Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to The History of Philosophy Podcast, brought

to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the

LMU in Munich, online at historyofilosophy.net.

Today's episode, Faith, No More, Martin Luther.

It seems like a perfectly reasonable assumption that the most impactful figures in the history

of philosophy would be, well, philosophers. Figures like Plato, Confucius, Megadrona,

Avesena, and Kant, they are the ones who divert the course of human thought.

But there are lots of ways to affect the development of philosophy and writing about philosophy

is probably not the most effective one. If you change the language people speak,

the books they read and the art they enjoy throw their political arrangements into upheaval,

challenge their institutions of learning, make them question their fundamental beliefs and

even the meaning of their lives on earth. You are definitely going to influence the way they

do philosophy. Martin Luther did all of these things. Indeed, I'm tempted to say that he's one of

the most influential non-philosophers in the history of philosophy, except that it's not quite

clear whether or not he was a philosopher. By his own terms, he certainly wasn't. He mentions

the philosophers as an enemy group whose views he wants to correct in light of whole scripture.

But he received a solid education in scholasticism as a student in Airfoot and was able to draw on

that training in his frequent polemics, including his attacks on scholasticism itself.

Having received his bachelor's degree from Airfoot in 1502,

his legend really began in July of 1505 when he was almost hit by lightning.

All but literally thunder struck. He wasted no time, or actually he wasted about two weeks

before joining an Augustinian monastery. His life from Menon was not all that dissimilar from

...