Quid ipsum vere sit quod loquuntur, ignorant: las críticas de Petrarca a la escolástica del siglo XIV

Abstract

Although Petrarch was not a member of any university staff, he was not oblivious to the disputes that characterized scholastics. In the XIV century it evolved, broadly, into three big streams: logicism, naturalism and speculative theology. The author accounts for each of them throughout his work. In this way, we set out to present the critics made by Petrarch about scholastics regarding its methodology, the obscurity of its language, the excessive trust in the rationality of men, the way in which the auctoritates are used, and the dangers it implied for the Christian faith. Based on the critics made by the humanist against scholasticism, we will observe the characteristics that placed Petrarch as one of the first humanists: the eloquence of the classics, the importance of the inner and spiritual reflection on man, the primacy of moral over rationalism and the defense of poetic discourse as a way to access the truth.