298 Crusades Lecture 13 March 19 Flashcards
- Aristotle translated into Arabic in the 8th c.
Text spreads slowly. Most heavily studied in Muslim Spain
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- Islamic world the vessel for much of the ancient Greek and Roman learning that would spark the 12th c. Renaissance.
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- Islamic world retained Aristotle, but had little use for him or philosophy in general
Preferred the various sciences and medicine
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- Byzantine Greeks had little interest in Aristotle
tended to be more archivists and preservationists
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- The reintroduction of Aristotle in particular was a turning point in the history of western thought
Think Darwin or Newtonian science
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- New schools of translation set up to deal with these works
Spain, Sicily, Provence
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- Some churchmen feared that the reintroduction of the ancient philosophies would end in disaster for the traditions of the church
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- The work of the translators not organized by any central authority
Some enjoyed patronage of a bishop or prince
Most did it for the love of the texts and a desire to enrich western knowledge
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- Every Greek contribution to philosophy and science that the Latin scholars could find in the Mediterranean world was translated.
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- Sicily important center for translation of works on technical subjects
Medicine
Natural Sciences
Mathematics
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- Sicily had a mix of Greek, Muslim, Italian, and Norman populations
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- Spain the center for translations of Greek philosophy and ethics.
Christian scholars took up residence in Muslim cities like Cordoba
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- Aristotle and the rest came to the West with trails of Muslim and Jewish commentaries
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- Aristotle the most important philosopher of the 12th c.
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15a Aristotle’s philosophy posed challenges for the three Abrahamic religions
- mechanistic God who is a prime mover. This tends to preclude a belief in providence
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15b
2. Denial of the creation of the world from nothing. Aristotle assumed the eternity of matter
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15c
3. Did not support hte doctrine of the immortality of the individual soul
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- But it wasn’t just Greek and Roman texts that were embraced
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- Ibn Sina (d. 1037)
Great commentator on Aristotle
Great contributions to western medicine
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- Ibn Sina’s philosophy represented an older tradition.
Drew on both Aristotelianism and neoplatonism
God does not concern himself with individuals, but greats an Intelligence, a sort of Platonic idea that engenders all other things
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- So with Ibn Sina we have the hierarchical universe of Plato and the mechanistic cosmos of Aristotle
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- However, Ibn Sina denied the omniscience of God, and so the efficacy of prayer
Negated creation of the world from nothing
Immortality of human soul only with reintegration with the general universe/Intelligence
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- Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) aka Averroes
Spanish Muslim
Greatest commentator on Aristotle
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- Ibn Rushd (d. 1198)
Averroes
Leading interpreter of Aristotle in the Muslim world and to a large extent the Christian world
The Commentator, according to Aquinas
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- Science inexorably demonstrates that God is the mechanistic mover of the universe
Upheld Ibn Sina’s doctrine of the general Intelligence/universal soul
Double true: one of science, one of faith
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- Averroism condemned in Spain (recall the Berbers and the return to a pure Islam)
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- Jewish scholars tried to find compatibility between science and revelation and to work out a rational theology.
Much in parallel with what Christians did
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- Maimonides (Rambam) (d. 1204)
Wanted to show that faith was compatible with reason.
Studied Aristotle and Greek science, philosophy
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- Jews at the time also suffering in Spain and the Mediterranean from the Muslim groups who’d gained power on a platform of wanting to return to a pure Islam
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- Maimonides, like Christian thinkers such as Aquinas, rejected the double-truth doctrine of Averroes
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- Coincides with the development of the universities in Europe
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- Efforts to harmonize knowledge
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- Right ordering of the world
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- Celebration of Human Reason
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- Realists vs Nominalists
(realists: universals really exist as meaningful constructs, if only in mind of God
nominalists: names/categories by which we impose order but are meaningless in themselves
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- Some repurcussions of these new forms of thinking:
Science revitalized
Observations of the natural world
Separation of humans from animals via Reason
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- The problems of the Vulgate
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