HoP 492 Changing By Degrees: French Scholasticism

Peter Adamson· Host0:00

[instrumental music] Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to The History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode, Changing by Degrees: French Scholasticism. I'd like to start today's podcast with a shout-out to my Uncle Fred, who in addition to being a devoted listener of the podcast, a song and dance man, and a fanatical theatergoer, holds a PhD in history. He tells me that some decades ago, he attended a talk by the British historian G.R. Potter, at which Potter raised what was then already a clichéd question: When did the Middle Ages end? Potter joked that since he was a medievalist and was just working on a biography of Ulrich Zwingli, who died in 1531, the medieval period must have ended in 1531. I think I can go him one better, though. Since the defining feature of medieval philosophy was scholasticism, it stands to reason that the medieval period lasted as long as scholasticism did, which by my reckoning means that it lasted at least until the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. On the eve of the revolution, people were still criticizing the university masters for clinging to the same old theses which are daily