Peter Abelard was a medieval French philosopher, logician, theologian, and poet. He was the finest academic brain of the 12th century and is best known as the father of nominalism. Peter earned a lot of acclaim for his use of dialectics and his solutions of problems of universals, a subject of metaphysics.
Background
Ethnicity:
Peter Abelard was a son of a minor noble French family.
Peter Abelard was born in 1079 in Le Pallet, or Palais, Brittany, France. He was the son of Berengar, lord of Le Pallet, a knight in Brittany south of the Loire River.
Education
Peter's father encouraged him to pursue his scholarly leanings. Peter decided to give up his military career and his noble inheritance in order to become an academic and study philosophy, particularly logic, in France. He first studied in Loire under the tutelage of Roscellinus of Compiegne, a famous French theologian and philosopher who is considered founder of nominalism.
Of the subjects forming the basic curriculum for scholars, Abailard was interested only in those concerning language, especially grammar and dialectic. He confesses not to have mastered mathematics, although he shows himself competent to deal with the question of continuity. In astrology he follows the accepted views. At this time in France doctrinal conflicts centered largely on dialectic, both within its proper field and in its applications to the problems of human life, then usually presented in theological terms. As a discipline in its own right, it was expanding into the province of metaphysics. Combined with deeper inquiries into grammatical concepts, it was developing new distinctions, refining its procedures, and purifying itself from the sources of easy sophistry. In its applications, it would claim to be the method of clarifying ideas, organizing statements, even extending the province of knowledge, and producing statements normally accepted as having a supernatural origin as valid conclusions derived from non-revealed truths. Such was the background of Abailard’s career.
He was an uneasy pupil at the school of Roscelin in Loches (ca. 1094-1096). Roscelin’s doctrines on significant words being merely words had appeared to endanger traditional views on knowledge and the dogma of the Trinity. Abailard soon passed on to William of Champeaux’s school in Paris; but impatient of this master’s opinions concerning the existence in our world (and possibly also in a Platonic world of ideas) of things referred to by general words, he began teaching in Melun and Corbeil. Perhaps, too, he was impatient of being just a pupil. About 1106 illness forced him to return to Brittany.
In 1100, Peter reached Paris and started studying in cathedral school of Notre-Dame de Paris under the guidance of William of Champeaux. Again in Paris he fought it out, victoriously, with William. The latter abandoned his chair, which soon after was given to Abailard. But intrigue had the better of learning; Abailard was dismissed.
So far, language, logic, and their metaphysical implications had dominated Abailard’s mind; after a business sojourn in Brittany he was attracted to Anselme and Ralph of Laon’s theological school (ca. 1114). Instead of clear words he found verbosity, instead of a scientific approach the smoke of traditional apologetics.
Career
After studying at the William of Champeaux’s school in Paris, Abelard began teaching in Melun and Corbeil. Perhaps, too, he was impatient of being just a pupil. About 1106 illness forced him to return to Brittany. Again in Paris (ca. 1110) he fought it out, victoriously, with William. The latter abandoned his chair, which soon after was given to Abailard. But intrigue had the better of learning; Abailard was dismissed. Undaunted, he opened a new school on the outskirts of the city, on the Montagne Ste. Geneviève in 1110. Then after a business sojourn in Brittany and his interest in Anselme and Ralph of Laon’s theological school (ca. 1114), where instead of clear words he found verbosity, and instead of a scientific approach - the smoke of traditional apologetics, the cathedral school of Paris now opened its doors to him as to an honored master of dialectic and theology.
The disturbing love affair with Heloise, who was a French nun and writer Heloise d’Argenteuil, niece of secular canon Fulbert, physically concluded with Abailard’s emasculation, turned into a friendship of a religious and intellectual character. He withdrew to the abbey of St. Denis outside Paris, and became a monk (ca. 1118): a bad choice for the abbey and for Abailard. He attacked the laxity of the monks; they attacked the dangers of his dialectical theology. The monks promoted the Council of Soissons (1121), where his doctrine of the Trinity was condemned. An attempt at demolishing, with the tools of historical criticism, the legend concerning the foundation of St. Denis by a pupil of St. Paul involved the enfant terrible in further trouble. He escaped, and finally obtained permission to settle at a place of his choice: a new convent was thus born under the symbolic name of Paraclete (the consoling Holy Spirit).
