Rewriting the History of Medieval Philosophy (or, a thousand years of philosophy): An interview with Andreas Speer
by Guido Alt
January 2023 – Prof. Andreas Speer (Cologne) is this issue’s interviewee for Philosophy and the Academy. Andreas has shared very interesting reflections about the Thomas-Institut, including his personal involvement of about thirty years with this renowned research center for medieval philosophy and studies. Besides hosting the Mediaevistentagung and producing its volumes in the series Miscellanea Mediaevalia (De Gruyter), the Thomas-Institut hosts under the collaboration of Prof. Speer a variety of projects mentioned in this interview, among which, for example, the Averroes Edition (directed by Andreas Speer and David Wirmer), the Durandus-Edition, the edition of the Hebrew-to-Latin translation of Maimonides’ Dux neutrorum, and much more. Clearly, this exemplifies a vision of medieval philosophy as cross-cultural and interreligious development, and then question naturally arises: how to write (or rewrite) a history of medieval philosophy which does justice to that? Is the category ‘medieval’ even accurate after all? With this in mind, Andreas is about to publish a book entitled “1000 Jahre Philosophie: Ein anderer Blick auf die Philosophie des “Mittelalters” (1000 years of philosophy: another look at the philosophy of the “Middle Ages”), coming this year on Brill (https://brill.com/display/title/64121).
About Andreas Speer
Prof. Andreas Speer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cologne, Director of the Thomas-Institut. He is a speaker at many fora for the research of the history of philosophy, and among his awards is a doctor honoris causa awarded by “St. Kliment Ochridski” University at Sofia (Bulgaria). A list of his publications and awards can be found at his homepage of the University of Cologne.
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