and Aristotle's own attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be "a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants". By 335 BC, Aristotle had returned to Athens. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira, who bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus.
According to the Suda, he had an erômenos, Palaephatus of Abydus. This period in Athens, between 335 and 323 BC, is when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his works, he wrote many dialogues. Those works that have survived are in treatise form and were not
Aether (classical element)
According to ancient and medieval science, aether spelled æther or ether and called quintessence, is the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere. The concept of aether was used in several theories to explain several natural phenomena, such as the traveling of light and gravity. In the late 19th century, physicists postulated that aether permeated all throughout space, providing a medium through which light could travel in a vacuum, but evidence for the presence of such a medium was not found in the Michelson–Morley experiment, this result has been interpreted as meaning that no such luminiferous aether exists; the word αἰθήρ in Homeric Greek means "pure, fresh air" or "clear sky". In Greek mythology, it was thought to be the pure essence that the gods breathed, filling the space where they lived, analogous to the air breathed by mortals, it is personified as a deity, the son of Erebus and Nyx in traditional Greek mythology. Aether is related to αἴθω "to incinerate", intransitive "to burn, to shine".
In Plato's Timaeus speaking about air, Plato mentions that "there is the most translucent kind, called by the name of aether". But otherwise he adopted the classical system of four elements. Aristotle, Plato's student at the Akademia, agreed on this point with his former mentor, emphasizing additionally that fire sometimes has been mistaken for aether. However, in his Book On the Heavens he introduced a new "first" element to the system of the classical elements of Ionian philosophy, he noted that the four terrestrial classical elements were subject to change and moved linearly. The first element however, located in the celestial regions and heavenly bodies, moved circularly and had none of the qualities the terrestrial classical elements had, it was neither neither wet nor dry. With this addition the system of elements was extended to five and commentators started referring to the new first one as the fifth and called it aether, a word that Aristotle had not used. Aether did not follow Aristotelian physics either.
Aether was incapable of motion of quality or motion of quantity. Aether was only capable of local motion. Aether moved in circles, had no contrary, or unnatural, motion. Aristotle noted that crystalline spheres made of aether held the celestial bodies; the idea of crystalline spheres and natural circular motion of aether led to Aristotle's explanation of the observed orbits of stars and planets in circular motion in crystalline aether. Medieval scholastic philosophers granted aether changes of density, in which the bodies of the planets were considered to be more dense than the medium which filled the rest of the universe. Robert Fludd stated that the aether was of the character that it was "subtler than light". Fludd cites the 3rd-century view of Plotinus, concerning the aether as non-material. See Arche. Quintessence is the Latinate name of the fifth element used by medieval alchemists for a medium similar or identical to that thought to make up the heavenly bodies, it was noted that there was little presence of quintessence within the terrestrial sphere.
Due to the low presence of quintessence, earth could be affected by what takes place within the heavenly bodies. This theory was developed in the 14th century text The testament of Lullius, attributed to Ramon Llull; the use of quintessence became popular within medieval alchemy. Quintessence stemmed from the medieval elemental system, which consisted of the four classical elements, aether, or quintessence, in addition to two chemical elements representing metals: sulphur, "the stone which burns", which characterized the principle of combustibility, mercury, which contained the idealized principle of metallic properties; this elemental system spread throughout all of Europe and became popular with alchemists in medicinal alchemy. Medicinal alchemy sought to isolate quintessence and incorporate it within medicine and elixirs. Due to quintessence's pure and heavenly quality, it was thought that through consumption one may rid oneself of any impurities or illnesses. In The book of Quintessence, a 15th-century English translation of a continental text, quintessence was used as a medicine for many of man's illnesses.
A process given for the creation of quintessence is distillation of alcohol seven times. Over the years, the term quintessence has become synonymous with elixirs, medicinal alchemy, the philosopher's stone itself. With the 18th century physics developments, physical models known as "aether theories" made use of a similar concept for the explanation of the propagation of electromagnetic and gravitational forces; as early as the 1670s, Newton used the idea of aether to help match observations to strict mechanical rules of his physics. However, the early modern aether had little in common with the aether of classical elements from which the name was borrowed; these aether theories are considered to be scientifically obsolete, as the development of special relativity showed that Maxwell's equations do not require the aether for the transmission of these forces. However, Einstein himself noted that his own model which replaced these theories could itself be thought of as an aether, as it implied that the empty space between objects had its own physical properties.
