Pierre (Peter) Abelard (fr. Pierre Abélard/Abailard, lat. Petrus Abaelardus; 1079, Le Palais, near Nantes - April 21, 1142, Saint-Marcel Abbey, near Chalon-sur-Saone, Burgundy) - medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian, poet and musician. Catholic Church repeatedly condemned Abelard for heretical views.

The son of Lucy du Palais (before 1065 - after 1129) and Berenguer N (before 1053 - before 1129), Pierre Abelard was born in the village of Palais near Nantes, in the province of Brittany, into a knightly family. Originally intended for military service, but irresistible curiosity and especially the desire for scholastic dialectics prompted him to devote himself to the study of sciences. He also renounced his right to primogeniture and became a school-cleric. At a young age, he listened to lectures by John Roscelin, the founder of nominalism. In 1099 he arrived in Paris to study with the representative of realism, Guillaume de Champeaux, who attracted listeners from all over Europe.

However, he soon became a rival and adversary of his teacher: from 1102, Abelard himself taught in Melun, Corbel and Saint-Genevieve, and the number of his students increased more and more. As a result, he acquired an irreconcilable enemy in the person of Guillaume from Champeaux. After the latter was elevated to the rank of Bishop of Chalons, Abelard took control of the school at the Church of Our Lady in 1113 and at that time reached the apogee of his glory. He was the teacher of many subsequently famous people, the most famous of whom are Pope Celestine II, Peter of Lombardy and Arnold of Brescia.

Abelard was the universally recognized head of dialecticians and in the clarity and beauty of his presentation surpassed other teachers in Paris, then the center of philosophy and theology. At that time, the 17-year-old niece of Canon Fulbert, Heloise, lived in Paris, famous for her beauty, intelligence and knowledge. Abelard was inflamed with passion for Heloise, who reciprocated his feelings.

Thanks to Fulbert, Abelard became Heloise's teacher and family man, and both lovers enjoyed complete happiness until Fulbert found out about this connection. The latter’s attempt to separate the lovers led to Abelard transporting Heloise to Brittany, to his father’s house in Palais. There she gave birth to a son, Pierre Astrolabe (1118-circa 1157) and, although not wanting it, got married in secret. Fulbert agreed in advance. Soon, however, Heloise returned to her uncle's house and refused the marriage, not wanting to interfere with Abelard in receiving clergy titles. Fulbert, out of revenge, ordered Abelard to be castrated, so that, according to canonical laws, his path to high church positions would be blocked. After this, Abelard retired as a simple monk to a monastery in Saint-Denis, and 18-year-old Heloise took monastic vows in Argenteuil. Later, thanks to Peter the Venerable, their son Pierre Astrolabe, raised by his father's younger sister Denise, received the position of canon in Nantes.

Dissatisfied with the monastic order, Abelard, on the advice of friends, resumed giving lectures at the Maisonville Priory; but his enemies again began to initiate persecution against him. His work “Introductio in theologiam” was burned at the cathedral in Soissons in 1121, and he himself was condemned to imprisonment in the monastery of St. Medarda. Having difficulty obtaining permission to live outside the monastery walls, Abelard left Saint-Denis.

In the dispute between realism and nominalism, which dominated philosophy and theology at that time, Abelard occupied a special position. He did not, like Roscelin, the head of the nominalists, consider ideas or universals (universalia) to be mere names or abstractions; he also did not agree with the representative of the realists, Guillaume of Champeaux, that ideas constitute universal reality, just as he did not admit that the reality of the general is expressed in every single creature.

On the contrary, Abelard argued and forced Guillaume of Champeaux to agree that the same essence approaches each individual person not in all its essential (infinite) volume, but only individually, of course (“inesse singulis individuis candem rem non essentialiter, sed individualiter tantum"). Thus, Abelard’s teaching already contained the reconciliation of two great opposites between themselves, the finite and the infinite, and therefore he was rightly called the forerunner of Spinoza. But still, the place occupied by Abelard in relation to the doctrine of ideas remains a controversial issue, since Abelard, in his experience as a mediator between Platonism and Aristotelianism, expresses himself very vaguely and shaky.

Most scholars consider Abelard a representative of conceptualism. Abelard's religious teaching was that God gave man all the strength to achieve good goals, and therefore the mind to keep the imagination within limits and guide religious belief. Faith, he said, is based unshakably only on conviction achieved through free thinking; and therefore faith acquired without the assistance of mental strength and accepted without independent verification is unworthy of a free person.

Abelard argued that the only sources of truth are dialectic and Scripture. In his opinion, even the apostles and fathers of the Church could be mistaken. This meant that any official dogma of the church that was not based on the Bible could in principle be false. Abelard, as the Philosophical Encyclopedia notes, asserted the rights of free thought, for the norm of truth was declared to be thinking that not only makes the content of faith understandable to reason, but in doubtful cases comes to an independent decision. highly appreciated this side of his work: “The main thing for Abelard is not the theory itself, but resistance to the authority of the church. Not “believe in order to understand,” as with Anselm of Canterbury, but “understand in order to believe”; an ever-renewing struggle against blind faith.”

