Peter Abelardus

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Peter Abelard or short Abelard , Latinized from Pierre Abaillard (* 1079 in Le Pallet in Nantes , † 21st April 1142 in Saint-Marcel in Chalon-sur-Saône ), was a French theologian, philosopher and important representative of early scholasticism . Among other things, he taught theology , logic and dialectics in Paris . In allusion to his origins from Le Pallet (Latin Palatium ) and his profession, his contemporary Johannes von Salisbury gave him the nickname Peripateticus palatinus (" Peripatetic from Le Pallet").

Abelardus and Heloïse in a manuscript from the Roman de la Rose , Chantilly, Musée Condé (14th century)

Many centuries before the Enlightenment, Abelard represented the primacy of reason not only in philosophy , but also in questions of faith . Through these and other controversial teachings, but also because of the love affair with his student Heloisa , he got into numerous conflicts. In addition to their extensive correspondence, his theological disputes with Bernhard von Clairvaux , among others, are interesting.

Life

Early years

Abelard was born in Le Pallet in the south-east of Nantes in 1079, the son of the knight Berengar. He renounced his inheritance in order to devote himself fully to science and was supported in this by his father. First he studied with Roscelin von Compiègne in Loches , Angers and Tours and later with Wilhelm von Champeaux , who held the most prestigious dialectic chair, that of Paris. Abelard had great success there, in that he succeeded in several disputations to involve his teacher in contradictions. Thereupon he broke with Wilhelm and wanted to give his own lectures. Abelard founded his own school around 1102 in Melun , later in Corbeil , which quickly gained a great reputation. Abelard spent the years 1105 to 1108 due to an illness with his family in Brittany, but probably also because Wilhelm von Champeaux had successfully campaigned against Abelard's school.

With the permission of Wilhelm's deputy Abelard was able to teach again in Paris from 1108, but soon under pressure from Wilhelm he had to retreat to Melun again, then to the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève (Mount of Saint Genoveva) at the gates of Paris. During this time Abelard received support from a politically influential man, the royal chancellor Stephan von Garlande . From this time it is reported that Abelard was defeated in a disputation by Goswin of Anchin , one of his students. In 1113 Abelard studied theology with Anselm von Laon , whom he soon challenged as well and surpassed in popularity with his own lectures. Anselm forbade him from further teaching, but in 1114 Abelard was able to teach logic and theology in Paris.

There he became tutor to Heloisa , a talented young woman with whom he soon developed a love affair. Her uncle and protector, Canon Fulbert , only noticed the relationship when Heloisa was already pregnant. At Abelard's behest, she fled to his family in Le Pallet , where she gave birth to a son named Astralabius . Abelard tried in the meantime to find a compromise with Fulbert: Although Heloisa was decidedly against it with regard to Abelard's reputation as a scholar, Abelard wanted to marry her, provided the marriage would remain secret. Fulbert agreed, but put increasing pressure on Heloisa, who did not want to leave Abelard. Heloisa then became a nun in the Argenteuil monastery by order of Abelard . Fulbert viewed this as an attempt by Abelard to free himself from his marital duties. Deeply offended and full of anger, Fulbert had Abelard ambushed and emasculated .

Career as a monk

Humbled, Abelard soon entered the Abbey of Saint-Denis as a monk . He contemplated appealing to the Holy See, but his compatriot Fulko, Prior of Deuil , urgently advised him against it. Abelard's reputation was still great and he was able to give lectures again after a short time. However, this brought him the enmity of his confreres and also led to hostility from other opponents, which finally led to Abelard having to burn his work Theologia Summi Boni himself at the Council of Soissons in 1121 .

Through a dispute over the identity of the patron saint of Saint-Denis , he made enemies there too. He then went to the dry Champagne and founded a hermitage with an oratory, south of Nogent-sur-Seine, on the river Ardusson , which he dedicated to the Paraclete , ie the "Comforter", the Holy Spirit. Many students soon followed him there in order to continue to teach them.

