In short, Abelard gives something very like a linguistic account of mental representation or intentionality. To this end he embraces a principle of compositionality, holding that what an understanding is about is a function of what its constituent understandings are about.
Likewise, it cannot offer any ground for taking the epistemic status of the agent into account, although most people would admit that ignorance can morally exculpate an agent. Abelard makes the point with the following example: imagine the case of fraternal twins, brother and sister, who are separated at birth and each kept in complete ignorance of even the existence of the other; as adults they meet, fall in love, are legally married and have sexual intercourse.
Technically this is incest, but Abelard finds no fault in either to lay blame. Abelard concludes that in themselves deeds are morally indifferent. The proper subject of moral evaluation is the agent, via his or her intentions. Abelard denies it:. We are so constructed that the feeling of pleasure is inevitable in certain situations: sexual intercourse, eating delicious food, and the like. If sexual pleasure in marriage is not sinful, then the pleasure itself, inside or outside of marriage, is not sinful; if it is sinful, then marriage cannot sanctify it—and if the conclusion were drawn that such acts should be performed wholly without pleasure, then Abelard declares they cannot be done at all, and it was unreasonable of God to permit them only in a way in which they cannot be performed.
On the positive side, Abelard argues that unless intentions are the key ingredient in assessing moral value it is hard to see why coercion, in which one is forced to do something against his or her will, should exculpate the agent; likewise for ignorance—though Abelard points out that the important moral notion is not simply ignorance but strictly speaking negligence. Abelard takes an extreme case to make his point. He argues that the crucifiers of Christ were not evil in crucifying Jesus.
Their non-negligent ignorance removes blame from their actions. First, how is it possible to commit evil voluntarily? With regard to the first objection, Abelard has a twofold answer.
First, it is clear that we often want to perform the deed and at the same time do not want to suffer the punishment. A man wants to have sexual intercourse with a woman, but not to commit adultery; he would prefer it if she were unmarried. There is nothing evil in desire: there is only evil in acting on desire, and this is compatible with having contrary desires.
However, Abelard does not take ethical judgement to pose a problem. God is the only one with a right to pass judgement. In fact, Abelard argues, it can even be just to punish an agent we strongly believe had no evil intention. He cites two cases. First, a woman accidentally smothers her baby while trying to keep it warm at night, and is overcome with grief. Abelard maintains that we should punish her for the beneficial example her punishment may have on others: it may make other poor mothers more careful not to accidentally smother their babies while trying to keep them warm.
Human justice may with propriety ignore questions of intention. Yet if we cannot look to the intrinsic value of the deeds or their consequences, how do we determine which acts are permissible or obligatory? But the resolution of this problem immediately leads to another problem. Even if we grant Abelard his naturalistic ethics, why should an agent care if his or her intentions conform to the Golden Rule?
In short, even if Abelard were right about morality, why be moral? In particular, he argues that the Afterlife is a condition to which we ought to aspire, that it is a moral improvement even on the life of virtue in this world, and that recognizing this is constitutive of wanting to do what God wants, that is, to live according to the Golden Rule, which guarantees as much as anything can pending divine grace our long-term postmortem happiness.
The Slave can follow the instructions or not. He reasons that if the Master indeed left the instructions, then by following them he will be rewarded and by not following them he will be severely punished, whereas if the Master did not leave the instructions he would not be punished for following them, though he might be lightly punished for not following them.
That is the position the Jew finds himself in: God has apparently demanded unconditional obedience to the Mosaic Law, the instructions left behind. The Philosopher then argues with the Christian. He initially maintains that virtue entails happiness, and hence there is no need of an Afterlife since a virtuous person remains in the same condition whether dead or alive. In the Afterlife we are no longer subject to the body, for instance, and hence are not bound by physical necessities such as food, shelter, clothing, and the like.
The Philosopher grants that the Afterlife so understood is a clear improvement even on the virtuous life in this world, and joins with the Christian in a cooperative endeavour to define the nature of the virtues and the Supreme Good. Virtue is its own reward, and in the Afterlife nothing prevents us from rewarding ourselves with virtue to the fullest extent possible. Abelard held that reasoning has a limited role to play in matters of faith.
Bernard of Clairvaux and other anti-dialecticians seem to have thought that the meaning of a proposition of the faith, to the extent that it can be grasped, is plain; beyond that plain meaning, there is nothing we can grasp at all, in which case reason is clearly no help.
That is, the anti-dialecticians were semantic realists about the plain meaning of religious sentences. Hence their impatience with Abelard, who seemed not only bent on obfuscating the plain meaning of propositions of the faith, which is bad enough, but to do so by reasoning, which has no place either in grasping the plain meaning since the very plainness of plain meaning consists in its being grasped immediately without reasoning or in reaching some more profound understanding since only the plain meaning is open to us at all.
