The "medieval synthesis" refers to the unity achieved intellectually and practically between Greek metaphysics as presented in the work of Aristotle and Christian theology.
Explanation:
From our current perspective, as far as philosophy is concerned, the Renaissance appears to produce a cacophony of voices, but none that sing as beautifully or as powerfully as Thomas Aquinas, on the one hand, or Descartes, on the other. Between the medieval synthesis most completely expressed in the Scholastic philosophy of Aquinas and the emergence of a new kind of scientific philosophy in the work of Descartes, the philosophical spirit proliferated into a great abundance of contending types. Within a general revival of Classical philosophy, there were partisans of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Stoicism, and Skepticism, as well as aficionados of more obscure, hermetic traditions jostling with one another in an intellectually bracing environment that gained in intensity what it may have lost in profundity. In this context, More’s Utopia, Janus-faced, looks back at the medieval synthesis and ahead to the modern experiments in planned, socialistic communities. The "medieval synthesis" refers to the unity achieved intellectually and practically between Greek metaphysics as presented in the work of Aristotle and Christian theology. It was Thomas Aquinas who was most responsible for achieving the synthesis. Philosophically stated, the conflict inherent in the problem of mixing Greek philosophy with Christian theology concerns the question of the relative superiority of faith or reason. This is the pivotal issue which reveals the Christian hegemony, but the relationship between faith and reason should not be conceived along lines suggesting a static precedence of one over the other. Even though faith always has the last word on critical issues of morality or politics, the history of the Middle Ages reflects the growing power of reason and the growing autonomy of politics. Augustine, at the very outset of the medieval period, completely subjugated reason and its "pagan philosophy" to the dictates of faith, but the controversy seethes beneath the surface of the period until Aquinas practically gives reason its independence by taking up the corpus of Aristotelian philosophy into Christian doctrine and "rationalizing" the faith.
