a. He maintains that true cosmic plan (order) unfolds in the history of the City of God, but the local accidents of the Earthly City are of little importance in comparison.

b. True wisdom and virtue are obtainable only in the light of the Christian Faith and divine grace.

c. Human nature which had been corrupted since the Fall is in the need of complete divine remaking (ie. grace).

a. This plan was cut short by his execution in A.D. 524.

b. He did accomplish the translation of Aristotle's logical works into Latin which had tremendous influence on the development of Medieval Thought.

a. He used the human power of reasoning to penetrate and explain the dogmas of Christianity.

b. He used the effort of reason (ratio) to support and discuss authority (auctoritas) as the principal means to reveal the truth (ie. make it clear, understandable).

c. The early Scholastics' (1000 - 1150) concentration upon logic is chiefly due to Boethius as well as the later controversy on "Universals".

a. The logical, theological, and classical inheritance (writing)went unnoticed in their insecure homes (libraries of threatened Western Monasteries).

b. The 11th and 12th Centuries saw an attempt to present a logical and coherent presentation of Church Doctrine.

c. The Latin West was employing a predominantly logical Aristotelianism.

a. From the middle of the 12th Century on, Latin translations of Islamic commentaries of those works began to become available.

b. Through these and translations of the Greek originals, Western thinkers became acquainted with all of Aristotle's works.

a. Members of recently founded Dominican and Franciscan Orders competed with secular masters for professorships.

b. Dominicans followed the lead of Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1224 -1274) and attempted to assimilate Aristotle by adopting a framework within which divine grace was seen as completing and fulfilling human nature.

c. This was viewed as a departure or a break from the Augustinian View that human nature had to be re-made by divine grace.

a. It held a more optimistic view of human nature, society, and the civil state.

b. It was also opposed to certain Latin writers who claimed that on certain points philosophy demonstrated conclusions that were incompatible with personal Christianity.

a. Such interpretations were often the result of other schools of thought especially the Aristotelian School.

b. The Augustinian Tradition emerged during the Medieval Period whose development was closely identified with the Franciscan Order.

"I do not want to be a philosopher if it is necessary to deny Paul. I do not want to be Aristotle if it is necessary to be separated from Christ. For there is no other name under heaven given to man, whereby he must be saved."

a. He was a conservative theologian despite his enthusiasm for the scientific method and experimentation.

b. He was convinced that the highest wisdom is found in Scripture, and philosophy exists only to explain that reason.

a. It has been called the "Principle of Interiorization".

b. Augustine expressed it: "For what is so present to knowledge as that which is present to mind? Or what is so present to the mind as the mind itself?"

a. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul is attentive to the changes suffered by the body. (ie. sensation is essentially an act of the soul.)

b. The knowledge of intellectual truth cannot be found in sensation alone.

a. In order to know that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present, otherwise the idea of multiplicity could not be recognized.

b. The mind of man is mutable and cannot give what it does not possess.

c. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can only be explained by an immutable source higher than the soul.

d. Conclusion: Man's intellectual capacity is directly related to the degree by which he is illuminated by God.

a. A theory that all physical things are made up of two principles: one which remains the same throughout all change is identified with the physical world. The other of which is displaced, or removed from actuation of its matter, in every substantial change.

b. Rationes Seminales (physical power of seeds) -- used by Augustine to explain the origin of creatures after the six days of creation.

c. Rationes Aeternae (divine mind) it is able to provide unity out of plurality.

d. All creatures are composed of matter and form.

a. It found universal acceptance among the Franciscan School and exerted considerable influence on all medieval theology and ethics.

b. It also affected such later thinkers as Luther and Calvin.

a. It was also held that the will is a faculty that determines itself without being determined by any other faculty.

b. It was also maintained that the will is free, where as the intellect is determined by that which is unknown.

ie. Everything had its proper place between the center of the earth and the outermost heaven of fixed stars.

a. Scholasticism was the philosophy of Christian Society which transcended the characteristics of individuals, nations, and people.

b. It was the corporate product of social thought, and as such its reasoning respected authority in the forms of tradition and revealed religion.

c. Tradition consisted primarily in the systems of Plato and Aristotle as they had been adapted and absorbed over the centuries.

d. It was natural that religion (which played a paramount role in the culture of the Middle Ages) should bring influence to bear on the medieval, rational view of life.

