Boethius: from antiquity to the Middle Ages
Boethius: from antiquity to the Middle Ages
John Marenbon
Boethius is a difficult figure to place in the history of philosophy.
Considered just in himself, he clearly belongs to the world of late
antiquity. Born in 480, at a time when Italy was ruled by the Ostrogoths
under their king, Theoderic, Boethius was adopted into one of the most
distinguished patrician families of Rome and benefited from an education
which made him at home not only in classical Latin culture but also in
Greek literature and philosophy. Although most historians doubt that
Boethius actually went to Alexandria or Athens to study, he certainly
knew the work of Greek Neoplatonists of the immediate past: Proclus,
Porphyry and probably Ammonius. Although a Christian, writing in
Latin, he therefore falls into a tradition stretching back directly to Plotinus
and, ultimately, to Aristotle and Plato. Yet considered as a late antique
philosopher, his importance is limited. Most of Boethius’ ideas and
arguments derive from his Greek sources; his own contribution lay more
in choosing, arranging and presenting views than in original thinking.
By contrast, from the perspective of medieval philosophy, Boethius looms
large. Only Aristotle himself, and perhaps Augustine, were more
important and wide-ranging in their influence. Besides providing scholars
in the Middle Ages with two of their most widely-read textbooks on
arithmetic and music,1 through his translations, commentaries and
monographs Boethius provided the basis for medieval logic. His short
theological treatises helped to shape the way in which logical and
philosophical techniques were used in discussing Christian doctrine.
His Consolation of Philosophy, read and studied from the eighth century
through to the Renaissance, and translated into almost every medieval
vernacular, was a major source for ancient philosophy in the early Middle
Ages and its treatment of goodness, free will and eternity continued to
influence thirteenth- and fourteenth-century thinkers. In short, it would
be hard to understand the development of philosophy in the medieval
Latin West without looking carefully at Boethius’ work—and it is for
this reason that, although he falls outside its chronological limits, a
chapter on his work (with glances forward at its medieval influence)
begins the present volume.
THE LOGICAL WORKS
In one of his logical commentaries ([1.4] II:78–9), Boethius announces
that he is planning to translate into Latin all the works of Aristotle’s he
can find, and all of Plato’s dialogues, and to provide commentaries for
each of his translations. Only for Aristotle’s logic was the project, at
least in large part, realized. Boethius translated the whole of Aristotle’s
logical 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 the
Middle Ages, except in the case of the Posterior Analytics, where his
version was lost. In addition, Boethius wrote two commentaries each
on the Isagoge and on On Interpretation, a commentary on the Categories
and scholia on the Prior Analytics; there are grounds for thinking he
also wrote a commentary on the Topics, although it does not survive.2
In formulating his project, Boethius was strongly influenced by the
common attitude among late Neoplatonists to Plato and Aristotle.
Although they looked to Plato as the originator of the philosophy which
gave understanding of the intelligible world and which they pursued
in their most ambitious works, Neoplatonists from Porphyry onwards
recognized a distinct place for the study of Aristotelian logic; and in
the Alexandrian school, Neoplatonists such as Ammonius devoted most
of their public teaching to Aristotle’s logic. This logic was seen to be
concerned with language as used to describe the world we perceive
with our senses. So long as students of logic were aware that they were
not dealing with a complete description of reality as the Neoplatonists
envisaged it, they could pursue the subject with profit. Plato and
Aristotle could be reconciled, once their different spheres of interest
were recognized (it is no surprise that Boethius himself planned to
write a monograph showing the agreement of Plato and Aristotle). In
the logical commentaries he kept scrupulously to the Aristotelian
approach, even where he produced two commentaries to the same text.3
Although he speaks of writing a second, ‘Pythagorean’ commentary
on the Categories, he seems never to have done so.4
Some scholars have argued that Boethius’ logical commentaries are
merely direct translations of marginalia he found in his manuscripts of
the Greek texts, but this view is implausible. Boethius gives every
indication of having worked from a small number of sources, among
which Porphyry was his favourite, selecting, arranging, paraphrasing
and from time to time adding his own reflections.5 It remains true that
these commentaries are thoroughly unoriginal works, but they were
all the more valuable for that reason to medieval thinkers. Rather than
giving them the views of just one logician, the commentaries opened to
them a whole tradition of late antique thinking over a wide range of
subjects, since the commentaries go far beyond the discussion of strictly
logical questions, to consider matters of metaphysics, meaning and the
philosophy of mind. Unlike the Neoplatonic students or Boethius
himself, however, the medieval readers did not suppose that the
approach to philosophical problems taken in the commentaries was a
deliberately limited one, to be complemented and superseded by an
investigation of intelligible reality. As a result, medieval Western
philosophy was given a strong bias towards Aristotelian ways and aims,
even before Aristotle’s metaphysical, scientific and ethical works became
available.
