Peter Abelard’s contributions to ethics are concentrated in two works, his Ethics (or Scito te Ipsum) and his Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian (or Collationes).1 There are ethical insights to be found scattered elsewhere in his works, but for the sustained presentation of an ethical theory, one can only turn to these two works. The Dialogue is actually two dialogues, one between a philosopher and a Jew, the other between the philosopher and a Christian, debating the relative merits of pagan philosophy, Judaism, and Christianity. The Ethics concentrates on the development of a distinctively Christian ethical theory. It was to have consisted of two books.
The unfinished second book of the Ethics begins with a description of what Abelard takes himself to have accomplished in the first book, namely, the provision of an understanding of what sins are, how they are rectified, and how they differ from vices (Sc. 128.1–4; Spade 1995, 226). The second book was supposed to have taken up the topic of what it is to do good, or, as he prefers to put it in his more careful moments, what it is to do well (Coll. 163.3229–3230; Spade 1995, 404). The text was abandoned after one page. The Ethics, then, consists of a rather elaborate and zestful account of wrongdoing along with the merest of gestures towards an account of right-doing. It is as if Dante had neglected to write Paradiso after finishing Inferno. But as the newspapers attest daily, accounts of wrongdoing fascinate us more than accounts of right-doing: how many more people have read Inferno than Paradiso?
We can speculate, however, about what the general contours of Abelard’s account would have been by deploying these strategies. First, if a thing’s functioning badly gives us clues about how it should function well, then an examination of Abelard’s account of sin should repay our efforts. Second, we can hope to exploit other writings of Abelard. Third, as the focus on sin indicates, Abelard seeks to provide an account of ethics that is theistic — more specifically, Christian — in its essential features. Although Abelard is a maverick on many philosophical matters, his project would misfire fundamentally were it to present an ethical theory that is unrecognizable or indefensible from the point of view of scripture and the Christian tradition. We can appeal to the constraints thereby provided to impart some direction to our speculation.
I shall begin by examining Abelard’s presentation and defense of his account of sin in the Ethics, organizing the examination in the hopes of shedding light on what it is to act well.
Early in the first book, Abelard puts forward three theses about what sin is not and one thesis about what sin is. A sin is not a mental vice, like irascibility or wantonness, that disposes us to do bad deeds. Nor is a sin the bad deed itself (Sc. 2.21–22; Spade 1995, 4). A bit later, Abelard claims that the will to perform a bad deed is also not a sin (Sc. 6.11 ff; Spade 1995, 9ff.). What sin is, according to Abelard, is contempt of God (Sc. 4.31–32; Spade 1995, 7). What are Abelard’s arguments for the three negative theses? And what is contempt of God, such that it is not any mental vice, or deed, or act of will? I shall begin by examining the negative theses, and defer discussion of the contempt-of-God thesis until Section II.
A sin is not a mental vice, according to Abelard, because one can have a vice and yet, by resisting it, not sin. A person with a tendency towards irascibility, for example, who successfully resists it is not to be charged with a sin just for having the tendency. Vices dispose us to sin but they are not the sins to which we are thereby disposed.2
There is no concise, straightforward argument for the remarkable thesis that no sin is a deed. Instead there are reiterations of that thesis interspersed in the argument for the positive thesis that sin is contempt of God. (And this comes after Abelard’s defense of his third negative thesis.) But an argument for the positive thesis does not by itself establish the thesis that no deed is a sin. Abelard must exclude the possibility that one way to scorn God is to act in ways contemptuous of God.
We get some help when Abelard says, as if summing up results established previously, that “outward deeds,” which are “equally common to reprobates and the elect, are in themselves all indifferent” (Sc. 44.30–31; Spade 1995, 90). In fact, he had hitherto neither explicitly characterized deeds as outward (exterior), nor made the (sociological?) observation about their distribution among saints and sinners, nor described them as indifferent. Nevertheless the quasi-summary is helpful, enabling us to construct the following edifice on its foundation.
Here is an example that Abelard uses at least twice (Sc. 28.11–17, Spade 1995, 58; and Coll. 164.3237–3241, Spade 1995, 404): two people participate in the legal execution of a criminal. One acts out of a desire to see justice served, the other out of personal hatred of the criminal arising from a long-standing feud. No matter how intense our scrutiny of their behavior, we might not be able to discern who is acting justly and who is acting unjustly. We can have a complete specification of the “outward deeds” — the overt, publicly observable bodily motions of a person — and still not know about the person’s inner life — the beliefs, desires, motives, intentions, and the like — that result in the outward deeds.
Outward deeds can thus be epistemologically inconclusive regarding an agent’s mental states. Although this phenomenon is related to the conception of indifference mentioned above, it does not explain the claim that outward deeds are indifferent. In the Dialogue Abelard says that a thing is indifferent if it is neither good nor evil (Coll. 160.3158; Spade 1995, 397). Abelard’s claim, then, is that no outward deed is good or evil in itself: all bodily motions are morally neutral.
Perhaps what Abelard has in mind is this. One and the same bodily motion can, depending on circumstances, be embedded in a conductor’s downbeat, a minister’s blessing, and an executioner’s coup de grâce. To the extent to which bodily motions are interpreted as having moral significance, it is because of the inferences people make about the mental states and activities behind them. But, as we shall see, it is Abelard’s view that, even when the inferences are correct, it is a mistake to call the bodily motions good or bad, righteous or sinful. Predicates of moral appraisal attach properly to internal items, the states and activities residing in the agent’s soul. Thus, no deed is a sin.
The inward—outward dichotomy is a time-honored one in the history of philosophy. It is frequently associated with some sort of soul—body dualism. If Abelard had a philosophical theory about the relation between soul and body, it is certainly not prominent in his writings. At one point in the Ethics, in order to emphasize the point that the commission of an outward deed does not augment the soul’s sin, Abelard concludes, “As if that which occurred outwardly in the body could contaminate the soul!” (Sc. 22.30–32; Spade 1995, 47). It is tempting to read into this remark Augustine’s dualism, which entails, among other things, that because the soul is superior to the body, it cannot be affected by what happens to the body. As we will see below, Abelard was influenced, directly or indirectly, by Augustine’s thought. But this one passage is too isolated to serve as a basis for an imputation of Augustine’s extreme dualism to Abelard.3 It will suffice for our purposes to suppose that whatever Abelard’s theory might have been, it would legitimize his use of inward—outward imagery.
