400 – 1400 · 12 philosophers
The Middle Ages
How can faith and reason live together?
After the western Roman Empire collapsed, most Greek philosophical texts were lost to the Latin world. Augustine had already grafted Platonism onto Christianity; Boethius, writing in prison, composed the Consolation of Philosophy and preserved a beginner's logic for later centuries.
The real turn came in the Islamic world. Avicenna and Averroes commented on Aristotle, and in the twelfth century those commentaries were translated back into Latin through Spain, shaking the universities of Paris and Oxford. Thomas Aquinas rebuilt theology with Aristotelian concepts, and scholasticism reached its peak.
In the fourteenth century Duns Scotus and William of Ockham began dismantling that synthesis. Ockham's nominalism denied the reality of universals, separated theology from philosophy again, and left a door ajar for modern empiricism.
Schools of this era
Philosophers of this era
Augustine of Hippo奥古斯丁
Grafted Platonism onto Christianity, wrote the first autobiography, and shaped the Western mind for a thousand years with his reflections on sin, grace and time.
Boethius波爱修斯
The last Roman and the first scholastic, who wrote The Consolation of Philosophy in a condemned cell and preserved Aristotle's logic for the Middle Ages.
John Scotus Eriugena爱留根纳
The one original philosopher of the Carolingian age, who brought Greek mystical theology into Latin and built a vast system in which God and nature are one.
Avicenna (Ibn Sina)阿维森纳（伊本·西那）
Giant of Islamic philosophy and medicine, who distinguished essence from existence, devised the 'flying man' thought experiment, and shaped Latin scholastic metaphysics.
Anselm of Canterbury安瑟伦
Father of scholasticism, who proposed the ontological argument: that than which nothing greater can be conceived must exist.
Peter Abelard阿伯拉尔
The sharpest logician of the twelfth century, a conceptualist on universals, and through his tragedy with Héloïse the most famous man of the Middle Ages.
Averroes (Ibn Rushd)阿威罗伊（伊本·鲁世德）
'The Commentator', who annotated the whole of Aristotle, defended the harmony of philosophy and religion, and set the University of Paris ablaze.
Maimonides迈蒙尼德
The greatest Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, who reconciled the Torah with Aristotle in the Guide for the Perplexed.
Thomas Aquinas托马斯·阿奎那
The summit of scholasticism, who rebuilt Christian theology with Aristotle; the Summa Theologiae is the grandest edifice of medieval thought.
Meister Eckhart埃克哈特大师
Father of German mysticism, who preached that in the soul's depths there is a spark no different from God, and taught 'letting go' of all things so that God may be born within.
John Duns Scotus邓斯·司各脱
'The Subtle Doctor', who proposed the univocity of being and the notion of haecceity, placed will above intellect, and opened a second road for scholasticism.
William of Ockham奥卡姆的威廉
Nominalist author of 'do not multiply entities beyond necessity', who separated theology from philosophy and paved the way for modern empiricism and the separation of church and state.