A report on Scholasticism and Organon

14th-century image of a university lecture

Roman copy in marble of a Greek bronze bust of Aristotle by Lysippos, c. 330 BC, with modern alabaster mantle

Scholasticism was a medieval school of philosophy that employed a critical organic method of philosophical analysis predicated upon the Aristotelian 10 Categories.

- Scholasticism

Whereas the Organon of the Latin Scholastic tradition comprises only the above six works, its independent reception in the Arabic medieval world saw appended to this list of works Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics.

- Organon

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Aristotelianism

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Philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics.

A medieval Arabic representation of Aristotle teaching a student.

Aristotle, holding his Ethics (detail from The School of Athens)

Moses Maimonides adopted Aristotelianism from the Islamic scholars and based his Guide for the Perplexed on it and that became the basis of Jewish scholastic philosophy.

Although some knowledge of Aristotle seems to have lingered on in the ecclesiastical centres of western Europe after the fall of the Roman empire, by the ninth century, nearly all that was known of Aristotle consisted of Boethius's commentaries on the Organon, and a few abridgments made by Latin authors of the declining empire, Isidore of Seville and Martianus Capella.

Averroes

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Averroes in a 14th-century painting by Andrea di Bonaiuto

Averroes served various official positions in the Almohad Caliphate, whose territories are depicted in this map.

Imaginary debate between Averroes and third-century philosopher Porphyry. Monfredo de Monte Imperiali Liber de herbis, 14th century

An Arabic illustration of Aristotle teaching a student, c. 1220. Aristotle's works are the subject of extensive commentaries by Averroes.

Title page from a Latin edition of Colliget, Averroes's main work in medicine

The Long Commentary on Aristotle's On the Soul, French Manuscript, third quarter of the 13th century

6th-century Byzantine depiction of Galen (top centre) among other noted physicians

The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas over Averroes by Benozzo Gozzoli, depicting Aquinas (top center), a major Averroes critic, "triumphing" over Averroes (bottom), depicted at the feet of Aquinas

Averroes, detail of the fresco The School of Athens by Raphael

This explanation was used up to the seventeenth century by the European Scholastics to account for Galileo's observations of spots on the moon's surface, until the Scholastics such as Antoine Goudin in 1668 conceded that the observation was more likely caused by mountains on the moon.

In 1232, Joseph Ben Abba Mari translated Averroes's commentaries on the Organon; this was the first Jewish translation of a complete work.

Duns Scotus

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John Duns Scotus (c.

Plaque commemorating Duns Scotus in the University Church, Oxford

Colophon from the edition of Scotus's Sentences commentary edited by Thomas Penketh (died 1487) and Bartolomeo Bellati (died 1479), printed by Johannes de Colonia and Johannes Manthen, Venice in 1477. It reads Explicit Scriptum super Primum Sententiarum: editum a fratre Johanne Duns: ordinis fratrum minorum Printed versions of scholastic manuscripts became popular in the late fifteenth century.

Scotus wrote purely philosophical and logical works at an early stage of his career, consisting of commentaries on Aristotle's Organon.

For some today, Scotus is one of the most important Franciscan theologians and the founder of Scotism, a special form of Scholasticism.

Logic

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Study of correct reasoning or good arguments.

A depiction from the 15th century of the square of opposition, which expresses the fundamental dualities of syllogistic.

One major early contributor was Aristotle, who developed term logic in his Organon and Prior Analytics.

During the High Middle Ages, logic became a main focus of philosophers, who would engage in critical logical analyses of philosophical arguments, often using variations of the methodology of scholasticism.