## 1. Life and Works



Anicius Severinus Manlius Boethius was born into the Roman aristocracy
c. 475-7 C.E.--about the same time as the last Roman
Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed (August 476). Boethius lived
most of his life under the rule of Theoderic, an Ostrogoth educated at
Constantinople, who was happy to let the old families keep up their
traditions in Rome, while he wielded power in Ravenna.
Boethius's privileged social position ensured that he was taught
Greek thoroughly and, though it is unlikely that he travelled to
Athens or Alexandria, the sites of the two remaining (Platonic)
philosophical schools, he was certainly acquainted with a good deal of
the work which had been going on there. He was able to spend most of
his life in learned leisure, pursuing his vast project of translating
and commenting philosophical texts. The Roman aristocracy was, by his
day, thoroughly Christianized, and Boethius also became involved in
some of the ecclesiastical disputes of his time, centring mainly
around a schism between the Latin and the Greek Churches which was
resolved shortly before his death.



Boethius's final years are well known to anyone who has read his
most popular work, the *Consolation of Philosophy.* He agreed
to become Theoderic's 'Master of Offices', one of
the most senior officials, but he quickly fell out with many others at
court, probably because he attacked their corruption. Accused of
treason and of engaging in magic, he was imprisoned and (probably in
526) executed, but not before he had the chance to write his literary
masterpiece.



The *Consolation of Philosophy*, a prosimetrum (a prose work
with verse interludes) which recounts, in polished literary language,
an imagined dialogue between the prisoner Boethius and a lady who
personifies Philosophy, contrasts with the rest of Boethius's
*oeuvre.* Besides writing text-books on arithmetic and
geometry, closely based on Greek models, Boethius devoted himself to
translating Aristotle's logic and commenting on it; he produced
a commentary on the *Categories* and two each on *On
Interpretation* and on the *Isagoge*
('Introduction') by Porphyry, which had become a standard
part of the logical curriculum. He also composed logical text-books on
division, categorical syllogisms, and on two branches of logic which
will require further explanation (see below,
 Section 3):
 hypothetical syllogisms and topical reasoning (along with a
commentary on Cicero's *Topics*). In three of his four
*Theological Treatises* (often known as the *Opuscula
sacra*), I, II and V, Boethius uses his logical equipment to
tackle problems of Christian doctrine; IV, however, is a
straightforward statement of Christian doctrine, a sort of confession
of faith; whilst III is a brief, not specifically Christian
philosophical treatise.


## 2. The Logical Project and the Logical Commentaries



Boethius's work as a translator and commentator of Aristotelian
logic might appear to be just the beginning of a wider project,
announced in the second commentary on *On Interpretation* (c.
516), and cut short by his execution, to translate and comment on all
the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Yet Boethius seems to have become
so engrossed in his role as an expositor of logic, not limiting
himself to a single commentary on each work, and writing extra
textbooks, that it is hard not to see it as having diverted him, in
any case, from his more grandiose scheme. Indeed, Boethius seems to
have pursued a rather special *logical* project.



The particular, deliberate nature of this project is not cast into
doubt by the fact that Boethius's logical commentaries, although
almost certainly not merely servile translations of marginalia from a
Greek manuscript (as James Shiel (1990) has argued), are not at all
original in their logical doctrines. For what is important is
Boethius's choice of Porphyry as his main authority in logic. It
was Porphyry who, two centuries or so earlier, had been responsible
for making Aristotelian logic an important subject within the
Neoplatonic curriculum. He held that it did not conflict with Platonic
doctrine, as his teacher Plotinus had believed, because its area of
application was limited to the sensible world, to which everyday
language refers. Later Neoplatonists accepted the importance of
Aristotelian logic, and the harmony between Platonic and Aristotelian
teaching, but they tended to try and discover Neoplatonic doctrines
even in the Aristotelian logical texts. In the case of the
*Categories*, they even imagined that Aristotle had taken his
doctrine from a Pythagorean writer, Archytas, and that there was an
underlying and wildly metaphysical strand to the text which it was the
commentator's duty to uncover. Boethius, however, although
making occasional use of later commentaries, usually followed
Porphyry: on the *Categories* he stayed close to
Porphyry's surviving (and quite simple) question-and-answer
commentary, whilst the long, second commentary on *On
Interpretation* is commonly accepted as the best guide to
Porphyry's exegesis, since his own commentary does not survive.
Boethius's commentaries were, therefore, because more
Porphyrian, so more Aristotelian than what was being written in Greek
in his period.



Boethius's Porphyrian approach is evident even in the two
commentaries on Porphyry's own *Isagoge* (an introduction
to the *Categories* which had become accepted as a standard
part of the logical curriculum)--one text on which, obviously,
Porphyry himself had never commented. Near the beginning of the
*Isagoge*, Porphyry mentions three questions about universals,
but declines to discuss them in an introductory work. Do they exist or
are they mere concepts? If they exist are they bodily or not, and, if
they are not, are they separated from sensible things or do they exist
in them? By Boethius's time, the Greek commentators had
developed a standard way of glossing this passage. They explained that
universals could be considered as concepts (universals *post
rem*--'following the thing'), as intrinsic to
bodily things (universals *in re*--'in the
thing') and as really existing and separate from bodies
(universals *ante rem*--'before the thing').
In most of his work, Boethius follows this way of thinking about
universals (cf. Cross 2012). But here he takes a different approach,
turning to a train of thought (1906, 161:14 ff.) which goes back in
part to Porphyry himself and, through him, to the great Aristotelian,
Alexander of Aphrodisias.



