Philosophy in medieval times also covered thinking about the ideal city. What is remarkable about thinking about the ideal city, is that the main focus seems to arise from religious thinking again. The Bible forms a great source for political philosophy, as it kind of contains a description of an ideal society. The Ten Commandments for example have a lot of correspondence with the laws we still have nowadays. Especially for philosophers such as Augustine or Gregory, christian theology and the ideal city know a lot of similarities. What I think is interesting is that within the idea of the christian ideal city, there are still a lot of differences, partly due to the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Despite the fact that the God described in both manuscripts is the same, the norms differ from each other.

In the Old Testament, there seem to be a lot more cruelties in the manuscript. Those cruelties are, according to the Bible, allowed by God. The New Testament however seems to be written more from a positive view, and therefore has more humane norms in my opinion. A very actual example of this is, I think, the case of Black Lives Matter. In the Old Testament, one can find very racist statements when it comes to this. It could be that, from this idea of an ideal city, based on the Old Testament, groups have formed that do approve of these kinds of ideas. I think one can barely call this an ideal city. But, I think that the ideas that are in the New Testament are more rational to hold onto for forming an idea on what an ideal city would look like. Therefore, I think creating an ideal city based on religion is not per se rational. The most important thing, in my opinion, is that you base your decisions on morality.

Thomas Aquinas is a philosopher that can be placed in the later medieval tradition. He attended the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino, where he was educated religiously. In the late medieval philosophy, a seven-piece liberal arts program formed the main course of the philosophical education. The trivium was mainly about grammar and dialectics, while the quadrivium focused on the mathematical parts of philosophy. In the nineteenth century, Aquinas was acknowledged by the biblical communities as the ideal Christian philosopher.

Aquinas observed different sciences and concluded that different types of knowledge came from those sciences. This was also applicable to philosophy and theology, and so he found a way to bring those two together. Philosophy for instance starts with knowledge of the world, says Aquinas, while theology starts with what God reveals about himself, thus the knowledge we have of God. An important question that came from this conclusion is why christians would investigate philosophical matters into religion, when the truth within religion is God-revealed. I think this is a very interesting matter, for I think that Aquinas does make a good point about different sciences and how truth within these sciences is found. I do think it is an idea that is quite revolutionary for Aquinas’ time, if I get his point right, because I have seen that a lot of philosophers in medieval times put their religion central and built all the other beliefs around the existence of God. I think pulling the different sciences apart is a very wise decision, because it allows you to put things in different perspectives.

Maimomides was a jewish rabbi and philosopher who tried to bring judaism and philosophy closer together, resulting in him changing both. He tried to make knowledge more accessible to the public and taught to advanced students. In his earlier years, he went to the Andalusian school of Aristotelian studies, where Maimomides was inspired to apply the Aristotelian ideas and science within the Torah.

The earlier writings of Maimomides were mainly about logic and systemization. This doctrine he applied to religion. Later, his interests went to neoplatonism and he got inspired by cosmology. One of his greater works became the Guide for the Perplexed, trying “to enlighten a religious man who has been trained to believe in the truth of our holy Law, who conscientiously fulfills his moral and religious duties, and at the same time has been successful in his philosophical studies”. What I think is the most interesting thing Maimomides did, is putting his belief in God into a logical framework. Through logic and attributes that can be deduced into logic, Maimomides makes an entire proof of God and what exactly He is supposed to be. I think this is interesting, because he was the first jewish philosopher to put something that is transcendent into a mathematical frame.

Saadia is a philosopher who stands in the jewish tradition of philosophy. Saadia originally came from Egypt and was the first to practice systematic philosophy in judaism. His main interests were physics, metaphysics, logic, ethics and politics. Under Saadia, Hebrew became more important as a philosophical language. Religion was important for him, but Saadia managed to combine science with religion (mainly the science of philosophy). He kept defending theism and said that both reason and revelation led to proper knowledge. His main contribution to philosophy was the systematization of the jewish thought, his philosophical reflection on religious matters. He went beyond rabbinical and Talmudic theology, and managed to combine philosophy and judaism.

In my opinion, the way Saadia combined his belief with his religion is very similar to what other philosophers did with their religions. They all keep believing what they always believed, and find a way to bring philosophy into it. I do see that by introducing philosophy into a religion, people start thinking instead of just believing and doing what their religion says. This is, in my opinion, a good thing, because just believing something and acting according to that can be quite dangerous. I think what Saadia did here may have been the start of the very slow movement of people becoming atheist. But again, this is a movement started by the entire tradition of medieval philosophers, since almost all of them started bringing philosophy and religion together.

It has been a weird time lately, but luckily these times allow us to keep following education. Al-Ghazali seems to be the last Arab philosopher we discuss in this course. He was a polymath, which seems to have become a very common way of philosophizing in the Middle Ages. Al-Ghazali’s work The doctrines of the philosophers was later translated into Latin and Hebrew, which shows how important it was considered. It was seen as the best summary of medieval philosophy, covering the subjects of theology, sufism, philosophy, jurisprudence, logic, ethics and grammar. Al-Ghazali considered metaphysics as problematic, because it ws unscientific. He tried to combine theology, philosophy and science. He used investigation and disjunction for logical arguments (A is true, B is necessarily false). He also attacked the major theses of muslim peripatetics.

