Talk:Medieval philosophy

message: I'd say that the scope of medieval extends only to Christian-ruled Europe, and so  thinkers like Maimonides are not Medieval thinkers, but it is impossible to understand medieval philosophy without the impact of thinkers within Muslim-ruled areas.  I suggest that we have a section Influences from outside Christian Europe, and include a list of the key contemporary figures; I guess I would have:
* Al-Kindi
* Al-Farabi
* Avicenna
* Averroes
* Maimonides
* Al-Ghazali
Thoughts? While I'm on the subject, I know of Al-Ghazali's influence on medieval thought, but almost nothing of what it consists of.  Who read him? --- Charles Stewart 18:35, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Eeek, what have I stumbled into here  :).  In my understanding of it, you are complete correct.  Far from being burned at the stake, there was some good academic discussion between Christians and Jews (Solomon Ibn Gabirol for instance, who was apparently supported by Duns Scotus).  And there was definitely interaction between Christians and Muslims.  For instance, how could Thomas Aquinas write the Summa Contra Gentiles if there were no Gentiles (i.e. Arabic philosophers primarily) to write Contra??  Sorry for my bad philosophy humor  :P FranksValli 06:31, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Medieval and Islamic thought

message: It seems that there has already been some attempt to bridge the gap in Medieval philosophy (Christian-Jewish-Muslim/Arabic philosphy) on Wikipedia.  I think what we need is a Medieval philosophy template.  This, or something similar, can be added to the template:
Christian philosophy, early Muslim philosophy, Jewish philosophy, Scholastic philosophy
Someone put those links at the bottom of the "list of philosophers", which IMHO should be turned into "notable philosophers" and perhaps divided into "Christian scholastics", "Jewish philosophers", and "Arabic/Muslim philosophers" just for that short list that appears on the "Medival philsophy" main page ("complete" lists like List of scholastic philosophers can be added for the latter two at a later date).
Sorry for the vagueness and lack of clarity in writing - it is late and I somehow got myself into Medieval Philosophy on a Friday night...
And now that I think of it, there is always the inevitable Western/Eastern philosophy contract.  Since Wikipedia is supposed to be a compendium of everything worldwide, Eastern philosophy during the Middle Ages should at least be linked to from this page.  FranksValli 06:31, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Medieval Philosophy template

message: This article needs some love!  The tone just seems off, the section on trends and concepts seems only tangentally related to trends and concepts, and there's almost no detail on what, aside from a focus on theology, distinguished medieval philosophy.  Mostly, I think, it just needs content, but the content that is here needs to be cleaned up a little, too.  -Seth Mahoney 21:27, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: Shouldn't Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) be added to the list?  Admittedly if he's considered Medieval at all, he's one of the last of the Medievals.  However, he's not a Modernist... he predates Descartes (or rather, overlaps Descartes), however I think he can be very much considered a Medieval, especially since his writings are in the scholastic method.  But if he's not a Medievalist, where does he fit in our History of Western philosophy?  Surely he's not to be considered a part of Renaissance philosophy, even though he's writing in the same time period?  I think this is somewhat important - Suarez should at least be mentioned in History of Western philosophy or some sub-page like this one (Medieval philosophy).  I think he's underrated but important.  For instance, before reading Descartes, it's useful to read Suarez to understand the Medieval view of types of distinctions, likes modes.  Descartes's "I think, therefore I am" relies on this understanding of modes (see Instantiation principle)...  FranksValli 08:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops.. maybe I spoke too soon.  I found Suarez listed in the Scholasticism article.  That's probably the most appropriate place for him to be listed anyhow.  FranksValli 08:32, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Francisco Suárez 

message: Many medieval thinkers such as Spinoza, Leibniz...
That's not many, that is a lot !
(Lunarian 11:45, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's "none" since neither of them are medieval thinkers! Adam Bishop 15:27, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

text: (Lunarian 10:53, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the notes. It was quite the opposite and don't know how that could happen. I remember that the article didn't mention any link between the medieval philosophy and the new thoughts that appeared later. It was a mistake made in good faith. Again thanks for noting it. -- Szvest 20:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: That Many ?

