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Scholasticism is not a philosophy or a set of beliefs, but a technique or a method of learning. It arose in contrast to the prevailing method of the day monasticism. Scholasticism was significant because it was possible to determine the answer to a question through one's own reason, in contrast to monastic learning which found authority purely through what was written in ancient manuscripts, but not through one's own reasoning.
The primary purpose of scholasticism was to find the answer to a question or resolve a contradiction. It is most well known in its application in medieval theology but was applied to classical philosophy and other fields of study. It is not a philosophy on its own but a tool and method for learning.
The scholastics would choose a book by a renowned scholar, called auctor, as a subject of investigation, for example the Bible. By reading the book thoroughly and critically, the disciples learned to appreciate the theories of the auctor. Then other documents related to the source document would be referenced, such as Church councils, papal letters, anything written on the subject be it ancient text or contemporary. The points of disagreement and contention between these multiple sources would be written down. For example the Bible has apparent contradictions and these have been written about by scholars ancient and contemporary, so a scholastic would gather all the arguments about the contradictions, looking at it from all sides with an open mind.
Once the sources and points of disagreement had been laid out, through a series of dialectics the two sides of an argument would be made whole so that they would be found to be in agreement and not contradictory. This was done in two ways.
First, through philological analysis. Words were examined and it would be argued they could have more than one meaning, that the author could have meant the word to mean something else. Ambiguity in words could be used to find common ground between two otherwise contradictory statements. Second, through logical analysis which relied on the rules of formal logic to show contradictions did not exist, but were subjective to the reader.
Scholastics developed two different genres of literature. The first is called questiones or "questions" which is basically as described above, except rather than being confined to a single scholar, or auctor, the scholastic method would be applied to a question. For example "Is it ok to kill for self preservation?". From there any number of sources could be referenced to find the pros and cons of the question. The second genre was called a summa. A summa was a system of all questions so that it would answer every question about Christianity one could ever have. In this way any question could be found in the summa and would reference any other question that might arise. The most famous summa is by Thomas Aquinas called Summa Theologica, covering the "sum" total of Christian theology.
Scholastic schools had two methods of teaching. The first is the lectio . A teacher would read a text, expounding on certain words or ideas, but no questions were allowed, it was a simple reading of a text, the instructors explained, and silence for the students.
The second is the disputatio which is at the heart of the scholastic method. There were two types of disputatio's. The first was called the "ordinary" in which the question to be disputed was announced beforehand. The second was the quodlibetal in which the students would pop the question to the teacher without any prior preparation. The teacher would then have to come up with a response. Such as "Is it ok to steal?" The teacher would then cite from authoritative texts such as the Bible and prove his position. Students would then rebut the response and this would go back and forth often digressing into unruly affairs. During this haphazard exercise someone would be keeping notes on what was said, the teacher would then summarize the arguments from the notes and present his final position the next day answering all the rebuttals in a final answer.
Scholastic philosophy usually combined logic, metaphysics and semantics into one discipline, and is generally recognized to have developed our understanding of logic significantly when compared to the older sources.
In the high scholastic period of 1250 - 1350 scholasticism moved beyond theology into the philosophy of nature, psychology, epistemologyEpistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin and scope of knowledge. Definition of knowledge Justified true belief Plato's Theaetetus''. defined knowledge as justified true belief. One implication of this definition is that and philosophy of scienceThe philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy which studies the philosophical foundations, presumptions and implications of science both of the natural sciences like physics and biology and the social sciences such as psychology and economics.. In Spain, the scholastics also made important contributions to economicEconomics is the social science studying how society uses its limited resources to meet desires and wants. Put otherwise, economics studies what, how and for whom society produces. This involves analyzing the production, distribution and consumption of go theory, which would influence the later development of the Austrian school. However all scholastics were bound by Church doctrine and certain questions of faith could never be addressed without being tried for heresy.
During the humanismHumanism is a neologism that defines a socio-political doctrine (" -ism") whose bounds exceed those of locally developed cultures, to include all of humanity and all issues common to human beings. Because doctrines of cultural distinction and exclusivity of the 1400sCenturies: 14th century 15th century 16th century Decades: 1350s 1360s 1370s 1380s 1390s 1400s 1410s 1420s 1430s 1440s 1450s Years: 1400 1401 1402 1403 1404 1405 1406 1407 1408 1409 Events and Trends 1400s. and 1500sCenturies: 15th century 16th century 17th century Decades: 1450s 1460s 1470s 1480s 1490s 1500s 1510s 1520s 1530s 1540s 1550s Years: 1500 1501 1502 1503 1504 1505 1506 1507 1508 1509 1510 Events and Trends Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa External li, scholastics were put to the background and somewhat forgotten. This has been the source of the view of scholastics as a rigid, formalistic, aged and unproper way of doing philosophy. During the catholic scholastic revival in the late 1800sEvents and Trends Beginning of the Napoleonic Wars ( 1803 1815). Semaphore is adopted by navies. United Kingdom founded in 1801 World Leaders Emperor Napoleon I ( France) Emperor Francis II ( Holy Roman Empire) Pope Pius VII Emperor Alexander I ( Russia) and early 1900s the scholastics were repopularized, but with a kind of narrow focus on certain scholastics and their respective schools of thought, notably Thomas Aquinas. In this context, scholasticism is often used in theology or metaphysics, but not many other areas of inquiry.
Scholasticism was concurrent with movements in Jewish philosophy (especially Maimonides) and Arabic philosophy (for example, the work of Averroes).
The following authors were commonly used as auctors:
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