Neo-Aristotelianism and the Medieval Renaissance

On Aquinas, Ockham, and Eckhart

Schurmann Reiner

In this lecture course, Reiner Schurmann develops the idea that, in between the spiritual Carolingian Renaissance and the secular humanist Renaissance, there was a distinctive medieval Renaissance connected with the rediscovery of Aristotle. Focusing on Thomas Aquinas's ontology and epistemology, William of Ockham's conceptualism, and Meister Eckhart's speculative mysticism, Schurmann shows how thought began to break free from religion and the hierarchies of the feudal, neo-Platonic order and devote its attention to otherness and singularity. A crucial supplement to Schurmann's magnum opus Broken Hegemonies, "Neo-Aristotelianism and the Medieval Renaissance" will be essential reading for anyone interested in the rise and fall of Western principles, and thus in how to think and act today.

About the Author

Reiner Schurmann (1941-93) was a German philosopher. He was born in Amsterdam and lived in Germany, Israel, and France before immigrating to the United States in the 1970s, where he was professor and director of the Department of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. He is the author of three books on philosophy: "Heidegger on Being and Acting", "Wandering Joy", and "Broken Hegemonies". Origins is his only work of fiction. He never wrote nor published in his native German.

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