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Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages
by Richard E. Rubenstein
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Harcourt (2003-10-15)
ISBN: 0151007209
EAN: 9781402568725
Dewy Decimal #: 189.4
Hardcover: 384 pages
Edition: 1
SKU: 03157
Condition: Collectible: Very Go
Comments: Stated First Edition. Number line is made of letters. A C E G I K H F D B. Book is in great condition
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Europe was in the long slumber of the Dark Ages, the Roman Empire was in tatters, and the Greek language was all but forgotten, until a group of Arab, Jewish, and Christian scholars rediscovered and translated the works of Aristotle. His ideas spread across Europe like wildfire, offering the scientific point of view that the natural world, including the soul of man, was a proper subject of study. The Catholic Church convulsed, and riots took place at the universities of Paris and Oxford.
Richard Rubenstein recounts with energy and vigor this magnificent story of the intellectual ferment that planted the seeds of the scientific age in Europe and reflects our own struggles with faith and reason.
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Customer Reviews
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Aristotle reused, Renaissance ignited
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-11-10
I finish off a thread about the Dark Ages by reading about how the rediscovery and reinvention of Aristotle helped end them by stirring political, scientific and religious thinkers in more "modern" directions.
One of the keys to the explosion was that Aristotle was rediscovered not in isolation, but in conjunction with hundreds of years of commentary by Muslim philosophers and theologians, so that Aristotle arrived not as revealed truth, but as potentially reusable tools for European thinkers.
And reuse him they did, to the betterment of history. Rubenstein shows how his ideas let to scientific inquiry in conjunction with (not opposition to) theological study through the 1200 and 1300's. The modern imagined "war" between reason and religion didn't come from this period, but in fact this period allowed each to grow, giving rise to the coming Renaissance and Enlightenment periods.
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Misleading
Rating  (2)
Date: 2008-08-03
I had purchased this book with great anticipation. I was no stranger to reading Mr. Rubenstein. However, I was more let down by this book than by his other works.
I had found it difficult to understand how a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs can feel he is authoritative enough to write books on history and theology, but then as I read it became clearer.
To start with the title of this book is misleading. While it is true that you should never judge a book by it's cover, one must weigh judgment of the cover by it's contents.
"How Christians, Muslims, and Jews rediscovered ancient wisdom and illuminated the Middle Ages." Ok, I am not an expect on this time period, so I was expecting to dive into this book with the expectation of coming out with knowing something I didn't know before. But, at the same time, I was under the impression that Muslims and Jews never lost the knowledge of the Classical era, and so had no need to "rediscover" it. I guess my impression was right because almost the entire book speaks of how the Christians rediscovered Aristotle's works from Jews and Muslims in 12th century Spain. Other than a few very brief references to Maimonides and Averroes, all other personages in this book are exclusively Christian.
Next, I was unaware that the Middle Ages were illuminated. By definition, the Middle Ages is the period between periods of illumination, hence "Middle Ages". So, again, I thought I might learn something that maybe I didn't know before. Again I was let down. The history of re-introducing Aristotle's work into Christian Europe during the Middle Ages was hardly illuminating, rather it is a chronology of violence, ignorance, intolerance, censorship, and intellectual depression amidst rampant superstition. Granted, from the 12th century on, we begin to see more people willing to think for themselves, as opposed to be told what to think, but they were baby steps. Aquinas, Ockham, Bonaventure and the others strived more to please the status quo with their new philosophies. I don't blame them, they liked to live as anyone does, so whatever they thought necessarily had to be watered down to succor the ruling theocracy of the time. These Medieval philosophers did not illuminate the Middle Ages, they were pioneers which would help illuminate a future age. Relatedly, on the back cover it is said that an intellectual explosion happened in the late Middle Ages that transformed Europe. Again, please Mr. Rubenstein, explain how four universities (Oxford, Paris, Padua, Bologne), which were under constant threat of censorship, excommunication, and being shut down, and a handful of radical thinkers (BTW-Middle age radical thinkers would equate to modern right-wing religious zealots) amidst a sea of an illiterate, superstitious, and ignorant population, can constitute an intellectual explosion, comparable to the 6th century BCE Ionian explosian of Ancient Greece or 18th century Western civilization.
Next I will point out random passages in the book that I have a bone to pick with. There are numerous passages, but I will focus on just a couple. On p.227, Mr. Rubenstein talks about Thomas Aquinas. He mentions how he had some mystical and supernatural experiences in which he communicates with Jesus and leviates, all seen by witnesses. This and other passages like it are worthless to me unless they are backed by source references. Otherwise, it is just a neat story passed by oral tradition in which the author got a warm and fuzzy feeling from, and so decided to insert it in his book.
Lastly, is this passage from p.251:
"If he wished, God could retroactively unmake everything that he has made, as well as make a human embryo into a fish or a flower."
The author may be passing this statement off as the way a medieval mind thought, or is he? Is this the belief of the author? Surely not, but how well did people have a grasp on biology in the Middle Ages, was "embryo" a household term as it is today? Let's continue the next sentence in the book, which is in the author's parentheses.
(This is not entirely theoretical, of course, since he has made miracles, as well as creating a universe from nothing.)
Once again, if anyone has an elementary understanding of the Middle Ages, then they know it was completely ruled by a superstitious, supernatural belief in a god. Is it necessary to reiterate it, or is this the author's stated belief?
If it is (which I hope is not the case), then this is the type of history in which I hope people will steer away from. The kind which is propagandistic, biased, and motivated by an agenda, in other words not true accurate history at all, but the author's personal perception of history.
