(TMR 00

(TMR 00.05.20)

Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault. Philipp

Rosemann, ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 263.

$49.95. 0-312-21713-7

Reviewed by David Metzger

Old Dominion University

dmetzger@odu.edu

Over the course of six studies, Understanding Scholastic

Thought with Foucault provides a brief introduction to a

Nietzschean-Foucauldian-inspired historical methodology (Study

1), an extended application of that methodology to the study of

Scholastic philosophy and its environs (Studies 2-5), as well as

an argument regarding the relation of the medieval and the modern

(Study 6). The tenth volume in the innovative "New Middle Ages"

Series edited by Bonnie Wheeler, UST promises a theoretical

underpinning for a new generation of medievalists wishing to

situate their work in the growing field of cultural studies.

Unfortunately, scholars already excited by the

carefully-considered theoretical work of Karma Lachrie and Louise

Fradenburg may find Rosemann's discussion of Foucault to be a bit

thin (for example, Rosemann conflates the terms "postmodern" and

"poststructural" throughout the book). And, in my opinion, UST

does not provide a strong complement to ongoing work on

nominalism (for example, Richard Utz et. al) or even more general

work on "medievalism" (Can one really speak about scholasticism

and modernity without mentioning Jacques and Raissa Maritain?).

Study 1 promises a description of Foucault's philosophy of

history and an exposition of his postmodern historical

methodology. My chief concern here is that Rosemann does not

really provide us with a methodology. Study 1 does offer some

statements about culture on p. 25: a) "No culture creates itself

ex nihilo"; b) "Yet, as much as by the positive values it

inherits from history, each culture, civilization, tradition,

etc., is also characterized by its Outside"; c) "The rejection of

the element not destined to be the culture's other does not

create a relationship of mere exteriority." But is a methodology

merely the identification and serialized illustration of

concepts? Is it enough to find medieval examples for

statements/concepts Foucault developed about culture in general?

Additionally, I am not satisfied with the version of Foucault

that Rosemann provides in Study 1. Rosemann does not consider

alternative readings of Foucault; his chief expository method is

an analogy between Foucault and Nietzsche. And he writes about

Foucault as if Foucault's work were not itself a response to nor

a prompt for the work of Foucault's contemporaries.

Study 2 ("Defining the Scholastic Tradition") begins with a very

important question "Was there a Scholastic Philosophy in the

Middle Ages?" Rosemann rewrites the question to read "What (if

anything) characterizes and distinguishes medieval intellectual

culture, beyond the mere historical fact that it took place

during a period we call the 'Middle Ages'? And can the term

'Scholastic' be used to convey such distinguishing

characteristics?" (45). Again, these are interesting questions,

but are they Foucauldian? Do we need Foucault to ask and answer

them? Rosemann's subsequent discussion of the "doctrinal"

approach (exemplified by the work of Mauruice De Wulf) and the

"formal" approach (exemplified by Martin Grabmann) to answering

these questions would suggest that these questions are not then

the beginning of a Foucauldian discussion of the Middle Ages as

much as the beginning of a Foucauldian discussion of modernity:

Why these questions now? But this avenue is not considered.

Rather, Foucault, it is suggested, offers a superior approach.

We are told that the doctrinal approach to the question "What

distinguished medieval civilization" does not take into account

the richness and diversity of medieval society (46), and the

formal approach to the question yields a generalization

("Medieval thought centered around one paramount issue -- the

reconciliation of authority and reason") that is not peculiar to

medieval culture (47).

What does Foucault offer? Interestingly enough, the transition

that Rosemann offers us for his discussion of the advantages of a

Foucauldian approach does not mention Foucault at all. Rosemann

invites us "to try to describe it [auctoritas/ratio: what

Grabmann identified as the central issue of Scholasticism], and

thereby situate Scholastic tradition in the intellectual history

of the West" (48). Unfortunately, Rosemann does no such thing;

he drops the discussion of auctoritas/ratio, starting up a

discussion of how Greek philosophical language developed as the

marginalization of mythos for the sake of logos.

Could the binary mythos/logos be related to the binary

auctoritas/ratio? Sure. But no such historicization is offered.

We find, rather, another binary in an extended quotation from 1

Corinthians: Christian folly (moria) vs. Greek wisdom

(sophia).

