Philosophy of Antiquity in Scholasticism

Abstract

This article examines the forms of understanding ancient philosophy in medieval and post-medieval scholasticism. Using the comparative method the author identifies the main approaches to the philosophical heritage of Antiquity, and to the problem of reviving the doctrines of the past. The Patristics (Epiphanius of Cyprus, Filastrius of Brixia, Lactantius, Augustine) saw the ancient cosmological doctrines as heresies. The early Middle Ages (e.g., Isidore of Seville) assimilated the content of these heresiographic treatises, which became the main source of information about ancient philosophy. Scholasticism of the 13^th–14^th cent. remained cautious to ancient philosophy and distinguished, on the one hand, the doctrinal content discussed in the framework of the exegetic problems at universities (Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, etc.), and, on the other hand, information on ancient philosophers integrated into chronological models of medieval chronicles (Peter Comestor, Vincent de Beauvais, Walter Burleigh). Finally, the post-medieval scholasticism (Pedro Fonseca, Conimbricenses, Th. Stanley, and others) raised the questions of the «history of ideas», thereby laying the foundation of the history of philosophy in its modern sense.