Dr Greg Bahnsen - Ancient & Medieval Philosophy: Medieval Philosophy (Part 19)

Lord, we ask for your help this morning as we study. We ask that you would help us to be efficient, that we would get much accomplished. And above all, we ask for your help that in all of our thoughts we would glorify you. Please forgive us for falling short of your glory in so many ways, not only in our thoughts, but in our words and deeds as well. We pray that you would continue to show your grace toward us, to forgive us to be faithful to your promises. We ask that you would help us to serve you, that your kingdom would be advanced through our efforts, that we would remember that our highest goal in life is to seek your kingdom above all. We thank you that you provide for us not only the promises of your kingdom and eternal life, but add to us everything necessary for this life as well, for which we give you our thanks. In Jesus name, Amen. We're going to look at the period of medieval philosophy as Roman numeral 15 on your outline. And the first thing I want to talk about for a while, A in the outline is the culture of the Middle Ages. Now, what do I mean by the Middle Ages? This is an interesting trick. All sorts of scholars have different opinions as to when to start and end the period of the Middle Ages. And so there's going to be some fluidity and different reasons or priorities will be revealed by the way in which one scholar dates it this way and another that. Let's remember that Augustine died in the year 430. Rome fell in the year 476 AD. And I believe that it is. I'm going to be rounding off and being arbitrary, but I'm going to take the date of 450, then somewhere between the death of Augustine and the fall of Rome as the beginning of the medieval period. And then at the other end, a major event was the fall of Constantinople, fall of the eastern capital in the year 1453. 1453, the year just before that, 1452, Leonardo da Vinci was born. Just about anybody would consider da Vinci the Renaissance man par excellence. And so I'm going to take the year 1450 for my arbitrary rounded date for the end of the Middle Ages. You know very well people didn't wake up on the first day of the year 1415, turn on their TVs only to find the Today show telling them the Middle Ages have ended. Doesn't work that way. But for our purposes, artificial though they may be, the years 450 to 1450 will be called the Middle Ages or the Medieval period of philosophy. So it's 1000 years even that's another nice thing about the way I do it. When you do things arbitrarily, you get to make them turn out nice and even like that. Okay. The culture of the Middle Ages, meaning the culture that we see between the years, roughly 450 and 1450, Christianity spread northward. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, missionaries took it to the north and into Europe, and the center of civilization moved out from the Mediterranean area to what we today would call Europe proper. Many cities flourished during the time of the Middle Ages. One which enjoyed among the highest standards of living in the Middle Ages was Cordoba, Spain. To understand the culture of the Middle Ages, one needs to grasp the tremendous religious and political domination of the Church at that time. Every individual's life was touched by the Church. Every area of life had some relationship to the Church. During this period of time, powerful lords and nobles and even kings yielded to the dictates of the Church. With the growth of the papacy and the importance of the Church, and especially the sacraments in the lives of the people to whom Christianity had come. Many clergymen during this period of time were rich men. That will seem strange, but you need to understand. The Church, because of its cultural prominence, was also a source of economic revenue. Many clergymen became rich. They ruled over vast land holdings, parcels of land that had been given to the Church or willed to the Church by people. Clergymen inherited the land and became very wealthy. Charlemagne, who ruled as King of the Franks from the years 768 to 814 and who was crowned Emperor by the Pope of the Holy Roman Empire in the year 800, Christmas Day. Charlemagne waged constant military campaigns during his reign and brought previously pagan peoples under his rule, thereby extending the boundaries of power of the Roman Catholic Church, or, as he put it, the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne subjugated the Lombards, the Avars, the Slavs, the Byzantines, the Moors, the Saxons and the Bavarians. You read, or should have read, chapter two in Schaeffer for today. And in his book, he uses the term the Carolinian Age. In Latin, Charlemagne is referred to as Carolus Magnus. Carolus Magnus. And thus the achievements of his reign are called by historians Carolinian. I just want you to be aware of that when you read Carolinian, think Charlemagne. Besides spreading a greater degree of law and order throughout Europe than had ever been achieved there before, Charlemagne was a great patron of the arts, so he extends the Holy Roman Empire through military might. He brings law and order in a way that Europe had not seen previously. And thirdly, remember that he was a Patron of the arts, he set up a palace school at his capital. The influence of his school was felt in areas such as education, art, music and literature, and this influence spread throughout Europe. Most of the leading scholars of this day were churchmen, And the high point of culture was seen in the revival of the arts and education. In the Carolinian age, great bodies of literature were preserved at monasteries as well. Monks in