Boethius

Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, Volume 62, Issue, Page 3-13, January 2020.

Boethius’s De arithmetica, a Latin adaptation of Nicomachus of Gerasa’s Introduction to Arithmetic, was the only truly neo-pythagorean text available in the Latin Middle Ages. It played a major role in medieval education and thought, but its influence has not yet been fully explored. Studying the material remains is the best way to show the real place of the De arithmetica. Here is published for the first time a handlist of medieval commentaries on Boethius’s De arithmetica. This is the first (...) step toward writing a history of medieval neo-pythagoreanism. (shrink)

This chapter compares three different general accounts of personhood (Byzantine, Boethian, and Modern) and argues that if personhood is the basis on which one has equal moral status in the moral community and the disability-positive position is correct, then the Byzantine and Boethian accounts are preferable over the Modern accounts that are surveyed here. It further argues that the Byzantine account is even friendlier to a disability-positive position compared to the Boethian account.

Boethius is unique among Christian authors in late antiquity in that his account of deification makes no explicit reference to Christ. Instead, he develops a distinctly Neo-Platonic notion of deification, which he puts in the mouth of Lady Philosophy. According to Lady Philosophy, human beings are made divine through participation in God, who is understood as happiness itself, goodness itself, and unity itself. On the basis of this identification of happiness and God, Lady Philosophy concludes that the happiness human beings (...) desire can only be attained through deification. Although the argument of the Consolation suggest that a virtuous life, contemplation, and prayer are all necessary for attaining happiness and deification, there is no indication that they are sufficient for happiness and deification; nor does she specify what would be sufficient. The reason for her silence in this regard is presumably Boethius’ orthodox Catholic belief that salvation, and therefore deification, is only attainable through Christ. While Lady Philosophy, as Boethius portrays her, can identify that happiness is only attainable through deification, she cannot on her own sufficiently identify how to achieve deification. (shrink)

Introduction: -/- It is likely that Boethius (480-524ce) inaugurates, in Latin Christian theology, the consideration of personhood as such. In the Treatise Against Eutyches and Nestorius Boethius gives a well-known definition of personhood according to genus and difference(s): a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Personhood is predicated only of individual rational substances. This chapter situates Boethius in relation to significant Christian theologians before and after him, and the way in which his definition of personhood is a (...) particular answer to the question, “Jesus has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, but is one what?” Among Greek (and Syriac) speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘hypostasis’. Among Latin speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘persona’. It is Boethius’s definition of ‘persona’ that inaugurates personhood as such in Latin speaking theology. Although the Greek and Syriac theologians that I survey come close to a concept of personhood as a distinct category, they do not have such a concept and did not need it for their theological purposes. I show that Rusticus the Deacon is an early witness to this Latin theological invention, and also show that for later Latin theologians, the rationality condition for personhood does very little metaphysical work for their Trinitarian theology or Christology. -/- Further, this chapter surveys Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians’ answers to the question, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are one God, but each is one what?” The same replies as above are typically given by Christian theologians. These two theological questions frame the discussion about personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) and put a boundary around what a satisfying account of personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) would be. -/- In contemporary philosophy, there is a lot of attention paid to the rationality condition for personhood. But if we look at the text in which Boethius defines a person, we do not find any precise criteria for it. In other texts, he says that a rational being is one compatible with (capable of) thought and free choice of the will. What we find is that detailed discussion of personhood shows up in theological questions about the Trinity and Incarnation, but not in e.g., applied ethics. The intrusion of personhood into contemporary applied ethics with a focus on detailed and disputed criteria for rationality as a condition for personhood seems to be a modern development. From a Patristic and Medieval Christian theology point of view, trying to find just the right detailed criteria for rationality in order to define personhood is a wild goose chase. This chapter makes clear another contribution that Christian theology had for personhood. Given the theological issues at play in developing a notion of personhood, Christian theologians came to posit that e.g., an individual human is a person contingently (i.e. not essentially), but God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are each a person essentially. The contingency for created persons is not based on whether e.g., an individual human has conscious acts (as might be the case for John Locke) but on the possibility of a divine person’s assuming e.g., an individual human nature. -/- This sampling of Christian intellectual history spans over one thousand years. I make no claim of being exhaustive. The chapter consists of six sections, where each section covers significant historical conversation partners who together represent the sorts of things that Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians where concerned with in theorizing about ‘persona’ or ‘hypostasis’. -/- 1. Origen of Alexandria and the Cappadocians: Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa 2. Miaphysites: Severus of Antioch, John Philoponus, and Peter of Callinicum 3. Boethius and Rusticus the Deacon: Rationality, Subsistence, and the Invention of Personhood 4. Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Leontius of Byzantium 5. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (I): Gilbert of Poitiers, Richard of St. Victor, William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ware 6. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham . (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 56, Issue 3-4, pp 201 - 221 This paper summarizes medieval definitions and divisions of consequences and explains the import of the medieval development of the theory of consequence for logic today. It then introduces the various contributions to this special issue of _Vivarium_ on consequences in medieval logic.