Abelard’s third negative thesis, that to sin is not to will to perform a bad deed, eliminates one more likely suspect — recall that vices have already been dismissed — from the interior rogue’s gallery. In the process of defending the thesis, Abelard considers an example that had first appeared in Book I of Augustine’s De libero arbitrio. Abelard reworks the example to present an analysis of it at odds with Augustine’s own analysis. But Abelard’s reworking of the example relies on conceptual apparatus that Augustine had developed after having written De libero arbitrio. Examination of the example and its reworking will help us to see not only the rationale for the negative thesis but also for Abelard’s positive thesis.
Here is the example. A servant flees his sadistic master, who is bent on torturing and killing the servant. Cornered finally by the master and fearing for his own life, the servant kills the master. Augustine and Abelard agree that the servant has done something wrong. They offer differing diagnoses of what the wrongness consists in. In De libero arbitrio Augustine tries out the hypothesis that all wrongdoing is motivated by inordinate desire,4 desire that is disproportionate to the value of the object desired. The example of the servant killing his master seems at first blush to be a counterexample to the hypothesis, for we are to suppose that the servant’s desire is to live a life without fear, and no one can be faulted for having that desire. Augustine’s resolution of the case is to claim, in effect, that the servant’s desire is inordinate nevertheless, because it leads the servant to overvalue his own life. His life is a good thing, to be sure, as is, Augustine might have added, his master’s life. But the servant’s life is not the sort of thing that can be possessed without the fear of losing it. Thus to desire to possess one’s life without fear of losing it, no matter what the cost, is to fail to appreciate that sometimes the cost is too high.5
Augustine’s hypothesis pins wrongdoing on a set of unruly desires. Abelard does not accept the maneuver. Let us look first at what he says about Augustine’s example. There is nothing wrong with the servant’s wanting to preserve his life; no hint from Abelard that this desire is inordinate. If there is nothing wrong with the will for self-preservation, what about the servant’s will to kill his master? Abelard’s reply is that the servant has no such will; in the case as described, he kills his master unwillingly (Sc. 6.32–8.4; Spade 1995, 14). A critic might protest that Abelard is surely mistaken: Because the servant’s action of slaying the master was not a matter of inadvertence or accident, it seems obvious that the servant wanted to kill the master and that that very desire was what brought about the action. The servant, after all, could have acquiesced in his own death rather than kill his master. Abelard acknowledges that that would have been the right thing to do. That the servant chose to kill his master shows that even if he had a desire not to kill, that desire was outmatched by the desire to kill. It is disingenuous, then, for Abelard to claim that the servant killed unwillingly. Since Abelard agrees that the homicide was unjust, what else could its evil consist in for him if not the evil desire?
It is crucial to see that Abelard’s strategy in reply is to assert that the servant has no evil desire. Abelard does not help himself to a more radical claim that might have been suggested by the moral neutrality of bodily behavior, that no desire is bad. Some desires are bad. It would be better for a person not to have them. Even so, one’s harboring bad desires does not make one a sinner. Bad desires are something to be fought against and overcome. Indeed, Abelard suggests that if we had no bad desires with which to contend, if our desires always naturally conformed to God’s will, then we would be deprived of the opportunity to achieve anything great for God’s sake (Sc. 12.3–17; Spade 1995, 22–23).
The key to understanding why the critic’s protest misfires is to see that, for Abelard, one and the same action can be done unwillingly yet intentionally. An intentional action need not be whatever action happens to have the strongest desires behind it. When Abelard uses the verbs volo (I want) and nolo (I do not want), they apply exclusively to desires. Correspondingly, when he speaks of an agent’s voluntas (will) he is simply referring to what the agent would most want to do, assuming that the agent is not subject to any kind of coercion.6 In happy circumstances what the agent does intentionally just is what the agent most wants to do. But not all circumstances are happy. Abelard submits the master-killing servant to illustrate the possibility of an agent acting intentionally but unwillingly.7 It might be useful to consider a simpler example, one in which the issue of the agent’s sinning does not arise. The mugger’s menu, “Your money or your life,” most likely will induce you to surrender your money intentionally but unwillingly. There is some element of choice even in this harrowing circumstance, a choice whose potential for gallows humor was exploited by the radio comedian Jack Benny (“I’m thinking, I’m thinking . . .”). Abelard allows that your surrendering your money can be voluntary even when performed unwillingly. But “voluntary” here can only mean that your action was not committed with the necessity of inevitability or that the action corresponds to some desire of yours, for example, a desire to escape or defer death (Sc. 16.24–32; Spade 1995, 34). Abelard does not take the fact that you have a desire to avoid death to tell against the claim that you act unwillingly. To adapt a point of his, “I wanted to give him the money from a desire to save my life” does not entail “I wanted to give him the money.” There is no will or desire to surrender the money; it is rather that surrendering the money is something you suffer in order to achieve something you do want (Sc. 8.21–10.6; Spade 1995, 17–18). The cases of the homicidal servant and the mugger’s victim have this in common: they are specimens of intentional, unwilling, but voluntary action. They differ in that one is sinful, the other not.
The distinction between desire and intention matters to Abelard because he wants to locate an action’s sinfulness not in the agent’s desires but in the agent’s intention. Although Abelard relies on the distinction, he does not provide much explicit help in seeing how he arrived at it or how its two central concepts differ. In the next few paragraphs I shall comment on the provenance and the contours of the distinction. I warn the reader that the comments stray increasingly beyond the confines of the text.
