A scholastic who practiced the scholastic method but also tried his hand at literary
style when writing on mystical topics is Bonaventure (ca. 1217–1274), who taught at
Paris in 1248–55. His Itinerarium mentis in Deum shows how philosophy functions in the
ascent of the soul from the visible world to the unificatory mystical experience where
scholastic distinctiones and quaestiones are no longer necessary or possible. Here, the
text does not impart information or provide analysis but becomes itself part of the process
toward illumination.
The basic presupposition of the scholastic method is that knowledge can be acquired
only on the basis of the interpretation of authoritative texts. The late 13th and 14th
centuries saw a shift to the critical examination of how words have meaning, how they
function in propositions and in wider contexts, and what their relations are to the external
world. Important French names in these discussions are Lambert of Auxerre (fl. 1250)
and the Parisian masters Jean Buridan (ca. 1295-after 1358) and Marsilius of Inghen (d.
1396). Not all philosophers in France during the Middle Ages used the scholastic method.
Through the influence of the Catalan thinker Ramon Lull (ca. 1232–1316), a way of
doing philosophy entered into France and especially Paris in the 14th century that leads
into the mystical and even alchemical aspects of Renaissance thought.
Debate and discussion are the life’s blood of philosophy, and the liveliness of
philosophers in medieval France can be illustrated by mentioning three controversies: the
debate between Anselm of Bec and Gaunilo, a Benedictine monk of Marmoutier (d.
1083), on proving the existence of God; the acrimonious interchange between Peter
Abélard and William of Champeaux (ca. 1070–1121) on the status of universal terms;
and the attack of Nicholas of Autrecourt (ca. 1300-after 1350) on Aristotelian
scholasticism.
Anselm wrote two works that on philosophical grounds argue for the existence of
God. In the Monologion (1076), he uses traditional Platonic and Aristotelian arguments to
prove the existence of a single supreme nature that is self-sufficient and causes all other
things to be. All this is couched in an analysis of the way that language works and
constantly employs metaphors, examples, and models derived from Augustine. This
makes for a complicated and difficult argument. So, in the Proslogion (1077–78) he sets
out to find a single, self-evident argument to demonstrate God’s existence and to describe
a number of his attributes. Anselm begins from the definition of the word “God” as “that
than which no greater can be thought.” Using only this definition, he demonstrates that it
entails God’s existence both in the mind of the person who thinks on God’s existence and
in the real world. In the history of philosophy, this argument is called the “ontological
proof’ of God’s existence. Although the monk Gaunilo did not deny the existence of God
in replying to Anselm, he felt that Anselm’s proof was philosophically unsound on the
grounds that it appears to confuse conventional language (voces) and logic with the real
world. For Anselm, however, real language (verbum) is the structure itself of the created
world and serves as the connecting link between the human being who contemplates God
and God’s answer to his prayer for the enlightenment of his intellect to show that God
really exists. This debate can be closely examined today because Anselm instructed
manuscript copyists always to add Gaunilo’s objections and his own replies to them as
appendices to the Proslogion.
The bitter controversy between Peter Abélard and William of Champeaux concerned
the problem of the status of “universals,” terms or concepts like “man” or “animal.”
The Encyclopedia 1387