Boethius begins with an argument against universals as an object of
enquiry. Everything that really exists is one in number, but nothing
that is common to many at the same time can be one in number. But
universals *are* common to many at the same time. And so
universals do not exist in reality, but in thought alone. Thoughts,
Boethius continues, are of two sorts: those which derive from their
object in the way it is (call them 'corresponding
thoughts') and those which do not. If the thoughts that are
universals were corresponding thoughts, then universals would also
exist in reality. Since they do not, universals are non-corresponding
thoughts, and non-corresponding thoughts are empty. Enquiry into
universals (and therefore into the five predicables studied in the
*Isagoge*) should therefore be abandoned. Boethius's way
of tackling this objection is to challenge just the very final stage.
Non-corresponding thoughts, he argues, are not empty if they are
abstractions. Consider a mathematical object such as a line or a
point, which the mathematician contemplates by abstracting from the
material body of which it is part. No such thing exists in reality as
an immaterial line or point, and yet the mathematician's thought
is not empty or misleading. The case is similar if we disregard the
accidental features of some particular thing (John Marenbon, for
instance) and are left just with his nature of man. This line of
reply, as Alain de Libera (1999, 159-280) has shown, goes back
to Alexander of Aphrodisias or his followers. Boethius, however, goes
on to give it his own particular twist, by suggesting that the
universals produced by abstraction are not merely the constructions of
the mind, but do grasp reality as it is. Although this line fits oddly
with the argument from which Boethius set out, he may already be
anticipating the Principle of Modes of Cognition, which he proposes in
the *Consolation* (see
 Section 6
 below).



The long, second commentary on *On Interpretation* is very
probably based, as explained above, on Porphyry's lost
commentary. It thus provides a full account of Porphyry's
semantics--a semantics based on Aristotle, because he takes
ordinary language to be concerned with material things rather than
with the intelligible world. There is also an extended discussion of
the sea-battle passage in Chapter 9. According to the principle of
bivalence, 'There will be a sea-battle tomorrow' is either
true or false. But, if it is true, then there *will* be a
sea-battle tomorrow; if false, there *will not* be one. Either
way, is it not therefore a matter of necessity? Boethius's
strategy is to say that 'There will be a sea-battle
tomorrow' is indeed either true or false, but, because the
sea-battle is a contingent event, its truth or falsehood is only
indefinite. What does this position amount to? There are various
interpretations of how it should be understood. Perhaps the most
plausible is that Boethius holds that, if an event *e* is
contingent, then the sentence '*e* will take place'
is false, even if it turns out that *e* does in fact happen,
because '*e* will take place' implies that
*e* will take place necessarily. But a qualified sentence such
as '*e* will take place contingently' is true just
in case it is not necessary that *e* happens, and *e*
actually happens.


## 3. The Logical Text-Books



The two most interesting of Boethius's logical text-books are
the treatises on topical *differentiae* (c. 522-3) and on
hypothetical syllogisms (516-22), since each gives an insight
into an area of late ancient logic for which there are otherwise few,
if any, sources.



From Aristotle's *Topics*, logicians of late antiquity
had elaborated a system of topical argument, which had been
considerably influenced by the needs of Roman lawyers. The focus of
topical theory is on *discovering* arguments, and these
arguments are not usually formally valid, but merely plausible. The
topical *differentiae* are the classifications of types of such
arguments; knowing the *differentiae* gives the arguer a ready
means to hit upon a persuasive line of reasoning. Suppose, for
example, I want to argue that we should praise Cicero. I start trying
to think what information I have which might help me to argue this
point, and I remember that everyone is full of praises for another
orator, Demosthenes. Then I turn over in my mind the list of topical
*differentiae* and I see that the *differentia*
'from equals' will provide me with the argument I
need:


1. Everyone praises Demosthenes as an orator.
2. Cicero is Demosthenes's equal as an orator.



Therefore


3. Everyone should praise Cicero.



Associated with this, as with every *differentia*, is a
'maximal sentence' (*maxima propositio*), in this
case: 'equal things are to be judged equally.' The maximal
sentence can be taken as an indication of how to put together the
argument; it might also be added to the argument in order to make it
formally valid, but Boethius did not envisage maximal sentences being
used in this way. Rather, the topical arguer produces arguments of
differing strength, depending on how close to being a logical truth is
the maximal sentence associated with the *differentia* he is
using. Some maximal sentences do indeed state fundamental laws of
reasoning (including *modus ponens* and *modus
tollens*); others state what are at best rules of thumb and, in
the case of the topic 'from authority'--the
injunction to accept as true what the wise, or experts or the majority
believe--not even that.



