Life
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Abelard was born in 1079 in the small village of Le
Pallet (about 16km east of Nantes, in Brittany, France), the eldest
son of a minor noble Breton family. He was a quick learner and his father
encouraged him to study the liberal arts (dialectic, rhetoric and
grammar). He particularly excelled in dialectic (or logic,
which at that time consisted chiefly of the logic of Aristotle), and soon becoming a wanderingPeripatetic
academic rather than pursuing a military career like his father.
His early teacher was Roscellinus of Compiegne (c.
1050 - 1125), who is often regarded as the founder of Nominalism (the doctrine that abstract
concepts, general terms or universals have
no independent existence but exist only as names).
In Paris, he was taught for a while by William of Champeaux (c.
1070 - 1122), a prominent Realist, and Abelard's arguments against Realism (and in favour ofNominalism and his own Conceptualism),
were instrumental in the decline ofRealism in the Middle Ages.
While still a young man, Abelard set up his own
school at Melun and then at Paris, which proved very successful and,
in 1115, at the age of 36, he was nominated canon of Notre-Dame
Cathedral in Paris. At the peak of his fame, he attracted thousands
of students from many countries of Europe.
One of those students was Héloïse (d.
1164), and Abelard fell madly in love with her and caused a
great scandal when she became pregnant. Héloïse has a son in
secret and reluctantly agreed to Abelard's suggestion of a secret
marriage. Her guardian, the canon Fulbert, found out about the
marriage, broke into Abelard's chamber by night and castrated him.
Héloïse, still only in her twenties, then became a nun for
many years.
Aberlard returned to his teaching work, but was charged
with heresy in 1121 over his rationalistic interpretation
of theTrinitarian dogma (God in three persons), and he was confined to
the convent of St. Medard at Soissons. Later he became ahermit, living
in a cabin of reeds in a deserted part of the country, although students
followed him even there. Gradually he recovered his respectability, and managed
to establish Héloïse at Paraclete, and they continued a passionate
but Platonic relationship, recorded in Abelard's autobiographical "Historia
Calamitatum".
In 1141, Abelard was again accused of
heresy by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 - 1153) in an attempt
to crush Abelard's rationalistic inquiries, and he collapsed and died before
being able to fully clear himself of the accusations.
Much of Abelard's legacy lies in the quality of his Scholastic philosophizing and his attempt
to give a formally rational expression to the received ecclesiastical
doctrine. Although much of his work was condemned at the
time, he paved the way for the ascendancy of the philosophical
authority of Aristotle (rather than the Realism of Plato), which became firmly established in the
half-century after his death.
Aberlard's attempt to bridge the gap between Realism and Nominalism became known as Conceptualism,
the doctrine thatuniversals (qualities or properties of
an object which can exist in more than one place at the same
time e.g. the quality of "redness") exist only within
the mind and have no external or substantial reality. Immanuel Kant later developed a modern
Conceptualism, holding that universals have no connection with
external things because they are exclusively produced by our a priori mental
structures and functions.
In theology, Pope Innocent III (1161
- 1216) accepted Abelard's Doctrine of Limbo, which amended St. Augustine's Doctrine of Original
Sin, and which held that unbaptized babies did not, as at
first believed, go straight to Hell, but to a special area oflimbo,
where they would feel no pain but no supernatural happiness either
(because they would not yet be able to behold God).
Perhaps Abelard's best known work is "Sic
et Non" ("Yes and No"), dating from
between about 1121 and 1132, in which he pointed out apparently contradictory quotations
from the Church Fathers on many of the traditional topics of
Christian theology (such as multiple significations of a
single word), and outlined rules for reconciling these
contradictions. This work rekindled interest in the dialectic as
a philosophical tool, and Abelard argued that dialectic (in addition to the
Scriptures) was the road to the truth, as well as being good mental
exercise.
He made contributions to the field of Ethics, an area rarely touched on in Scholastic teaching, anticipating
something of modern speculation with his idea that the moral character or
value of human action is, at least to some extent, determined by
subjective intention.
Abelard was also long known as an important poet and composer,
although very little remains of his work in this field.
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