First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This introduction to philosophy in the Latin West between 1150 and 1350 combines an historical approach, which concentrates on the sources, forms and backgrounds of the medieval works, with philosophical analysis of thirteenth and fourteenth-century writing in terms comprehensible to a modern reader. Part One looks at the intellectual and historical context of medieval thought. It examines the courses in the medieval universities; the methods of teaching; the forms of written work; the logical techniques used for argument and analysis; the translation and the availability of Ancient Greek, Arab and Jewish philosophical texts; the challenges the new material presented and the various ways in which Western thinkers responded to them. Part Two focuses on one important problem in later medieval thought: the nature of intellectual knowledge. It explains the arguments given by Aristotle, his antique commentators and the Arab philosophers Avicenna and Averroes, and traces how a series of Western thinkers, including Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham, developed, modified or rejected them.

Compact but singularly well thought out material of a theological, logical, poetic as well as philosophical nature.

Updated to include recent research in the field, this exploration of medieval philosophy looks at the subject’s history, techniques and concepts. Discussing the main writers and ideas, it is the standard companion for all students of the discipline.

The Middle Ages span a period of well over a millennium: from the emperor Constantine's Christian conversion in 312 to the early sixteenth century. During this time there was remarkable continuity of thought, but there were also many changes made in different philosophies: various breaks, revivals and rediscoveries. David Luscombe's history of Medieval Thought steers a clear path through this long period, beginning with three great influences on medieval philosophy: Augustine, Boethius, and Pseudo-Denis, and focusing on Alcuin, then Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas, Ockham, Duns Scotus, and Eckhart amongst others from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. Medieval philosophy is widely regarded as having a theological and religious orientation, but more recently attention has been given to the early study of logic, language, and the philosophy of science. This history therefore gives a fascinating insight into medieval views on aspects such as astronomy, materialism, perception, and the nature of the soul, as well as of God.

In The Political Animal in Medieval Philosophy Juhana Toivanen investigates the foundations of human social life through the Aristotelian notion of ‘political animal’, as it was used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.