二十世紀西方視覺批判傳統將視覺中心主義視為現代性表徵之一，而中世紀則被描述為其對立面——一個反視覺的「黑暗時代」。但是這個描述是不準確的。中世紀的視覺思想是在持視覺優先論立場的希臘思想、主要是柏拉圖主義，以及充滿視覺恐懼色彩的古猶太教與聖經這兩種強大傳統的共同影響下發展起來的。二者看似相互對立，其實在否定視覺能夠認識真理的問題上具有共謀關係。中世紀早期教父釋經學將視覺問題納入到「屬靈感覺」概念之中，對肉體感覺與屬靈感覺之間的關係做出種種闡釋，其中，奥奧古斯丁的心理學視角將亞里斯多德主義視覺思想引入基督教柏拉圖主義的認識論框架，在外視覺與內視覺之間建立起現實關聯性，從而確證了視覺作為認識真理之起點的功能。就此意義而言，中世紀乃是西方視覺中心主義真正得以確立的時代。

The Middle Ages has been described as “Dark” for a long time by many thinkers in 20th century who tend to definite ocularcentrism as a symbol of modernity and then identify medieval times the opposition of it. However, this common assumption is confronted with more and more suspicion. Medieval thought of sight had been developed under a dualist context of Platonism and Judaism, the former of which held strongly on a kind of ocularcentrism and the latter ocularphobia. Despite of their apparent opposition, both traditions conspired to deny the possibility of seeing the truth by human’s corporal eyes. Medieval Christian theology, which tended essentially to confirm the connection between sight and truth according to its crucial doctrine of Incarnation, raised new concepts such as “spiritual senses” and “insight,” and developed different understanding of the relationship between corporal and spiritual eyes. It was Augustine who invented a psychological perspective in theological epistemology and introduced Aristotelian tradition of sight into Christianity and established a subsistent relationship between outer and inner sight, which paved the way of rationalizing the sight and laid really the foundation of modern ocularcentrism.