Abelard suggests that to form an intention to do something is to consent to that thing. The terminology of consent traces back to Augustine, who, in De sermone Domini in monte, a work written approximately six years after Book I of De libero arbitrio, develops an account of sin that supplements or supplants the earlier account of sin as inordinate desire. On this later account, a sin is the culmination of three stages, suggestion, pleasure, and consent. Suggestions, Augustine says, come about typically through the workings of memory or the bodily senses, and can range from a momentary thought about having sex with someone to a vivid fantasy about ramming one’s car into the vehicle that just cut into one’s traffic lane. In Abelard’s hands, suggestion is linked more closely to conscious instigators, including demons (Sc. 34.3–38.4; Spade 1995, 69–76). One may or may not take pleasure in such suggestions. Abelard has no brief to file against pleasure, any more than he did against desires. Perhaps, like desires, some pleasures are bad, for instance, taking pleasure in another person’s suffering. But Abelard asserts that no natural bodily pleasure is a sin. If fiends were to force some helpless monk to lie amid amorous women, he says, and if that helpless monk were to be thus led into pleasure, but not consent, who would dare call the pleasure a sin? (Sc. 20.15–19; Spade 1995, 42.) If bodily pleasures were sins, then God would be at fault for having created us in such a way that we cannot help but enjoy the taste of some foods (Sc. 18.13–16; Spade 1995, 37). Finally, Abelard follows Augustine in giving a subjunctive analysis of consent: to consent to a pleasurable suggestion to φ is to set oneself to φ should opportunity arise (Sc. 14.17–19; Spade 1995, 29).8
“There are those,” Abelard observes, “who completely regret being drawn into consent to lust or to a bad will, and are compelled out of the weakness of the flesh to want what they by no means want to want” (Sc. 16.22–24; Spade 1995, 33). (This passage immediately precedes the observation that some intentional actions are voluntary only in the attenuated sense that is compatible with their not being done willingly.) It is tempting to see in this passage a prefiguration of Harry Frankfurt’s distinction between freedom of action and freedom of will.9 Roughly, one has freedom of action if one is free to do what one wants to do. One has freedom of will if one is free to want what one wants to want; if, that is, there is harmony betwen one’s first-order desires and one’s second-order desires. A narcotics addict who takes drugs because he wants to has freedom of action. Nonetheless he lacks freedom of will if his second-order desire not to have a first-order desire for narcotics is powerless over the first-order desire. Conversely, a person who does not realize that she is locked in her room may have freedom of will, the freedom to pick and choose among her first-order desires, even though she would lack the freedom to act on a desire to leave her room, were she to adopt that desire. Abelard does not examine further the phenomena of first and second-order desires and the harmonies and dissonances that are possible among them. His focus is on intention, since that is where sin finds it home. But an examination of the philosophical contours of intentions and desires may help us to understand why Abelard endorses the change in the account of sin given by Augustine.
Like intentions, second-order desires presuppose the capacity for self-awareness. An intention is a setting of oneself to do something. The object of a second-order desire is not just any first-order desire but a first-order desire of one’s own. There is thus some cognitive capacity required of any creature capable of entertaining intentions and second-order desires. There may be a further similarity between them. A second-order desire can be directed favorably or unfavorably at a first-order desire already in place. (“I am glad I want to have a large family.” “I wish I did not have a craving for tobacco.”) A second-order desire can also be directed at a non-existent first-order desire. (“I want to become more willing to help others.”) One might think that some second-order desires are thus synchronous with their first-order, object desires while others are future-directed. Plato put forward the thesis in the Symposium, however, that the desire to have x, when one already has x, is really the desire to retain x.10 It would seem to be a trivial extension to add that the desire not to have x, when one in fact has x, is really the desire to lose x. If Plato is correct, then all desires are future-directed. And even if Plato is mistaken in general, one might be able to make a case for the more circumscribed claim that all second-order desires are future-directed. If such a Platonic case could be made, then second-order desires would share an important feature with intentions, which seem to be essentially future-oriented.
Still, there would be these differences, differences that suggest that intentions are further up the cognitive stream. Second-order desires have first-order desires as their objects. Can there be second-order intentions, that is, intentions that take other, garden-variety intentions as their objects? The schema, “I intend to intend to ϕ,” if not a typographical error, induces a kind of mental vertigo. It is hard to imagine a circumstance in which it does not boil down to “I intend to ϕ.” In contrast, “I intend to have only charitable intentions” and “I intend not to have vicious intentions,” however rare, pompous, and foolhardy they may appear, are intelligible. If wanting to want always points to a future, intending to have intentions points to a future in the future. For if we intend to acquire or retain certain intentions, then we must intend that those future intentions will lead to action, if opportunity arises, at a time subsequent to their acquisition or retention. Whereas second-order desires, given the Platonic thesis, require that we cognize ourselves as continuing subjects in the future, second-order intentions require that we envision ourselves not merely as continuing in the future, but as having intentions in the future that we may or may not have now, and as being prepared to act on those intentions at a still further future time.
We humans are no strangers to the phenomenon of one person having conflicting desires, that is, two or more desires such that the satisfaction of one or more of them precludes the satisfaction of others. The phenomenon is as familiar as wanting to have your cake and eat it too. On first thoughts we might regard cases of intrapersonal desire conflict as a kind of volitional immaturity. On second thoughts it might occur to us that there are some occasions when not to be pulled in opposite directions would be a symptom of less than full humanity. Sophie can save one of her children but not both; which will it be? A reply of “Oh, well, flip a coin,” might pass muster from a decision-theoretic point of view. But were Sophie not to persist in wanting to save both children even when she knew she could not, then Sophie would have become as brutalized as those who forced the choice upon her.
The situation is quite different with conflicting intentions. We understand Hamlet’s wanting and not wanting to slay Claudius and appreciate the dramatic tension that his ambivalence contributes to the play and to the psychological complexity of its protagonist. We are gripped by the pivotal scene in which Hamlet, fully intent on killing Claudius, forswears his intention at the last moment because to kill Claudius while Claudius is praying would be to allow Claudius to go to heaven.11 The logic of decisions is non-monotonic: one’s intentions can and should change sometimes with the addition of a new consideration. Suppose now that I tell you that Shakespeare contemplated inserting material into Hamlet that has Hamlet announcing in the same breath, without benefit of intervening considerations and without equivocation, that he intends to kill Claudius and that he intends not to kill Claudius. I ask you to speculate on how the scene would have fit into the play. Two hypotheses might occur to you. One is that Shakespeare was thinking of portraying Hamlet as not merely burning to avenge his father’s death yet frozen by inconclusive evidence: Shakespeare had contemplated having Hamlet become completely unhinged. The other is that Shakespeare was planning to have Hamlet feign being unhinged by putting the unused material into the scene with the barmy but pointed banter with Polonius. Either hypothesis rightly regards the simultaneous holding of both intentions as a sign of massive irrationality.
