Boethius: from antiquity to the Middle AgesJohn MarenbonBoethius is a difficult figure to place in the history of philosophy.Considered just in himself, he clearly belongs to the world of lateantiquity. Born in 480, at a time when Italy was ruled by the Ostrogothsunder their king, Theoderic, Boethius was adopted into one of the mostdistinguished patrician families of Rome and benefited from an educationwhich made him at home not only in classical Latin culture but also inGreek literature and philosophy. Although most historians doubt thatBoethius actually went to Alexandria or Athens to study, he certainlyknew the work of Greek Neoplatonists of the immediate past: Proclus,Porphyry and probably Ammonius. Although a Christian, writing inLatin, he therefore falls into a tradition stretching back directly to Plotinusand, ultimately, to Aristotle and Plato. Yet considered as a late antiquephilosopher, his importance is limited. Most of Boethius’ ideas andarguments derive from his Greek sources; his own contribution lay morein choosing, arranging and presenting views than in original thinking.By contrast, from the perspective of medieval philosophy, Boethius loomslarge. Only Aristotle himself, and perhaps Augustine, were moreimportant and wide-ranging in their influence. Besides providing scholarsin the Middle Ages with two of their most widely-read textbooks onarithmetic and music,
1 through his translations, commentaries andmonographs Boethius provided the basis for medieval logic. His shorttheological treatises helped to shape the way in which logical andphilosophical techniques were used in discussing Christian doctrine.His
Consolation of Philosophy, read and studied from the eighth centurythrough to the Renaissance, and translated into almost every medievalvernacular, was a major source for ancient philosophy in the early MiddleAges and its treatment of goodness, free will and eternity continued toinfluence thirteenth- and fourteenth-century thinkers.In short, it wouldbe hard to understand the development of philosophy in the medievalLatin West without looking carefully at Boethius’ work—and it is forthis reason that, although he falls outside its chronological limits, achapter on his work (with glances forward at its medieval influence)begins the present volume.
THE LOGICAL WORKSIn one of his logical commentaries ([1.4] II:78–9), Boethius announcesthat he is planning to translate into Latin all the works of Aristotle’s hecan find, and all of Plato’s dialogues, and to provide commentaries foreach of his translations. Only for Aristotle’s logic was the project, atleast in large part, realized. Boethius translated the whole of Aristotle’slogical
organon, along with the
Isagoge (‘Introduction’) by Porphyry.The translations, executed in meticulous word for word fashion,remained the standard versions of the
organon until the end of theMiddle Ages, except in the case of the
Posterior Analytics, where hisversion was lost. In addition, Boethius wrote two commentaries eachon the
Isagoge and on
On Interpretation, a commentary on the
Categoriesand scholia on the
Prior Analytics; there are grounds for thinking healso wrote a commentary on the
Topics, although it does not survive.
2In formulating his project, Boethius was strongly influenced by thecommon attitude among late Neoplatonists to Plato and Aristotle.Although they looked to Plato as the originator of the philosophy whichgave understanding of the intelligible world and which they pursuedin their most ambitious works, Neoplatonists from Porphyry onwardsrecognized a distinct place for the study of Aristotelian logic; and inthe Alexandrian school, Neoplatonists such as Ammonius devoted mostof their public teaching to Aristotle’s logic. This logic was seen to beconcerned with language as used to describe the world we perceivewith our senses. So long as students of logic were aware that they werenot dealing with a complete description of reality as the Neoplatonistsenvisaged it, they could pursue the subject with profit. Plato andAristotle could be reconciled, once their different spheres of interestwere recognized (it is no surprise that Boethius himself planned towrite a monograph showing the agreement of Plato and Aristotle). Inthe logical commentaries he kept scrupulously to the Aristotelianapproach, even where he produced two commentaries to the same text.
3Although he speaks of writing a second, ‘Pythagorean’ commentaryon the
Categories, he seems never to have done so.
4Some scholars have argued that Boethius’ logical commentaries aremerely direct translations of marginalia he found in his manuscripts ofthe Greek texts, but this view is implausible. Boethius gives everyindication of having worked from a small number of sources, amongwhich Porphyry was his favourite, selecting, arranging, paraphrasingand from time to time adding his own reflections.
