Abstract

The characteristic doctrines of Peter Abelard (1079-1142) can be arranged under the headings of logic, metaphysics, and ethics.

Abelard rejects the position that logical theory deals with universals taken as things (res). It deals with words, which are able to achieve generality by association with thoughts that are stripped of individuating detail. His account of propositions is shaped by his distinction between propositional force and propositional content, and by his notion of the dictum, the causally efficacious non-thing which is what a proposition says. His account of inference is especially focused on the nature of conditionals and the sorts of relationships between terms that can be used to verify them.

Abelard’s most characteristic metaphysical view is that the only things which exist are individuals. Forms exist but only as individual, not shared. Material objects are matter/ form composites whose forms are simply arrangements of the underlying matter; material objects are thus profitably subject to mereological analysis. Humans, but not animals, have immaterial souls, and are capable of freedom. By contrast God is not free; he can only do the things he does.

On Abelard’s ethical theory, it is consent, not action, that bears moral worth. A sinful consent is marked by contempt for God, and is formed explicitly in violation of God’s law. Meritorious consent is marked by love of God - in other words, by charity, which is the fundamental virtue.

Peter Abelard was a colossus of twelfth-century culture. He is most widely known through his popular writings: letters, an autobiography, sermons, and hymns. But his greatness as a thinker stems chiefly from a series of technical writings in philosophy and theology.

He was born in 1079 near Nantes in Brittany. As a young man he studied under two of the most eminent philosophical minds of the time, Roscelin of Compiegne and William of Champeaux. After conflict with the latter he established schools of his own in different places - Melun, Corbeil, Mont Ste. Genevieve - before becoming master of the cathedral school of Notre Dame. By 1117 he had vacated this choice position following the scandal of his romance with Heloise. Removal to various monastic settings increased his literary productivity, and progressively channeled his interests toward theology and ethics. Open conflict with elements of the church hierarchy led to a condemnation of his work in 1121 at the Council of Soissons. In 1122 he established a flourishing school at Quincy, and in 1127 he took the position of abbot in a monastery in Brittany. After several tumultuous years in that situation he resumed teaching in Paris in 1132. His work was publicly condemned again at the Council of Sens in 1141, and he was excommunicated at that time. This sentence was lifted in 1142, just prior to his death.

Abelard received from Boethius a three-part division of the subject-matter of philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics: respectively, the reasoned consideration of reasoning itself, of the natures of things, and of right living. This division is a useful organizing device for setting out the essentials of Abelard’s own philosophical work, the preponderance of which maybe gathered under the headings. These will therefore mark the section divisions of the following summary - but with one change. As a label for philosophical subject-matter, ‘‘physics’’ actually applies to what we would now broadly call ‘‘metaphysics,’’ so it is a better fit with current usage to speak of Abelard’s philosophical work as focusing on the areas of logic, metaphysics, and ethics.