the monasteries were occupied with copying and recopying ancient manuscripts. The manuscripts they would be most interested to copy, obviously, were the Scriptures. And it was by this method that many of many of the documents that have come down to us today and are the basis for our understanding of what the original Greek and Hebrew were, were preserved. Not just the Scriptures, though many classical writings were preserved in the monasteries as well. What apparently was not well preserved were the writings of the classical philosophers, at least not until 1200. Thereafter, throughout the bulk of the Middle Ages, up till the time of the Aristotelian revival, with the recovery of the works of Aristotle, the Christian west knew very little of the philosophers. I'm trying to remember, I think they only had Plato's Timaeus, one dialogue of Plato. Throughout these years, they had a portion of Aristotle's works, primarily on logic, preserved because of Boethius, who himself was copying a work of Porphyry, And then of the Atomist of ancient Greece. I think there were only like 12 lines of Lucretius. So, I mean, when you stop and think about it, it's pretty amazing. You go hundreds of years without any manuscript knowledge of the ancient Greek philosophers. The philosophers were preserved primarily among the Muslims, and it was the influx of Muslim culture in the 12th and 13th centuries that brought a knowledge of the Greek philosophers, and particularly Aristotle, back to the attention of Western. Well, back to the attention, or for the first time, to the attention of Western Europe. In the Middle Ages, Latin began to die out in its everyday use, although it remained the official language of the Church. Important works of literature began to be produced in French, German and English, Although modern literary analogy analogies, anthologies can't read my own writing. Although modern literary anthologies divide the works of the Middle Ages into religious and secular categories, we have to understand that for the medieval writers themselves, this kind of distinction would make no sense. They didn't write religious works and secular works. All of their work, from their standpoint, were religious. They didn't have a divided field of knowledge. In a way that's very popular in our culture after the Enlightenment, the study of a saint's life could take on the attributes of the Genre romance. Or it could be a straightforward story of an everyday person that has a certain injected in it. They didn't clearly differentiate between religious and non religious subjects. Let me try to detail for you real quickly some of the genres of medieval literature. Many of the authors in the Middle Ages, by the way, are unknown. We have works that were written and we're not sure who the, who the author was. Well, let me see, maybe six genres of literature you should be familiar with real quickly. The epic poem is number one. The epic poem. Example, Beowulf, written around 800 by a Christian poet. In this we see legend presented as history and we see pagan virtues Christianized. Around the year 1000. The song of Roland, written in French about Charlemagne. A second genre would be the romances, for instance, tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. These romances were usually about battles and other adventures of the knights. Characterizations were very extreme and improbable. In. The 12th and 13th centuries, we read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where a profoundly Christian view of man's character is set forth. A third genre in the Middle Ages would be the allegories like Piers Plowman. Piers Plowman is a dream vision about theological love. You'd have allegories about every man, that is morality plays about the common man, about every man. Characters would be named beauty, strength, good deeds, etc. Who do we know from the Puritan era who picked up on this allegory approach to writing? Bunyan and pilgrims Fragos. Exactly. A fourth genre of medieval literature were the mystery plays. That presented the cycles of Christian theology in a dramatic framework from creation to the Last Judgment. The fifth category would be prose, Particularly Chaucer's the Canterbury Tales in the late 1300s. Story about pilgrims that relate stories about different themes as they are traveling to and from Canterbury. So the Canterbury Tales. Later we're getting into the Renaissance. We see medieval prose develop into story poems like Dante's Divine Comedy, an Italian work, or Boccaccio's Decameron. And then the sixth kind of literature that you should be aware of would be lives of the saints. This is a very popular form of literature telling the lives of the Christian saints. Maybe one more thing in terms of medieval literature that should be mentioned would be John Wycliffe's English translation of the Bible, which was quite an accomplishment, very revolutionary and culturally significant that people will now be able to read the Bible in their own language. And as you know, Wycliffe's work proves to be a forerunner of the Protestant Reformation, continuing with the culture of the Middle Ages. Let me do a real quick summary of architecture. You should be aware of three different kinds of architectural style. First, the Carolinian. The Carolinian architectural style as we see it in the Abbey of the Church in northeastern France, Abbeville, about the year 799, or the palace chapel in 792. The Carolinian style reflected Charlemagne's interest in the arts. There would be many murals, sculpture, mosaics, a lot of goldsmith work in them. You know, the basic layout of a medieval cathedral or church was in the form of a