Why Study Medieval Philosophy? John Marenbon The simplest answer is a rather shocking one. ‘Medieval philosophy’ should not be studied at all! But this answer – as the inverted commas indi- cate – is about the packaging rather than the goods themselves. There are very good reasons for studying philosophers such as Boethius, Abelard, Avicenna, Aquinas, Maimonides, Scotus, Ockham and many others, but the term ‘medieval philosophy’ itself is unhelpful or even misleading, and we would do better to drop it, and give up the subject-division for which it stands. This is the theme of Part III. The subject of Part I is more general. It considers the justifications for studying what I shall label ‘antiquated philosophy’ of any sort. ‘Antiquated philosophy’ certainly includes the texts usually labelled as medieval philosophy, and so Part I provides a justification for why they should be studied; but there is a particular char- acteristic – their frequent connection with revealed religion – which might be used either to provide a different, special justification for studying them, or, by contrast, a reason for thinking that the medieval material should be excluded from the general justification. These two possibilities are the theme of Part II. 1 I. Studying antiquated philosophy: some justifications Some of the philosophy of the past is connected with present-day phi- losophizing, because it regularly provides at least the starting-points for discussion. Many parts of the work of Hume, Kant and Frege, for exam- ple, and certain aspects of Descartes, Leibniz and perhaps Aristotle are connected to philosophy now in this way. For philosophy of the past 1 I have deliberately kept the annotation sparse. For those wishing to investigate further into the methodological questions about medieval philosophy, see Aertsen and Speer 1998, 19–68; Cameron/Marenbon 2011; Flasch 1987; de Libera 1991, 2000; Marenbon 2000; Rosemann 1999 and, for references to the older literature, Marenbon 1987, 214 f. AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR