After the Greeks:
Christianity and the Rise of the
Roman Empire
• 100 B.C. to 1450 A.D. represents a critical
period of transition in the development of
Western thought and civilization.
• This period of time spans the Roman
Empire overtaking the Greek Empire (100
B.C. to 400 A.D. , the post-Roman-Empire
“Dark Ages” (400 A.D. to 1000 A.D., and
the not-so-dark “Middle Ages” (1000 A.D.
to 1450 A.D.)
Roman Empire
(100 B.C. to 400 A.D.)
• The Roman Empire was a time of plenty - a
world of much progress and wealth. If you
see an old structure in Europe, and it is not a
castle, the Romans probably either built it or
conquered it.
• Intellectual pursuits, however, were not a
priority for he Romans. They became a
hedonistic society where ‘romantic’ pursuits
constituted the Roman version of the “good
life”.
A Paradigm Shift Occurs
• Our understanding of human nature
remained based primarily on Aristotle’s
teachings until the birth of Christ and the
development and spread of Christianity.
• In fact, the embracing of Christianity and
its values marks the formal beginning of
Western Civilization.
Core Christian Beliefs
1.
The presence of one God who created the universe
and everything in it.
2.
The notion that Christ is Devine –
It is through His grace that our salvation is possible.
3.
Belief in the Holy Trinity
>God the Father
>God the son
> God the Holy Spirit
Concept of the Trinity
• The concept of the Trinity was debated
among Christian and not reconciled until the
fourth century.
• The controversy centered on logic of a threein-one notion, or x = 3x, and especially the
Holy Spirit, the means by which God could
guide us, make His presence known to us,
and He could hear and answer our prayers.
PLOTINUS (205 – 270 A.D.)
• Proposed a new subjectivism based on
neo-Platonism.
• Plotinus took Plato’s notion of Pure Form
and converted it into a new concept of the
Psyche or “spirit”.
• For him the soul was a substance separate
from the body and existing without regard
to spirituality, a concept refined later by
St. Augustine.
PLOTINUS (continued)
• Provided the strongest philosophical support for
the existence of the soul.
• Although not a Christian, his teachings provided
the intellectual foundation for a Christian
philosophy and Psychology.
-- one of the first statements on the presence of
a sprit apart from the body.
-- the concept of the spirit is later transformed
into the mind.
-- the study of the so called ‘mind’ dominates
psychology for centuries to come.
PLOTINUS (continued
• According to Plotinus, there are different
grades or levels of being: the soul is
superior to the body, and the other grades
are superior to the soul.
PLOTINUS (continued
• For Plotinus, the soul is immaterial, evolves from
the body, but existed apart from it.
• Functions of the soul:
– perceiving the world
– reflecting and thinking about what was known
– pure contemplation, transcending the physical
to focus on eternal & timeless matters
St. Augustine
(354 – 430 A.D.)
• Dismissed pagan science in favor of an
intense focus on the non-material world.
• True knowledge comes from God, not
from the study of the world of nature.
– This constitutes a complete reversal of the
Greek naturalistic doctrine.
• St. Augustine’s view of man dominates
philosophy until the start of 4th century.
St. Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274)
• Studied under the great Albertus Magnus, who
among other things, advocated the peaceful
coexistence of science and religion.
• Greatest work was Summa Theologica
• Extrapolating from his writings, psychology
would fall somewhere between a discussion of
the six days of creation and a study of the
original innocence of man.
• Confirmed Aristotle’s ideas as presented in De
Anima.
• Assimilated Aristotle’s pagan & naturalistic ideas
within the framework of a Christian Doctrine.
– Aristotle’s reason became the Christian soul.
Aristotle and The Soul
Searching for happiness:
Three competing views
• Life of pleasure and contentment
• Life of wealth and honor
• Virtuous life.
• Sole constraint placed on these conceptions
of happiness is that if happiness is the end
of all human action, then it must be
complete, i.e., self-sufficient, such that
nothing more can be added to happiness to
make it more complete. If something more
can be added to this notion, then we have
not discovered the ultimate end of all
human action.
Aristotle and The Soul
(continued)
• The upshot of this way of thinking is that only
the virtuous life can complete your reason for
being. All the other notions lack something that
is only found in the virtuous life.
• Division of the virtues: Intellectual and the moral
virtues
• The intellectual virtues are those that we acquire
naturally, by exercising our native curiosity and
are perfections (fruits) of our rationality.
• The moral virtues are those that we acquire
through learning and personal growth; they
require the use of desire and reason in order to
develop our sociability.
