Doing Medieval Philosophy in the UK

Doing Medieval Philosophy in the UK. An Interview with John Marenbon and Anna Marmodoro

by Rodrigo Ballon-Villanueva

IPM Monthly opens the year with John Marenbon and Anna Marmodoro. On December 4^th, the 33^rd Meeting of the ‘Medieval Philosophy Network in the UK’ (MEDPHILUK) took place. IPM had the chance to speak with the organisers, professors John Marenbon (Trinity College, Cambridge) and Anna Marmodoro (Durham University/Oxford University), to learn more about the network and the launch of its new website!

About John Marenbon

John Marenbon became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1978 and a Senior Research Fellow in 2005. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009 and became Honorary Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2010. He has taught or held visiting fellowships at a number of universities abroad, including the Sorbonne, the University of Toronto, the University of Vienna, and the University of Peking. At present, he is a Visiting Professor at the University of Italian Switzerland. John is interested in the full range of Western philosophy (in its Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek traditions) in the Long Middle Ages (200 – 1700). By training, however, he is a Latinist, and his work for the first 25 years of his career was mostly on the Latin tradition up to 1200, especially Boethius, Abelard, and the logical tradition. His best book is Pagans and Philosophers. The problem of paganism from Augustine to Leibniz(Princeton 2015). He is currently finishing a book (co-written with the Arabist Nadja Germann) on the emergence of medieval philosophy in the Latin and the Arabic traditions and writing a study of the Other Medieval Philosophy – philosophy (mainly) outside the universities in Latin Europe from 1100 to c. 1500. He has also published on a variety of topics in medieval metaphysics, including facts and states of affairs, modality, and relations.

About Anna Marmodoro

Anna Marmodoro is a Full Professor of Philosophy at Durham University, where she holds the Chair of Metaphysics since 2016. Concomitantly, Anna is an Associate Member of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, where she worked for a decade before taking her current position. She earned her PhD at Edinburgh University in 2006 and her MA at the University of Pisa in 2000. She has held several visiting positions internationally, in Europe, the US, and Australia. Anna specialises in two main research areas: on the one hand, analytic metaphysics; on the other, ancient, late ancient, and medieval philosophy. She has also strong interests in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of religion. She has published monographs, edited books, and journal articles in all these fields. Her most recent monographs are Forms and Structure in Plato’s Metaphysics (OUP 2022) and Properties in Ancient Metaphysics (CUP 2023). She is the co-editor of the journal Dialogoi. Ancient Philosophy Today, published by EUP since 2019.

The Interview

Rodrigo Ballon-Villanueva: First of all, I want to thank you both for accepting this interview. Today, we are in London for the 33^rd meeting of the Medieval Philosophy Network in the UK. Could you please tell us about the origins of this initiative?

John Marenbon: The network’s first meeting was in 2012, yet its prehistory goes back 20 years. Because there were so few people in the UK who were interested in medieval philosophy, they tended to feel isolated. For a long time, I thought bringing them together and having regular conferences would be wonderful. So, in 2001, I tried to do something myself. The idea was that there would be conferences in Cambridge, Oxford, and perhaps London. We did, indeed, have a Cambridge conference – which I think I called by the somewhat unfortunate acronym ‘UKAMP’. Then, I rather hoped other colleagues at different UK universities might organise similar events, but nothing came out of it. Thus, this first attempt faded away into nothing, and I was somewhat disappointed.

More or less ten years later, the British Academy celebrated the 25^th anniversary of its postdoctoral fellowships scheme with a conference. Former PDFs (i.e., postdoctoral fellows) were invited to give lectures. Fellows of the British Academy chaired the sessions, and, as such, I chaired one. Generally, I have to say, I was very disappointed by the papers people gave until Anna came along. No notes at all. She just spoke very coherently, very interestingly, and I thought, gosh, this is very good! We started talking afterwards, and I quickly discovered that, despite her main interests being ancient and contemporary philosophy, she also had excellent training in medieval philosophy and, indeed, was doing some work on that. And I said, well, why don’t we try to organise a series of conferences? We hit upon our current format, which is having just a one-day meeting without catering and so on, open with regard to the subject matter, and in London because it is easiest for people to get to. In this way, mainly thanks to Anna, this project, instead of fizzling out, seems to have gone very well. So – this is the early history of the network.

