Scholasticism
SCHOLASTICISM. An abstract noun formed from the Latin-Greek stem scholastic-, pertaining to "school," scholasticism signifies principally the type of training used in the schools, and secondarily, the doctrine given, usually in the universities of the Latin Middle Ages. In a pejorative sense, it connotes dictatorial or authoritarian methods, or a hidebound and unimaginative view, much like the "correct" answer that a schoolmaster would demand from his pupil in the classroom.
Method
Principally Scholasticism indicates a method of training and learning that developed in Christian schools between about 1000 and 1650 and reached its peak in the thirteenth century. It arose naturally and spontaneously in the early Middle Ages as teachers lectured on a fixed text, pausing to explain a difficult passage by posing a question and lining up authorities pro and con, sic et non. Divergent resolutions of difficulties were often written in the margins of the Bible or lawbook. Abelard's work Sic et non is both a collection of seemingly contradictory theological texts and a reasoned methodology for resolving such apparent contradictions. The underlying supposition was the commonly held conviction that truth cannot contradict itself and that all truth is from God. Thus, logic, coupled with a respect for antiquity, was always considered the chief instrument of Scholastic teaching in the Middle Ages.
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