Abelard and Heloise

            On Thursday morning during song practice, someone sitting at the side of the A+ Sushi and Bibim restaurant near the garbage cans let off what must have been a hand held smoke bomb. White smoke came shooting out in a stream from something he was holding. It quickly filled the Dollarama parking lot and swirled out large onto Queen Street in front of my window before turning down Dunne Avenue and dissipating. For a second or two it blocked out a lot and it was three stories high. It didn’t smell like smoke but it didn’t feel all that healthy to breathe. After that the guy, who was wearing a yellow reflective jacket, walked over to the Capital Café and met someone else wearing something similar, then they went inside. I didn’t notice if this had been some kind of visual effect for a video or just some idiot thing the guy did.

            I did a bit of writing that morning to finish up my report on Tuesday’s events and continued on my laptop when I got to the Bahen Building before class.

            Professor Black continued her introduction to Peter Abelard, who wrote an autobiography called the Historia Calamitatum, which translates as “The Story of My Advsersities”. This was made into a novel called “Stealing Heaven” by Marion Meade in 1979, which later became both a movie and a Broadway musical. The professor said that maybe she should give a trigger warning before telling what happened to him.

            Abelard was born in Brittany in 1079. He was the eldest son of an educated soldier and so he received a good education towards following in his dad’s footsteps but gave up being part of his father’s legacy to become an academician. He still had the spirit of a soldier, except that he preferred the weapons of dialectic. He wandered around learning and debating and then ended up in Paris where he studied under William of Champeaux, who was the most famous philosopher of his time. Abelard challenged him a lot and so he had to keep revising his position. Then Deborah Black jokingly warned us, “Don’t do that to your teachers!”

            In 1115 Abelard was hired by the canon of Notre Dame to tutor his niece, who could already read Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Abelard was young and handsome and Heloise got pregnant. She was against getting married but he insisted. She gave birth to a son, who was named Astrolabe. Professor Black said the name would be the 12^th Century equivalent of naming your kid Macbook or Ipad.

            There is a series of detective novels set in medieval times called The Catherine LeVendeur Mysteries and one of the characters is Abelard’s son Astrolabe.

Heloise was sent to a convent where she dressed and lived as a nun but without taking the vows. The canon arranged for a gang to break into Abelard’s room one night and castrate him. After that he didn’t have much choice but to become a monk.
            Abelard disproved that Pseudo-Dionysius was St Denis.
            Abelard founded the Benedictine monastery The Oratory of the Paraclete.

Abelard continued to correspond with Heloise to discuss philosophy and their correspondence is published. She also corresponded with others but the authenticity of some of these writings is disputed.

He got into trouble and was condemned several times. He died while on his way to appeal one of those condemnations.

He wrote Sic et Non “Yes and No” on applying logic to theology.
            He wrote a famous dialogue between a Philosopher, a Christian and a Jew. Wouldn’t that be a trialogue?

We will be reading “Ethica” or “Scito Te Ipsum” “Ethics” or “Know Yourself” (a Socratic maxim).  Self-knowledge was important for Abelard. Intention is only knowable to the agent and god. There is a fairly straightforward process of illumination. He tries to illuminate other contenders. Cases in which the contender other than intention is present, such as pleasure, desire and will. He uses a counter-example where desire is good but the act is evil. He really piles on the examples, which makes sorting through them to find the core of his meaning difficult. He uses examples of sexual sins because Biblically there is tension between the inner and the act. There are cases of men that lust after women only in their hearts; cases in which both desire and will are present; cases of desire without intent. He had an internalist view of actions.

            The second part develops an account of what society should punish and reward. He starts by laying out sorts of moral acts:

1.      The act itself such as killing.

2.      Desire / Will.

3.      Virtue / Vice – Character

4.      Intent

He first defines the moral ground with the difference between good and bad acts. It’s not all moral or ethical. He narrows it down to an interest in defects of the

mind. If one is slow one’s actions are not morally relevant. It looks like he is going to suggest voluntaristic or maybe virtue ethics.

            He tries to illuminate Aristotle’s picture. He doesn’t know Aristotle’s works but he does know his view through the works of others.

            Essentially Abelard rules will and virtue out because they are dispositional.

            Vices may be relevant because if one is of a vicious character it is hard to do the right thing. For a glutton it is hard not to overeat. If desire is something bad it is hard to resist. His point is, how can one be judged for sin based on disposition when there is no consent? The ability to act against desire is a marker of moral character. Being vicious is not enough to be sinful. If you are drawn to your friend’s spouse and you don’t do anything with her you are worthy of praise.

            There are two Platonists. One loves chocolate and the other loves a juicy steak. If you overcome your desire you may get brownie points. Aristotle would say the opposite. If you have the desire it means you have self-control but you are still not virtuous.

            Consent is important to Abelard. The struggle is more significant than the desire.

            Intention means consent to act. He doesn’t always make it clear.

           

1.      Act ↔ Pleasure

2.      Desire ↔ Pleasure

His example of a slave killing its master is supposed to show that desire is

Irrelevant. Consent is relevant. He consents without wanting to do it. The slave kills the master to save his own life but killing him is counterintuitive. The act is forced but voluntary. Desire can be absent from intent. Constrained by circumstances without desire. The master wants to kill the slave. That he is vicious is not relevant. He is consenting but has no control. Professor Black confesses that she reads too many murder mysteries. The killer or the intended murderer is the same. Maybe we can take pleasure as an indicator of desire and intent. Performing the act is ethically irrelevant. Appetite is intrinsically natural. Pleasure from adultery is not blameworthy because it shows nothing of intent. When the act is neutral, pleasure is irrelevant.

            The big lacuna here is that he rules out the act itself because the attempt to kill is not blameworthy. Intention is intentional and the ethics of intent needs an object. He’s eliminated the traditional candidates. Abelard links intention to the consent to act, which shows contempt to god. He needs to fix the object of intent and so he uses the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham would not have been sinning if he’d killed Isaac because the ultimate intent is to obey god. He ultimately uses god’s command to fix intention. Character flaws can predispose you to act in contempt of god but they are not immoral in themselves. Character and disposition factor into intent. .

            Do your best to have a nice weekend, despite the weather.

            I stopped at a bank machine on my way home along Queen, but my wallet containing my bankcard wasn’t in my backpack.  Went home but my wallet wasn’t there either. I looked in my backpack again and it was there but no in the usual pocket. I went back out and down to King and Dufferin to take out some money and then I rode to Freshco. Besides fruit and yogourt, I bought Raisin Bran, which was the first time I’ve bought cereal for quite a while. I usually get my cereal from the food bank but since I hadn’t been there for a couple of weeks I ran out.

            That night I watched the first broadcast of the Mickey Mouse Club from 1955. It really was a well-produced show, with documentary content about the Seminole Indians and the Florida Everglades and a cartoon that I’d never seen featuring Pluto. And of the club itself, those kids could dance! Annette Funicello was a cast member from the start. She certainly had distinctive facial features and when one saw all of the kids in one frame it was her face that stood out the most but it’s hard to look at that little girl and see the future beauty she would become.