Julie Anna Allen

This dissertation is a critical analysis of Peter Abailard's account of the supreme good. Abailard develops a forceful and innovative account of goodness and evil in the second collatio of the Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Christian and a Jew. In the Introductory Chapter I discuss the interpretative obstacles which a student of the Dialogue must overcome. Chapters one through three follow Abailard's attempt to develop a definitive position on the supreme good of man. The second collatio features two transitory positions and a final doctrine which I identify and discuss in detail. These are: the Original Philosophic position, the Pseudo-Christian position and the Christian position. Each transitory position is critically debated by the Dialogue's characters. Abailard levies three criticisms against the original philosophic position. First, he maintains that this view inappropriately locates the supreme good in this life. Second, he rejects the claim that virtue is an end in itself and finally, he rejects the Stoic's absolute conception of "goodness". The "Pseudo-Christian position" is rejected because it identifies the supreme evil as punishment and this claim generates an insurmountable difficulty. These objections direct the plot of the Dialogue, they highlight main areas of contention between classical and Christian conceptions of goodness and they inform Abailard's own account. According to Abailard, the supreme good is ever-increasing love of God and this end is attained by loving God. The supreme evil is a degenerative and unrelenting hatred of God and sinners are damned for the fault of contempt. Abailard's ultimate position is not a complete departure from the views of the pagan philosophers. Rather, Abailard imposes a series of modifications and clarifications upon classical positions. This process culminates in a doctrine which is uniquely Abailard's but it is one which, nonetheless, bears a wide variety of family resemblances. In Chapter Four, I subject the final "Christian Position" to both an internal and an external assessment and I conclude by considering the relationship between Abailard's account of the supreme good and evil in the Dialogue and his account of sin in the Ethics