Picking Up My Cosmic Garments at the LOST and Found: Back in the Bardo, or "The Twenty-Eight Or So People You Meet in Heaven"

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." -Benjamin Franklin

LOST, in part, was an exploration of the tensions between seemingly contradictory notions: reason and faith dominated the first two seasons, fate and free will the next few, good and evil in the last. These dualistic schemata, of course, have contributed to conflict in countless myths, legends, and works of literature in the Western canon, and Sunday night, LOST added to this in its weird, love-festy, after-party, fetishistic sort of way (I half-expected the last shot to fade to white with the word "FOUND" scrolling toward me). The sometimes heavy-handed, sometimes ambiguous symbolism of the show is one thing that kept me thinking about it and coming back to it week after week. The forced and unwarranted simplicity of the good versus evil storyline that characterized the final season, while it had come to the fore only recently, had been backgrounded since the pilot, when Locke sat down with Walt, holding one white and one black backgammon piece, and explained that "there are two players...one is light, one is dark." (What we thought was superficial racial harmony was in fact foreshadowing the great ideological struggle of the later seasons?) I had held out hope, as late as the next-to-last episode that the Jacob/Man in Black conflict was a ruse, a ploy designed to lull us into a false sense of complacency, after which it would be revealed that neither were truly good or evil, that they were each manipulating the survivors in their own way, a la Sirrus and Achenar at the end of Myst (Cuse and Lindelof have remarked how heavily this game influenced their story-telling). Not only was I wrong, but to add insult to injury, they essentially placed the mantra of reason in the mouth of the evilest character on the show: "There are very smart men among us," the Man in Black says, "who are very curious about how things work." What is the lesson here? That trying to reason through things is inferior to having faith? The Jack/Locke dynamic in the first two seasons was so excellent precisely because they interpreted the island oppositely, yet both were very easy to to identify with. Unfortunately, for me, this dynamic was completely ruined in the finale. On this level, the show succeeded for so long because the writers openly and honestly depicted the real-life tensions of nearly irreconcilable conceptions without consciously favoring one or the other or suggesting that one was more powerful or viable than the other. This changed with the finale, as faith alone triumphed, and one of the principal messages of the show seems to have been - to use the now trite and overused phrases of the show - that, by "let[ting] go" of reason, we can "move on" to faith. This is at best simple moralizing and at worst intellectual dishonesty. While I found the finale to be emotionally satisfying, I found it to be extremely unsatisfying on a cerebral level. Indeed, what we got was, in the words of one unforgiving critic, "a prom of the dead in a chapel of love where everybody is farting rainbows, where all the primary Oceanic 815 survivors are redeemed, where a loving 'Dad' opens a Spielbergian door of light to the greater beyond." As the old adage goes, "truth is stranger than fiction." Unfortunately, LOST gave us a comforting fiction. I'll take genuine truth, discovered through reason, any day.

"I cannot allow your ignorance, however great, to take precedence over my knowledge, however small." -William James

I fully expected, nay, predicted (the one I made that actually came true), that the series would not really answer the major questions that have so obsessed hardcore LOST fans for the last six years: What was the source of the island's power? What was the meaning behind the numbers? What was the smoke monster made of? What caused the castaways time traveling? And so on. These were questions that could only be answered intrinsically within the show's mythology, not extrinsically through some overwrought pseudo-scientific borrowing from quantum mechanics or string theory. Such an ending would be lost (no pun intended) on the average American television viewer. Despite my love of science fiction, I fully braced myself for the fact that this is not how questions would be answered. But, in one sense, the writers betrayed the entire mythology of the series by implying that these were the wrong questions to ask in the first place. In the end, the moral of the series is that the metaphysical is more important than the physical, the spiritual is more important than the material, and hoping for answers through faith is more important than achieving them through reason. This is unacceptable to me, not because I think faith is, of its own accord, unsatisfactory, but because it is an entirely subjective experience, that gives meaning only individually - thus, while it may "answer" personal questions about the nature of reality, it is not a suitable way of attaining the type of knowledge that, I feel, LOST claimed it was offering. It seems as though Jack's entire character arc consisted of relinquishing reason, being a "man of science," and becoming a "man of faith." It is certainly difficult to disagree with that interpretation if we remember of his conversation with Locke in the first season - in which Locke asks, "Why do you find it so hard to believe?" to which Jack replies, "Why do you find it so easy?!" - with Jack's conversation with the Man in Black in the last episode, in which he tells him that Locke was right about everything from the beginning and says he wishes he'd had a chance to tell him.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke

Along with faith and reason, fate and free will, good and evil, we might add fantasy and science fiction to the list of strange dualities. These, too, are overlapping genres and creating false distinctions between them may be ill-conceived, but there are some significant differences that created difficulties in attempting to view LOST as true science fiction. For quite a while, LOST did a wonderful job at skillfully melding traditional science fiction tropes, epitomized by the Dharma Initiative, the effects of electromagnetism, and time travel, with typical elements of fantasy. However, LOST always maintained an air of intrinsic plausibility, a world which had a set of specific explanatory rules that did not defy logic in any metaphysical sort of way. In a crude way, one major distinction between science fiction and fantasy is that, in science fiction,"things" are "explained." That is, elements central to the story are not usually taken as given in a particular fictional universe: Transporters are "explained" in Star Trek; magic, in The Lord of the Rings, is not. This is not a hard and fast rule - midicholorians aside, the Force is never really explained in Star Wars, for example, yet it exists within a universe in which things, more or less, are presumed to have a technological explanation. (Star Wars is often called "space fantasy" for this very reason.) In the words of literary critic Gwyneth Jones, science in science fiction