Despite the early modern aether models being superseded by general relativity some physicists have attempted to reintroduce the concept of aether in an attempt to address perceived deficiencies in current physical models. One proposed model of dark energy has been named "quintess
Scholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100 to 1700, a program of employing that method in articulating and defending dogma in an pluralistic context. It originated as an outgrowth of and a departure from Christian theology within the monastic schools at the earliest European universities; the rise of scholasticism was associated with the rise of the 12th and 13th century schools that developed into the earliest modern universities, including those in Italy, France and England. Scholasticism is not so much a philosophy or a theology as a method of learning, as it places a strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference and to resolve contradictions. Scholastic thought is known for rigorous conceptual analysis and the careful drawing of distinctions. In the classroom and in writing, it takes the form of explicit disputation; because of its emphasis on rigorous dialectical method, scholasticism was applied to many other fields of study.
As a program, scholasticism began as an attempt at harmonization on the part of medieval Christian thinkers, to harmonize the various authorities of their own tradition, to reconcile Christian theology with classical and late antiquity philosophy that of Aristotle but of Neoplatonism. Some of the main figures of scholasticism include Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas's masterwork Summa Theologica is considered to be the pinnacle of scholastic and Christian philosophy. Important work in the scholastic tradition has been carried on well past Aquinas's time, for instance by Francisco Suárez and Luis de Molina, among Lutheran and Reformed thinkers; the historical legacy of scholasticism lay not in specific scientific discoveries, for these were not made, but laying the foundations for the development of natural science. The terms "scholastic" and "scholasticism" derive from the Latin word scholasticus, the Latinized form of the Greek σχολαστικός, an adjective derived from σχολή, "school".
Scholasticus means "of or pertaining to schools". The "scholastics" were "schoolmen"; the foundations of Christian scholasticism were laid by Boethius through his logical and theological essays, forerunners to scholasticism were Islamic Ilm al-Kalām "science of discourse", Jewish philosophy Jewish Kalam. The first significant renewal of learning in the West came with the Carolingian Renaissance of the Early Middle Ages. Charlemagne, advised by Peter of Pisa and Alcuin of York, attracted the scholars of England and Ireland. By decree in AD 787, he established schools in every abbey in his empire; these schools, from which the name scholasticism is derived, became centers of medieval learning. During this period, knowledge of Ancient Greek had vanished in the West except in Ireland, where its teaching and use was dispersed in the monastic schools. Irish scholars had a considerable presence in the Frankish court, where they were renowned for their learning. Among them was Johannes Scotus Eriugena, one of the founders of scholasticism.
Eriugena was the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period and an outstanding philosopher in terms of originality. He had considerable familiarity with the Greek language and translated many works into Latin, affording access to the Cappadocian Fathers and the Greek theological tradition; the other three founders of scholasticism were the 11th-century scholars Peter Abelard, Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury and Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury. This period saw the beginning of the'rediscovery' of many Greek works, lost to the Latin West; as early as the 10th century, scholars in Spain had begun to gather translated texts and, in the latter half of that century, began transmitting them to the rest of Europe. After a successful burst of Reconquista in the 12th century, Spain opened further for Christian scholars, as these Europeans encountered Islamic philosophy, they opened a wealth of Arab knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. Scholars such as Adelard of Bath traveled to Spain and Sicily, translating works on astronomy and mathematics, including the first complete translation of Euclid's Elements into Latin.
At the same time, Anselm of Laon systematized the production of the gloss on Scripture, followed by the rise to prominence of dialectic in the work of Abelard. Peter Lombard produced a collection of Sentences, or opinions of the Church Fathers and other authorities The 13th and early 14th centuries are seen as the high period of scholasticism; the early 13th century witnessed the culmination of the recovery of Greek philosophy. Schools of translation grew up in Italy and Sicily, in the rest of Europe. Powerful Norman kings gathered men of knowledge from Italy and other areas into their courts as a sign of their prestige. William of Moerbeke's translations and editions of Greek philosophical texts in the middle half of the thirteenth century helped form a clearer picture of Greek philosophy of Aristotle, than was given by the Arabic versions on wh
On the Heavens public domain audiobook at LibriVox
