Does the Habit Make the Nun? A Case Study of Heloise's Influence on Abelard's Ethical Philosophy

Abstract

A careful reading of Heloise's letters reveals both her contribution to Abelard's ethical thought and the differences between her ethical concerns and his. In her letters, Heloise focuses on the innate moral qualities of the inner person or animus. Hypocrisy—the misrepresentation of the inner person through false outer appearance, exemplified by the potentially deceitful religious habit or habitus—is a matter of great moral concern to her. When Abelard responds to Heloise's ideas, first in his letters to her and later in his Collationes and Scito te ipsum, he turns the discussion away from her original interests. He transforms her metaphor of the habitus as false appearance into a discussion of another type of habitus, the habitual process of acquiring virtue, and integrates her focus on the animus into his developing ideas about sin as intention. Examining the differences between Heloise's ethical thought and Abelard's allows us to appreciate the distinct contributions of both.

Augustine's On the Good of Marriage and Infused Virtue in the Twelfth Century

“…130 of Sic et non : “whether no human copulation can be without fault.” He even identifies the source correctly, instead of misattributing the passages to Augustine's treatise On Holy Virginity (Abelard 1976–77, 448–52). The correspondence between Abelard and Heloise also includes quotations from De bono , along with some clever word‐play, such as a shift from habitus as the religious garb (“habit”) worn by monks and nuns, hence as something concealing and potentially deceptive, to the Augustinian sense of habitus as one's true inner disposition, known only by God (Findley ).…”