Abelard has no patience for the semantic realism that underlies the sophisticated anti-dialectical position. Rather than argue against it explicitly, he tries to undermine it. From his commentaries on scripture and dogma to his works of speculative theology, Abelard is first and foremost concerned to show how religious claims can be understood, and in particular how the application of dialectical methods can clarify and illuminate propositions of the faith.
Furthermore, he rejects the claim that there is a plain meaning to be grasped. Outlining his method in the Prologue to his Sic et non , Abelard describes how he initially raises a question, e. Now each authority Abelard cites seems to speak clearly and unambiguously either for a positive answer to a given question or for a negative one.
If ever there were cases of plain meaning, Abelard seems to have found them in authorities, on opposing sides of controversial issues. His advice in the Prologue amounts to saying that sentences that seem to be perfect exemplars of plain meaning in fact have to be carefully scrutinized to see just what their meaning is.
Yet that is just to say that they do not have plain meaning at all; we have to use reason to uncover their meaning. There is a far more serious threat to the proper use of reason in religion, Abelard thinks Theologia christiana 3. Such pseudo-dialecticians take reason to be the final arbiter of all claims, including claims about matters of faith. More exactly, Abelard charges them with holding that a everything can be explained by human reason; b we should only accept what reason persuades us of; c appeals to authority have no rational persuasive force.
Real dialecticians, he maintains, reject a — c , recognizing that human reason has limits, and that some important truths may lie outside those limits but not beyond belief; which claims about matters of faith we should accept depends on both the epistemic reliability of their sources the authorities and their consonance with reason to the extent they can be investigated. For the claim that reason may be fruitfully applied to a particular article of faith, Abelard offers a particular case study in his own writings.
He elaborates an original theory of identity to address issues surrounding the Trinity, one that has wider applicability in metaphysics.
The upshot of his enquiries is that belief in the Trinity is rationally justifiable since as far as reason can take us we find that the doctrine makes sense—at least, once the tools of dialectic have been properly employed. The traditional account of identity, derived from Boethius, holds that things may be either generically, specifically, or numerically the same or different.
Abelard accepts this account but finds it not sufficiently fine-grained to deal with the Trinity. The core of his theory of identity, as presented in his Theologia christiana , consists in four additional modes of identity: 1 essential sameness and difference; 2 numerical sameness and difference, which Abelard ties closely to essential sameness and difference, allowing a more fine-grained distinction than Boethius could allow; 3 sameness and difference in definition; 4 sameness and difference in property in proprietate.
Abelard holds that two things are the same in essence when they are numerically the same concrete thing essentia , and essentially different otherwise. The Morning Star is essentially the same as the Evening Star, for instance, since each is the selfsame planet Venus. Again, the formal elements that constitute a concrete thing are essentially the same as one another and essentially the same as the concrete thing of which they are the formal constituents: Socrates is his essence Socrates is what it is to be Socrates.
The corresponding general thesis does not hold for parts, however. Abelard maintains that the part is essentially different from the integral whole of which it is a part, reasoning that a given part is completely contained, along with other parts, in the whole, and so is less than the quantity of the whole. Numerical difference does not map precisely onto essential difference.
The failure of numerical sameness may be due to one of two causes. First, objects are not numerically the same when one has a part that the other does not have, in which case the objects are essentially different as well. Second, objects are numerically different when neither has a part belonging to the other. Numerical difference thus entails the failure of numerical sameness, but not conversely: a part is not numerically the same as its whole, but it is not numerically different from its whole.
Thus one thing is essentially different from another when either they have only a part in common, in which case they are not numerically the same; or they have no parts in common, in which case they are numerically different as well as not numerically the same.
Essential and numerical sameness and difference apply directly to things in the world; they are extensional forms of identity. By contrast, sameness and difference in definition is roughly analogous to modern theories of the identity of properties.
Abelard holds that things are the same in definition when what it is to be one requires that it be the other, and conversely; otherwise they differ in definition. Finally, things are the same in property when they specify features that characterize one another. Abelard offers an example to clarify this notion. A cube of marble exemplifies both whiteness and hardness; what is white is essentially the same as what is hard, since they are numerically the same concrete thing, namely the marble cube; yet the whiteness and the hardness in the marble cube clearly differ in definition—but even so, what is white is characterized by hardness the white thing is hard , and conversely what is hard is characterized by whiteness the hard thing is white.
