The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps - Jill Kraye and John Marenbon

The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps has reached its 200th episode. To celebrate this event, the host, Peter Adamson, a specialist in medieval Arabic philosophy, takes some time to discuss the category of 'medieval philosophy' with John Marenbon and Jill Kraye. The former is a specialist in early Latin medieval philosophy and the latter is a specialist in late medieval (or 'Renaissance') Latin philosophy. 

Marenbon advocates for a Long Middle Ages stretching from Plotinus to the mid-17C. He doesn't explain precisely why this would be, but we can assume that he's envisioning a period in which Platonic metaphysics makes up the core of elite intellectual culture. Beauty = Truth = Good = God as the centre of all thinking up until Leibniz.

Kraye is sympathetic to this notion but seems to want to claim that the Middle Ages represent a moment in which Aristotelian logic and natural philosophy came to surround and modify that core of Platonism. This would place the Middle Ages of intellectual culture between early-12C and mid-17C. The Renaissance would then name a phase in the intellectual culture of the Middle Ages in which the style and form of philosophical discussion mattered to intellectuals just as much as content did. Furthermore, the Renaissance would name a period in which philosophies other than Aristotelianism, such as Epicureanism or Pyrronic Skepticism, gained in popularity without replacing the Platonic core of most forms of thinking.

Jill is an historian interested in philosophy and John is a philosopher interested in history. They both want to contextualize the thought of their objects of study, but only John wants to think with those objects. Here in this podcast and also in a lecture given elsewhere, Marenbon suggests that we first isolate a philosophical problem that concerns us today, something that to us seems like philosophy. With that problem in hand we return to the past to see how it was dealt with then. But, in the process of doing so, we contextualize the old arguments and old solutions in order to provide contrast for the new, or to inspire new approaches to present problems.* Marenbon respects difference while prizing similarity. Jill, on the other hand, like most historians, wants to paint--to the best of her ability--a true and faithful portrait of her subject as it changes over time. Hers is the instinct of an antiquarian and a biographer and a pedant. Such an approach no doubt keeps us honest, and reveals to us the peculiarity of past minds, but it does little to sketch out how to make use of the past.

There is too much of Jill in me, and not enough of John.

*this strikes me as a benign version of Quentin Skinner's methodology. For more on him, check out this two part interview.