[has] nothing in particular to say about the subject matter, which may be just about anything so long as the formal conventions of future dress are observed. It means only, finally, that whatever phenomenon or speculation is treated in the fiction, there is the claim that it is going to be studied at some point scientifically - that is objectively, rigorously; in a controlled environment. The business of the writer is to set up the equipment in the laboratory of the mind such that the 'what if' in question is at once isolated and provided with the exact nutrients it needs. (Jones, Deconstructing the Starships: Science, Fiction, and Reality, 1999: 4)

Adam Roberts clarifies this by writing that the "truth" of the science in science fiction is unimportant, so long as "the scientific method, the logical working through of a particular premise" is maintained (Roberts, Science Fiction: The New Critical Idiom, 2000: 10). For a time, LOST did exactly this. The Dharma initiative is nearly ludicrous in our reality, but within the fictional universe of LOST, it existed as a prime example of the inductive method at work, of cognition through objective reasoning. In the end, however, LOST seemed to eschew even the idea of cognitively plausible ending adhering to the self-contained rules of its universe, opting instead for a touchy-feely, huggy, "everybody-dies-and-goes-to-heaven" ending. To be sure, plenty of science fiction has attempted these quasi-religious resolutions. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, with its enigmatic and equivocal star child, or Tarkovsky's Solaris, with its highly figurative house on an island, stand as primary examples. But Kubrick used this in a symbolic way, to signify the mental evolution of mankind as we reached out into the cosmos. Not so, LOST. "Everything that's ever happened to you has been real," Christian tells Jack in the final scene. The finale was literal, one-dimensional, and attempted to depict an irrational world devoid of any of the deeper symbolism that might have redeemed this convoluted, lazily-constructed resolution.

Perhaps mirroring the increasing binarism of the show, the chatter on the Internet seemed to revolved around the false dichotomy of "plot versus characters." While one variety of fan extolled the virtues of the multi-layered, complex characters, the other lauded the impressive scope and depth of its mythologically-driven, part science fiction, part fantasy, story arc. To me, these have always been false choices. The characters worked and were interesting because of the context of the island-story, while it was worth going down the rabbit hole of that twisted plot to begin with because of their intricate relationships. The writers have noted on several occasions that they originally envisioned this whole epic as a character-driven drama, and while I agree that that was what made the story compelling, I feel like attempting to separate them from the plot is pointless. Each is what made the other work, and the almost disrespectful lack of denouement in the finale left me wondering why they'd even created such an elaborate and compelling narrative architecture in the first place.

"The external world and the inner world are...only two sides of the same fabric, in which the threads and all forces and all events, of all forms of consciousness and their objects, are woven into an inseparable net of endless, mutually connected relations." -Lama Anagarika Govinda

What about the actual finale itself? At risk of sounding absurdly obvious, the finale was filled with mytho-logical and religious symbolism, most, though not all of it, Christian. Jack represented a Christ-figure, complete with wounds (or at least dripping blood) on his hands and feet, stab in the side, who eventually is reunited with his (the?) father (named Christian Shepherd, no less) in a happy little church where all of the people who've ever meant anything to Jack are all there waiting for him so they can all be ushered into the light. (Does this make Jacob like Holy Spirit? I thought he was supposed to represent, you know, Jacob.) The power of the island, while never explained, seemed to represent some sort of forbidden knowledge, a forbidden fruit which, if eaten, er, turns you into a smoke monster. The last season even came with its own holy grail, drinking from which gave one the powers of Jacob. Despite this very Christian interpretation, the reunion in the church in the final scene existed somewhere in the borderland between schmaltzy multi-denominational inclusiveness (note the cross, crescent, Star of David, Dharma wheel, Om, and Taijitu on the stained-glass window) and subjective "it-doesn't-matter-what-you-believe-in-as-long-as-you-have-faith." Even more galling was that the writers had been promising the theorists since season one that the overall twist was not that survivors were in purgatory, and lo and behold, the flash-sideways universe turned out to be a sort of purgatory where the castaways were required to atone for their past misdeeds (by reliving them properly?) before remembering their actual lives and being ushered into the next world. (OK, technically the writers were telling the truth, since the theory floating around was that the island was purgatory, which in fact turned out to be little more than a Hitchcockian MacGuffin). The purgatory theory actually works much better, not in the Abrahamic context, but the Dharmic one, in which the castaways are all part of the same jati of souls connected for eternity - and through multiple lives - and are returning to the bardo of Tibetan Buddhism, a liminal or transitional state between life and the next stage: luminosity of the true nature of the universe followed by karmic oneness with that nature. (This also provides another interesting LOST allusion, since the most famous English translation of the Bardo Thodol or The Tibetan Book of the Dead, was made by Ram Dass, nee Richard Alpert.) Of course, in the Buddhist tradition, since the castaways were all deeply flawed individuals, they would likely be reincarnated where they would all meet up again in seemingly coincidental ways made possible by some sort of cosmic synchronicity. But this is just one interpretation. The point is that the island reality, in the very words of Desmond Hume in the finale, "doesn't really matter." Unfortunately, it mattered to a lot of us...

