Emile Alexandrov is an assistant professor of philosophy, formerly at the University of Tyumen in Russia, and currently a visiting scholar at Waseda University in Tokyo. He is author of The Other Platonist Beginning and Metaphysics and Ineffable.

Emile examines the millennial turn around the year 1000 as the pivotal transition from the early to high Middle Ages and the emergence of high scholasticism, driven by new Latin translations of Aristotelian logic and the flowering of demonstrative philosophy. He traces the gradual shift from non-discursive, intuitive modes of knowing toward discursive, logical reasoning in figures such as Anselm, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, showing how this altered understandings of God, the soul, will, and the intelligible order of the cosmos while shaping a unified culture expressed in Gothic architecture. Alexandrov highlights the lasting consequences of this historical rebalancing for modern thought, the overemphasis on calculative reason, and the contemporary hunger for non-discursive approaches.

00:00:00 Introduction

00:05:00 Importance of the year one thousand

00:09:30 Gothic architecture and medieval habitus

00:12:30 Shift from non-discursive to discursive thinking

00:16:30 Anselm and the ontological argument

00:22:30 Balancing reason with intuition

00:27:30 The soul will and choice in Aquinas

00:34:30 Duns Scotus and haecceity

00:40:30 Renaissance freedom and the individuated subject

00:49:00 Conclusion

(Recorded on Wednesday, August 26th, 2026)

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Published on November 13, 2026