e. The most constant characteristic of Scholasticism was its method.

a. He lectured there as a bachelor in theology until 1256, when he was awarded the magistrate (doctorate) in theology.

b. Accepted after some opposition from the professors as a fully accredited member of the theology faculty in 1257 -- Aquinas continued to teach at Paris until 1259.

a. He was engaged in three distinct controversies:

b. Many of Aquinas' literary works were in the process or completed at this time.

a. Illness forced him to stop both teaching and writing toward the end of 1273.

b. Early in 1274 he set out for Lyons, France to attend a Church Council -- an illness interrupted the trip and he died in March of that year.

a. Most thinkers in the Middle Ages felt that if something is to be explained, it must be treated in universal terms.

b. Aquinas' position on this problem is now called "Moderate Realism".

c. He denied that universals are existing realities (he often criticized Plato for suggesting that there is a world of intelligible forms).

d. Aquinas insisted that man's universal concepts and judgments have some sort of foundation in extramental things.

e. This basis of universality would say that humanity would consist in the real similarity found among all individual men.

f. Aquinas did not attribute an active existent universal nature to all individual men (that would be extreme realism).

g. Only individuals exist -- the individuals of a given species or class resemble each other to the extent that they are representative of a common nature.

a. It is more than opinion because it involves a firm assent (agreement) to its object, and it is less than knowledge be-cause it lacks vision.

b. Both are intellectual acts and habits of assent (agreement).

a. Through understanding one simply knows by seeing what something means.

b.Through reason one is able to move from one item of knowledge to another.

a. When the basic principles are grasped by man's sensory experiences, he is using the reasoning process of natural science and philosophy.

b. When one starts to reason from judgments accepted on religious faith, then one is thinking as a theologian.

ie. The purpose of speculation is simply to know, and practical reasoning is to know how to act.

a. Philosophical Theology (metaphysics) that uses divine matters as principles for the explanation of all things.

b. The Theology taught in Scriptures which "studies divine things for their own sake."

a. The word "theology" was rarely used by Aquinas -- in the first question of his Summa Theologiae he calls his subject sacra doctrina (sacred doctrines).

b. Its principles, unlike those of philosophy, are various items of religious faith.

c. Thomism can be called "Christian Philosophy" in the sense that he used pagan and non-Christian philosophies but his understanding of them was based on his personal faith.

a. This would have destroyed his distinction between philosophy and sacred doctrine.

b. De Aeternitate Mundi: Aquinas states that as far as philosophical considerations go, the universe might be eternal but as a Christian he believed that it was not eternal.

a. Aquinas limited human cognition to sense perception and the intellectual understanding of it.

b. Internal sensation (imaginative, memorative, and contemplative functions) works to perceive, retain, associate, and judge various impressions (phantasms) through which things are directly known.

a. One sees and remembers an apple on the level of sensation -he judges it to be healthful on the level of intellectual knowledge.

b. Universals (health & humanity) are not taken as realities but are viewed as intelligibilites (rationes).

a. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

b. These functions and powers are called external because their objects are outside of the mental awareness of the perceiver.

a. The perceptual grasping of a whole object.

b. The simple retention of sensed images (imagination).

c. The association of retained images with past experiences (sense memory).

d. Concrete discrimination or judgment concerning individual things (thinking, particular reason).

a. A simple tendency toward or away from what is sensed as good or evil.

b. A more complicated sensory tendency to meet bodily threats, obstacles, and dangers by attacking or avoiding them or putting up with them.

c. Eleven distinct kinds of sensory passions (emotions) are attributed to these two sensory appetites.

a. The general capacity to understand (intellectus) covers simple apprehension, judging, and reasoning.

b. Since universal objects do not exist in nature, Aquinas described this intellectual action as an abstraction of universal meaning from that of sense experience. (ie. a quality or idea of the concrete.)

c. A second cognitive function on this level is the grasping (comprehensio) of these abstracted meanings in the very act of understanding.

d. In Thomistic Psychology -- there are two different "intellects" (one abstracts, the other knows).

e. No special power is required for intellectual memory -- it is explained by habit formation in the possible intellect.

a. Affective responses to the universal objects of understanding are functions of intellectual appetition.

b. This is the area of volition, and the special power involved is the "will" (voluntas).

