At the beginning of the 14th century, urban handicrafts and commerce further developed, the citizen class rose, and the Roman Catholic Church gradually declined. Skepticism and humanism are gradually on the rise. Faced with the impact of rationalism on Christian faith, Christian theologians seek to further separate religious belief from reason. J. Duns Scott believed that God’s will is absolutely free, and it is impossible for human beings to understand God with their limited rationality. The separation of religious beliefs and rationality leads to doubts about theology. William (O'Connell) advocated that all knowledge should be based on facts, and the content of religious beliefs cannot be the object of rational inquiry. Acknowledge that it is impossible to defend religious beliefs by reason. At this time, the issues discussed by philosophers changed. The issues discussed in philosophy turned to the relationship between God, the world and people: the relationship between God's oneness and three persons, the function of the human soul, the status of divine grace and its relationship with human good deeds, The relationship between free will, whether God foreknows man’s free will choices, etc. This reflects the idea that people strive to expand the status of human beings in the theological system. Within Christianity, the decline of traditional theology and church authority is also reflected in the rise of speculative mysticism. In the early 14th century, the German Dominican monk Uetrich of Freiburg, starting from Neoplatonic philosophy, claimed that the center of the human soul is directly illuminated by God and is the divine resting place, laying the foundation for subsequent speculative mysticism. Another Dominican monk in Germany, M.J. Eckhart, and his followers advocated that communication with God can be achieved through meditation. Effectively denying the need for the sacraments of the Church or for invocation of divine grace.

The changes in philosophical thought during this period made ideological preparations for the rise of humanistic thought in the Renaissance after the second half of the 14th century.