Abstract
The last thirty years of scholarship in western medieval philosophical historiography have seen a number of reflections on the methodological paradigms, schools, trends, and dominant approaches in the field. As a contribution to this ongoing assessment of the existing methods of studies in medieval philosophy and theology and a supplement to classifications offered by M. Colish, J. Inglis, C. König-Pralong, J. Marenbon, A. de Libera, and others, the article offers another explanatory tool. Here is a description of an imaginary system of methodological coordinates that systematizes the current tendencies by placing them in a three-dimensional system of axes. Every axis corresponds to a certain aspect of the historical and systematic research in medieval thought and symbolizes a possible movement between two extremes representing opposite methodological values and directions. The methods and approaches practiced in recent studies in medieval philosophy and theology might be schematically located inside this general system of argumentational, focal (or objectival), and (con)textual axes with their intersection identified with what some scholars call the “integral” model of study. This explanatory tool allows one to see how current approaches and methods form a panoply of axes that belong together in one complex grid and helps to visualize the tapestry of existing approaches in medieval philosophical historiography.
Highlights
The progress of the historical-philosophical and historical-theological studies of western medieval thought has been rather considerable in the last decades of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century
Like Norman Cantor, and numerous authors of various collective works devoted to major academic figures of the recent past highlighted these giants’ personal stories and contributions to medieval scholarship [Aurell & Crosas 2005; Aurell & Pavón Benito 2009; Cantor 1991; Damico 2000]. Such researchers as Jean Jolivet, Alain de Libera, David Luscombe, Albert Zimmermann, Luca Bianchi, Robert Wielockx, Claude Panaccio, and others concentrated on and assessed the collective contributions made by representatives of “national” historiographical traditions [Aurell 2009; Bianchi 2000; Jolivet 1991; Libera 1991; Luscombe 1991; Zimmermann 1991] and semi-institutional “schools” of research [Bose 2006; Panaccio 2000; te Velde 2013, esp. chaps. 17-21; Wielockx 1991]
Whether a volume dedicated to a single thinker or medieval philosophy as a whole, many recent publications tend to read their materials more contextually, this tactic is not predominant yet
Summary
The progress of the historical-philosophical and historical-theological studies of western medieval thought has been rather considerable in the last decades of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. There are major publications on the reception of Augustine and other church fathers in medieval thought [e.g., Backus 1997; Boiadzhiev et al 2000; Elders 2018; Gasper 2004; Otten & Pollmann 2013], of the Aristotelian corpus [e.g., Bradshaw 2006; Emery & Levering 2015; Galluzzo 2013; Honnefelder et al 2005], of the Arabic tradition [e.g., Benevich 2018; Butterworth & Kessel 1994; Lagerlund 2008], and of a number of significant medieval figures—Anselm, Aquinas, Boethius, Duns Scotus, Peter Lombard, et alii—and their teachings [e.g., Catalani & De Filippis 2018; Courtenay 2008; Friedman & Nielsen 2010; Hoenen & Nauta 1997; Kaylor & Phillips 2012; Levering & Plested 2021; Rosemann 2007; Schumacher 2020] These reception-historical and tradition-historical studies modify the existing methodologies and significantly deepen the picture of medieval philosophy by highlighting the sources and the later transformations of individual ideas, theories, and texts. Whether a volume dedicated to a single thinker or medieval philosophy as a whole, many recent publications tend to read their materials more contextually, this tactic is not predominant yet.
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