c. Aquinas distinguished two kinds of volitional functions:

a. These various "powers" were referred to as agents -- Aquinas stressed the view that the whole man is the human agent.

b. Anima (the psychic principle) is distinctive of the species and determines that the material is human.

c. The soul is a real part of man (being both immaterial and real) -- it is spiritual.

d. The should is not divisible into parts -- the soul thus is incapable of corruption (disintegration into parts) and thus is immortal.

a. Since the act of being is common to many creatures, there must be one universal cause of all.

b. All beings (creatures) are imperfect, not self-motivated and thus not the actual source of their being -- there must be a "mover completely immobile and most perfect".

c. Aquinas reasons that from the composite nature of finite beings there is a necessary existence of a primary being (in which essence and the act of being are identical).

a. The First Way: Things in the world are always changing or moving which is the basis for the existence of one, first, moving Cause.

b. The Second Way: Argues from the observation of efficient production of things in the universe to the need of an existing, first efficient cause.

c. The Third Way: Reasons from the contingent (dependent) character of things in the world (none of them has to be) to the existence of a totally different kind of being, a necessary one (which has to be).

d. The Fourth Way: Argues from the gradations of goodness, truth, and nobility in the things of man's experience to the existence of a being that is most true, most good, and most noble.

e. The Fifth Way: Argues that all things are directed toward one end (the principle of finality), and concludes that this universal order points to the existence of an intelligent Order of all things.

ie. a purpose or a design.

a. Human conduct are those actions that are under the control of man's intellect and will.

b. The primary characteristic of human conduct is not so much freedom as voluntariness.

a. There must be sufficient knowledge that a given action is within one's power.

b. A person cannot be entirely ignorant of the kind of action that he is performing.

c. One must know the means, circumstances, and end of his actions.

a. All men have sufficient knowledge of what is morally right to regulate their own actions.

b. The first principle of practical reasoning is: "Good should be done and sought after, and Evil should be avoided."

a. Man's substantial nature toward the conservation of his own existence and physical well being.

b. Man's animal nature to seek such biological goods as sexual reproduction and the care of offsprings.

c. Man's reason by which he tends toward universal goods, such as consideration of the interests other persons and the avoidance of ignorance.

a."Reason" is the key word in the definition -- Right Reason (recta ratio) is the justification of ethical judgment in Aquinas' thought.

b. In the case of volitional activities, the nearest standard is human reason, but the supreme standard is eternal law.

c. When a man's actions are in accord with the order of reason and of eternal law -- then the act is right.

a. Man's own good is achieved by governing his actions and feelings under rational reflection.

b. Aquinas: "For we do not offend God, except by doing something contrary to our own good."

c. Part of being reasonable is to respect the good of others -the moral good is not so much obeying an all-powerful legislature, than living in accord with the reasonable perfecting of man.

a. All things have specific natures which do not change; dogs are dogs and stones are stones.

b. Certain functions are taken as natural and appropriate to given natures: eating is an act expected of a dog not a stone.

c. Human Nature is distinguished by the performance of rational activities.

a. For Aquinas it was simply a man's best practical judgment concerning a concrete moral problem.

b. Conscience is a person's internal guide to good action -- it is his best judgment on a matter.

a. Thinking of the kind of action that it is (the formal object).

b. The purpose to which it is directed (the end).

c. The pertinent circumstances under which it is to be performed.

a. His father and at least two of his brothers were in the service of Emperor Frederick II.

b. Thus, Aquinas grew up in an atmosphere of monarchist loyalties.

a. The purpose of the state is to provide for temporal peace and welfare.

b. Political society is quite different from ecclesiastical society (The Church) whose end is otherworldly.

a. "Divine Justice" (ius divium) which stems from grace does not cancel human justice which comes from natural reason.

b. There is no detailed theory of government in Aquinas' writings.

ie. the Middle Ages.

a. The idea has been put forth: "Can we modern men hope to equal or even excel the achievement of antiquity?"

b. In literary history this question is known as the "quarrel of the ancients and moderns."

c. 17th Century Comparison: "We have science and truth on our side, as against those writers, with their inflexible rules, who favored the ancients."

d. However, the Renaissance had championed the modern even before the rise of modern science.

a. The Renaissance is characterized as rebirth of classical knowledge.