"Is it not time that Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once?"
-Carl Jung

I'm having a hard time describing my feelings about why I so disliked the way things wrapped up without sounding anti-religious. I'm honestly not anti-religion, I simply cannot abide when people cannot explain something and they attribute it to God. This is more insulting to religion, as it relegates the concept of God to a mere epiphenomenal explanation of the increasing smaller details of existence. I think religion, in its symbolic and psychologically functional way, is extraordinarily important, but when literalism and dogmatism become the foundation for belief, it undermines everything that makes faith important in the first place. What made the ending of LOST so infuriating is that the writers had heretofore done such a great a job of demonstrating the tensions between faith and reason, while not really favoring one over the other. They simply acknowledged that these interpretations coexisted in an uneasy way, that the human condition necessitates reasonable men having to come to grips with the irrational, and men of faith having to deal with doubt. With the finale, the writers reneged on this approach, and said "faith trumps all." As one blogger wrote, "Do you want to believe in the supernatural or in science? That's the point they've always been trying to make. It doesn't matter if you believe in science or faith, or both, just believe in something. We can never know for sure why things are the way they are, we can only put them in the context of our own experiences and understand it the best we can." Maybe... Perhaps I'm being too hard on this show. I'm trying really hard not to let one episode ruin, what to me, was the second best show of the decade (behind Arrested Development). I really did like the bulk of the series, even if it did get clunky and unfulfilling in the final season. After some reflection, the flash-sideways, purgatory universe reminded me a bit more of the nexus from Star Trek: Generations, a place of great joy where we got free do-overs for those thing we'd done wrong in life. But as Kirk said of this purgatory, contradicting both Desmond and Christian, "None of this matters. Because it isn't real." Indeed. LOST promised us the cosmic importance of the power of myth; what it delivered was hackneyed bromides on the power of faith.

The Decline of Scholasticism and the Rise of Humanism: Late Medieval Thought and the Coming Renaissance

That Scholasticism was the primary mode of academic discourse in the medieval university system is an understatement. From the early 12th till at least mid 14th century, it was the only system within which reputable scholars and academics aired their ideas and theories. Just as the Church held a spiritual monopoly over Western Christendom, so too did Scholasticism, combined primarily with Thomist philosophy, hold sway over the scholarly mind, and this entrenchment, over time, led to a gradual erosion of original thinking until by the mid-14th century a serious crisis of stagnation entered Western thought. As we have seen, the "Latin Averroists" along with Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas managed to propel Aristotle to the forefront of the philosophical dialogue, and even though his ascension hit numerous snags along the way (being banned in 1210 and severely restricted in 1231), his preeminence, especially among the Dominican order and its followers, became obvious by mid-century. The inertness of learning did not come about purely because of the rigidity of the Scholastic method so much as by the tyranny exerted over the minds of the period by an authority which was never to be contradicted. Numerous scholars spent decades systematizing and synthesizing Aristotle's works until at last a body of ideas existed that held up both the revealed truths of the Church and the observed truths of nature. But nobody is perfect, and chinks began to appear in The Philosopher's armor as scholars began to find out that the ancient scholar was not always correct and some ideas could still be interpreted, even in spite of the synthesis, as heretical. It became evident that new paths of knowledge had to be explored if any advancement could be made. What was to result over the course of about a century and a half were two dynamically different modes of thought: one which sought to divorce faith and reason and one that brought a more secular and more humanistic approach to Western philosophy.

The status of "mandatory" conferred upon Aristotle in 1255 was to be a short-lived one despite the fact that his works were now readily accessible and nearly sacred in Western Christendom. While Aquinas had been rather reserved in his application of Aristotelian logic to Christian theology, some near contemporary scholars dared to go further, stating that Aristotle's philosophy proved such diverse ideas as the unity of all thought, coalescing in a godhead (such as Siger de Brabant, 1235-1282) and the idea that the individual soul was not immortal but that all souls merged into one upon death (Boetius of Dacia, 1230-1285). The next major test of the Aristotelian corpus came just 22 years later in 1277 when more charges of heresy came up relating to Aristotle's work. However, this time it was not the Philosopher himself, but merely his works that were to be held up for scrutiny. Rather than putting a blanket ban on him, Pope John XXI commissioned the Bishop Etienne Tempiers of Orleans to review Aristotle's writings and bring to his attention any precepts that specifically contradicted the Holy Scriptures. Fortunately for Tempiers, Thomas Aquinas had completed his great compilation of Aristotle fewer than four years prior. In less than six weeks, the bishop brought forth no fewer than 219 propositions which he claimed should be banned. These were taken into consideration by the Pope, and he upheld Tempiers' findings. This prohibition, unlike the one of 1210, would not be as far reaching and ended up applying only to the University of Paris. Many other universities used this to their advantage and several attracted students who would otherwise have gone to Paris, boasting that their university still allowed his teachings. Still, the effect was that some of Aristotle's thoughts would be forever tainted with a brand of heresy and scholars would have to tread into Aristotelian waters at their own risk. And in spite of the ban, the University of Paris continued to be the foremost theological school in Europe. Far from being an inhibition on the minds of medieval scholars, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the hold this philosopher exerted over them began to give way to a more open-ended way to reach new realms of knowledge.

One such way that this new academic freedom led the learned was in the direction of skepticism. This was not so much skepticism in the modern sense as it was in the a skepticism specifically of the entire enterprise of Aristotelian synthesis. Several major thinkers of the late 13th and early 14th century attempted to scrap Aristotle altogether, hearkening back to more Augustinian and Platonic notions of the self, the soul, and the metaphysical nature of the universe. John Duns Scotus (1266-1308), for example, claimed that since the human being was a perfect being made imperfect through sin, we could never truly trust our senses empirically, thus, the only sure path of knowledge was faith in revealed scripture. This did not , as some have suggested, mean that Duns Scotus advocated a complete denial of reason, but that the sphere of reason had no place being used in the arguments raging in the theological arena. This mode of thought was particular to the Francisan order, which found its philosophical inspiration from the likes of Augustine and the Middle Platonists rather than Aristotle and the Averroist, but by the early 14th century, the gap between faith and reason was certainly widening.

