Peter Abelard (1079–1142) is one of the greatest philosophers of the medieval period. Although best known for his views about universals and his dramatic love affair with Heloise, he made a number of important contributions in metaphysics, logic, philosophy of language, mind and cognition, philosophical theology, ethics, and literature. The essays in this volume survey the entire range of Abelard's thought, and examine his overall achievement in its intellectual and historical context. They also trace Abelard's influence on later thought and his relevance to philosophical debates today.

The importance of Pierre Abelard's position in the history of logic has been stressed by the editions of the Glasse Letterali edited 2 by M. Dal Pral, of the Dialectica edited by De Rijk, and, more recently by the publication of two texts which Minio Paluello 3 attributes to the Palatine Master. The interest of students in the writings of Abelard is further stimulated by considering the time in which he lived, a strategic point in the history of mediaeval logic ; also by the echo of the fame in which his contemporaries had cloaked him, and by his own vivacious and rampant personality. The historical humus which nourished and fired the polemic that makes the Palatine Master's pages so personal and noteworthy is not yet completely known to us, and Geyer has already pointed out the difficulty of satisfactorily understanding the logical position of Abelard before being familiar with the contemporary glossary materia\.4 This material, judging by the information supplied to us by John of Salisbury and by the actual words of our subject, who tells us of numerous discussions and frequently refers to the 'sen tentiae' of'quidam' which give a different interpretation ofthe Aristo telian or Boetian passages, turned out to be of considerable weight.

This book offers a major reassessment of the philosophy of Peter Abelard (1079-1142) which shows that he was a far more constructive and wider-ranging thinker than has usually been supposed. It combines detailed historical discussion, based on published and manuscript sources, with philosophical analysis which aims to make clear Abelard's central arguments about the nature of things, language and the mind, and about morality. Although the book concentrates on these philosophical questions, it places them within their theological and wider intellectual context.

This book offers a major reassessment of Abelard’s modal logic and theory of modalities, and provides a comprehensive study of the 12th-century context in which his views originated and developed, by analysing many logical sources that are still unedited and mostly unexplored.

Abelard in Four Dimensions provides new interpretations of central areas of Peter Abelard's philosophy and its influence.