There are many illustrations of this phenomenon. An obvious
example is the influence of Boethius’ discussion of universals in his
second commentary on the Isagoge ([1.3] 159:10–167:20). Porphyry
himself had skirted over the problem of universals as one too difficult
for the beginners to whom the Isagoge was addressed. He left just a set
of unanswered questions, which suggest that, understandably for a
Neoplatonist, were he teaching more advanced students he would have
wished to raise and defend the existence of Platonic universals, existing
independently of particulars and incorporeally. Boethius, however,
presents the view of Alexander of Aphrodisias, which he considers to
be the solution in accord with Aristotle. His argument, identifying the
universal with the form which makes any particular of a given species
the sort of thing it is, and which can be grasped mentally by abstracting
from accidental differences, has been criticized by modern
commentators as muddled—and was perceived as such by many
medieval readers. But it presented a realism quite distinct from Platonic
realism, and in the medieval debate, dominated by refinements of
Boethius’ position and nominalist attacks on it, Platonic realism played
almost no part.6 Or, to take another example, Boethius’ discussion of
perception, the mind and language at the beginning of his second
commentary on On Interpretation introduced many of the themes
which Aristotle explored in his On the Soul.
Boethius’ work as a logician went beyond his plan of translating
and commenting on Plato and Aristotle. He wrote a series of logical
monographs, on categorical syllogisms, hypothetical syllogisms, division
and 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)—in
his earlier On Categorical Syllogisms and his later, unfinished
Introduction to Categorical Syllogisms—Boethius follows Aristotle
closely, though adding some post-Aristotelian developments concerning
negative terms. The other two treatises introduce new, non-Aristotelian
areas of logic. A hypothetical syllogism is a syllogism where one or
both of the premisses are molecular statements: statements consisting
of 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 in
categorical syllogisms are terms, the variables in hypothetical syllogisms
are statements. On Hypothetical Syllogisms goes beyond Aristotle, who
had restricted himself to the logic of terms, by exploring the logic of
statements (prepositional logic), although it seems not to draw on the
most sophisticated ancient exponents of this branch of logic, the Stoics.
To a modern reader, some of the inference schemata Boethius proposes
will seem strange, since—unlike most modern logicians—he assumes
that it cannot be the case that, if p then q is true, it is also true that if p
then not-q.7 For medieval logicians, however, On Hypothetical
Syllogisms was one of the two important bases from which they went
on to elaborate a logic of statements.
The other basis was Boethius’ On Topical ‘differentiae’. The theory
of topics was seen originally as a way of discovering arguments: in the
case 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 be
both what were called ‘maximal propositions’—obviously true,
universal generalizations—and the differentiae by which the whole
genus of maximal propositions is divided into subordinate genera and
species. 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 each
divided up the maximal propositions differently, producing two
alternative sets of differentiae. On Topical ‘differentiae’ explains the
theory of topics, sets out the two schemes of differentiae and compares
them. The use of the treatise as an aid to constructing (and, by extension,
to confirming) informal arguments is obvious. The link with formal
logic arose because, in addition to maximal propositions expressing
what might, at best, be thought of as common-sense generalizations
(‘what seems true to everyone or to many or to the wise should not be
denied’), there are others which put forward some of the fundamental
principles 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, as
set out by Boethius, as providing the laws both for syllogistic inference
and for the logic of statements.
