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C82CHI > Medievalists > Flashcards

Medievalists Flashcards

1
Q

What years does the middle ages incorporate?

A

About 1100-1600AD, but goes further back.

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2
Q

What can middle ages philosophy be related to?

A

Plato and Aristotle, as well as psychology as a science, the mind and the body etc.

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3
Q

When were the dark ages?

A

600 AD onwards for the Western world, there are very little records. Much more from Islamic countries. Then ideas moved back into the west!

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4
Q

When did St Augustine live?

A

354-430 AD.

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5
Q

Describe the life of St Augustine.

A

Algerian, born to Xn mother and pagan father. Followed Manichaeism. Had an interesting life - many sexual partners and at least one son by a concubine. Later converted to Christianity.
Wrote that sin is disordered love, and is inevitable.

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6
Q

What is Manichaeism?

A

A religion based on the writings of Mani primarily known for its striking dualism between light and dark (we are both, can do both).

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7
Q

What was St Augustine the first to do?

A

Use children and case studies to attempt to understand human nature.

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8
Q

What was St Augustine’s idea of the wilful child?

A

A baby begins to have wishes and communicates them - they get angry when they don’t get what they want, and cry. Children desire to control adults.

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9
Q

What was St Augustine’s idea of the sinful mind?

A

Everything is seen as a source of instant gratification. Anger, greed and jealousy are all important.
Personality traits don’t actually change.

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10
Q

What did St Augustine believe about the self?

A

There is no isolated individual self - only in relationship with God.

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11
Q

What did St Augustine write about love?

A

Love is the most powerful act of the soul, it’s ambiguous and unstable. The soul is divided, love is never entirely healthy. Vanity and greed are distortions of love.

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12
Q

What was St Augustine’s underlying theory of personality and account of how children become adults based on?

A

His Christian beliefs.

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13
Q

What is key to St Augustine’s theory?

A

The idea of original sin - that we have no free will to abstain from sin except through God’s grace (hence the need for baptism, without which one can’t go to Heaven).

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14
Q

What was St Augustine’s idea of the elect?

A

The elect are the chosen few - people can only become less evil through love of God.

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15
Q

Who had similar ideas to St Augustine regarding child development?

A

Freud.

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16
Q

What did St Augustine say about lust?

A

Sexual intercourse in marriage is not sinful as long as the intention is to have children. Any sexual acts not aiming for children are bad. ‘The lawful act of nature is accompanied with penal shame’ - shameful because of its independence of our will. Apparently sex would have been divorced from pleasure if not for original sin, a virtuous state. Huge list of times and situations in which sex was not allowed.

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17
Q

What did St Augustine say about obesity?

A

Obesity is greed, which is bad.

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18
Q

Who followed the same line as St Augustine on lust and sex?

A

Reformation protestants such as the Lutherans and Calvinists.

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19
Q

What did St Augustine think about Plato?

A

He was correct in that:
• god is not anything material
• all things have their being through god
• god is immutable
• perception is not a source of truth
• the sensible world is inferior to the eternal
• there are things that can be discovered by reason alone.
All other knowledge, if it is to be true, must be based on religious writings.

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20
Q

When did Ibn Sina live?

A

980-1037 AD.

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21
Q

Where did Ibn Sina live?

A

Persia.

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22
Q

What were Ibn Sina’s most important works?

A

The book of healing and the canon of medicine.

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23
Q

What did Ibn Sina’s work discuss?

A

Reason and reality.

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24
Q

What did Ibn Sina claim?

A

That God is pure intellect and that knowledge consists of the mind grasping the intelligible. Both reason and logic are required, gaining the correct knowledge determines heaven/hell.

25
Q

What was Ibn Sina’s ideas of the mind an extension of?

A

Aristotle’s facultative psychology.

26
Q

What kind of souls did Ibn Sina distinguish between?

A

Plants, animals, then humans - vegetative soul, sensitive soul, rational soul.

27
Q

What does Ibn Sina’s idea of the rational soul involve?

A

Contemplative intellect (universals, abstract and concrete) and practical intellect (everyday tasks).

28
Q

What did Ibn Sina relate memory to?

A

Punishment and pleasure, similar to Skinner.

29
Q

What was Ibn Sina’s idea of the rational soul similar to?

A

Freud’s idea of the ego.

30
Q

When did St Thomas Aquinas live?

A

1225-1274.

31
Q

Describe the life of St Thomas Aquinas.

A

Educated in Benedictine Abbey at Cassino and University of Naples.
Became a Dominican monk at 17, rejection of wealth etc. unlike Benedictine.

32
Q

What were St Thomas Aquinas’ opinions of Aristotle and Plato?

A

Had a thorough understanding of Aristotle, disliked Plato. Used the Aristotlean argument for existence of God - animation, causation and consequence; God is the unmoved mover.