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The unity of reason
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-07-13
Once upon a time, reason, metaphysics ethics and faith were all part of a unified quest for understanding. Unfortunately over the last eight hundred years or so, reason broke into schisms, just as Christiandom did. Can we ever regain the unity of thought of the middle ages that was set into motion by the rediscovery of Aristotle? Rubenstein, disappointingly, doesn't give a difinitive answer to this question. He does, however, write compellingly about the history of those times and highlights the central questions involved.
What saved the western world from a similiar decline in the Muslim world, this book suggests, was the rediscovery of Aristotle that preceded the scholastic age. Rubenstein goes to lengths to tell the reader how the intellectual battles that followed were not faith versus reason in nature, but the history he describes tells a different story. Faith and reason were intertwined because that's what reason had to do to survive the era of the inquisition. In the Muslim world not even a reason-infused theology could survive the onslaught of faith and "falsafah" was eventually driven out. While Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas can hardly be called secular, it seems clear to this reader that the Church itself deserves less credit for the survival of reason than Rubenstein suggests. This may be construed as a criticism, but the fact that it is possible to read the book and come to a different conclusion than the author, I think, speaks to its credit.
Rubenstein does do an excellent job of bringing the characters of history to life. His portrayal of Peter Abelard stands out particularly in my mind as an example of good writing. I give this book 4 stars instead of the full 5 for the sole reason that it seems incomplete. I flipped the last page and felt as if the author was just getting to the most important part. I supposed one might consider that a virtue as well as a vice.
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The Importance of Aristotle
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-06-14
This book presents that the thesis that the Renaissance and eventually the Enlightenment in the Western World was brought out by a rebirth of appreciation for and understanding of Aristotelian philosophy.
In this book you will learn about Thomas Aquinas' intellectual efforts to persuade his contemporaries that reason (i.e., Aristotelian thought) is absolutely essential to discovering both understanding the universe and discovering moral truths. This was a revolutionary idea for the time of Aquinas, which was dominated by men of faith who were vehemently hostile towards reason.
From reading this book, you will also learn about Pelagius and his disputes with Saint Augustine. Pelagius believed that man could gain God's graces by his efforts and therefore *deserve* God's acceptance. Saint Augustine strongly disagreed. You will also learn about the courageously heretical thinking of Peter Abelard who condemned the idea of inherited sin. This too, was antipodal to Saint Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin as well as the idea that all Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. In this book, you will also learn about Thomas Magnus (the great teacher of Thomas Aquinas), the mendicant orders of monks and the extent to which Aristotelian philosophy became so pervasive in European universities during the Renaissance where he was simply referred to as "The Philosopher."
Although I loved this book, I will list a few complaints for the purpose of construction discussion. First, I perceived that this book does not spend enough time discussing the Muslim scholars such as Averroes and Avicenna who, to my understanding, were influential in spreading Aristotelian thought in the near east and preventing his ideas from being lost forever. Second, I strongly disagree with Dr. Rubenstein's assertion that the Renaissance did not come about from the triumph of scientific reasoning and the marginalization of faith. This is precisely what happened. Although there is not enough room to justly argue this thesis here, I recommend examining the book The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman as an excellent complement to this book. Anyway, although the author ends the book arguing the above claim, this theme is not pervasive enough throughout the book to the extent that it detracts from the book as a whole.
In spite of the two aforementioned shortcomings, this book nevertheless is a must read for anyone interested in the intellectual history of reason in the Western World. I highly recommend it!
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Root of a Modern Problem
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-03-02
When researching works of fiction set in 14th Century France, as I am doing, one doesn't necessarily want the kind of exhaustive detail that one finds in tomes written by historians for historians. No, one really desires a more populist and popular history. Yet, at the same time, one really can't approach one's work with the cavalier attitude of the dilettante, either. So, one tries, as much as is possible, to immerse one's self into the period without getting bogged down in it.
Such books as Richard Rubenstein's "Aristotle's Children" are an immense help. Written for the popular audience, it still provides a wealth of information about that most tumultuous period just after the first millennium when the newly "discovered" works of the Macedonian Materialist, Aristotle, hit Medieval Europe like an intellectual bomb!
Classical literature, it is well known, was preserved by the Byzantines and the Muslims, eventually finding fertile ground in the great learning centers of Cordoba and Toledo in Muslim occupied Spain.
Although it was the Church that sponsored the translations from Arabic into Latin, it became quite picky about which of his ideas it would allow to be read and discussed. Yet, these works, as much as any other influence, fueled the Church Reform that would culminate in the Protestant Reformation and eventually fuel the Age of Reason in the 18th Century. Rubenstein tells us how.
It began, Rubenstein writes, in the 12th Century with Archbishop Raymond of Toledo, a city newly re-taken from the Muslims, who set up a center in that city for the translation of The Philosopher from Arabic into Latin. According to Rubenstein, Muslim, Jew and Christian all worked together in Toledo with no attempt at censorship or judgment as to what ideas would be beneficial to the faith and what would be dangerous. Kudos to Archbishop Raymond!
The effect of these translations, and Arabic commentaries, was a bifurcation of the Catholic faith with Neo-Platonists on one side and Aristotelian reasoners on the other. Although Plato and Aristotle admired and respected each other (Aristotle gave a moving eulogy at his master's funeral), the same cannot be said for their Medieval disciples who were, more often than not, at each others throats; many honest Aristotelians found themselves with their backs to the stake.
One really cannot fully appreciate the medieval mind without some grounding in the intellectual struggles that molded it. Rubenstein here has presented a lively, funny, informative and readable analysis of the impact that Aristotle, the proponent of reason over faith, had on the Church, an impact that is still very much in evidence in the 21st Century.
"Aristotle's Children" is an important work, not just for the specialist in medieval history, but also for anyone wishing to understand the roots of the modern struggle between reason and faith.
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