THE THEOLOGICAL TREATISES
Boethius’ reputation as a theologian depends on five short treatises,
called in the Middle Ages the Opuscula sacra. Only three of them are
of importance: no. 2 is a briefer, probably preliminary version of part
of 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 of
the opposing extreme Christological views of Nestorius and Eutyches,
was probably the first to be written (after 512). Christology was a
controversial issue in Boethius’ day. The statement of the Council of
Chalcedon (451), which affirmed that Christ was made known in two
natures, but without division or separation, was accepted in the West,
but challenged in the East by the followers of Nestorius, who
emphasized the distinctness of Christ’s two natures, and by
monophysites, who held that in the person of Christ there is only a
single, divine nature. Acacius, the patriarch of Constantinople (471–
89) issued a document, the Henotikon, which condemned Nestorius
and also condemned the extreme monophysite, Eutyches, but failed to
reaffirm the Council of Chalcedon’s statement about the number of
natures in Christ. This failure provoked a schism (the ‘Acacian schism’)
with the Latin Church. Boethius’ treatise was stimulated by the attempt
in 512 of a group of Greek bishops to draw up a compromise position
which would be acceptable to the papacy (see [1.31]). Boethius—who
was more willing than the Pope to go along with the Greek bishops’
position—clearly wished to contribute to the debate, though less
perhaps by the view he stated, than by the manner in which he put it
forward. He adopted the precise, scholastic style of theological writing
which had become popular in the Greek East, but went against usual
practice in the Latin West. He carefully defined his terms—‘essence’,
‘subsistence’, ‘substance’, ‘person’ and ‘nature’—and proceeded to argue
that his heterodox opponents were guilty of logical, as well as doctrinal,
error (see [1.14]). Boethius’ treatises on the Trinity (1 and 2) also seem
to owe their origin to events connected with the Acacian schism. In
519, a group of Scythian monks, loyal to Chalcedon, came to Rome to
try to gain acceptance of the formula ‘one of the Trinity suffered in the
flesh’, 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, especially
Aristotle’s theory of the ten categories, shows how God can be both
three persons and yet one God.
Boethius’ theological treatises were studied intensely, glossed and
commented on, from the ninth century onwards. Their importance for
medieval scholars was unrelated to the doctrinal controversies from
which they arose: although there were many theological controversies
in the medieval Western Church, they were rarely on the questions of
Christology and trinitarian doctrine which were so important in late
antiquity. Medieval thinkers, rather, found in the opuscula a valuable
source of information about ancient philosophical doctrines. To take
two examples. Boethius’ definition of ‘nature’ in treatise no. 5 introduced
them to ideas from Aristotle’s Physics. A discussion early on in treatise
no. 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 without
matter, he is also (the only) non-composite pure form. Physical objects
are concrete wholes of form and matter but, Boethius insists, the
embodied forms are merely images of other, disembodied forms. Much
twelfth-century metaphysics is an effort to clarify and develop this threelayered
hierarchy of pure, non-composite form, disembodied forms and
the images of these forms in material things. Medieval thinkers were
also greatly influenced by the method of these treatises. They suggested
that logical tools and precisely defined philosophical terms could both
clarify difficult points of Christian doctrine and provide the means to
demonstrate that, given certain fundamental points of doctrine (accepted
by all parties), heterodox positions involved logical error. These two
patterns of logically-competent, philosophically-informed theological
speculation were two of the main models for Christian thinking from
the ninth century to the fifteenth.
The third of the theological treatises is different in character from
the others. In the Middle Ages it was known as De hebdomadibus
(‘On the groups of seven’) from the reference in its first sentence to a
work, since lost, by Boethius called the ‘Hebdomads’. The treatise is
intended to clarify a problem considered there: how is it that all things
are ‘good in that they are’, although they are not ‘substantial goods’?
