Medieval Philosophy
Description:... Excerpt from Medieval Philosophy
The impression used to be given by historians of philosophy that one could profitably jump from Plato and Aristotle straight to Francis Bacon and Descartes, omitting all consideration both of post-Aristotelian Greek philosophy and of medieval thought. This attitude can, of course, be explained; but it cannot be defended with adequate reasons; nor would there now be any strong wish to defend it. For we realize better today the continuity between medieval, Renaissance, and modern philosophy. Bacon and Descartes, for example, may have inveighed against scholastic Aristotelianism; but students of Bacon and Descartes are well aware of the influence exercised upon their thought by the very philosophy which they criticized. Philosophers continued for many years to use much the same categories of thought which had been used by the medieval philosophers, and to employ in their philosophy the same principles as the medievals had employed. It would be a mistake to attribute what one may call the 'scholastic' elements in philosophies like those of Descartes, Malebranche or Leibniz to the influx of, and interest shown in, classical literature in the Renaissance period. Descartes's first philosophical studies were in the scholastic tradition; and even if his mind afterwards moved in other directions the influence of those early studies was permanent.
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