A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy - Hardcover

'This is a particularly well-produced collection of meticulously researched papers on central aspects of philosophy in 12th-century western Europe ... As a model of accessibility to non-specialists its appearance is especially welcome at a time when philistine charges of irelevance are increasingly being made against disinterested scholarship.' The Times Higher Education Supplement

'All of the essays are of high quality and offer excellent introductions to the textual sources. Taken together they reveal a complementarity rare in collections of this kind.' History of European Ideas

'[A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy] belongs not only in all college and university libraries but also in the private libraries of all serious medievalists.' Speculum

This is the first comprehensive study of the philosophical achievements of twelfth-century Western Europe. It is the collaboration of fifteen scholars whose detailed survey makes accessible the intellectual preoccupations of the period, with all texts cited in English translation throughout. After a discussion of the cultural context of twelfth-century speculation, and some of the main streams of thought - Platonic, Stoic, and Arabic - that quickened it, comes a characterisation of the new problems and perspectives of the period, in scientific inquiry, speculative grammar, and logic. This is followed by a closer examination of the distinctive features of some of the most innovative thinkers of the time, from Anselm and Abelard to the School of Chartres. A final section shows the impact of newly recovered works of Aristotle in the twelfth-century West.