b. The discovery of old manuscripts and the invention of printing made the heritage of Ancient Greece and Rome available to a far wider audience.

c. Humanists of the 14th and 15th Centuries discovered and preserved many ancient texts that have gone neglected for centuries.

a. The ideals of feudal nobility, medieval in origin, persisted through the Renaissance among the ruling class.

b. Religion provided the second set of ideals -- it centered upon moral salvation and one's willingness to give up the world.

c. A third set of ideals came from Ancient Platonic and Stoic Thinking.

d. Finally, there was an ideal of a return to nature -- a flight from urban life to pastoral pleasures.

a. During the 14th and 15th Centuries, the traditional subjects of grammar, rhetoric, and poetry had begun to called "studia humanitatis".

b. Renaissance teachers of the "humanities" placed a greater emphasis on ancient models than earlier teachers had.

c. Many of these students found employment in both government and the Church (letter-writers and speech writers for princes and popes).

a. A civilized and urbane way of life could be formed through acquaintance with Greek Literature.

b. Humanists began to concern themselves with moral and political philosophy - this brought them into conflict with philosophers who taught ethics and politics in universities.

c. The humanists regarded Aristotelian Scholasticists as derelict in their duties, since their teaching made no difference in the lives of their students.

d. This period saw a genuine rebirth of traditional Greek Philosophy even of Aristotle.

a. The mainstream of philosophical inquiry during the Renaissance continued to be Aristotelian.

b. It is suggested that Aristotelianism remains the least known of Renaissance schools because of its association with Scholasticism.

a. Platonism had been known for centuries chiefly through Aristotle's attacks on it.

b. Marsilio Ficino's translation of Plato into Latin (1484) was the main reason for the spread of Plato's doctrines.

c. Ficino founded a famous academy in Florence in direct immitation of Plato's School.

d. There were also attempts to show how Aristotle and Plato were similar.

a. Rejected without honor by medieval thinkers -- anyone who believed the soul perished with the body was called Epicurean.

b. Epicurus began to be more sympathetically known as a result of humanistic activity of the Fifteenth Century.

c. Lucretius' De Rerum Natura was widely accepted -- however, this was chiefly due to its poetic qualities.

a. The direct influence of philosophical skepticism (in a technical sense) began with the publication of Sextus Enpiricus in 1562 -- skepticism then exercised an important influence upon European thought and literature.

b. The religious factionalism or warfare of the 16th Century resulted in a widespread distrust of religious dogmaticism and fanaticism.

c. Writing of this period contributed to the growth of a spirit of toleration that is usually associated with the Enlightenment.

a. The Renaissance was immensely receptive (perhaps more than the Middle Ages) to occult and secret lore of all kind.

b. This was especially true when it claimed to come from the most ancient of times and to incorporate the wisdom of the Ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans (Babylonians), and Hebrews.

a. An Italian who lived in the late, mature stage of the Renaissance -- when the dialogues of Plato and the works of Aristotle were known (as were the works of Galen and Hippocrates).

b. Cardano wrote works on medicine, astrology, and mathematics-- his philosophical reputation rests on two works of natural philosophy:

a. The Early Period of the English Renaissance -- toleration of eclecticism, search for simplicity, stress on ethics, return to Greek sources, and a desire for reform: social, political, educational, religious, and philosophical.

b. More's life can be divided into two philosophical periods -these are separated by the year 1521 (the publication of Henry VIII's Defense of the Seven Sacraments.

a. More was involved in the study of Aristotle's works in Greek with their classical Greek Commentaries.

b. He also mastered the Greek New Testament and Greek Fathers as well as pagan classics in their original language.

c. He was very critical of contemporary Scholastics for their preoccupation with logic, universals, and a mere fragment of the Aristotelian corpus.

a. More defended Thomas Aquinas and Scholastic Theologians whose doctrines he showed agreed with that of the Early Church.

b. He held the common scholastic view on the mutual relationship, harmony, and assistance between reason and revelation.

c. The idea that ethical norms are bolstered by religious truths, and true religion can prevail in an atmosphere of free and calm reasoning.

a. Ambrogio Traversari's Latin translation of the Life of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius helped to accelerate the process in the early 15th Century.

b. Lorenzo Valla attempted to set forth the doctrines of Epicurus in favorable light in his work, (Pleasure and the True Good).

c. Erasmus in his The Contempt of the World (1490) and the Epicurean (1533) attempted to manipulate the concept of pleasure and the principles of selection to establish a Christian Epicureanism.

a. The term pleasure (voluptas) in the Utopia is manipulated to embrace everything from scratching an itch to enjoying eternal bliss with God.

b. Like Epicurus pleasure is both a state and a motion.

ie. Health is a pleasure just as granting a benefit or favor to someone is a pleasure.

