Confusion but an attempt

badspellar — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 04:10:06 +0000

I tried, I really did. But pushing past all fo the name dropping and big words is tough for a tired student so I will try my best to give out some interpretations on “A History of 12th Century Western Philosophy.” I would write about Colish’s work but failed to find it. I’ll look again tomorrow when my eyes aren’t as crossed but I can’t say I didn’t try.

To begin with, I got a mixed message from this text. One moment Dronke is saying how Arab philosophers are essential in the developement of Western Christian thought. Okay, got it, there was respect for the Eastern thought, even though they are still considered infidels and bad to the Westerners during their crusades.

Dronke also uses the word “apologetic” a number of times. Can anyone clarify what he means exactly? I thought that the Crusaders didn’t care about the infidels, and yet they are apologetic to the Arabs.

One of the (what I consider) major parts of the text is the recognition that there were translation issues from Arabic to Latin and so a number of consequences occured that unwittingly shaped the Latin language and skewed the understanding of the Arabic texts. For starters there was a diproportion in the languages with the words meaning being. In Arabic there are many terms that funtion as synonyms for said word and the Latin language had problems with this. Secondly translators who saught accuracy in the translations used Latin words in an unfair, technical sense. Also new, phonetic words were created when translators ran out of options. Finally, the act of tranlating Arabic into latin created new Latin words.

What confuses me is that Dronke says all of this and then sates “The translations from Arabic do not seem to have done much to enlarge the scope of philophical Latin in the Middle Ages” but the theories of Aristotle elaborated by the Arabs entered the Western Christian Philosophy.

So wait, it was Aristotle, not the Arabs, that shaped Christian Philosophy? So was Arabic simply the barrier between the West and ancient Greece?

Pretty much what I got out of this text was that the Arabs had written a lot of Aristotle’s works and then the West took it from them and translated their writings into Latin. Dronke also dabbles in the idea of the East’s influence in Western Science but with all of the back-tracking and name dropping I was pretty much lost. I understand that noetics provided Western thought a new way of thinking and the ideas of morals were incorporated through the work “Disciplina.” Overall the point is made that the Arabs had a significant impact on the West and no one really awknowledge it then so it is not really common knowledge today.

Irwin Chapter 3/ Menocal Chapters 1 & 2

bford — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 05:27:58 +0000

the other- Menocal writes that the recent surge, over the past few centuries, in the development of Europe and the Americas, due to imperialist pursuits, has led them to classify themselves as a distinct entity from the Arab cultures that had helped lay the groundwork for the very same Renaissance that had given the western world power. Because the west found itself as the victors of war it was able to record history as it saw fit and only gave anecdotal credit to the Arab cultures for helping establish the rudiments of western progress. Instead the west has alienated itself from these cultures that tremendously aided their now privileged existence and ignores the fact that the dark ages were only a dark age in western societies; the cultures of the middle east as well as the Arab influence in Spain were making great strides in areas such as mathematics and the arts (architecture & music/poetry). The recorded histories of the west sought to cut ties with these eastern influences once in a position of authority.

evolution – Irwin writes that there is no clear cut origin of the written story, in large part due to the influence of the oral tradition in storytelling, and that it is important to realize how one story facilitates the creation of others. This free flowing movement of ideas cannot be pinned down and is in a state of constant flux. At all times a new story is being created that cannot be accounted for without having to draw upon previously encountered texts or spoken words. This fluid notion of literature gives the reader the idea of of it being almost a living, breathing thing that will certainly be nurtured into varying novel forms.

evolution – Islam & Medieval Western Literature

Confusion but an attempt

Irwin Chapter 3/ Menocal Chapters 1 & 2