Peace was short-lived: too many people were attracted to the rebel. He accepted the position of abbot of St. Gildas in Brittany, leaving the Paraclete to Heloise and her nuns, only to fight once more in vain against irreligiosity and immorality. By 1136 he was again on his Montagne Ste. Geneviève, again provoking hostility by his methods and doctrines. The unflinching St. Bernard was among the attackers. The Council of Sens (1140) dramatically or theatrically condemned, with the pope’s support, the man for whom reason was a good companion of faith and intention rather than action the touchstone of sin.
Abailard set out toward Rome for an appeal, but was persuaded by Peter the Venerable of Cluny to accept the verdict. From Cluny he moved to the priory of St. Marcel, where he died soon after in 1142 suffering from fever and skin disorder. Peter was initially buried in St Marcel but soon his remains were taken to Paraclete and given to Heloise, the love of his life. Heloise herself was buried next to Peter when she died in 1163.
Abailard’s more strictly logico-philosophical works are partly documents of the elaborate development and preparation for his activity as a teacher and partly the systematic organization of his knowledge and critical evaluation of others’ views concerning the whole of logico-philosophical studies. The Introductiones parvulorum is an elementary commentary on the three basic texts studied by every boy aiming at a career that required learning: Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Categories and De interpretatione. The more extensive commentaries on these same works and on Boethius’ De differentiis topicis embody, both in the form of a penetrating analysis and in the form of constructive and destructive argument, much of Abailard’s most original philosophical production. The Dialéctica is the first full-scale attempt, in the Latin West, at producing a system of logic covering all the recognized sections of that discipline, until then dispersed in disconnected works composed by authors of différent periods and treated without a uniform pattern and often without a clear plan. Abailard’s own plan, however, depended too much on a traditional set of texts and on an old division of the parts of logic: his contribution is to be found more in details than in the general scheme.
Religion
Towards the last years of his life Abelard withdrew to the great monastery of Cluny in Burgundy. There, under the skillful mediation of the abbot, Peter the Venerable, he retired from teaching. Now both sick and old, he lived the life of a Cluniac monk.
Views
At the early start Abelard preserved a determination to impose his personality on the studies and intellectual polemics of his time, and often he dominated the entire field. Intolerant of what was not the best, he moved from school to school, fighting against his masters and colleagues and founding his own schools and a religious community. When he was forced as a punishment to reside in a monastery and when he accepted the leadership of another, he applied his exacting moral principles, his scholarship, and his energy to correcting and reforming mistakes and practices; if defeated, he prepared for further battle.
Most of Abailard’s philosophico-theological works, including sections of two biblical commentaries (on the beginning of Genesis and on St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans) contain elaborations of the main themes of Christian doctrine from the point of view of the man of faith. But the elaborations are aimed at showing how much of this doctrine is accessible to the man without faith who uses his reason (itself, after all, of divine origin) both for directly establishing truth and for critically accepting non-Christian reasonable authorities, such as Plato and Aristotle. This is most evident in the successive editions of his Theologia. His Scito te ipsum (Know Yourself), the study of the psychology of intention, volition, and action, as related to the concept of guilt, appeared to revolutionize the dogma of original sin. The Sic et non (Yes and No) is an analysis of texts chosen from works of the Fathers of the Church; in it, critical rules of interpretation of the written word are applied to show to what extent apparently contradictory statements can be seen to agree in their basic meaning.
From the introduction to the Yes and No the following principles or rules can be elicited: (1) methodical doubt (doubting is necessary [Aristotle]); search and you will find (the Gospels); (2) distinguish statements that compel assent from those on which free judgment must be exercised; (3) distinguish between the levels of language used (technical [proper] or common [vulgar, improper], explicit or metaphorical or rhetorical, stating the writer’s views or quoting the opinions of others); (4) meanings of words change with time; (5) fallibility of human writers, however authoritative (mistakes even in Scripture); (6) fallibility of written tradition (textual criticism); (7) context affects meanings.
