Jeffrey E. Brower

The Cambridge companion to Abelard

Introduction 1. Life, milieu, and intellectual contexts John Marenbon 2. Literary works Winthrop Wetherbee 3. Metaphysics Peter O. King 4. Philosophy of language Klaus Jacobi 5. Logic Christopher J. Martin 6. Mind and cognition Kevin Guilfoy 7. Trinity Jeffrey E. Brower 8. Sin, grace, and redemption Thomas Williams 9. Ethics William E. Mann 10. Influence Yukio Iwakuma.

Aquinas on Mental Representation: Concepts and Intentionality

Let us say that a representation is an entity with intentional or semantic properties that is, an entity having properties in virtue of which it is of or about one or more objects. Given this characterization, we can say that a mental representation is just a mental entity (or better, a mental state) with intentional or semantic properties. The purpose of this essay is to explore certain aspects of Aquinass account of mental representation.1 Although there are a number

Life, milieu, and intellectual contexts

Abelard worked against an institutional and intellectual background that was complex and various not just because of his period - before the rise of the universities regularized the structure of academic teaching and learning - but also as a result of his own character and fortune. The aim of this chapter is to examine how Abelard fitted into these contexts and, in particular, to look at how his philosophical ideas relate to those of the thinkers who immediately preceded him. It aims also to show that Abelard was a changing, developing thinker. In the first section, “Life and works,” I give a very brief sketch of Abelard’s life, and then of his works, and try to show the main direction of his intellectual interests in a career which, as I shall argue, falls into two distinct halves. In Section ii, I add a little detail to this bare account, by considering (in very roughly chronological order) the various cultural settings in which Abelard worked. Three of them are particular milieus to which he belonged: the logical schools at the beginning of the twelfth century, the world of twelfth century monastic thinking and reform, and the Paris schools, logical and theological, of the 1130s. One is a cultural setting in rather a different sense: Abelard’s reading. In Section iii, I have chosen two topics through which to examine more precisely, and very selectively, aspects of Abelard’s relation to earlier and contemporary medieval philosophers: Abelard’s nominalism, and his treatment of Plato’s idea of a World Soul. The discussions in Section ii are general and aim to introduce readers both to important aspects of Abelard’s intellectual life and, more widely, to the culture and education of the twelfth century. Those in Section iii are more detailed. They aim to put forward some new suggestions, and to give an idea of the sort of evidence the historian must sift and interpret in order to understand how Abelard’s thought developed within its intellectual context.

Philosophy of language

Abelards investigations into the philosophy of language are of great interest not only with respect to the history of philosophy, but also with respect to systematic considerations. These investigations, however, are not readily accessible. They offer nothing to a reader who wants to glean information quickly from them. A thorough study is required, and this itself requires extraordinary patience. The purpose of this chapter is to contribute to the project of making Abelards investigations into the philosophy of language accessible to the general philosophical community. Unlike contemporary philosophers, Abelard does not conceive of philosophy of language as a distinct or separate branch of philosophy. Indeed, as he conceives of philosophy, it is a genus with just three species, namely, logic, physics, and ethics ( LNPS 506.18–19). If we want to identify his contribution to what we now recognize as issues in philosophy of language, therefore, we must extract his views from his discussion of that branch of philosophy in which they are embedded, namely, logic or, as he also refers to it, dialectic (hereafter I shall use the terms “logic” or “dialectic” synonymously).