The Last Anselm. Essay On the Structure of the "De concordia"

Abstract

This article aims to show that the analysis of Anselm of Canterbury’s last text –which is known to be especially difficult–, is finally working. Thanks to the detailed study of its complex structure, it allows us to highlight both the evolution of the entire intellectual itinerary of Anselm and the method he applied in the construction of the texts. If it keeps, following the example of De conceptu virginali..., the textual centre of the written word (Part II on predestination), which gives to the whole a synchronic structure, this construction thus centralised is at the service of an object of thought which does not coincide entirely with the textual centre. The “Concordia” of grace and free will is here the true objective center of the Anselemian thought (III part). This is what Anselm does in the De Concordia: on the one hand, a duplication of the center (textual and objective) which constitutes its originality in the whole of the Anselemian “corpus”; on the other hand, a reflection on the New Covenant (the “Concordia”), in other words, on man as heir of the Spirit of Christ (theological life); and, finally, a fully matured awareness of the creative act of the theologian, which gives his book the traces of an autobiographical text written at the end of his life (a theological life). De Concordia..., is thus, in the full sense of the word, the work of the last Anselm.