There is nothing explicitly Christian in its content. Boethius begins
with a list of philosophical axioms which modern scholars have been
able to interpret in the light of late antique Neoplatonism, but which
perhaps proved all the more stimulating to medieval commentators by
their obscurity.8 The discussion which follows is, in effect, an unravelling
of the ambiguity of the phrase ‘good in that it exists’. One way in
which something can be good in that it exists is to be ‘a substantial
good’. God is a substantial good because he cannot be conceived except
as 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 unless
they did so), and because God is good, they are good by virtue of the
existence they derive from him. It is true, therefore, that they cannot
exist without being good. They, however, unlike God, could be
conceived as not being good. They are not, therefore, substantial goods.
Some of the considerations Boethius raises here would be explored in
a wider context as part of medieval discussion of the transcendentals—
those attributes, including goodness, which everything was considered
to have by virtue of existing.9
‘ON THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY’: THE HIGHEST GOOD
Although they lived under the rule of a barbarian king committed to a
heretical Arian Christianity, Boethius and his aristocratic Roman
contemporaries were allowed to retain many of the trappings of
importance and authority and, if they chose, to exercise real power as
officials of Theoderic. Boethius combined—as a man of his rank would
have been expected to do—public service with his private devotion to
scholarship. Until near the end of his life, however, writing and
translating was his primary concern, and his political activities were
confined to Rome and the Senate, away from the court of Theoderic at
Ravenna.10 In 522 Boethius was given the almost unprecedented honour
of both his sons being appointed as consuls together. In the same year,
Boethius himself was appointed to be ‘Master of the Offices’, an
important and influential position at the Ravenna court. He had not
held the post for long when he was arrested, imprisoned and eventually
(probably in 525, but possibly in 524 or 526) executed, on charges of
treason against the Gothic regime and sorcery. Boethius himself
dismisses all these accusations and attributes his downfall to the
intrigues of enemies created by his uprightness and his defence of the
weak 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 over
the loyalty to him of the Roman aristocracy, after the strongly pro-
Catholic Emperor Justin acceded to the Byzantine throne in 518 and
the Acacian schism had finally been resolved in 519.
While in prison, Boethius wrote the work by which he is most
remembered, On the Consolation of Philosophy (De consolatione
Philosophiae). Here he deserts his usual simple presentation and dry
style for the elaborate literary form of a prosimetrum (a work in prose
interspersed with verse passages), which allows his personal
circumstances to give urgency to the philosophical questions he tackles.
The Consolation is an imaginary dialogue between Boethius and
Philosophy, a female personification of the tradition of philosophical
wisdom which, despite the attempts of different schools to sunder it
(her clothes are torn, because each philosophical sect has tried to take
some of them for itself), is a unified one, stretching back to Socrates
and Plato. Boethius represents himself at the beginning of the dialogue
as overcome by grief and self-pity: he bewails the injustice of the
accusations against him and the turn of fortune which has brought
him from a position of importance to prison; he longs for death to put
an end to his suffering. Philosophy treats him as someone suffering
from an illness. The shock of his fall from power has made him forget
the wisdom which, from his youth, he had learned from her. He still
retains the knowledge (I, prose 6) that there is a God who rules the
universe, but he no longer knows to what end all things move. He
believes 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 of
arguments to show him that his personal downfall is not the disaster
he takes it to be. In particular, she insists that he cannot blame fortune
for instability, since it is the very nature of fortune to be unstable, and
of the goods of fortune, such as riches, power, honour and fame, to be
transitory.
Boethius is now prepared for Philosophy’s ‘weightier remedy’, her
argument about the highest good (bk III). When people seek to obtain
the various goods of fortune, she argues, they are motivated by a genuine
desire for the good—we desire only what we consider to be good—but
are misled by ignorance about the nature of the good. Each of the
goods of fortune, taken on its own, is worth little and does not last.
