PHIL 249

PHIL 249: Medieval Philosophy and the Christian Tradition
Instructor: Matthew Kostelecky

[Philosophy majors and honors can exceptionally count this course toward the "History of Philosophy" degree requirement. Contact the Undergraduate Advisor at philudgr@ualberta.ca for details.]

Course Description

This course is a study of philosophy from the 5th to 15th centuries. The course is intended to introduce the student to the methods, sources, general questions, and results of some of the best representatives of this time period. The students will also deepen their capacity to analyze a text critically and philosophically through an engagement with primary sources (in English translation).

Course Goals

The course has historical, theological, and philosophical elements, but it is primarily a philosophical endeavour, the primary purposes of which are to learn and do philosophy. Philosophy – at least since Socrates – has been inextricably linked with writing, and, in addition to studying some of the greatest representatives of medieval thought, the students will also learn how to approach a text and write upon it in a distinctly ‘philosophical’ manner. Philosophy has always had an oral component to it, and the students will refine their ability to articulate verbally the concepts and debates we will be studying. 

Historical and Geographical Scope of the Course

As stated, the course focuses on philosophy as it occurred in the 5th to 15th centuries, but there are several ambiguities in the term ‘medieval philosophy’ that we have to confront in order to state better the scope of this course.

  • The first ambiguity concerns the first part of the term: medieval. When does the medieval era begin, or, for that matter, when does it end? What constitutes someone as a medieval figure? Would they have called themselves ‘a medieval’? Why do we so name them? What is it that makes a particular philosophical tradition or philosopher ‘medieval’ (as opposed to ancient or modern or something else)? As we will see, the boundaries of the 5th and 15th centuries are somewhat arbitrary and we will be considering figures outside of those boundaries with some frequency.

  • Another ambiguity that we’ll have to treat regards the other part of the term ‘medieval philosophy’: the sense in which the thought of the time can be called ‘philosophical’. Many of the thinkers we will be reading (though not all) would not have self-identified as philosophers, but as theologians or as simply pastors involved in the care of souls. Philosophy proceeds differently in the ‘medieval’ model than it does in the ancient, modern, or contemporary frameworks and coming to an understanding of how philosophical questions were addressed in a theological context is one goal of the course.

  • A corollary to these questions is the sense in which there is such a thing as ‘medieval philosophy’ that can be labeled under one, common umbrella. The thinkers we will be studying are so different in geographical and temporal context that it may not be obvious as to whether one can find a unifying theme by which to unite them under one subject heading. For instance, the period of time we are looking at spans more than a thousand years, includes thought in at least four languages (Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew), and three massive religious traditions (Jewish, Muslim, Christian – each of which have their own further internal differentiations). We will be reading thinkers who lived at very different times in varied locales such as Paris, Uzbekistan, Oxford, north Africa, and Muslim Spain (al-Andalus), and places in between. How these disparate thinkers are united into a broader arc, treating similar issues, will remain a live question for the duration of the course.

  • We will be spending a fair bit of time discussing some of the towering figures of medieval Jewish and Islamic thought, but spending more time focusing on Christian authors who wrote in Latin and lived and worked in what today is western Europe. I allocate our limited time like this in order to stress the continuation of medieval philosophy within the larger western philosophical tradition. While Latin medieval philosophy by no means repeats ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, it develops in part out of issues that are initiated in ancient thought; although modern European philosophy is not reducible to a mere development of medieval thought, it could not have taken the shape it did had modern philosophy not inherited the problems and questions of medieval thinkers. The questions that we will be treating require an understanding of some of the basic issues of ancient Greek philosophy. As such, I’ll be lecturing on the thought of some ancient philosophers (namely, Plato, Aristotle, and some of the neo-Platonic tradition of late antiquity) while also looking for points of continuity between medieval and modern thought.