We might expect Study 3 ("Scholastic Intellectual Practices") to

continue the discussion of moria/sophia, but Rosemann turns his

attentions to Gothic script, Gothic architecture, manuscript

transmission, and the methods/genres of instruction in

13th-century universities. His general orientation, here, is

that an intellectual practice is not simply a vehicle for

thought; an intellectual practice enables people to think and act

as they do -- "exercising," in the case of Gothic script for

example, "a formative influence upon the thought to which it

gives expression" (63). Yet, how is it possible to support such

an assertion given that what we might observe of these practices

is limited to how these intellectual practices "seem to reflect

and reinforce a certain confidence in the powers of human reason"

(63)? The proposed solution to this problem is the

identification of a sea-change, a break in tradition that can be

supported only by the invention of those new practices and

materials:

we can see a clear evolution in which medieval thought

gradually detaches itself from its immediate textual bases,

emancipating itself as it were and assuming an increasingly

independent character, and finally culminating in the

'elaboration of systematic disciplines'.

(87)

But one more evidentiary move is required in order to avoid a

circular argument: the sea-change ("the elaboration of systematic

disciplines") cannot itself be rendered wholly as these

intellectual practices. Study 4 ("The Prose of the World -- The

Greek Circle and the Christian Line") and Study 5 ("Aquinas: the

Open Circle") serve this argumentative function.

By avoiding circularity in argument, Studies 4 & 5 run the risk

of losing sight of the distinctive identity of the medieval

enterprise. I say "risk" here, only because, in Study 2,

Rosemann identifies this loss of a distinctive medieval identity

as a problem with "formal" approaches to scholastic philosophy.

Rosemann cites Foucault on the "sixteenth-century episteme"

("resemblance played a constructive role in the knowledge of

Western culture"); then Rosemann adds that "much of what is said

in 'The Prose of the World' can indeed be taken as commentary,

extremely insightful commentary even, on medieval culture" (105).

Rosemann proceeds to chart a doctrine of resemblance from

Parmenides through Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, concluding

this study with a discussion of the shape of Christian time. We

might very well ask what holds all of these discussions together

-- certainly not a serialization/narrativization of affect

through individuals, social conditions, political intentions.

No, Rosemann finds his model of transmission in the difference

between a circle and a line: showing us how the "texts" and

"textualization" of the Hellenic world could not have given birth

to the Christ (Greek time is circular; Christian time is linear).

Study 4 ends with a quotation from Bonaventure: "How the center

of a circle can be found by means of a cross becomes clear

through a geometrical example." And Study 5 finds that Greek

circularity is synthesized with Christian linearity in the

following sentence from Aquinas' Libri Sententiarum:

In the issuing forth of the creatures from their first

principle, a certain circling or wheeling around is to be

considered, due to the fact that all things turn back, as to

their end, to that from which they have come forth as from

their principle.

(In IV libros Sententiarum 1.14.2.2.c

Opera omnia, ed. Busa, 1, p. 36.)

Rosemann's discussions in Studies 4 & 5 are interesting inasmuch

as they encourage us to find the circle and the line in a good

deal of philosophical material. But I am not certain how a

Foucauldian methodology allows Rosemann to talk about circles and

lines without also discussing the role geometrical figures and

the "impossibility of the void" played in medieval natural

philosophy.

Foucault's "method" assumes a movement between two poles: (1)

that which comes to function as the Other because it is presumed

to be in place of the Other and (2) that which can come to the

place of the Other. That-which-comes-to-the-place-of-the-Other

causes the Other as such to disappear or go into hiding, but this

fading/disappearing of the Other is also necessary insofar as it

allows us to recognize that the Other-function is not the Other

itself. From a Foucauldian standpoint, torture/discipline

becomes a way of translating the presence and absence of the

Other into knowledge so that even when the Other is absent we

know it's there. Likewise, the fact that the Other-function is

not the Other allows for anything other than the Other to take

the place of the Other-function (culture as fetish). Readers

might at least consider the possibility of reading Foucault this

way and then reexamine Rosemann's claims about the relationship

of the modern ("post-Scholastics"?) and the medieval in "Study 6"

as well as his discussion of the Inquisition and "witch-hunts" as

the closing of the Scholastic episteme/circle. Foucault, I

suspect, would lead us in other directions. But, to give the

author his due, these other directions may well be more carefully

considered because of Rosemann's efforts.