Letters of Peter Abelard, Beyond the Personal

10. Letter Thirteen. To an Ignoramus in the Field of Dialectic

10 letter thirteen. To an Ignoramus in the Field of Dialectic The most common and fundamental schema of learning in the Middle Ages was the seven liberal arts, which comprehended the trivium of the verbal or logical arts (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic or logic) and the quadrivium of the so-called mathematical arts (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music).1 Grammar enabled correct speech and writing, together with interpretation of poetry; rhetoric was the art of persuasion; and dialectic or logic imparted the skills necessary for distinguishing between truth and falsehood. Although from one period to another the arts within the trivium shifted in relative importance, grammar was always the first to be studied for the obvious reason that a working knowledge of Latin was essential before any other formal higher learning could be approached . In late antiquity rhetoric held the highest standing, as can be sensed from Augustine’s Confessions. In the early Middle Ages grammar predominated. In the twelfth century both dialectic, or logic , and rhetoric gained prestige at the expense of grammar. Although we must not force our own terms upon the twelfth century, to an extent the rivalry between dialectic and grammar corresponds to a friction between theory and practice.  1. In the Didascalicon (2.20) Hugh of St. Victor touches upon similar matters of relevance to the worldviews of Peter Abelard and other twelfth-century contemporaries . From what has been said about the trivium, it is evident that dialectic was not far from being an altogether new area of study. A revolutionary development of the twelfth century, associated above all with Peter Abelard himself, was to transform dialectic from being a discipline concerned with identifying and rejecting false arguments to one that encompassed much more than that. Even in Abelard’s most restrictive understanding of the craft he made his own, dialectic stood preeminent among the liberal arts. In his Dialectica he gave the following definition: “Dialectic, to which all judgement of truth and falsehood is subject, holds the leadership of all philosophy and the governance of all teaching.”2 Beyond philosophy and teaching lay theology and faith itself. Here dialectic constituted a means of reasoning that could enable its practitioner to determine or even construct the elements of faith on the basis of rational argumentation. In other words, dialectic became in Abelard’s eyes no longer merely a weapon with which to defend faith from the outside against the falsities of flawed or even heretical doctrines. In his view it could actually be a force within faith, a component in its inner workings. Letter Thirteen is addressed to an unidentified and possibly imaginary recipient who is ignorant in dialectic. Still worse, from Abelard ’s point of view, his addressee is hostile to dialectic and thinks it bad that others should study it. In this letter Abelard rails that some of his contemporaries in the world of learning are like the fox in the fable about sour grapes; his version has sour cherries instead of grapes, but the moral is the same. Unable to achieve a mastery of dialectic , they denigrate its methods as being mere sophistries and fallacies . (In two versions of his Theologia, Abelard refers to opponents of another sort, those who lay claim to proficiencies in dialectic they truly lack, as pseudodialecticians.)3 Since the critics being rebutted here have no training or aptitude in dialectic, Abelard must combat    other controversi es 2. Dialectica, ed. De Rijk, p. 470, lines 3–4, trans. Constant J. Mews, “Peter Abelard on Dialectic, Rhetoric, and the Principles of Argument,” in Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100–1540: Essays in Honour of John O. Ward, ed. Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Nederman, and Rodney M. Thomson, Disputatio 2 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003), 37–53, at 43. 3. Theologia “Summi boni” 2.5–26, pp. 115–23, and in the Theologia Christiana 3.1–58, pp. 194–219. their accusations by employing the method of argumentation with which they are familiar. Accordingly, he adduces Scripture and patristic authorities such as Augustine and Jerome to prove that dialectic is necessary for interpretation of the Bible, refutation of heresy, and other purposes. By implication, the practitioners of dialectic (the logicians ) are themselves also indispensable. Abelard differentiates resolutely between dialectic and sophistry, which resemble each other in employing logical arguments but differ in that the logical arguments in dialectic are true while those in sophistry are false...