One of the longest periods in the history of human thought is medieval philosophy. Patristicism and scholasticism are some of its most important stages. The first of these two terms refers to the works of the "fathers of the Church": from the early followers of the apostles to the thinkers of the 7th and 8th centuries. Let us consider the second philosophical phenomenon.
The concept of scholasticism is borrowed from the Greek language. In itself, it initially pointed to schooling. More precisely, this term referred mainly to educational institutions, open for money church budget. The teachers who worked in them were called scholastics. Education in those days was based only on the cramming of the supplied material and was supported by the system of punishing children in schools. In addition, it was in many ways religious. That is why educational institutions were opened in the churches. Derived from the Greek word "school" after a while began to call the whole system. Scholasticism is a complex of phenomena that for centuries characterized the intellectual life of the Catholic Roman Church. This era is still divided into five main periods. The first of these is still not scholasticism in a certain sense of the word, but only its inception. He was characterized by the activities of a number of Catholic thinkers who contributed to the awakening of intellectual interest in what is happening in the Life. As a result, many schools, institutes and, accordingly, students in them. The second period, many researchers of history call "the golden age in the era of scholasticism." It began in the 13th century. It was marked by the activities of a number of outstanding thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus and Bonaventura. Then came a period of sharp decline, when the intellectual activity of the thinkers of the Catholic Church came to naught. With the advent of the Renaissance came the fourth stage. Outstanding thinkers at that time were: Francis Silvestre, Luis Molina, Domingo Banes and others. However, with the spread of ideas of Descartes and his followers, this current began to fade. A new impetus to development it received in the middle of the nineteenth century. Since then, the fifth period of scholasticism has begun. It lasts to this day.
Scholasticism is a philosophical direction created to justify church doctrine. Many Catholic dogmas are hardly perceived. Therefore, scholasticism is a philosophical trend, which often used artificial, formal arguments to justify the postulates of the Catholic Church. Sometimes such arguments were, in fact, "sucked out of a finger". In general, the material with which the masters of Catholic thought worked was far from real life. As an example, we can cite the treatise of Boethius "On the Goodness of Substances by virtue of their existence." Therefore, in the current view of many people, scholasticism is an artificial art that is not applicable anywhere in real life. Its main subject is the questions of religion and theology.
Scholasticism in philosophy is a system of reasoning based not on the analysis of individual theses, as, for example, it was accepted by ancient thinkers, but on the analysis of linguistic means by which certain postulates are formulated. This partly explains the operation with artificial terms, impracticality and dryness of the teaching itself.