Toward a Cultural History of Scholastic Disputation (American Historical Review, 2012) (original) (raw)

THE SCHOLASTIC DEBATES OF MEDIEVAL AUTHORS have not fared well among historians. As a subject, they are treated seriously by philosophers and theologians interested in particular points of logic or doctrine, selectively by specialists of medieval learning who focus on particular authors or key ideas, and hardly at all by historians concerned with the wider cultural fabric of medieval society. Popular images of scholastic argumentation have only isolated the field further. From Renaissance humanists and luminaries in the age of reason to general assumptions today, these debates have routinely been condemned as medieval vestiges of an anti-intellectual world: pedantic at best, pointless at worst. 1 Faced on the one hand with the pejorative connotations of "scholastic" and "quodlibet," we are on the other hand endlessly entreated these days to enter into "dialogue" with others, a discourse that both reflects and presupposes a post-Enlightenment (perhaps even postmodern) engagement with the world. 2 Marginalized and misunderstood, the history of medieval dialogue and debate is in need of a fresh assessment.