Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- I Background
- II New Perspectives
- III Innovators
- 9 Anselm of Canterbury
- 10 Peter Abelard
- 11 William of Conches
- 12 Gilbert of Poitiers
- A note on the Porretani
- 13 Thierry of Chartres
- 14 Hermann of Carinthia
- IV The Entry of the ‘New’ Aristotle
- Bio-bibliographies
- General Bibliography
- Index of Manuscripts
- General Index
10 - Peter Abelard
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- I Background
- II New Perspectives
- III Innovators
- 9 Anselm of Canterbury
- 10 Peter Abelard
- 11 William of Conches
- 12 Gilbert of Poitiers
- A note on the Porretani
- 13 Thierry of Chartres
- 14 Hermann of Carinthia
- IV The Entry of the ‘New’ Aristotle
- Bio-bibliographies
- General Bibliography
- Index of Manuscripts
- General Index
Summary
Peter Abelard received his early education in arts from Roscelin of Compiègne in the schools of Loches or Tours around the mid or late 1090s. He probably also studied at Angers, and he was taught by a magister V., who may be Ulger or Vasletus. He finally arrived at the most important centre for the study of dialectic, which was Paris; here he sat at the feet of William of Champeaux. The sharpness of his attacks on William's realism is partly to be explained by his earlier nominalist training under Roscelin. From Abelard's autobiography, his Historia calamitatum, we know of his struggles to establish himself as a teacher at Corbeil (1102), at Melun (ca. 1104), and at Paris. We learn as well of his espousal of the study of theology, for the sake of which he went to the school of Anselm in Laon after 1113. How much of Abelard's logical writing was done before and how much after this turn to theology is far from certain. He presumably developed his commentaries on logic while teaching at the cathedral school of Paris from ca. 1116, at least until his affair with Heloise disrupted his life. His theological writings, on the other hand, were all prepared after his visit to Laon.
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- A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy , pp. 279 - 307Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988
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