People’s mistake is to seek these goods individually, rather than trying
to gain the single good from which all these other goods derive. This
highest good is happiness (beatitudo); but, since God (III, pr. 10) is
that than which nothing better can be thought, he is perfectly good.
Therefore the highest good, which everyone seeks but most, ignorant
of its undivided nature, fail to gain, is God himself. Philosophy goes
on (bk IV) to explain why, despite appearances, it is not the case that
the wicked enjoy power while the good are left impotent. She
distinguishes the will to obtain something and the power to be able to
do so. Everyone, she says, wants happiness. The good have the power,
by being good, to gain happiness, whereas the evil are unable to gain
it. By contrast with Boethius-the-character’s earlier view of a universe
in which God has abandoned humankind to its own devices, Philosophy
explains that divine providence arranges all things; fate is simply the
working 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’s
arguments does little justice to the reasoned manner in which she is
made to develop her points. Yet the impression of looseness and
question-begging which may emerge is not misleading. At almost every
stage, Philosophy makes assumptions which an interlocutor less docile
than Boethius-the-character would have questioned, and the views she
reaches, although sweeping, are far from clear. To take just two
examples. Central to Philosophy’s argument is the idea that there is a
perfect good, from which the imperfect goods of fortune are derived.
She argues that the existence of a perfect good follows from the existence
of imperfect goods, because (III, pr. 10) ‘if in any genus there seems to
be something which is imperfect, it is necessary that there is also
something perfect in it’. She supports this view by asking from where
the imperfect thing would derive its existence, did a perfect one not
exist. This principle may, indeed, have been one which Neoplatonists
of Boethius’ time would accept, but is not the obvious truth which
Philosophy claims it to be. Another central idea is that the good man is
happy because he is able to gain the highest good, God. But in what
does this grasp of the highest good consist? What seems to be called
for is some idea of a beatific vision, either in this life or beyond it.
Philosophy, however, provides no such explanation. Yet it may not be
right to criticize Boethius-the-author for merely indicating the shape
of a philosophical position, rather than describing and justifying it in
detail. The full arguments for Philosophy’s views, he might argue, are
to be found in the tradition of writing she personifies. The Consolation
merely sets out the main conclusions of the way of thought which the
character Boethius had supposedly forgotten in his grief; five short
books cannot be expected to provide a substitute for his years of
Neoplatonic study.
‘ON THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY’: DIVINE PRESCIENCE AND HUMAN FREE WILL
In Book V, the manner of the Consolation changes. The ornate
language of the earlier books all but disappears in favour of a more
technical style, close to that of the logical commentaries; and it is the
Aristotelian logical tradition which now gives Boethius his starting
point. After a short discussion of chance, the dialogue takes up the
question of God’s omniscience and human freedom. Here the issue is
strictly God’s foreknowledge: his providential predestination, executed
in time through fate, as discussed in Book IV, does not enter into
consideration.
Intuitively, divine omniscience seems to pose a threat to human free
will. If God knows everything, then he knows what I will do tomorrow.
Whether I drink red wine or white wine with my dinner tomorrow
might appear to be something I can choose by my free will. But if God
knows now which I shall drink, is not my free will over the choice
illusory? If God knows now that I shall drink white wine—and it is
knowledge, not just a good guess—then it seems that the possibility
that I shall drink red has already been closed. I have no choice but to
drink white. One way of trying to formalize this train of thought is
what might be called the ‘knowledge-brings-determinism’ argument.
Part of the definition of ‘knowledge’ is that it is true belief. So, if I
know p, then p is true. Since this follows from a definition, it is a
matter of necessity. Just as it is a matter of necessity that, if I am a
bachelor, 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 any
true statement about the past, present or future, including statements
about future events such as my drinking the white wine. If God knows
that I will drink white wine tomorrow, then necessarily I will drink
white wine tomorrow, and similarly for any statement about the
future—there are therefore no future contingents; all that will happen
will happen by necessity.
The knowledge-brings-determinism argument, however, is invalid.
