ABSTRACT
Abelard’s argument would seem to lead to the position that every state of affairs is good, and so the word ‘good’ is entirely redundant, when used of events. He escapes from this conclusion by suggesting that, when we say that an event is good, it is ‘as if we say that it is necessary to fulfil some excellent disposition of God, which is entirely hidden from us’ (170:3404-6). To predicate goodness of events is therefore to make a guess about the course of divine providence; and presumably-although Abelard does not draw the consequence explicitly-any event which has taken place must be good, because it will have been part of God’s providential design. Abelard has saved ‘good’ from being entirely otiose as a description of events; but he has made goodness of events something separate from moral goodness. In many theories of ethics, to be morally good is to bring about a good (or, at any rate, less bad) state of affairs. But by Abelard’s theory, every state of affairs is good if it actually come about. If goodness of events were the measure of moral goodness, it might enable Abelard to make a guess about the moral status of some future action, but anything which actually had been done would, of necessity, have been morally good.
