Abstract:
The paper deals with some definitions of scholasticism which can be found in works from the philosophical or our century. Firstly definitions put forward by Maurice De Wulf (1857-1947) and Martin Grabmann (1875-1949) are discussed. The first of these historians identifies 'scolasticism' with one particular philosophy (i.e. an articulated series of doctrines) which, he claims, have existed in the Middle Ages and somehow anticipate the positions of 'new-scholasticism', moreover, De Wulf refuses to connect the characters of scholasticism with the educational background of medieval scholars; Grabmann, on the other hand, ends up by considering scholasticism simply as a theology, if not 'the' (only possible) form of theology, and his definition is of no use in the field of the history of philosophy. In the second part the definitions put forward more recently by Lambert M. de Rijk and Georg Wieland are considered. These definitions start from the relationship between 'auctoritas' and 'ratio', and focus on giving a concrete content both to the idea of authority (i.e. a set of authoritative texts, different for each faculty) and to 'reason', which must be understood as the particular set of tools of dialectic, as they developed throughout the Middle Ages. Wieland adds to this a series of characteristics of scholasticism, such as the commitment to a topic as a scientific topic, the fact that each discipline is penetrated by philosophy, and the separation between 'school' and 'life'. The simultaneous appearence of all these characteristics in the 12th Century marks the beginning of scholasticism, and can also explain its 'dissolution' at the end of the Middle Ages.