In order to evade hostility and probably also the war in Champagne, Abelard was elected abbot of the remote monastery of Saint-Gildas-en-Rhuys in Brittany around 1127 . The circumstances of this choice are unclear. The nuns of Argenteuil under Heloisa, who had meanwhile become prioress , were expelled from their convent by Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis at the same time . Abelard gave them the Paraklet monastery and subsequently looked after them spiritually by writing hymns, sermons and a rule of the order for them . His attempts to enforce the order appropriate to the monastery in Saint-Gildas brought the monks there against him and led to several attacks on him.

Last years

Abelard finally gave up monastery life and returned to the mount of Saint Genoveva near Paris around 1133 as a teacher. However, this time he did not teach at the monastery itself, but at the Saint-Hilaire church, which belonged to the small canonical monastery of Saint-Marcel near Paris. Saint-Hilaire was under the observation of the Bishop of Paris, Stephan von Senlis, who at that time was no longer able to actively exercise his office due to illness, so that Abelard at Saint-Hilaire - possibly under the aegis of Gilbert Porreta - teach relatively undisturbed could. Stephan von Garlande , who had meanwhile lost his offices at court, seems to have given up support Abelard at this point.

The tomb of Heloise and Abelard, drawing from the 19th century

Back on the scientific stage, Abelard made a terrific comeback: He was visited by students from all over the world, including famous people such as Otto von Freising , Guido von Città di Castello (who later became Pope Celestine II ), Hyacinth Bobo (who later became Pope Celestine III) . ), Roland Bandinelli (who later became Pope Alexander III ), John of Salisbury or Petrus Cellensis . Abelard read from his works, primarily from his Ethica and his Theologia Scholarium , but also wrote new ones, including an extensive commentary on Romans .

Abelard's return also drew the attention of the Cistercian abbot Bernhard von Clairvaux , who rejected some of Abelard's teachings as heretical. After various attempts at compensation had failed, Bernhard accused the theologian of heresy at the Council of Sens (May 25, 1141) . The procedure - and a promised disputation - failed when Abelard left. A subsequent appeal by Abelard to Pope Innocent II ended on June 16, 1141 in a papal condemnation to cloister imprisonment and perpetual silence, together with Arnold of Brescia , who had recently joined Abelard. Abelard's works were publicly burned in Rome.

It remains uncertain whether Abelard wanted to defend himself personally in Rome. An illness forced him to seek refuge in the Cluny monastery under the care of his friend and Grand Abbot Petrus Venerabilis . This still achieved a formal reconciliation between Abelard and Bernhard von Clairvaux, after which Abelard could remain in the convent of Cluny. Abelard spent the months before his death on April 21, 1142 in Kluniazenserpriorat Saint-Marcel in Chalon-sur-Saone , a foundation of the Angevin Count Gottfried gray coat , which at 985 and the former home of Peter Abelard, the Donjon of Le Pallet founded .

At Heloisa's request, Abelard's body was transferred to Paraklet monastery. According to her wishes, she was buried next to Abelard after her death in 1164. Both corpses were reburied several times within the monastery in the following centuries. During the French Revolution , the monastery was closed and the couple's remains were brought to Paris, where they have rested in the Père Lachaise cemetery since 1817 .

Fonts

Abelard wrote an autobiographical account of his life up until his time in St. Gildas, the Historia Calamitatum (Passion), the authenticity of which is now widely accepted after long controversies. The same applies, with certain restrictions, to the correspondence between Abelard and Heloisa, which some researchers regarded as the sole work of Abelard, but others as a later forgery, since, like the autobiography, it has not survived either in the personally written manuscript or in a contemporary version is.

