Syllabus
General part 18.02.Introduction to the course and general informations about requirements and exams. Historical introduction to the theme 25.02. Notions about the medieval Scholastic Philosophy and the literary genres of the medieval University. Examples of summae, commentaria and tractatus from medieval authors. 03.03. The concept of auctoritas and its use in the medieval Scholasticism.
Reception of Aristotle 10.03. Latin Medieval translations of Aristotle’s works. Reading of examples 17.03. The Auctoritates Aristotelis: history and structure of a fundamental medieval florilegium. Reading of the introduction. 24.03. Reading of other passages from the Auctoritates Aristotelis, in particular belonging to Metaphysica and De anima 31.03. Medieval commentaries of Aristotle’s works. Reading of examples from Averroes, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure 07.04. Aristotle as a philosophical support to theology. The use of Aristotle’s categories in the treatises of Heymericus de Campo (1395-1460). Reading of selected passages from Heymericus’ Millelogicon.
Reception of Plato 14.04. Medieval platonism: an overview 21.04. Timaeus and its medieval reception. 28.04. Jean Gerson and his criticism to Plato and the Platonici. Reading of selected passages
Reception of Augustine 05.05. Confessiones 12.05. De doctrina christiana in the scholastic thought
Annotation
Through the mediation of the Arabic culture, many new texts of the ancient Greek philosophers reached Europe in the XII century and changed forever the Western culture. Read and used in their Latin translations, these works (in particular an important amount of new Aristotelian texts) were used in the medieval intellectual speculation, serving as logical foundations or philosophical authorities to be constantly quoted, in order to support or contrast philosophical or theological argumentations. In the course, we will analyze some of the most important strategies that the medieval thinkers adopted for absorbing and using these ancient texts. We will also see how these texts were transmitted or were the object of anthologies (florilegia). Attention will also be given to the study of how
Christian medie-val thinkers often “forced” the texts of Plato and Aristotle with tendentious translations and interpretations, in order to make them more acceptable and nearer to the Christian dogmas. The course is meant as interdisciplinary and is open to all those who are interested in the medieval culture, in particular philosophers, philologists, historians, theologians and experts of cultural studies.