To depict intention as a kind of consent following on the heels of suggestion and desire enables us to see why this regard is appropriate. Consent, as employed by Augustine and Abelard, suggests an executive decision that has taken into account various suggestions received from the executive’s constituents, weighted by the strengths of the constituents’ desires, but mindful of the executive’s own desires concerning the desirability or undesirability of the constituents’ desires. The palate favors going out for a pizza. The conscience reports unreadiness for tomorrow’s examination. The person has a pizza delivered and spends the saved time studying. An executive who promulgates inconsistent policies provides no coherent guidance for her constituents or herself. We may not be surprised to find different components of a corporate body in competition with each other. But we should think that the corporate head is derelict or inept if her decisions and policies take no steps towards diminishing the internal competition by restructuring the desires. Inconsistent policies have the effect of sanctioning all actions and legitimating all desires in a bellum omnium contra omnes. A cynical corporate head, whose personal interests diverged from the interests of the corporation, might find an occasion to hamstring the latter for the sake of the former. But, to return the analogy to the individual case, when the interests of one’s constituents are literally one’s own interests, to pit the one against the other is to court schizophrenia.
We have seen that Abelard rejects the following inference pattern about desires: if A wants y and x is the only means to y, then A wants x. This inference pattern seems to rest on a false descriptive generalization. Desire for an end may or may not confer desire on the means necessary to achieving the end. Consider now an analogous inference pattern for intentions: if A intends y and x is the only means to y, then A intends x. In the history of philosophy after Abelard’s time, the analogous pattern for intentions (and patterns bearing a strong family resemblance to it) has often been put forward as a normative principle, imputing responsibility to A for intending the necessary means in the very process of intending an end. Here, for a recent example, is Allen Wood’s introduction to his discussion of Kant’s notion of a hypothetical imperative:
To set an end is to undertake a self-given normative commitment to carry out some plan for achieving the end. Sometimes when I have set an end, I subsequently feel an impulse or desire either to perform some action that precludes achieving the end or else to refrain from an action that is necessary for achieving the end. In such cases, I must (on pain of a failure of rationality) make up my mind whether to abandon the end or to abstain from acting on the impulse.12
Abelard does not discuss this feature allegedly attaching to intentions. If intentions do impose a standard of instrumental rationality on agents who have them, this is yet another respect in which intentions carry with them more cognitive baggage than do desires. Perhaps because Abelard neglects the topic of means—end rationality, he also does not seem to be aware of a vexing distinction that would become crucial to the principle of double effect, namely, the distinction between what one intends and what one merely foresees as consequences of one’s actions.13
In sum, I have speculated, I hope on Abelard’s behalf, that to locate sin in the realm of intentions rather than the domain of desires is to imply that sins require for their commission beings whose level of rational, cognitive sophistication is higher than that of beings who are merely capable of desires, even second-order desires. Infants and animals have desires. But, “as blessed Jerome has remarked, and as plain reason maintains, as long as the soul remains in the stage of infancy, it lacks sin” (Sc. 22.1–3; Spade 1995, 44).
So far we have been following the ramifications of Abelard’s three negative theses. His positive thesis is that all sins are acts of intention, whether they be translated into physical action or not. But not all acts of intention are sins. What makes an intention, or an act of consent, a sin? Abelard’s answer is that sinful consent is “contempt of God and an offense against him” (Sc. 4:32; Spade 1995, 7). The terms are carefully chosen: as Abelard points out immediately, no one can literally damage God, but contempt and offense are not the same as damage.14 More formally, Abelard says that contempt of God is “not to do for his sake what we believe should be done by us for his sake, or not to omit doing for his sake what we believe should be omitted” (Sc. 6.3–6; Spade 1995, 8; reaffirmed at Sc. 54.30–32; Spade 1995, 110).15 The definition specifies two kinds of failures, failing to do what one believes should be done and failing to refrain from that which one believes one should refrain. Abelard discusses both kinds of failures. The principal case offered in illustration of failing to do is a case involving non-culpable ignorance. The case illustrating a failure to refrain is a case of mistaken belief. As it turns out, the distinction between acting in ignorance and acting on a mistaken belief tends to occupy Abelard’s attention more than the distinction between failing to do and failing to refrain.
The star example of the first sort of failure appears in Abelard’s discussion of the persecution of Christ. It is not just that Christ’s persecutors were not sinning if they believed that they were pleasing God by punishing a dangerous heretic. Even more strongly, Abelard claims that had they failed to punish Christ when they believed that he was a dangerous heretic, they would have been sinning (Sc. 54.27–56.8, 66.31–34; Spade 1995, 110–111, 131). Abelard spends more time defending the former claim than the latter, a reasonable strategy if he thought that the former claim is a consequence of the latter.16 If Christ’s persecutors were not sinful, why did Christ say “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34)? Why is forgiveness necessary if they were free of sin?
Abelard’s reply is to distinguish four senses of the term “sin,” only two of which need concern us here. The proper sense of the term is the sense Abelard has advocated — consent that is contempt of God. There is in addition what I shall call on Abelard’s behalf a public sense of “sin,” which applies to external deeds, in particular to those deeds which have not been “performed or willed correctly” (Sc. 56.32–58.1; Spade 1995, 130). Christ’s persecutors have committed a public sin but not a sin proper. The commission of a public sin exposes its agents to divine punishment even though they might be without sin proper. Christ’s petition, then, amounts to asking that God remit punishment on the persecutors that is otherwise justified by their deed. “Thus to sin through ignorance is this sort of thing: not to have a fault in this [act], but to do what is not fitting for us” (Sc. 66.27–28; Spade 1995, 116). To put the point in more contemporary terms, Abelard has just claimed that at least from the divine point of view, some offenses are strict liability offenses, that is, cases of culpable wrongdoing in which the offender has no mens rea. We shall see that Abelard countenances a similar class of offenses from the point of view of secular authority. When the point is put this way, however, it becomes obvious that Abelard needs to provide an account of what it is that makes a deed a public sin, something not performed or willed correctly. Contempt of God cannot be the only dimension of moral wrongness. We need an account of what it is that makes an act “not fitting for us.”