5 It remains true thatthese commentaries are thoroughly unoriginal works, but they wereall the more valuable for that reason to medieval thinkers. Rather thangiving them the views of just one logician, the commentaries opened tothem a whole tradition of late antique thinking over a wide range ofsubjects, since the commentaries go far beyond the discussion of strictlylogical questions, to consider matters of metaphysics, meaning and thephilosophy of mind. Unlike the Neoplatonic students or Boethiushimself, however, the medieval readers did not suppose that theapproach to philosophical problems taken in the commentaries was adeliberately limited one, to be complemented and superseded by aninvestigation of intelligible reality. As a result, medieval Westernphilosophy was given a strong bias towards Aristotelian ways and aims,even before Aristotle’s metaphysical, scientific and ethical works becameavailable.There are many illustrations of this phenomenon. An obviousexample is the influence of Boethius’ discussion of universals in hissecond commentary on the
Isagoge ([1.3] 159:10–167:20). Porphyryhimself had skirted over the problem of universals as one too difficultfor the beginners to whom the
Isagoge was addressed. He left just a setof unanswered questions, which suggest that, understandably for aNeoplatonist, were he teaching more advanced students he would havewished to raise and defend the existence of Platonic universals, existingindependently of particulars and incorporeally. Boethius, however,presents the view of Alexander of Aphrodisias, which he considers tobe the solution in accord with Aristotle. His argument, identifying theuniversal with the form which makes any particular of a given speciesthe sort of thing it is, and which can be grasped mentally by abstractingfrom accidental differences, has been criticized by moderncommentators as muddled—and was perceived as such by manymedieval readers. But it presented a realism quite distinct from Platonicrealism, and in the medieval debate, dominated by refinements ofBoethius’ position and nominalist attacks on it, Platonic realism playedalmost no part.
6 Or, to take another example, Boethius’ discussion ofperception, the mind and language at the beginning of his secondcommentary on
On Interpretation introduced many of the themeswhich Aristotle explored in his
On the Soul.Boethius’ work as a logician went beyond his plan of translatingand commenting on Plato and Aristotle. He wrote a series of logicalmonographs, on categorical syllogisms, hypothetical syllogisms, divisionand topical reasoning, as well as a commentary on Cicero’s
Topics.The short treatise
On Division deals with some of the material of the
Isagoge and
Categories. In writing about categorical syllogisms(syllogisms the premisses of which are non-complex statements)—inhis earlier
On Categorical Syllogisms and his later, unfinished
Introduction to Categorical Syllogisms—Boethius follows Aristotleclosely, though adding some post-Aristotelian developments concerningnegative terms. The other two treatises introduce new, non-Aristotelianareas of logic. A hypothetical syllogism is a syllogism where one orboth of the premisses are molecular statements: statements consistingof more than one simple statement joined together by a connective.These are not just conditionals (as the word ‘hypothetical’ may suggest)but also conjunctions and disjunctions. Whereas the variables incategorical syllogisms are terms, the variables in hypothetical syllogismsare statements.
On Hypothetical Syllogisms goes beyond Aristotle, whohad restricted himself to the logic of terms, by exploring the logic ofstatements (prepositional logic), although it seems not to draw on themost sophisticated ancient exponents of this branch of logic, the Stoics.To a modern reader, some of the inference schemata Boethius proposeswill seem strange, since—unlike most modern logicians—he assumesthat it cannot be the case that, if
p then
q is true, it is also true that if
pthen not-
q.
7 For medieval logicians, however,
On HypotheticalSyllogisms was one of the two important bases from which they wenton to elaborate a logic of statements.The other basis was Boethius’
On Topical ‘differentiae’. The theoryof topics was seen originally as a way of discovering arguments: in thecase of Aristotle’s
Topics, arguments for use in dialectical argumentcontests,in the case of many later writers (including Cicero in his
Topics)for use in legal oratory. By Boethius’ time, topics were considered to beboth what were called ‘maximal propositions’—obviously true,universal generalizations—and the
differentiae by which the wholegenus of maximal propositions is divided into subordinate genera andspecies. For instance, one of Boethius’ maximal propositions is that‘things whose definitions are different are themselves also different’and its
differentia is ‘from definition’. Themistius and Cicero had eachdivided up the maximal propositions differently, producing twoalternative sets of
differentiae.
On Topical ‘differentiae’ explains thetheory of topics, sets out the two schemes of
differentiae and comparesthem. The use of the treatise as an aid to constructing (and, by extension,to confirming) informal arguments is obvious. The link with formallogic arose because, in addition to maximal propositions expressingwhat might, at best, be thought of as common-sense generalizations(‘what seems true to everyone or to many or to the wise should not bedenied’), there are others which put forward some of the fundamentalprinciples which are needed for logical deduction, such as
modus ponens(if
p then
q, and
p, then
q) and
modus tollens (if
p then
q, and not-
q,then not
-p). Some medieval logicians would see the theory of topics, asset out by Boethius, as providing the laws both for syllogistic inferenceand for the logic of statements.
