Abelard’s Sic et Non

Abelard’s Sic et Non

At some future date, you may want to read Peter Abelard’s famous treatise Sic et Non (1120) for a no-nonsense guide to critical thinking during the Middle Ages. Merely reading its 158 theological questions would have been an education in itself for 12th-century university students. Within just a few minutes they would have discovered the kinds of questions that were routinely studied during that time.

If students had been fortunate enough to own a copy of this book before the age of printing that was to dawn three centuries later, they could have chosen any question that interested them and found both pro and con arguments by authorities that would at first glance have proved equally convincing to them.

What they wouldn’t have found, however, was a resolution of those questions, for that after all was the point of this groundbreaking, astonishing book. Students had to work their way through both sets of persuasive arguments to determine for themselves which arguments made the stronger case.

It was this personal challenge to each student that caused a sensation in the medieval university world, which had always appealed to recognized authorities and their proof texts to answer such questions. But here students were confronted with two sets of authorities that contradicted one another; hence the title, Yes and No.

So why didn’t Abelard provide an answer key, but purposely left these questions unanswered? For two reasons: (1) to dramatize the inadequacy of appealing to authority as a reliable means of answering such questions. By juxtaposing two contradictory sets of arguments, students realized at once that appealing to authorities would get them nowhere for one set contradicted the other. Viewed in this way, Sic et Non was a very iconoclastic modern book that shattered centuries of precedent.

(2) It was human reason alone that could settle these questions by subjecting their pro and con arguments to critical analysis to discover which side of the question offered the more convincing arguments. Students had now to decide for themselves not which authorities were right, but rather which authorities offered the stronger arguments. It was a tectonic shift in attitude that no longer had anything to do with the prestige of the authority, but everything to do with the quality of evidence and argumentation.

For the first time in their lives, students were invited to leave intellectual childhood where they had always been spoon-fed the “answers” to become mature adults by having to choose for themselves which arguments and authorities were the more convincing.

This was a revolution in medieval thinking, and once word began to spread about what Abelard was doing, students came flocking to Paris from all over Europe to study with this exciting new master of dialectical thinking.

This newfound reliance on reason instead of authority brushed aside eleven centuries of conditioning on the primacy of authority over reason in searching for truth, which received its classic expression by Tertullian in the early third century: Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? Quid academiae et ecclesiae? What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? The Academy with the Church? (Tertullian, On the Prescription of Heretics, 7. 9).

Tertullian was rejecting the relevance of Greek philosophy to Christianity which had its beginning in Jerusalem. Divine Revelation rather than human reason as symbolized by Plato’s Academy in Athens was the only reliable way to truth. And now, one millennium later, this point of view was being challenged by the use of reason alone not to deny Revelation, but to determine what Revelation had actually said, or, as Abelard himself wrote in his Prologue to Sic et Non: Dubitando quippe ad inquisitionem uenimus; inquirendo ueritatem percipimus (By doubting we come to questioning and through questions we perceive the truth).

In this sense, Sic et Non was not an iconoclastic book at all, but quite traditional in nature because it wasn’t denying Divine Revelation, which it accepted on faith, but what Revelation had actually said or meant as interpreted by various authorities, mainly the early Church Fathers, who attempted to explain it.

In his 6,400-word Prologue to Sic et Non, Abelard goes to great lengths in offering examples to suggest how critical intelligence could, in fact, reconcile some of these so-called “contradictory arguments.” His was a very subtle and sophisticated mind that wanted to engage the tradition in much more nuanced ways than had ever been done before.

One comes away from reading this Prologue realizing that Abelard was no destroyer of traditional authority at all but, on the contrary, its staunch defender in a way that his critics might not perhaps have had the wit to understand. In fact, he comes across as the Church Fathers’ defense attorney, giving all sorts of possible reasons why they might not have been correctly understood, as well as providing extenuating circumstances that would mitigate their natural human errors.

The initial opposition to Abelard on the part of the older generation of churchmen gradually subsided over the coming decades as these critics gradually died off and were replaced by the next generation, many of whom had once been Abelard’s students. His dialectical way of thinking became a permanent feature of later Scholasticism, especially in the work of Thomas Aquinas, as well as in later philosophy up to our times.

It must be said in closing that Abelard’s effect on his times bore a remarkable cultural resemblance to that skeptical Greek philosopher of whom we spoke earlier, Carneades, when he visited Rome and proceeded to argue both sides of a question and shocked Cato the Elder, who because of the danger posed by unfettered intellect had Carneades banished from Rome the following day. Plutarch gives the gist of the story in his Life of Cato the Elder (22):

[In 155 BCE] there came as ambassadors from Athens to Rome, Carneades the Academic, and Diogenes the Stoic philosopher, to petition the reversal of a certain decision against the Athenian people, which imposed upon them a fine of five hundred talents . . . .

Upon the arrival of these philosophers, the most studious of the city’s youth hastened to wait upon them, and became their devoted and admiring listeners. The charm of Carneades especially, which had boundless power and a fame not inferior to its power, won large and sympathetic audiences, and filled the city like a rushing mighty wind with the noise of his praises.

Report spread far and wide that a Greek of amazing talent, who disarmed all opposition by the magic of his eloquence, had infused a tremendous passion into the youth of the city, in consequence of which they forsook their other pleasures and pursuits and were “possessed” about philosophy. The other Romans were pleased at this, and glad to see their young men lay hold of Greek culture and consort with such admirable men.

But Cato, at the very outset, when this zeal for discussion came pouring into the city, was distressed, fearing lest the young men, by giving this direction to their ambition, should come to love a reputation based on mere words more than one achieved by martial deeds . . . .

But nothing is permanent in this world, and Abelard’s Sic et Non nevertheless was later considered so dangerous by Church authorities that it was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Even in ecclesiastical circles, job security, alas, always prevails.

Today, if you read widely in any field, you soon discover that there are authorities on every side of every question, so that one simply chooses which authorities are the most persuasive, which was simply what Abelard had taught. This approach strikes the modern mind as common sense, but in the twelfth century it was heresy.

Another good critical read is John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859), which deals with the pro and con arguments about censorship. Its eloquence and argumentative prowess have made it a masterpiece, which is now taught in every college and university. However, you should not believe one word of it or the attempts to refute it, but keep an open mind and decide for yourself.

Frank Breslin is a retired high-school teacher in the New Jersey public school system, where he taught English, Latin, German, and History for forty years.