Contemporary work on Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy often overlooks a discussion in CP.V.3 of a Peripatetic strategy for dissolving theological fatalism. Boethius’ treatment of this strategy and the lesson it provides about divine foreknowledge requires a reorientation of our understanding of the Consolation text. The result is that it is not foreknowledge nor any other temporally-conditioned knowledge that motivates Boethian concern but divine knowledge simpliciter.

In this study, Uhlfelder argues convincingly that, in portraying his literary persona as an exemplum of man in his quest for self-knowledge, Boethius has made the whole Consolatio a cosmic image representing man as microcosm. The mental faculties of sensus, imaginatio, ratio, and intellegentia are arranged as a proportion suggesting both Plato’s famous “divided line” at the end of Book 6 of the Republic and, at the same time, the four elements of the physical cosmos which, according to the Platonic (...) Timaeus, are connected with one another so as to form a geometrical proportion. The philosophical argument of the Consolatio in books II through V comprises another cosmic image with III. M.9 at its exact center; in addition, the other three cosmic depictions, revolving as concentric circles around III. M.9, may be viewed as forming an image of cosmic order. In its structure, then, Boethius’ work is an anagogic eikon which formally depicts its content. (shrink)

Boethius fasst im 6. Jahrhundert den Plan, samtliche Werke Aristoteles' und Platons ins Lateinische zu ubersetzen und mit Kommentaren zu versehen. Die Motivation fur dieses Projekt liegt in seiner Einsicht in die bildungstheoretischen Grundlagen des Platonismus und des Aristotelismus begrundet, die ihm auch als Massstab fur seine ethischen Erkenntnisse und sein padagogisch orientiertes Schaffen dienen. Daruber hinaus liefert seine Sorge um die Anschlussfahigkeit dieser Bildungstradition an die gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen im lateinischsprachigen Raum seiner Zeit den entscheidenden Impuls. Ziel dieses Buches ist (...) es, Boethius' Ubersetzungsprojekt in die verschiedenen Ebenen der mit diesem Projekt verbundenen Wissenstransfers aufzuschlusseln und sowohl die Inhalte als auch die Bedingungen dieser Transfers aufzuzeigen. Die Ubersetzungen im engeren Sinne sind hierbei nur ein Teil des Wissenstransfers. Denn mit Blick auf die Sorge um eine gelingende Vermittlung der Inhalte fur die verschiedenen Niveaustufen seines Zielpublikums stellen die Kommentierungen und die Massnahmen der didaktischen Vermittlung einen integralen Bestandteil seines Ubersetzungsprojekts und damit weitere Wissenstransferebenen dar. Die Vorgehensweisen bei diesen verschiedenen Aspekten der Ubersetzung wiederum finden ihre Grundlage in den sprachphilosophischen und seelentheoretischen Einsichten, die fur Boethius' Konzeption einer gelingenden Vermittlung verantwortlich sind. Die Theorie der Sprache, die Boethius in seiner Bearbeitung der aristotelischen Schrift Peri hermeneias (bzw. De interpretatione) ins Lateinische ubertragt, bildet damit zugleich die Grundlage fur die Praxis seiner Ubertragung. (shrink)