The main work, “Yes and No” (“Sic et non”), shows the contradictory opinions of church authorities. He laid the foundation for dialectical scholasticism.

Abelard became a hermit in Nogent-sur-Seine and in 1125 built himself a chapel and cell in Nogent-on-Seine, called the Paraclete, where after his appointment as abbot of Saint-Gildas-de-Ruges in Brittany, Heloise and her pious monastic sisters settled. Finally freed by the pope from the management of the monastery, which was made difficult for him by the machinations of the monks, Abelard devoted the ensuing time of calm to revising all his works and teaching at Mont-Saint-Geneviève. His opponents, led by Bernard of Clairvaux and Norbert of Xanten, finally achieved that in 1141, at the Council of Sens, his teaching was condemned and this verdict was approved by the pope with the order to subject Abelard to imprisonment. However, the abbot of Cluny, the Venerable Peter the Venerable, managed to reconcile Abelard with his enemies and with the papal throne.

Abelard retired to Cluny, where he died in the monastery of Saint-Marcel-sur-Saône in 1142 at Jacques-Marin.

Abelard's body was transported to the Paraclete and then buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. His beloved Heloise, who died in 1164, was then buried next to him.

Abelard's life story is described in his autobiography, Historia Calamitatum (The History of My Disasters).

Pierre Abelard (1079-1142), the eldest son of a rather noble father, was born in Pallet, a village near Nantes, and received a very good upbringing. Carried away by the desire to devote himself to scientific activity, he renounced his birthright and the military career of a noble man. Abelard's first teacher was Roscellin, founder of nominalism; then he listened to lectures by the famous Parisian professor Guillaume Champeau and became a researcher of the system of realism he founded. But she soon ceased to satisfy him. Pierre Abelard developed for himself a special system of concepts - conceptualism, average between realism and nominalism, and began to argue against Champeau's system; his objections were so convincing that Champeau himself modified his concepts on some very important issues. But Champeau became angry with Abelard for this dispute and, moreover, became jealous of the fame that he acquired with his dialectical talent; the envious and irritated teacher became the bitter enemy of the brilliant thinker.

Abelard was a teacher of theology and philosophy in Melun, then in Corbeul, at the Parisian school of Saint Genevieve; his fame grew; Upon the appointment of Champeau as Bishop of Chalons, Pierre Abelard became (1113) the main teacher of the school at the Cathedral Church of Our Lady of Paris (Notre Dame de Paris) and became the most famous scientist of his time. Paris was then the center of philosophical and theological science; young men and older people came from all over Western Europe to listen to the lectures of Abelard, who expounded theology and philosophy in clear, elegant language. Among them was Arnold Breshiansky.

A few years after Pierre Abelard began to lecture at the school of the Church of Our Lady, he suffered a misfortune that gave his name a romantic fame even louder than his scientific fame. Canon Fulbert invited Abelard to live in his house and give lessons to his seventeen-year-old niece Heloise, a beauty and extremely talented girl. Abelard fell in love with her, she fell in love with him. He wrote songs about his love and composed melodies for them. In them he showed himself to be a great poet and a good composer. They quickly gained popularity and discovered to Fulbert the secret love of his niece and Abelard. He wanted to stop it. But Abelard took Heloise to Brittany. There she had a son. Abelard married her. But a married man could not be a spiritual dignitary; in order not to interfere with Abelard’s career, Heloise hid her marriage and, returning to her uncle’s house, said that she was a mistress, not Abelard’s wife. Fulbert, indignant at Abelard, came with several people to his room and ordered him to be castrated. Pierre Abelard retired to Saint-Denis Abbey. Héloise became a nun (1119) at the Argenteuil monastery.

Abelard's farewell to Heloise. Painting by A. Kaufman, 1780

After some time, Abelard, yielding to the requests of the students, resumed his lectures. But the orthodox theologians launched a persecution against him. They found that in his treatise “Introduction to Theology” he explained the dogma of the Trinity differently from what the church teaches, and they accused Abelard of heresy before the Archbishop of Reims. The Council, which took place in Soissons (1121) under the chairmanship of the papal legate, condemned Abelard's treatise to burning, and himself to imprisonment in the monastery of St. Medarda. But the harsh sentence aroused strong displeasure among the French clergy, many of whose dignitaries were students of Abelard. The murmur forced the legate to allow Pierre Abelard to return to Saint-Denis Abbey. But he incurred the enmity of the Sen. Denis monks by his discovery that Dionysius, the founder of their abbey, was not Dionysius the Areopagite, a disciple apostle paul, and another saint who lived much later. Their anger was so great that Abelar fled from them. He retired to a deserted area near Nogent on the Seine. Hundreds of students followed him there and built huts for themselves in the forest near the chapel dedicated by Abelard to the Paraclete, the Comforter leading to the truth.