As a prelude to his definition of sinning through ignorance, Abelard discusses the case of Cornelius the centurion, “a devout man who feared God with all his household” (Acts 10.2). As Abelard interprets the case, Cornelius had come to recognize and love God “by the natural law” (Sc. 64.17; Spade 1995, 126), but did not believe in Christ until Peter informed him. Abelard says that had Cornelius passed away believing in God before his acceptance of Christ, he would have been numbered not among the faithful but among those without faith. The reference to natural law is seemingly offhand and certainly isolated. Even so, I suggest that it may be the key to understanding why Abelard thinks some actions are fitting or unfitting for us independently of whether they express contempt of God.
In the Dialogue, the Philosopher claims that the natural law is “the science of morals we call ‘ethics’” (Coll. 44.85; Spade 1995, 11). It is “first” both in time and in nature to the “Old Law” given to the Jews — the precepts contained in the Pentateuch — and to the “New Law” given to Christians and contained in the Gospels and the apostles’ teaching. Its temporal primacy explains how the ancient pagans were able to achieve moral sophistication without knowledge of the Old or New Law. Its natural primacy involves its being simpler than the Old or New Law. The Old and New Law are less simple in that they contain everything contained in natural law, but add to natural law’s content. The Old Law, for example, includes precepts concerning circumcision and forbidden food. Among the New Law’s edicts is a precept concerning baptism. The challenge the Philosopher sets the Jew and the Christian is to convince him, by rational argument alone, that these sorts of additions make the Old Law or the New Law superior to natural law. The presupposition behind the challenge, a presupposition made explicit in the Philosopher’s discussion of Job (Coll. 59.489–492; Spade 1995, 63), is that the content of natural law is discoverable by natural reason, that is, reason unaided by supernatural revelation. In contrast, insofar as the Old and New Law are less simple than natural law, their complexity is attributable to content that appears not to be backed by reason but by faith based on revelation alone. We should note that the Philosopher takes the content of natural law — and thus the power of natural reason — to be fairly extensive. We know by it that God exists and that we must love God, neighbor (Coll. 53.332–334; Spade 1995, 48), parents, punish the depraved, and in general observe whatever practices are so necessary for all people that without them individual human merits would be insufficient (Coll. 125.2223–2225; Spade 1995, 283). Like Cornelius, then, the Philosopher is no atheist. Yet, also like Cornelius, there is no assurance that the Philosopher will be saved, no matter how fervent his piety, if he lacks faith in Christ (Sc. 64.17–23; Spade 1995, 126). Abelard is careful not to say that Cornelius, and by implication, the Philosopher, would definitely be damned. To say that would be to presume to know too much about God’s plans.
One of the examples Abelard uses to illustrate the notion of sinning through ignorance is a hunting accident (Sc. 66.19–21; Spade 1995, 129). Overeager Nimrod may mistake a companion for a deer, death resulting. Not intentional homicide, but a substandard performance nonetheless. If one of the precepts of natural law enjoins us to exercise due diligence when engaging in dangerous activities, then Nimrod has disregarded natural law. Note here two different pleas of ignorance. “I didn’t know that my companion had moved behind that bush,” an acknowledgment of ignorance of factual circumstance, helps to explain how the homicide occurred, may exonerate Nimrod from a charge of murder, but still betokens negligence. “I didn’t know that I was supposed to be careful while engaged in dangerous pastimes,” a confession of ignorance of a relevant part of natural law, would betray not only Nimrod’s behavior but Nimrod himself as substandard.
Let us return to the case of Christ’s persecutors. Perhaps what Abelard has in mind is the thought that the persecutors have violated a precept of natural law. A likely candidate for such a precept might be that one should not punish the innocent. That Christ’s persecutors violated this precept unwittingly exculpates them from the a charge of sin but not from a charge of acting in a way not fitting for them. As appealing as this solution may be, we shall see that it is at tension with other things Abelard has to say.
Recall that the second part of Abelard’s definition of contempt of God is failing to refrain from that which one believes one should refrain. Abelard does not discuss such a case in the Ethics or the Dialogue. We get some help from his Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Paul says of types of foodstuff that none is unclean in itself (Romans 14:14, 14:20). Yet, Paul continues, “He who has doubts is condemned, if he eats, because he does not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). Abelard interprets the passage as maintaining that “he sins who uses even lawful things against his conscience” (Comm. Rom. 306.313–314).
It appears that Abelard is speaking in his own voice and intends his remark to apply universally. The Old Law contains a prohibition against eating pork. The New Law does not (see Sc. 18.19–23; Spade 1995, 38). Abelard believes that the New Law supersedes the Old Law. Does the New Law’s supersession rescind all parts of the Old Law that are not also part of natural law? Or does the Old Law still remain in effect on the Jews? In either case consider a Jew who believes that it is illicit for him to eat pork, but who consents to eating pork nonetheless. If the Old Law is in effect, he is expressing contempt of God by consenting to something that actually transgresses God’s law. If the Old Law is no longer in effect, then although he is not actually transgressing God’s law, it would seem that as long as he mistakenly believes that he is, he actually is expressing contempt of God.
Abelard’s definition of contempt of God sows the seed of what the agent believes into it essentially. What we are seeing, I suggest, is the harvest. Is the crop welcome? John Marenbon observes:
But if Abelard had thought about the more general application of the principle he appears to admit, he could hardly have remained complacent. . . . Applying the principle generally: I sin if I contravene what I believe, wrongly, is a revealed precept that applies to me. But I might believe wrongly that any precept is a revealed precept which applies to me, including ones which contradict precepts of natural law (for instance, supposedly revealed precepts commanding human sacrifice). I may even believe that my revealed precept includes the command to follow it, not natural law . . . Abelard does not see the difficulty which wrongly believed revealed precepts (whether general or particular) present for his theory.17
One might think that Abelard’s complacency would be shaken upon seeing that, according to his theory, an agent, A, has sinned by intentionally refraining from human sacrifice when A believes that human sacrifice is commanded. How can A sin by doing the right thing? A related question: because refraining from human sacrifice is not otherwise sinful, how can A’s merely believing that it is sinful make it sinful? An unflappable Abelard should reply by reminding us that his theory countenances two dimensions of wrongdoing, acting in a way unfitting for us to act and sinning proper. If there is anything that is picked out by the phrase, “A’s doing the right thing,” it can only be A’s act of eating pork or refraining from human sacrifice, which, we may suppose, A does fittingly. A’s sin is not this, however, nor is A’s sin established by A’s belief. A’s sin is in consenting to the sinful suggestion to which the belief gives rise.
