John Marenbon

“Problem of paganism” is my name for the set of questions raised for medieval thinkers and writers, and discussed by some of them (Abelard, Dante, and Langland are eminent examples), by the fact that many people—especially philosophers—from antiquity were, they believed, monotheists, wise and virtuous and yet pagans. In this paper, I argue that Boethius, though a Christian, was himself too much part of the world of classical antiquity to pose the problem of paganism, but that his Consolation of Philosophy was an essential element in the way medieval writers saw and resolved this problem. In particular, because it was a text by an author known to be Christian which discusses philosophy without any explicitly Christian references, it opened up the way to treating texts by ancient pagan philosophers as containing hidden Christian doctrine.

_Abelard in Four Dimensions: A Twelfth-Century Philosopher in His Context and Ours_ by John Marenbon, one of the leading scholars of medieval philosophy and a specialist on Abelard's thought, originated from a set of lectures in the distinguished Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies series and provides new interpretations of central areas of Peter Abelard's philosophy and its influence. The four dimensions of Abelard to which the title refers are that of the past (Abelard's predecessors), present (his works in context), future (the influence of his thinking up to the seventeenth century), and the present-day philosophical culture in which Abelard's works are still discussed and his arguments debated. For readers new to Abelard, this book provides an introduction to his life and works along with discussion of his central ideas in semantics, ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion. For specialists, the book contains new arguments about the authenticity and chronology of his logical work, fresh evidence about Abelard’s relations with Anselm and Hugh of St. Victor, a new understanding of how he combines the necessity of divine action with human freedom, and reinterpretations of important passages in which he discusses semantics and metaphysics. For all historians of philosophy, it sets out and illustrates a new methodological approach, which can be used for any thinker in any period and will help to overcome the divisions between "historians" based in philosophy departments and scholars with historical or philological training. "This searching, thorough, and original study examines Abelard's past, present, and future, and our present. John Marenbon offers the best enquiry yet made into the sequence of Abelard's writings and their chronology, followed by an incisive and highly illuminating account of the various, successive formulations of his 'unpopular argument' to the effect that God cannot do otherwise than as he does. This is an accomplished work which will be eagerly read and hugely appreciated by students and their teachers on courses of philosophy, theology, and history." —_David Luscombe, University of Sheffield_.

A collection of essays written by pupils, friends and colleagues of Professor Peter Dronke, to honour him on his retirement. The essays address the question of the relationship between poetry and philosophy in the Middle Ages. Contributors include Walter Berschin, Charles Burnett, Stephen Gersh, Michael Herren, Edouard Jeauneau, David Luscombe, Paul Gerhardt Schmidt, Joe Trapp, Jill Mann, Claudio Orlandi and John Marenbon. It is an important collection for both philosophical and literary specialists; scholars, graduate students and under-graduates in Medieval Literature and in Medieval Philosophy.

Si Dieu prévoit toute chose, rien n’arrive sauf par nécessité car il y a incompatibilité entre la certitude de la connaissance et la contingence. Une des réponses classiques est celle que la philosophie analytique nomme « la solution boécienne » ou « de Thomas d’Aquin » et qui repose sur l’idée que Dieu est atemporellement éternel.Dans ce livre, John Marenbon démontre que les théories de ces deux auteurs ne correspondent pas à cette solution dans le sens où, selon eux, la connaissance est relative aux sujets connaissants. Deux chapitres sont consacrés aux solutions du problème de la prescience avec, pour guides, Pierre Abélard, Guillaume de Conches, Pierre Lombard, Guillaume d’Auxerre, et d’autres. Dans le chapitre final, l’auteur pose la question de savoir jusqu’à quel point les techniques de l’analyse pratiquée par la philosophie anglo-saxonne servent à découvrir ce que les philosophes du Moyen Âge ont véritablement pensé

For many of us, the term 'medieval philosophy' conjures up the figure of Thomas Aquinas, and is closely intertwined with religion. In this Very Short Introduction John Marenbon shows how medieval philosophy had a far broader reach than the thirteenth and fourteenth-century universities of Christian Europe, and is instead one of the most exciting and diversified periods in the history of thought.Introducing the coexisting strands of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish philosophy, Marenbon shows how these traditions all go back to the Platonic schools of late antiquity and explains the complex ways in which they are interlinked. Providing an overview of some of the main thinkers, such as Boethius, Abelard, al-Fârâbî, Avicenna, Maimonides, and Gersonides, and the topics, institutions and literary forms of medieval philosophy, he discusses in detail some of the key issues in medieval thought: universals; mind, body and mortality; foreknowledge and freedom; society and the best life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

My article surveys philosophical discussions of Abelard over the last twenty years. Although Abelard has been a well-known figure for centuries, his most important logical works were published only in the twentieth century and, so I argue, the rediscovery of him as an important philosopher is recent and continuing. I concentrate especially on work that shows Abelard as the re-discoverer of propositional logic (Chris Martin); as a subtle explorer of problems about modality (Simo Knuuttila, Herbert Weidemann) and semantics (Klaus Jacobi); as a metaphysician before the reception of Aristotle's Metaphysics (Peter King); and as an ethical thinker who echoes the Stoics (Calvin Normore) and anticipates Kant (Peter King).

Boethius, though a Christian, worked in the tradition of the Neoplatonic schools, with their strong interest in Aristotelian logic and Platonic metaphysics. He is best known for his Consolation of Philosophy, which he wrote in prison awaiting execution. His works also include a long series of logical translations, commentaries and monographs and some short but densely-argued theological treatises, all of which were enormously influential on medieval thought. But Boethius was more than a writer who passed on important ancient ideas to the Middle Ages. The essays here by leading specialists, which cover all the main aspects of his writing and its influence, show that he was a distinctive thinker, whose arguments repay careful analysis and who used his literary talents in conjunction with his philosophical abilities to present a complex view of the world.

According to Alain de Libera, Boethius replies to Porphyry’s famous three questions about universals by using a theory of abstraction. Universals can exist only in thought, although they derive, through abstraction, from what is common in things. I contrast this “neutral abstractionism” with a “realist abstractionism” — the view that it is only by conceiving universals that humans are able properly to grasp the form or likeness according to which particulars belong to a given species or genus. I try to show that, in his second commentary on the Isagoge, Boethius is uncertain which sort of abstractionism to prefer, but in the Consolation he opts for realist abstractionism.

Although Abelard arrived at a view ofens nearer to Aristotle''s than his sources would suggest, unlike thirteenth-century thinkers he did not work out a view of transcendentals in terms ofens, its attributes and their convertibility. He did, however, regard unity (though not goodness or truth) as an attribute of every thing. At first, Abelard suggested that unity, being inseparable, could not be an accident according to Porphyry''s definition (that which can come and leave a subject without the subject being corrupted): either it is some type of form not classified by Porphyry, or not a form at all. In his later logical work, Abelard argued differently. Unity, he said, is an accidental form, but Porphyry''s definition of an accident must be understood negatively, not as asserting something about what could happen in reality (since the form of unity could never leave its subject) but rather something about an absence of connection: were it,per impossible, to occur, the loss by a subject of its form of unity would not lead to the loss of its specific or generic status.