It was William of Occam, however, who put together a coherent argument against the use of the Scholastic method, and his critique attempted to completely overturn the technique of linking theological premises through reasoned analysis. Scholasticism had been about plurality--combining multifaceted and disparate ideas into one congruous form. Occam turned this philosophy on its head, stating that "plurality need not be posited without necessity." He viewed all of this reconciliation as unnecessary and posited that Scholastics relied on too many assumptions to link between Aristotle to Scripture. The best theory was the one that required the fewest amount of leaps in logic to validate it. This very simple yet profoundly powerful thesis was an enunciation of what would come to be called "Occam's Razor" or "the law of parsimony." According to Occam, the simplest explanation was always the best one--and of course, for Occam, the simplest explanation for nearly every tenet within the Aristotelian corpus was that God was in control of all action. Occam promoted the idea of the absolute power of God at the expense of almost any other reason-based explanation. This was the greatest affront to Scholasticism in that Scholastics, at their core, believed that one could through reason become closer to God. Occam did not deny the importance of reason, but stated, as Duns Scotus and others had, that it had no place in theology. This is an essential divorce between faith and reason that is still with us to this day, though it would not reach its full peak until the Scientific Revolution. The great irony of Occam's most lasting contribution to philosophy is that, today, the premise of Occam's Razor is often used to disprove the existence of God.

But what of the other direction philosophy was heading during the close of the Middle Ages? For all their differences in opinion, Duns Scotus and Occam, the two most towering figures of the early 14th century, were essentially still working within the Scholastic framework. The modes of thought that would begin developing to the south in Italy, laying the seeds of the Renaissance which would unleash itself upon Europe beginning in the 15th century, were trending in an entirely different direction. Philosophy in general was losing a great deal of consistency in the Later Middle Ages, as it was interrupted by what Barbara Tuchman has called the "calamitous 14th century" which was racked by peasant revolts, religious upheavals, a sharp rise in mysticism, the long and bloody Hundred Year's War, and most of all the Black Plague. The unity of the previous few centuries was long gone and people seemed to seek comfort and consistency in a plethora of areas. What happened in Italy is a subject for another philosophy lecture, but in many ways its roots are firmly planted in the Middle Ages. In terms of philosophy, there is one figure that truly stands out as the early Renaissance champion of a new secular and humanistic outlook on life: Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374).

Petrarch very quickly became disenfranchised by contemporary university professors who insisted on reading the glosses and commentaries of ancient texts as if they were the equal of the original and he complained that the eloquence of the original Latin and Greek (though he knew no Greek) were too muddied and vulgarized by the later writers. By simply asserting that the original texts be held in the highest regard and by demanding access to the unadulterated ones (as much as was possible) Petrarch began the process of rediscovery for which the coming period was named. This was a literal rediscovery: Petrarch became a papal secretary and physically scoured libraries across Europe looking for old and long forgotten texts--and for this, he is thought to be personally responsible for the discovery of no fewer than 10 histories of Livy, several orations of Cicero, and at least one text of Archimedes. What resulted was a much more human-oriented philosophy that emphasized a study of the arts and humanities in their original form, a rejection of the authority of the universities (including Aristotle), and the individual freedom of scholars to discover at will. It is also at this time that the first recorded uses of the term "Middle Ages" appears to describe the preceding period (from medium aevum, Latin for "in-between-age," coined in the early 1400s by humanist scholar Flavio Biondo). This was a disparaging term, implying that the thousand years "in between" the fall of Rome and the rebirth of its cultural, literary, and philosophical greatness in 15th century was essentially a time of little importance and learning. But, of course, the Middle Ages, though crude, were hardly "dark" and the illuminating light of academia shined on even in difficult times. And the modern word, thought to be so influenced by the humanism and secularism of the Renaissance, was in a very tangible way, influenced as much as by the Medieval period as those which followed it.

The Aristotelian Reconciliation: Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas

The primary goal of 12th and 13th century Scholasticism was to reconcile the natural philosophy of Aristotle with revealed truth of Christian scripture. The impact of Christian thought on the philosophy of the Middle Ages need not be mentioned, for not only was it the most important in terms of influence, it was indeed the entire framework within which medieval philosophers perceived the world. However, beginning in the early 12th century, a new force which had hitherto been unknown or at least obscure enough to escape the notice of all but those scholars lucky enough to have access to his work, began to exert its influence on Western thought. Much like the Bible, Aristotle needs no introduction and if the specifics of his philosophy do not precede him, his reputation does. Throughout the course of the 12th and 13th century, he would become so popular and so emulated that he came to be known simply as Ille Philosophus, "The Philosopher," and this is in large part due to the works of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, who were able to resolve many of the differences between and synthesize both the corpus of Christian thought and the writings of the ancient thinker.

The path from obscurity to ubiquity for Aristotle's works in the Middle Ages was an arduous one and more complex than can be attempted here, but we may briefly track its movement. Aristotelian philosophy, like most other intellectual pursuits, gradually faded from the collective consciousness of Western Europe following the fall of the Roman Empire as there was a general dearth of scholars to carry on his work and the more academic nature of his writings did not lend itself to study in the generally difficult life led by most from 500-1000 CE. As we have seen, there were areas where his works were preserved: Boethius' translations formed the backbone of later Latin translations and copyists and scribes in the British Isles and in the Byzantine Empire preserved a fair amount in later centuries as well. But likely the greatest location for the preservation of Aristotelian knowledge was the Islamic world, which, if the Appropriation Theory is correct, managed to add to and improve. The greatest of these was the mid-12th century Muslim Spaniard Averroes (Ibn Rushd), who is often regarded as the founder of secular thought in Western Europe. Among Averroes' many accomplishments include his massively influential commentary on the writings of Aristotle, written in 1160, in which he simplified and summarized Aristotle's philosophy, made editorial comments on them to elucidate their oftentimes difficult concepts, and attempted to tease out the meanings behind Aristotle that may be conciliatory to the Islamic religion. What resulted was a sort of medieval Cliff's Notes version of the works of Aristotle that were read across the Islamic world and soon found their way into the hands of eager European scholars. Averroes was so influential that, for a time, Scholastics who were engaged in the process of synthesizing Aristotle with Christianity were known as Averroists.

