General Introduction

Summary

Some features of medieval philosophy that distinguish it from ancient or modern philosophy are substantial and interesting, but there is also an accidental distinction that is annoying at best and often frustrating. Most of the surviving philosophical literature of the Middle Ages is still unavailable in printed editions of the Latin texts, let alone translations into modern languages. Readers of Guthrie's volumes of The History of Greek Philosophy have easy access to almost all the literature he discusses, in critical editions of the Greek texts for specialists, in English translations for students and general readers. Readers of The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, on the other hand, lack those advantages. They will often enough be confronted with claims founded on textual evidence that still exists only in medieval manuscripts, some of which will have been consulted by no living person other than the scholar making the claim. And when such textual evidence is available in print, it will often enough be in an uncritical edition which is itself four or five hundred years old (and therefore rare), printed with typographical abbreviations that must be learned even by readers who know Latin. Only a very small percentage of the surviving medieval philosophical literature is available in modern critical editions, and a much smaller percentage is available to readers who do not read medieval Latin.