What’s Wrong with the World

Nothing could be more true---the two most valuable classes I have ever taken are the jurisprudence courses with Charlie Rice and G. Robert Blakey, who not only understand the point you make, but know how to apply it to the specific intellectual problems facing attorneys.

Their re-definitions of various key philosophical terms, along with their sometimes ridiculous caricatures of the Aristotelian and Scholastic ideas they were attacking, have (however inadvertently) made it nearly impossible for modern readers correctly to grasp the arguments of medieval writers. This is no less true of educated people, and indeed even of professional philosophers (unless they have some expertise in ancient or medieval philosophy), than it is of students and general readers.

How about the Griffith brothers who are themselves professional philosophers with seemingly immense expertise in Aristotle and, yet, they scoff tremendously at the Scholastics as being more concerned with how many angels fit on the head of a pin.

Unfortunately, their reputation is such that most, if not, all people who read their books would likely take their word as Gospel and likewise ridicule the whole enterprise of Scholasticism as such.

Way back in my undergraduate days at Berkeley, I studied Medieval Philosophy with Wallace Matson - notorious for his atheism.

But he was a gentleman & a scholar of the old school, who instilled in me an undying respect for the greatness of the scholastics.

Later, in graduate school at the University of Michigan, I learned that to bring up Aquinas or Duns Scotus in discussion was a major social/intellectual *faux pas*.

Times had changed.

The sadness of all that one sees.

At least you got that far before the times and seasons had changed for the worse. In my undergrad programme, it was accepted as a matter of course that the moderns had fairly exploded the superstitions and arguments of the Medievals, a fact which struck me as curious, given the religious orientation of the school.

...they scoff tremendously at the Scholastics as being more concerned with how many angels fit on the head of a pin.

I don't know about scholastics in general, but - as far as I know - St. Thomas doesn't treat this question anywhere in his corpus.

As an aside: if he did, the answer would be one (see ST, I, q. 52, a. 3).

I've actually never understood why this question is seen as foolish. The nature of how limited, separate substances can be said to be in material places tells us a lot about the power and nature of said limited, separate substances and the nature of being in general. It's only a foolish question if such separate substances don't exist. But if that's ones' position, then one should argue for it rather than mock one's opponents. That's what the scholastics would have done.

Brendon,

I agree. When I finally found out what the argument or investigation was really about, I thought it a perfectly natural question about the metaphysical in contact with the physical.

I am always astonished at the clarity of Aristotle's and Aquinas' thought even if I might not agree with their conclusions. That's because I don't agree with their premise. Not because their logic is flawed. Or Aquinas will interpret a verse differently than I do.

Today you have utter fools discussing reality as thirteen dimensions of strings etcetera or the first nanosecond of a Big Bang as if their theory was a fait accompli.

I agree with this post, though it is pretty darn funny coming from a guy who repeatedly says "superman" when he actually means "Cartesian subject."

But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads -- makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number. In certain theological systems, the corporeality or non-corporeality of angels is an important matter indeed.

-- Stephen Jay Gould

My mistake, this post wasn't by Zippy.

I tend to think this point is rather banal. Many scholars believe their own area of study, if it is not the current hot topic, is neglected by others. It is very common to believe that others make a strawman of one's own position. The simple sociology of professional requirements and personal interests mean we have to find new ways of describing, say, infinity or the univocity debate rather than simply making new annotations to Scotus.

This being said, there is an unavoidable truth here - times change. For example, simply stamping your feet and insisting on the medieval description of infinity does nothing to engage with Hegel.

My point: your conception of philosophy reduces the discipline to nothing other than endless commentary, endless repetition. Which I suppose is a perfectly comfortable position for a conservative.

My point: your conception of philosophy reduces the discipline to nothing other than endless commentary, endless repetition.

True things are endlessly repeated because they need to be repeated to those who have just begun learning them. Do you complain that primary school teachers reduce math to the endless repetition of arithmetic?

And the idea that scholasticism is nothing but the continual repetition of the same thing over and over again - with no engagement, disagreement or growth - can only come from someone who has never engaged with the scholastics or their modern disciples.

True things are endlessly repeated because they need to be repeated to those who have just begun learning them. Do you complain that primary school teachers reduce math to the endless repetition of arithmetic?

In an undergrad lecture, the repetition is completely justified. After that, it's time to start walking on your own.

And the idea that scholasticism is nothing but the continual repetition of the same thing over and over again - with no engagement, disagreement or growth - can only come from someone who has never engaged with the scholastics or their modern disciples.

My suspicion is that the engagement, disagreement and growth you speak of remains entirely on the surface - as I've already suggested, the Thomist mixing of divine infinity with Aristotelian finitude either needs to be re-articulated in post-Hegelian terms, or you just need to admit that you want your philosophy departments to be nothing other than old men yelling "get off my lawn!"

My point: your conception of philosophy reduces the discipline to nothing other than endless commentary, endless repetition.

Thanks for illustrating my point. This is exactly the sort of silly caricature I was talking about. You manifest the very phenomenon the existence of which you apparently deny.

