298 Crusades Lecture 13 March 19

Question 0

2. Aristotle translated into Arabic in the 8th c.

Text spreads slowly. Most heavily studied in Muslim Spain

Answer 0

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Question 1

1. Islamic world the vessel for much of the ancient Greek and Roman learning that would spark the 12th c. Renaissance.

Answer 1

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Question 2

3. Islamic world retained Aristotle, but had little use for him or philosophy in general

Preferred the various sciences and medicine

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Question 3

4. Byzantine Greeks had little interest in Aristotle

tended to be more archivists and preservationists

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Question 4

5. 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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Question 5

6. New schools of translation set up to deal with these works

Spain, Sicily, Provence

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Question 6

7. Some churchmen feared that the reintroduction of the ancient philosophies would end in disaster for the traditions of the church

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Question 7

8. 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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Question 8

9. Every Greek contribution to philosophy and science that the Latin scholars could find in the Mediterranean world was translated.

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Question 9

10. Sicily important center for translation of works on technical subjects
    Medicine
    Natural Sciences
    Mathematics

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Question 10

11. Sicily had a mix of Greek, Muslim, Italian, and Norman populations

Answer 10

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Question 11

12. Spain the center for translations of Greek philosophy and ethics.

Christian scholars took up residence in Muslim cities like Cordoba

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Question 12

13. Aristotle and the rest came to the West with trails of Muslim and Jewish commentaries

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Question 13

14. Aristotle the most important philosopher of the 12th c.

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Question 14

15a Aristotle’s philosophy posed challenges for the three Abrahamic religions

1. mechanistic God who is a prime mover. This tends to preclude a belief in providence

Answer 14

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Question 15

15b

2. Denial of the creation of the world from nothing. Aristotle assumed the eternity of matter

Answer 15

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Question 16

15c

3. Did not support hte doctrine of the immortality of the individual soul

Answer 16

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Question 17

15. But it wasn’t just Greek and Roman texts that were embraced

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Question 18

16. Ibn Sina (d. 1037)
    Great commentator on Aristotle

Great contributions to western medicine

Answer 18

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Question 19

17. 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

Answer 19

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Question 20

18. So with Ibn Sina we have the hierarchical universe of Plato and the mechanistic cosmos of Aristotle

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Question 21

19. 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

Answer 21

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Question 22

20. Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) aka Averroes

Spanish Muslim

Greatest commentator on Aristotle

Answer 22

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Question 23

21. 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

Answer 23

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Question 24

22. 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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Question 25

23. Averroism condemned in Spain (recall the Berbers and the return to a pure Islam)

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Question 26

24. Jewish scholars tried to find compatibility between science and revelation and to work out a rational theology.

Much in parallel with what Christians did

Answer 26

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Question 27

25. Maimonides (Rambam) (d. 1204)

Wanted to show that faith was compatible with reason.

Studied Aristotle and Greek science, philosophy

Answer 27

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Question 28

26. 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

Answer 28

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Question 29

27. Maimonides, like Christian thinkers such as Aquinas, rejected the double-truth doctrine of Averroes

Answer 29

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Question 30

28. Coincides with the development of the universities in Europe

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Question 31

29. Efforts to harmonize knowledge

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Question 32

30. Right ordering of the world

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Question 33

31. Celebration of Human Reason

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Question 34

32. 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

Answer 34

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Question 35

33. Some repurcussions of these new forms of thinking:

Science revitalized
Observations of the natural world
Separation of humans from animals via Reason

Answer 35

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Question 37

34. The problems of the Vulgate

Answer 37

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