Medieval Philosophy

● Augustine was born in Tagaste in 354 A.D.

● His father was a pagan and his mother was a devout Christian.
● He studied rhetoric in Carthage at age 16.
● He was perplexed by the problem of moral evil and turned to the Manichaeans for
answers.
● The Manichaeans taught dualism and conflict between light and darkness.
● Augustine believed that true philosophy required a confluence of faith and reason.
● Medieval philosophy sought to synthesize philosophy with religion.
● Neoplatonism initially provided intellectual support for religious doctrine.
● Later, Aristotle's metaphysics gained wider acceptance.
● The goal was to provide a philosophical foundation for theological positions.
Important statements:
● Augustine was perplexed by the problem of moral evil.
● The Manichaeans taught dualism and conflict between light and darkness.
● Augustine believed that true philosophy required a confluence of faith and reason.
● Medieval philosophy sought to synthesize philosophy with religion.
● Neoplatonism initially provided intellectual support for religious doctrine.
● Aristotle's metaphysics gained wider acceptance in the medieval era.

Augustine: Christian Platonism

● Augustine of Hippo was the first great medieval philosopher, who used neoplatonic
elements in his Christian philosophy.
● Augustine believed that reason and philosophy were useful only to those who already
have faith.
● Augustine rejected the criticisms of the Academic skeptics and believed that human
reason can be used to pursue knowledge.
● Human reason is certain of the principle of contradiction, which helps in knowing the
world.
● The act of doubting itself is a form of certainty, for it confirms one's existence.
● Augustine emphasized the reality of human evil and believed that evil is the absence of
good.
● Augustine believed that the classical attempts to achieve virtue through discipline,
training, and reason are bound to fail, and only God's grace can offer hope.

God Existence

● Augustine proved the existence of God in Platonic fashion.

● Mathematical knowledge transcends sensory realm, demonstrating the immateriality and
immortality of rational souls.
● Eternal existence of numbers and mathematical relations requires metaphysical support.
 ● God is the eternal source of reality for these things.
● Augustine endorses a Plotinian concept of God as the central core from which all of
reality emanates.

Human Freedom

● Augustine questions human capacity for free will

● God's infinite power and knowledge can cause humans to act in certain ways
● If humans have no will of their own, they should not be held morally responsible
● Augustine's solution lies in his analysis of time
● God is eternal and stands outside the realm of time as we know it
● Time and temporal relations are features of limited human minds
● Humans feel free and are responsible for their actions within these limitations
● God's knowledge has no bearing on human moral responsibility
● A true understanding of the divine plan resolves conflicts.

Moral Philosophy

● Morality is the culmination of everything.

● Man's purpose is to seek happiness.
● Augustine and Aristotle had different ideas about how to achieve happiness.
● Augustine believed that happiness requires going beyond the natural to the
supernatural.
● Augustine believed that human nature cannot be the source of happiness.
● Man seeks happiness because of his incompleteness and finitude.
● Man can only find happiness in God because he was made to do so by God.

The Role of Love

● Man's sense of incompleteness makes it inevitable for him to love

● There are different objects that man can love such as physical objects, other persons,
and himself
● All things are good as they come from God and are legitimate objects of love
● Evil is not a positive thing but the absence of something
● The problem is not in loving or in the objects of love but in the manner of attachment and
expectations
● Men are unhappy due to their "disordered" love.
Evil and Disordered Love
● Love is a complex concept that varies based on the object of affection and human needs
● There is a correlation between human needs and the objects that can satisfy them, and
love harmonizes them
● Certain human needs, such as companionship and spiritual fulfillment, cannot be met by
material objects
● Ultimate happiness and satisfaction can only be achieved through the love of God, who
is infinite and can fulfill man's need for the infinite
● Disordered love occurs when one expects more from an object of love than it is capable
of providing, leading to destructive behaviors and attitudes
● Personal reconstruction and salvation can only be achieved by reordering love and
loving the proper things properly
● To love a person properly, one must love God first, and to love oneself properly, one
must subordinate oneself to God to overcome pride.

