An encyclopedist of the dark ages: Isidore of SevilleBrehaut, Ernest
History
An encyclopedist of the dark ages: Isidore of Seville
Brehaut, Ernest
Isidore, of Seville, Saint, -636; Thesis (Ph. D.)
3. And so in later times it became the practice to give only the
name of philosopher, no matter how great the learning in matters
pertaining to wisdom each seemed to himself or to others to possess.
And these philosophers are divided into three classes: for they are
either natural philosophers (_physici_), or moral (_ethici_), or
rational (_logici_).
4. The natural philosophers are so-called because they treat of
nature....
5. The moral philosophers are so-called because they discuss
morals....
6. The rational philosophers are so named because they add
reason to nature and morals.... These are divided into their
schools, some having names from their founders, as _Platonici_,
_Epicurei_, _Pythagorici_; others from their places of meeting, as
_Peripatetici_, _Stoici_, _Academici_.
7. The _Platonici_ are named from the philosopher Plato. They assert
that God is the creator of souls, the angels of bodies; they say that
after many cycles of years souls return to different bodies.
9. [The Stoics] assert that no one is happy without virtue. They
claim that every sin is equally sinful, saying: “He is as guilty
who steals chaff as he who steals gold, he who kills a waterfowl as
he who kills a horse; for it is not the thing but the spirit (_non
animal sed animus_) that makes the sin.”
10. These also say that the soul perishes with the body. They love
the virtue of self-control, and seek eternal glory although they
assert that they are not immortal.
11. The _Academici_ are named from Academia, Plato’s villa at Athens,
where he taught. These believe that all things are uncertain; but
although it must be admitted that many things which God willed to
surpass the understanding of man, are uncertain and hidden from us,
yet there are very many things which can be received by the senses
and apprehended by man.
15. The Epicureans are named from Epicurus, a certain philosopher, a
lover of vanity not of wisdom, whom the very philosophers themselves
called a swine because he wallowed in carnal filth and asserted that
bodily pleasure was the highest good, and even said that the universe
was not formed and ruled by a divine Providence.
16. But he assigned the origin of things to atoms, that is, to
indivisible material bodies, from the chance combination of which all
things arise and have arisen. He said that God did nothing, that all
things are corporeal, that the soul is not different from the body.
And so he said, “I shall not exist after I die.”
22. These errors of the philosophers have given rise also to heresies
in the church....
23. When it is said that the soul perishes, Epicurus is honored; and
the denial of the resurrection of the flesh is taken from all the
philosophers; and where matter is put on an equality with God, it is
the teaching of Zeno; and where anything is read about a God of fire,
Heraclitus comes in. The same material is used and the same errors
are embraced over and over by heretics and philosophers.
Chapter 7. On poets.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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