I had yet not quite passed the bounds of youth and reached early manhood when I knew of your name and your reputation, not yet for religion but for your virtuous and praiseworthy studies. [...] you have surpassed all women in carrying out your purpose. - Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, in a letter to Héloïse dated 1142.

Readers of Quirkality will be familar with the lives of Pierre Abelard and Héloïse d'Argenteuil. In this second part of their story, we look more closely at the conflict between Abelard's dualistic philosophy of love and, we claim, Héloïse's more rounded, human philosophy.

After the unhappy events which saw Abelard castrated and Héloïse sent, by Abelard, to the convent where she had received her education, Héloïse took the veil at Argenteuil. She had no desire for it, indeed the idea was hateful to her; it was at Abelard's bidding that she did so:

[...] I have carried out all your orders so implicitly that when I was powerless to oppose you in anything, I found strength at your command to destroy myself. ... I changed my clothing along with my mind, in order to prove you the sole possessor of my body and my will alike.

Héloïse and her community were evicted from Argenteuil, and in 1129 Abelard and Héloïse founded the Order of the Paraclete. It was here that Héloïse came by chance across Abelard's Historia calamitatum. Héloïse was hurt and angered by what she read. How could this man, her Abelard, claim that their love was earthly, carnal, and nothing more? The philosophy of love which Abelard sets out in his "letter to a friend", his Historia calamitatum, is dualistic: he conceives of a divide between body and mind, passion and reason. For Abelard, love begins and ends with the body. He had "yielded to the lusts of the flesh"; seduced Héloïse for his own ends.

Upon reading these words Héloïse was not only angry, but confused. It is easy to see why. In letters discovered by a young monk in Clairvaux in 1471, a writer identified only as V (from Vir, for man) writes:

Love is ... a particular force of the soul, existing not only for itself nor content by itself, but always pouring itself into another with a certain hunger and desire, wanting to become one with the other, so that from two diverse wills one is produced without a difference...

To his correspondent, M (from Mulier, for woman), he goes on to claim that:

[...] although love may be a universal thing, it has nevertheless been condensed into so confined a place that I would boldly assert that it reigns in us alone - that is, it has made its very home in me and you. For the two of us have a love that is pure, nurtured, and sincere, since nothing is sweet or carefree for the other unless it has mutual benefit. We say yes equally, we say no equally, we feel the same about everything.

These letters, between V and M, have been identified as the lost love letters of Abelard and Héloïse. In his Historia calamitatum Abelard speaks consistently of earthly, physical passion, yet it is clear from what he writes in the lost letters that he loved Héloïse wholly and intensely. These words belie his claim that love is merely physical; these are not words of bare seduction.

Héloïse does not accept Abelard's position. For her, love is not limited to the body. Her love for Abelard persists because her mind "is on fire with its old desires"; she cannot conceive of a love that begins and ends with the body as love encompasses the whole person.

Héloïse demands that Abelard love her mind and soul even though he can no longer love her body, as he has been castrated:

While I am denied your presence, give me at least through your words - of which you have enough and to spare - some sweet semblance of yourself.

In Héloïse's beautiful and profound philosophy, "love does not easily forsake those whom it has once stung." In a complex web of interactions, responsibilities, desires and mutual pleasures, "the services of true love are properly fulfilled only when they are continually owed." Not for Héloïse the reduction of love to carnal appetites. Rather, she provides a full and rich philosophy of love which finds full expression in her humanism.

By the fourteenth-century Héloïse's identity as a philosopher and scholar was becoming lost to romanticism and an image of her as the ideal lover. In his copy of the manuscript of the letters, Petrarch wrote "you are acting throughout with gentleness and perfect sweetness, Héloïse". This picture of Héloïse, as the idealised, passive lover, persisted for centuries. The time for Héloïse to be recognised as love's true philosopher is overdue.

(Sources: The Lost Love Letters of Héloïse and Abelard, Constant Mews; The Letters of Abelard and Héloïse, trans. Betty Radice; Women in Western Intellectual Culture, 600-1500, Patricia Ranft.)

The year 1848 was decidedly nervewracking for the established rulers of Europe. Not only had Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto at the year's beginning, calling on the proletariat to rise up and throw off their chains, but bourgeois-democratic and progressive forces were out on the streets of European capitals, demanding the overthrow of the old quasi-feudal order. Before the year was out, France, Italy, Denmark, Germany, the Austrian Empire and the Netherlands had seen popular uprisings, the monarchies in France and Denmark had fallen, and serfdom had been abolished in Austria and Hungary.

Not everybody was sanguine about this upsurge in revolutionary consciousness. Holed up in his Frankfurt apartment, Arthur Schopenhauer, who had written so powerfully of the importance of compassion, was worried that the "sovereign canaille" - the rabble on the streets - would deprive him of his wealth. He dismissed the leaders of the German revolt as "students gone wrong" and suggested that the materialism of their philosophy - eat, drink, there is no pleasure after death - was a kind of bestialism. His biographers report that he began to economise, gave up his daily lunches at the Zum Schwan inn, and was prone to bouts of rage and fearfulness.

Matters came to a head in Frankfurt on September 18th, when the simmering tension of the previous months spilled over into violence, sparked by the new German parliament's endorsement of a peace treaty between Denmark and Prussia that favoured the status quo. The result was barricades on the street, the brutal murder of two conservative politicians, and a bizarre encounter between Schopenhauer and the Austrian army.