cross. At the front of the what we'll call auditorium, there was the apse, which contained the altar, which was crucial in medieval worship, because that's where the miracle of attraction, transubstantiation, took place during the Mass. And then you had the choir area in front of the altar and then the crossing area, which made the building into the form of a cross. Then down the middle you have the nave, and on the side, the aisles, and at the back, the narthex. This is the general structure of the church, the Romanesque. Secondly, the Romanesque style of architecture emphasized rounded arches, thick walls and dimly lit interiors. It was a more heavy style of architecture. We see it in the cathedral at Pisa, Italy, with its famous tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We see it in Toulouse, France, about 1080. We see it in Durham, south of the Scottish border, around 1093. Heavy, rounded arches, thick walls, dim interiors. Third style of medieval architecture was Gothic, which flourished between the 1100s and the 1400s. Known for its flying buttresses, that is, stone supports which were built against the outside walls that help support the vaulting of the buildings. They tended to reduce wall surfaces then, because there was so much exterior structure necessary to hold them up. And so the Gothic tended to replace much of this, of the window space with stained glass. And the stained glass became increasingly ornate. You see that especially in Milan. Gothic architecture has pointed arches, emphasizes lightness, height, tall, slender columns. Some of the best examples of Gothic are the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Amunds, France, Westminster Abbey in England, and the Cologne Cathedral in Germany. Now, why are we bothering to talk about architecture in a philosophy class? Well, we're not going to talk about it long. This is about all I have to say. I do want you to pay attention to Schaeffer's commentary. It's important. A cathedral in the Middle Ages was often seen, seen as an artistic expression of an idea. Harmony was to be striven for, because harmony exemplified the laws according to which God's reason The divine reason had constructed the universe. Windows were emphasized in a period where in enlightenment was stressed the need for divine impartation of light, the ability to see. Moreover, the change of architectural style, the move from Romanesque to Gothic apparently accompanied theological movement toward Mariology and Mariolatry. Gothic churches are often filled with sculptures of Mary. Okay, so architecture is an expression of ideas and theology. That's reason enough to mention it in the philosophy class. But this becomes in itself an illustration of a broader cultural facet of the Middle Ages, and that is that all areas of life, one way or another, reflected Christian commitment. Not always good theology. I'm not endorsing all of the thinking and the cultural expressions of the Middle Ages, but you need to understand. You have the lives of the saints. It's popular literature. Think about that. You have the nights being written about to express Christian character. You have architects, architecture expressing theological conceptions of the universe and theological distinctives. The Middle Ages, very simply was a period of time where culture was being developed out of an interest in the teaching of God's word theology. This period of time is often called the Dark Ages. Obviously, those who call these years the Dark Ages don't think well of them. And I have two things to say about those who call the Middle Ages the Dark Ages. One, it is totally unreasonable to call them the Dark Ages because they didn't have scientific advances and all the sorts of things that modern society has come to enjoy. To say, well, they're dark because they had low economic, what I want to say, level style of living. Times were hard. It was a time of a lot of military combat. There wasn't a widespread educational system, on and on and on. To hold the Middle Ages accountable for not being the modern period is just unreasonable. I mean, if you're going to do that, you might as well call the Greek philosophers the darkest of the ages, you know, because they were even less advanced culturally. Although some people would say because of painting, well, sculpture in particular, that there was a flourishing of the arts that you don't see in the Dark Ages. But that leads me to my second comment. When people call the culture of the Middle Ages dark, what they're basically saying is they don't like religiously related paintings or sculpture and architecture and literature that's related in one way or another to religious themes or religious commitment. So the expression Dark Ages is one, unreasonable and two, simply a reflection of the bias of the person who speaks that way. Now, does that mean that I'm real enthusiastic about the Middle Ages? Well, there were really many Problems that had to be worked out. The Middle Ages are known for the rise of the papacy. I'm very critical of the rise of the papacy. Middle Ages were characterized in, in terms of its religious devotion with the development of monasticism, which I think is a denial of the biblical approach to life. It was a feudal, not feudal, but feudal F E U D A L feudal society, which I'm very happy has been broken up. Often. Nobility and honor were identified with chivalry and the life of the knights. And that seems to me to be rather silly, especially since I don't agree with the purpose for which the knights orders existed. Why did the knights exist? To go on holy campaigns, right. To reclaim allegedly the promised land, to take it