Consider a form-matter composite in relation to its matter. The matter out of which a form-matter composite is made is essentially the same as the composite, since each is the entire material composite itself.
Yet despite their essential sameness, they are not identical; the matter is not the composite, nor conversely. The matter is not the composite, for the composite comes to be out of the matter, but the matter does not come to be out of itself. Now despite being essentially the same, the matter is not characterized by posteriority, unlike the composite, and the composite is not characterized by priority, unlike the matter.
Hence the matter and composite are different in property; the properties priority and posteriority are unmixed—they differ in property. Now for the payoff. Abelard deploys his theory of identity to shed light on the Trinity as follows. The three Persons are essentially the same as one another, since they are all the same concrete thing namely God. They differ from one another in definition, since what it is to be the Father is not the same as what it is to be the Son or what it is to be the Holy Spirit.
The three Persons are numerically different from one another, for otherwise they would not be three, but they are not numerically different from God: if they were there would be three gods, not one.
Moreover, each Person has properties that uniquely apply to it— unbegotten to the Father, begotten to the Son, and proceeding to the Holy Spirit—as well as properties that are distinctive of it, such as power for the Father, wisdom for the Son, and goodness for the Holy Spirit. Aristotle, General Topics: logic mereology: medieval relations: medieval theories of syllogism: medieval theories of universals: the medieval problem of William of Champeaux. Life and Works 1.
Metaphysics 3. Logic 4. Philosophy of Language 5. Philosophy of Mind 6. Ethics 7. Logic Abelard was the greatest logician since Antiquity: he devised a purely truth-functional propositional logic, recognizing the distinction between force and content we associate with Frege, and worked out a complete theory of entailment as it functions in argument which we now take as the theory of logical consequence. Philosophy of Mind Aristotelian philosophy of mind offers two analyses of intentionality: the conformality theory holds that we think of an object by having its very form in the mind, the resemblance theory that we do so by having a mental image in the mind that naturally resembles the object.
Abelard denies it: For example, if someone forces a monk to lie bound in chains between two women, and by the softness of the bed and the touch of the women beside him he is brought to pleasure but not to consent , who may presume to call this pleasure, which nature makes necessary, a fault?
Theology Abelard held that reasoning has a limited role to play in matters of faith. Holding all authorities in contempt, they glory in believing only themselves—for those who accept only what their reason persuades them of, surely answer to themselves alone, as if they had eyes that were unacquainted with darkness. Bibliography Primary texts in Latin Carmen ad Astralabium.
Edited by J. Groningen: phil. Rijksuniversiteit Collationes a. Dialogus inter Philosophum, Iudaeum, et Christianum. Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos. Edited by Eligius M. Buytaert in Petri Abaelardi opera theologica.
Corpus christianorum continuatio mediaevalis Vol. Brepols: Turnholt , — Edited by L. For Abelard however, the only morally significant component on this list is e consent and intention. Each of these other components that make up immoral behavior is irrelevant to the moral assessment of the agent.
He argues that each of these other components is either present in morally good behavior, or absent in immoral behavior and is morally irrelevant. Consent and intention are thus intimately connected. To consent is simply to give oneself over to what one intends. An intention can in most cases explain why the agent undertook the action. An agent can be said to consent to an action only if he could provide an account of his intention. This is not to say that the account must be a good one.
We can and do consent to all manner of actions with foolish and ill-conceived intentions. Mental vice a and will or desire b can be dispensed with as sources of moral blame because they are beyond our control.
Mental vice is simply the inclination towards evil. Some people are just born with strong natural inclinations to lust or gluttony or anger. Will or desire is a more reflective wanting of what one is inclined towards. However whether he consents to satisfy the desires is in his control. To experience pleasure c is not, of itself, immoral. William of Champeaux had argued that pleasure was the result of our fallen state, in Eden there was no physical pleasure thus any experience of pleasure is immoral.
Abelard disagrees. We feel pleasure because God made us in such a way that some things are pleasurable. If pleasure were bad then the fault would lay with God, not us. In a truly strange example Abelard describes a monk, dragged in chains, and forced to have sex with women. That the behavior is voluntary d is also not a defining characteristic of immoral behavior.
This is the point at which Abelard disagrees with many other ethical theorists. Abelard not only believes in involuntary consent but also that we are morally responsible for involuntary consent. As Abelard sees it, much immoral behavior is at a fundamental level irrational and thus not voluntary. When an agent consents to commit adultery he consents to the act without wanting the punishment that necessarily follows.
