Folia Theologica 16. (2005)
Pál Bolberitz: The Beginnings of Hungarian Philosphy (The Reception of Nicholas of Cusa in the work of "De homine" by Peter Monedulatus Csokas Laskoi)
THE BEGINNINGS OF HUNGARIAN PHILOSOPHY 7 Hereby I shall briefly touch upon to clear up a problem. Namely whether can we suppose of the existence of an independent philosophical science, or not? It seems to me that the ancient Greek philosophers, regarded classical - in their own way - indirectly dealt with theological questions under the pretext of philosophy, since the Greek polytheist religion had not served sufficiently their intellectual inquiry towards the final principles. The Christian Middle Ages - including the Patristic period as well - predominantly was preoccupied with theology by analyzing the theoretical issues of it in the conceptual categories of the ancient philosophical tradition. It is obvious that philosophy was regarded the maidservant for theology. First in the sense that among free arts (septem artes liberales) Aristotle' s works were introduced within dialectics - translated into Latin by Boëthius - and thus logics - preceeding theology in the curriculum - appeared only as "ancilla theologiae". It was in a subordinated position in comparison to theology in another sense as well, since - in contradiction to the ancient Greek philosophy's attempt to replace theology by a "quasi theology" (Aristotle called philosophy "teologike episteme", that is a science about God), the Christian theology - mainly in the Patristic age - was able to provide a full, comprehensive content to the philosophical inquiry towards the final principle. With the newly discovered Aristotle by an Arabian presentation - in the interpretation by St. Thomas Aquinas - inquirers were becoming more familiar with the metaphysics of Aristotle, and by thinking over the Christian creation-theology it preferred to Nominalism and the renaissance philosophy's focussing on nature. All these questions were raising a series of independent - gradually separated from theology - topics of philosophy and specialised branches of science. As modern times emphasized the priority of reason from one point of view, and experience from the other, - and in its own way - even applied to the saint sciences for assistance, philosophy were gradually losing its metaphysical and teological basis, and being detached from its enlivening sources, it began to become similar to a decorated Christmas-tree, for a while sparkling and glittering, but soon drying and be thrown away. However ideology was unable to replace metaphysics and theology. Earlier philosophy served theology, but after the last great systematizing representative of philosophy - Hegel -
