MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

FIDES ET RATIO
 Medieval Philosophy
• A.D. 500- 1500

Fall of Constantinople
Discovery of America
Beginning of Reformation
 Medieval Ages
• Feudalism

• God and Religion

• Christianity began to
lift up Europe from the
Dark Ages
 Unmoved Mover
Aristotle
(384-322 BC)

• For Aristotle, the

purpose of a human
being is to be happy;
• to develop rational,
moral,social,
emotional, physical.
 God and Religion
Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274)

– Thomistic Philosophy

– The Summa
Theologica and
Summa Contra
Gentiles

– Points to higher form

of happiness that
could be found in
God alone
St. Anselm of Canterbury
• Christian Platonist

• Ontological Argument

• Monologion and
Proslogion

• Benedictine monk
 Anselm’s God

Five perfections of God

• Perfectly good (he does not evil)

• Omniscient (knows all there is to be known)
• Omnipotent (has infinite power)
• Personal God (capable of acting in the world)
• Necessary being (one being that must exist)
 Anselm’s God
As long as we can think of God as a being
so great that we can conceive of no greater
being
Suppose that we conceive of
something that has all
conceivable perfection yet does
not exist?
 Anselm’s Reply
• That cannot be God,
because we can conceive
of a being alike in all
respects that does exist,
and that which exists is
greater than which
doesn’t.
• Therefore, existence is a
perfection that must
belong to God. That is,
God must exist
 St. Thomas Aquinas
• God as unmoved mover, a first cause

• God does not fall in any genus for God is a

pure being.

• As fully actual, God must be perfect, and as

a first cause, the ground of all perfections in
all other beings
 St. Thomas Aquinas
• God is omnipresent or present in every
place and in everything by his essence and
power, for He gives being to all else

• As perfect and immutable, he is eternal, for

his eternity means simultaneity, lacking the
beginning or end and all successions
 Thomistic Philosophy
• Between humanity and God is an
infinite gap, which God alone can
bridge through His power
 St. Augustine

• Truth is attainable by reason

• Does not all knowledge come from
sensation, and does not the sense constantly
deceive us?
 St. Augustine
• The lowest form of
knowledge is that of
sensation
• Knowledge of higher
principles concerns the
will
• Man is a rational
substance constituted
of soul and body
 St. Augustine
• Physically we are free, yet
morally bound to obey the
law

• Eternal law is God

himself

• No human being should

become an end to
him/herself. We are
responsible to our
neighbors as we are to our
own actions.
 Pascal’s Wager
• Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne
connait point.

• The heart has its reason which the mind

knows nothing of.

Pensees, IV. 277

Pascal’s gamble and probabilities

Argument du pari (the proof of GOD)

• If God exists, our lives would be affected

• If God does not exist, we are stuck with our

present state of affairs or misery
Thank you!