SUMMARY OF PSYCH IN MIDDLE AGES

Source: Hergenhahn, B.R. and Henley, T., “Rome and the Middle Ages,” in An Introduction to
the History of Psychology, Cengage Learning, 2013, pp.88-89.

After Aristotle’s death, philosophers began to con- cern themselves with principles of human conduct
and asked the question, What constitutes the good life? Pyrrho preached Skepticism. To him, nothing
could be known with certainty, so why believe anything? Antisthenes and Diogenes advocated a back-
to-nature approach to life because they viewed society as a distortion of nature that should be rejected.
A simple life, close to nature and free of wants and passions, was best. The position of Antisthenes
and Diogenes was later called Cynicism. Epicurus said the good life involved seek- ing the greatest
amount of pleasure over the longest period of time. Such pleasure did not come from having too little
or too much but from a life of moderation. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, claimed that the good life
involved living in harmony with nature, which was designed in accordance with a divine plan.
Because everything happens for a reason, one should accept whatever happens with courage and
indifference. The Stoics believed mate- rial possessions to be unimportant, and they empha- sized
virtue (the acceptance of one’s fate). Stoicism flourished in Rome, and emperor Marcus Aurelius was
one of its most important advocates.

Clearly, the preceding moral philosophers were often contradictory, and they lacked a firm philo-
sophical base. This problem was “solved” when philosophers switched their attention from ethics to
religion. Philo, a Neoplatonist, combined Judaism with Plato’s philosophy and created a system that
glorified the spirit and condemned the flesh.

Plotinus, another Neoplatonist, believed that from the One (God) emanates the Spirit, from the Spirit
emanates the Soul, and from the Soul emanates the physical world. The Soul then reflects the Spirit
and God. Like all the Neoplatonists, Plotinus taught that it is only by pondering the contents of the
Soul that one can embrace eternal, immutable truth. St. Paul claimed that Jesus was the son of God
and thereby established the Christian religion. In 313, Emperor Constantine made Christianity a
tolerated religion in the Roman Empire, and under his leadership, the many diverse versions of
Christianity that existed at the time were transformed into a standard set of documents and beliefs.

St. Augustine said that humans can know God through intense introspection. The ecstasy that comes
from cognitively embracing God was con- sidered the highest human emotion and could be achieved
only by avoiding or minimizing experi- ences of the flesh. By postulating human free will, Augustine
accomplished several things: He explained evil as the result of humans choosing evil over good,
humans became responsible for their own destiny, and personal guilt became an important means of
controlling behavior. Augustine claimed that an internal sense reveals to each person how he or she
should act as a Christian. Acting contrary to this internal sense, or even intending to act contrary to it,
causes guilt. Augustine argued that the experiences of the past, present, and future are accounted for
by memories, ongoing sensory impressions, and anticipations, respectively.

During the Dark Ages, progress in the West was limited, but Islamic culture flourished and expanded.
Muslim and Jewish scholars translated the works of the Greek and Roman philosophers and used this
wisdom to make great advances in medicine, science, and mathematics. Avicenna and Averroe ̈s
concentrated mainly on the works of Aristotle, translating and expanding them and attempting to
make them compatible with Islam. Maimonides attempted, among other things, to reconcile
Aristotelianism with Judaism.

Before the Western world could embrace Aristotle’s philosophy, human reasoning powers had to be
made respectable. St. Anselm and Peter

Lombard were instrumental in showing that reason and faith were compatible, whereas Abelard and
St. Albertus Magnus were among the first Western philosopher-theologians to embrace the work of
Aristotle. Within the church, there was a debate between the realists and the nominalists. The realists
believed in the existence of universal (essences), of which individual, empirical events were only
man- ifestations. The nominalists believed that so-called universals were nothing more than verbal
labels applied to classes of experiences. Abelard offered a compromise solution to the problem.
According to his conceptualism, concepts were viewed as less than essences but more than mere
words.

Those who attempted to synthesize Aristotle’s philosophy with the Christian religion were called
Scholastics. The greatest Scholastic was St. Thomas Aquinas, and the major outcome of his work was
the acceptance of both reason and faith as ways of knowing God. Before Aquinas, faith alone had
been emphasized. The acceptance of reason as a means of knowing God made respect- able the
examination of nature, the use of logical argument, and even debate within the church itself. It is
widely believed that Aquinas inadver- tently created an atmosphere that led ultimately to the decline
of church authority and therefore to the Renaissance.

Concerning the realism-nominalism debate, William of Occam sided with the nominalists by
explaining universals as simply verbal labels. He took this position because it required the fewest
assumptions. Occam’s razor is the belief that of two or more adequate explanations, the one requir-
ing the fewest assumptions should be chosen.

In the heyday of early Christianity, a largely negative social climate prevailed in the Western world.
There was widespread superstition, fear, and persecution of nonbelievers. The church had absolute
power, and any dissension from church dogma was dealt with harshly. Clearly, the spirit of the times
was not conducive to open, objective inquiry. For such inquiry to occur, a paradigm shift was
required, and the seeds of such a shift could be seen in the reemergence of science not in the service
of theology.