To Medieval scholars, the most important ideas to be found in Aristotle's works were the ones related to metaphysics and natural philosophy. While too broad to detail here, some of his more notable theories include the concept of the four element (earth, water, air, and fire) composition of matter and their correspondent qualities, humors, zodiacal signs, etc.; the idea of nature as a "plenum," meaning that one could not reach the smallest portion of matter (the word atom comes from the Greek a tomos meaning "uncuttable"); the sphericity of the earth and the cosmos and the idea of a "natural place" for all elements (earth sank to the center, water on top of it, air rose above these two, and fire ascended to the heavens); the perfect circular motion of heavenly bodies and the difference in the nature of physics below the orbit of the moon (the sublunar sphere) and above the orbit of the moon (the supralunar sphere); and the logical hierarchy of "causes" in nature, among many, many others. It became clear early on, that not all of Aristotle's ideas meshed well with Christian doctrine, but Aristotle's authority was already too great and religious figures of the day likely could not have passed laws forbidding his teachings if they had wanted to. But try they did: in 1210 in Paris a council of bishops forbade the teaching of his works in the French university system and in 1231 in Rome Pope Gregory IX ordered a "clean-up" of Aristotle's works so they would become more palatable to medieval Christian sensibilities. The most notable of "The Philosopher's" beliefs that disagreed with Christianity included his assertion that the cosmos was eternal and had no beginning or end (this denied the Creation as well as the Apocalypse), that the soul and the body are interminably linked (this denied the immortal soul and the prospects for salvation and afterlife), and that miracles were impossible (this, of course, denied God's will). This is where Albertus and Thomas Aquinas enter the picture.

Albertus Magnus (c. 1200-1280) was a German Dominican scholar who was the first to attempt a Christian synthesis of Aristotle's ideas utilizing the same format as Averroes. Albertus, who would later be made a Doctor of the Church (one of only 33 people to hold this title in history), had a lifelong thirst for knowledge that never seems to have been satiated and ranged from theology and philosophy to alchemy and astrology, physics and metaphysics to metallurgy and phrenology. During his lifetime, he managed to compile the majority of Aristotle's known works, make insightful comments upon them as they related to the Christian world view, and preserve his work in a relatively complete form upon which later scholars could draw. However, Albertus is generally considered to have failed in truly creating a systematized Aristotelian corpus which could pass muster among the Church powers who insisted on a thoroughly Christianized philosophy. Albertus' greatest contributions to history were not to be his writings on Aristotle but his advocacy of an experimental method and of a compatibility between science and religion--perhaps broader realizations of his attempts with Aristotle. It is fitting that the scholar who succeeded in this more specific and more laborious task was Albertus Magnus' greatest student, Thomas Aquinas.

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) was originally from the country-side around Naples and the son of a minor noble who wanted Thomas to enter a Benedictine monastery as his uncle had done. Thomas' early education was at the state-sponsored University in Naples where he developed an early interest in theology. He was more receptive to Dominican ideals as they had placed a greater emphasis on empiricism and rationality and this eventually led him to Paris where he received instruction from the imminent Albertus Magnus. Where Thomas was able to succeed his master's failures was in the great organizational capacity and originality in his thinking. Thomas regarded Aristotle, not necessarily as an ancient pagan philosopher, but as a brilliant thinker who had the Christian-perceived misfortune of being born before the salvation of Christ. And he viewed Christianity not as an island of meaning, new and disparate from other philosophy, but as a completion and fulfillment of the knowledge originally, if only partially, realized by Aristotle. Aquinas was the first to distance himself from the Augustinian viewpoint of deduction: Augustine had explained everything by taking what was known universally (the existence of God, the salvation of Christ, the path to Heaven, etc.) and derived particulars from this. Thomas, on the other hand, using the quintessentially Scholastic tool of reason, began with what could be discerned rationally among particular cases (a particular murder being evil, arriving at a conception of God after reviewing his individual creations of plants and animals, etc.) and used these to arrive at universal conclusions. His verdict on Aristotle was, essentially, that reason and faith, being separate but complementary, could be used in service of one another--reason had helped Scholastic philosophers arrive at proofs and arguments in favor of the existence of God, and faith was now being used to contend that, as far as Aristotle's natural philosophy was concerned, it could not truly contradict revealed truth if the validity of his ideas were discovered in nature. For was not nature the very dominion of God and the expression of His will at creation? Aquinas would follow Aristotle very closely in this respect, and this would lead him on the path to reworking most of the Philosopher's ideas under the illumination of the light of Christianity.

His greatest work in this endeavor was his Summa Theologica, which would contain the entirety of his new philosophical system. Written between 1265 and 1274, it argued nearly every major point of Christian theology with appeal to reason, including especially the existence of God; the Creation; Man and his purpose; Christ and His life, death and resurrection; and salvation. The work is especially known for its enunciation of "The Five Ways" or quinquae viae, five arguments for the existence of God that have a certain Aristotelian ring to them. The first of the Five Ways can be, and has been, read as the most astonishing example of Aristotelian reconciliation in particular and with Scholastic logic in general. The First Way reads, "God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or matter and form." Aristotle had, as we have seen, argued for the eternity of the universe, but had conceded that if there was a beginning, it would necessitate the existence of a "prime mover" or a "first cause"--something that got the ball rolling. Aquinas linked these ideas thusly: To cause change is to bring into being that which had hitherto not existed and this can be done only by something that already existed (as fire is needed to cause burning in matter); a thing causing this change must remain constant itself during the change if the result is to be constant; therefore anything in the process of changing was caused by something prior to it; there must be a terminal point as there will be no original cause of changes if we do not; this first cause must be God. These words are essentially Aristotle's, with the phrase "prime mover" changed to "God." This is Thomist Scholasticism and Aristotelian reconciliation at its finest.