But a new persecution arose against Pierre Abelard; His fiercest enemies were Bernard of Clairvaux and Norbert. He wanted to escape from France. But the monks of the Saint-Gildes monastery (Saint Gildes de Ruys, in Brittany) chose him as their abbot (1126). He gave the Parakleti monastery to Heloise: she settled there with her nuns; Abelard helped her with advice in managing affairs. He spent ten years in Saint-Gild Abbey, trying to soften the rude morals of the monks, then returned to Paris (1136) and began lecturing at the school of St. Genevieve.

Once again irritated by their success, the enemies of Pierre Abelard and especially Bernard of Clairvaux instigated a new persecution against him. They selected from his writings those passages in which thoughts were expressed that were inconsistent with generally accepted opinions, and renewed the charge of heresy. At the Council of Sens, Bernard accused Abelard; the accuser's arguments were weak, but his influence was powerful; The council submitted to Bernard's authority and declared Abelard a heretic. The condemned man appealed to the pope. But the pope was completely dependent on Bernard, his patron; moreover, the enemy of papal power, Arnold of Brescia, was a student of Abelard; therefore the pope condemned Abelard to eternal imprisonment in a monastery.

The abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, gave the persecuted Abelard shelter, first in his abbey, then in the monastery of St. Markella near Chalons on the Saone. There, the sufferer for freedom of thought died on April 21, 1142. Peter the Venerable allowed Heloise to transfer his body to the Paraclete. Eloise died on May 16, 1164 and was buried next to her husband.

The grave of Abelard and Heloise in the Père Lachaise cemetery

When the Paraclete Abbey was destroyed, the ashes of Pierre Abelard and Heloise were transported to Paris; now he rests in the Père Lachaise cemetery, and their tombstone is still decorated with fresh wreaths.

1079-1142) - one of the most significant representatives of European medieval philosophy during its heyday. Abelard is known in the history of philosophy not only for his views, but also for his life, which he outlined in his autobiographical work “The History of My Disasters.” From an early age, he felt a craving for knowledge, and therefore refused the inheritance in favor of his relatives. He was educated at various schools, then settled in Paris, where he was engaged in teaching and gained fame as a skilled dialectician throughout Europe. Abelard dearly loved Heloise, his talented student. Their romance led to marriage, which resulted in the birth of a son. But Heloise’s uncle intervened in their relationship, and after Abelard was abused on his uncle’s orders (he was castrated), Heloise went to a monastery. The relationship between Abelard and his wife is known from their correspondence.

Abelard's main works: “Yes and No”, “Know Thyself”, “Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew and a Christian”, “Christian Theology”, etc. Abelard was a widely educated person, familiar with the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and others monuments of ancient culture.

The main problem in Abelard's work is the relationship between faith and reason; this problem was fundamental for all scholastic philosophy. Abelard gave preference to reason and knowledge over blind faith, so his faith must have a rational justification. Abelard is an ardent supporter and adept of scholastic logic, dialectics, which is able to expose all sorts of tricks, which is what distinguishes it from sophistry. According to Abelard, we can improve in faith only by improving our knowledge through dialectics. Abelard defined faith as an “assumption” about things inaccessible to human senses, as something that does not deal with natural things knowable by science.

In the work “Yes and No,” Abelard analyzes the views of the “church fathers” using excerpts from the Bible and their writings, and shows the inconsistency of the statements cited. As a result of this analysis, doubts arise in some of the dogmas of the church and Christian doctrine. On the other hand, Abelard did not doubt the basic tenets of Christianity, but only called for their meaningful assimilation. He wrote that anyone who does not understand the Holy Scriptures is like a donkey trying to extract harmonious sounds from the lyre without understanding anything about music.

According to Abelard, dialectics should consist of questioning the statements of authorities, the independence of philosophers, and a critical attitude towards theology.

Abelard's views were condemned by the church at the Council of Soissons (1121), according to the verdict of which he himself threw his book “Divine Unity and Trinity” into the fire. In this book, he argued that there is only one God the Father, and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are only manifestations of his power.

In his work “Dialectics,” Abelard sets out his views on the problem of universals (general concepts). He tries to reconcile extremely realist and extremely nominalist positions. Extreme nominalism was adhered to by Abelard's teacher Roscelin, and extreme realism was also adhered to by Abelard's teacher, Guillaume of Champeaux. Roscelin believed that only individual things exist, the general does not exist at all, the general is just names. Guillaume of Champeaux, on the contrary, believed that the general exists in things as an unchanging essence, and individual things only introduce individual diversity into a single common essence.

Abelard believed that man, in the process of his sensory cognition, develops general concepts, which are expressed in words that have one meaning or another. Universals are created by man on the basis of sensory experience by abstracting in the mind the properties of a thing that are common to many objects. As a result of this process of abstraction, universals are formed that exist only in the human mind. This position, overcoming the extremes of nominalism and realism, subsequently received the name conceptualism. Abelard opposed the scholastic speculative and idealistic speculations regarding knowledge that existed at that time.

