John of Salisbury on Skepticism & Medicine

John of Salisbury liked the idea of academic skepticism, which ultimately came from Plato's Academy. Let me explain. The head of Plato's Academy post-Plato was Philo of Larissa, who fled Athens for political reasons and landed in Rome. While there, Cicero (106 - 43 BCE) attended some of his lectures and learned "academic skepticism." This started with Socrates' method of posing a series of questions to someone that could undermine their firmly held beliefs. Cicero's writings were known to John of Salisbury's time, but the Greek influences not so much.

John's approach was one of "moderate skepticism": although some things could be proven "definitively" there was still room to question them. He prized the use of Rhetoric and Grammar to challenge ideas, which put him at odds with some scholars who rejected the Trivium because Grammar and Rhetoric (they felt) clashed with the third part of the Trivium, Logic.

John considered the Trivium crucial to human beings because he felt philosophical thought was the dividing line between human beings and wild animals (and human beings and less intellectually gifted human beings). The arts of the Trivium were what enabled philosophical and critical thought to contribute to the ability to socialize, to create a community, and they therefore enabled human well-being.

He had very strong opinions on the state of medicine, believing that doctors had become more interested in making money than researching the best way to care for patients. Some physicians focused on the state of the soul and its relationship to bodily health. John thought this was ridiculous since there was no way to test or prove anything involving the soul. It also "trespassed on religious belief" which he was not keen to support. He expressed that doctors should spend their time divided evenly between research and practice, because the two pursuits were currently separated and leading to two separate practices that did not support each other. He proposed what he called regularum compendium: figure out what caused the illness, figure out how to cure the illness, figure out appropriate aftercare, then figure out how to avoid the illness in the future.

There was another Latin phrase that John of Salisbury coined that influenced later times, theatrum mundi, and we'll look this topic tomorrow.