message: What to put in this section?  Assume it ends before Anselm, who is the first scholastic.  Then that gives about the same as the length of the Islamic section to develop all of the period 400 – 1050.
Augustine over Boethius, probably, but perhaps space for both, given there aren't that many philosophers in between.  Then
* What to say about Augustine?  
**That he is the most quoted of all medieval writers?
**That he is not in fact medieval, being at the end of the classical period?
**Phrases like 'casts a long shadow', 'dominates all medieval thought', "He shaped medieval thought as no one else did" bla bla.
** As well as one of most influential philosophers of any time (Wittgenstein and Heidegger)
** The influence of Plato, whose writings were lost during early middle ages, was mainly through Augustine
** His approach to the problem of evil & human free will was of great importance in the middle ages, and his doctrine of grace underpinned the Reformation 
*About Boethius
**His importance in translations and commentaries – one of the main sources of the transmission of Greek philosophy in the Early Middle Ages
**He translated Aristotle's Categories and On Interpretation, plus two commentaries each on 'On Interpretation' and Porphry's Isagoge, and one on the Categories.  Everything that was known about logic in the early Middle Ages is contained in these books.  In his commentary on the Isagoge he formulates the Problem of universals in the way that it was widely discussed in the later Middle Ages.
* Would the patristic period be mentioned, given that this gives us many of the problems that later theologians struggled with?  
* the dark ages were very dark.
* the monasteries and the preservation of learning
* that it was only some learning – few Aristotelian texts, e.g.
* The importance of Boethius and Porphyry, in giving them the problem of universals, and the Perihermaneias.
* John Scotus Eriugena – major figure of 500 year period, Irish, fused Christian and Neoplatonic thinking.
* The Carolongian renaissance
* Other influences such as Dionysus, St John Damascene, Philoponus
edward (buckner) 15:42, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Early Christian Philosophy 

message: Medieval is not a correct attribute for the middle east. As Henry Corbin describes in his book, History of Islamic Philosophy, philosophy in the Muslim worlds including Middle East, Central Asia, Indian sub-continent, North Africa and Andulusia have different stages. He says Needless to say, the epochs in the history of Islamic philosophy cannot, save by a verbal artifice, be subjected to our usual system of dividing the history of philosophy—and history in general—into three periods which we call Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. It would be equally inappropriate to say that the Middle Ages have continued down to our day, for the very notion of the Middle Ages presupposes a vision of history thematized according to a particular perspective... And we in our turn cannot impose upon them a chronological schema imported from a foreign world. Thus I suggest changing the lead and substituting Islamic philosophy in the Middle Ages with Early Islamic philosophy. Some part of the article does not fit to Mulim world at that age. For example it's written Medieval philosophy is characteristically theological: with the possible exceptions of Avicenna and Averroes, medieval thinkers did not consider themselves philosophers at all. While Corbin says The clear-cut distinction which exists in the West between 'philosophy' and 'theology' goes back to medieval scholasticism, and it presupposes a process of 'secularization' the idea of which could not exist in Islam, primarily because Islam has never experienced the phenomenon of the Church, with all its implications and consequences. There were several renowned philosophers at that time among Muslims and later philosophy overcome theology in the eastern part of Muslim world and both of them are affected by Sufism.--Seyyed(t-c) 11:02, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well Kretzmann includes all the Middle Eastern philosophers in his magisterial work on Medieval Philosophy, so what's the problem?  I worked very hard (after someone criticised a much earlier version of this for being Latin West-centric) to get a balanced version of this article.  What's the problem?  Suggest something.  Peter Damian (talk) 20:48, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

text: The sentence you cite "with the possible exceptions of Avicenna and Averroes, medieval thinkers did not consider themselves philosophers at all" is from Noone. Peter Damian (talk) 20:48, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  And didn't Al-Ghazali accept a 'clear-cut' distinction between philosophy and theology? Peter Damian (talk) 20:55, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Isn't the tag in the main article "History of Western Philosophy"? Of course the article is "biased": there is a warning in the very TOC. The chronological order is based in Western History, and Eastern philosophers related to the West are ordered according to that criterion. You may start another article on "Philosophy in Islam" and make a completely different arrangement, and that would be fine. There is no problem here, only creative misreading. Louie (talk) 18:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have removed the tag.  There were some other points made, such as there being no clear-cut distinction between philosophy and theology, but this has no basis in fact, as far as I can see.  Peter Damian (talk) 20:12, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Worldwide view and POV tag

