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Heloise: A Christian View on Ethics and Love
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
The writings of Heloise are examined for their philosophical content, with special reference to the notions of friendship and love. The work of Mews, Dronke, Clanchy and others is cited, and it is concluded that Heloise's gifts as a writer and thinker have been overlooked and merit more careful examination.
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- Copyright © 2010 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2010 The Dominican Society.
References
1 Mews, Constant, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999, p. 7.Google Scholar
2 Mews notes that Georges Duby has claimed that twelfth‐century writing about love was “essentially a male invention.” (Ibid., pp. 7–8).
3 Waithe, Mary Ellen, “Heloise and Abelard,” in Presenting Women Philosophers, eds. Tougas, Cecile T. and Ebenreck, Sara, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 117–128Google Scholar. This citation p. 121.
4 Mews, Lost, p. 257.
5 Waithe, “Heloise,” p. 122.
6 Dronke, Peter, Women Writers of the Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 107, 112.Google Scholar
7 Ibid., p. 112. He notes that their intellectual partnership was “not wholly one‐sided.”
8 Mews, Lost, p. 217.
9 Ibid., p. 140.
10 Ibid., p. 241.
11 Waithe, “Heloise,” p. 123.
12 The so‐called “signed” letters—those from a later part of the relationship that have been available for centuries—come to us in various translations from the Latin. Those currently in greatest use are probably The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Radice, Betty, New York: Penguin Books, 1974,Google Scholar and The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Moncrieff, C.K. Scott, London: Guy Chapman, 1925.Google Scholar Except for citations taken from anthologies, we will here use Scott Moncrieff.
13 Heloise, Letter 2, cited in Waithe, Mary Ellen, “Heloise and Abelard: Love, Sex and Morality,” in An Unconventional History of Western Philosophy, ed. Warren, Karen, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009, pp. 127–157.Google Scholar This citation p. 141.
14 Clanchy, M.T., Abelard: a Medieval Life, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar
15 Clanchy asserts that “Even before Abelard taught her, she was reputed to be the most learned lady in France.” (Ibid., p. 12)
16 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, IV, cited in Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 156.
17 Heloise, Letter 2, in op. cit., p. 141.
18 Heloise, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff, p. 44. Scott Moncrieff refers to this as “The Second Letter”.
19 For one such account, see the work of Julius Evola, Eros and the Mysteries of Love, Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1991.
20 Dronke is adamant about the sheer level of literary skill exhibited by Heloise. Dronke, Women, p. 107.
21 Clanchy, Abelard, p. 149.
22 Abelard, “Calamitatum” in Letters, trans. Scott Moncrieff, pp. 9–10.
23 Waithe, “Heloise,” p. 121.
24 Clanchy, Abelard, p. 169.
25 Unconventional, ed. Warren, pp. 129–130. Warren notes “His special area of philosophical expertise is ethics, focusing on the relationship between intention and moral character … .”
26 Abelard, unsigned letter 50, in Unconventional, ed. Warren, p. 133.
27 Abelard, “Calamitatum,” in Letters, trans. Scott Moncrieff, p. 14.
28 Clanchy, Abelard, p. 162.
29 Broad, C.D., “Egoism as a Theory of Human Motives,” in his Ethics and the History of Philosophy, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1952, pp. 218–231.Google Scholar Cited in Beauchamp, Tom L., Philosophical Ethics, New York: McGraw‐Hill, 1982, p. 56.Google Scholar
30 Stance of W.D. Ross, as outlined in Beauchamp, Ethics, p. 125.
31 Dronke, Women, p. 129.