Abelardian Ethics (Paper)

  For Abelard the key to ethics is not in the acts that are perpetrated but in the consent, will, and desire to perpetrate them. In order to illustrate these claims and explain why it is sinful to consent to acts, Abelard uses four examples: a monk among women, a man with a homicidal master, a man marrying his sister, and two hangmen.

  The monk in Abelard's example is forced into sexual relations with women against his will. Here will is used to mean consent, as opposed to will meaning desire. For the monk to be engaged in sexual relations of any kind is prohibited by his solemn vows. The question here is whether the monk has committed any sin. According to Abelard there is no sinning on the part of the monk because he did not consent to the acts performed upon him by others.

  In the case of the servant with the homicidal master who kills his master in self defense, there is sin involved. Because the man desired life and so killed his master to prevent him (the master) from killing the servant, he had the will to murder. Even though he did so in self-defense he had a desire to kill his master to save his own life. However, this desire alone was not sufficient to make him a sinner. That final turn comes when he consents to killing his master. Desire alone cannot commit sin in the same way that a person who has a disposition to being mad is mad only when they consent to be mad, not all the time. Our servant in this case is a sinner for consenting to murder but not for murder itself. In Abelard's words he is a sinner without a bad will for as Abelard points out he is not to be blamed for not wanting to die.

  In the third example Abelard gives a man marrying his sister as the purported sin. In this example we are told that knowledge about the purported act that is going to be committed is necessary for the consent to the act to be considered sinful. If a person knowingly decided to marry his sister he has given consent to eh act therefore, even before the actual marriage, he has committed sin. However if he does not know that the person he is marrying is his sister then he had no intent to commit sin and therefore is free from blame.
  In the fourth and final example given by Abelard we are shown that intent, as mentioned above, is based on what God considers to be sinful or not. When hanging a man to comply with Justice, i. e. God's Law, it is not sinful to kill someone as it is not the intention of the executioner to sin but rather to uphold an ideal. This is opposed to the hanging of a man because the killer holds a personal grievence with the executed and therefore is only seeking vengeance. His intent here is to purposefully commit a sin rather than uphold Justice. Because of this he has committed the act of consenting to kill while the righteous executioner has only consented to upholding Justice.
  In addition to these example Abelard says that a life without sin or the temptation to sin is none existent. We must struggle against our desire to sin in order for us to lead a moral life. The disposition of our mind at a point in time might make sinning more likely but in the end the individual must always willfully, knowledgeably consent to the perpetration of said act, even if that act is not carried out, in order to sin.