Medieval Philosophy Redefined

Up to now, "medieval philosophy" has suffered from the absence of any positive definition which would give coherence to the period as a whole. The positive terms for a redefining of medieval thought, as accomplished in this book, result from developing the neglected but intertwined consequences of two simple facts. The first is the fact, generally recognized, that from its beginning in the lifetime of Augustine to its demise in the lifetime of Galileo, Poinsot, and Descartes (when transition was made to our national languages), intellectual life was communicated principally in the Latin language. The second is the fact, unnoticed by the principal historians of philosophy (and medieval philosophy in particular from the late 19th to the end of the 20th century), that the general notion of sign as a reality upon the action of which depends the whole of human knowledge, including science in the modern sense, was an original initiative of Latin thought--an idea without counterpart in the ancient Greek period of philosophy's first development. The general notion of sign, in fact, was first introduced into human thought in a thematic way by Augustine of Hippo, coincidentally the first maj