Thanks to Aquinas, not only was Aristotle reinstated in the European university system in the Middle Ages, it was made mandatory in 1255. His separation of natural philosophy from theology made the study of both easily compatible and this is viewed as a proto-attempt to reconcile science and religion. Aquinas himself, however, would leave his greatest work unfinished as he died while writing it in 1274. While celebrating Mass, Aquinas had a mystical vision which he would share with no one, but it obviously had a profound effect on him which changed him deeply. "I cannot go on," he said. "All that I have written seems like so much straw to me [mihi videtur ut palea] compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me." Aquinas died four months later. Modern observers believe he may have had a stroke or a nervous breakdown. Others that he received a mystical vision from God, providing him with an instant communion with the ultimate reality beyond logical comprehension, which no words could possibly attempt to describe. Whatever the case, even despite Thomas Aquinas' refusal to complete his opus, his new system of philosophy would dominate the remainder of medieval thought and would not find a replacement until the Protestant reformation 250 years later and the revival of Neoplatonism in the Renaissance. And he would almost single-handedly make Aristotle available for intellectual consumption on a broad scale for the remainder of the Middle Ages.

Peter Abelard and Heloise: The Problem of Universals, the Rise of Scholasticism, the School of Nominalism, and One Horrific Castration

Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was a Scholastic philosopher and theologian, originally from Palet in Brittany, known primarily for his controversial views regarding the concept of universals, his instrumental role in the formation of the Scholastic method and the school of nominalism, his secret love affair with his female student Héloise, and the punishment of castration which followed. He is regarded by many scholars as the greatest logician of the Middle Ages and, in that role, as an essential founder of the technique of medieval philosophy known as Scholasticism, in which the primary raison d'etre became the reconciliation of Greco-Roman philosophy (primarily Aristotle) with Christian theology.

Abelard is given credit for the creation of the school of thought known as nominalism, a proposed solution to the problem of universals, which replaced the school of realism then in vogue in European universities. The school of realism, as opposed to the modern definition of the term, asserted that ideal concepts such as "love" or "virtue" referred to "forms" in the Platonic sense and that these terms were independent of the physical world, existing only as ideals. These ideals were known in medieval times as universals, which, according to one succinct scholar of medieval philosophy, is "a functional word expressing the combined image of a word's common association within the mind," or, perhaps even more succinctly, if less descriptive, an "ideal that exists solely within the realm of ideas." In other words, a green sweater, a blade of grass, and a Green Bay Packers uniform all exhibit qualities of "green-ness" even if "green-ness" itself exists only as an ideal. Nominalists went one step further, saying that universals were not only not dependent on physical reality, but had no real existence whatsoever other than in the realm of the human mind as a way of thinking and talking about abstract concepts. This may seem a trivial difference to the modern reader, but this was vastly important to medieval Christian theologians as Christian discourse contained numerous references to abstract concepts such as Heaven, Hell, Grace, and the Trinity. If universals were real only insomuch as they were necessary for humans to linguistically express them, did this not also mean that essential Christian necessities such as the aforementioned concepts were also unreal? Abelard's controversy only begins here.

Abelard was a prolific writer during his university years and his works were, by medieval standards, among the most lively and original works of philosophy of the early 12th century. His most famous and enduring work is known as Sic et Non, or Yes and No (also sometimes translated as Thus and Otherwise or For and Against) and it was to be used as the standard scholastic textbook for much of the Middle Ages. Written around 1123, it affirmed that any dialectical or logical truth can only be regarded as true when all sides of an argument have been presented. The Scholastic method developed only a few generations before Abelard, primarily from Islamic philosophers in the East and by the Bishop Anselm of Canterbury in the West, and Abelard's work Sic et Non developed a coherent organizational procedure. Scholasticism, as mentioned earlier, was primarily concerned with the reconciliation of Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy, and the method bequeathed to this institution by Abelard was a technique that sought specifically to use reason and logic to resolve these apparent contradictions between sources which were argued from both sides, theoretically, with an open mind. The writing consisted of essentially arguing the pros and cons (or "Yeses and Nos") of various contradictory issues of the day. Abelard is quoted in it as saying "by doubting, we come to inquiry." This ran counter to Anselm's and the Church's proclamation, fides quaerens intellectum, of first having faith and then coming to reason (see The Ontological Argument Revisited). For this, Abelard was regularly rebuked. Among Abelard's many other controversial assertions include his theory of sin, in which he argued true sin was in intention rather than action, which also ran counter to the predominant Catholic teaching of the day. Abelard also contended that one could only truly confess sins to God and no other (earning Abelard retroactive admiration by some Protestants), which would get him into entanglements with the papacy, since Catholic doctrine gave the monopoly of confession to priests, and this sidestepping of Church authority was seen as blasphemous and politically dangerous. In fact, Abelard's works were officially condemned by the Church twice: once at a council in Soissons in 1121 over his denial of a universal of the Holy Trinity and again in Sens in 1140. This latter one was conducted by Pope Innocent II himself, at the behest of the mightily influential Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian monk who had been instrumental in preaching the First Crusade, and who was viewed as resoundingly anti-rationalist and anti-skeptic. Later historians would interpret Abelard and Bernard as mortal enemies.