out of the hands of the Turks, the Muslims and so forth. Of course, they were basically raids. Well, there was pious devotion in them for some people. Very misled pious devotion. But the reason why kings favored them often is that it was a matter of bringing back a lot of loot. So the knights order doesn't strike me, with all of its chivalry as being the high point of true civic nobility. But there is one part of the Middle Ages that I wanted to especially emphasize as a positive development and that was the rise of the universities. The rise of the universities. Granted, the universities didn't always teach the kind of things theology or exemplify the kind of scholarship that we might honor today. But the idea of the university was a grand idea. You see, the key assumption of the universities was that there was an all encompassing worldview which unites the diverse areas of thought and life. The reason why you can go to an institution and study in university style is that there would be a uni, a unity to the diversity of life, a uni versity. And Christianity, though it was often poorly conceived, Christianity, nevertheless, Christianity provided the synoptic perspective that unified all the departments in the different areas of study at the university. Christianity provided the common ground and also the organizing concepts for the professors at the university. The university was, to put it very simply, an external expression of what we have called the task of philosophy. To put together constructively an overall vision of life in which every part of man's experience has its place as related to every other one. To unify everything man knows and his life in the world. So the university was an outward expression of the task of philosophy. And that's why I bring it to your attention now. What we're experiencing today in our own day and age is the destruction of the university and the university is being destroyed. Regardless of what you think of the financial or social problems that are there at the modern university, the university is being destroyed by pluralism. Pluralism says there isn't one integrating point of view, one sovereign and dominating perspective, or all encompassing presupposition that has authority in every area of life. The pluralist wants to say, there's all these different perspectives. Life is fragmented. And the way in which we look at the pluralism with the pluralistic outlook, there is no uni to diversity. Modern society in general has no cultural unity such that faith provides. And since modern society has no cultural unity, it's no surprise that modern societies, institutions of education, have no university perspective. The idea of the university has been lost or shattered by pluralism. The university could arise, however, in the Middle Ages. Despite all of the criticisms we'd make of the theology and other aspects of its culture, the university could arise in the Middle Ages. And this is the great light and glory of the Middle Ages. Because the Middle Ages at least belong believed in a cultural unity, a worldview, in terms of which every aspect of life had its place. Toward the end of the Middle ages, in the 11th and 12th centuries particular, we see a return to, or at least a noticeable advance and interest and worldly interests such as science, the arts, culture and politics. This worldly interest have a very noticeable place when we get to the latter part of the Middle Ages. And so philosophers like Aquinas at that time needed to make it their task to explain how this worldly interest approached by the Christian harmonized with other worldly interests, like theology. They were especially pressed to explain how a Christian could approach the world in a what we'll call today distinctively Christian way. How does Christian theology account for the arts or the sciences or politics? And that's all a very good thing, because as I taught you at the beginning of this course, philosophy is interested in having that constructive overall worldview developed. I don't happen to agree with the worldview that was developed by Thomas, but the task, the effort to do that was there. And like the universities, we have to commend that. The end of the medieval period. Okay, that's all I want to say about the culture of the Middle Ages and its relationship to philosophy. Let me give you a philosophical overview of the periods of medieval philosophy and the problems that were faced. As the author of your textbook indicates, the Middle Ages can be divided into two major periods, depending on which ancient philosopher got the emphasis, up to about the year 1200, to use a round artificial date, up to about 1200, we would say that medieval thinking and philosophy tended to be Platonic in its orientation. But after the discovery of the works of Aristotle and enthusiasm about them, roughly at the year 1200, we see a shift away from Platonic to Aristotelian thinking. We get to the end of our lectures today and I have overall remarks and commentary. I will be pointing out that the key characteristic of the Middle Ages was that of synthesis rather than antithesis. There was an attempt to form an overall Christian view of life, everything we know, a view of reality and knowledge and how we should live our lives and organize our societies and so forth. That was all good. You have the universities, you have the summa approach of Thomas Aquinas. However, the way in which Christians tried to do that was by means of synthesis. The sad thing about thinking throughout the Middle Ages is that so often you had Christian philosophers trying to tie their Christianity to a Platonic view or tie their Christianity