In this chapter from a collection on the Stoici tradition, I explore Boethius’s works chronologically in order to elucidate his overall evaluation of Stoicism as a philosophy. It turns out that Boethius offers a "mixed review"' of Stoicism. Beginning with references to the Stoics in his logical works and then turning to the 'Consolation', I delineate the intelligible contours of Stoicism as Boethius sees it, including the positive impetus Stoicism provides toward a philosophical apprehension of reality as well as its (...) innate inadequacy for attaining the full measure of wisdom available to us through philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, literature was read with the ear as much as with the eye: silent reading was the exception; audible reading, the norm. This highly original book shows that Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy--one of the most widely-read texts in Western history--aims to affect the listener through the designs of its rhythmic sound. Stephen Blackwood argues that the Consolation's metres are arranged in patterns that have a therapeutic and liturgical purpose: as a bodily mediation of the text's (...) consolation, these rhythmic patterns enable the listener to discern the eternal in the motion of time. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy vividly explores how in this acoustic encounter with the text philosophy becomes a lived reality, and reading a kind of prayer. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 53, Issue 2-4, pp 170 - 193 Boethius identifies beings that _are in_ a subject with what the Scholastics called predicamental accident, and predication by accident with the predication of what _is in_ a subject. The first of these questionable assimilations went on to become terminology commonly accepted by Scholastics of all eras. On the other hand, the second, which seems quite consistent with the thinking of Aristotle, was only admitted with many reservations, probably because of the (...) bewildering claims of Aristotle in _Cat._ 5, 2a27-34 about the predication of what _is in_ the subject. In what follows I will try to show how these phrases, properly understood, are consistent with the idea that what _is in_ the subject is said by accident of the substance, although they implicate a difficulty poorly resolved by Boethius himself and those who followed him on this point, of whom I will only mention by way of example some Scholastics from the 16th century. (shrink)

According to Plutarch, the theory of psychological disharmony relies on the Platonic music harmony. When Plato refers to music harmony, he means the kind of harmony where the concept of God is the source through which all beings emanate. The mental passions define the quality of human character and consequently develop the social man. As far as the Aristotelian ethical theory is concerned, morality does not condemn the passions, because it has a clear ontological and anthropological basis. The Stoics stress (...) that a trait of the human soul is sociality, and that happens because all human beings are under the law of sympathy and constitute a whole. At medieval times, Boethius portrays the middle age social conditions which also resemble with our postmodern societies. (shrink)

Anicius Manlius Seuerinus Boethius has been regarded one of the major sources of Platonism in the Middle Ages, and the influence of different Platonists on his thought has been widely discussed. In his Aristotelian commentaries, however, Boethius rejects Platonists’ opinions while saying that Aristotle and Plato essentially agree. Boethius may have intended to show the agreement he saw, but did not provide any explanation in his works. In this article, I consider how Boethius could have seen such an agreement. While (...) reexamining past remarks about Platonism in Boethius, I conclude that he adopts Porphyry’s view that Aristotelian logic functions as a step toward the metaphysical appreciation of the universe, which Platonists consider to be the most essential form of philosophy. However, Boethius follows Iamblichus in holding that the highest level of metaphysical appreciation involves mathematization. (shrink)

Arithmetic was one of the seven liberal arts taught in the French schools just before the middle of the twelfth century, and Boethius’s De arithmetica was the principal textbook for this art. This volume provides an edition of a commentary on the De arithmetica; the accompanying introduction identifies the author of the commentary as Thierry of Chartres, and provides a careful consideration of how the commentary reflects his philosophy. Unlike the commentaries on Plato's Timaeus and on Boethius's Consolatio philosophiae, medieval (...) exegesis of Boethius's De arithmetica has seldom been subjected to comprehensive and systematic enquiry. Inhabiting the shifting boundary between philosophy and history of science, the De arithmetica itself has been neglected by most medievalists. Yet, from the Carolingian renaissance onward, when the scholarly curriculum came to be based on the seven liberal arts, Boethius's work soon became a canonical text for the study of arithmetic. Indeed, the growing interest in it during the twelfth century is attested by the large number of surviving commentaries in manuscript. (shrink)

Boethius is largely underrated in the history of Western thought. Scholarship often regarded him and his era Late Antiquity as mere intermediaries between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. This volume shows that Boethius and his time can be appreciated in their own right.".

