EARLY MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

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EARLY MEDIEVAL

PHILOSOPHY

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 John the Scot Eriugena

Eriugena’s refutation (On Predestination) was, from Hincmar’s point of view, a remedy worse than the disease. In the ﬁrst place, his arguments against

Gottschalk were silly: there could not be a double predestination, because God was simple and undivided, and there was no such thing as predestination because God was eternal. Secondly, he tried to draw the sting out of the destiny of the

damned by maintaining that there was no physical hell; the wicked want to ﬂee from God to Unbeing, and God punishes them only by preventing their

annihilation. The ﬁre of judgement spoken of in the Gospels is common to both good and bad; the difference between them is that the blessed turn into ether and the damned into air. Gottschalk and Eriugena both found themselves condemned by Church Councils, one at Quiersy in 853, the other at Valence in 855. (Anthony Kenny An Illustrated Brief History of Western Phılosophy, Blackwell Publishing 2006 p.123.)

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 Alkindi and Avicenna

Arabic thinkers were quick to exploit the patrimony of Greek learning. Alkindi, a contemporary of Eriugena’s, wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima. He offered a remarkable interpretation of the bafﬂing passage in which Aristotle speaks of the two minds, a mind to make things and a mind to become things.

(Anthony Kenny An Illustrated Brief History of Western Phılosophy, Blackwell Publishing 2006 p.128.)

The most signiﬁcant Muslim philosopher of the time was Ibn Sina or Avicenna

(980–1037). Born near Bokhara, he was a precocious student who masteredlogic, mathematics, physics, medicine and metaphysics in his teens, and published an encyclopedia of these disciplines when he was twenty. His medical skill

wasunrivalled and much in demand: he spent the latter part of his life as court physician to the ruler of Isfahan. He wrote a few works in Persian and many in Arabic; over one hundred have survived, in the original or in Latin translations.

(Anthony Kenny An Illustrated Brief History of Western Phılosophy, Blackwell

Publishing 2006 p.128.)

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 Saint Anselm

Anselm, who was born just before Avicenna’s death, resembled him as a philosopher in several ways, but began from a very different starting point.

Whereas Avicenna was the ﬁrst to say that God’s essence entailed his existence, Anselm claims that the very concept of God shows that he exists. If we know what we mean when we talk about God, then we

automatically know there is a God; if you deny his existence you do not know what you are talking about. (Anthony Kenny An Illustrated Brief History of Western Phılosophy, Blackwell Publishing 2006 pp.131-132) It is important to note that Anselm is not saying that God is the greatest conceivable thing. Indeed, he expressly says that God is not conceivable;

he is greater than anything that can be conceived. On the face of it, there is nothing self-contradictory in saying that that than which no greater can be conceived is itself too great for conception. (Anthony Kenny An