to an Aristotelian view. Plato was the important fellow up to about 1200 and Aristotle more important thereafter. So those are the two general periods. There are also two basic problems that are faced in medieval philosophy. These are recurring problems addressed by a number of men. But I'm going to boil it down to the key exponents of the most basic answers to these problems. The two recurring problems were, first, the problem of universals, and then secondly the problem of how faith relates to reason, the problem of universals. What is that all about? Well, the question arises if you do any self conscious reflection about what philosophers are talking about. They talk about the object of knowledge. We need to. Need to ask what are we talking about when we speak of knowing hoarseness or knowing triangularity or humanity or justice, These universal concepts, that is knowing not just a particular set of men, but knowing humanity, not knowing, simply a just or righteous action here and there, but the general concept of justice. What are we talking about when we talk about universals? What is the nature of a universal? What is its status? Now you realize that this is a problem that was addressed in ancient Greek philosophy. And so it may be a little surprising that it's such a big issue in the Middle Ages. Well, it should be a big issue even if it had been addressed by the pagans, Because Christians still have to ask what do we make of what the pagans said about that? But they didn't know a whole lot about the arguments of Plato and Aristotle, for instance, over what forms are. Remember I told you they had very little manuscript evidence of the Greek philosophers. And so much of the thinking in the Middle Ages about this would be not original because it's never appeared before, but original because those who thought of it did it without a whole lot of help. And it's very interesting that the answers that they came up with approximate what Plato and Aristotle themselves said about the nature of forms. In the Middle Ages, they approached this problem of universals by asking what is the signification of names? That is, what is pointing, pointed to when you use certain words or terms. If I use the word J, I know what I'm signifying. We could say I'm pointing to this student in our class. If I use the word Pete, I know what I'm signifying. I am pointing toward a another student in the class, this one over here named Pete. But when I use the word man, what am I pointing to? What am I signifying when I use a general term like man? And in the Middle Ages, three different answers are offered to that question. The positions are known as realism, nominalism and conceptualism. We're going to go back and look at each one briefly here. The realist says that when you use the word man, you're pointing to something that really exists. There is something objectively outside of the mind of man, apart from the word being spoken through his mouth or written by his pen on a page, that outside of the mind and outside of the actual vocalization of this, that the word man points to something real. The word duck points to something real. The word triangle points to something real. A universal is a real entity separate from the sense particulars that are instances of that form or universal and subsisting in an immaterial fashion. They are real, but immaterial. We see the realist answer given to the question of universals and their status in men, like John Scotus Erigina, I'll call him Erigina for short. The realist answer was proposed by Odo of Ternaye, Was also offered by Anselm. And william of shampoo. I don't ever like to say that, and I don't speak french well at all. It's william of c. H a m p e a u x as in champagne. But the end, as you know, is p e a u x which is poo in french. So it comes out shampoo, william of shampoo. These are the best known realists of the middle ages. Odo, who taught at the cathedral school of tournai. T o u r n a. I died in the year 1113. Anselm we'll be looking at a little bit later. But just so you can put him in context. Anselm was born in 1033 and died in 1109, and William. Of shampoo lived from 1070 to 1120. Okay, so that's one approach to the the status of universals. They are real, immaterial objects. Immaterial, but real. They exist outside the mind. They are more than just the words on the page or what we speak with our tongues. Nominalism is the extreme opposite of realism. The designation nominalism comes from the Latin nomen, which means name. Nominalism is the name ism view of universals. The universals are merely names. And by names what they mean is universals are just the noise that comes out of my throat throat when I say triangle. Universal is simply what I write down on the page when I write T, R, I, A, N, G, L, E. And so universals have the status simply of names. The extreme nominalist position comes from holding that only particulars exist. Only particulars exist. There are no universals. There are no forms or general ideas that have extra mental existence are only sense particulars or individual spiritual things like God, but only particulars exist. It's hard to know whether anybody held to nominalism in the extreme form that it's sometimes presented as an option. But if anybody did, it would have been Rosselin. R, O S C E L I N or the Latin form Rosalinus. Rosalinus lived from 1050 to 1121. Nominalism is. Of the three positions we're going to look at the least adequate philosophically. One stops to think about it. Here's a general concept. 