If Abelard needs two dimensions of wrongdoing, sin proper and unfit action, parity of reason leads us to expect two dimensions of good conduct, namely, having the right intention and action that is fit for us to perform. Abelard takes pains to argue that when we call an intention and its ensuing action good, we correctly distinguish two things, the intention and the deed. We are mistaken, however, if we think that the goodness of the intention and the goodness of the action are two commensurable instances of goodness. Abelard’s position on this point is not entirely stable. His first pronouncement, consonant with his thesis that all deeds are indifferent, is that when “good” is predicated of an action, the predication is akin to synecdoche. That is, the predication extends to a whole, the complex of intention plus action, what properly applies only to a part, the intention (Sc. 46.4–16; Spade 1995, 91). A bit later he seems willing to settle for a weaker view. Even if deeds can be good in some sense, the sense in which they can be good is different from the sense in which intentions can be good. This difference in sense is sufficient to preclude addition of the one good to the other to produce a complex whose goodness is greater than the goodness of the intention alone (Sc. 52.4–15; Spade 1995, 105).
In either case it is clear why Abelard insists on the claim that deeds do not amplify an agent’s goodness. Suppose that two people have the same charitable intentions, but that one of them is robbed of his money through no fault of his own while the other brings her plans to fruition. It cannot be that the second person earns more divine credit or that the first person’s credit diminishes in the eyes of God because of the robber’s malice. For if merit could be enhanced by external deeds, then the rich could become more meritorious than the poor simply by plowing their wealth into external projects. To think that wealth can by itself contribute to true happiness or the worth of the soul, says Abelard, is the height of madness (Sc. 48.25–30; Spade 1995, 99).
The performance of deeds does not add to an agent’s sinfulness or merit. What is the point, then, of secular institutions of justice, especially punishment? If the real sin in murder lies in the murderer’s consent, which will be duly assessed by a supremely knowledgeable and just judge, and if performance does not aggravate the felony, the imposition of punishment on a murderer by secular authorities might seem to be akin to double jeopardy. It is true that natural law is supposed to warrant punishing the depraved. Abelard does not rest content with a bare appeal to natural law; moreover, the cases he presents involve punishing those without relevant fault, not the depraved. His discussion unfolds in two stages. First Abelard argues for the permissibility of secular punishment. Then he argues for its practical value. The discussion would warm the hearts of many consequentialists.
The permissibility argument takes this form. If there are cases of legitimate secular punishment where there is no sin on the part of the defendant — cases where secular authorities may punish even if God remits punishment — then a fortiori there should be cases of legitimate secular punishment where the defendant has sinned. But there are cases of sinless deeds meriting secular punishment. Abelard cites two, one involving negligence, the other the knowing punishment of an innocent person. Therefore there are cases of legitimate secular punishment of sinners.
I do not propose to defend the first premise. It may appear to beg the question against those who worry about the justice of double jeopardy. Its defense would seem to depend, then, on the distinction between two kinds of wrongdoing, prosecuted in two different jurisdictions. I do want to look at Abelard’s two cases more closely. In the first one, a destitute mother, in an attempt to keep her baby warm, takes him into bed with her and, while asleep, smothers him. Abelard maintains that a legal authority18 is justified in exacting a heavy penalty on the woman, even though she lacks sinful consent, in order to deter her and others from similar future behavior (Sc. 38:13–22; Spade 1995, 79–80). Divine justice scrutinizes the inner workings of the mind, where human justice cannot penetrate. Human justice attends to the outer behavior (Sc. 40.7–19; Spade 1995, 82–83), attempting to modify it, not so much with an eye to serving justice as to ensuring the common utility by preventing public injuries and the corruption of others (Sc. 44.3–5; Spade 1995, 88). This is the practical value of secular punishment. In pursuit of this value it may happen that a lesser offense should be punished more severely than a greater one, if the lesser offense, left unchecked, would tend to erode the common good more than the greater one. Thus arson is punished more severely than fornication even though fornication is the more serious sin from God’s point of view (Sc. 42.5–44.2; Spade 1995, 86–87).
Abelard’s second case is more troublesome. We are to imagine a judge before whom a defendant has been brought by unscrupulous plaintiffs. The plaintiffs impute something to the defendant. The judge realizes from the imputation that the defendant cannot be guilty. Yet at trial, the plaintiffs, using perjurious witnesses, make an unrebuttable case for the defendant’s guilt. In discharging his judicial duties, the judge justly imposes punishment on someone he knows to be innocent (Sc. 38.22–40.5; Spade 1995, 81).
Let us suppose, on Abelard’s behalf, that whatever it is by means of which the judge realizes the defendant’s innocence, it cannot be admitted into the legal proceedings. Let us also suppose that there is no legal mechanism in place for the judge’s recusing himself. These are very large suppositions indeed, but without them the judge’s behavior cannot plausibly be described as the just fulfillment of his secular official duties. Even with them, however, Abelard’s case is still vexing. Recall that in the case of Christ’s persecutors, Abelard says that they did not sin, because they unwittingly failed to live up to a precept of natural law that one should not punish the innocent. What should we say of Abelard’s judge, who wittingly consents to a violation of that precept? How can this fail to be a case of sin? It can be maintained that there is another Natural Law precept that dictates that one ought to discharge those legitimate duties entailed by one’s voluntary acceptance of a particular vocation. Without further elucidation, however, we now must conclude that Abelard’s judge is ensnared in a moral dilemma. One precept says he must punish, the other says he must not. No matter what he does, he sins.19
One might try to dissolve the dilemma by claiming that one of the judge’s two conflicting duties is weightier and takes precedence over the other. There are two problems. First, it is not clear that the duty to discharge one’s office trumps the duty not to punish the innocent, as is required by Abelard’s verdict. Second, even if one could make out a case to that effect, one would not thereby have shown that Abelard’s judge is free from sin. All one would have shown is that Abelard’s judge sins less grievously in punishing the innocent defendant than in failing to meet the obligations of his office.