THE THEOLOGICAL TREATISESBoethius’ reputation as a theologian depends on five short treatises,called in the Middle Ages the
Opuscula sacra. Only three of them areof importance: no. 2 is a briefer, probably preliminary version of partof no. 1, whilst no. 4 (‘On faith’)—sometimes, but probably wrongly,supposed inauthentic—is a straightforward confession of faith,containing nothing of Boethius’ own thoughts. No. 5, a refutation ofthe opposing extreme Christological views of Nestorius and Eutyches,was probably the first to be written (after 512). Christology was acontroversial issue in Boethius’ day. The statement of the Council ofChalcedon (451), which affirmed that Christ was made known in twonatures, but without division or separation, was accepted in the West,but challenged in the East by the followers of Nestorius, whoemphasized the distinctness of Christ’s two natures, and bymonophysites, who held that in the person of Christ there is only asingle, divine nature. Acacius, the patriarch of Constantinople (471–89) issued a document, the
Henotikon, which condemned Nestoriusand also condemned the extreme monophysite, Eutyches, but failed toreaffirm the Council of Chalcedon’s statement about the number ofnatures in Christ. This failure provoked a schism (the ‘Acacian schism’)with the Latin Church. Boethius’ treatise was stimulated by the attemptin 512 of a group of Greek bishops to draw up a compromise positionwhich would be acceptable to the papacy (see [1.31]). Boethius—whowas more willing than the Pope to go along with the Greek bishops’position—clearly wished to contribute to the debate, though lessperhaps by the view he stated, than by the manner in which he put itforward. He adopted the precise, scholastic style of theological writingwhich had become popular in the Greek East, but went against usualpractice in the Latin West. He carefully defined his terms—‘essence’,‘subsistence’, ‘substance’, ‘person’ and ‘nature’—and proceeded to arguethat his heterodox opponents were guilty of logical, as well as doctrinal,error (see [1.14]). Boethius’ treatises on the Trinity (1 and 2) also seemto owe their origin to events connected with the Acacian schism. In519, a group of Scythian monks, loyal to Chalcedon, came to Rome totry to gain acceptance of the formula ‘one of the Trinity suffered in theflesh’, which had been rejected by the authorities in Constantinople.Boethius approaches the question of divine triunity more generally,trying to show that a careful application of logical tools, especiallyAristotle’s theory of the ten categories, shows how God can be boththree persons and yet one God.Boethius’ theological treatises were studied intensely, glossed andcommented on, from the ninth century onwards. Their importance formedieval scholars was unrelated to the doctrinal controversies fromwhich they arose: although there were many theological controversiesin the medieval Western Church, they were rarely on the questions ofChristology and trinitarian doctrine which were so important in lateantiquity. Medieval thinkers, rather, found in the
opuscula a valuablesource of information about ancient philosophical doctrines. To taketwo examples. Boethius’ definition of ‘nature’ in treatise no. 5 introducedthem to ideas from Aristotle’s
Physics. A discussion early on in treatiseno. 1 ([1.7] 10:21–12:58) discusses in detail the relations between God,form, matter and being. God, says Boethius, is not just form withoutmatter, he is also (the only) non-composite pure form. Physical objectsare concrete wholes of form and matter but, Boethius insists, theembodied forms are merely images of other, disembodied forms. Muchtwelfth-century metaphysics is an effort to clarify and develop this threelayeredhierarchy of pure, non-composite form, disembodied forms andthe images of these forms in material things. Medieval thinkers werealso greatly influenced by the method of these treatises. They suggestedthat logical tools and precisely defined philosophical terms could bothclarify difficult points of Christian doctrine and provide the means todemonstrate that, given certain fundamental points of doctrine (acceptedby all parties), heterodox positions involved logical error. These twopatterns of logically-competent, philosophically-informed theologicalspeculation were two of the main models for Christian thinking fromthe ninth century to the fifteenth.The third of the theological treatises is different in character fromthe others. In the Middle Ages it was known as
De hebdomadibus(‘On the groups of seven’) from the reference in its first sentence to awork, since lost, by Boethius called the ‘Hebdomads’. The treatise isintended to clarify a problem considered there: how is it that all thingsare ‘good in that they are’, although they are not ‘substantial goods’?There is nothing explicitly Christian in its content. Boethius beginswith a list of philosophical axioms which modern scholars have beenable to interpret in the light of late antique Neoplatonism, but whichperhaps proved all the more stimulating to medieval commentators bytheir obscurity.
8 The discussion which follows is, in effect, an unravellingof the ambiguity of the phrase ‘good in that it exists’. One way inwhich something can be good in that it exists is to be ‘a substantialgood’. God is a substantial good because he cannot be conceived exceptas good. Everything else is good in that it exists, but in a different way.All things derive their existence from God (and could not exist unlessthey did so), and because God is good, they are good by virtue of theexistence they derive from him. It is true, therefore, that they cannotexist without being good. They, however, unlike God, could beconceived as not being good. They are not, therefore, substantial goods.Some of the considerations Boethius raises here would be explored ina wider context as part of medieval discussion of the transcendentals—those attributes, including goodness, which everything was consideredto have by virtue of existing.
