Parsa’s Reviews > Medieval Philosophy > Status Update

"[scholars used to believe] that the third treatise was the definitive one, dating from the last
years of Abelard’s life. Some recent scholars have suggested, on the other
hand, that it dates from a much earlier period, partly on the uncompelling
ground that examples like ‘May my girlfriend kiss me’ and ‘Peter loves his
girl’ are unlikely to have been included in a textbook written after the affair
with Heloise.

"Avicenna said that he had read Aristotle’s metaphysics forty times and
had learnt it by heart without understanding it—only when he came
across a commentary by al-Farabi did he understand what was meant by
the theory of being qua being."
Interestingly, as far as I can remember, Avicenna is known in Iran as primarily a great Physician and only secondarily a great Philosopher.

"It was, in fact, in the area of logic that it was first appreciated that the
study of medieval texts had much to offer. Medieval logicians had ad-
dressed questions that had fallen into oblivion after the Renaissance, and
many of their insights had to be rediscovered during the twentieth-century
rebirth of logic."
" Augustine was one of the most interesting human beings ever to have
written philosophy."