Scholasticism had reached its climax in the thirteenth century;
universities were founded in Paris, Oxford and Padua, and he who aspired
to the full dignity of learning had to take his degrees there; even
Eckhart did not neglect to obtain his scholastic education in Paris.
Scholasticism was an imposing and yet strangely grotesque system of the
world, built up--before a background of blazing stakes--of scriptural
passages and ecclesiastical tradition, lofty, pure thought and
antique-mediaeval superstition. Its fundamental problem, the
determination of the border line between faith and knowledge, was purely
philosophical. While the older scholasticism, based on Platonic
traditions, endeavoured to bring these into harmony with Christianity,
that is to say, prove the revelations by dialectics, Albertus Magnus
and, authoritatively, his pupil, Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274), strictly
distinguished, by the use of Aristotelian weapons, the rational or
perceptive truths from the supernatural verities or the subjects of
faith.
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