Out of all this controversy, however, it is likely his relationship with his most famous student Héloise that earned him the most infamy at the time and the most fame in later centuries. Though Héloise is mostly famous due to her association with Abelard, she was a great scholar in her own right, being proficient in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. She came from lower nobility in France and her uncle Fulbert managed to secure Abelard as a private tutor for the precocious young academic. If the contemporary sources are to be believed, they instantly and passionately fell in love. Due to the circumstances of his place in their household and the impropriety of the tutor/student relationship, their love was kept a secret, though it seems that it was secret from no one except Héloise's naive uncle. Unfortunately for them, a furious Fulbert eventually did find out and the two were forced to flee. Abelard, who still hoped for advancement within the Church, urged a secret marriage, but Héloise turned down his proposals, claiming that it would do too much to destroy Abelard's reputation should word reach his superiors. Soon thereafter, Héloise became pregnant with their child (whom they would name Astrolabe, after the recent astronomical invention) and she conceded to the marriage. Fulbert could not be kept in the dark forever, and when Héloise flatly denied their involvement, Fulbert took this under the assumption that he had deserted her, infuriating him even more. Eventually, he dispatched a group of knights to Abelard's bedchamber where he was tied down and slowly castrated as punishment for his licentious behavior. This effectively put an end to their relationship, and Abelard retired to St. Denis monastery until poverty forced him to resume teaching, at Paraclete, under the rank of abbot, while Héloise continued her life as a private scholar in a convent in Paris. Abelard would never again enjoy the fame and eminence he once held, and would spend much of the rest of his life moving from monastery to monastery. The two would never see each other again, though they would maintain a correspondence through letters for the rest of their lives, which many have regarded as among the most romantic love letters in the Western canon.

Abelard's legacy is one of controversy from beginning to end--from his tumultuous academic life to the tragic end of his affair with Héloise. But it is also a legacy of the advancement of human knowledge and the stirrings of free thought emerging out of a fairly intolerant and traditionalist society. Abelard's career can be seen as philosophically paradigmatic in that he believed in the essential unity of thought, reason, skepticism, individual intellectual interpretation, and emotion and intuition as a way of understanding and having faith. Abelard came to represent the excitement and aggressiveness with which Scholasticism would tackle the philosophical problems of the Middle Ages, and he sowed an optimism in the human spirit and intellectual faculties. For this, and for his undying affection for his beloved Héloise, he is one of the most romanticized figure from the period. Indeed, in later centuries, is life and love would be fodder for numerous poets:

"How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!/ The world forgetting by the world
forgot./ Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!/ Each pray'r accepted and each wish resigned."
--Alexander Pope, from "Eloisa to Abelard" (1717)

The Ontological Argument Revisited

The Ontological Argument, first proposed by the Islamic scholar Avicenna, but made popular by the archbishop of Canterbury Anselm of Bec (c. 1033-1109) in the late 11th century in his philosophical tracts the Monologion and Proslogion, is the metaphysical premise that purports to prove the existence of God through rational means. At its core, the argument states that God is "that than which nothing greater can be conceived" or, put another way, that God is a necessary assumption in the nature of the universe and that as a necessary being, God is something that can not be thought not to exist. Anselm begins with the premise that "that than which nothing greater can be thought can be thought" and that "if that than which nothing greater can be thought can be thought, then it exists in reality", therefore, "that than which nothing greater can be conceived exists in reality." This convoluted language oftentimes obscures the true nature of the argument and foundation on which Anslem's belief rested, and it is perhaps easier to begin with the man Anselm and his beliefs before attempting to understand the argument.

Anslem is often considered the father of Scholasticism, a medieval technique in which logic and reason were used in service of Christian theology, and the formulation of the Ontological Argument is considered the primary early example of this modus operandi in action. Obviously, the Middle Ages was a time in which the Christian institution dominated thought, and at the time the theory was somewhat controversial, primarily because many of the more conservative churchmen of the day considered it a type of blasphemy to attempt any "proof" whatsoever as to the existence of God, claiming faith alone was sufficient. This argument also helped to lead Anselm to perhaps his most famous statement of faith and one which had a considerable amount of influence on medieval Christian philosophy and still exerts influence to this day: "Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam. Nam et hoc credo, quia, nisi credidero, non intelligam"--"Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this too I believe, that unless I first believe, I shall not understand." Building from Augustine, Anslem contended that no true understanding of any philosophical topic was possible without faith in God, for faith was not the end of understanding but the beginning, and without this foundational grounding, one could never be intellectually fulfilled. Anselm's motto, fides quaerens intellectum ("faith seeking understanding"), implies a priority on faith and that a love of God will, out of necessity, lead to a greater wisdom of Him and of the universe. This has remained, in Catholicism, a particularly important point, that belief should come first and foremost and that, given orthodox consideration, metaphysical and ontological understanding will follow.

The theory is, of course, not without its critics and almost immediately after it inception, it was attacked vociferously by the the famous Gaunilo de Montmourtiers. Anslem, in his formulation of the argument, had quoted the first verses of Psalms 14 and 53, which state that "the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" and Gaunilo poignantly titled his rebuttal In Behalf of the Fool. In it, he argued that, simply because he could envision the most perfect island in existence, this did not mean it did exist. Simply imagining an existence did not make it so, and this entire premise ran counter to Anslem's, and many others', prevailing notions of faith. Nevertheless, the Ontological Argument remained an edifice of Christian philosophy relatively unscathed by Gaunilo's criticisms for two centuries until is was rejected by the even more influential Christian Scholastic Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas rejected the argument on the grounds that God is never specifically defined in the argument and thus only those who have already conceived of God in the same way may be convinced by Anselmm's argument. The argument, and the rebuttals, have since then undergone heavy criticism, especially in the early modern era by Rene Descartes, Gottfreid Leibnitz, and most fervently by Immanuel Kant, the originator of the phrase "ontological argument" (the medievals simply called it argumenta Anselmi, or "Anselm's argument"). Descartes, faintly echoing the Platonic concept of forms, reaffirmed the argument on the basis of certain ideas inherent in the structure of the universe. For example, we cannot envision a triangle whose interior angles do not add up to a sum of 180 degrees, just as the existence of the cosmos cannot exist without some originator, who may be defined as God. Leibnitz attacked this view by claiming that perfection was not analyzable and, much like Aquinas, claimed that the inconsistency of the definition of God, or perfection, rendered this argument meaningless. It is Kant, however, who is considered by many philosophers to have laid the argument to rest for good with his rebuttal of the idea of "existence" as a property to begin with. In short, Kant cries foul on the basis of circular logic: since Anselm has already endowed God with the property of existence, his argument proves nothing and he merely repeats himself by presuming to prove existence through the faculty of existence itself. And, in defining existence as a predicate, Kant takes to task the moral and subjective claims that existence is somehow more perfect than nonexistence.

