History of Philosophy

Philosophy of The Middle Ages

Scholasticism

In the 7th to 9th centuries, as Western Europe experienced stabilization and the formation of large states, education flourished, largely due to the influence of the Catholic Church. At that time, education was otherwise unneeded. The Church was responsible for training future priests, scribes, canonists, and other specialists, with bishops overseeing this educational task. Bishops gathered talented youth and tasked cathedral priests with imparting necessary knowledge. The cathedral dean, known as rector in Latin, organized the educational process: appointing teachers, developing curricula, and, at the end of the course, administering exams and issuing diplomas. It was within these medieval church schools that European educational traditions began to take shape. Without specially designed classrooms, instruction took place in the church, with the teacher standing on the cathedra, the raised platform used by bishops during services. As schools expanded, bishops separated them from churches, and the head of a school (or university) continued to be called a rector, just as the head of a cathedral was.

Thus began the history of European universities. As the system of basic education was still developing, universities admitted students with varying levels of preparation. Consequently, universities had to provide both higher and secondary education. All medieval university students started in the Faculty of the Liberal Arts, a term inherited from antiquity where sciences were considered the arts of free people, and crafts and agriculture were the arts of the unfree (slaves). The liberal arts were divided into two blocks: the trivium, consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium, comprising arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. After completing the liberal arts curriculum, students could proceed to higher faculties: theology, law, or medicine. Education in all medieval universities was conducted in Latin.

The emphasis on education set the tone for the philosophical discourse of the entire Western Middle Ages. Medieval philosophers and theologians, being university professors, primarily focused on teaching. The books they wrote were intended not for general reading but for instructional purposes. Initially, teachers compiled collections of quotes for classroom discussions, then wrote commentaries on these, and eventually began writing extensive books that encompassed all the knowledge students were expected to acquire during their course. Such books were called sumae. The focus on teaching led to the term scholasticism being used to describe medieval philosophy, derived from the Latin schola (school), indicating that the primary environment for philosophical, theological, and scholarly thought of the time was the academic space, the school or university.