The Man without Memory: Peter Abelard and Trust in History

Abstract

This article on Abelard takes up the question of memory as oblivion that has sundered life from knowledge. It demonstrates how Abelard's dealings with the rules of logic and grammar, rather than being timeless in themselves, are a product of memory in the process of producing meaning. Efforts to get hold of the past are as much part of that quest as, for instance, the philosophical enquiry into the status of universals. “Status” is the right expression in this context since it contains stasis and movement, time and fixity. Reconstruction of past events and intentions, rather than being part of the endless chain of mnemonic resonances for the sake of the events and intentions themselves, has to operate without a point fixe, narrative or otherwise. For Abelard (philosophical) brilliance (ingenium) means the narrowing down of the polyphonous voices of thought, action and emotion to a life form that, by creating, assessing and honoring rules (of logic, and life as in the monastic Rule), carves out room for insight. That insight overcomes the flux of temporality by artificially structuring reality (including the past) while tentatively establishing a “when,” “before” and “after.”