School · 1079–1500 CE
Scholasticism
Scholasticism names the Latin-Christian university culture that advanced philosophical and theological questions by disputed questions, commentary, logical distinctions, and engagement with newly translated Aristotle. Dominican, Franciscan, and other approaches diverged over cognition, universals, divine attributes, and the relation of reason to revelation.
Shared questions
- How can Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology be reasoned through without collapsing either into the other?
- What can demonstrative reasoning establish about God, nature, universals, and human knowledge?
Internal disagreements
- Thomist, Franciscan, and nominalist arguments differed over analogy, individuation, will, universals, and the scope of natural theology.
Key texts
- Summa theologiae · 1265–1274 — Aquinas’s unfinished synthesis of theological and philosophical questions.
- Opus maius · 1267 — Bacon’s program for reforming studies through languages, mathematics, and experimental inquiry.