Read complete books and articles on: Peter Abelard

Abelard, Peter - ăbˈəlärd, Fr. Pierre Abélardpyĕr äbālärˈ, 1079–1142, French philosopher and teacher, b. Le Pallet, near Nantes.

Life

Abelard went (c.1100) to Paris to study under William of Champeaux at the school of Notre Dame and soon attacked the ultrarealist position of his master with such success that William was

Abelard, Peter - ăbˈəlärd, Fr. Pierre Abélardpyĕr äbālärˈ, 1079–1142, French philosopher and teacher, b. Le Pallet, near Nantes.

Life

Abelard went (c.1100) to Paris to study under William of Champeaux at the school of Notre Dame and soon attacked the ultrarealist position of his master with such success that William was forced to modify his teaching. Abelard became master at Notre Dame but, when deprived of his place, set himself up (1112) at a school on Mont-Ste-Geneviève, just outside the city walls. Abelard's fame as a dialectician attracted great numbers of students to Paris. This part of his career was cut short by his romance with Heloise, d. c.1164, the learned niece of Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame, who had hired Abelard as her tutor.

After Heloise bore a son, a secret marriage was held to appease her uncle. Fulbert's ill-treatment of Heloise led Abelard to remove her secretly to the convent at Argenteuil. Fulbert, who thought that Abelard planned to abandon her, had ruffians attack and emasculate him. Abelard sought refuge at Saint-Denis where he became a monk. In 1120 he left Saint-Denis to teach. At the instigation of his rivals, the Council of Soissons had his first theological work burned as heretical (1121). After a short imprisonment, he returned to Saint-Denis but fell out with the monks and built a hermitage near Troyes. To house the students who sought him out, he established a monastery, the Paraclete. When Abelard became abbot at Saint-Gildas-en-Rhuys, Brittany, he gave the Paraclete to Heloise, who became an abbess of a convent there.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux thought Abelard's influence dangerous and secured his condemnation by the Council of Sens (1140). Abelard appealed to the pope, who upheld the council. Abelard submitted and retired to Cluny. He was buried at the Paraclete, as was Heloise; their bodies were later moved to Père-Lachaise in Paris. The events of his life are chronicled in his autobiographical Historia calamitatum and revealed in the poignant letters of Heloise and Abelard (tr. by B. Radice, 1974).

Philosophy

A theological Platonist, Abelard emphasized Aristotle's dialectic method. His belief that the methods of logic could be applied to the truths of faith was in opposition to the mysticism of St. Bernard. He also opposed the extreme views of William of Champeaux and Roscelin on the problems of universals. His own solution, in which universals are considered as entities existent only in thought but with a basis in particulars, is called moderate realism and to some extent anticipates the conceptualism of St. Thomas Aquinas.

His most influential work was Sic et non, a collection of contradictory selections from Scripture and the Fathers of the Church. In his introduction to Sic et non, Abelard set a method of resolving these apparent contradictions, thereby making the work significant for the development of the scholastic method. This work formed the basis for the widely read Sentences of Peter Lombard, who may have been Abelard's pupil. Abelard was perhaps most important as a teacher; among his pupils were some of the celebrated men of the 12th cent., including John of Salisbury and Arnold of Brescia. Of Abelard's poetry only Latin hymns survive.

Bibliography

See D. E. Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard (1969); D. W. Robertson, Jr., Abelard and Heloise (1972); R. Pernoud, Heloise and Abelard (tr. 1973).

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12 of the Best Books and Articles on: Peter Abelard

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Heloise and Abelard. » Read Now
by Etienne Gilson. 194 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library

...George Moore, the Peter Abelard of Helen Waddell...before knowing Abelard personally. She herself...recognized this and Peter the Venerable, much...chosen ones", says...
2.

Medieval Philosophy ("Peter Abelard" begins on p. 155) » Read Now
by John Marenbon. 510 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library

This volume provides a broad and scholarly introduction to the major authors and issues involved in the philosophical discourse of the medieval era, as well as some original interpretations of the philosophical writings addressed.
3.

A History of the Church in the Middle Ages ("Peter Abelard" begins on p. 152) » Read Now
by F. Donald Logan. 370 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library

In this fascinating survey, Donald Logan introduces the reader to the Christian church, from the conversion of the Celtic and Germanic peoples through to the discovery of the New World. He reveals how the church unified the people of Western Europe as they worshipped with the same ceremonies and...
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In this fascinating survey, Donald Logan introduces the reader to the Christian church, from the conversion of the Celtic and Germanic peoples through to the discovery of the New World. He reveals how the church unified the people of Western Europe as they worshipped with the same ceremonies and used Latin as the language of civilized communication. A History of the Church in the Middle Ages offers a unique perspective on the legacy and influence of the Christian church in Western culture. Never fixed or static, the church experienced remarkable periods of change between the sixth and sixteenth centuries. Saint Francis of Assisi, the gentle poverello of Umbria, the martyr Thomas Becket, the ill-fated lovers Abelard and Heloise, the visionary Hildegard of Bingen, all testify to the diversity and richness of the medieval churchFrom the crusades to the creation of magnificent architecture, A History of the Church in the Middle Ages explores the central role of the church in determining a thousand years of history.
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4.

