Why Medieval Philosophy Matters (Why Philosophy Matters)

Title page
Copyright page
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Why philosophy matters
	Introduction
	Squaring up to the redundancy thesis
	What is a philosophical question?
	The human predicament and the social order
	Tensions in the social order of the West
	Medieval answers to modern questions
Chapter 1 Scholasticism and common sense
	Introduction
	What counts as a common sense belief?
	The problem of universals
	Any solutions?
	The problem of change
	Aristotelian essentialism
Chapter 2 Scholasticism and the sciences
	Introduction
	Medieval thought and the emergence of the modern sciences
	Do the sciences need metaphysics?
	The metaphysical background to the sciences
	The design of scientific experiments
	Conclusion
Chapter 3 The meta-philosophy of scholasticism
	Introduction
	Who were the scholastics?
	Aristotle’s aporetic method
	Descartes on method
	Aristotle versus Descartes
	The condemnations of 1277
Chapter 4 Scholasticism on the various kinds of distinction
	Introduction
	How to resolve contradictions
	What philosophers used to know
	How does one ‘know’ if a real distinction obtains between A and B?
	Some modern cases
Chapter 5 The scholastics and arguments for the existence of God
	Introduction
	Religion or metaphysics?
	What standards of evaluation should we employ?
	Two naturalisms
	The cosmological argument: Aquinas’s second way
	Scotus’s version of the ontological argument
Chapter 6 Scholasticism and Western ‘disenchantment’
	Introduction
	How did we get into this fine mess?
	A scholastic ethical theory
	A scholastic response to objections
Notes
	Introduction
	Chapter one
	Chapter two
	Chapter three
	Chapter four
	Chapter five
	Chapter six
Epilogue
Some useful latin terms and phrases for philosophers
Appendix 1 When were the Middle Ages?
Bibliography
Index