Robert Kiely

The story of European philosophy in the Middle Ages is one of loss and recovery. A great deal of classical thought was lost when the Roman Empire crumbled, and those ideas were reintroduced and reconciled to European culture in a series of intellectual events spanning a thousand years. In this course, we trace the course of this process, from the monastic culture of the Early Middle Ages, to the Aristotelian world of the High Medieval universities, to the classical resurgence of the Italian renaissance. We explore a wide variety of written material. Augustine of Hippo and Boethius illustrate the period immediately after the fall of Rome, while Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd demonstrate the crucial role played by Arab philosophy after the 9th century. Hildegard of Bingen and Peter Abelard embody the energy of European thought in the 12th century, and the scholastic synthesis of Thomas Aquinas represents the culmination of that intellectual energy. Finally, the work of Christine de Pisan and Pico della Mirandola manifest the Humanist character of the Otalian Renaissance. Assignments vary, but they might include some or many of the following: weekly reading responses, quizzes, papers, and exams.

In the first scene of Marlowe?s Dr. Faustus, the main character systematically dismisses the foundations of medieval European thought. The play represents the profound skepticism of the late Renaissance, a skepticism that takes formal philosophical form in the thought of Rene Descartes. Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a new intellectual orthodoxy arose in Europe, one that continues to influence global thought and culture to this day. In this course, we encounter the varied approaches to truth, self, nature, and power that combined, sometimes dramatically, to produce this new modern worldview. The course closely examines the work of some of the seventeenth and eighteenth century European philosophers: Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Anne Conway, John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, to name a few. However, the course places their work in its cultural context by exploring the religious, scientific, and political thought of the period, as well as literature and the visual arts. Assignments vary, but they might include some or many of the following: weekly reading responses, quizzes, papers, and exams.