Abelard's Theory of Relations: Reductionism and the Aristotelian Tradition, in The Review of Metaphysics » Read Now
by Jeffrey E. Brower. 26 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library
5.

Early Medieval Philosophy » Read Now
by George Bosworth Burch. 146 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library

...STATES OF AMERICA PREFACE WHEN Peter Abelard resolved to "desert the court...43 Chapter III. Peter Abelard 48 The Problem...for understanding. Chapter III. PETER ABELARD...
6.

The Evolution of Medieval Thought » Read Now
by David Knowles, D. E. Luscombe, C. N. L. Brooke. 342 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, History, Entire Library

...Universals 98 10 Peter Abelard 106 11 The School...9-10: The Question of Universals; Peter Abelard Dom David correctly observed...grasped. Tullio Gregory in Peter Abelard ...
7.

The Silent Masters: Latin Literature and Its Censors in the High Middle Ages » Read Now
by Peter Godman. 372 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

In the tension between competing ideas of authority and the urge to literary experiment, writers of the High Middle Ages produced some of their most distinctive achievements. This book examines these themes in the high culture of Western Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, showing how...
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In the tension between competing ideas of authority and the urge to literary experiment, writers of the High Middle Ages produced some of their most distinctive achievements. This book examines these themes in the high culture of Western Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, showing how the intimate links between the writer and the censor, the inquisitor and the intellectual developed from metaphors, at the beginning of the period, to institutions at its end. All Latin texts--from Peter Abelard to Bernard of Clairvaux, from the Archpoet to John of Salisbury and Alan of Lille--are translated into English, and discussed both in terms of their literary qualities and in relation to the cultural history of the High Middle Ages. Not a proto-Renaissance but part of a continuity that reached into the Reformation, the eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed a transformation of the writer's role. With a combination of literary, philological, and historical methods, Peter Godman sets the work of major intellectuals during this period in a new light.
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8.

Studies in the History of Natural Theology » Read Now
by Clement C. J. Webb. 363 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

...represented by six writers, St. Anselm, Abelard, St. Thomas Aquinas, Raymond of Sebonde...II. ANSELM 156 III. ABELARD 199 IV. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS...with heathenism, down to...
9.

Realists and Nominalists » Read Now
by Meyrick H. Carre. 130 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library

...formidable critic of the older tradition was Peter Abaelard, and I have tried to show the...SAINT AUGUSTINE 1 II. PETER ABAELARD 32 III. SAINT...his character and history...
10.

The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950-1200 » Read Now
by C. Stephen Jaeger. 530 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, History, Education, Entire Library
11.

The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard » Read Now
by Etienne Gilson. 266 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library

...I. CURIOSITAS 155 II. ABELARD 158 III. BERENGER THE...for certain isolated figures such as Abelard, intruders as they may seem at first sight...seq. 1121 somewhat earlier...
12.

A Comprehensive History of Western Ethics: What Do We Believe? » Read Now
by Warren Ashby. 561 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library

Professor Warren Ashby speaks both to university students in history and ethics and, more generally, to those individuals interested in but perplexed by their own moral values as they attempt to create satisfying lives in an increasingly complex world. Ashby includes the great thinkers and periods...
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Professor Warren Ashby speaks both to university students in history and ethics and, more generally, to those individuals interested in but perplexed by their own moral values as they attempt to create satisfying lives in an increasingly complex world. Ashby includes the great thinkers and periods that have shaped Western ethics: the Greeks, the Hebrew prophets, the Roman Stoics, St. Augustine, the medieval ethicists, the Renaissance and Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Romantics, and the radical revolutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the period from 1850 to 1920, Ashby notes, the transformations wrought by the four great modern thinkers - Darwim, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud - both extended and significantly challenged the traditional core beliefs of the West and, as a result, bestowed upon us a profound moral crisis, one that we have not yet successfully met. Consequently, as we stand at the brink of the twenty-first century, with its further technological breakthroughs and social upheavals, how will we deal with the moral uncertainties that await us? In his final chapter Ashby contends that while remaining alive to our Western ethical heritage, we will have no choice but to confront its basic presuppositions as we move into a more pluralistic society, for he asserts that the ideology of the future cannot be exclusively Western; future history cannot be purely Western history. So, while this history of ethics cannot tell us how to live, it can offer to the reader what is prerequisite to a more satisfying life: an insightful and inclusive history of where our own ethical beliefs have come from and a sense of the challenges that await us all. A Comprehensive History of Western Ethics: What Do We Belive? embraces all who are concerned with expanding human rights, finding new ways to think about moral experience, and discovering an ethical perspective appropriate to their own
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