9‘ON THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY’: THE HIGHEST GOODAlthough they lived under the rule of a barbarian king committed to aheretical Arian Christianity, Boethius and his aristocratic Romancontemporaries were allowed to retain many of the trappings ofimportance and authority and, if they chose, to exercise real power asofficials of Theoderic. Boethius combined—as a man of his rank wouldhave been expected to do—public service with his private devotion toscholarship. Until near the end of his life, however, writing andtranslating was his primary concern, and his political activities wereconfined to Rome and the Senate, away from the court of Theoderic atRavenna.
10 In 522 Boethius was given the almost unprecedented honourof both his sons being appointed as consuls together. In the same year,Boethius himself was appointed to be ‘Master of the Offices’, animportant and influential position at the Ravenna court. He had notheld the post for long when he was arrested, imprisoned and eventually(probably in 525, but possibly in 524 or 526) executed, on charges oftreason against the Gothic regime and sorcery. Boethius himselfdismisses all these accusations and attributes his downfall to theintrigues of enemies created by his uprightness and his defence of theweak as a court official. The underlying reasons for Boethius’execution—followed soon by that of his respected father-in-law,Symmachus—seem, however, to lie in Theoderic’s growing doubts overthe loyalty to him of the Roman aristocracy, after the strongly pro-Catholic Emperor Justin acceded to the Byzantine throne in 518 andthe Acacian schism had finally been resolved in 519.While in prison, Boethius wrote the work by which he is mostremembered,
On the Consolation of Philosophy (De consolationePhilosophiae). Here he deserts his usual simple presentation and drystyle for the elaborate literary form of a
prosimetrum (a work in proseinterspersed with verse passages), which allows his personalcircumstances to give urgency to the philosophical questions he tackles.The
Consolation is an imaginary dialogue between Boethius andPhilosophy, a female personification of the tradition of philosophicalwisdom which, despite the attempts of different schools to sunder it(her clothes are torn, because each philosophical sect has tried to takesome of them for itself), is a unified one, stretching back to Socratesand Plato. Boethius represents himself at the beginning of the dialogueas overcome by grief and self-pity: he bewails the injustice of theaccusations against him and the turn of fortune which has broughthim from a position of importance to prison; he longs for death to putan end to his suffering. Philosophy treats him as someone sufferingfrom an illness. The shock of his fall from power has made him forgetthe wisdom which, from his youth, he had learned from her. He stillretains the knowledge (I, prose 6) that there is a God who rules theuniverse, but he no longer knows to what end all things move. Hebelieves that, whereas the workings of nature follow a rational order,in human affairs the evil are left free to triumph and oppress the good.Philosophy begins with what she calls ‘lighter remedies’, a series ofarguments to show him that his personal downfall is not the disasterhe takes it to be. In particular, she insists that he cannot blame fortunefor instability, since it is the very nature of fortune to be unstable, andof the goods of fortune, such as riches, power, honour and fame, to betransitory.Boethius is now prepared for Philosophy’s ‘weightier remedy’, herargument about the highest good (bk III). When people seek to obtainthe various goods of fortune, she argues, they are motivated by a genuinedesire for the good—we desire only what we consider to be good—butare misled by ignorance about the nature of the good. Each of thegoods of fortune, taken on its own, is worth little and does not last.People’s mistake is to seek these goods individually, rather than tryingto gain the single good from which all these other goods derive. Thishighest good is happiness
(beatitudo); but, since God (III, pr. 10) isthat than which nothing better can be thought, he is perfectly good.Therefore the highest good, which everyone seeks but most, ignorantof its undivided nature, fail to gain, is God himself. Philosophy goeson (bk IV) to explain why, despite appearances, it is not the case thatthe wicked enjoy power while the good are left impotent. Shedistinguishes the will to obtain something and the power to be able todo so. Everyone, she says, wants happiness. The good have the power,by being good, to gain happiness, whereas the evil are unable to gainit. By contrast with Boethius-the-character’s earlier view of a universein which God has abandoned humankind to its own devices, Philosophyexplains that divine providence arranges all things; fate is simply theworking out as actual events of this providential plan which is conceived‘in the purity of God’s intellect’ (IV, pr. 6).The thumbnail sketch in the last paragraph of Philosophy’sarguments does little justice to the reasoned manner in which she ismade to develop her points. Yet the impression of looseness andquestion-begging which may emerge is not misleading. At almost everystage, Philosophy makes assumptions which an interlocutor less docilethan Boethius-the-character would have questioned, and the views shereaches, although sweeping, are far from clear. To take just twoexamples. Central to Philosophy’s argument is the idea that there is aperfect good, from which the imperfect goods of fortune are derived.She argues that the existence of a perfect good follows from the existenceof imperfect goods, because (III, pr. 10) ‘if in any genus there seems tobe something which is imperfect, it is necessary that there is alsosomething perfect in it’. She supports this view by asking from wherethe imperfect thing would derive its existence, did a perfect one notexist. This principle may, indeed, have been one which Neoplatonistsof Boethius’ time would accept, but is not the obvious truth whichPhilosophy claims it to be. Another central idea is that the good man ishappy because he is able to gain the highest good, God. But in whatdoes this grasp of the highest good consist? What seems to be calledfor is some idea of a beatific vision, either in this life or beyond it.Philosophy, however, provides no such explanation. Yet it may not beright to criticize Boethius-the-author for merely indicating the shapeof a philosophical position, rather than describing and justifying it indetail. The full arguments for Philosophy’s views, he might argue, areto be found in the tradition of writing she personifies. The
Consolationmerely sets out the main conclusions of the way of thought which thecharacter Boethius had supposedly forgotten in his grief; five shortbooks cannot be expected to provide a substitute for his years ofNeoplatonic study.
