Philosophy Talk this Friday: Sandrine Berges (Bilkent) “From Aristotle to Heloise: Virtue and Moderation.”
Dear All,
Sandrine Berges (Bilkent) will give a talk this Friday entitled:
“From Aristotle to Heloise: Virtue and Moderation.”
Friday November 9th,5-7pm, Bogazici University Philosophy Department, TB130.
Everyone welcome.
Further details can be found here:
http://hesperusisbosphorus.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/talk-at-bogazici-sandrine-berges-bilkent-from-aristotle-to-heloise-virtue-and-moderation-09112012/
ABSTRACT: While many of her contemporaries, and some significant
predecessors saw the virtues, especially that of temperance, as perfect
achievements and complete freedom from bodily impulses, Heloise was keen to
reinstate the Aristotelian understanding of virtues as means between two
extremes. In her letters, she defends the ideal of moderation against
Abelard’s calls for struggle and self control, and in doing so, she uses the
vocabulary of the mean, in very much the same way as John of Salisbury did
some years later. In this paper I highlight Heloise’s position in that
debate, and argue that it is of philosophical and historical significance.
