page_title: History of philosophy in Poland
section_title: Scholasticism
hierarchical_section_title: History of philosophy in Poland / Scholasticism
caption_attribution_description: Page from a manuscript of "De Perspectiva" by Witelo with a miniature showing the author, end of 13th century
context_page_description: The history of philosophy in Poland parallels the evolution of philosophy in Europe in general.
context_section_description: The formal history of philosophy in Poland may be said to have begun in the fifteenth century, following the revival of the University of Kraków by King Władysław II Jagiełło in 1400.
  The true beginnings of Polish philosophy, however, reach back to the thirteenth century and Witelo (c. 1230 – c. 1314), a Silesian born to a Polish mother and a Thuringian settler, a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas who had spent part of his life in Italy at centers of the highest intellectual culture.  In addition to being a philosopher, he was a scientist who specialized in optics.  His famous treatise, Perspectiva, while drawing on the Arabic Book of Optics by Alhazen, was unique in Latin literature, and in turn helped inspire Roger Bacon's best work, Part V of his Opus maius, "On Perspectival Science," as well as his supplementary treatise On the Multiplication of Vision.  Witelo's Perspectiva additionally made important contributions to psychology:  it held that vision per se apprehends only colors and light while all else, particularly the distance and size of objects, is established by means of association and unconscious deduction.
  Witelo's concept of being was one rare in the Middle Ages, neither Augustinian as among conservatives nor Aristotelian as among progressives, but Neoplatonist. It was an emanationist concept that held radiation to be the prime characteristic of being, and ascribed to radiation the nature of light.  This "metaphysic of light" inclined Witelo to optical research, or perhaps vice versa his optical studies led to his metaphysic.
  According to the Polish historian of philosophy, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, no Polish philosopher since Witelo has enjoyed so eminent a European standing as this thinker who belonged, in a sense, to the prehistory of Polish philosophy.
  From the beginning of the fifteenth century, Polish philosophy, centered at Kraków University, pursued a normal course. It no longer harbored exceptional thinkers such as Witelo, but it did feature representatives of all wings of mature Scholasticism, via antiqua as well as via moderna.
  The first of these to reach Kraków was via moderna, then the more widespread movement in Europe.  In physics, logic and ethics, Terminism (Nominalism) prevailed in Kraków, under the influence of the French Scholastic, Jean Buridan (died c. 1359), who had been rector of the University of Paris and an exponent of views of William of Ockham.  Buridan had formulated the theory of "impetus"—the force that causes a body, once set in motion, to persist in motion—and stated that impetus is proportional to the speed of, and amount of matter comprising, a body:  Buridan thus anticipated Galileo and Isaac Newton.  His theory of impetus was momentous in that it also explained the motions of celestial bodies without resort to the spirits—"intelligentiae"—to which the Peripatetics (followers of Aristotle) had ascribed those motions.  At Kraków, physics was now expounded by (St.) Jan Kanty (1390–1473), who developed this concept of "impetus."
  A general trait of the Kraków Scholastics was a provlivity for compromise—for reconciling Nominalism with the older tradition. For example, the Nominalist, Benedict Hesse, while in principle accepting the theory of impetus, did not apply it to the heavenly spheres.
  In the second half of the fifteenth century, at Kraków, via antiqua became dominant. Nominalism retreated, and the old Scholasticism triumphed.
  In this period, Thomism had its chief center at Cologne, whence it influenced Kraków.  Cologne, formerly the home ground of Albertus Magnus, had preserved Albert's mode of thinking.  Thus the Cologne philosophers formed two wings, the Thomist and Albertist, and even Cologne's Thomists showed Neoplatonist traits characteristic of Albert, affirming emanation, a hierarchy of being, and a metaphysic of light.
  The chief Kraków adherents of the Cologne-style Thomism included Jan of Głogów (c. 1445 – 1507) and Jakub of Gostynin (c. 1454 – 1506).  Another, purer teacher of Thomism was Michał Falkener of Wrocław (c. 1450 – 1534).
  Almost at the same time, Scot
caption: Page from a manuscript of De perspectiva, with miniature of its author Witelo
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