2. Twoness. Okay, now if is just the name, it's just the gnomon. So I'll put it on the board here. If that is the universal two, then when I erase it from the board, there is no more universal. That's one problem with the position is that it doesn't account for the fact that universals exist even when no one is using the word to or triangle or duck or human. Even if it's not inscribed anywhere, there'd still be the idea of humanity. But the nominalist didn't seem to recognize that he was only transferring the problem of universals from the things themselves to the inscriptions and utterances of words like horse, duck, triangle, or what have you. So if I have, I'm going to put on the board what is supposed to be three objects, really. So let's say I have three ducks out here, and I say what is common to these three objects in the world? The realist would say there is an objective idea duckness that these three participate in or have in common. So I'll write that above the three particulars, duckness exists in itself. The nominalist says, that's ridiculous. Where do you ever find. Has anybody ever tripped over duckness? Has anybody ever seen duckness? No, we only see particulars, we don't ever see universals. And so the nominalist says, what these three have in common is the name Duck. This one's called Duck, this one is called Duck, and this one is called Duck. You can go on and on. They say, see, that's what they have in common. They all have the same name, Duck applied to them. Now, you don't have to be a real sophisticated philosopher to realize this doesn't answer the problem of the one and the many at all. If you don't like the idea of an immaterial duckness as the way of uniting these three, you just want to say they all had the same name, Duck, applied to them. Now the problem becomes, are these the same name or are those three different names? You see this portion of the board right here that has squiggles on it, Is that the same as this portion of the board that has squiggles on it? And is that the same as this portion of the board? So what I'm saying is, if you're only talking about names, now we have to ask, when are you. Are three words the same name? When are three really the same word? We just transferred the problem from the things, the ducks, to the words, the utterances, and the inscriptions on boards and pieces of paper of duck. They don't look the same, do they? I mean, you have to be awfully generous to say that all the letters are. Are formed the same way. Here there's variation. So you look at it. If only particulars exist, I'd say that's a different. Whatever this is, it's different from this and it's different from that. So when the nominalist says, oh, no, they all have the same name, the nominalist is secretly being a realist, isn't he? He's assuming that there's names that exist and of which this is an inscription. This is an inscription. This is an inscription. So you see how nominalism is no answer to the problem of universals. It may look like it's fighting the realist, but ends up affirming realism in the form of names being general, whatever realities of which inscriptions and sounds or noises that come out of our throats participate or have a commonality. Well, there's a theological problem, too, which Rosalinas ran into. And that's why it's assumed that he was an extreme nominalist, if anybody was. And that's that if you apply the nominalist approach to the Trinity, you end up having one particular, that is God, that is three different names. Name to the Father, name to the Son, named the Holy Spirit. You don't have God, which is the ultimate reality. And then real persons that are separate, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they all simply use the same name, God. Well, a compromise position obviously seemed necessary. And that's what we find in the third view of universals. That's called conceptualism. The conceptualist agrees with the realist insofar as the realist rejects the view that universals are merely names. So the conceptualist and the realist stand together when they look at the nominalists and say, no, no, you can't say universal terms are just names. However, the conceptualist would agree with the nominalist that there aren't any universals that are independent, existing by themselves like Platonic forms. And so the conceptualist, wanting to agree with the realist in one way and agree with the nominalist in another, comes up with a kind of mediating position that amounts to what Aristotle taught in ancient Greek philosophy. Remember, Aristotle said that forms are not independent entities that exist by themselves. But forms are not completely subjective states of the mind either. Aristotle believed that the forms, what we'll call universals, do exist apart from the activity of any human mind. They exist embedded in the particulars. Duckness exists whether I think about ducks or not. Nevertheless, they do not exist apart from the things that are in the world. You don't have a universal that exists over and above the particulars which instance it. We don't have Huey, Dewey, and Louie out on the pond. And then add to that duckness. We rather have Duckness embedded in Huey, Duckness embedded in Louis, Duckness embedded in Dewey. What happens is that the human mind looks at these particulars and finds a similarity, a likeness between them. And when the human mind thinks about the like likeness isolated from the particular Huey Duck or Dewey Duck or Louie Duck. When the human mind thinks about the likeness in isolation from the particular, it forms a mental product, an abstraction that we'll call a concept. Now remember, the universal is not merely a human or mental product. That mental abstraction is supposed to be based on the reality of the form embedded in the