St. Thomas Aquinas and Scholasticism

● Scholasticism was a dominant system of thought developed by medieval cathedral

school scholars.
● Scholasticism attempted to put together a coherent system of traditional thought and
fused Christian theology with philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.
● Scholasticism relied on strict logical deduction and expressed in dialectical form,
dominated by theology.
● Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 and pursued his studies in a Benedictine abbey and
later entered the University of Naples and joined the Dominican Order.
● Thomas studied under Albert the Great in Paris and was shaped by his vast range of
learning and views on particular problems.
● Thomas used Aristotle's teachings more creatively and systematically, recognizing their
harmony with the Christian faith.
● Thomas became involved in a controversy with Averroists and participated in a council
called by Pope Gregory X in 1274.
● Thomas died on his way to the council at the age of 49, leaving a huge literary legacy,
including his two major works Summa contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica.
Important statements:
● Scholasticism was a dominant system of thought developed by medieval cathedral
school scholars.
● Thomas Aquinas pursued his studies in a Benedictine abbey, entered the University of
Naples, and joined the Dominican Order.
● Thomas studied under Albert the Great in Paris and was shaped by his vast range of
learning and views on particular problems.
● Thomas used Aristotle's teachings more creatively and systematically, recognizing their
harmony with the Christian faith.
 ● Thomas became involved in a controversy with Averroists and participated in a council
called by Pope Gregory X in 1274.
● Thomas died on his way to the council at the age of 49, leaving a huge literary legacy,
including his two major works Summa contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica.

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

● Aquinas was a Christian theologian who relied on the philosophy of Aristotle.

● Aquinas believed that philosophy and theology complement each other in man's quest
for truth, with theology dealing with what man needs to know for his salvation.
● Aquinas believed that there is a real external world ordered by law and that human
beings can have knowledge of that world, but such knowledge is insufficient to
comprehend supernatural truths.
● Aquinas held that existence is the most important actuality in anything, without which
even form (essence) cannot be actual.
● Aquinas believed that the soul is the essential form of the human body, a pure form
without matter, created directly by God, and immortal in its individual form.
● Without the soul, the body would be formless, and without a body, the soul would have
no access to knowledge derived from sensation.

Aquinas: Christian Aristotelianism

● Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican philosopher who used rational argumentation and the
teachings of Aristotle to defend Christian theology.
● Aquinas departed from the neoplatonic/Augustinian tradition that had dominated much of
the Middle Ages.
● Aquinas showed that it was possible to incorporate the teachings of Aristotle without
falling into the mistaken excesses of Ibn Rushd.
● Aquinas believed that theology is a science that yields demonstrative certainty through
the careful application of reason.
● Aquinas believed that accepting religious teachings by faith alone is possible, but for
those with well-developed reasoning skills, it is better to establish the most fundamental
principles on the use of reason.
● Aquinas believed it was appropriate and desirable to demonstrate the existence of God
by rational means.

The First Way

● The first way is an argument from motion.
● Natural things are in motion.
● Moving things did not put themselves into motion.
● If every moving thing were moved by another moving thing, there would be no first
mover.
● A first mover exists that is moved by no other, and this is God.
The Second Way
● Motion in this sense is understood as something quite broad, that is, change in general.
● Things do not put themselves into motion, meaning they do not just bring themselves
into existence.

● The argument presented is known as the Second Way, one of the Five Ways of St.
Thomas Aquinas.
● In the world of sensible things, nothing causes itself.
● If everything were caused by something else, then there would be no first cause, and
therefore, no first effect.
● Without a first cause, there would be no effect at all.
● Therefore, we must admit the existence of a first cause, which is God.

The Third Way

● Aquinas' Third Way is the most complex of the Five Ways.
● In nature, some things can not exist.
● Everything belongs to the "need-not-exist" category.
● If everything belongs to that category, then at one point, nothing existed.
● Thus, there must exist something whose existence is necessary.

The Fourth & Fifth Way

● Aquinas' fourth way is the Moral Argument.

● All things possess degrees of goodness, truth, and nobility.
● We make judgments about the relative perfection of ordinary things.
● To make these judgments, we presuppose an absolute standard of perfection.
● There must be a source of these perfections, which is pure goodness, truth, and so on.
● This source is what we call God.

● Aristotle observed that natural things act for a purpose or end and function according to
a plan or design.
● He believed that an intelligent being exists, which directs things towards their end, and
this intelligent being is God.
● Aquinas developed five proofs for the existence of God.
● The first three proofs, known as the cosmological argument, state that the existence of
contingent things points to the existence of a necessary being, God, as their ultimate
cause or creator.
● The fourth proof, called the moral argument, cites the existence of goodness or good
things.
● The fifth proof, called the teleological argument or argument from design, argues that the
apparent purposefulness or orderliness of the universe or its parts or structure points to
the existence of a divine designer.