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Cordula Reichart
The following article investigates how Abélard functionalises concepts of nature as part of the philosophical and literary discourse in his Historia Calamitatum and correspondence with Héloïse. Nature and nature metaphors in the literary work of the Letters prove to be more than simply a means for reflecting upon and imagining that which, due to dogmatic and generic constraints, encountered enduring resistance in philosophy and theology. They offer a glimpse of Abélard as a great reformer by providing insights into a new monastic order that, as will be demonstrated by comparison with the Aristotelian concept of friendship and by contrast with Giorgio Agamben’s The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government (Homo Sacer II, 2), questions contemporary mediaeval economic relations. The Abélardian bond of love in Christo, the new monastic communitas of Paraclete, is constructed as the model of what can be called a more «natural» community, a model which here for the first time receives thorough systematic analysis.