In his work “Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew and a Christian,” Abelard pursues the idea of ​​religious tolerance. He argues that every religion contains a grain of truth, so Christianity cannot claim that it is the only true religion. Only philosophy can reach truth; it is directed by natural law, free from all kinds of sacred authorities. Moral knowledge consists of following natural law. In addition to this natural law, people follow all kinds of prescriptions, but they are only unnecessary additions to the natural law that all people follow - conscience.

Abelard's ethical views are set out in two works - “Know Thyself” and “Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew and a Christian.” They are closely dependent on his theology. The basic principle of Abelard's ethical concept is the affirmation of a person's full moral responsibility for his actions - both virtuous and sinful. This view is a continuation of Abelard’s position in the field of epistemology, emphasizing the subjective role of man in cognition. A person's activities are determined by his intentions. In itself, no action is either good or evil. It all depends on intentions. A sinful act is one that is committed in contradiction with a person’s beliefs.

Accordingly, Abelard believed that the pagans who persecuted Christ did not commit any sinful actions, since these actions were not in conflict with their beliefs. The ancient philosophers were not sinful either, although they were not supporters of Christianity, but acted in accordance with their high moral principles.

Abelard questioned the assertion of the redemptive mission of Christ, which, in his opinion, was not that he removed the sin of Adam and Eve from the human race, but that he was an example of high morality that all humanity should follow. Abelard believed that humanity inherited from Adam and Eve not the ability to sin, but only the ability to repent of it. According to Abelard, a person needs divine grace not to carry out good deeds, but as a reward for their implementation. All this contradicted the then widespread religious dogmas and was condemned by the Sansk Cathedral (1140) as heresy.

By 1119, the treatises “On the Unity and Trinity of God” (De unitate et trinitate Dei), “Introduction to Theology” (Introductio ad theologiam), and “Theology of the Supreme Good” (Theologia Summi boni) were written. In 1121, a local council was held in Soissons, where Abelard was accused of violating the monastic vow, expressed in the fact that he taught classes in a secular school and taught theology without a church license. However, in fact, the subject of the proceedings was the treatise “On the Unity and Trinity of God,” directed against the nominalism of Roscelin and the realism of Guillaume of Champeaux. Ironically, Abelard was accused precisely of nominalism: the treatise allegedly defended the idea of ​​tritheism, for which Abelard accused Roscelin; the treatise was burned by Abelard himself. After condemnation by the Soissons Cathedral, he was forced to change monasteries several times, and in 1136 he reopened the school on the hill of St. Genevieve. During this time, he wrote several versions of “Christian Theology” (Theologia Christiana), “Yes and No” (Sic et non), “Dialectica”, a commentary on “The Epistle to the Romans”, “Ethics, or Know Thyself” (Ethica, seu Scito te ipsum), etc. Convened by Bernard of Clairvaux in 1141, the Council of Sens accused Abelard of Arian, Pelagian and Nestorian heresies. He went to Rome with an appeal, fell ill on the way and spent his last months in the monastery of Cluny, where he wrote “Dialogue between Philosopher, Jew and Christian” (Dialogus inter Philosophum, ludaeum et Christianum), which remained unfinished. Pope Innocent III confirmed the verdict of the council, dooming Abelard to eternal silence; his treatises were burned in the Cathedral of St. Peter's in Rome. The Abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, interceded for Abelard. Abelard died in the monastery of St. Marcellus near Chalons.

The name of Abelard is associated with the design of the scholastic antithetical method, based on the idea of ​​equivocation (the term was introduced by Boethius), or ambiguity. The idea of ​​equivocation, clearly presented in “Yes and No,” where, through the method of quotation comparison, contradictory statements of the Church Fathers about the same problem were collected, it is expressed in three aspects: 1) the same term, located on different sides of the contradiction, conveys different meanings; 2) different meanings of the same term are a consequence of the figurative nature of the language and 3) a consequence of the transfer (translation) of a term from one type of knowledge to another (the expression “man is”, fair for natural knowledge, is unfair for theological knowledge, where the verb “is” can only be applied to God as the fullness of being). Affirmation and negation turn out to be contradictions in one case (in theology), in another (in natural science) they form different forms of connection between words and things. The same word can express not only different things that have different definitions, as was the case with Aristotle, but different definitions can be assumed in the same thing due to its simultaneous sacred-profane existence. In “The Theology of the Highest Good”, based on the idea of ​​equivocation, Abelard identifies 4 meanings of the term “person”: theological (the existence of God in three Persons), rhetorical ( entity), poetic (a dramatic character who “transmits events and speeches to us”) and grammatical (three faces of speech).