‘ON THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY’: DIVINE PRESCIENCE AND HUMAN FREE WILLIn Book V, the manner of the
Consolation changes. The ornatelanguage of the earlier books all but disappears in favour of a moretechnical style, close to that of the logical commentaries; and it is theAristotelian logical tradition which now gives Boethius his startingpoint. After a short discussion of chance, the dialogue takes up thequestion of God’s omniscience and human freedom. Here the issue isstrictly God’s fore
knowledge: his providential pre
destination, executedin time through fate, as discussed in Book IV, does not enter intoconsideration.Intuitively, divine omniscience seems to pose a threat to human freewill. If God knows everything, then he knows what I will do tomorrow.Whether I drink red wine or white wine with my dinner tomorrowmight appear to be something I can choose by my free will. But if Godknows
now which I shall drink, is not my free will over the choiceillusory? If God knows now that I shall drink white wine—and it isknowledge, not just a good guess—then it seems that the possibilitythat I shall drink red has already been closed. I have no choice but todrink white. One way of trying to formalize this train of thought iswhat might be called the ‘knowledge-brings-determinism’ argument.Part of the definition of ‘knowledge’ is that it is true belief. So, if Iknow
p, then
p is true. Since this follows from a definition, it is amatter of necessity. Just as it is a matter of necessity that, if I am abachelor, I am unmarried, so it is a matter of necessity that if I know
p,p is true. God knows everything, and so for
p we can substitute anytrue statement about the past, present or future, including statementsabout future events such as my drinking the white wine. If God knowsthat I will drink white wine tomorrow, then necessarily I will drinkwhite wine tomorrow, and similarly for any statement about thefuture—there are therefore no future contingents; all that will happenwill happen by necessity.The knowledge-brings-determinism argument, however, is invalid.It commits what would now be called a scope fallacy, by failing todistinguish whether the whole complex statement, or rather just anelement of it, should be qualified by ‘necessarily’. Consider the analogyof the bachelor. It is not the case that, if someone is a bachelor, thennecessarily he is unmarried. He might well have married before now,although he has not. Rather, we ought to say: necessarily, if he is abachelor, he is unmarried. Similarly, the definition of ‘knowledge’ showsmerely that necessarily, if God foresees
p, then
p. Allowing that thewhole conditional (if God foresees
p, then
p) is necessarily true in noway implies that
p itself is necessarily true, and so it presents no threatto contingency or to human free will.Boethius is often credited with showing the fallaciousness of theknowledge-brings-determinism argument and contrasted with earlierthinkers, such as Augustine who, though upholding free will, thoughtthe logic of this argument irrefragable.
11 The basis of the claim is adistinction Boethius makes near the end of his discussion of divineprescience (V, pr. 6) between ‘simple necessity’ and ‘conditionalnecessity’. As an example of strict necessity Boethius gives the necessitythat all men are mortal; as an example of conditional necessity, that ‘ifyou know someone is walking, it is necessary that he is walking’. Hegoes on to explain that, in such a case of conditional necessity, it is notthe nature of the matter, but the ‘adding of the condition’ which bringsabout the necessity; and conditional necessity, he says, does not implysimple necessity. At first sight, especially in light of his terminology,Boethius
does seem to be distinguishing between simple (non-composite)necessary statements, and the necessity of a whole conditional; and itis this distinction which is needed to expose the fallacy of the necessitybrings-determinism argument, by contrasting the whole conditional‘If God knows
p, then
p’, which is necessary, with the simple statement
p, the consequent of this conditional, which is not necessary. But closerscrutiny of the text does not support this reading.
