Scholasticism

Roots of Scholasticism

From the beginning of medieval Scholasticism the natural aim of all philosophical endeavour to achieve the “whole of attainable truth” was clearly meant to include also the teachings of Christian faith, an inclusion which, in the very concept of Scholasticism, was perhaps its most characteristic and distinguishing element. Although the idea of including faith was expressed already by Augustine and the early Church Fathers, the principle was explicitly formulated by the pivotal early 6th-century scholar Boethius. Born in Rome and educated in Athens, Boethius was one of the great mediators and translators, living on the narrow no-man’s-land that divided the epochs. His famous book, De consolatione philosophiae (The Consolation of Philosophy), was written while he, indicted for treachery and imprisoned by King Theodoric the Goth, awaited his own execution. It is true that the book is said to be, aside from the Bible, one of the most translated, most commented upon, and most printed books in world history; and that Boethius made (unfinished) plans to translate and to comment upon, as he said, “every book of Aristotle and all the dialogues of Plato.” But the epithet that he won ... (200 of 7,235 words)