In Utopia this leads to the ridicule of false, unnatural delight in fine clothing, noble ancestry, jewelry, gold and silver, gambling and hunting.

ie. It must be natural; three negative norms: that no pain follows the chosen pleasure, that no greater pleasure is lost, and that no social harm results.

a. There is an emphasis upon marriage (in contrast with its disapproval by Epicurus).

b. There is an emphasis on euthanasia (in comparison to Epicurus' denial and opposition to suicide).

c. There is an emphasis on learning (Epicurus urged his disciples to fly from learning in the swiftest ship available).

a. He is unattached: he is only commitment is to freedom, truth, and justice.

b. He has given up the worry of wealth by giving his inheritance to relatives -- he lives as he pleases speaking his mind openly.

c. He travels and searches for something quite practical: the good state and the good citizens.

d. In the emphasis on usefulness, and his return to sources (especially Greek), Hythodaeus is representative of the English and Northern Renaissance.

a. Utopia is a casteless democracy and not an aristocracy.

b. The family, not a ruling class with common wives and children, is the basic social and political unit.

a. Pleasurable Matter are vital commodities (food, clothing, housing etc.).

b. The matter then is determined by a form (either private ownership or common possessions).

a. Only in this way will justice be introduced into an unjust society.

b. In this theoretical approval of communism, More was agreeing with a view held by many humanists.

a. The Reformation describes the aspirations of the age not its achievements.

b. Protestants did not succeed in reforming the Church but only splitting it into rival groups.

a. He wanted to purify the Church by returning to its primitive sources: -- the New Testament and the writings of the Early Church Fathers.

b. His "philosophy of Christ" minimized the dogmatic and institutional nature of the Church.

c. He emphasized Christ mainly as a teacher of virtue, and Christianity as an ethical system not essentially different from pagan philosophies.

a. It sought to repudiate Protestant errors on the basis of authority, justification and the sacraments.

b. Many Church Leaders opposed the abuses that had first provoked the Protestant movement.

c. The Problem: instead of a concentration on Church abuses and reformation, there was a preoccupation with Protestant errors and a campaign of suppression after the Council.

a. It was the revolt of Martin Luther against the papacy that won success in most of Germany and almost all of Scandanavia.

b. It was the Lutheran princes and cities represented at the Imperial Diet of Speyer in 1529 who by making their historic protest, gave the Lutheran Movement the nickname Protestantism.

c. The official belief of the Lutheran Church was formulated in the Augsburg Confession (1530).

a. The so-called Reformed Churches grew up first in Switzerland (under Zwingli and Calvin).

b. They became dominant in Scotland, Holland, and parts of Germany -- they also gained areas of influence in England and France.

c. They were a less homogeneous group than the Lutherans and produced a variety of national confessions instead of single statement of belief like the Augsburg Confession.

a. The English Reformation began in the reign of Henry VIII largely for political reasons and proceeded slowly.

b. Henry VIII, though not intending to alter Catholic doctrine, had opened the door to Protestant reform in the reign of his son Edward VI.

c. Mary attempted a short-lived restoration of Catholicism which ended with her life.

d. The 39 Articles of Religion (Latin, 1563, English, 1571) adopted under Elizabeth I was adopted as the official doctrinal standard of the Reformed Church of England.

ie. The authority of the Word, justification by faith alone, and the priesthood of all believers.

a. They emphasized the concept of Christian Fellowship as the focal point of God's Word.

b. The Word of God was understood to be the effective proclamation of the Gospels based on the Scriptures (not on the basis of institutional means or tradition).

c. The central focus of the proclamation is the promise of free forgiveness (justification) through Christ.

a. It has been argued that the Reformation postponed for a while the triumph of Renaissance secularism.

b. In practice they refused to abandon the medieval concept of a Christian Society.