Abelard laid the foundation for the disciplinarity of knowledge, designating for each discipline different methods of verification and establishing the basic criteria for what from now on, instead of ars-art, begins to be called scientia and in the future will develop into the concept of science. The main principles of Theology as a discipline (in this capacity, this term begins to come into use precisely with Abelard, replacing the term “sacred doctrine”) is, first of all, intransigence to contradictions and faith in the solvability of problems (associated, for example, with unclear places of dogma) with using term transfer. Ethics is presented by Abelard as a discipline, the subject of which involves assessing the activities of both humanity as a whole and a specific generation of people. With its emergence in the 11th century. secular intellectual inquiry about moral orientation in the world, one of the central points of Abelard’s moral philosophy was the definition of ethical concepts (primarily the concept of sin) in their relation to law. This gave rise to the problem of the relationship between two forms of law: natural and positive. Natural law defined the concepts of sin and virtue in relation to the Supreme Good (God), positive law - to general, human law, the principles of which were developed in ancient philosophy; problem

Moreover, how it is possible to achieve good through one’s own effort or the plans of the law, forced one to turn to the Jewish religion.

In his treatise “Ethics, or Know Thyself,” Abelard introduces the concept of intention—the conscious intent of an action; not considering the will to be the initiator of the action (the will, curbed by the virtue of abstinence, ceases to be the basis for sin), he shifts attention from the action to an assessment of the state of the soul, which makes it possible to identify different intentions for outwardly identical actions (“two are hanging a certain criminal. One is driven by zeal for justice , and the other by inveterate enemy hatred, and although they commit the same act... due to the difference in intention, the same thing is done differently: by one with evil, by another with good” (“Theological Treatises.” M ., 1995, p. 261). Due to the fact that sin, determined through intention, is expiated through conscious repentance, which presupposes internal questioning of the soul, it turns out that 1) the sinner does not need an intermediary (priest) in communication with God; 2) sinners are not people who committed a sin out of ignorance or due to rejection of the gospel preaching (for example, the executioners of Christ); 3) a person does not inherit original sin, but the punishment for this sin. If ethics, according to Abelard, is the way to comprehend God, then logic is a rational way of contemplating God. Ethics and logic appear as aspects of a single theological system. Due to the combination in one concept of two differently directed meanings (secular and sacred), such philosophizing can be called meditative dialectics. Since universally necessary knowledge belongs only to God, then before His Face any definition acquires a modal character. An attempt to define a thing with the help of many species-forming characteristics reveals its indefinability. The definition is replaced by a description, which is an allegory of a thing (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, etc.), i.e., a trope. The trope turns out to be a matrix of thinking.

Paths, concept, transfer (translation), intention, subject-substance are the basic concepts of Abelard’s philosophy, which determined his approach to the problem of universals. His logic is a theory of speech, since it is based on the idea of ​​a statement, conceptualized as a concept. The concept connection between a thing and speech about a thing is, according to Abelard, a universal, since it is speech that “grabs” (conceptualizes) all possible meanings, selecting what is necessary for a specific representation of a thing. Unlike a concept, a concept is inextricably linked with communication. It is 1) formed by speech, 2) sanctified, according to medieval ideas, by the Holy Spirit and 3) therefore taking place “beyond grammar or language” - in the space of the soul with its rhythms, energy, intonation; 4) it expresses the subject to the utmost. 5) Changing the soul of a reflective individual, when forming a statement, he assumes another subject, listener or reader and 6) in answers to their questions, he actualizes certain meanings; 7) memory and imagination are integral properties of the concept, 8) aimed at understanding here and now, but at the same time 9) it synthesizes three abilities of the soul and, as an act of memory, is oriented to the past, as an act of imagination - to the future, and as an act judgments - to the present. The concept of a concept is associated with the features of Abelard’s logic; 1) purification of the intellect from grammatical structures; 2) inclusion in the intellect of the act of conceiving, connecting it with various abilities of the soul; 3) this made it possible to introduce temporary structures into the logic. Conceptual vision is a special kind of “grasping” of the universal: a universal is not a person, not an animal, and not the name “man” or “animal,” but the universal connection of a thing and a name, expressed by sound.

