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Peter Adamson, Don’t Think for Yourself: Authority and Belief in Medieval Philosophy, University of Notre Dame Press, 2022, 192pp., $100.00 (hbk), 9780268203399.
Reviewed by Christina Van Dyke, Barnard College at Columbia University, and Andrew W. Arlig, Brooklyn College, The City University of New York
In this short and engaging volume, Peter Adamson explores a range of medieval answers to questions of epistemic authority. The first five chapters address (primarily) Islamic answers to the question of how one should balance epistemic deference to authority against the importance of being responsible for one’s beliefs, while the final two chapters focus on how those issues play out, respectively, in the case of women authors and debates about the value of reason itself. Written in an easy, conversational tone that renders the subject matter accessible to non-experts as well as to scholars of medieval thought, Don’t Think for Yourself takes an admirably inclusive approach to its subject matter. We expect that it will be a boon especially to those looking for historical precedents…
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