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Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages

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This interesting account tries to weave a tale of preservation of learning from Spain to Oxford to the Renaissance. This book, while interesting and entertaining, has several flaws. Its largest flaw is the authors subconscious hatred of Catholicism and love of Islam. The author tries to make the argument that 'enlightened' Islam(the same people that were circumcising women and importing slaves from Africa) was actually far superior to the western states of the Catholic world. And that learning was loved in Spain where 'Jews and Muslims' preserved the works of Plato and Aristotle. The basic fallacy here is that this is simply incorrect. The Muslim governors win Spain had no interest in learning, they only had interest in conquering lands for Allah and they did not support these efforts, by many Jews who were translating the documents. The Islamic hysteria with persecuting 'non believers' led them to destroy many Greek texts that seemed polytheistic. It was the Jews of Spain, who would later give birth to Maimonadies, that preserved the works of Plato and Aristotle and transported these works along trade routes to Christendom, where they were eventually adopted at Oxford and Florence. This is where the author does the story justice, in describing the men and schools of learning that worked to preserve essential western works from the intolerance of the Church. The book should have been called 'between Cross and Crescent: how enlightened men preserved the essential works of western civilization'. An interesting account but historically flawed.

Let make it perfectly clear I throughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. That said I will go against custom and list what I liked about it first and disliked second. What I liked about it was the author has an excellent writing style that takes what can be (trust me I know) a very dry subject and render it interesting and accessible without dumbing it down. Further Mr. Rubentstein works in both the details of Aristotle's philosophy and its growth in the west and the lives of the characters involved superbly. This is different than most histories of the time period involved which have covered the spread of Aristotle's thought without really explaining it and have more or less ignored the lives of the people involved. Also Mr. Rubenstein to his credit has noted that he started his work under the impression that the Catholic Church would be revealed as a hinderance to learning and discovered to the contrary that the Church after some considerable initial trepidation enthusiastically embraced the philosophy of Aristotle. Now on the flip side. Mr Rubenstein gives very short shrift to the times before and after the period of the 12th-13th centuries. Relegating the the time prior to them as the "Dark Ages" and simply ending his book around the dawn of the 14th century. This is a critical lack in that the time up to the time period covered in the book was hardly a time of intellectual ignorance (see the Church Fathers)and despite what Mr. Rubenstein seems to think, the use of Greek philosophical thought has continued to the present day particulary in the Catholic Church which he seems to think has abandoned it and adopted an antagonistic view towards science and reason. NB Virtually all Catholic priests have undergraduate degrees in Philosophy (or close to it) and Pope John Paul II has a Phd in Philosophy and but has written a reconciliation of faith and reason called Fides et Ratio. Further, although the book is incredibly well researched I get the feeling that Mr. Rubenstein just didn't know the subject very well before he started his research. This may explain his intial misconceptions about the Catholic Church and his giving such short shrift to the time periods before and after the events of the book. Overall very good, but for a more complete study of the subject I highly recomend The Thirteenth, the Greatest of Centuries by James J. Walsh along with Religion and the Rise of Western Civilization by the incomparable Christopher Dawson and Fides et Ratio by Pope John Paul II.

"Aristotle's Children" provides the reader with an interesting blend of philosophy and history. Author Richard E. Rubenstein follows the European rediscovery and study of Aristotle's writings beginning in Reconquered Spain and continuing into modern times. As the reader goes through this book he or she is introduced to a succession of philosophers who studied Aristotle's teachings and applied them to the problems and thought of their days. We are introduced to the blend of Christianity, Judaism and Islam which transmitted the works that shaped Christendom in later centuries. Names that we recognize we begin to know, and understand their relationships to one another. Boethius, Sts. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and Roger Bacon are just a few who we meet along this journey. This book explains how the teachings of Aristotle were used to define and shape the interplay between faith and reason, philosophy and science. At the end, Rubenstein suggests a role that a proper appreciation of Aristotle could enrich our world today.

Although this book deals with philosophical thought, it is easy to follow, at least enough to obtain a better understanding of the importance of this philosophy in our world and to our own thoughts. Although philosophy is not a major interest of mine, this book has given me a better understanding of how it has affected the world view into which we were born and grow. I recommend it for anyone who ever ponders why our culture has developed the way it has and where it is likely to be going.

