The Significance of Mediaeval Intellectual Culture

E-ISSN： 1748-6858|9|4|453-462

ISSN： 0034-6705

Source： Review of Politics, Vol.9, Iss.4, 1947-10, pp. : 453-462

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Abstract

Nicholas Berdyaev, the noted religious philosopher and sociologist, wrote a book more than a decade ago entitled, in the French, The New Middle Ages. In this work he naturally did not imply that history is repeating itself. Nor did he imply diat, by reason of a cyclical recurrence of identical periods in history, following our age of enlightenment, there would dawn a new age of predominantly religious authority concurrently with which State authority would almost disappear—a new age wherein philosophy and science would exercise a far greater general influence upon life than they do today. History, indeed, does not repeat itself. If it did, its story would be a poor carmen universitatis, a poor drama of world progress, unworthy of the Lord of history and of human freedom.