It commits what would now be called a scope fallacy, by failing to
distinguish whether the whole complex statement, or rather just an
element of it, should be qualified by ‘necessarily’. Consider the analogy
of the bachelor. It is not the case that, if someone is a bachelor, then
necessarily he is unmarried. He might well have married before now,
although he has not. Rather, we ought to say: necessarily, if he is a
bachelor, he is unmarried. Similarly, the definition of ‘knowledge’ shows
merely that necessarily, if God foresees p, then p. Allowing that the
whole conditional (if God foresees p, then p) is necessarily true in no
way implies that p itself is necessarily true, and so it presents no threat
to contingency or to human free will.
Boethius is often credited with showing the fallaciousness of the
knowledge-brings-determinism argument and contrasted with earlier
thinkers, such as Augustine who, though upholding free will, thought
the logic of this argument irrefragable.11 The basis of the claim is a
distinction Boethius makes near the end of his discussion of divine
prescience (V, pr. 6) between ‘simple necessity’ and ‘conditional
necessity’. As an example of strict necessity Boethius gives the necessity
that all men are mortal; as an example of conditional necessity, that ‘if
you know someone is walking, it is necessary that he is walking’. He
goes on to explain that, in such a case of conditional necessity, it is not
the nature of the matter, but the ‘adding of the condition’ which brings
about the necessity; and conditional necessity, he says, does not imply
simple 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 it
is 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 closer
scrutiny of the text does not support this reading.12 Boethius is not
talking about different types of statement but about different types of
necessity. He is saying that the fact that men are mortal is necessary
according to simple necessity, whereas, if you know someone is walking,
the fact that he is walking is necessary, but only according to conditional
necessity. Simple necessity, he believes, constrains—men cannot but
die some time; but not conditional necessity—the man might have
chosen 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 he
is walking) to illustrate conditional necessity, he moves on to another
example, which he apparently considers parallel: ‘No necessity compels
a walking man that he should will to walk although at that time when
he is walking, it is necessary that he walks.’ Here, too, Boethius believes,
is an example of conditional necessity: the fact that he is walking at
time t becomes necessary, conditionally though not simply, by the
addition of the condition that it is now time t. Modern philosophers
would say that, although it is not possible that he walk and not walk
at t, it is possible that, although he is walking at t, he might not have
been walking at that time: there is another possible world in which he
stayed still at that moment. Boethius had no such conception of
synchronous alternative possibilities.13
The link Boethius makes between conditional necessity and the
necessity of the present renders the way in which he goes about
tackling the question of divine prescience and human free will
explicable. At the beginning of the discussion (V, pr. 3) the character-
Boethius puts to Philosophy a version of the knowledge-bringsdeterminism
argument, as applied to divine prescience. He considers
the counter-argument made by some, that there is no causal relation
between divine prescience and future events, but he replies to it by
saying that, though there is no causal relation, none the less, divine
prescience renders future events necessary. In her reply (which
presumably gives Boethius-the-author’s considered view), Philosophy
begins by arguing that Boethius was wrong to dismiss the counterargument.
If divine prescience does not cause future events to take
place, it does not determine them. She recognizes, however, that there
is something troubling about the idea that God knows now what I
shall do tomorrow. Since, if the action in question is one I shall freely
decide on it is not certain now what it will be, it seems as if there can
be no foreknowledge about it, merely opinion. Philosophy’s way of
dealing with this problem (V, pr. 4–5) is to explain that beings of
different levels cognize in different ways. God’s ‘intelligence’ is unlike
our reason, just as our reason differs from the senses. To see how
God’s intelligence works, we must realize (V, pr. 6) that for God to be
eternal means that he enjoys ‘the entire and perfect possession at once
of unending life’ (interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio).