It is possible to maintain that given the assumption that the judge has sinned, it does not follow that the sinless defendant’s punishment is illegitimate. Abelard may be prepared to embrace a purely formalistic conception of secular judicial conduct, one that would maintain that as long as all public procedure is duly followed, the result is legitimate. This attitude would be consistent with the importance Abelard lays on the inward-outward distinction.
Fornication is a worse sin than arson, says Abelard, but one may wonder how Abelard’s theory can accommodate degrees of sin. Contempt is contempt. It cannot be that the psychological intensity of the contempt is an accurate index of the gravity of sin, lest the guilt-ridden fornicator become less of a sinner than the swaggering arsonist. Psychological intensity would seem at most to provide a gauge to the distance the sinner has to travel to make repentance. Abelard scoffs at the Stoic doctrine that all sins are equal, calling it “plain foolishness” (Sc. 74.9; Spade 1995, 145) and the kind of insanity that consists in believing the most patent falsehood (Coll. 109.1795–1796; Spade 1995, 230). Yet his own theory raises the question of how it is that not all sins are equal.
Although Abelard presents a taxonomy of sins according to their gravity, the taxonomy is disappointing in its conventionality. According to Abelard, some sins are venial, others damnable; of damnable sins, some are criminal, some are not (Sc. 68.27–29; Spade 1995, 134). “Sins are venial or light when we consent to what we know should not be consented to; nevertheless at the time what we know does not occur in memory” (Sc. 68.31–70.1; Spade 1995, 135). Examples are boasting and overindulgence: there are occasions when, caught up in the spirit of the moment, we brag or eat or drink too much and only in retrospect come to recall what we knew all along — the excessive nature of our behavior. It is distinctive of damnable sins that no one can have forgotten, even momentarily, that perjury, homicide, or adultery are sinful.20 Finally, damnable sins that are criminal are those that have been carried out and made known publicly.
Set aside the fact that the taxonomy is a mixed bag: by Abelard’s strictest lights, criminal sins are not a third class of sin proper. Set aside the fact that the taxonomy is too coarse-grained to help us see why, for instance, fornication is a more serious sin than arson. Abelard would still face the complaint that appealing to the phenomenon of forgettability does nothing to explain why damnable sins are worse than venial ones.
Let us raise a related problem for Abelard’s theory. It bears some resemblance to his case of the two differently motivated executioners. Consider two cases of homicide, alike as they can be in their external manifestations and consequences. Suppose further that in both cases, the agent acts intentionally, consenting to the suggestion to kill the victim. In the first case, Grimesby stands to inherit a fortune upon the victim’s death, and is motivated entirely by greed. In the second, Philemon has witnessed Amanda, Philemon’s sister, suffer from a slow, painful, degenerative disease for which there is no cure. In her lucid moments, Amanda has urged Philemon to kill her. Philemon understands that he will gain nothing from Amanda’s death and risks being charged with murder. He kills Amanda nevertheless; he can no longer bear seeing Amanda suffering. A natural reaction to the two cases is to say that motive should make a difference, a difference to which Abelard’s theory seems insensitive. Grimesby intended to kill out of greed, Philemon out of compassion. As far as Abelard’s theory is concerned, however, the only relevant moral dimension to sin is the intention. Would Abelard have us believe that Philemon’s act is exactly as contemptuous of God as Grimesby’s is? That God, “the examiner of the heart and reins,” can see no significant moral difference between the two?
At one point Abelard says that adultery is more displeasing to God than overeating because adultery does more injury to love of neighbor (Sc. 74.12–19; Spade 1995, 146). Abelard alludes to what lies at the core of New Testament ethics. Love of God and love of neighbor are enjoined on Christians as the two great commandments, on which depend all the law and the prophets (Matthew 22:37–40). The more we come to love God, the more eager we are to avoid what offends him, and our eagerness will wax or wane in proportion to the magnitude of the offense (Sc. 72.24–26; Spade 1995, 142). To be sure, much the same could be said of fear of God, except that anxiety replaces eagerness. Fear motivates us to avoid incurring God’s wrath. But fear can only produce painful and grudging compliance with God’s will, while love involves endorsing God’s will and taking on God’s projects as the lover’s own. Abelard depicts fear as standing to the Old Law as charity stands to the Gospel (Sc. 72.2–14; Spade 1995, 139–140). Fear of divine punishment is the source of what Abelard calls unfruitful penitence; love is the source of genuine and fruitful penitence (Sc. 76–92 passim; Spade 1995, 151–171 passim).
To say only this much, however, is to leave crucial questions unanswered. Why should we want to love God? Why should we want to love our neighbor? Abelard says precious little in answer. To provide a detailed response on his behalf would risk the charge of invention masquerading as exposition. I offer the following remarks as the least daring answer I can think of. They are anchored in a claim made by Abelard’s Christian in the Dialogue, that the ultimate good for humans is to love the ultimate good itself, which is God (Coll. 132–133.2437–2440; Spade 1995, 315). We can presume that Abelard would regard it as axiomatic that we desire to be happy. If greater goods contribute to greater happiness and if God is the greatest of all goods, then Abelard has the ingredients of an answer to the first question. Themes that are prominent in the thought of Augustine would help to answer the second. Suppose that created goods exhibit different degrees of goodness to the extent to which they reflect God’s goodness. Humans, who are (feebly) like God in possessing the capacity for judgment, are superior to animals, who lack the capacity. Animals, who are like God in being alive, are in turn superior to inanimate objects. In our ordinary, literally mundane affairs, then, the other people we encounter are the most God-like creatures around, thus deserving to be loved as much for their goodness as we love ourselves.21
Skating on even thinner ice, we are led to speculate about how to connect an ethics of love to Abelard’s views about sin. This much seems clear: the Augustinian account sketched in the previous paragraph tolerates, indeed, rests on, the thought that love should vary in intensity depending on the worthiness of the object of love. Abelard’s Christian argues for this thesis (Coll. 110–113:1826–1924; Spade 1995, 235–243). Lovers may thus err in two ways, either by investing too much love in an object not meriting it or by failing to love strongly enough something they should.22 Now while degrees of mislocated love might help Abelard to explain how sins can vary in their severity, one may still wonder how this fits his analysis of sin in the cases of Grimesby and Philemon. No doubt Grimesby fastens far too much love on wealth and far too little on his victim. Philemon’s love for Amanda seems harder to fault. Yet Abelard’s analysis of sin brands both cases equally.
