ENDNOTES  page 308

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Gothic philosophy (basic problem- primacy of will or reason): *

The 2 main orders founded of this period were the Franciscans & the Dominicans.  The Franciscans (founded 1209) had many notable scholars.  Two of the most famous were Duns Scotus (1266-1308), priest & friar & William of Ockham (1287-1347), English friar.  Both promoted theological voluntarism, giving emphasis on the divine will & human freedom (voluntas superior intellectu).  Scotus held that morality comes from God's will & choice rather than his intellect or knowledge.  God should be defined as an omnipotent being whose actions should not & cannot be ultimately rationalized & explained through reason.  Building on this, Ockham espoused “fideism”, arguing only faith gave access to theological truths.  The ways of God are not open to reason, for God has freely chosen to create a world and establish a way of salvation within it apart from any necessary laws that human logic or rationality can uncover.  The Dominican order was founded in 1215; it emphasised reason & made use of the newly available Aristotelian sources.  The greatest Dominican scholar was Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), one of the first to use Aristotle's metaphysical & epistemological writing.  Aquinas spoke of divine Eternal laws existing outside human society; reality was created by God and according to his plan.  Men have the natural capacity through reason & logic to know many truths without special divine revelation.  His philosophy became known as Thomism and emphasised reason & argumentation; his synthesis of Greek rationalism & Christian doctrine would define Catholic philosophy.  This was a significant departure from the Neo-Platonism and Augustinian thinking of earlier Scholasticism.

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Nietzsche (on Will): *

In 1880 in The Wanderer and his Shadow & in1881 in Daybreak, Nietzsche spoke of the "Desire for Power".  He sees that driving the Will to Power is the pleasure in power & the hunger to overpower.  In The Gay Science (1882) he expanded the concept; he connects the desire for cruelty with the pleasure in the feeling of power.  Elsewhere he notes that it is only "in intellectual beings that pleasure, displeasure, and will are to be found", thereby excluding most organisms from the desire for power.  In 1883 in Thus Spoke Zarathustra he coined the phrase "Wille zur Macht".  Now this will to power is no longer limited to intellectuals who can actually experience the feeling of power; it now applied to all life.  In 1883 he writes extensively about the concept, describing it in detail, saying it is an "unexhausted procreative will of life".  There is will to power where there is life and even the strongest living things will risk their lives for more power.  It is stronger than the will to survive & so Schopenhauer's "Will to life" became subsidiary.  Nietzsche believes his concept will prove more useful than Schopenhauer's.  It can explain human behaviour for instance.   Nietzsche uses it to explain both ascetic, life-denying impulses and strong, life-affirming impulses as well as his master and slave morality.  Nietzsche also sees it as offering a richer explanation than the utilitarian notion that all people want to be happy the Platonist's notion that people want to be unified with the Good.

 

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Schopenhauer ("World as Will and Idea,"): *

Taking the transcendental idealism of Kant as his starting point, Schopenhauer argues that the world we experience around us, exists solely as ‘representation’ dependent on a cognizing subject, not as a world that can be considered to exist in itself .  Our knowledge of objects is knowledge of phenomena & not things-in-themselves.  Schopenhauer identifies the thing-in-itself (inner essence of everything) as will: a blind, unconscious, aimless striving devoid of knowledge, outside of space and time, and free of all multiplicity.  The world as representation is the ‘objectification’ of the will.  Aesthetic experiences release a person briefly from his endless servitude to the will, which is the root of suffering.  True redemption from life can only result from the total ascetic negation of the ‘will to life.’  He notes fundamental agreements between his philosophy, Platonism & the philosophy of the ancient Indian Vedas.

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Hohenstaufen empire: *

dynasty established on election of Conrad III (1138-52) to the office of Holy Roman Emperor.  This triggered a century of strife between the Welf & the Hohenstaufen houses.  In 1152, his nephew Frederick I "Barbarossa" succeeded him & made peace with the Welfs.  Frederick (1152-90) emphasized the "Romanness" of the empire to justify the power of the Emperor independent of the Pope.  An imperial assembly asserted imperial rights; the list of prerogatives included public roads, tariffs, coining, collecting punitive fees & the investiture of office holders.  These rights were now explicitly rooted in Roman Law, a far-reaching constitutional act.  Frederick's policies were primarily directed at Italy, where he clashed with the increasingly wealthy & free-minded cities of the north, especially Milan.  He also came into conflict with the Papacy by supporting a succession of antipopes before finally making peace in 1177.  Under his son, Henry VI (1190-97), Hohenstaufen rule reached its apex.  Henry added the Norman kingdom of Sicily to his empire & hoped to establish a hereditary monarchy.  When he died in 1197 his son, Frederick II (1220-50) was still a child.  The election was contested until Pope Innocent gave his support to Frederick.  Fredrick marched into Germany & defeated Otto.  However now Frederick also began working on uniting Sicily & the Empire.  The papacy found itself hemmed in between his lands in northern Italy and his Kingdom of Sicily in the south.  Fearing Frederick's concentration of power, the Pope would excommunicated him 4 times & often vilified him as well.. Another issue was the crusade, which Frederick had promised but repeatedly postponed.  Now, although excommunicated, he led the 6th Crusade (1228).  In the 6th Crusade, he acquired control of Jerusalem and styled himself its king of the restored Kingdom of Jerusalem.  Despite his imperial claims, Frederick's rule began the disintegration of central rule in the Empire.  He concentrated on establishing a modern, centralized state in Sicily, but in Germany, he was absent.  He issued far-reaching privileges to Germany's secular and ecclesiastical princes: In the 1220 Confoederatio cum principibus ecclesiasticis, he gave up some of his prerogatives to the bishops, granting them power to set tariffs, coin & fortify.  The 1232 Statutum in favorem principum extended these privileges to secular territories & princes.  These privileges were now granted globally & once and for all; they allowed the German princes to maintain order north of the Alps while Frederick concentrated on Italy.  For the first time to German dukes are named as domini terræ, owners of their lands.  Frederick’s political and cultural ambitions were enormous & he ruled a vast area, from Sicily and stretching through Italy north to Germany.  However, he had overreached himself.  SEE MAP BELOW After his death in 1250, the German kingdom was divided between his son Conrad IV (died 1254) & the anti-king, William of Holland (died 1256).  Conrad's death was followed by the Interregnum, during which no king could achieve universal recognition, allowing the princes to consolidate their holdings and become even more independent rulers.