Monday, May 18, 2009

Aristotle: A Divine Punishment?

For most of the Middle Ages, Christian thinkers were familiar with Plato and knew what aspects of Plato they accepted and which they didn't. It was only when the Crusades took place that Aristotle became known, and was considered suspect until St. Thomas Aquinas reconciled much of Aristotle with Christianity.

Luther, however was not convinced. He once remarked that "God had sent Aristotle as a punishment for the sins of mankind".

8 comments:

Ilíon said...

BR: "... It was only when the Crusades took place that Aristotle became known, ..."

Ah! So, it was only after the Western Christians successfully (for a time) united in putting down the continuous and centuries-long Moslem raiding against them, such that they were finally able again to communicate with their Eastern co-religionists, that Aristotle became known to their civilization?

Gordon Knight said...

My understanding is that Aristotle became known through a group of muslim,jewish, and christian translators working in Spain. Was there work in any way connected to the Crusades?

In any case, it was interfaith cooperation that helped bring Aristotle back to the west.

I am more likeley to convert to voodooism than Islam. Nevertheless, there is a great intellectual herritage that the Medievals appreciated. Remember that Aquinas calls Averoes "The Commentator"--

Medieval islamic culture was quite intellectually vibrant, and apparently much less fundamentalist than it seems today.

My history is shakey, but i think there was some kind of fundie backlash against the philosophers in Medieval times.. and then the glory that was islamic philosophy began to wane.

Ilíon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ilíon said...

GK: "Medieval islamic culture was quite intellectually vibrant, and apparently much less fundamentalist than it seems today. .. and then the glory that was islamic philosophy began to wane."

Islam has always been Islam and has always been and will always be anti-intellect.

The myth about the past intellectual wonders of Islamic civilization was a deliberate concoction (initially) of some French anti-Chrisatian socialists. There never was a Golden Age Of Islamic Civilization (*); and there *never* was an Islamic state in which non-Moslems did not exist perpetually on the edge of the knife, their lives and deaths governed by the whim of the Moslems. And, it didn't even have to be the whim of the ruler, the whim of any Moslem was sufficient.

(*) What there was were non-Moslems and first- or second-generation Moslems (that is, not yet fully mentally and culturally enslaved by the totalitarian system that Islam is) living under Moslem rule and burning through their cultural inheritance before the inevitable Moslem darkness settled in. A bonfire is not the same thing as a torch.

Gordon Knight said...

Illion: two names for you to look up: Averoes and Avicena. (those are the latinized names, I would screw up the others. It was Islamic thinkers that was dinking around with Aristotle when the Christian west only had Aristotle's logic.

Ilíon said...

Do you really think I'm unaware of these names?

Do you *really* think that two candles, or a dozen, a "Golden Age" makes?

GK: "It was Islamic thinkers that was dinking around with Aristotle when the Christian west only had Aristotle's logic."

"Dinking around" may well capture it. And *why* were the westerners missing -- for centuries -- so much of their own cultural heritage, which heritage was moreover a still-vibrant concern just a few hundreds of miles to their east?

Gordon Knight said...

well here is a serious question, if you are aware of medieval islamic scholarship, then why do you dis it so? I am no defender of Islam, but its not like there were not some really smart, creative intellects in medieval islamic society, and I don't think any of the Christian medieval thinkers from Thomas on would disagree.

Ilíon said...

Because I detest "pious" or "polite" lies.

Just look at what you've said: "well here is a serious question, if you are aware of medieval islamic scholarship, then why do you dis it so?"

"Islamic scholarship!" A mere handful of dudes who were at vast intellectual odds with Islam and the whole trajectory of Islam, and you want to call that "Islamic scholarship?"

How is it, pray tell, that this "Islamic scholarship" always came to nought in the context of Islam?