Works: MPL., t. 178; Philosophische Schriften, hisg. von B. Geyer. Munster, 1919; Theologia "Summi boni", ed. H. Ostlender. Munster, 1939; Oeuvres choisies dAbelard, ed. V. Gandillac. P., 1945; Dialectica, ed. L. M. de Rijk. Assen, 1956; Opera theologica, l. Corpus Christianorom. Continuatio medievalis, XI, ed. E. M. Buyiaert. Tumhout, 1969; Dialogus inter Philosophum, ludaeum et Christianum, ed. R. Thomas. Stuttg.-Bad Cannstatt,. 1970; Du bien supreme, ed. J.Jolivet. Montreal., 1978; Peter Abaelards Ethica, ed. D. E. Luscombe. Oxf., 1971; Ethical Writing, transi. H. V. Srade. Indianopolis-Cambr., 1995; in Russian Transl.: The story of my disasters. M., 1959; 1992 (in the book: Aurelius Augustine, Confession. Peter Abelard, The History of My Disasters); 1994 (translated from Latin by V. A. Sokolov); Theological treatises, trans. from lat. S. S. Neretina. M., 1995; Lit.: Fedotov G. P. Abelar. Pg., 1924 (republished: Fedotov G. II. Collected works in 12 volumes, vol. l. M., 1996); Rabinovich V., Confession of a bookworm who taught the letter and strengthened the spirit. M., 1991; Neretina S.S., Word and text in medieval culture. Conceptualism of Peter Abelard. M., 1994 (in the “Pyramid” series. M., 1996); Neretina S.S. Believing mind: on the history of medieval philosophy. Arkhangelsk, 1995; Remusat Ch. de. Abelard, sa vie, sa philosophie et sa theologie. P., 1855; Sikes 1. Abailard. Cambr., 1932; CottieuxJ. La conception de la theologie chez Abailard.-“Revue dhistoire ecclesiastique”, t. 28, N 2. Louvain, 1932; Gilson E. Heloise et Abailard. P., 1963; /olivet J. Art du langage et theologie chez Abelard. Vrain, 1969; Compeyre G. Abelard and the origin and early history of University. N.Y., 1969; Fumagalli Seonio-Brocchieri M. T. La logica di Abelardo. Mil., 1969; Eadem. Abelardo. Roma-Ban, 1974; Peter Abelard. Proceedings of the International Conference. Louvain. May 10-12. 1971 (ed. E. Buytaert), Leuven-The Hague, 1974; Eveedale M. M. Abailard on Universals. Amst.-N.Y.-Oxf., 1976; Abelard. Le Dialogue. La philosophie de la logique. Gen.-Losanne-Neue hatel. 1981.

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Pierre Abelard(1079-1142) - the most significant representative of Medieval philosophy during its heyday. Abelard is known in the history of philosophy not only for his views, but also for his life, which he outlined in his autobiographical work “The History of My Disasters.” From an early age, he felt a craving for knowledge, and therefore refused the inheritance in favor of his relatives. He was educated at various schools, then settled in Paris, where he was engaged in teaching. He gained fame as a skilled dialectician throughout Europe. Abelard also became famous for his love for Heloise, his talented student. Their romance led to marriage, which resulted in the birth of a son. But Heloise’s uncle intervened in their relationship, and after Abelard was abused on his uncle’s orders (he was castrated), Heloise went to a monastery. The relationship between Abelard and his wife is known from their correspondence.

Abelard's main works: “Yes and No”, “Know Thyself”, “Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew and a Christian”, “Christian Theology”, etc. He was a widely educated person, familiar with the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and others monuments of ancient culture.

The main problem in Abelard's work is the relationship between faith and reason; this problem was fundamental for all scholastic philosophy. Abelard gave preference to reason and knowledge over blind faith, so his faith must have a rational justification. Abelard is an ardent supporter and adept of scholastic logic, dialectics, which is able to expose all sorts of tricks, which is what distinguishes it from sophistry. According to Abelard, we can improve in faith only by improving our knowledge through dialectics. Abelard defined faith as an “assumption” about things inaccessible to human senses, as something that does not deal with natural things knowable by science. In the work “Yes and No,” Abelard analyzes the views of the “church fathers” using excerpts from the Bible and their writings, and shows the inconsistency of the statements cited. As a result of this analysis, doubts arise in some of the dogmas of the church and Christian doctrine. On the other hand, Abelard did not doubt the basic tenets of Christianity, but only called for their meaningful assimilation. He wrote that anyone who does not understand the Holy Scriptures is like a donkey trying to extract harmonious sounds from the lyre without understanding anything about music.

According to Abelard, dialectics should consist of questioning the statements of authorities, the independence of philosophers, and a critical attitude towards theology.

Abelard's views were condemned by the church at the Council of Suassois (1121), and according to his verdict, he himself threw his book “Divine Unity and Trinity” into the fire. (In this book, he argued that there is only one God the Father, and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are only manifestations of his power.)

In his works "Dialectics" Abelard sets out his views on the problem of universals. He tried to reconcile extremely realist and extremely nominalist positions. Extreme nominalism was adhered to by Abelard's teacher Roscelin, and extreme realism was also adhered to by Abelard's teacher, Guillaume of Champeaux. Roscelin believed that only individual things exist, the general does not exist at all, the general is just names. Guillaume of Champeaux, on the contrary, believed that the general exists in things as an unchanging essence, and individual things only introduce individual diversity into a single common essence. Abelard believed that a person, in the process of his sensory cognition, develops general concepts that are expressed in words that have one meaning or another. Universals are created by man on the basis of sensory experience through abstraction in the mind of those properties of a thing that are common to many objects. As a result of this process of abstraction, universals are formed that exist only in the human mind. This position, overcoming the extremes of nominalism and realism, subsequently received the name conceptualism. Abelard opposed the scholastic speculative and idealistic speculations regarding knowledge that existed at that time.