Schopenhauer's apartment on the Schöne Aussicht afforded the philosopher a good view of the day's tumultuous events, and he didn't much like what he was seeing. His biographer, David Cartwright, reports that he watched "a disorderly crowd of people armed with poles, pitchforks and rifles pour across the bridges from Sachsenhausen." Snipers from the Austrian army took up strategic positions, and fired into the crowd.

It was at this point that things took a rather surreal turn. Schopenhauer heard a commotion outside his locked apartment, followed by loud banging on his front door. Fearing that the sovereign canaille had finally tracked him down, he left it to his maid to go see what all the fuss was about. She reported back that it was not the rabble at the door, but rather the Austrian army. Schopenhauer was thrilled.

Immediately I opened the door to these worthy friends. 20 stout Bohemians in blue pants rushed in to shoot at the sovereign canaille from my window. Soon, however, they thought better of it and went to a neighboring house. From the first floor the officer reconnoitered the crowd behind the barricade. Immediately, I sent him my big, double opera glasses...

The idea, of course, was for the officer to use the glasses as a rifle-sight to make it easier for him to take pot shots at the rabble in the street below.

It is fair to say that Schopenhauer was not a great fan of revolutions; he was, as Bryan Magee puts it, "a counter-revolutionary, a reactionary in the strict sense of that word." It is no great surprise, then, that he called for Robert Blum, one of the leaders of the Frankfurt uprising, to be hanged; that he sang the praises of Prince Alfred Windisch-Graetz for successfully quelling the rebellion; and that a few years later he left a large sum in his will to the "fund for the relief of the Prussian soldiers who... had become disabled in their struggle for the maintenance of law and order in Germany, and of the next of kin of those who had fallen in this struggle".

(Sources: David E. Cartwright, Schopenhauer: A Biography; Rüdiger Safranski, Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy.)

Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher and curmudgeon, was not spectacularly successful in affairs of the heart. It is true that aged 31 he fell in love with a nineteen year old opera singer, Caroline Richter, and pursued a relationship with her for several years, but this fell apart after he refused to marry her, complaining that "Marrying means to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find an eel amongst an assembly of snakes." Some ten years later, he did manage to proposition a seventeen year old girl, Flora Weiss, at a party, apparently while brandishing a bunch of grapes, but she rejected him, and his grapes, remarking in her diary that she didn't want the fruit, because "old man Schopenhauer had touched them."

These setbacks, however, did not prevent the great curmudgeon from opining at length on the character of love and desire. In his essay, "The Metaphysics of Love", Schopenhauer claimed that "every one, in the first place, will decidedly prefer, and eagerly desire, the most beautiful persons"; and, more precisely, will "demand from the other individual especially those perfections which he himself lacks; yes, even find beautiful those imperfections that are opposed to his own. Therefore, small men seek large women; blondes love brunettes, etc."

Luckily for us, Schopenhauer was not content to let matters rest at this level of banality. Rather, his project required that he focus in on the particulars - on the considerations that guide us in our quest for a mate.

Top of the list of desirable characteristics in a woman is youth.

On the whole, it is effective from the years of beginning to those of ending menstruation. However, we give decided preference to the period from the eighteenth to the twenty-eighth year. Outside of those years, no woman can excite us; an old woman arouses our disgust. Youth without beauty, still has its charm; beauty without youth, none.

Once a suitably youthful woman has been identified, it is necessary to check on her health, because while "Acute diseases disturb only temporarily; chronic diseases, or even cachexy, repel...".

The next requirement is a decent skeleton.

Next to old age and disease, nothing so repels us as a deformed figure; even the most beautiful face is no compensation for this defect. Moreover, the ugliest features, when accompanied by a symmetrical body, are absolutely preferred. Furthermore, we are most sensitive to every disproportion of the skeleton, as, for instance, a stunted, short-legged figure, et al., also a limping gait, where it is not the result of an accident. On the other hand, a strikingly beautiful stature can compensate all defects: it bewitches us.

A fourth consideration is a "certain plumpness", and particularly a "full female bosom", which has "an uncommon charm for the male sex". Be warned, though, excessive fatness in a woman will "arouse our disgust" (though, equally, "undue leanness strongly repels us").

The final recommendation is beauty of features.

Here...the bony parts are the most important consideration. A beautiful nose is especially attractive, while a short, pug nose mars all. The life's happiness of innumerable girls has been decided by a slight upward or downward curve of the nose.

Heady stuff, indeed. Happily, men do not entirely escape Schopenhauer's steely gaze, though, surprise, surprise, the considerations that govern how women choose cannot be specified with such a degree of accuracy.

On the whole, the following may be maintained. Their choice is given to men of from thirty to thirty-five years of age; and, indeed, they prefer them to youths, although these represent the highest human beauty... In general, they care little for beauty, especially of the face: it appears that they take it upon themselves to bestow beauty upon the child. They are won principally by man's strength and the courage allied to it: for these promise generation of strong children and, at the same time, a brave defender of them.

In addition, Schopenhauer mentions broad shoulders, narrow hips, straight legs, muscular power, courage and a beard, noting that "women often love ugly men, but never, an unmanly man".

Despite having at least half a beard, Schopenhauer never married. Perhaps this was for the best, though, given his belief that every sexual encounter inevitably ends in disappointment, with lovers "amazed that what was desired so passionately accomplishes no more than any other sexual gratification."

Schopenhauer died at home on his couch in 1860. It is sometimes claimed that he had only a cat for company, which would make for a poetic, if likely apochryphal, end.

(Sources: Arthur Schopenhauer, Selected Essays; Helen Zimmem, Arthur Schopenhauer: His Life and Philosophy).