A análise visa a uma reflexão sobre ética e educação na obra De consolatione philosophiae, de Boécio. A partir da posição e atitude filosófica e de uma breve exposição geral do trabalho, procura-se compreender o processo boeciano de busca da felicidade, exposto no Livro III. No diálogo entre a Filosofia e Boécio, é retomada a ideia de que todos os homens desejam alcançar o bem final identificado como felicidade. Perdidos na multiplicidade fragmentada dos bens exteriores das paixões, os homens devem (...) procurar, pelo caminho da filosofia e sem apelo à religião, o bem único e verdadeiro: Deus. A reflexão mostra o itinerário da vida humana e a necessidade de cada pessoa em "aprender a viver" uma vida ética, libertando-se das paixões do corpo que adoecem a alma. This article analyses ethics and education in Boethius' De consolatione philosophy of Boethius. We seek to comprehend the search for happiness as expounded in Book III of that work. Boethius takes up the idea that all men wish to reach the final good, which is identified as happiness. Lost in the fragmented multiplicity of external goods and passions, men should search - by the path of philosophy and without resorting to religion - the one true good: God. These considerations indicate the path of human life and the need for one to "learn to live" an ethical life, freeing oneself from the passions of the body that sicken the soul. (shrink)

Boethius, “the first of the scholastics,” had an influence on the Latin Middle Ages that is difficult to overestimate. His translations of and commentaries on Aristotle’s philosophical and logical works were the main conduit between the Greek classical culture and the early Middle Ages. His two commentaries on Aristotle’s Peri Hermenias (“On Interpretation”), the longer of which is translated in the present two volumes (the first covering Books 1–3 and the second Books 4–6), were particularly influential. Unfortunately, those seeking to (...) understand this aspect of Boethius will find little to encourage them here. Aquinas is mentioned once (on the book jacket), and Augustine only a few times. About other .. (shrink)

This article offers a description of the manuscript Tokyo, National Diet Library, Ms. WA42-29. This manuscript, purchased in London in 1987, contains Latin translations of Aristotle’s logical works, some original works on logic by Boethius, and William of Moerbeke’s Latin translation of De anima. It is most likely identical with a manuscript of a similar composition that disappeared in the first decades of the twentieth century from what is today the Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek Fulda. The manuscript was once part of (...) the collection of Johannes Guldin, Domherr of Konstanz in the fifteenth century. The suggestion that this Guldin was also the author of Questiones veteris et nove logice, preserved in Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. HB X 2, turns out to be incorrect. (shrink)

In book one of the Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius is portrayed as a man who suffers because he forgot philosophy. Scholars have underestimated the significance of this portrayal and considered it a literary device the goal of which is simply to introduce the discussion that follows. In this paper, I show that this view is mistaken since it overlooks that this portrayal of Boethius is the key for the understanding of the whole text. The philosophical therapy that constitutes the core (...) of the ?Consolation? can in fact be properly evaluated only if we recognize the condition it is designed to cure. Through the portrayal of Boethius's forgetfulness, the ?Consolation? illustrates that it is the very nature of philosophical knowledge that makes it susceptible to being forgotten. Philosophical knowledge can (i) turn into misology, when it appears unable to solve certain problems, and (ii) be overrun by strong emotions. The therapy offered in the ?Consolation? is designed to make Boethius aware of the ?fragility? of philosophical knowledge and show him how to ?strengthen? it. He is taught how to more fully embody philosophy's precepts and that philosophy's inability to solve certain problems reveals not its failures but its limits. (shrink)