There are two components to the solution I suspect Abelard would give. The first is that what motivates Philemon’s action is not genuine love but “tender-heartedness” (misericordia), a natural inclination — thus not a moral virtue — that tends to work against justice and God’s plans (Coll. 122–123.2152–2176; Spade 1995, 275–277). The second is that Abelard’s account of sin is not, and is not intended to be, an account of human depravity. Grimesby displays a character more depraved than Philemon’s because Grimesby’s greed is not just another natural inclination like tender-heartedness. Greed is a moral vice, voluntarily acquired, disposing its possessor to sin. Ceteris paribus it would take considerably more effort to establish in Grimesby’s soul the relations of love that constitute its ultimate human good. Yet for all of that, Abelard can maintain that Grimesby’s and Philemon’s consenting to homicide are equally sinful.
It may have occurred to you that we have already embarked on speculation about the content of the unfinished second book of the Ethics. Let me indulge myself for one more paragraph. In the second book Abelard would have maintained that moral virtues dispose us to do well but they are not what doing well is. Nor is doing well simply a matter of doing good deeds: first, because goodness attributed to deeds is parasitic on a more fundamental goodness; second, because the widow’s mites count for more than the sums of the wealthy (see Mark 12:41–44). Finally, doing well is not simply a matter of desiring to do well; if wishes were horses, beggars might ride. To do well is to consent to do well, to take on as one’s own projects, insofar as one can, projects that are pleasing to God, out of love of God. Looking back at Abelard’s definition of contempt of God as a model, we can ask which of these two definitions would more closely match his conception of love of God:
Love of God is to do for God’s sake what we believe should be done by us for God’s sake.
Love of God is to do for God’s sake what should be done by us for God’s sake.
By incorporating the agent’s beliefs into it, the first definition more closely parallels Abelard’s definition of contempt of God. But it also entails that one could have genuine love of God while committing atrocities, based on false beliefs, in God’s name. The second definition requires of genuine love of God that the lover’s actions actually comport with God’s will, not some misguided conception of it. The second definition sets a loftier standard. The first definition is audacious, controversial, the sort of thing that would require defense from a brilliant if pesky philosopher. Which one would Abelard have chosen?23
1. I provide references to the standard Latin editions of both works, as well as to numbered paragraphs of the translations in Spade 1995. All translations, however, are my own.
2. Abelard appears to regard irascibility and wantonness as vices due to our bodily constitution, natural liabilities that we should learn how to control. They are distinct from vices, like greed and gluttony, that are acquired, typically by sinful choices. The distinction plays no role here, but is relevant to the issue of vicious motivation; see §III.
3. For further discussion of Augustine’s dualism, especially in relation to his ethics, see Mann 1999.
4. Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.3.8–1.4.10. “Inordinate desire” is Thomas Williams’s translation of libido in Williams 1993. Although somewhat tendentious in the context, the translation has the virtues of not confining Augustine’s use of libido to sexual passion and emphasizing that the desire in question is somehow out of order.
5. Augustine is referring to one’s earthly, embodied life. His resolution foreshadows the hierarchy of values that he develops in Book II of De libero arbitrio; see Mann 1999, 147 for citations.
6. Thus Abelard does not use voluntas to refer primarily to anything as substantive as a mental faculty, something apart from but in communication, say, with another faculty called “intellect.” See, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I.79, 82.
7. John Marenbon (1997a, 259) pairs this case with another one mentioned by Abelard: “Often too it happens that, attracted by her appearance, we want to lie with a woman whom we know to be married, yet by no means would we want to commit adultery with her as much as we would want her not to be married” (Sc. 16:16–18; Spade 1995, 32). As the context of Abelard’s discussion clearly implies, we have not sinned merely in having those desires. So if the case is to parallel the master-killing servant case, we must suppose, as Marenbon does, that we actually commit adultery while wishing that our partner were not married.
8. Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte, 1.12.33–34. Abelard refers to the trio of suggestion, pleasure, and consent at Sc. 32:23–25 (Spade 1995, 68), even though he had not hitherto mentioned suggestion.
9. Frankfurt 1971.
10. Plato, Symposium 200C–D.
11. Act III, scene iii.
12. Wood 1999, 61.
13. See, e.g. Audi 1999, s.v. “principle of double effect.”
14. For more on this distinction in another context, see Mann 1998.
15. Abelard defines contempt negatively, as not doing or not omitting, in order to conform to the Augustinian thesis that evil is non-being. See Mann 2001.
16. One can make a case that “They would have sinned by not punishing” entails “They did not sin by punishing,” especially if one is inclined to deny the possibility of moral dilemmas. For more on the topic of moral dilemmas, see the discussion of the case of the judge punishing a person the judge knows to be innocent, see 297–298 below.
18. A bishop, in Abelard’s example, but the case is not materially changed if we suppose the authority not to be ecclesiastical.
19. Aquinas would later distinguish between simpliciter and secundum quid moral dilemmas. A secundum quid dilemma is one that arises because of previous wrongdoing on the agent’s part. A simpliciter dilemma is one in which the agent has done no relevant previous wrong that leads to it. The judge’s plight seems to be a simpliciter dilemma. For references and discussion, see Mann 1991.
20. Compare Abelard’s observation with the 1843 M’Naghten rule defining criminal insanity. A person is criminally insane if “at the time of committing the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong” (Goldstein 1967, 45).
21. This sentiment is compatible with the beliefs that (1) humans are nevertheless a fairly miserable lot and (2) there are other created beings — angels, for example — superior to us in virtue of being immaterial. Augustine held both beliefs; see especially Books II and III of De libero arbitrio.
22. This is a vindication of the utility of the Augustinian notion of inordinate desire.
23. An earlier draft of this essay benefited from comments from Jeffrey Brower, Kevin Guilfoy, Scott MacDonald, Gareth B. Matthews, Christopher Taylor, and Thomas Williams.