I would like to discuss the importance of Al-Ghazali’s work about the doctrines of the philosophers. It is seen as the most accurate summary of medieval philosophy because it is a comprehensive analysis, with an important piece of criticism towards the Avicennian school of early Islamic philosophy. Al-Ghazali’s main criterion is that Avicenna and Al-Farabi follow Greek philosophy, even when it contradicts the islamic belief. Al-Ghazali’s opinion about this really changed the islamic philosophy for the better, I think, because it brought philosophy and religion more together as a whole. I think therefore Al-Ghazali can be seen as a philosopher that was the beginning of more modern philosophy.

This week we talked about the arabic philosopher Al-Farabi. Al-Farabi is being seen as the father of the islamic neoplatonism and as the second master (the first one was Aristotle). He was polymathic, a concept that is hardly seen nowadays because of our focus on specialization and the earlier focus on becoming a better person through studying.

In this week’s blog I will discuss whether Al-Farabi was a more important/better philosopher than Avicenna. Al-Farabi was inspired by Aristotle and Plato and introduced logic and reason into the islamic culture. He can be held responsible for bringing the islamic religion and philosophy together. For Al-Farabi, philosophical knowledge is more valuable than religious revelation, since knowledge focusses on verifiable truth whereas religious texts are incomplete when it comes to real knowledge. Al-Farabi does think that God is above all knowledge, the human reason is the way to get to knowledge.

Avicenna had to use Al-Farabi’s criticism to really understand Aristotle’s metaphysics. His main contribution to philosophy nowadays are his translations of Aristotle, Galenus and Euclid. Furthermore, Avicenna continued on Aristotle’s philosophy by giving it a whole new ‘being’, so that God would fit into Aristotle’s understanding of metaphysics.

In my opinion, Al-Farabi’s contribution to philosophy is more important than Avicenna, in the way that Al-Farabi seems to have introduced philosophy into his religion in a way that no one has ever really done before. Avicenna’s translations and his view on Aristotle’s philosophy have been important for the contemporary philosophy as well, but it seems to be a greater accomplishment to create an entire new philosophy within a religion than it would be to translate other people’s philosophy. In the end, I think both philosophers were important for what philosophy is nowadays, but it feels more rightful to give Al-Farabi the first place when it comes to importance and put Avicenna in a nice second place.

This week was about medieval logic. In medieval times, logic was seen as an art, which is nowadays hard to believe. Whereas logic in ancient times was more of a discipline, it now became a way of telling truth and getting attention. One way of doing that was, for instance, criticizing ancient philosophers like Aristotle. Arabic logic was quite similar to the Ancient Greek logic. Subjects that were discussed a lot are categories, interpretations, analytics and sophistical refutation. Logic was not solely being used as a way to examine ordinary subjects, but was also a tool to proof the existence of God.

To me, the most interesting philosopher we discussed was Avicenna. Avicenna is seen as one of the most influential philosophers in the history of the western thinking. He said there were two ways of forming a logical judgement: through acquiring knowledge of concept or acquiring knowledge of fact. He said that ‘logic is a science or art through which we can gain knowledge that we did not previously have‘. According to Avicenna, language was more than what was just spoken; it was also what was unspoken. Avicenna put a lot of work in logically analyzing Aristotle’s texts. I find his point of view towards logic quite refreshing and he even makes it kind of interesting to exercise logic. The logic we have had as a course in the first semester was quite dry to me, but the way Avicenna uses logic to analyze Aristotle and to practice philosophy in this way, was an eye-opener to me. Especially for his time, this was a new way to practice philosophy as well as logic and to me that made this lecture very interesting.

Boethius was born in 475 around Rome. He was almost obsessed with the Alexandrian philosophy and was keen to preserve the Greek philosophy as well. Unlike many other philosophers, who wrote their philosophy in Greek, Boethius’ philosophy was written in common Latin. He also translated Aristotle to littery Latin, so that more people could read it. Boethius died in 524, being executed after a proces in which he was accused of treason and practicing magic.

Boethius’ works were not extremely orginal: he wrote about the debate about universals like ‘justice’. Boethius was on the nominalist side, meaning he denied the existence of universals. His argument for this was that even if universals existed, it can not be possible that one thing can be many things at once; if one thing can be called ‘justice’, how can another thing also be called ‘justice’, when one thing cannot exist multiple times at once?
I think Boethius’ argument here is incomplete and can be disproved easily. Universals are terms that are used for many different things. They do exist, but not in the way Boethius would want them to. His claim makes it look like universals are somehow tactile, and thus not possible to exist multiple times at once, but I think this is a mistake in his thinking. For example, no one in our world would or could deny that the word ‘horse’ cannot be an actual true concept, since ‘horse’ exists multiple times at once. If I would try to convince anyone about this statement, I would be declared crazy. I am not saying that the opinion of the multitude decides what’s true and what’s not, but I think that this example shows perfectly why Boethius’ claim is too narrow.
Furthermore, Boethius claims about the universals that they are empty thoughts, and that they correlate with nothing. Again, if you ask me, this can be easily disproved by using the ‘horse-example’ again.