Abelard's logical treatises comment on the logic of Aristotle , Porphyrios and the Aristotle translator Boethius , in many cases several times: Abelard, for whom logic was the guide of knowledge and philosophy in general , wrote explanatory introductions for beginners ( Introductiones parvulorum ) as well as also discussing and own contributions to problems of logic ( Logica Ingredientibus , Logica Nostrorum petitioni sociorum ). His main work on logic, the Dialectica , deals, among other things, with physics, which has to investigate whether the nature of the thing corresponds to the expression (enuntiationi) . For Abelard, in particular, logic had the task of investigating the correct use of words.

Abelard's position in the universal dispute

In the universality dispute Abelard had got to know the contrary positions of his teachers, first the radical nominalism with Roscelin and then the decided realism with Wilhelm von Champeaux . In his investigation of this question, Abelard in his writings Logica Ingredientibus and Logica Nostrorum Petitioni Sociorum placed the linguistic perspective in the foreground in addition to the purely ontological aspect . First of all, he criticized the existing arguments. For him the universals could not each be a unified entity because they could not be indwelling in different, separate things at the same time. The universal could also not be something summarized, because the individual would then have to contain the whole. He also rejected the thesis that universals are both individual and universal, since the concept of individuality as a property of the universal would then be defined contradictingly by itself. So z. B. Terms like “living beings” do not exist because they cannot be rational (“human”) and non-rational (“animals”) at the same time. Rather, a universal concept only creates a blurred image of many objects and denotes what is common to several individuals without a clear distinction between the individual; he only summarizes similar things in thinking (Logica Ingredientibus 21: 27-32).

Since the arguments for the reality of the general terms did not lead to a tenable result, Abelard concluded that the universals are words ( vox universalis ) that are determined by humans to denote . Insofar as they relate to what is sensually concretely perceptible , Abelard saw in them only designations, i.e. improper universals ( appelatio ) that arise when all other innumerable determinations of a thing are disregarded and only one thing is observed - today one would say: through selective attention . Only in so far as the universals relate to what is not sensually perceived are genuine general terms ( significatio ). Such terms are conceived by humans to denote what is common and indistinguishable from different objects of the same kind. The knowledge about this does not arise through physical sensory perception ( sensus ), but through conceptual understanding ( intellectus ) of the soul , in which the spirit ( animus ) creates a similarity ( similitudo ). Material and form exist connected and are only separated by the 'imagination' ( imaginatio ) of reason ( ratio ) in the way of abstraction ( forma communis ). Universals thus emerged neither “before things” (realism) nor “after things” as designations (nominalism), but purely in the mind as an abstraction of individual things. They are therefore “in things” ( in rebus ). The word as a natural sound ( vox ) is part of creation. But the word as meaning ( sermo) is a human institution ( institutio ). Because general terms have their own meaning, they stand between real things ( res ) and pure conceptual terms ( ficta ). Universals are semantically existent (mentally real). However, something can also be introduced that does not correspond to the status of an existing thing. In this sense Abelard distinguishes the being of a real thing ( subsistentia ) from mere thought things ( esse in opinione ). The subsistence of the universals exists only in a figurative sense ( in figurato sensu ).

This position of Abelard was later called conceptualism . A classic example of Abelard is " The Name of the Rose " , which does not refer to any object when there are no more roses, but still retains its meaning.

Abelard's new method

An important step towards the dissolution of dogmatic rigidity in church teachings was Abelard's writing Sic et non (“Yes and No”).

Here he listed contradictions in the texts of the Church Fathers (especially Augustine ) as well as in the texts of the Bible in 158 sections in order to show that conflicts based on tradition can only be resolved with the help of interpretation . In doing so, he turned against the rigid attachment to the texts of the recognized authorities, because this was the only way to grasp the real meaning of what was said. "For by doubting, we come to an investigation and through this we grasp the truth." (Prologue). Abelard particularly called for text-critical analysis. With his systematic hermeneutic approach, he made a significant contribution to the development of the scholastic method with this work . For Abelard, the interpreter of the texts was no longer the “last, weakest link in the chain of tradition”. Rather, he should try to resolve the undeniable contradictions rationally on his own responsibility, independently select the statements of the authorities and no longer see objectivity as the “possession of the clergy who administer the truth”, but as a permanent task.