Also, the complaint is not mere "foot stamping" at the fact that Scholasticism is no longer the mainstream view. The complaint is that modern philosophers have largely lost the means of understanding what the Scholastics really said, and thus have lost the ability even to imagine alternatives to their own most fundamental assumptions, and thereby to take a reflective and critical stance toward them. Even if one rejects Scholasticism and thinks the moderns were basically right, one should acknowledge that this lack of intellectual self-awareness is not a good position to be in.

Mike wrote:

...a guy who repeatedly says "superman" when he actually means "Cartesian subject."

Ed,

I think you (and the University of Utrecht) have definitely hit upon the problem with Descartes. His philosophy is not based upon the precise understanding of the meaning of certain terms, but rather on a sort of awareness of certain ideas. "A clear and distinct perception," is the phrase he uses. It seems that for Descartes terms are only necessary for describing knowledge, not for producing it.

"Their re-definitions [...] have (however inadvertently) made it nearly impossible for modern readers correctly to grasp the arguments of medieval writers. This is no less true of educated people, and indeed even of professional philosophers (unless they have some expertise in ancient or medieval philosophy), than it is of students and general readers."

So what you're saying is that people no longer understand ancient or medieval philosophy unless they've studied it.

I call complete and utter silliness. Or rather, a completely obvious point that doesn't bear the weight of your argument. You're over-mythologizing all of this, and I think this is what's the problem with a lot of genealogies of modernity. Not that there aren't valid critiques of someone like Descartes to be made, but acting as if this was an epochal hatchet job is a bit of an exaggeration. The Enlightenment's rejection of medieval philosophy is just like any other dispute in the history of philosophy. It's not a massive cover-up.

Evan,

I never said anything about a "cover-up"; indeed, I said twice that the deep misunderstanding of the Scholastics generated by the moderns' re-definition of various key terms, coupled with the caricatures they peddled, was inadvertant.

Nor is my claim either silly or obvious. Because much of the terminology used by the Scholastics seems familiar, modern readers of philosophy often assume they know what it means; but the senses those terms have in medieval philosophy are often very different from the senses familiar to modern readers. The situation is thus very different from that of a contemporary reader picking up Hume or Descartes for the first time, whose language is much closer to ours precisely because ours derived fom theirs. Obviously fully understanding these writers also requires study, but a basic understanding of them does not require the depth of study that the study of the medievals does, because it does not require as much in the way of getting oneself into a now-alien mode of thinking.

Well, an inadvertent cover-up then. All the same, I don't see the impetus for the point that you're making. How is the 17th century Utrecht condemnation any different than the 13th century Paris condemnations? Why privilege one over the other?

Because much of the terminology used by the Scholastics seems familiar, modern readers of philosophy often assume they know what it means; but the senses those terms have in medieval philosophy are often very different from the senses familiar to modern readers. The situation is thus very different from that of a contemporary reader picking up Hume or Descartes for the first time, whose language is much closer to ours precisely because ours derived fom theirs.

How is the 17th century Utrecht condemnation any different than the 13th century Paris condemnations? Why privilege one over the other?

The point has nothing to do with "privileging" condemnations, or indeed with condemnations per se at all. The Utrecht citation was just an illustration; an isolated statement by some individual 17th century Scholastic would have done just as well. The point has to do with the way in which en entire vocabulary and the sophisticated conceptual scheme that went along with it were imperceptibly subverted to the point where it could not even be understood anymore from outside except with great effort. This was not true of the 13th century case: compared to the dispute between the medievals and the moderns, the dispute betwen Augustinians and Aristotelians is a family squabble.

I think the conception of the 13th century as merely a family squabble is easily made by those who accept the family resemblance, but precisely the same subversion of an entire conceptual scheme is a major question in recent Augustine scholarship. Personally, I'd agree with you that the Augustinian-Aristotelian development is a breach that can be negotiated well enough. I'd only also say that modernity represents a similar family resemblance. And that's not to deny your point that people these days can't read the scholastics well, but only to say that Descartes isn't to blame for the difficulty. Why not Suarez, or Scotus, or Ockham? While they may also have a greater family resemblance to the earlier scholastics, their very family resemblance is arguably what most conceals the major shifts that they enacted away from the earlier tradition. If anything, Descartes' more decisive shift is also thus more obvious, thus more identifiable, and so easier to accommodate in our retrieval of the pre-Cartesian tradition.

I didn't blame Descartes alone -- again, the Utrecht condemnation was just an illustration of a more general phenomenon. I also explicitly named Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Moliere, "and the other moderns who ridiculed crude caricatures of substantial forms, final causes, and the like before banishing them from the philosophical lexicon altogether."

I would in fact cite Ockham, and to some extent Scotus, as relevant too. Indeed, in The Last Superstition I describe their work as the "pre-birth of the modern." But what they did was to set the stage for the moderns' big shift; they didn't constitute the shift themselves. (Certainly Scotus did not, much less Suarez. You could make a case for Ockham, but at the end of the day I think he is a decadent Scholastic rather than a modern.)