Dual Forms of Cognition in the Middle Ages

Modern thinkers could really learn a great deal in this connection, if they would train their capacity of forming concepts by studying the conceptual technique which was unfolded by the scholastic thinkers of the Catholic Church. If we observe the disorderly way of thinking which is customary in modern science, if we observe how certain ideas which are indispensable for the attainment of a world-conception (for instance, the idea of subsistence in connection with existence) have altogether disappeared, particularly in regard to their inner character, if we observe how concepts such as “hypothesis” have acquired an entirely indistinct character, whereas for the scholastics it was a conceptual form with clearly defined outlines, if we observe many other things which could be adduced in this direction, we shall realise that the ordinary modern life of the spirit does not possess a real technique of thinking. How many things could be learnt if we would once more become acquainted with what has been developed up to the fifteenth century as a technique of thinking, that is to say, as a technique of intellectualism! Thinkers who have had a training in this sphere are so superior to the modern philosophers because they have taken up within them the scholastic element.