Ethical views

In the ethical text Scito te ipsum - the title of which "Know thyself" referred to the saying of the oracle of Delphi - he taught that the yardstick should not be external social norms and actions as such, but the inner attitude of people. Similar to Kant later , Abelard took the view that it depends on what intentions one has, what the inner act of consent looks like, whether an act is to be assessed as moral. Only the disposition is the right standard for the judgment of God. Conversely, consent to evil ( consensus mali ) is a sin , which is to be assessed as disregard for God. So the individual is responsible for his salvation.

theology

Abelard, Apologia contra Bernardum , page from Clm. 28363 (12th century)

In his theological works ( Theologia Summi Boni , Theologia Christiani and Theologia Scholarum ), among other things, he turned against the doctrine that God, through his death on the cross , bought back the rights to humans that the devil had acquired because of original sin . Original sin is not the fault of the individual, but only a consequence of Adam's fault . Rather, God wanted to set an example as the God of love by granting people the grace of redemption through his sacrifice and thus the chance for a new beginning. Abelard reversed the motto credo ut intelligam ( Augustinus , Anselm ) by using reason to find faith ( nihil credendum, nisi prius intellectum - “Nothing can be believed if it is not understood beforehand”). He tried to show how the conversion of the pagans based on the testimonies of the philosophers (especially Plato's doctrine of the world soul ) succeeded in showing that God lovingly moves the whole of the world and, as world-founding wisdom, is good itself. From this it follows for the doctrine of the Trinity that God is omnipotence ( Father ), wisdom ( Son ) and goodness ( Holy Spirit ). However, belief in the mystery of the Incarnation is essential for salvation . The geometric structures of the world are an expression of God's goodness, which is higher than human reason.

In Dialogus inter Philosophum, Iudaeum et Christianum , Abelard lets a philosopher, a Jew and a Christian discuss questions of metaphysics and theology with one another . Abelard starts from a core of reason that is common to all peoples and monotheistic religions ( Judaism , Christianity and Islam ). It shows that truth can be found in every doctrine and that it is important to find this truth; for all truth is due to divine wisdom. Abelard thus opened the dialogue between the religions , even if he certainly had in mind to convert both pagan philosophers and Jews through Christian truth in this way.

effect

Due to his conflict-ridden life, he was widely famous and sometimes notorious during his lifetime. Abelard's pupils included Johannes von Salisbury and Otto von Freising , who each mention him in their works. In the following century it was hardly quoted, even if its after-effects are clear in the scholastic method, as found in Petrus Lombardus or perfected in Thomas Aquinas . In Lombardus' sentences one can even prove that passages come from Abelard's Theologia summi boni , as Lombardus also describes the Trinity as power, wisdom and love. The reason for the silence about Abelard may have been the condemnation of Sens.

Abelard can be seen as one of the founders of the University of Paris . The emphasis on the subject, which was absolutely unusual for his time, the emphasis on reason and, above all, the motif of doubt as the path to truth anticipate Descartes in a certain way . It was not until the 19th century that people began to discover his works; today he is considered to be the second great philosopher of the 12th century alongside Anselm of Canterbury .

Tomb in the Père-Lachaise cemetery

Others

There are hundreds of literary accounts of the love affair between Abelard and Heloisa, including by Rousseau La nouvelle Héloïse (1761). Also Luise Rinser has in her novel Abelard's love a monument to Peter Abelard and Heloise.

In 1988 the story was also made into a film. The German title of the film is Zeit der Dunkelheit .

