Doing Public Philosophy in the Middle Ages? On the Philosophical Potential of Medieval Devotional Texts

Res Philosophica 99 (2):241-274 (2022)
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Abstract

Medieval and early modern devotional works rarely receive serious treatment from philosophers, even those working in the subfields of philosophy of religion or the history of ideas. In this article, I examine one medieval devotional work in particular—the Middle High German image- and verse-program, Christus und die minnende Seele (CMS)—and I argue that it can plausibly be viewed as a form of medieval public philosophy, one that both exhibited and encouraged philosophical innovation. I address a few objections to my proposal—namely, that CMS is neither public enough nor that it counts as proper philosophy—and I attempt to defend CMS’s public philosophical credentials in light of these objections. I conclude with a brief discussion of how devotional texts like CMS can help us do innovative public philosophy today.

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Amber L. Griffioen
Duke Kunshan University

Citations of this work

Rethinking Religious Epistemology.Amber L. Griffioen - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (1):21-47.
Introduction.Amber L. Griffioen & Marius Backmann - 2023 - In Amber L. Griffioen & Marius Backmann (eds.), Pluralizing Philosophy’s Past: New Reflections in the History of Philosophy. Springer Verlag. pp. 1-14.

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References found in this work

Transaction or Transformation: Why do Philosophy in Prisons?Mog Stapleton & Dave Ward - 2021 - Journal of Prison Education and Reentry 7 (2):214-226.
Coming out of the Shade.Myisha Cherry - 2017 - In Russell Blackford & Damien Broderick (eds.), Philosophy's Future: The Problem of Philosophical Progress. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 21-30.
Medieval philosophy.Paul Vincent Spade - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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