In his work “Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew and a Christian,” Abelard pursues the idea of ​​religious tolerance. He argues that every religion contains a grain of truth, so Christianity cannot claim that it is the only true religion. Only philosophy can reach truth; it is directed by natural law, which is free from all kinds of sacred authorities. Moral knowledge consists of following natural law. In addition to this natural law, people follow all kinds of prescriptions, but they are only unnecessary additions to the natural law that all people follow - conscience.

Abelard's ethical views are set out in two works - “Know Thyself” and “Dialogue between the Philosopher,” a Jew and a Christian.” They are closely related to his theology. The basic principle of Abelard's ethical concept is the affirmation of a person's full moral responsibility for his actions - both virtuous and sinful. This view is a continuation of the Abelarian position in the field of epistemology, emphasizing the subjective role of man in cognition. A person's activities are determined by his intentions. In itself, no action is either good or evil. It all depends on intentions. A sinful act is one that is committed in contradiction with a person’s beliefs.

In accordance with these beliefs, Abelard believed that the pagans who persecuted Christ did not commit any sinful actions, since these actions were not in conflict with their beliefs. The ancient philosophers were not sinful either, although they were not supporters of Christianity, but acted in accordance with their high moral principles. Abelard questioned the statement about the redemptive mission of Christ, which was not that he removed the sin of Adam and Eve from the human race, but that he was an example of high morality that all humanity should follow. Abelard believed that humanity inherited from Adam and Eve not the ability to sin, but only the ability to repent of it. According to Abelard, a person needs divine grace not to carry out good deeds, but as a reward for their implementation. All this contradicted the then widespread religious dogmatism and was condemned by the Council of Sana (1140) as heresy.

Pierre Abelard is one of the largest Western European philosophers and writers of the 12th century. He described his life, filled with a constant desire to know the truth against the backdrop of a tragic personal fate, in his autobiographical essay “The History of My Disasters.”

Abelard was born in France, near the city of Nantes, into a knightly family. While still a young man, striving for knowledge, he renounced his inheritance and began studying philosophy. He attended lectures by various French Catholic theologians, studied at various Christian schools, but from no one could he find answers to the questions that tormented him. Already in those days, Abelard became famous as an indomitable debater, excellent in the art of dialectics, which he constantly used in discussions with his teachers. And just as constantly he was expelled by them from among their students. Pierre Abelard himself repeatedly made efforts to create his own school, and in the end he succeeded in doing this - the school on the hill of Saint Genevieve in Paris was quickly filled with student admirers. In 1114–1118 he headed the department of the Notre Dame School, which began to attract students from all over Europe.

In 1119, a terrible personal tragedy occurred in the life of the thinker. The story of his love for a young girl, his student Eloise, who married him and had a child, ended in a sad ending, which became famous throughout Europe. Eloise's relatives took the most wild and savage methods to break off her marriage with Abelard - as a result, Eloise took monastic vows, and soon Abelard himself became a monk.

In the monastery in which he settled, Abelard resumed lecturing, which displeased many church authorities. A special church council convened in 1121 in Soissons condemned the teachings of Abelard. The philosopher himself was summoned to Soissons only to, by the verdict of the Council, throw his own book into the fire and then retire to another monastery with a more severe charter.

The philosopher's patrons achieved Abelard's transfer to his former monastery, but here the restless debater was unable to maintain good relations with the abbot and the monks and he was allowed to settle outside the monastery walls. Young people again began to come to the place near the city of Troyes, where he built a chapel and began to live, who considered him their teacher, so Abelard’s chapel was constantly surrounded by huts in which his listeners lived.

In 1136, Abelard returned to teaching in Paris and again had enormous success among students. But the number of his enemies is also increasing. In 1140, another Council was convened in Sens, which condemned all of Abelard’s works and accused him of heresy.

The philosopher decided to appeal to the Pope himself, but on the way to Rome he fell ill and stopped at the Cluny monastery. However, a trip to Rome would have changed little in Abelard’s fate, for soon Innocent II approved the decisions of the San Council and condemned Abelard to “eternal silence.”

In 1142, here in Cluny, during prayer, Abelard died. At his grave, pronouncing the epitaph, friends and like-minded people called Abelard “the French Socrates”, “the greatest Plato of the West”, “the modern Aristotle”. And twenty years later, in the same grave, according to her last will, Eloise was buried, uniting forever after death with the one from whom her earthly life separated her.

The teachings of Pierre Abelard were expounded by him in numerous works: “Yes and No”, “Dialectics”, “Christian Theology”, “Introduction to Theology”, “Know Thyself”, etc. It was not the theological Abelard's views presented in these writings. His own views on the problem of God were not particularly original. Perhaps only in the interpretation of the Holy Trinity did Neoplatonic motives appear to a greater extent, when Abelard recognized God the Son and the Holy Spirit as only attributes of God the Father, expressing his omnipotence. Moreover, the exponent of the actual power of God the Father is, in Abelard’s understanding, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit is a kind of world soul.

This Neoplatonic concept served as the reason for condemning Abelard’s views and accusing him of Arianism. But the main thing that was not accepted by church authorities in the teachings of the French thinker was something else.