He wants his partner to be unmarried, or he wants the sixth commandment to be repealed. Acting in the hope that the moral laws of the universe will alter and allow an exception, just this once, is irrational. Abelard argues further that a conflict between first and second order desires makes some behavior involuntary. An alcoholic may have a very strong first order desire to drink. This same alcoholic also has a very strong second order desire, namely, the desire not to desire alcohol.
The alcoholic desperately wants a drink; he also desperately wants to be free from this desire for alcohol. When this alcoholic drinks alcohol the behavior is involuntary. He consents to drink. He knows what he is doing and he does it. Even though an agent is deeply confused he can still form an intention and consent to it. If this account is correct, much immoral behavior will be involuntary but still something for which we are morally responsible. Finally, Abelard argues that the act itself is morally irrelevant.
He points out that we often act in ignorance. In what may be the first serious use of this defense, Abelard argues that if a man genuinely mistakes another woman for his wife he may physically act but he has not sinned because he did not consent to commit adultery.
Conversely, a man who arranges to commit adultery and would follow through has committed adultery even if the woman does not show up. The genuine misanthrope who donates to famine relief believing that death is the end of all pain and intending to increase the sum total of human misery does what is good but is not a good person. Strikingly, Abelard argues that the central event in Christian history, the crucifixion of Christ, was carried out by many agents, some praiseworthy for their participation, some not.
Christ is to be praised; his consent to suffer crucifixion was morally right. He intended to do what was pleasing to God by redeeming mankind. Judas played an integral role also, but his consent to betray a man he believed to be the messiah was immoral. The Jews were morally blameless. The Jews believed that executing this convicted criminal was required by God. The event of the Crucifixion was brought about by all these agents acting together.
Jesus merits moral praise. He consented to what he believed was pleasing to God and his belief was correct. Judas is morally bad. He consented to what he believed was offensive to God. The Jews are blameless, but not morally good. They consented to what they believed was pleasing to God, but their belief was mistaken. The Jews sinned in act but not in fault: it is worse to sin in fault.
To be good one must avoid not only sinning in fault but also sinning in action. One must intend to do what one believes shows love of God and neighbor, and these beliefs must be correct. Presumably Abelard would have offered a fuller account in book II of the Ethics or in the unfinished judgment of the Dialogue. His explanation likely would have relied heavily on his discussion of natural law.
Through study of the natural law we can recognize goodness and love without divine revelation. There are precepts of natural law that we can discover and probably ought to know.
Abelard discusses several examples to show that one can sin in action violate the natural law but not in fault intentionally violate the natural law. Ignorance of these precepts may exonerate us from fault, but the existence of such precepts also means that there is an objective standard we must achieve in order to be morally good. Merely believing our intentions are good is not enough.
The Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian is really a pair of dialogues, the first between a Philosopher and a Jew, the second between a Christian and a Philosopher.
Unable to reach a conclusion, the three come to Abelard begging him to act as judge. In the dialogue between the Philosopher and the Jew, the Jew claims that the law of the Old Testament is the path to ultimate human happiness. The Jewish conception of the path to ultimate happiness is characterized as an exhaustive list of prescribed ritual and prohibited behavior.
For many of the reasons discussed above, the philosopher argues that it is possible to obey all the precepts of the old law and yet intend to scorn and hate God. The philosopher argues in turn that true happiness must be within our power to acquire and maintain. Since the only thing we have complete control over is our own soul, the basis for happiness must be internal and in our power to attain.
In the dialogue between the Philosopher and the Christian, the Philosopher defends the Stoic claim that ultimate happiness is the state of mental tranquility achieved when one has attained virtue. For the Philosopher, ultimate happiness is achievable in this life by the person who seeks virtue. The Christian argues that ultimate happiness is attainable only in the afterlife, and that it is different from any state attainable without divine grace. The Christian argues for a sort of beatific vision of God, in which those who love God are rewarded with a clear vision of God that inspires more love and hence clearer vision in an ever rising spiral of pure love and spiritual bliss.
Exactly the opposite happens to those who do not love God. They end up in an ever plummeting spiral of hate and loathing. Seeking and developing virtue is the path to human happiness, but true happiness is not attainable by human means alone. We need grace. Since human virtue requires that we understand and demonstrate love in this life we are primed to receive and accept this grace. True happiness is then the spiritual bliss and tranquility that comes with the ever rising love and understanding of God.
Although without the conclusion to the Dialogue it is impossible to know how Abelard would have worked out many of the details. There is much scholarly dispute as to how far Abelard intended to take his reductive project in metaphysics, as well as debate about how successful he ultimately was.