message: I'm not  an expert but I find the sentence "Yet this period of nearly a thousand years was the longest period of philosophical development in Europe, and possibly the richest." in the lead part of the article to be utterly unbelievable. Much of it wasn't development it was regress and apart from the final part the only contributions were in theology not philosophy.
It might have had some relevance a year ago when the article included a reasonable section on Islamic philosophy, which was about the only place where thinking was going on, but that's been removed. Could someone rephrase please. Chris55 (talk) 19:01, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Go ahead. However, by the time of Thomas Aquinas, medieval philosophy had clearly become creative, not merely imitative, again. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 10:26, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Ma for your latest compromise. I don't know what is now recognized as the scope of the term. But all the recent additions have been made from a book (ed Garcia, Noone) which uses the word Middle Ages and which Amazon describes as "An unparalleled source of information on the lives and thought of no fewer than 138 medieval Christian, Islamic, and Jewish philosophers". The judgements made in the first paragraph reflected this perspective, not the narrower use of the term which has been traditional in western universities. Both of the latter cultures were making progress at a time when Christendom was forgetting most of what it knew. Chris55 (talk) 09:58, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I am thinking here more along Wikipedia-specific lines, from a horizontal perspective: Most articles of the Template:Middle Ages wide 2 only deal with medieval topics in the common, more narrow sense (that is [Western] Europe), so we should hold on this editorial line. Then, Islamic philosophy already has an article of its own, so if we start to go into depth on Muslim developments here, we only duplicate the material and end up with more than one full article for IP and less than one full for MP. Hardly ideal. Therefore, I believe we should stick here to WP:Scope. Finally, Latin translations of the 12th century and Transmission of the Classics already deal at length with the subject. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 12:33, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Development? 

message: It took me a moment to realise that the bar chart under "See also" refers to lines of Jewish philosophy. Can someone perhaps move it to go under that bullet, or at least give it a caption? (I don't have the formatting skill.)
Herbgold (talk) 09:50, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formatting problem under "See also" 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Medieval philosophy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080719105814/http://www2.bc.edu/~solere/siepm.html to http://www2.bc.edu/~solere/siepm.html
*Added archive https://archive.is/20130630101530/http://tcrnews2.com/vonbalthasarfathers.html to http://tcrnews2.com/vonbalthasarfathers.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 12:09, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Medieval philosophy. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20030301105108/http://radicalacademy.com/adiphiljewish1.htm to http://radicalacademy.com/adiphiljewish1.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:36, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: Thought of the Middle ages has a reputation.  The term "dark ages" is already mentioned, but there is more to it than that.  The word Gothic is used commonly to refer to dark things such as the poetry and stories of Edgar Allen Poe.
The only good example I can think of is from Robert Crumb, who introduced Zap Comix No. 1 (1967, Apex Novelties) by ridiculously claiming to be "one of the world's last great Medieval thinkers" along with "From the bedroom closet, I operate a huge network of radios, sending out incantations, curses voodoo hoodoo." There must be other examples that could be listed.  That might even make this article a bit more comprehensible to a wider audience.  David R. Ingham 02:02, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Add a "Popular Culture" section? 

message: I'm marking this down from "B" to "C" due to the lack of coverage of Medieval philosophers in Islamic philosophy, Jewish philosophy, Byzantine philosophy etc. It looks like this has been mentioned on this talk page above, but the tradition is fairly continuous here between Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, etc. and Latin philosophers like Aquinas so it makes sense to cover them all on the same page.  - car chasm (talk) 18:24, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs coverage of non-european medieval philosophers 

message: I reassessed the Vital Articles assessment to C-class. The article fails the B-class criteria. Also, I am going to chop all but three of the "External links". A discussion may change this around but I am just picking all after the first three. Three seems to be an acceptable number and of course, everyone has their favorite to add for four. The problem is that none is needed for article promotion. 
*ELpoints #3) states: 
*LINKFARM states: 
*WP:ELMIN: . --  Otr500 (talk) 07:05, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Article issues and classification