6. Philosophy in the Middle Ages¶
Core Argument¶
After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Europe descended into the Dark Ages, a period of profound cultural and intellectual decline. Feudalism emerged, a rigid hierarchy of serfdom sanctified by the Church, which demanded blind faith and actively suppressed reason and empirical science. Classical Greek philosophy was largely lost to the West, only to be partially revived in the twelfth century through Arabic translations preserved and advanced in Islamic centres in Spain.
The ideological cornerstone of this medieval theocracy was Augustine’s philosophy, a synthesis of Christian mysticism and Platonic idealism. His theory of universals, known as Realism, held that general concepts are real archetypes existing in God’s mind, accessible only through faith, not the senses. This left no room for science; truth was obtained solely through Divine Illumination.
However, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the peak of feudal society and the rise of universities. The rediscovery of Aristotle’s works via Arabic translations sparked a crisis in Church ideology. Peter Abelard founded Nominalism, arguing that universals are merely words for singular things and that knowledge derives from sense experience and abstraction. This dealt a mortal blow to Augustinian thought. Thomas Aquinas attempted to reconcile Aristotle’s materialism with Plato’s idealism, bastardising Aristotle to prop up Church dogma. John Duns Scotus developed the Univocity of Being, hinting that God and creatures differ only in degree. William of Ockham fully developed Nominalism, arguing universals are concepts based solely on experience and that God’s existence cannot be proven by reason, thereby separating philosophy from religion.
Nominalism, while containing the germ of a one-sided materialism that later led to a philosophical dead-end, represented a huge advance and the last nail in scholasticism’s coffin. Ockham’s approach encouraged scientific discovery, separating science from theology. Roger Bacon challenged scholastic dogmatism by advocating experimental study of nature, anticipating the scientific method, but was confined to a monastery. Nicholas of Oresme questioned the geocentric theory, challenging the Church’s cosmology, which mirrored feudal hierarchy. The rise of towns, trade, and the bourgeoisie demanded technical innovations and broke down feudal barriers. The Black Death, peasant revolts, and endless wars signalled feudalism’s decline. A crisis of ideology emerged: the Church was widely discredited, heretical movements were violently repressed, and new monastic orders were founded to combat dissent. No amount of repression could preserve an outlived ideology, preparing the ground for the bourgeois revolution, ignited by Martin Luther in 1517.