Anna Marmodoro: Lovely John, thank you! It was incredibly exciting to meet at the British Academy and discover that we have overlapping interests in medieval philosophy. We spoke about Abelard on that occasion – it is still vivid in my mind! And, yes, it seemed a good idea to create a venue for people to meet, discuss, and share their passion for medieval philosophy. We both felt that the UK has/had great scholars in this area who did not seem to be interconnected and visible in a sense. The opportunity to meet regularly in an organised manner was something that did not exist at that time, so we set it up, and it worked really well. Our main goal was to consolidate the national interest in the field and project it globally.

JM: I suppose an important thing to add is the question about where to meet in London. First, I tried to host the conference at the British Academy, but, unfortunately, they were terribly difficult. For instance, they could only provide a room for a maximum of 12 people! Fortunately, Charles Burnett has been marvellous, getting us rooms from the very beginning. First at the Warburg Institute and then (when they were having works) at the Senate House. We owe a lot to Charles for the meetings taking place.

RB-V: This is all fantastic. Thanks for sharing it with us! The network now has a trajectory of more than ten years. How has it evolved?

AM: One thing that has happened in the course of time is that, in the beginning, it was more of a ‘local affair’. Now, we also have participants who come from abroad, either because they are already visiting the UK or have the opportunity to come over in connection with our meetings. So, the network is national, with international impact – I would say.

JM: That’s right. An unexpected aspect of this internationalisation is that the network has gone on without any funding at all. It has carried on mainly by piggybacking. People have been coming to the UK for other reasons and got involved in our meetings. We have had scholars from absolutely everywhere, including New Zealand, China, Europe, America, and so on. Also, I believe part of the internationalisation came as one of the few good spin-offs of COVID.

AM: Yes, unfortunate circumstances led to something good. Our meetings are hybrid, and we have lots of participants online. The mailing list includes over 80 people, I think. We obviously get a smaller number in person, but that is good because it facilitates discussion. If there were 80 people in the room, it would be a different spirit. I think we both feel everything works really well as things are.

RB-V: The network has just launched a new website. What can we find there?

AM: The new website is a way of giving a public face to what we are doing. There, we have a list of members, announce present and future activities, etc. Now, we have also expanded a little bit, including resources for students interested in pursuing a PhD in medieval philosophy in the UK. So far, there is information about Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, King’s College London, Manchester, and Edinburgh.

JM: Of course, the website owes you (RB-V) and Suf (Amichay) a great deal. This is an interesting example of how almost everything done in medieval philosophy in the UK depends on people who come from abroad! There is Anna, of course, Cecilia (Trifogli), etc.

AM: That’s a thought-provoking point. You would imagine medieval philosophy is a speciality that particularly interests the British because there is such a great tradition here. But in any case, internationalisation is good!

JM: Yes. Going back to the question, the idea for the website goes beyond just being something to announce our meetings. As Anna said, the website aims to tell what is happening in different universities. For instance, in Cambridge, we have this Medieval Philosophy Reading Group, and the website gives details about that. By the way, we also do this in a hybrid way so that people can join in from wherever.

AM: In sum, the goal is to raise awareness of what is happening in our field. Actually, if I remember correctly, at a point, part of our in-person sessions was devoted to discussing new published work in medieval philosophy. So, we had some book reviews presented by group members, but this faded out. On the website, we are trying to recapture the spirit of that by collecting information about new publications. In this line, I want to take the opportunity of this interview to encourage all our members (even those not based in the UK) to let us know about their work if they want to be featured on the website.

RB-V: What can we expect from the network in the future, and why is it important?

JM: It would be terrific if these meetings do indeed continue and continue. I do not believe it will be good if they become much longer. Also, although you want a decent audience, you do not want 100 people in person… we can always have more online. It would be very nice if more colleagues get involved in this project of telling people what is going on in medieval philosophy here in the UK, but this, of course, is not in our hands. Having this central source where people can look into and realise that the UK is not a bad place to do research in medieval philosophy could help attract good scholars here and nourish the discussion.