12 Boethius is nottalking about different types of statement but about different types ofnecessity. He is saying that the fact that men are mortal is necessaryaccording to simple necessity, whereas, if you know someone is walking,the fact that he is walking is necessary, but only according to conditionalnecessity. Simple necessity, he believes, constrains—men cannot butdie some time; but not conditional necessity—the man might havechosen to remain still.Boethius’ idea of conditional necessity is bound up with his view,inherited from the Aristotelian tradition, of the necessity of the present.Immediately after he has used the example of knowing (you know heis walking) to illustrate conditional necessity, he moves on to anotherexample, which he apparently considers parallel: ‘No necessity compelsa walking man that he should will to walk although at that time whenhe is walking, it is necessary that he walks.’ Here, too, Boethius believes,is an example of conditional necessity: the fact that he is walking attime
t becomes necessary, conditionally though not simply, by theaddition of the condition that it is now time
t. Modern philosopherswould say that, although it is not possible that he walk and not walkat
t, it is possible that, although he is walking at
t, he might not havebeen walking at that time: there is another possible world in which hestayed still at that moment. Boethius had no such conception ofsynchronous alternative possibilities.
13The link Boethius makes between conditional necessity and thenecessity of the present renders the way in which he goes abouttackling the question of divine prescience and human free willexplicable. At the beginning of the discussion (V, pr. 3) the character-Boethius puts to Philosophy a version of the knowledge-bringsdeterminismargument, as applied to divine prescience. He considersthe counter-argument made by some, that there is no causal relationbetween divine prescience and future events, but he replies to it bysaying that, though there is no causal relation, none the less, divineprescience renders future events necessary. In her reply (whichpresumably gives Boethius-the-author’s considered view), Philosophybegins by arguing that Boethius was wrong to dismiss the counterargument.If divine prescience does not cause future events to takeplace, it does
not determine them. She recognizes, however, that thereis something troubling about the idea that God knows now what Ishall do tomorrow. Since, if the action in question is one I shall freelydecide on it is not certain now what it will be, it seems as if there canbe no foreknowledge about it, merely opinion. Philosophy’s way ofdealing with this problem (V, pr. 4–5) is to explain that beings ofdifferent levels cognize in different ways. God’s ‘intelligence’ is unlikeour reason, just as our reason differs from the senses. To see howGod’s intelligence works, we must realize (V, pr. 6) that for God to beeternal means that he enjoys ‘the entire and perfect possession at onceof unending life’
(interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio).God therefore knows all things, past, present and future, as if theywere present. Only after having established this point at length, doesPhilosophy introduce briefly the distinction between simple andconditional necessity. The idea of God’s timelessness—which wouldhave been entirely superfluous were this distinction Boethius’ way ofnoticing the scope fallacy which underlies the knowledge-bringsdeterminismargument—is, then, central to his treatment of prescienceand free will for two reasons. First, it enables him to answer theepistemological problem about how an uncertain future could be
known: for God, the object of knowledge is not future (or past), butpresent. Second, it allows him to resolve the logical problem whichtroubled the Boethius-the-character-in-the-dialogue, by assimilatingGod’s present-tense knowledge of
p to the more general case of
pbeing true at the present time. Both cases are seen to involve an addedcondition (‘GOD KNOWS
p’/‘
p WHEN
P’). Boethius accepted thenecessity of the present, but also knew that no one thought it aconstraining necessity, and so it was now easy for him to characterizeboth it and the necessity implied by God’s omniscience as a specialsort of non-constraining ‘conditional necessity’, to be distinguishedfrom constraining simple necessity.From the thirteenth century onwards, detection of the scope fallacyinvolved in the knowledge-brings-determinism argument was routine.Statements of the form ‘if
p, then necessarily
q’ were said to exhibit‘necessity of the consequent’
(necessitas consequentis), as opposed tostatements of the form ‘necessarily, if
p then
q’, which exhibited‘necessity of the consequence’
(necessitas consequentiae) (
‘consequentia’was the word for an ‘if…then…’ statement). This awareness was,however, often put in terms of Boethius’ simple and conditionalnecessity, as if Boethius had shared it. Moreover, Boethius’ treatmentof God’s timeless eternity was widely discussed. Some, such as Aquinas,adopted it (in the
Summa Theologiae Aquinas states verbatim Boethius’definition of eternity as ‘the entire and perfect possession at once ofunending life’ and defends it); other, later thinkers argued vigorouslyagainst it. Aquinas also found an important use for this view of timelesseternity in tackling an argument from divine prescience to determinismwhich Boethius had not anticipated. If God foreknows everything, thenit is not just that God knows that tomorrow I shall drink white wine,not red: it is also true that it
has come to God’s knowledge that I shalldrink white wine, not red, tomorrow. ‘It has come to God’s knowledgethat
p’ implies
p and, since it is a statement about the past and the pastcannot be changed, if it is true, it seems it must be necessarily true;what a necessary truth implies is itself necessarily true; and so, theargument goes, my drinking the white wine is necessary.