33
Q

What did St Thomas Aquinas do?

A

Applied reason to senses, stated that some Christian ideas are beyond reason. Wrote about ethics and just war.

34
Q

What did Aquinas challenge?

A

The Augustinian acceptance of Plato - he turned the theology of the church upside down.

35
Q

What did Aquinas write about God, good and evil?

A

God is supreme good and supreme being. Evil is non-being. One finds God through pilgrimage.
Bringing faith and reason together.

36
Q

What is the Platonic view of the material world?

A

Platonic scheme doesn’t say much about the material world.

37
Q

What did Aquinas believe about Aristotle’s principles of operation for the world?

A

He agreed, but said it’s not self-explanatory - there has to be a beginning and end. Directionality, how did things begin, where are they going? The problem of the unmoved mover. Brings together the best of religious and philosophical thought into a coherent theory.

38
Q

What did Aquinas write about humans and God?

A

That humans don’t have an innate desire for God, but for our highest good. Impelled towards this highest good, as determined by highest principle which controls and explains everything, causes everything to be.

39
Q

Did Aquinas believe that humans are fundamentally good or evil?

A

We’re not fundamentally evil, more like we’re fundamentally good as that’s what we strive for.

40
Q

Did Aquinas follow the nature or nurture scheme of thought?

A

Nurture - we have no innate beliefs and knowledge about the world.

41
Q

How does Aquinas relate to Aristotle?

A

Aquinas adopted a lot of Aristotle and demonstrated that it wasn’t in conflict with Catholicism; God can only be known through attempts to understand his creation - the world of nature, using Aristotle’s empiricism!

42
Q

What did Aquinas state that all thinking requires?

A

Imagination - that’s the key difference between humans and animals.

43
Q

How did Aquinas state that knowledge of God is gained?

A

Cannot be gained by introspection or by reason alone - has to be both.

44
Q

When did Roger Bacon live?

A

1219-1294.

45
Q

What did Roger Bacon do?

A

Took on Aquinas’ ideas and applied scientific method (arguably developed in early Islamic philosophy on optics):
• Using experiments
• Citation, peer review and open enquiry
• A general belief that knowledge reveals nature honestly.

46
Q

Who was Roger Bacon?

A

An Aristotlean Franciscan monk.

47
Q

How did Roger Bacon describe the development of knowledge?

A

As a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification. Essentially, scientific empiricism.

48
Q

What did Roger Bacon state was the purpose of the development of knowledge?

A

To further our understanding of God and his creation.

49
Q

When did William of Ockham live?

A

1290-1350.

50
Q

Who was William of Ockham?

A

A Franciscan monk, little known about him. May have been brought before the pope in Avignon to face charges of heresy. Eventually fled to Bavaria after a dispute with Dominicans about Franciscan poverty.

51
Q

What aspects of William of Ockham’s ideas live on today?

A

Occam’s razor and Nominalism and/or Conceptualism.

52
Q

Outline the premise of Occam’s razor.

A
  • “plurality should not be posited without necessity” - the simplest answer is the best one.
  • Argument applies to intelligent design or the existence of God (originally used as proof! However, who made God? Flawed, explanation not as simple as it sounds. Slightly heretical).
  • Regardless, the sound logic does not guarantee the truth of the outcome.
53
Q

What argument did William of Ockham have a problem with?

A

The unmoved mover argument, and stated that there is no reason to believe that we experience things directly.

54
Q

What is nominalism?

A

The idea that things are what they are because we name them so.

55
Q

What does science consider in terms of nominalism?

A

Only propositions, not things, since the object of science is what is known, not what is.

56
Q

What is a universal according to nominalism?

A

An ‘intention’ of the mind, a symbol representing several objects of a kind (platonic form/ideal). This was the first time the notion of mental representation was seriously discussed, and leads to problems with objectivity and subjectivity. Knowledge is subjective. Objectivity must refer to things outside us, and no universal exists outside the mind.

57
Q

What do objects call forth according to nominalism?

A

Sense-impressions which become mental images through the work of the active intellect. Similar to Piaget and schemas - accommodation.

58
Q

According to nominalism, what does the human mind tend to do?

A

Create universal concepts from even single instances of an entity or its properties, which although they represent objective reality are in fact subjective.

59
Q

What else did William of Ockham state/do?

A

The authority of rulers resides with who they rule.
Annoyed a lot of people.
Very controversial with his opinions.
Similarity doesn’t have to be grounded in metaphysical elements.
Challenged the Church - lots of dogmas don’t make as much sense as we thought. Cannot therefore represent the nature of God - so philosophically inherent they cannot represent the mind of a perfect being.

C82CHI (4 decks)

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