Most Famous Scholasticism Philosophers

Scholasticism is the dominant philosophical and theological method of medieval European universities from roughly the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries. It is characterized by careful logical analysis, the use of dialectic to resolve apparent contradictions between authoritative sources, and the systematic integration of classical philosophy, especially Aristotle, with Christian theology. The Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas is the most ambitious and influential product of the scholastic method. Other major scholastic figures include Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. Scholastic logic and metaphysics shaped Western intellectual life until the rise of early modern philosophy in the seventeenth century.

Philosophers in this tradition

Jacques Maritain 1882 – 1973 · French
Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher and one of the architects of the twentieth-century revival of Thomism. After studies at the Sorbonne and a conversion to Catho...
Joseph Pieper 1904 – 1997 · German
Joseph Pieper was a German Catholic philosopher and one of the most widely read twentieth-century interpreters of Thomas Aquinas. Long-time professor at Munster, he combined car...
Etienne Gilson 1884 – 1978 · French
Etienne Gilson was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy, the leading figure of twentieth-century neo-Thomism. He devoted his career to recovering medieval philosophy...
Peter Abelard 1079 – 1142 · French
Peter Abelard was a French philosopher, logician, and theologian and one of the most original thinkers of the twelfth century. He made decisive contributions to the problem of u...
Thomas Aquinas 1225 – 1274 · Italian
Thomas Aquinas was a 13th-century Italian Dominican friar and philosopher, the most influential figure of medieval scholasticism. His Summa Theologica, left unfinished at his de...
Bonaventure 1221 – 1274 · Italian
Bonaventure was a 13th-century Italian Franciscan friar, theologian, philosopher, and Cardinal, regarded as one of the most important medieval Christian thinkers alongside his c...
Robert Grosseteste c. 1175 – 1253 · English
Robert Grosseteste was an English statesman, scholastic philosopher, theologian, and bishop of Lincoln. He served as the first chancellor of the University of Oxford and as the ...
Roger Bacon 1219 – 1292 · English
Roger Bacon was an English Franciscan friar, philosopher, and early advocate of experimental method, sometimes called Doctor Mirabilis. Trained at Oxford and Paris, he produced ...
William of Ockham 1287 – 1347 · English
William of Ockham was an English Franciscan friar, philosopher, and theologian, one of the most important figures of late medieval thought. He defended a thoroughgoing nominalis...
Gabriel Biel c. 1420 – 1495 · German
Gabriel Biel was a German scholastic philosopher and theologian, sometimes called the last of the great medieval nominalists. After studies at Heidelberg, Erfurt, and Cologne an...
Henry of Ghent c. 1217 – 1293 · Flemish
Henry of Ghent was a Flemish secular master of theology at Paris in the late thirteenth century and one of the most influential scholastics of the generation between Aquinas and...
Hugh of Saint Victor c. 1096 – 1141 · German-French
Hugh of Saint Victor was a German-born theologian and philosopher who taught at the abbey of Saint Victor in Paris and shaped the intellectual and contemplative life of the Vict...
John of Salisbury c. 1110 – 1180 · English
John of Salisbury was an English humanist scholar, secretary to two archbishops of Canterbury including the martyred Thomas Becket, and finally bishop of Chartres. After studies...
Nicholas Oresme c. 1320 – 1382 · French
Nicholas Oresme was a French scholastic philosopher, mathematician, economist, theologian, and bishop of Lisieux, and one of the most original thinkers of the fourteenth century...
Alexander of Hales c. 1185 – 1245 · English
Alexander of Hales was an English Franciscan theologian and the first holder of the Franciscan chair of theology at the University of Paris. After training in the arts and theol...
Anselm of Canterbury 1033 – 1109 · Italian
Anselm of Canterbury was an 11th and early 12th-century Italian-Norman Benedictine monk, philosopher, and theologian, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. H...
John Pecham c. 1230 – 1292 · English
John Pecham was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic theologian, and natural philosopher, and from 1279 archbishop of Canterbury. After studies at Paris and Oxford and a long...
Francisco Suarez 1548 – 1617 · Spanish
Francisco Suarez was a Spanish Jesuit priest and the leading philosopher of the late scholastic revival. Known as Doctor Eximius, he produced the Disputationes Metaphysicae, the...
Duns Scotus c. 1266 – 1308 · Scottish
