One of the longest periods in the history of human thought is medieval philosophy. Patristics and scholasticism are some of its most important stages. The first of these two terms refers to the writings of the “Fathers of the Church”: from the early followers of the apostles to thinkers of the 7-8th century. Consider the second philosophical phenomenon.
The concept of scholasticism is borrowed from the Greek language. By itself, it originally indicated schooling. More precisely, this term refers mainly to educational institutions opened with church budget money. The teachers who worked in them were called scholastics. Education in those days was based only on cramming of the material provided and was supported by the system of punishment of children in schools. In addition, it was largely of a religious nature. That is why educational institutions were opened at the churches. After some time, the whole system began to be called a derivative term from the Greek word “school”. Scholasticism is a complex of phenomena that for centuries has characterized the intellectual life of the Roman Catholic Church. This era is still divided into five main periods. The first of them is not scholasticism in a certain sense of the word, but only its origin. He was characterized by the activities of a number of Catholic thinkers who contributed to the awakening of an intellectual interest in what was happening in
of life. As a result, many schools, institutes and, accordingly, students in them appeared. The second period, many scholars of history call the "golden age in the era of scholasticism." It began in the 13th century. It was marked by the activities of a number of prominent thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great and Bonaventure. Then came a period of sharp decline, when the intellectual activity of the thinkers of the Catholic Church came to naught. With the advent of the Renaissance, the fourth stage began. Prominent thinkers at that time were: Francis Sylvester, Luis Molina, Domingo Banes and others. However, with the spread of the ideas of Descartes and his followers, this trend began to fade. It received a new impetus for development in the mid-nineteenth century. Since then, the fifth period of scholasticism has begun. It lasts to this day.
Scholasticism is a philosophical trend created to justify church dogma. Many Catholic dogmas are hardly perceived. Therefore, scholasticism is a philosophical trend that often used artificial, formal arguments to substantiate the postulates of the Catholic Church. Sometimes such arguments were, in fact, "sucked out of the finger." In general, the material with which the masters of Catholic thought worked was far from real life. As an example, Boethius's treatise "On the goodness of substances by virtue of their existence." Therefore, in the current view of many people, scholasticism is a kind of artificial teaching that is not applicable anywhere in real life. Its main subject is issues of religion and theology.
Scholasticism in philosophy is a system of reasoning, based not on the analysis of individual theses, as, for example, this was accepted by ancient thinkers, but on the analysis of the language means by which certain postulates are formulated. This partly explains the operation with artificial terms, the impracticality and dryness of the doctrine itself.
