Written in 1159 and addressed to Thomas Becket, John of Salisbury's The Metalogicon presents -- and defends -- a thorough study of the liberal arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The very name "Metalogicon", a coinage by the author, brings together the Greek meta (on behalf of) and logicon (logic or logical studies). Thus, in naming his text, he also explained it. With this lucid treatise on education, John of Salisbury urges a thorough grounding in the arts of words (oral and written) and reasoning, as these topics are addressed in grammar and logic. Written more than nine hundred years ago, The Metalogicon still possesses an invigorating originality that invites readers to refresh themselves at the sources of Western learning.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1955.

This volume deals with the development of moral and political philosophy in the medieval West. Professor Nederman is concerned to trace the continuing influence of classical ideas, but emphasises that the very diversity and diffuseness of medieval thought shows that there is no single scheme that can account for the way these ideas were received, disseminated and reformulated by medieval ethical and political theorists.

The University of Paris is generally regarded as the first true university, the model for others not only in France but throughout Europe, including Oxford and Cambridge. This book challenges two prevailing myths about the university's origins: first, that the university naturally developed to meet the utilitarian and professional needs of European society in the late Middle Ages, and second, that it was the product of the struggle by scholars to gain freedom and autonomy from external authorities, most notably church officials. In the twelfth century, Paris was the educational center of Europe, with a large number of schools and masters attracting and competing for students. Over the decades, the schools of Paris had many critics--monastic reformers, humanists, satirists, and moralists--and the focus of this book is the role such critics played in developing the schools into a university. Ferruolo argues that it was the educational values and ideas promoted by the critics--ideas of the unity of knowledge, the need to share learning freely and willingly, and the higher purposes and social importance of education--that first inspired the scholars of Paris to join together to form a single guild. Their programs for educational reforms can be seen in the first set of statues promulgated for the nascent University of Paris in 1215.