From the blog of the Journal of the History of Ideas:
Back to Scholasticism?
In Europe, scholasticism was the dominant mode of teaching for at least five centuries. Yet all we tend to hear about it is how useless it was. It has come down to us as a joke and a warning: do not let your learned knowledge ossify into self-referential learned doggerel.
I first encountered this depiction of scholasticism in François Rabelais’ sixteenth-century novel Gargantua,where the learned theologian Janotus de Bragmardo is sent to bargain with the eponymous protagonist for the return of the bells of Notre-Dame, which our hero had purloined in a previous chapter. Bragmardo’s speech reaches a climax with this gem of a sentence:
Hem, hem, hem, haikhash! For I prove unto you, that you should give me them. Ego sic argumentor. Omnis bella bellabilis in bellerio bellando, bellans, bellativo, bellare facit, bellabiliter bellantes. Parisius habet bellas. Ergo gluc, Ha, ha, ha.
Omnis bella bellabilis in bellerio bellando—there is a nursery-rhyme catchiness to it, which has made it stick in my memory for a decade and a half. You do not need to speak Latin to understand that this is not how Latin is supposed to be spoken. What does it mean? Nothing, really. The learned man plays around with the language, creating a sentence that almost makes sense—every bell-able bell belling in the belfry—expressing little except that he is familiar with Latin declensions. In his book, Rabelais lets this oration be met with laughter.
A very different emotion characterizes current-day philosopher Alexander Douglas’ description of peer-reviewed journal articles:
During my doctorate, exposure to peer-reviewed journal articles nearly put me off the whole idea of philosophy. Having been philosophically raised on the exciting narrative that began with Descartes shining a ray of clear light through the accumulated fog of Scholastic decadence, I was disheartened to discover a whole industry churning out reams of (largely unread) philosophical literature so dull and lifeless it would shame the most pedantic monk of the darkest age.
Douglas’ tone is tongue-in-cheek, but the image he sketches—the brilliant light of reason shearing through centuries’ worth of scholastic dust—is a recognizable one. Many of us were raised on that same narrative....
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