Abailard’s discussion of “universals” in his longer commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge exemplifies his procedure. It can be schematized in this way: (a) be clear about the meaning that is ascribed to “universal,” starting, as one normally does, from Aristotle’s statement “universals are those that are predicated of many”; (b) properly used, the key term “predicated” applies only to words; (c) consequently “this kind of universals” can only be words, i.e., universal (or common) words; (d) these words have, in a proposition, the special function of “being predicated,” not of “signifying”; (e) a more serious problem is this: What makes us invent and use universal words, i.e., what is the cause (common cause) of common words; is it a community in things or a community in our concept; (/) there is a common state of affairs (“status”) for A and B such that each can be said to be man; this “status” is not a thing (res); (g) our mind “melts together” (confundit) into one image that which it elicits, abstracts, from things according to their “common status”; (h) the “common cause” of universal words is primarily to be found in the common “status” of things, secondarily in the imago confusa, i.e., in our concept; (i) extrapolating from the common status to the knowledge of it possessed by the maker of things (not by us, men), it is possible to conceive a knowledge of the common cause as forma (a Platonic idea in God’s mind). In this way, Abailard surveys the linguistic, logical, naturalistic, gnoseological, metaphysical, and theological aspects of the problems of universals.
In the Dialéctica as well as in the several commentaries there are many statements of importance to philosophy, theory of language, logic, methods of expression, and possibly of research in science, which were either first put forward clearly or strongly endorsed by Abailard. Some are to the effect that (a) “is,” “are,” etc., in sentences like John is a man and John is, have no existential import (the second sentence being elliptical = John is an existing being) but are connectives (copulae); (b) propositions in the future or past must be resolved into propositions in the present; (c) a self-referring word, e.g., “Man” (= “the word Mari’'), does not alter the nature of “is” qua copula-, (d) “not every . . and “some . . . not” are not equivalent; (e) “all” implies both collectivity and exclusivity; modal words (“possible,” “necessary” . . . , “true,” “false” . . . , etc.) have two different functions according to whether they affect the relationship between subject and predicate or the status of a proposition. In the study of conditional propositions, often called by Abailard consequentiae (possibly a new, systematically technical use of this term), a number of rules are made explicit in forms easily translatable into modern symbolism, e.g., the rules of transitivity of entailment, of incompatibility between a true affirmation and a true negation, and of entailments between modalities.
With his inquiries into the logic of language Abailard contributed possibly more than anyone else to the developments of the new logico-linguistic theories, especially those concerning suppositio, copulado, and appellado.
In ethics, Abelard develops a theory of moral responsibility based on the agent's intentions. Moral goodness is defined as intending to show love of God and neighbor and being correct in that intention.
Quotations:
"The Son of God took our nature, and in it took upon himself to teach us by both word and example even to the point of death, thus binding us to himself through love."
"By doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth."
"I preferred the weapons of dialectic to all the other teachings of philosophy, and armed with these, I chose the conflicts of disputation rather than the trophies of war.'
"Are you not moved to tears and bitter compassion, when you behold the only Son of God seized by the most impious, dragged away, mocked, scourged, buffeted, spit upon, crowned with thorns, hung upon the infamous cross between two thieves, finally in such a horrible and execrable manner suffering death, for your salvation and that of the world?"
"Are you not moved to tears and bitter compassion, when you behold the only Son of God seized by the most impious, dragged away, mocked, scourged, buffeted, spit upon, crowned with thorns, hung upon the infamous cross between two thieves, finally in such a horrible and execrable manner suffering death, for your salvation and that of the world?"
"Are you not moved to tears and bitter compassion, when you behold the only Son of God seized by the most impious, dragged away, mocked, scourged, buffeted, spit upon, crowned with thorns, hung upon the infamous cross between two thieves, finally in such a horrible and execrable manner suffering death, for your salvation and that of the world?"
"Our redemption through the suffering of Christ is that deeper love within us which not only frees us from slavery to sin, but also secures for us the true liberty of the children of God, in order that we might do all things out of love rather than out of fear - love for him that has shown us such grace that no greater can be found."