A Hidden Wisdom

Medieval Contemplatives on Self-Knowledge, Reason, Love, Persons, and Immortality

Bibliographic Data

ID23211360
AuthorsChristina Van Dyke (0000-0002-9481-6902, Term Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University and Emerita Professor of Philosophy, Calvin University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Publication date2022-10-28
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueHidden Wisdom (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198861683.001.0001
OpenAlexW4309168078
ISBN9780198861683
LanguageEN
Citations received8

Medieval philosophy is primarily associated today with university-based disputations and the authorities cited in those disputations. In their own time, however, scholastic debates were recognized as just one part of wide-ranging philosophical and theological discussions. A Hidden Wisdom breaks new ground by drawing attention to another crucial component of these conversations: the Christian contemplative tradition. The thirteenth–fifteenth centuries in particular saw a dramatic increase in the production and consumption of mystical and contemplative literature in the ‘Christian West’, by laypeople as well as religious scholars, women as well as men. A Hidden Wisdom focuses on five topics of particular interest to both scholastics and contemplatives in this period—namely, self-knowledge, reason and its limits, love and the will, persons, and immortality and the afterlife. This focus centers on the (often overlooked) contributions of medieval women and demonstrates that when we reunite scholasticism with its contemplative counterpart, we gain not only a more accurate understanding of the scope of medieval Christian philosophy and theology but also an increased awareness of a deeply practical tradition that builds up as well as tears down, generates as well as deconstructs. The book’s treatment of topics and figures is meant to be representative rather than exhaustive—a tasting menu rather than a comprehensive study. The choice of topics offers a series of ‘hooks’ for philosophers to connect their own interests to issues central to medieval contemplative philosophy, while also providing medievalists in other disciplines a fresh lens through which to view these texts.

Aesthetics · Afterlife · Art · Contemplation · Epistemology · Immortality · Literature · Mysticism · Scholasticism · Theology · Classics · History · Medieval Literature and History · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity