Contingenza e Infallibilità Divina nei Testi Logici di Pietro Abelardo

Abelard takes the existence of contingent events as an evident and indubitable feature of the way things are. As any indeterminist, however, he must deal with several fatalist arguments, aiming to prove that the inevitability of all future events follows from the acceptance of some fundamental principles of logic and theology. In the article, I focus on the arguments for theological determinism that Abelard considers in the Dialectica and the Logica ingredientibus. The purpose of these argu- ments is to show that — because God has already established a providential plan for the world and knows everything that will occur — things cannot but happen in conformity to his knowledge, which is infallible, and according to his providential plan, which is unchangeable. Abelard rejects these arguments as sophistical, and strives to maintain the compatibility between God’s omniscience and the existence of chance and free will. Abelard’s strategy against theological determinism — which is deeply indebted to the one developed by his master, William of Champeaux — is built on a number of principles and rules of inference that are taken from his logic for modal propositions, such as the distinction between the de rebus and de sensu interpretations of modalities.