Generally speaking, medieval philosophy is taken to run from around the fifth through fifteenth centuries CE, roughly corresponding to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire through the beginning of the Renaissance, which itself is taken as running from the mid-fourteenth through mid-seventeenth centuries. These two periods, then, overlap. To the extent they can be genuinely teased apart, the medieval period is marked by adherence to monotheistic religious tenets and authority as well as to Aristotle, while the Renaissance sees the rediscovery of pre-Christian thought and a decreasing reliance on prior texts and thinkers. However, none of these qualifications can be taken as fully descriptive of either period and their similarities and differences will become apparent in equal measure as we move through the material.

As this is a survey course covering approximately 1200 years of philosophy, it is impossible to do justice to either period, more so than in other survey courses. That said, we will read many of their most important thinkers. We begin with Augustine of Hippo (354-430) and his sermon on the sacking of Rome in 410. We then move to selections from the Roman senator Boethius (477-524); the great Islamic philosophers Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126-1198); and the high watermarks of medieval Christian thought as found in Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308). With that, we move into the Renaissance with readings from Nicholas of Cusa’s (1401-1464) On Learned Ignorance, Niccolò Machivelli’s (1469-1527) Prince, Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) “Ninety-five Theses,” the Coimbra Commentaries (1591-1606), and closing with Francisco Suárez’s (1548-1617) Metaphysical Disputations.