Medieval philosophy - Topics

How Christian theology rebuilt Greek philosophy into something new Duns Scotus on thisness and what makes a thing itself The problem of universals and why it refuses to die Was Dante writing theology or poetry in the Divine Comedy? The problem of universals: does whiteness exist apart from white things How Aquinas made Aristotle safe for Christian theology How did Aquinas reconcile Aristotle with Christian doctrine? What actually happened in a medieval disputation? Toledo in the 12th century as a hinge for Arabic learning into Latin Why was Averroes so important to Christian thinkers? How the Western tradition absorbed Jewish and Islamic philosophy and then forgot it Why did nominalism slowly undermine scholastic theology? How much Arabic philosophy made it into Latin? Why do scholastic arguments look so formal and repetitive on the page? What did a student at a medieval university actually study in the seven liberal arts? What is the difference between a sophism and a fallacy in medieval logic? What Byzantine scholars preserved while the Latin West lost Greek Augustine on time: what it means that the past no longer exists Why did the scholastics treat commentary as a serious philosophical genre? What was the point of a formal disputation in a medieval university? Why did medieval universities teach in Latin when nobody spoke it at home? Why did medieval philosophers fight so hard over whether universals exist? Did medieval philosophers have anything useful to say about free will? Augustine on how evil can exist in a world God made good Ockham's nominalism and why words stopped being things The Baghdad translation movement and how Greek philosophy reached Arabic Why philosophy flourished in al-Andalus and then faded there How Islamic philosophy moved from Persia to India and changed there Christine de Pizan and the first sustained defense of women in European letters Averroes on the unity of intellect and why Latin theologians objected Maimonides on why scripture speaks in language people can grasp How disputation shaped teaching in the medieval university