Modern philosophers have added to the debate, but it has been less in the purely metaphysical realm and more in the validity of the argument itself. The Ontological Argument is regarded by its critics, especially those in the scientific fields, as the penultimate a priori argument, or argument based on rationalization independent of empirical experience. In short, logic can be, and has been, employed to prove anything, but without evidence, these arguments amount to nothing more than suppositions and word games. Perhaps this is why so many scientists have a natural disdain for philosophers, who often arrive at truth simply "by thinking about it." In any case, the Ontological Argument was highly influential in the Central Middle Ages and was essential in creating the ontological branch of metaphysics, dominant for nearly a thousand years, which remains among the most studied fields in philosophy.

Boethius and the Consolation of Philosophy

The Consolation of Philosophy, a philosophical treatise written in 524 by the former Roman consul Boethius while awaiting execution in prison, is often viewed as the most influential non-religious work of the entire Middle Ages. Boethius, a Roman of noble birth, served the the remnants of the Roman state for a time following the Ostrogothic takeover of the kingdom of Odoacer, who had deposed the final Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476, effectively dissolving the imperial system of government. Boethius and his family, which was of ancient Roman patrician stock, held great distinction in the early 6th century and the Ostrogothic king Theodoric employed Boethius to be the magister officiorum, or master of government and court services. However, in 523, Boethius was accused by Theodoric of conspiring with the Byzantine emperor Justin I to overthrow his regime and reinstate a Roman to the throne in the West. It is also possible that Boethius was being punished, not for treason, but for religious reasons. Theodoric, who was an Arian Christian, as were most Ostrogoths, grew alarmed at the eastern power because Justin I was a Catholic, as many of the Roman aristocracy were. Boethius, who may have been a pagan or a Catholic, could have been a casuality of this relgious strife. The source evidence is scant and the guilt or innocence of Boethius can likely never be settled; nevertheless, Boethius was imprisoned for one year and was executed following excruciating torture. During his year of imprisonment, Boethius wrote what is considered his capstone achievement, The Consolation of Philosophy.

The Consolation of Philosophy follows the Greek example of a dialogue, much as Aristotle and Plato had written, and the work takes the form of five books--part lyrical, part prose (the Menippean satire)--in which Boethius engages in a philosophical discussion with the Lady Philosophy. They discuss, among other things, fate vs. free will and the the idea of predestination, the nature of justice and virtue, and the question of why bad men prosper and go unpunished while good men suffer (an issue obviously close to Boethius' heart). Among the more notable and influential moments of the piece, is the concept of the "Wheel of Fate" which generally depicted a wheel with many spokes, with a king sitting atop the wheel and progressively lower ranks of people populating the spokes, until we reach the poor beggars, prisoners, and those of destitute fate at the bottom. Boethius reminds us that at any time the wheel may turn, sinking those of high birth into the pit of woeful fate (as had happened to himself) while the lowly rise to the top. While this notion had its roots in earlier Greco-Roman philosophy (particularly that of Cicero) and had seen cruder representation in various Germanic mythologies, the eloquence and depth with which Boethius elucidated the concept proved extremely appealing to early medieval philosophy and the parallels between it and the Christian concept of the "meek inheriting the earth" are easy to surmise. Indeed, Boethius, though he is usually studied in the medieval context, is generally seen as the last of the great classical authors, and his coupling of essential classical and Christian concepts, mirrors the cultural shift from Greco-Roman to medieval occurring during his lifetime. The Consolation of Philosophy ends with Boethius fittingly consoled by the Lady Philosophy with the idea, not of divine judgment, as this desire for retribution would not be virtuous, but with the image that all things that happen happen out of necessity, and that "no man can ever be truly secure unless he has been forsaken by Fortune."

The posterity of Boethius lies not just in this work, but in the long-lasting contributions he made to Latin scholarship. While The Consolation of Philosophy took shape only in his final year of life, his life's work was the translation of most of the major works by Aristotle and Plato from Greek into Latin, and in many places, his were the only translations available until the 12th century, nearly 600 years later. And, in the medieval university, which would not emerge until the late 11th century (500 years after his death), the basic curriculum of the "seven liberal arts" was drawn directly from his works: the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic or logic included the essential techniques medieval students were required to conquer in order to graduate and, for the more advanced students, the quadrivium of music, astronomy, geometry, and arithmetic followed. Boethius' works, and especially The Consolation of Philosophy, were among the most translated works of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, undergoing translations in English in different periods by such luminaries as King Alfred the Great (Old English), Geoffrey Chaucer (Middle English) and even Queen Elizabeth I (modern English) who counted it among her favorite works. Due to the extraordinary circumstances of its composition, the masterful bridging of pagan and Christian concepts, and the honest humanity in Boethius' reconciliation with his reality and his fate, The Consolation of Philosophy remains a philosophical work of the ages.