I enjoyed the book and I recommend the book. His style is very readable. The first chapters are especially good. I never knew how Aristotle was re-introduced into the intellectual community of Western Europe in the middle ages. His description of the faith versus reason (Aristotle's teaching) struggle over the centuries is very interesting. However, the book drags towards the end. The author repeatedly makes the same points in the final chapters. His thesis is that we can learn from Aristotle and from history methods and attitudes that will unite faith and reason in our present day. However, his conclusions are confusing to me.

The book as a whole gave me a better understanding of the faith versus reason struggle and how it started long before Galileo's dispute with the Catholic church.

This book covers an enormous amount of intellectual history and is worth reading for its summary of thinkers from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Avicenna, Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, to William of Ockham. The book sets out the theme that the intellectual turn that led to scientific understanding actually started, not with Copernicus and Galileo, but much earlier, at least by the 12th Century as Aristotelean works on natural phenomena began to flood the libraries of Europe's scholars. Aristotle's work on logic had been long known, thanks to Boethius' 6th Century translations. But this was all the West had until the Christian gradual retaking of the Iberian Peninsula made possible rediscovery of his other works. The libraries of the Muslims and Jewish scholars there had Aristotle's works, and Latin scholars eagerly translated them with help of the Jews and the Muslims.
The impact of Aristotle's natural philosophy derived from his outlook that human reason, not tradition, revelation or sentiment, is the road to uncover objective truths about the universe. This outlook regularly leads to conflicts with a faith-based outlook. So what were the Muslims doing with these time-bombs? Rubenstein traces the route that preserved Aristotle's work. The Nestorians translated much of Greek philosophy, not only Aristotle, into Syriac, and these got further translated to Persian, and therefore they fell into the hands of the Arabs with their 7th Century conquest of Persia. These treasuries, at least initially they were seen this way, resulted in the arabic translations and Muslim philosophy flourished. However, by the 11th Century the Muslim religious establishment banished Aristotle from the universities concluding his outlook was inimical to their faith, just before Aristotle was rediscovered in the West. Many religious scholars, both Muslim and Christian, were so fascinated with Aristotle's knowledge of the natural world that they tried hard to spiritualize or "correct" Aristotle's outlook in the hope that then it would not endanger faith. Both Muslim and Christian religious authorities were wary of Aristotle's outlook and in the long run both concluded his outlook could not be papered over. The Muslims were both quicker and more vigilant, the Christians more dilatory and divided and at the same time enthralled by Aristotle's knowledge. Attempts to ban his thought in the West were made in the 13th Century, but it was too late. Modern secular thought was let out of the bottle in the West; even though it still struggles to emerge for many Muslims and well as Christians. In the West, there are still many who would like faith to dominate reason. Currently, only 23 percent of Americans, for example, believe biological evolution to be correct. The story is far from over.
Another theme Rubenstein pursues is how Plato and Aristotle differ, even though they agree on many things. The Aristotelian Stance is one of "...unabashed admiration for the material and a distaste for mystical explanations of natural phenomenon..." plus an "optimism about human nature" (page 8). The Platonic attitude is that the "really real" are abstractions such as Beauty, Goodness, Justice -- Eternal Forms or Ideas. The sensate natural world Aristotle rejoiced in only reminded Plato "of a much better place" (page 29). Mystery was Plato's meat. Rubenstein feels some periods of history favor one stance over the other. In times of economic growth, political expansion, optimism and the like, the Aristotelian stance fits in. In times of discomfort and longing, where personal and social conflicts seen all but unresolvable, the Platonic stance kicks in. Plato, with mystery and supernaturalism, may be where many will cling to now. Rubenstein would like to go beyond these tendencies. He would like to restore a creative, rather than destructive, tension between reason and faith. They cannot be fused, but perhaps there can be a integration in which technology, using reason, is guided by a new, global morality based on a "mature and expanded" faith, a faith not threatened by reason. However he offers no road map for such startling developments, let alone any evidence that those of faith see any need to "mature." On the other hand we can see many road maps and much evidence for the outcome he fears, namely, that powerful elites will use both faith and reason for keeping and extending their power.

Aristotle's Children is an informed and informative survey of Aristotle's legacy reveals how Christians, Muslims and Jews rediscovered the wisdom and findings of the Middle Ages, and charts the conflicts between militant religious groups and modernists who battled between opposing belief systems. Aristotle's Children is more than just a history of how knowledge came to light: it holds fascinating concepts for modern ideas, relationships between West and East, and how modern countries can keep open lines of conflict resolution and communication.