God therefore knows all things, past, present and future, as if they
were present. Only after having established this point at length, does
Philosophy introduce briefly the distinction between simple and
conditional necessity. The idea of God’s timelessness—which would
have been entirely superfluous were this distinction Boethius’ way of
noticing the scope fallacy which underlies the knowledge-bringsdeterminism
argument—is, then, central to his treatment of prescience
and free will for two reasons. First, it enables him to answer the
epistemological problem about how an uncertain future could be
known: for God, the object of knowledge is not future (or past), but
present. Second, it allows him to resolve the logical problem which
troubled the Boethius-the-character-in-the-dialogue, by assimilating
God’s present-tense knowledge of p to the more general case of p
being true at the present time. Both cases are seen to involve an added
condition (‘GOD KNOWS p’/‘p WHEN P’). Boethius accepted the
necessity of the present, but also knew that no one thought it a
constraining necessity, and so it was now easy for him to characterize
both it and the necessity implied by God’s omniscience as a special
sort of non-constraining ‘conditional necessity’, to be distinguished
from constraining simple necessity.
From the thirteenth century onwards, detection of the scope fallacy
involved 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 to
statements 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 conditional
necessity, as if Boethius had shared it. Moreover, Boethius’ treatment
of 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 of
unending life’ and defends it); other, later thinkers argued vigorously
against it. Aquinas also found an important use for this view of timeless
eternity in tackling an argument from divine prescience to determinism
which Boethius had not anticipated. If God foreknows everything, then
it 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 shall
drink white wine, not red, tomorrow. ‘It has come to God’s knowledge
that p’ implies p and, since it is a statement about the past and the past
cannot be changed, if it is true, it seems it must be necessarily true;
what a necessary truth implies is itself necessarily true; and so, the
argument goes, my drinking the white wine is necessary.14 There are
various ways of attacking this argument, but Boethius provides Aquinas
with 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 with
many aspects of Boethius’ work, medieval thinkers found more in his
argument about divine prescience and human free will than he had
explicitly put there. This may be a tribute to a certain undeveloped
philosophical insight in Boethius—an inexplicit feel for important
problems and the moves needed to deal with them—as well as to the
cleverness of his medieval readers.
‘ON THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY’: NEOPLATONISM AND CHRISTIANITY
The most remarkable feature of the Consolation is something it omits:
any explicit reference to Christianity. Boethius’ discussion of the highest
good, which is God, and his treatment of providence, fate and
prescience, would have been as acceptable to a pagan Neoplatonist as
to a Christian, and of uniquely Christian doctrines such as the Trinity
and incarnation there is not a mention. But few scholars nowadays
believe that Boethius omitted Christian dogma from the Consolation
because, when he wrote it, he had abandoned Christianity. Such a
conversion to paganism is implausible, and there are several biblical
echoes in the Consolation, at least one of which appears deliberate,
since Philosophy echoes closely the phrasing of the Book of Wisdom
and Boethius-the-character comments that, not merely what she has
said, but the ‘very words’ she has used, delight him (III, pr. 12). Why,
then, is the Consolation not more openly Christian? Perhaps because
Boethius envisaged his task as presenting a philosophical justification
of 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, and
even his theological works had been exercises in philosophical analysis.
It is not surprising that he should seek to come to terms with his
downfall by writing as a philosopher, though he remained in his faith
a Christian.
