Global History of Philosophy (Vol. 5): The Period of Scholasticism (Pt. 2) (1150-1350 A.D.)

The fourth and fifth volumes of the Global History of Philosophy are

designated The Period of Scholasticism in order to stress that the

scholastic method with its emphasis on thesis, antithesis, and attempts at

synthesis became universal throughout Eurasia. Scholasticism should not be

taken in the pejorative sense as the juggling of arguments by straw men,

but in the sense of a challenge even in our own era to work for consistent

and comprehensive systematic synthesis. All the “older traditions” need to

be reinteerpreted in terms of “modern conditions”–which, after all, is

what the Eurasian scholastics of these centuries were doing for their own

time.

The major developments of this period are “Monism in Many Moods” during the

ninth century, through “Exfoliation and Elaboration” of those seminal

systems in the tenth and eleventh centuries unitl the time of the “Great

Summas” in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was during this time

that philosophy and theology developed a very highly sophisticated

technique of balancing arguments and refutations and counter-arguments and

counter-refutations.

As is true of the whole series, these volumes are a new way of exploring

the accumulative wisdom of mankind, and in the process explode many of the

ethnocentric stereotypes which still hinder intercultural communications

and world peace through intercultural understanding.

Review(s)

About the Author(s)

JOHN C.PLOTT received his B.A. degree with Phi Beta Kappa honors at the

University of Oklahoma and Ph.D. degree from Banaras Hindu University. He

is now teaching philosophy at Marshall University, U.S.A. He constantly

concerned for World Peace through Global Understanding and Social Justice

through Gandhian Practice.