Scholastic Philosophy is the love, desire and pursuit of wisdom. Taken in its broadest sense it includes the knowledge of all things in as far as they can be known, by the light of reason. This science has six parts: Logic, which teaches reasoning; Metaphysics, the philosophy concerned with the study of the nature of beings; Cosmology, which explains the visible world; Anthropology, which explains man; Natural Theology, which explains God; and Moral Theology, the religious study of right and wrong. [Scholasticism]

Early universities were the first representation of the spread of Scholasticism and philosophy. They brought together the great minds of the age and allowed scholars to be educated. They lay the foundation for our school systems today, combining many teachers in different areas of study to teach students, rather than expecting one teacher to know

The Realist held that there was something objective, something outside our minds, answering to these Universal ideas. Some took this view and differed it among themselves, some holding the object of a Universal Idea to be itself universal and one, others holding it to be particular and multiplied with the multiplication of individuals. The first group was called Ultra-Realists, they believed there was one universal humanity, found the same in everyone. The other group called Moderate Realists believes humanity exists only in individual living men and is different in each. By the end of the twelfth century, Moderate Realism was triumphant in the Schools.

In the thirteenth century intellectual progress, under the guidance of faith, had reached that point were it could be said: "Reason could go no higher; faith could not receive more numerous or stronger arguments from reason to explain or defend dogmas." [Newman 14] This perfection was only attained after St. Thomas had lived and written his Summa. This is the great accomplishment, which according Leo XIII made St. Thomas the prince of all Christian philosophers.

During the Renaissance scholasticism was called Barockscholastik. In this time period philosophers were mostly interested in the work of Thomas Aquinas. The Protestant Reformation in the 16th century stimulated the revival of theology, the return to the language of the bible, the Fathers of the Church and the great scholastics of the 13th century. This was called the Second Scholasticism. The hundred and fifty years from the middle of the 16th to the end of the 17th century is known as the period of the Counter-Reformation.[Scholasticism] With this revival of Catholicism, the dying embers of Scholasticism were kindled into a new glow.

The thirteenth century also held the moderate concept; this age was called the "Golden Age".[Scholasticism] In this century the human race attained the summit of intellectual greatness. Before that time Plato and Aristotle had carried human reason as high as unaided reason could go; but they were pagans, they had no religion, and great as they were they made many mistakes. The theologian of this century who accepted the challenge of combining faith with reason, or Aristotelianism, was Albertus Magnus. He conceived a plan of making accessible to the Latin West the complete works of Aristotle. His strongest point was the direct observation of nature and experimentation. He had a passion for the study of the visible world. He formulated completely new and even revolutionary, principles: fore instance, "There can be no philosophy about concrete things," or "in such matters only experience can provide certainty." [Drane 23] Albertus was not able to combine faith and reason, because for him reason implied the capacity to grasp the reality that man encounters. Instead Albertus put the task of joining faith with reason onto his pupil, Thomas Aquinas.

Benaventura, a colleague of Thomas had likewise been enamoured of Aristotle. But later, alarmed by the secularism that had grown in Christendom, he became more mistrustful of the capacities of natural reason.

Aquinas set forth that his life's task was to do this, join "the Bible" with the Aristotelian writings and outlook. He resulted in writing the famous Summa Theologica, which he chose to leave incomplete, was a magnificent intellectual structure; but it was never intended to be a closed system of definitive knowledge. At Paris he had to defend his idea of "a theologically based worldliness and a theology open to the world".[Newman 10] By his advocating the rights of all natural things Thomas would encroach upon the rights of God.

Boethius was a 6th century scholar born in Rome and educated at the Lyceum in Athens he was one of the great mediators and translators of the middle ages. He was known as "the First Scholastic". [Vaughan 121] The idea of including faith into the idea of scholasticism was formulated

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