John Duns Scotus was a 13th and early 14th-century Scottish Franciscan friar, philosopher, and theologian, regarded as one of the most important medieval scholastic philosophers...
Peter Lombard c. 1096 – 1160 · Italian
Peter Lombard, known as the Master of the Sentences, was an Italian theologian and bishop of Paris, and the author of the most influential textbook of medieval scholastic theolo...
Jean Gerson 1363 – 1429 · French
Jean Charlier de Gerson was a French theologian, mystic, and chancellor of the University of Paris and one of the leading figures of the late medieval conciliar movement. He pla...
Thomas Bradwardine c. 1300 – 1349 · English
Thomas Bradwardine was an English theologian, mathematician, and Archbishop of Canterbury, known to scholastic posterity as the Doctor Profundus. As one of the Oxford Calculator...
Alan of Lille c. 1128 – 1202 · French
Alan of Lille was a French Cistercian theologian, preacher, and Latin poet of the twelfth-century renaissance, known to medieval readers as Doctor Universalis for the breadth of...
Berengar of Tours c. 999 – 1088 · French
Berengar of Tours was a French theologian, philosopher, and grammarian of the eleventh century, master of the cathedral school of Tours, and the principal early-medieval defende...
Boethius of Dacia c. 1240 – c. 1284 · Danish
Boethius of Dacia was a Latin philosopher and master of arts at the University of Paris, one of the leading exponents of the Latin Averroist school of the Faculty of Arts in the...
Domingo de Soto 1494 – 1560 · Spanish
Domingo de Soto was a Spanish Dominican philosopher, theologian, and jurist of the School of Salamanca. Imperial theologian to Charles V at the Council of Trent and confessor to...
Francisco de Vitoria c. 1483 – 1546 · Spanish
Francisco de Vitoria was a Spanish Dominican philosopher, theologian, and jurist and the founder of the School of Salamanca, the great sixteenth-century revival of Thomistic mor...
Gilbert of Poitiers c. 1085 – 1154 · French
Gilbert of Poitiers, also known as Gilbert de la Porree, was a French scholastic theologian and bishop of Poitiers and one of the most acute minds of the twelfth-century renaiss...
Jean Buridan c. 1300 – c. 1361 · French
Jean Buridan was a French priest and one of the most important philosophers of the late Middle Ages, who spent his entire career in the secular arts faculty at Paris rather than...
Luis de Molina 1535 – 1600 · Spanish
Luis de Molina was a Spanish Jesuit philosopher and theologian of the School of Salamanca and one of the most influential figures of late scholasticism. After many years of teac...
Nicholas of Autrecourt c. 1299 – c. 1369 · French
Nicholas of Autrecourt was a French scholastic philosopher of the early fourteenth century, sometimes called the medieval Hume for the radical skeptical critique of Aristotelian...
Petrus Olivi 1248 – 1298 · French
Petrus Iohannis Olivi was a French Franciscan philosopher and theologian of the late thirteenth century, the most original and controversial Spiritual Franciscan of his generati...
Pierre d'Ailly 1351 – 1420 · French
Pierre d'Ailly was a French scholastic theologian, cardinal, and statesman of the Church and one of the leading figures of the conciliarist movement that resolved the Western Sc...
Richard of Saint Victor c. 1110 – 1173 · Scottish-French
Richard of Saint Victor was a Scottish-born Latin theologian and philosopher of the twelfth century, prior of the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris and one of the most influential ...
Robert Kilwardby c. 1215 – 1279 · English
Robert Kilwardby was an English Dominican philosopher, archbishop of Canterbury from 1273 to 1278, and finally a cardinal of the Roman Church. After teaching the arts at Paris a...
Siger of Brabant c. 1240 – c. 1284 · Brabantian
Siger of Brabant was a master of arts at the University of Paris and the leading exponent of Latin Averroism in the thirteenth century. Drawing on the commentaries of Averroes, ...
Walter Burley c. 1275 – c. 1344 · English
Walter Burley was an English scholastic philosopher and logician, fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a leading representative of the realist tradition that stood against the ...
William of Auvergne c. 1180 – 1249 · French
William of Auvergne was a French scholastic theologian and bishop of Paris from 1228 until his death in 1249, and one of the first major Latin Christian thinkers to engage serio...
William of Conches c. 1090 – c. 1154 · French
William of Conches was a French scholastic philosopher and grammarian and one of the leading lights of the School of Chartres in the twelfth-century renaissance. He taught gramm...
Albert the Great c. 1200 – 1280 · German
Albertus Magnus, known in English as Albert the Great, was a 13th-century German Dominican friar, theologian, philosopher, and natural scientist, regarded as one of the greatest...