How should we live? This question lies at the core of what it means to be human. In volume II we explore the “best which has been thought and said” from the middle ages through the early renaissance. Today’s session is on Peter Abelard’s Dialogue between and Philosopher, and Jew, and a Christian.

Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian was written by Peter Abelard (1079-1142), a superstar amongst 12th-century Parisian teachers, drawing crowds of thousands at the Notre-Dame cathedral school. Abelard contributed to the development of the “scholastic” method in theology. (The contrasting “monastic” method of theology would be exemplified by Abelard’s opponent, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.) Shifting the balance of influence from Plato to Aristotle (which is bound up with the question of “universals”) was crucial for this change in theological method. Abelard helped secure Aristotle’s prestige though he only had access to a few of Aristotle’s logical works (which are together known as the Organon). Impressive spadework in logical and linguistic analysis in the 12th century helped make the high-medieval achievements of Aquinas and others possible in the following century. This Dialogue symptomatizes the vital medieval conversation between the western religious and philosophical ideologies.