duck or the three ducks that you're looking at. But the point is, when we use the word duck or use the word man or triangle or justice, what we are Naming is not some kind of disembodied Platonic form. We're naming a concept that our mind has abstracted by having contact with the particulars in the sense world. Now, of course, there are some problems with conceptualism, and I talked about them when we studied Aristotle. A universal exists in a particular. The universal itself exists in a particular. That's a strange way of speaking, because then you seem to have a number of universal universals running around. Three of them out on the pond. You have duckness. Duckness. Duckness. That doesn't seem quite right. Moreover, I have a concept abstracted in my mind of duck. You have a concept abstracted in your mind of duck. Why are those not different ideas, since they're in different places and parts of the spatial world? In my head, my gray matter. And in your head, your gray matter. Why do we say they are coming? Don't we have the same problem that the nominalist does? Why do we say that the concept in your mind is the same as the concept of my mind when we don't have the same mind or the same brain tissue, Even if you want to be even harder on them, Obviously, from a conceptualist standpoint, if there were no human beings, if there were no human minds active, there would be no universals to speak of. But given the collective activity of humans with their minds or intellects, the universal is real enough, according to the conceptualist. But then, of course, when we call this a collective activity, are we all awake this morning? We're watching how people are smuggling back in the very problem they're supposed to be solving. Yes, there are universals if there is a collective activity of human minds. Collective activity of human minds. But how do we know that what the human minds are doing are not all isolated, random particulars? Why do we call them collective? Well, somebody says, because they all use the same word. They all say duck. Well, now we're back to nominalism. Yeah, but why do we say that? You're saying duck and my saying duck are naming the same name, naming the same word. It would appear to me that for all of the problems of realism, the difficulty, people can laugh and say, oh, where is duckness? After all, for all the problems, the nominalist and the conceptualist have even greater problems, and they end up, it seems to me, relying upon a realist understanding. It's just they don't see that, because they don't see that there has to be something common to names or common to concepts. The collective activity of the mind. Before you've answered the problem of the universal. The man in the Middle Ages who is credited for the development of the conceptualist point of view is Abelard. Abelard, whose dates are 1079 to 1143. So that's the first problem, philosophical problem in medieval philosophy that I mentioned, the problem of universals. You have the realists who are Erigina, Odo Anselm and William, the nominalists Rosalinus, and then the conceptualist approach of Abelard. The second major problem that's worthy of mention in medieval philosophy is the problem of faith and reason. What is the relationship of faith? Faith or accepting the authority of God's revelation and reason, what man comes up with independently using his intellect, his thinking ability. It soon became apparent, especially through through contact with non Christian cultures, the Crusades with knights going out and having contact with infidels and so forth, and traveling along the way, contact with non Christian cultures and dealing with heretics as well. It became apparent to Christians that reason is an indispensable tool. One must reason, reason with those who disagree. Somebody might say very simply, no, we don't need reason, we just go to the Bible. Well, obviously you use reason, your thinking ability, when you read the Bible, and not everybody reads the Bible or interprets the Bible in the same way. So reason is an indispensable tool in dealing with heretics and dealing with unbelievable believers. But what's the proper domain of reason? And this is especially important, the question is asked, are all the truths of Christianity accessible to proof by the human intellect? Can reason prove everything that we find in the Bible? Most people would say no. There are a few exceptions to that, but most people would say no. And if you say no, then the question comes, where do you draw the line? What things can reason by itself prove? And what things do you have to accept on the basis of authoritative revelation? Where do you draw the line? Reason, after all, can prove to be a very dangerous instrument. Most of the heretics that are condemned by the church have made an improper use of reason. Moreover, Christian philosophy has to deal with the pagan origins of much of philosophical reasoning. You know, you go back to the Greeks and they obviously weren't Christians. Now, can you trust reasoning that comes from men like the? Issues like these raise then the general problem of how does faith relate to reason? And in the course of my exposition of the philosophers of the Middle Ages, we're going to see five different attitudes expressed. We can boil them down to just two if we wanted to, but there are some variations that I want you to see, and I'm going to name those five people so that as I go through the exposition, you'll know to pick up on this. Erigina, Bernard Anselm, Thomas and Occam. Do note how Erigina, Bernard Anselm, Thomas and Occam come up with different answers to this problem of the relation of faith and reason.