Dans des travaux récents, l’aspect logique du thème de la prescience et de la causalité divines chez Boèce a été largement exploité, surtout dans les études vigoureuses de François Beets et John Marenbon. Cependant, si on considère l’ensemble des textes boéciens sans se borner à en privilégier quelques extraits, il apparaît que certains éléments de cette thématique peuvent encore être soulignés, principalement dans le sens du caractère négatif du discours sur la connaissance, la prescience et la causalité divines. Cela semble (...) permettre, par conséquent, de continuer le débat au sujet de ce qu’on pourrait nommer l’épistémologie philosophico-théologique de Boèce. (shrink)

Le premier commentaire à l’Isagoge de Porphyre, réalisé à partir de la version de Marius Victorinus, semble avoir été pour Boèce l’occasion de faire converger deux analyses, mises au service d’un même idéalisme culturel, l’une propre à une certaine philologie, en un sens qu’il conviendra de définir, l’autre propre à la philosophie, dans son acception classique. Par bien des aspects, ce double cheminement nous paraît présenter des analogies avec ce que l’on observera à la Renaissance, lorsque les approches linguistiques et (...) gnoséologiques se verront associées dans le déchiffrement de textes dont la teneur se révèle à même de susciter l’élévation et l’accomplissement de l’homme. (shrink)

By developing a reassesment of the repertoire of Albertist literature in light of new manuscript witnesses, the article intends to reconstruct the late-medieval Albertist model of metaphysics and to investigate the crucial reception of Boethius’ De hebdomadibus and of the Liber de causis in the academic teaching and disputes of the early fifteenth century. The article focuses on two anonymous commentaries on these treatises, which were both composed by the same Albertist master , and analyzes their significance within the Albertist (...) school as well as their close relation to the works of Johannes de Nova Domo. In particular, the essay illustrates how the De hebdomadibus and the Liber de causis, which were adduced and commented on as canonical authorities, not only constituted central sources for Albertist doctrines, but also served as disciplinary models for the axiomatic exposition of first philosophy. The final section of the article provides a detailed account of the manuscript transmission of the two Albertist commentaries and traces the topography of their dissemination. (shrink)

General remarks on some ontological premises of Aquinas' Epistemology.

Anselm inherited a Platonizing approach to philosophy from Augustine and Boethius. But he characteristically reworked what he found in their texts by questioning and disputing it into something more rigorous. In this paper, I compare and contrast Anselm’s treatment of the trope ‘evil is nothing, not a being’ withBoethius’s use of it in The Consolation of Philosophy. In the first section, I expose a fallacious argument form common to them both: paradigm Fness is identical with paradigm Gness; X participates in (...) paradigm Fness and so is F; therefore, X participates in paradigm Gness and so is G. In the second section, I contrast Philosophy’s “strong medicine”—‘evil is nothing,’ ‘evil-doings are nothing,’ ‘evil humans do not exist’—with Anselm’s development of the point that injustice is a privation and so parasitic on the beings that are deprived. By contrast with Boethius, Anselm emphasizes that the willinstrument, will-power, the will’s action and turnings are something and so from God. Likewise, Anselm insists—pace Boethius—that Adam’s fallen race is still the human race. In the final section, I turnto Anselm’s distinction between injustice (iniustitia) and disadvantage (incommoda), his concession that some disadvantages are something, and his explanation of happiness in terms of advantage or bona sibi. For Anselm, happiness and justice break apart, so that it is possible in this world for the just to lack advantage. Moreover, in the world to come, the damned will suffer radical deprivation—not only of the justice, which they deserted, but of advantages. I contrastthis with Boethius’s insistence (based on the argument in section I) that virtue suffices for happiness and vice for unhappiness, and that there is no such thing as bad fortune. I conclude by pondering why Anselm treated disadvantage as a something rather than as a misfit between somethings. (shrink)