Boethius has further focused on hypothetical syllogisms (the use of the word ‘if’), nexuses (necessities in philosophy) and on what we can say about God. Is he powerful, merciful, good? Here Boethius differentiates between intrinsic predications and extrinsic predications, intrinsic being ‘God is powerful’, and extrinsic ‘God is a woman’. This part actually makes a lot of sense.

Boethius’ text we read for this week was quite interesting and we discussed some questions about it. One that I found very interesting was about the gender of Lady Philosophy Boethius describes in his text. Her gender is extremely interesting and important, since one can compare the caring and loving character of a female, a mother in particular, and the role philosophy can have in one’s life. Boethius sees philosophy as a way to care for your soul and for yourself.

I am happy to conclude this weeks blog with not per se a religious point of view, but more a view about philosophy and how it effects your life. I think Boethius makes some excellent points, but just like any other philosopher, he also shows defects in his philosophy, especially when it comes to universals.

This week the lecture was about Augustine. Augustine was born in 354 in Algeria . He converted to the Manichean tradition, became an auditor and focussed his works on religious philosophy. Later, Augistine mastered himself in rhetoric. Augustine was an important philosopher and up until the 19th century he was seen as the greatest antique philosopher. Up until today his sayings about free will and other big subjects are very important. One of Augustines masterpieces was ‘Confessions’, where he writes about how man can change and he does an attempt to do philosophy as an everyday practice. Augustines main audience were Greek pagans such as Aristotelians, Platonists, Manechieists and Donatists.

Augustine was known for his love for wisdom. He liked discussing ‘important life topics’, like more philosophers in his time did. But one of the questions he spent most of his time on was the problem of evil. How could God allow evil, would he exist. This question can be magnified to the question of how the perks of religion can be declared by philosophy. Just like last week, we see here that religion is at the top of other studies, ‘she’ stands above all and other studies ‘serve’ her. But back to Augustine. His thought of evil is most comparable to the neoplatonistic thought about it. Shortly explained, there is ‘nous’ in neoplatonism, which is the rational intellect that is prior to the corporal world. Since the nous existed before the material world, it must be immaterial. Since nous is the highest good, everything that is in the material world makes us humans feel ‘incomplete’. We are always looking for ‘completeness’ and this makes that there is some kind of paradox in the story of life. evil is always in the corporal realm and has a human affair. Herein lies the problem: people try to appoint evil as in within Gods control, but since it is actually in the physical realm, and not in the realm of ‘nous’ where God also exist, the problem of evil lies within humans. Therefore, evil is being described as a lack of goodness.

In this weeks lecture we saw again that religion is what the medieval philosophy is all about. Bit by bit we also see that not religion nor God is the source of evil, like discussed last week, but that religion might even be ‘the good’, while things such as evil lie within our physical realm, which is the realm of human beings, but not of God. Next week, we will hopefully see that this line is continued.

This week, the course ‘An introduction to Medieval Philosophy’ has started. What could I expect? To be very honest, I had not really thought about it. And I did not in the least expect that I would be starting a blog today. However, here I am, more excited to write about todays lecture that I thought I would be. So let’s start. When I think about the Middle Ages, one of the first things that pops to my mind is religion. I think it is common knowledge that religion was a huge part of life back then. Whenever you go to a museum, when you are in the section of the Middle Ages, you will almost solely encounter religious art. However, the connection between religion and philosophy seemed a bit odd to me. I can even say that I thought religion and philosophy kind of contradicted each other. Today I learnt that nothing is less true.

Medieval Philosophy actually knows its origin in religion. Back in the Middle Ages, people had a God-centric worldview, meaning that almost their entire world was about God. Philosophy, or what we would now call philosophy, was seen as a tool to worship God correctly. Philosophy meant thinking, analyzing religious texts, finding the true meaning behind them. In that way, it actually looks a lot like what philosophy is today. Back then, it was about understanding religion and learning how to practice your religion at best, while nowadays it can be seen as a way to understand politics and ideology and practicing those at best.

Besides learning this, I made up my mind about what I think of religion. In my opinion, religion is nowadays used as an excuse for one’s action. Take, for instance, ISIS: they claim that they act in the name of their god, and for them, their actions can be excused because religion is for them the highest good. On the other hand, I see that people let their religion think for them, which I also disapprove of. Altogether, I had quite a negative view on religion, until the good things that came from religion were discussed. Many values we have nowadays are inherited from the Middle Ages. Back then, egalitarianism was an important value in religion. The idea that women were not inferior to men, but that they might be equal, have their origin in religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam, just as many other present-day liberal values we have. Religion might not be such a bad thing after all.

Concluding, you might say that philosophy is the servant of a queen named Religion. Although I thought at first that this queen was more like an evil dictator, I now think she may as well be a benign leader and I am eager to learn about her relationship to her servant Philosophy.