APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1

Book Reviews

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Peter Abelard, Ethical Writings: Ethics and Dialogues between a Philosopher, a Jew and a Christian
Translated by Paul Vincent Spade, with an introduction by Marilyn McCord Adams
Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1995.

Reviewed by August Viglione
Instituto Orientale, Naples, Italy

This book contains a translation of several of Peter Abelard's works on ethics, and a detailed introduction by Marilyn McCord Adams, who helps to bring the two works into focus for the modern reader. In the translator's introduction, Spade explains the reason for a new translation of these works. Although he acknowledges using the translations of Luscombe and of Payer, respectively, for the Ethics and the Dialogue, he maintains that his translation has brought to perfection the earlier translations. This certainly would be a sufficient reason for a new translation of so important a figure in the world of medieval philosophy as Peter Abelard. Spade's translation and his notes to these translations certainly help the reader to get a better view of the complexity, and in some cases even the modernity, of Abelard. However there is a shortcoming, or at least an oversight, on the part of Spade, inasmuch as he leaves the reader without the Latin text to consult. The reader cannot be expected to find the text that Spade used for his translations nor trust that his translations are necessarily the most valid. Also considering the variety of even fifteenth-century (preprinting) editions of the Bible, perhaps Spade should have tried where possible to find the edition of the Bible which Abelard actually used in his quotations. This holds for the other works cited, as well. It might be an insurmountable task, but given the claims he made for this translation, Spade should have attempted to show that he had thoroughly researched the material that Abelard had in front of him, and had searched the available editions for possible variant readings of his text. Purportedly complete and accurate translations such as Spade's run the risk of being undermined by textual criticisms of an external kind.

Despite these observations, Marilyn McCord Adams and Paul Vincent Spade have made an admirable attempt at interpreting and translating Peter Abelard's Ethics and Dialogue. The authors could have added, however, a historical note or two with regard to the historical contexts of Abelard's life. His early life coincides with the preaching and launching of the First Crusade and his later life coincides with the launching of the subsequent Crusades. The late eleventh century and early twelfth century is a frenetic anti-Infidel period in Western European history, yet it barely seems to have affected Abelard. These facts are cited only to further magnify Abelard's significance in medieval history. Moreover, we are confronted in some of Abelard's statements with positions that a modern theologian would probably hesitate to make with the same equanimity, and some historical background would help make clear the somewhat aberrant nature of Abelard's thought. For instance Abelard clearly draws the distinction between a sin through action and a sin through fault when he says that: "Thus those who persecuted Christ or his followers and believed they should be persecuted, we say sinned through action. Nevertheless, they would have sinned more seriously through fault if they had spared them contrary to conscience" (pp. 24-25, 29 [Ethics (110)(112)(131)]). To make a like statement at any time other than the present could have seemed heresy, but to state it in the early twelfth century was very bold, to say the least, even if the persecutors of Christ were not Infidels but presumably Jews.