Aquinas and The Soul
• The soul was not part of the body; we
have a body and a soul.
• The purpose of the soul is to understand
God and our relation to Him.
• Major ontribution to modern psychology:
dualism (mind and body).
Dark Ages (400 to 1000 A.D.)
• Begin with the fall of the Roman Empire,
which includes the pillaging and destruction
of Greco-Roman universities and libraries.
• With the end of the Greco-Roman stability,
and lack of any other stable government, this
period of time is regarded as mysterious, or
“Dark,” by historians.
• The Catholic Church becomes the most stable
entity, but strongly upholds doctrine to
remain separate from “worldly affairs”
(government).
Emperor Constantine
• In 312 A.D., Constantine has a vision of
the cross, then wins a major war.
• This causes him to convert to Christianity,
despite the fact that most Christians reject
the divinity of rulers.
• Soon after, he signs the Edict of Milan to
make Christianity a tolerated religion.
Emperor Constantine
(continued)
• In 325 A.D., Constantine is distressed to find out
that Christians have conflicting teachings about
Jesus, and proceeds to convene a meeting of
bishops from around the empire to settle their
differences.
• The bishops debate, and agree on a set of
definitive conclusions, including the divinity of
Jesus. Defying any of the conclusions is treated
as heresy.
• The meeting of bishops is a precursor to formal
establishment (recognition) the Catholic Church.
The Constantine Rumor
• Constantine was hoping that Christianity
could re-unite the Roman Empire.
– The western half (which is now synonymous
with ‘Western Civilization’ and the Catholic
Church) was weakening from internal power
struggles.
– The eastern half (which is now synonymous
with the Byzantine Empire and Orthodox
Christianity) was stable and wanted to
separate from the western half.
Constantine’s legacy
• Christianity became a religion of formally
documented beliefs (creeds) as decided by a
council of religious leaders. Differing beliefs,
even within pre-existing Christian churches,
became heretical beliefs.
• Christianity was given organizational centers in
Rome (now the Vatican, home of the Pope and
the Catholic Church), and Constantinople (now
Istanbul, home of the Greek Orthodox Church).
After Constantine
• Roman Empire is formally split in two.
• Eastern half becomes Byzantine, and
Orthodox Christianity becomes a
naturalistic religion in the spirit of the
Greek intellectuals.
• Western half remains Roman Empire, and
Roman Catholicism becomes more
spiritualistic.
Middle Ages (1000 – 1450 A.D.)
• Symbolized by the beginning of the
Crusades
• During Crusades, Western Civilization is
reunited with the works of Greek
intellectuals, as well as subsequent Muslim
scholarship such as al-Gebra (variable
math), al-Gorithms (problem-solving
devices), and al-Chemy (early chemistry),
as well as the number “zero.”
• But, the Western world, which addresses
“worldly affairs,” still lacks stability.
Just Before the Renaissance:
Catholicism and Civilization
• Disputes involving Catholicism were resolved by the
council of Bishops (later, Cardinals), who debated and
resolved strictly-spiritual religious conflicts.
• Even today, doctrine conflict resolutions are “final”
(unless changed by a new council). This creates the
“right or wrong” culture within the Catholic Church.
• As the most powerful entity in Europe, the Catholic
Church’s culture of spiritual “right and wrong” became
synonymous with morality in Europe.
Catholicism and Oppression
• From 400ad to 1450ad, most European societies had
little alternative to the stability provided by the Catholic
Church, thus they discarded or hid their worldly affairs.
• Empiric order is replaced with spiritual order.
• Ignoring worldly affairs, though, made societies more
dependent on Catholic Churches.
• The history of Judaism in the middle ages is
largely a history of persecution from other
religions and of reliance on supernatural
explanations in the world.
Catholicism and Oppression
(continued)
• The Catholic Church takes over more tax-free
land, builds more churches and schools
(spiritual educations), gets more money.
Upside view.
• Nations have less taxable land, fewer public
schools, fewer worldly-minded scholars,
merchants and laborers, and less goods.
Downside view.
• Intellectual “oppression” had to do with the
unwavering position that spiritual knowledge
is superior to all other forms of knowledge.
Intellectual Oppression
• Intellectual pursuits of knowledge derived
from the natural world were generally
discouraged if not oppressed.
• Priority of spiritual interests had specific and
significant consequences on scholarly
pursuits:
– Natural theories are irrelevant
– Natural causes are insignificant
– Spiritual conclusions overrule natural conclusions
Makings of the Renaissance
• Christian leaders start protestant
movements.
• Nation-leaders become more empowered
with their worldly affairs, start church
movements to promote themselves as
divine rulers.