Anselm inherited a Platonizing approach to philosophy from Augustine and Boethius. But he characteristically reworked what he found in their texts by questioning and disputing it into something more rigorous. In this paper, I compare and contrast Anselm’s treatment of the trope ‘evil is nothing, not a being’ withBoethius’s use of it in The Consolation of Philosophy. In the first section, I expose a fallacious argument form common to them both: paradigm Fness is identical with paradigm Gness; X participates in (...) paradigm Fness and so is F; therefore, X participates in paradigm Gness and so is G. In the second section, I contrast Philosophy’s “strong medicine”—‘evil is nothing,’ ‘evil-doings are nothing,’ ‘evil humans do not exist’—with Anselm’s development of the point that injustice is a privation and so parasitic on the beings that are deprived. By contrast with Boethius, Anselm emphasizes that the willinstrument, will-power, the will’s action and turnings are something and so from God. Likewise, Anselm insists—pace Boethius—that Adam’s fallen race is still the human race. In the final section, I turnto Anselm’s distinction between injustice and disadvantage, his concession that some disadvantages are something, and his explanation of happiness in terms of advantage or bona sibi. For Anselm, happiness and justice break apart, so that it is possible in this world for the just to lack advantage. Moreover, in the world to come, the damned will suffer radical deprivation—not only of the justice, which they deserted, but of advantages. I contrastthis with Boethius’s insistence that virtue suffices for happiness and vice for unhappiness, and that there is no such thing as bad fortune. I conclude by pondering why Anselm treated disadvantage as a something rather than as a misfit between somethings. (shrink)

Contrary to the claims of recent commentators, I argue that Boethius holds a modified version of the Ammonian three-fold universal (transcendent, immanent, and conceptual). He probably identifies transcendent universals as divine ideas, and accepts too forms immanent in corporeal particulars, most likely construing these along the Aphrodisian lines that he hints at in a well-known passage from his second commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge. Boethius never states the theory of the three-fold form outright, but I attempt to show that this theory (...) nevertheless underlies and gives structure to what Boethius has to say on the topic. (shrink)

Remembering Boethius explores the rich intersection between the reception of Boethius and the literary construction of aristocratic identity, focusing on a body of late-medieval vernacular literature that draws on the Consolation of Philosophy to represent and reimagine contemporary experiences of exile and imprisonment. Elizabeth Elliott presents new interpretations of English, French, and Scottish texts, including Machaut's Confort d'ami, Remede de Fortune, and Fonteinne amoureuse, Jean Froissart's Prison amoureuse, Thomas Usk's Testament of Love, and The Kingis Quair, reading these texts as (...) sources contributing to the development of the reader's moral character. These writers evoke Boethius in order to articulate and shape personal identities for public consumption, and Elliott's careful examination demonstrates that these texts often write not one life, but two, depicting the relationship between poet and aristocratic patron. These works associate the reception of wisdom with the cultivation of memory, and in turn, illuminate the contemporary reception of the Consolation as a text that itself focuses on memory and describes a visionary process of education that takes place within Boethius's own mind. In asking how and why writers remember Boethius in the Middle Ages, this book sheds new light on how medieval people imagined, and reimagined, themselves. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide more evidence for the notions that there actually is a Latin (as opposed to a Greek) Neoplatonic tradition in late antiquity, that this tradition includes a systematic theory of first principles, and that this tradition and theory are influential in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. The method of the essay is intended to be novel in that, instead of examining authors or works in a chronological sequence and attempting to isolate doctrines in the traditional (...) manner, it proceeds by identifying certain philosophemes (a concept borrowed from structuralist and post-structuralist thought and here signifying certain minimal units from which philosophical “systems“ can be constructed), and then studying the combination and re-combination of these philosophemes consciously and unconsciously by a selection of important medieval writers. These philosophemes occur in Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram ; Augustine, De Trinitate ; Augustine, De Vera Religione ; Augustine, De Musica ; Macrobius, Commentarius in Somnium Scipionis ; and Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae . The sampling of medieval authors who use these philosophemes includes Eriugena, William of Conches, Thierry of Chartres, and Nicholas of Cusa. (shrink)

The articles in this volume focus upon Boethius's extant works: his De arithmetica and a fragmentary De musica, his translations and commentaries on logic, his five theological texts, and, of course, his Consolation of Philosophy.