Abstract

Gilbert Durand assigns to scholastic Aristotelianism the role of a metaphysical catastrophe to symbolism, thus considering it as the medieval moment of the broader Western iconoclasm. He envisages Thomas Aquinas as a major representative of this medieval iconoclasm. In this paper I examine critically Durand’s narrative, showing that it is built upon simplifications, one-sidedness and some mistaken interpretations of medieval thought. I especially show how one cannot charge Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics of being catastrophic to symbolism, and also correct some of Durand’s misrepresentations of specific aspects of his thought on human knowledge and revelation. After this critical examination, we come to the rectifying conclusion that the potential iconoclastic trend that Durand sees in the thirteenth century is counterbalanced by the regulative influence of faith over reason, and will effectively be actualized only after the dissolution of the authentic medieval project of thought.