• Printing press invented in 1450, making
Bibles and Greek writing more accessible.
Intellectual Milestones of the
Middle Ages
• The rise of European universities occurred
slowly and often around famous teachers
who attracted students to a given location.
• Who were the most famous intellectual
leaders (teachers)?
• Peter Abelard was a brilliant and brave
theologian who argued that faith, reason,
and doubt were all acceptable avenues to
truth and that truth could be accessible to
non-Christian thinkers.
Intellectual Milestones of the
Middle Ages (continued)
• Héloise, known more commonly for her
relationship with Abelard, was a creative
philosopher in her own right, writing
extensively on the nature of love.
• Roger Bacon is best known for his Opum
Majus, a book that addressed a number of
different topics, including epistemological
questions that explored the nature of
human ignorance.
Intellectual Milestones of the
Middle Ages (continued)
• St. Thomas Aquinas was the “Church’s” designated
intellectual leader.
• He was deeply committed to reconciling faith and
reason, and he focused particularly on the known works
of Aristotle.
• The views of Thomas Aquinas reflect Aristotle’s
hylomorphism (see Chapter 3) in his conception of the
mind-body problem, sensation, and emotion. He was
instrumental in bringing Aristotle’s work into the church,
where Aristotle became unchallengeable church doctrine.
• Aquinas started with sensory perceptions and used
reason to interpret these perceptions. He maintained
that the church had nothing to fear from empiricism or
rationalism.
The Renaissance Takes Hold
• The Renaissance spanned the fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth centuries and was a paradoxical time
including the rebirth of inquiry, a rising interest in the
individual, but continued stagnation in some arenas.
• Effects of the plague were overwhelming as the Black
Death swept across Europe.
• Historians estimate that millions died, perhaps one third
of the population of Europe.
• Intellectual (psychological) reactions to the plague
included stoicism, heroism, opportunism, hedonism, and
flight.
• Many viewed the plague as punishment from God.
The Renaissance
(continued)
• The Jews were the most common
scapegoat for the plague. The plagues of
the Renaissance were times of torture,
imprisonment, and massacre for the Jews.
• The Renaissance set new standards of
anti-Semitism that would last until the
20th century.
The Renaissance
(continued)
• Some individuals joined flagellant orders
and responded self-destructively to atone
for sin and ameliorate what they viewed
as punishment from God.
• The plague generated doubt related to
theological institutions.
• The church leaders were powerless to
save anyone, even themselves.
Catholic Church Weakens
• Besides increasing open questioning by nonChristian scholars, expanding geographical
knowledge also damaged the authority of the
church. Explorers returned to suggest that
theological leaders were wrong about the shape
of the earth, the land on the earth, and the
existence of humans in the Western hemisphere.
• The Greek classics provided models of
unrestrained speculation. More people were
reading the original works instead of the texts
approved by the church, and many people were
genuinely speculating as the Greeks did.
The Catholic Church Looses
Luster (continued)
• The authority of the Roman Catholic Church diminished
for several reasons:
• a) Emerging nation-states challenged the church
politically and financially.
• b) A wider-reading public began to question the
relationship between church doctrine and the Bible.
• c) Some financial practices of the church (e.g., the sale
of indulgences) created frustration.
• d) The Protestant Reformation also served to diffuse
church authority. The Reformation may or may not have
contributed to the development of science; Protestant
authorities were as restrictive of inquiry as were Catholic
authorities.
The Catholic Church Looses
Luster (continued)
• Growth of empirical studies continued in such areas as
anatomy, botany, and zoology.
• Interest in quantification and mathematics for its own
sake emerged in the Renaissance and was put to practical
application in business and navigation.
• New data encouraged changing visions of the world.
Various astronomers provided evidence to challenge the
geocentric cosmology and replace it with a
heliocentric cosmology.
• The geocentric work of Ptolemy was accepted as church
doctrine and could not be challenged. The geocentric
view supported the church’s Biblical worldview placing
humans at the center of creation and existence and
making the history of the universe synonymous with
human history.
The Catholic Church Looses
Luster (continued)
• Nicolaus Copernicus argued for a heliocentric system
with circular planetary orbits.
• Johannes Kepler refined the Copernican system by
introducing elliptical planetary orbits.
• Galileo Galilei refined the telescope and challenged the
assumptions of the church regarding the geocentric
cosmology.
• The conflict between Galileo and the church was not
only a conflict of cosmology; it was also a conflict over
epistemology. The church favored authority as a method
of knowledge. Galileo was forced to recant his views.