Aristotle's Children is one of those rare books dealing with potentially dry historical narratives that electrifies the dust of the past and brings vividly to life intellectual and human struggles of antiquity through the efflorescence of Christian and scientific Europe. Surfing waves of pagan philosophies through their translations and migrations within the orthodoxies and heresies of Christian, Jewish and Muslim contexts, Rubenstein renders accessible and gripping such diverse subjects as epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge), the origins of Christian theology as a discipline, and many other threads of human thought crisscrossing landscapes of time, cultures, religions and thinkers. He commands the voice of a lively yet neutral narrator throughout, making this an excellent read for people of any or no faith tradition. While historical, this page turner naturally calls us to reflect on our own struggles with reconciling Faith and Reason, and our own troubled times, with deeper understanding. Contrary to some whacky interpretations of this solid work, there is no hatred or minimization of Catholicism, Europe, or Jewish scholars in this book, subconscious or otherwise, but a real appreciation of scholasticism at its best, and a fabulously true story with important implications for constructively engaging today's world.

The bulk of this book deals effectively with the impact of Aristotle on Western Europe and his importance in the slow emergence there of an intellectual and scientific culture independent of theological constraints. The importance of his book is that it cleary shows this independence arising out of, not against, a Christian intellectual and spiritual matrix.

Unfortunately, Rubenstein claims to be doing something else, and this claim of his makes it harder to appreciate what he in fact did do. He claims to be demonstrating the superior value of "transnational" global culture, specifically an encounter between Jewish, Islamic and Christian scholars in evolving a morally grounded conception of science. He even implies this Aristotelean moment was superior in some ways to the more Eurocentric one that followed as Europeans turned against Aristotle in the 1500s and 1600s, by which time the Philosopher's teachings had ossified and lost all value.

The West's creative incorporation of Aristotle, as Rubenstein himself makes quite clear, was due to the imaginative uses made of him by a string of European intellectuals, including Abelard, Acquinas, and William of Ockaam. While Rubenstein mentions such Islamic and Jewish scholars as Avicenna, Averroes, and Moses Maimonides, it is clear from his own analysis that their commentaries on Aristotle were a sidebar to the creative reworking that the West itself did. Rubenstein's references to present day events such as Cold War anti-Communism, the war in Iraq or globalization are even more of a sideshow and a distraction. He tries to use his book to promote a transnational ideology. What he in fact has given us (and it still makes the book worthwhile) is an early chapter in the rise of, and utter uniqueness of, the West.

This book is a knockout. As hard as it may be to imagine a book about the "Aristotelian Revolution" of the Middle Ages being a page-turner, I could not put this one down.

To begin with, the story itself is incredibly interesting and important. When Aristotle's complete works, lost to the West for 700 years, were rediscovered in "reconquered" Spain, European thinking was changed forever. As Rubenstein says, it was as if some document discovered in our own time were found to contain the science of the future -- the secret of time travel, or a cure for AIDS.

Catholic officials were therefore forced to decide whether to ban the new learning, which contained all sorts of ideas at odds with traditional Christian thought, or to try to reconcile faith with reason. Surprisingly, after a ferocious struggle involving "superstars" of Christian learning like Peter Abelard, Saint Bernard, Bonaventure, Aquinas, and William of Ockham, they opted for reconciliation. The result was Europe's first Scientific Revolution -- and a creative dialogue between reason and religion that, Rubenstein suggests, might serve as a model for us modern folk.

What makes this book so appealing is the author's ability to make complex debates crystal-clear to ordinary readers, and his gift for vivid historical narrative. We are there when Peter Abelard goes on trial before his nemesis, Saint Bernard;
when Pope Innocent III calls down the fires of Crusade upon the heretical Cathars; and when Aquinas fights it out with enemies to his left and right at the tumultuous University of Paris.
You don't have to know much about medieval history to enjoy this story, but reading it made me want to learn more about the origins of modern Western thinking -- and about ways of healing the split between what Rubenstein calls "the culture of the heart" and "the culture of the head."

Although the author is excessively politically correct and spends too much time on theological fantasies, toward the end of the book he gives glimpses of the way the modern mind emerged from the middle ages. The book is very readable and that balances its weaknesses.
The final quarter of the book is the most interesting and least religiously oriented. There are glimpses of the scientific method emerging in the work of Bacon and Ockham and the idea of secular sovereignty being born in the work of Hobbes. It sent me to other books to read further, and that's a good thing.