The fact is that Abelard, being a sincerely believing Christian, nevertheless doubted the evidence of Christian doctrine. He did not doubt the truth of Christianity itself, but he saw that the existing Christian dogma is so contradictory, so unsubstantiated that it does not withstand any criticism and therefore does not provide the opportunity for full knowledge of God. Talking about one of his teachers, with whom he constantly argued, Abelard said: “If someone came to him with the goal of resolving some perplexity, he left him with even greater perplexity.”

And Abelard himself sought to see and show everyone the numerous contradictions and inconsistencies that are present in the text of the Bible, in the writings of the church fathers and other Christian theologians.

It was the doubt about the evidence of dogmas that was the main reason for Abelard’s condemnation. One of his judges, Bernard of Clairvaux, wrote on this occasion: “The faith of the simple is ridiculed... issues relating to the highest are recklessly discussed, the fathers are reproached for the fact that they considered it necessary to remain silent about these issues rather than attempt to resolve them.” Elsewhere, Bernard of Clairvaux further specifies his claims against Abelard: “With the help of his philosophies, he tries to explore what the pious mind perceives through living faith. He believes in the faith of the pious, and does not reason. But this man, suspicious of God, agrees to believe only what he had previously explored with the help of reason."

And in this sense, Pierre Abelard can be considered the founder of the most rationalized philosophy of the entire Western European Middle Ages, because for him there was no other force capable of creating true Christian teaching except science, and, above all, philosophy based on the logical abilities of man.

Abelard asserted the highest, Divine origin of logic. Based on the well-known beginning of the Gospel of John (“In the beginning was the Word”, which in Greek sounds like this: “In the beginning was the Logos”), as well as on what Jesus Christ calls “Logos” (“The Word” - in the Russian translation ) God the Father, Abelard wrote: “And just as the name “Christians” arose from Christ, so logic received its name from “Logos”. Its followers are the more truly called philosophers, the more true lovers of this highest wisdom they are.” Moreover, he called logic “the greatest wisdom of the highest Father,” given to people in order to enlighten them with “the light of true wisdom” and make people “equally Christians and true philosophers.”

Abelard calls dialectics the highest form of logical thinking. In his opinion, with the help of dialectical thinking it is possible, on the one hand, to discover all the contradictions of Christian teaching, and on the other hand, to eliminate these contradictions, to develop a consistent and demonstrative doctrine. Therefore, he argued for the need for a critical reading of both the texts of Holy Scripture and the works of Christian philosophers. And he himself showed an example of a critical analysis of Christian dogma, clearly expressed, for example, in his work “Yes and No.”

Thus, Abelard developed the basic principles of all future Western European science - scientific knowledge is possible only when the subject of knowledge is subjected to critical analysis, when its internal inconsistency is revealed and then, with the help of logical thinking, explanations are found for the existing contradictions. The set of principles of scientific knowledge is called methodology. Therefore, we can assume that Pierre Abelard is one of the first Western Europe creators of the methodology of scientific knowledge. And this is precisely where Abelard’s main contribution to the development of Western European scientific knowledge lies.

Literally praising the possibilities of scientific knowledge, Abelard comes to the conclusion that pagan ancient philosophers, with the help of science, came to many Christian truths even before the emergence of Christianity itself. God Himself guided them to the truth, and it was not their fault that they were not baptized.

Moreover, in “Introduction to Theology,” he even defines faith as a “supposition” about invisible things inaccessible to human senses. Knowledge as such is carried out exclusively with the help of science and philosophy. “I know what I believe in,” says Pierre Abelard.

And the main principle of his philosophical quest was formulated in the same rationalistic spirit - “Know yourself.” Human consciousness, the human mind are the source of all human actions. Even to moral principles, which were believed to be Divine, Abelard treats rationalistically. For example, sin is an act committed by a person contrary to his reasonable beliefs. Abelard generally rationalistically interpreted the Christian idea of ​​the original sinfulness of people and the mission of Christ as the redeemer of this sinfulness. In his opinion, the main significance of Christ was not that through his suffering he removed humanity’s sinfulness, but that Christ, with his reasonable moral behavior, showed people an example of true life.

In general, in Abelard’s ethical teachings the idea is constantly conveyed that morality is a consequence of reason, the practical embodiment of a person’s reasonable beliefs, which, first of all, are implanted in human consciousness by God. And from this point of view, Abelard was the first to designate ethics as a practical science, calling ethics “the goal of all sciences,” because ultimately, all knowledge must find its expression in moral behavior corresponding to existing knowledge. Subsequently, such an understanding of ethics prevailed in most Western European philosophical teachings.

For Pierre Abelard himself, his ideas became the cause of all life's disasters. However, they had the most direct and significant influence on the development of all Western European science, became very widespread and, ultimately, influenced the fact that already in the next, XIII century, the Roman Catholic Church itself came to the conclusion about the need scientific justification and Christian dogma. This work was done by Thomas Aquinas.