• Gives a comprehensive overview of the many traditions of medieval philosophy, over the full chronological range of the period
• Discusses the importance of the religious and historical contexts of medieval philosophy
• Shows how the philosophical traditions in the Middle Ages all stem from the Platonic schools of late antiquity and explains their evolution
• Looks at key phlosophical figures of the time such as the Latin writers Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Dante and Pomponazzi; the Arabic writers al-Fârâbî, Avicenna, ibn Tufayl, Averroes and Maimonides, and Gersonides, who wrote in Hebrew

  
For many of us, the term 'medieval philosophy' conjures up the figure of Thomas Aquinas, and is closely intertwined with religion. In this Very Short Introduction John Marenbon shows how medieval philosophy had a far broader reach than the thirteenth and fourteenth-century universities of Christian Europe, and is instead one of the most exciting and diversified periods in the history of thought.

Introducing the coexisting strands of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish philosophy, Marenbon shows how these traditions all go back to the Platonic schools of late antiquity and explains the complex ways in which they are interlinked. Providing an overview of some of the main thinkers, such as Boethius, Abelard, al-Fârâbî, Avicenna, Maimonides, and Gersonides, and the topics, institutions and literary forms of medieval philosophy, he discusses in detail some of the key issues in medieval thought: universals; mind, body and mortality; foreknowledge and freedom; society and the best life.