The lectures this week introduce two New Urban Institutions - The Commune and The University.
Communes took many forms and thus defining them is difficult, but broadly speaking, they were the established allegiances among the citizens of a town for their mutual governance and benefit. They first arose in the late 11th and early 12th centuries and became increasingly popular after that. There was a strong concentration of them in central northern Italy.
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| factional defensive towers in San Gimignano |
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The late 11th and early 12th centuries was also the time when the first universities were established. The first university seems to have been established at Bologna in 1088 and it was not until c.1150 that the University of Paris first opened its doors, with Oxford opening shortly later in c.1167.
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| meeting of doctors at the University of Paris |
The secondary reading for this week is taken from Edward Peters'
Europe and the Middle Ages and deals with the cultural and historical changes associated with the new University, while the primary material deals with one of the early university's pin up boys, Peter Abelard and his misfortunes.
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| the tomb of Abelard and Heloise |
The Blog Question:
What does Peters mean when he says (p.267) that "Abelard himself adopted a modified nominalist position".
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Joshua, and I think that "modified nominalist position" also covers how Abelard tried very hard to use reason alongside faith, especially with the way he claimed existence didn't require further proof and how he tried to argue for empirical proof that God was a very real and present thing.
ReplyDeletePeters describes the Nominalist view simply as "the truth could be discovered only by the study of individual things and material creation". However Abelard also had the view that "Nothing can be believed unless it is first understood." So his view was that to discover the truth, you must first understand individual things before you can understnad the world.
ReplyDeleteI would like to have a deeper understanding of the realism-nominalism views but what I can gather from the readings is that the nominalists favoured the value of truth through the study of parts of a whole, whereas realism began with study of the universal. What Peters means by Abelard adopting a "modified" perspective is that he used logic to understand the relationship between man and God. However, logic and reason sometimes led to a great contradiction of faith to which Abelard discovered and made use of in "Sic et Non" attempting to simplify and justify these contradictions.
ReplyDeleteNominalism is the idea of contemplating the world around you with a logical and methodical view. By examining humanity, life and religion methodically Abelard had the potential to reach an understanding different entirely to what had been achieved before. In his text "Sic et Non" Abelard lays bare the numerous contradictions inherent in the bible and furthers his idea of god and religion through that. By taking this view of the world around him Abelard showed his contemporaries new ways of examining texts which had not been considered before.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I’ve read, Nominalism is also the denial of abstract objects, as God is somewhat abstract, could Abelard’s ‘modified nominalist position’ be an attempt to prove the existence of God in space and time by combining elements of realism and nominalism?
ReplyDeleteAbelard developed his version of nominalism that used logic to understand truth. In Sic et Non he describes the comparison of contradictory passages from the Bible to relevant Church commentaries in order to discover the truth about God and Christianity.
ReplyDeleteAbelard’s “modified nominalist position” can be described as reason over faith, and that investigation of the individual and the tangible is necessary to truly understand the world and God. He expounded these views in works such as Sic et Non by comparing the inspired words of God in scripture and highlighting their rational inadequacies.
ReplyDeletePeters' view of Abelard as a modified nominalist can be explained by how Abelard definitely had no doubt in relation to his faith, however he still wanted to find material evidence of the existence of God.
ReplyDeleteAs I gather from the Peters reading, nominalism was a philosophical doctrine that responded to the problem of universals. Abelard held some variation of a nominalist viewpoint, in that he considered universals — abstract categories or concepts — as no more than names/groupings with no inherent reality of their own. Peters relates that someone like Abelard who took a nominalist position saw no value in examining these abstract universals (as a Christian universalist would), only in the study of individual material things.
ReplyDeleteAbelard’s statement that “nothing can be believed unless it is first understood,” encapsulates what he is trying to achieve in the publication of “sic et non”. In it he solidifies his justifications for the existence of his faith in god, by addressing the contradictions between the passages of scripture, and the writings of the church. This can be seen as a practice of a nominalist perspective, in that his inherit belief in god is considered truth, whereas scripture and the writings of the church are mere labels and text that are vessels for understanding that have no corresponding physical reality. A realist perspective however may be reflected in his other mentioned publication: ‘Ethics: Know Thyself’, which appears to pursue an understanding of the self in relation to the existence of god through “achieving their own salvation” in devotion. Abelard could be considered adopting a “modified nominalist position” therefore, in that he incorporates both philosophies into his understanding of the existence of god.
ReplyDeletePeter's statement regarding Abelard adopting a "modified nominalist position" seemed to refer to Abelard's efforts in establishing the essence of human nature and their relationship with God. If nominalism argues that truth and reality are merely established through our studying and naming of individual things; Aberlard was seen to have facilitated a means of understanding the nature of humans and their relationship with God. That through the use of logic and the study of the self, a relationship with God could form.
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