None the less, there are moments in the Consolation when
Boethius’ Neoplatonism does sit uncomfortably with Christian
doctrine. At a central point in the work, before she concludes her
argument identifying God with the highest good, Philosophy makes a
solemn prayer. The poem (III, metrum 9) is an epitome of the Timaeus,
the favourite Platonic dialogue of the Neoplatonists. It speaks without
reservation of Platonic doctrines, such as reincarnation and the World
Soul, which are clearly incompatible with Christianity. Possibly
Boethius thought that, in the context of a poem, they need not be
taken literally. Later, however, in his discussion of divine prescience (V,
pr. 6), he champions the view that the world has endured for ever: it
is what many would call ‘eternal’, although Boethius prefers to
describe it as ‘perpetual’, reserving ‘eternal’ to describe the timeless
eternity of God. Boethius’ view was that of the pagan Neoplatonists
of his time. Christians insisted that the world had a beginning and,
writing shortly after Boethius’ death, the Greek Christian philosopher
John Philoponus would devise a set of intricate arguments, drawing
on Aristotle’s ideas about infinity, to support this position. Yet
Boethius cannot have seen his own view as unacceptable for
Christians, since he had already referred to it in his painstakingly
orthodox On the Trinity (section IV).15
Although medieval writers drew on almost every aspect of the
Consolation, none was more important than the work’s uncertain
status as a text by a Christian writer without explicitly Christian
doctrines, and with some ideas which seemed distinctly pagan. The
most popular strategy for commentators was to discover an explicitly
Christian meaning implicit within the text, especially in sections like
III, m. 9 which, at first sight, were hardest for Christian readers to
accept. But there were dissenters, such as Bovo of Corvey in the tenth
century, who insisted on a literal reading.16 For some writers, such as
the Middle English poet, Chaucer, the Consolation seems to have
provided a model for writing about serious issues in a way which
presupposes no commitment to Christianity, a philosophical
precedent for the use of a pagan setting in literary fiction.
EPILOGUE
In the Latin West, Boethius’ death marks the end of the ancient tradition
of philosophy. There were writers—for instance, Cassiodorus
(c. 485–580), Boethius’ more politically-compromising successor as
Master 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. The
seventh- and eighth-century scholars in England and Ireland included
some enthusiastic grammarians, but no logicians; the philosophical
elements in patristic texts aroused little interest from them. The medieval
Latin philosophical tradition would begin at the court of Charlemagne,
in the 790s.
In the Greek tradition of philosophy, however, Boethius’ death by
no means marks a boundary. The Christian, John Philoponus, would
produce important and influential philosophical work a little later in
the sixth century.17 Nor had pagan Neoplatonism come to an end.
When in 529, shortly after Boethius’ death, the Emperor Justinian
closed the Platonic school at Athens, its philosophers sought refuge at
the court of the Persian king, Chosroes. When, a little later, Chosroes
concluded a peace treaty with Byzantium, it included a provision that
the pagan philosophers be allowed to return to Byzantine lands and
practice their form of philosophy unhindered. They took up residence
at Harran, near to the Persian border, in about 532 and there
Simplicius wrote most of his work.18 The pagan Neoplatonic school
at Harran survived at least until the tenth century, although very little
is known of its later work. By then, the Middle East had been
transformed by the preaching of Muhammad in the seventh century
and the rapid rise of Islam. It is the tradition of philosophy which
grew up in Islam from the ninth century onwards that this History
will first consider.
NOTES
1 For these works (and possible works on geometry and astronomy), which fall
outside the scope of this discussion, see Chadwick [1.12] 69–107 and the articles
in Gibson [1.16] by Caldwell, Pingree and White.
2 See J.Barnes, ‘Boethius and the study of logic’, in Gibson [1.16] 73–89. Barnes
points out (p. 87) that Boethius himself ([1.1] 1191A, 1209C, 1216D) claims to
have written such a commentary. Barnes also points to a thirteenth-century
commentary 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 Marius
Victorinus’ translation rather than Boethius’ own; the second commentary gives
his 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’ in
Sorabji [1.32], esp. 387–91.
5 See J.Shiel, ‘Boethius’ commentaries on Aristotle’ in Sorabji [1.32] 349–72 for
the view that Boethius translated marginalia, and Ebbesen’s article, cited in the
previous 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 develop
and justify it in the following paragraphs. Pike [1.28] 72–6) attributes to Boethius
a different and more powerful argument either than the traditional interpretation
criticized above, or than the one proposed here. But it is hard to believe, from the
way 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 and
other ancient writers, and the gradual introduction of this notion from the twelfth
century 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. For
discussion of it, see Kenny [1.19] and Prior [1.29].
15 See Courcelle [1.13] 221–31 for a comparison between Boethius’ views on the
eternity 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.) Philoponus
and 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; but
not all scholars accept this reconstruction of events.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original Language Editions of Boethius
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Boethius Studies
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Philosophy, Oxford, 1981.
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