Peter Abelard

Peter Abelard (1079-c. 1142), French philosopher and theologian, whose fame as a teacher made him one of the most celebrated figures of the 12th century. Born in Le Pallet, Brittany, Abelard left home to study at Loches with the French nominalist philosopher Roscelin and later in Paris with the French realist philosopher William of Champeaux. Critical of his masters, Abelard began to teach at Melun, at Corbeil, and, in 1108, at Paris. He soon gained fame throughout Europe as a teacher and as an original thinker. In 1117 he became tutor to Héloïse, the niece of Fulbert, a canon of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris.

Héloïse and Abelard fell in love, and she gave birth to a son whom they named Astrolabe. At Abelard’s insistence they were married secretly; he persuaded Héloïse to take holy vows at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Argenteuil. Her uncle Fulbert, at first enraged by the relationship between the two and later somewhat placated by their marriage, finally decided, however, that Abelard had abandoned Héloïse at the abbey and had him castrated. The couple then separated: Héloïse joined an order of nuns, while Abelard retired to a religious retreat, the Abbey of Saint-Denis-en-France, in Paris.

Abelard’s first published work, a treatise on the Trinity (1121), was condemned and ordered to be burnt by a Roman Catholic council that met at Soissons in the same year. Forced by criticism to leave Saint-Denis-en-France, Abelard founded a chapel and oratory, called the Paraclete, at Nogent-sur-Seine. In 1125 he was elected abbot of the monastery at Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuis, where he wrote his autobiographical Historia Calamitatum (History of Misfortunes, 1132). At this time the famous exchange of letters with Héloïse began, letters that have become classics of romantic correspondence. In 1140 St Bernard of Clairvaux, an eminent French ecclesiastic who thought Abelard’s influence dangerous, prevailed upon a Roman Catholic council in session at Sens, and upon Pope Innocent II, to condemn Abelard for his sceptical, rationalistic writings and teaching. On his way to Rome to appeal against the condemnation, Abelard accepted the hospitality of Peter the Venerable, abbot of the Abbey of Cluny, remaining there for many months. Abelard died at a Clunist priory near Chalon-sur-Saône. His body was taken to the Paraclete; when Héloïse died in 1164 she was buried beside him. In 1817 both bodies were moved to a single tomb in the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris.

The romantic appeal of the life of Abelard often overshadows the importance of his thought. He was, however, one of the leading thinkers of the Middle Ages. In the emphasis he placed on dialectical discussion, Abelard followed the 9th-century philosopher and theologian John Scotus Erigena, and he foreshadowed the Italian Scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas. Abelard’s important dialectical thesis that truth must be attained by carefully weighing all sides of any issue is presented in Sic et Non (Thus and Otherwise, c. 1123). He also foreshadowed the later theological reliance on the works of Aristotle, rather than on those of Plato.

Abelard reacted strongly against the theories of extreme realism, denying that universals have an independent existence outside the mind. According to Abelard, “universal” is a functional word expressing the combined image of that word’s common associations within the mind. This position is not nominalism, because Abelard adds that the associations from which the image is formed and to which a universal name is given have a certain likeness, or common nature. His theory is a definite step towards the moderate realism of Aquinas, but it lacks an explanation of how ideas are formed. In the development of ethics, Abelard’s great contribution was to maintain that an act is to be judged by the intention of the doer in doing it.

In addition to the writings mentioned, Abelard wrote many works in Latin on ethics, theology, and dialectics, as well as poetry and hymns.