Works

  • Logica Ingredientibus
  • Logica Nostrorum Petitioni Sociorum
  • Dialectica
  • Theologia Summi Bonuses. De unitate et trinitate divina
  • Theologia Christiani
  • Introductio ad theologiam
  • Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judaeum et Christianum. Edited by Rudolf Thomas. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1970
  • Petri Abelardi epitome theologiae christianae . Ed. Frid. Henr. Rheinwald . Friedrich August Herbig, Berlin 1835 digitized
  • Expositio in hexameron
  • Expositio in epistolam ad Romanos (German by Rolf Peppermüller, Herder, Freiburg 2000)
  • Sic et Non (new edition, Minerva, Frankfurt 1981)
  • Ethica seu scito se ipsum
  • Historia calamitatum mearum (German by Eberhard Brost, in: The story of suffering and the correspondence with Heloisa , new edition with an afterword by Walter Berschin, Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1979)
  • Planctus . Consolatoria , Confessio fidei , ed. Massimo Sannelli, La Finestra editrice, Lavis 2013, ISBN 978-88-95925-47-9 .

Work edition

  • Bernhard Geyer (ed.): Peter Abelards philosophical writings. Aschendorff, Münster (first edition 1919–1933)

literature

Further editions

  • Petri Abelardi Opera theologica. Brepols, Turnhout 1969ff. (so far 5 volumes, most recently 2004)
  • Petri Abelardi Glossae super Petri Hermeneias , quas ediderunt Klaus Jacobi et Christian Strub. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 206. Turnhout 2010
  • Theologia summi boni. Tractatus de unitate et trinitate divina. Latin - German. Translator and note ed. by Ursula Niggli. 3. Edition. Meiner, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-7873-1310-9 .
  • Conversation between a philosopher, a Jew and a Christian. Latin and German. Ed. And trans. by Hans-Wolfgang Krautz. 2nd Edition. Insel, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1996, ISBN 3-458-16728-5 .
  • The Ethica of Peter Abelard. Translation, introduction and interpretation. by Alexander Schroeter-Reinhard, Univ.-Verlag, Freiburg / Switzerland 1999, ISBN 3-7278-1215-X .
  • The story of suffering and the correspondence with Heloisa. Translated and ed. by Eberhard Brost. WBG, Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-534-18077-1 .
  • The correspondence with Heloisa. Transl. And ed. by Hans-Wolfgang Krautz. Reclam, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-15-003288-1 .

Secondary literature

Fiction

  • Luise Rinser : Abelard's love . Novel. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-10-066043-9 .
  • Christian Zitzl, Klaus U. Dürr, Reinhard Heydenreich (eds.): Abelard and Héloise. The tragedy of a great love. (German / Latin). Buchner, Bamberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-7661-5738-6 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Also: Peter Abälard, Pierre Abélard, Pierre Abelard, Abailardus, Abaielardus as well as numerous variants.
  2. ↑ For the discussion of authenticity cf. Peter von Moos : Middle Ages and Ideology Criticism. Munich 1974 and in summary with a positive result John Marenbon : Authenticity Revisited. New York 2000.
  3. ↑ Andrea Grigoleit, Jilline Bornand: Philosophy: Occidental Thought in a Historical Overview. Compendio Bildungsmedien, 2004, 57; see also: The expression "The Name of the Rose" from Peter Abelard (accessed on May 19, 2011; PDF; 109 kB)
  4. ↑ Kurt Flasch: The philosophical thinking in the Middle Ages. 2nd Edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-15-018103-8 , p. 247.

Web links

Wikisource: Petrus Abelardus  - Sources and full texts (Latin)
Wikisource: Petrus Abelardus  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Petrus Abelardus  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Petrus Abelardus  - Quotes

Primary texts

Secondary literature

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on November 6, 2005 .
personal data
SURNAME Peter Abelardus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Petrus Abelardus; Pierre Abaillard; Abelaerd; Abelard; Abelard; Abelard; Abailardus; Abaielardus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher, scholastic and writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1079
PLACE OF BIRTH Le Pallet near Nantes
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 1142
Place of death Saint-Marcel near Chalon-sur-Saône