14 There arevarious ways of attacking this argument, but Boethius provides Aquinaswith a very straightforward one: if God knows in a timeless eternity,then it is not the case that God
has come to know anything. As withmany aspects of Boethius’ work, medieval thinkers found more in hisargument about divine prescience and human free will than he hadexplicitly put there. This may be a tribute to a certain undevelopedphilosophical insight in Boethius—an inexplicit feel for importantproblems and the moves needed to deal with them—as well as to thecleverness of his medieval readers.
‘ON THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY’: NEOPLATONISM AND CHRISTIANITYThe most remarkable feature of the
Consolation is something it omits:any explicit reference to Christianity. Boethius’ discussion of the highestgood, which is God, and his treatment of providence, fate andprescience, would have been as acceptable to a pagan Neoplatonist asto a Christian, and of uniquely Christian doctrines such as the Trinityand incarnation there is not a mention. But few scholars nowadaysbelieve that Boethius omitted Christian dogma from the
Consolationbecause, when he wrote it, he had abandoned Christianity. Such aconversion to paganism is implausible, and there are several biblicalechoes in the
Consolation, at least one of which appears deliberate,since Philosophy echoes closely the phrasing of the Book of Wisdomand Boethius-the-character comments that, not merely what she hassaid, but the ‘very words’ she has used, delight him (III, pr. 12). Why,then, is the
Consolation not more openly Christian? Perhaps becauseBoethius envisaged his task as presenting a
philosophical justificationof the providential ordering of the universe by a supremely good deity:a justification in which none of the premisses is based on revelation.His training and writing had been as a logician and philosopher, andeven his theological works had been exercises in philosophical analysis.It is not surprising that he should seek to come to terms with hisdownfall by writing as a philosopher, though he remained in his faitha Christian.None the less, there are moments in the
Consolation whenBoethius’ Neoplatonism does sit uncomfortably with Christiandoctrine. At a central point in the work, before she concludes herargument identifying God with the highest good, Philosophy makes asolemn prayer. The poem (III, metrum 9) is an epitome of the
Timaeus,the favourite Platonic dialogue of the Neoplatonists. It speaks withoutreservation of Platonic doctrines, such as reincarnation and the WorldSoul, which are clearly incompatible with Christianity. PossiblyBoethius thought that, in the context of a poem, they need not betaken literally. Later, however, in his discussion of divine prescience (V,pr. 6), he champions the view that the world has endured for ever: itis what many would call ‘eternal’, although Boethius prefers todescribe it as ‘perpetual’, reserving ‘eternal’ to describe the timelesseternity of God. Boethius’ view was that of the pagan Neoplatonistsof his time. Christians insisted that the world had a beginning and,writing shortly after Boethius’ death, the Greek Christian philosopherJohn Philoponus would devise a set of intricate arguments, drawingon Aristotle’s ideas about infinity, to support this position. YetBoethius cannot have seen his own view as unacceptable forChristians, since he had already referred to it in his painstakinglyorthodox
On the Trinity (section IV).
15Although medieval writers drew on almost every aspect of the
Consolation, none was more important than the work’s uncertainstatus as a text by a Christian writer without explicitly Christiandoctrines, and with some ideas which seemed distinctly pagan. Themost popular strategy for commentators was to discover an explicitlyChristian meaning implicit within the text, especially in sections likeIII, m. 9 which, at first sight, were hardest for Christian readers toaccept. But there were dissenters, such as Bovo of Corvey in the tenthcentury, who insisted on a literal reading.
16 For some writers, such asthe Middle English poet, Chaucer, the
Consolation seems to haveprovided a model for writing about serious issues in a way whichpresupposes no commitment to Christianity, a philosophicalprecedent for the use of a pagan setting in literary fiction.
EPILOGUEIn the Latin West, Boethius’ death marks the end of the ancient traditionof philosophy. There were writers—for instance, Cassiodorus(
c. 485–580), Boethius’ more politically-compromising successor asMaster of the Offices, and Isidore (before 534–636), Bishop of Seville—who helped to pass elements of ancient teaching to medieval readers.But they were educators and encyclopaedists, rather than thinkers. Theseventh- and eighth-century scholars in England and Ireland includedsome enthusiastic grammarians, but no logicians; the philosophicalelements in patristic texts aroused little interest from them. The medievalLatin philosophical tradition would begin at the court of Charlemagne,in the 790s.In the Greek tradition of philosophy, however, Boethius’ death byno means marks a boundary. The Christian, John Philoponus, wouldproduce important and influential philosophical work a little later inthe sixth century.
