Despite his enormous productivity, his renown among his contemporaries, and his considerable influence on his successors (from students and contemporaries such as John of Salisbury and Bernard Silvestris to such fourteenth-century humanists as Geoffrey Chaucer, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Lino Salutati), William of Conches has not received the kind of attention that has been lavished on some of his better-known contemporaries, such as Peter Abelard, Bernard of Clairvaux, and John of Salisbury. As of 1992 none of William's works had been translated into English, and few had been made available in modern critical editions, although the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies was planning critical editions of all his works. There still exist no detailed studies of William's theological thought, no published examination of his moral philosophy, and no book-length study in English of his thought. This situation is especially regrettable because an examination of William's writings reveals an important aspect...