Marginalia : Epic Fail At School

[darkelf105]

So, I took my final for Ancient/Medieval Christianity today. I scored fine on the multiple choice and true and false and matching sections and wrote a helluva essay on the evolution of medieval piety from Gregory the Great to Thomas a Kempis...then I got to the essay question which was something like "Define scholastic thought as a movement throught the Middle Ages starting with Bonaventure and ending with Ockham. Touch on Anselm, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus along the way." And I was like, Fuck, I can tell you WHO was a Scholastic but not what exactly scholasticism is, it's kind a nebulous...and crap, can you be a nominalist and a Scholastic? Are they mutually exclusive...shit I don't know because I'm not sure what the defintion of Scholasticism is...


So my answer went like this. LALALALALALALALAL The scholastics liked logic, Aquinas is a good example of this lalalalalalalalalala Anselm "proved" God with his ontological argument, also might have pretended to be Gaunilo , who wrote about an island to disprove his argument, and then wrote his argument out again mention the shit the Gaunilo said which apparently made it more true lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala Duns Scotus liked nature...and something about God being "I am who am" which means he existed and therefore there is shit about intentions and they somehow allow us to talk about God but not really lalalalalalalalalalalalalalal Ockham Keep it simple, stupid lalalalalalalalalalala logic and lets talk about nominalism and Psuedo-Dionysus just because I read him. Oh yeah....and Bonaventure, he liked Scripture, a lot, something about divine revelation and the light lalalalalalalalalalalala.

Oy vey. I had an A+ in that class. I'm so mad. The bright side is adore the professor who taught it and really, really learned alot and was saddened that I would probably never be able to take one of his classes again. So I asked to do independent study and he was like hell yeah (prolly cuz he hadn't seen my test yet) and so now rokk_lobster and I are doing Medieval Platonism as an independent study course. Huzzah! And no, I'm not being facetious, I am truly excited.

Comments

[i-renovated.livejournal.com]

Doesn't sound like epic fail to me...I think this kind of essay is more about having an educated dialogue about the topic rather than regurgitation of facts. Sounds like you did that...no clue about all the facts, tho. ;P~

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

You know what's sad? I still haven't looked up Scholasticism yet. My brain feels like the Middle Ages has storm troopered my brain and bludgeoned all thought to death. I looked a little at William of Ockham before my test and I felt part of my soul die. Medieval philosophy is hard core and causes most modern minds to melt, mine included.

[inafoxhole.livejournal.com]

Well, as I recall, scholasticism can be summed up as a school of thought that took "pure logic" to the extreme. They gave us angels dancing on the head of a pin. You take some crazy-ass premise not entirely based on reality, and you see who can out-logic the other guy. No fair checking the facts.

'Course, it's been a while since I finished my B.A. In Classical and Medieval Studies ages ago, and medieval philosophy was not really my favourite topic, but that's my semi-layman's summary. :). It's a very Catholic school of thought, actually, and that I am familiar with!

Anyway, it was just one question. I'm sure you didn't blow your A too badly.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Lol, oh good, I babbled about the relevance of logic, a lot.

Medieval philosophy makes a little piece of me die each time I think about it.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

I guarantee your essay is much much better than mine. I had no damn clue how to answer that question.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you did fine!

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

I just wish I hadn't been the first person out of the room. That makes me nervous. Now I am working on my equally crappy answer to the Greek paper. Joy. Do you think have 1000 words of quotes in a 1500 word paper is bad? (Just kidding, I am sure I probably won't use a majority of what I have found.)