17 Nor had pagan Neoplatonism come to an end.When in 529, shortly after Boethius’ death, the Emperor Justinianclosed the Platonic school at Athens, its philosophers sought refuge atthe court of the Persian king, Chosroes. When, a little later, Chosroesconcluded a peace treaty with Byzantium, it included a provision thatthe pagan philosophers be allowed to return to Byzantine lands andpractice their form of philosophy unhindered. They took up residenceat Harran, near to the Persian border, in about 532 and thereSimplicius wrote most of his work.
18 The pagan Neoplatonic schoolat Harran survived at least until the tenth century, although very littleis known of its later work. By then, the Middle East had beentransformed by the preaching of Muhammad in the seventh centuryand the rapid rise of Islam. It is the tradition of philosophy whichgrew up in Islam from the ninth century onwards that this
Historywill first consider.
NOTES1 For these works (and possible works on geometry and astronomy), which falloutside the scope of this discussion, see Chadwick [1.12] 69–107 and the articlesin Gibson [1.16] by Caldwell, Pingree and White.2 See J.Barnes, ‘Boethius and the study of logic’, in Gibson [1.16] 73–89. Barnespoints out (p. 87) that Boethius himself ([1.1] 1191A, 1209C, 1216D) claims tohave written such a commentary. Barnes also points to a thirteenth-centurycommentary which mentions a commentary by Boethius on the
Posterior Analytics;but this medieval remark, not otherwise supported, carries little weight.3 The first commentary on the
Isagoge is an early work, which uses MariusVictorinus’ translation rather than Boethius’ own; the second commentary giveshis maturer thoughts on the text. Boethius composed the two commentaries on
On Interpretation together, putting simpler material in the first and more complex(but no less Aristotelian) discussion in the second.4 See [1.1] 160AB and S.Ebbesen, ‘Boethius as an Aristotelian commentator’ inSorabji [1.32], esp. 387–91.5 See J.Shiel, ‘Boethius’ commentaries on Aristotle’ in Sorabji [1.32] 349–72 forthe view that Boethius translated marginalia, and Ebbesen’s article, cited in theprevious note, pp. 375–7, for strong arguments against it.6 See the wide-ranging discussion in de Libera [1.22] (pp. 128–32 for Boethius).7 See Barnes, ‘Boethius and the study of logic’ in Gibson [1.16] 83–4, Dürr [1.15]and Martin [1.23] 379–86.8 On the medieval influence of
De hebdomadibus, see Schrimpf [1.30].9 There is a collection of articles on the transcendentals in medieval philosophy in
Topoi 11 (1992) (guest editor, J.Gracia).10 See J.Matthews, ‘Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius’ in Gibson [1.16] 26–9.11 See, for instance, C.Kirwan,
Augustine, London, 1989, p. 98.12 Knuuttila ([1.21] 60–1) briefly mentions exactly this point; I shall try to developand justify it in the following paragraphs. Pike [1.28] 72–6) attributes to Boethiusa different and more powerful argument either than the traditional interpretationcriticized above, or than the one proposed here. But it is hard to believe, from theway Boethius develops his ideas in the text, that the argument really is his.13 The lack of a conception of synchronous alternative possibilities in Boethius andother ancient writers, and the gradual introduction of this notion from the twelfthcentury onwards, is one of the main themes of Knuuttila [1.21].14 This argument is stated in, for instance, Aquinas’
De veritate q.12, a.12. Fordiscussion of it, see Kenny [1.19] and Prior [1.29].15 See Courcelle [1.13] 221–31 for a comparison between Boethius’ views on theeternity of the world and those of his Christian and pagan near contemporaries.16 See Chapter 5, pp. 110–11.17 A good introduction to Philoponus’ work is given in R.Sorabji (ed.)
Philoponusand the Rejection of Aristotelian Science, London, 1987.18 See I.Hadot, ‘La vie et oeuvre de Simplicius’, in I.Hadot (ed.)
Simplicius: Sa vie,son oeuvre, sa survie (Peripatoi 15), Berlin and New York, 1987, pp. 3–39; butnot all scholars accept this reconstruction of events.
BIBLIOGRAPHYOriginal Language Editions of Boethius1.1
Works in
MPL, 63–4, Paris, 1847.1.2 Translations of Aristotle in
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AL).1.3 Commentaries on Porphyry’s
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Gilbert de Poitiers et ses contemporains (History ofLogic 5), Naples, 1987, pp. 377–400.1.24 Minio-Paluello, L. ‘A Latin commentary (trans. ?Boethius) on the
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