AM: In the future, we want to consolidate this good initiative we have set up, raising awareness of the field and the people working in it. We do not want to change the nature of what we are doing but just increase its visibility. One thought I have is that, compared to our beginnings, we have different generations of researchers involved in our meetings. When we started, there were mostly established people in the field who would attend and give papers. Now, I notice that we have at least three generations: the graduate students, the postdoctoral fellows, and colleagues with permanent academic positions. This wider participation must be encouraged because I see the future of the field depending on the next generations, who will then go on to permanent academic positions. So, it is good to bring them in and share with them – and that is partly what we do with you (RB-V) and Suf. [Suf, who is mentioned quite frequently, is Dr Suf Amichay, junior research fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge]

Additionally, my thought is that we academics need to keep the history of (medieval) philosophy salient in today’s intellectual landscape because there are pressures that may lead to marginalising our field if we do not keep it alive. This is true in Britain and other countries. Thus, we want to show that this is a very lively philosophical discipline that can significantly enrich the younger generations. It is not something of the past in the sense of antiquated; it is not something to live at the margins of philosophy. People can develop into great philosophers by studying the history of philosophy, in particular, the Middle Ages.

JM: It is interesting to hear Anna saying that research on medieval philosophy in the UK is something that was being done and that there is now a danger to it. Because I wonder whether, perhaps, it is the opposite. For instance, from the Cambridge perspective, medieval philosophy was not being done at all, but now it is gaining traction. Still, it is definitely more endangered in Cambridge than, let’s say, Oxford, where the discipline is well-established. I guess Anna is also partly influenced by what is going on in ancient philosophy. There is, and there has been, a continuous and great tradition of scholarship in that field. In contrast, there has not really been much of a British tradition of work in medieval philosophy, except in History Departments.

AM: Well, ancient philosophy is now done within Classics departments in many universities in the UK. This is an interesting fact because it means that new cohorts of graduate students come out with a PhD in Classics instead of Philosophy. Yet, wherever it is done, medieval philosophy is done within Philosophy Departments.

JM: This is not quite true when you consider people like Suf, for instance, whose doctorate is actually from the Divinity Faculty. Indeed, most of my supervision in medieval philosophy has been done in Cambridge’s Divinity Faculty.

AM: I see, but there are St Andrews, Oxford, Durham, Edinburgh… so wouldn’t you say, statistically, that medieval philosophy is done within Philosophy Departments?

JM: Yes, I think that is right and certainly a significant change. As I said, in the past, people doing medieval philosophy usually came from History Departments.

AM: Generally, part of what matters to me here is to make colleagues aware that medieval philosophy is philosophy. We must maintain it within the mainstream curriculum because that is how the discipline will grow.

RB-V: Today’s meeting includes a symposium on methodology. So, for my last question (since people have started to arrive!), how did you decide on such an exciting subject?

AM: It is a very topical issue whether research in the history of philosophy is philosophically important or not. Many colleagues have published on this and are discussing the issue, so we wanted to join the debate.

JM: It also started from the feeling that it would be nice for Anna and me to have a debate about this. I suppose there is a strange contrast on the surface between us. We both have published things on methodology, which seem to go in entirely different directions. And yet, we do not really believe that is the case – as it was shown in a summer school we organised in Lugano (Switzerland). Moreover, Christia Mercer happens to be in Cambridge for the next six months. Although she works in a slightly later era, she has strong interests in the Middle Ages. It seemed great to have her come along, especially because she has a very strong methodological interest in the whole issue of narratives.

AM: This kind of illustrates how we both think, especially John, of the Middle Ages as the longue durée.

JM: Of course, exactly! For me, Christia is a medievalist!

AM: Indeed, this illustrates concretely how there is a continuing tradition from Antiquity to what others think as the Early Modern period in philosophy. We believe that there is intellectual continuity, which allows for dialogue. This openness is a fundamental part of the network’s spirit.