The Premodern Colloquium. Love of Wisdom, Ancient Sources, and Innovation in Medieval Philosophy: Contemplative Desire according to Henry of Ghent

To what extent is medieval philosophy original and innovative? Is its theological context a stimulating or a dulling influence, or something else? To address these questions, I outline some the chief ancient approaches to philosophy, understood as the love of wisdom, to see the starting point from which the medieval version develops. Next, I consider the general influence of theological doctrine on medieval love of wisdom. I then analyze a specific issue—the purpose of contemplation—according to the theologian Henry of Ghent (d. 1293), to get a more concrete grasp of the possibilities of medieval philosophy as an attempt to synthesize reason and religious doctrine. This last analysis makes special reference to some of Henry of Ghent’s questions on human knowledge, which appear in the first part of his major work, the Summa.