Peter Abelard

Peter Abelard was one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the twelfth century, famed for his skill in logic as well as his romance with Heloise. His Collationes - or Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher, and a Jew - is remarkable for the boldness of its conception and thought.

Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the twelfth century, famous for his skill in logic as well as his romance with Heloise. His Collationes--or Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher, and a Jew--is remarkable for the boldness of its conception and thought.

Translation of Dialogus inter philosophum, iudaeum, et christianum.

A penetrating and historically important critique of medieval moral thought.

Peter Abelard's Expositio in hexaemeron, or interpretation of the six-day work of creation, was commissioned by Heloise for the community of the Paraclete. The work is unusual in that it gives priority to the historical over the allegorical sense, and bears strong affinities to the writings of Thierry of Chartres and other twelfth century students of the natural sciences. As such, it is evidence both for the general state of twelfth century knowledge of cosmology, and for the quality of scholarship (...) available in particular to a community of women religious.The source text of this volume appeared in Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis as Expositio in Hexameron . References to the corresponding pages of the Corpus Christianorum edition are provided in the margins of this translation.Wanda Zemler-Cizewski is Associate Professor of historical theology in the Department of Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She received her doctorate in Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto in 1983, and is the author of numerous articles on early scholastic biblical interpretation and theology. (shrink)

This dissertation is a critical analysis of Peter Abailard's account of the supreme good. Abailard develops a forceful and innovative account of goodness and evil in the second collatio of the Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Christian and a Jew. In the Introductory Chapter I discuss the interpretative obstacles which a student of the Dialogue must overcome. Chapters one through three follow Abailard's attempt to develop a definitive position on the supreme good of man. The second collatio features two (...) transitory positions and a final doctrine which I identify and discuss in detail. These are: the Original Philosophic position, the Pseudo-Christian position and the Christian position. Each transitory position is critically debated by the Dialogue's characters. Abailard levies three criticisms against the original philosophic position. First, he maintains that this view inappropriately locates the supreme good in this life. Second, he rejects the claim that virtue is an end in itself and finally, he rejects the Stoic's absolute conception of "goodness". The "Pseudo-Christian position" is rejected because it identifies the supreme evil as punishment and this claim generates an insurmountable difficulty. These objections direct the plot of the Dialogue, they highlight main areas of contention between classical and Christian conceptions of goodness and they inform Abailard's own account. According to Abailard, the supreme good is ever-increasing love of God and this end is attained by loving God. The supreme evil is a degenerative and unrelenting hatred of God and sinners are damned for the fault of contempt. Abailard's ultimate position is not a complete departure from the views of the pagan philosophers. Rather, Abailard imposes a series of modifications and clarifications upon classical positions. This process culminates in a doctrine which is uniquely Abailard's but it is one which, nonetheless, bears a wide variety of family resemblances. In Chapter Four, I subject the final "Christian Position" to both an internal and an external assessment and I conclude by considering the relationship between Abailard's account of the supreme good and evil in the Dialogue and his account of sin in the Ethics. (shrink)

Abelard repeatedly claims that no thing can survive the gain or loss of parts. I outline Abelard’s reasons for holding this controversial position. First, a change of parts compromises the matter of the object. Secondly, a change in matter compromises the form of the object. Given that both elements of an object are compromised by any gain or loss of a part, the object itself is compromised by any such change. An object that appears to survive change is really a (...) series ofrelated, but non-identical, objects. I argue that, for Abelard, this series of objects is not itself an object. Finally, I examine an apparent exception to Abelard’s claimthat no thing can survive a gain or loss of parts, and I show that this specific case does not undermine his general thesis. (shrink)

In his ethical writings Peter Abelard declared the accomplishment of good deeds irrelevant to a person’s merit. Also, he denied that acts had any moral value in themselves. The article argues that both theses are contradicted by the purport of Abelard’s ethical teaching. If the opportunity to act is present, good intentions must be followed by good deeds in order not to lose their meritorious character. Moreover, the intrinsic morality of intended acts determines the morality of human intentions, whereas the (...) moral evaluation of these acts determines whether consenting to them is sinful. Good acts can become neutral or bad on account of improper intentions, but evil deeds always retain their evil character. In the early-twentieth-century debate on Abelard’s alleged moral subjectivism, both sides appear to have been at fault to a certain degree. Those who charged Abelard with subjectivism mistook his theses on the indifference of human actions for the essence of his ethical teaching. Those who defended Abelard against the said charge have pointed to his use of objective criteria of right and wrong either with regard to intentions or with regard to deeds. In the first case, they did not notice that Abelard’s notion of objectively right or wrong intentions implies a judgment on the intrinsic moral value of material deeds; in the second case, they failed to account for the inconsistency with Abelard’s theses on the moral indifference of human actions. (shrink)

The public, dramatic, and eventually calamitous love affair of Abelard and Heloise must have had a powerful effect on their contemporaries. In one form or another, the story was known far and wide. While he was still in a position to joke about it, Abelard himself made humorous references about his “amica” in the lectures he prepared for his students. After his castration he was the subject of a taunting and probably widely circulated letter by his former teacher Roscelin, as (...) well as of a more sympathetic letter of “consolation” by his fellow monk, Fulk of Deuil. At some unknown time an anonymous poet linked Abelard's castration to that of a Count Mathias, who suffered a similar fate because of a charge of adultery. (shrink)

Twelfth-century ethics is commonly thought of as following a stoic in fl uence rather than an Aristotelian o ne. It is also assumed that these two schools are widely different, in particular with regards to the social aspect of the virtuous life. In this paper I argue that this picture is misleading and that Heloise of Argenteuil recognized that stoic ethics did not entail isolation but could be played out in a social context. I argue that her philosophical contribution does (...) not end there, but that she departs from both the stoics and her teacher, Abelard, in her defence of the ideal of moderation. By insisting that virtue must strike a mean between two extremes, she shows that Aristotelian virtue ethics were present in the intellectual life of the twelfth century. (shrink)

This article provides a sympathetic treatment of Abelard’s account of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It argues that the key to Abelard’s account lies in his ingenious defense of a form of numerical sameness without identity--a relation whose application to the Trinity he justifies on the grounds that it must be invoked to explain familiar cases of material constitution. The conclusion is that, although Abelard’s discussion provides the resources to establish the coherence of the Trinity, his attempt to reconcile (...) it with the classical doctrine of divine simplicity, though going considerable distance toward this goal, remains incomplete. (shrink)