Marenbon and argues for a more moderate reductivism, arguing that there are several items Abelard could not eliminate from his ontology and suggesting it would have been unwise to have tried. These are items that exist but are not individuals. Arlig draws a distinction between particulars and individuals arguing that everything that exists is particular, that is discrete from everything else, but not everything is an individual.
In many cases all that is easily found are excerpts of unedited manuscripts quoted in other sources. Citations for works cited in this article are provided here.
Kevin Guilfoy Email: kguilfoy carrollu. Peter Abelard — Peter Abelard was the preeminent philosopher of the twelfth century and perhaps the greatest logician of the middle ages.
Universals Abelard is credited as the founder of nominalism for his claim that a universal is a name nomen or significant word sermo.
The most general essence, Substance, is formed into Corporeal Substance and Incorporeal Substance by the addition of the differentiae Corporeal and Incorporeal, and so on down the tree of porphyry 3 individuation is accomplished by the addition of accidental forms. William writes: One Man is many men, taken particularly.
Logic and Philosophy of Language In the introductions and preambles to his various works, Abelard writes that a student should proceed from the study of words to the study of propositions—all with the goal of learning about argument.
References and Further Reading a. Brower, J. The Cambridge Companion to Peter Abelard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Marenbon, J. The Philosophy of Peter Abelard. Journal of the History of Philosophy Mews, C. Abelard and Heloise.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, Life Abelard, P. Historia calamitatum. Radice trans. London: Penguin, Clanchy, M. Abelard: A Medieval Life. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, Peter Abelard. Authors of the Middle Ages: historical and religious writers of the Latin West. Aldershot, Hants. Universals Abelard, P. P Spade trans. Indianapolis: Hackett, King, P. Princeton University, Tweedale, M.
Abailard on Universals. Amsterdam: North-Holland, Logic, Metaphysics, and Philosophy of Mind There is much scholarly dispute as to how far Abelard intended to take his reductive project in metaphysics, as well as debate about how successful he ultimately was. Abelard, P. Logica Ingredientibus commentary on De Interpretatione. Selections on mind and language translated in King vol ii. Logica Nostrorum Petitoni Sociorum. Selections on genera and differentia translated in King vol ii.
Translated in King , vol ii. Arlig, A. Ohio State University, Guilfoy, K. Brower and K. Jacobi, K. Kretzmann, N. Benson and G. Constable, — Martin C. The work did not attack traditional authorities, but it suggested that reliance on authority should be combined with a critical examination of the theological issues involved in each problem as well as an examination of the intention and merits of the authorities quoted.
In the abbot of St-Denis allowed Abelard to found a primitive hermitage on a piece of land between Provins and Troyes. There he built a school and a church, which he dedicated to the Paraclete, or Holy Spirit. Seeking the safety of his homeland, Abelard returned to Brittany to accept the abbacy of the unruly monastery of St-Gildas, on the coast near Vannes. For 10 years Abelard struggled to bring order to the monastery at the risk of his life, and he was able to befriend Heloise and her fellow nuns, expelled from Argenteuil by the abbot of St-Denis, by deeding to them the hermitage of the Paraclete.
In Abelard returned to Paris to teach at the church of Ste-Genevi'e. For the next 4 years he continued to attract students as well as opposition from Bernard and others.
During this period Abelard wrote a work on ethics which took as its title the Socratic admonition, "Know thyself. The opposition of Bernard was instrumental in provoking a second trial of Abelard's orthodoxy.
A council was convened at Sens in , which resulted in the second condemnation of Abelard. Convinced of his innocence, Abelard decided to take his case before the Pope. There he died on April 21, Abelard's autobiography is available in an excellent translation by J. Muckle, The Story of Abelard's Adversities ; written in a clever and convincing style, it presents only Abelard's side of events and issues.
The delightful historical novel of the English medievalist Helen Waddell, Peter Abelard , provides insight into the period. See also Cedric Whitman, Abelard The best introduction to the thought of Abelard remains J. Sikes, Peter Abailard The lengthy introduction to the translation of one of Abelard's most important works, Christian Theology, edited by J. Ramsay McCallum , is informative. The influence of Abelard's teaching is covered by D. Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard Ericson, Donald E.
Marenbon, John. All rights reserved. Early Career In Abelard set up his own school at Melun. Affair with Heloise The decision of his parents to enter the religious life or the development of his own interests led Abelard upon his return to Paris to seek instruction in theology. Monastic Years, Abelard's life at St-Denis was difficult not only because of the public disgrace occasioned by his emasculation and the exposure of his affair with Heloise, but also because separation from the cathedral schools and subjection to the authority of an abbot were new and unpleasant experiences for him.
Further Reading on Peter Abelard Abelard's autobiography is available in an excellent translation by J.
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