Boethius's two main authorities, Cicero and Themistius, give
rather different lists of the topical *differentiae*, and one
of the tasks of his text-book is to show that their schemes do really
coincide. In his commentary on Cicero's *Topics*, written
shortly before, Boethius expounds the same theory, but leaves himself
plenty of room for digressions on such subjects as universals,
causation, free will and Stoic logic.



It is Stoic logic and Boethius's relations to it which give his
treatise *On hypothetical syllogisms* its special interest. A
syllogism is 'hypothetical' when one of its premisses is a
molecular sentence which uses 'if' or 'or'
(understood as exclusive disjunction) as a connective. So, for
example, the following syllogism is hypothetical:


4. If it is day, it is light.
5. It is not light.



Therefore


6. It is not day.



A modern reader will be inclined to see (4-6) as a piece of
simple sentence logic: *p-q*; !q; therefore
!*p.* Since it was the Stoics who, in antiquity, developed
a sentence logic, by contrast with Aristotle's term logic, it
would appear that Boethius's treatise on hypothetical syllogisms
is the tributary of Stoic logic. This conclusion is true to the extent
that the tradition Boethius inherited goes back in part to Stoic
roots. By the time it had reached Boethius, however, Stoic and
Peripatetic elements had become hopelessly confused (cf. Speca 2001).
As C.J. Martin (1991) has shown, Boethius himself lacked the
conceptual apparatus to think in terms of sentence logic. For him,
(4-6) is to be understood as term logic, in which the predicates
'is light' and 'is day' are attributed to or
denied of a vague subject 'it'. The treatise itself is
mainly devoted to a laborious calculation of the various different
possible forms of hypothetical syllogism involving two, three (with a
first premise such as 'If it is *A*, then if it is
*B*, it is *C*') and four terms (with a first
premise such as 'If, if it is *A* then it is *B*,
then, if it is *C* then it is *D*').


## 4. The Theological Treatises



The three *opuscula sacra* written to analyse points of
Christian doctrine seem to have been occasioned by events of the time.
Treatise V, against Eutyches and Nestorius, was apparently inspired by
a letter (c. 513) from a group of Greek bishops, proposing a
Christological formula which, they hoped, would unite the Western and
Eastern Churches. The two treatises on the Trinity (II is a partial
sketch for I) are probably related to the intervention in 519 by a
group of Scythian monks, also designed to heal the schism. The works
have, however, an interest far beyond their contributions to the
immediate doctrinal debate. They pioneer a method of using logical
analysis in a theological context which Augustine had anticipated but
not developed. Both heretical positions (for examples, the views about
Christ and human nature held by Eutyches and Nestorius) and orthodox
Christian doctrine are subjected to rigorous scrutiny, using the
techniques of Aristotelian logic and, where necessary, ideas from
Aristotelian physics. The heretical ideas are shown to contain logical
contradictions. As for the orthodox understanding of God, it does not
fit within the classifications of Aristotelian logic and natural
science, but Boethius tries to chart exactly how far these
distinctions, which are accommodated to the created world, also apply
to the deity, and at what point they break down and provide us merely
with an analogy.



This way of thinking about God is made especially clear in the longer
treatise on the Trinity (I). When God is said to have an attribute,
how is this predication to be understood? For created things, on the
Aristotelian scheme, a predication is either substantial (when the
genus, species or *differentia* is predicated of something:
'Socrates is an animal/man/rational') or accidental, when
the predicate is any accident in any of the nine Aristotelian
categories of accident. Augustine had already acknowledged that
nothing is predicated of God accidentally. Predications about him may
be relative, as when he is called 'Father' or
'Son', or substantial. Even when a quality or quantity is
attributed to him, the predication is substantial. When we say of a
created thing that it is great or good, we are affirming that it
participates in greatness or goodness: it is one thing for the thing
to exist, another for it to be great or good. But God is greatness
itself and goodness itself, and so, when we say, 'God is
good' or 'God is great', we are not affirming any
attribute of him beyond what he is as a substance. This Augustinian
view is faithfully set out in the brief Treatise II.



In Treatise I, Boethius develops this scheme. In especial, he
distinguishes between predications in the categories of Substance,
Quantity and Quality, which are proper and intrinsic, and those in the
other six categories, excluding Relation, which he calls improper and
extrinsic. The intuitive idea behind the distinction seems to be that
predications in these other categories concern only how the subject
relates to other things; only substantial, quantitative and
qualitative attributes characterize the thing itself. Boethius goes on
to say that, whereas all proper, intrinsic predications about God are
substantial, extrinsic, improper predications about him are not: they
do not concern what either God or his creatures *are*, but are
rather about exterior things.



The discussion of Relation shows particularly clearly how Boethius
applies logic to analysing God as far as he can, and then shows where
and how the logic fails. He needs to explain how it can be true that
the same, one God is both the Father and the Son. He does so by
claiming that a predication of Relation, such as 'is the
Father', does not concern the substance of the things related:
that *a* is related to *b* in no way changes *a*
or *b*. Moreover, there are some relationships which a thing
can have to itself--for example, that of equality. Being-a-father
and being-a-son are not, among created things, such relations: no one
can be his own father or his own son. But it is here, says Boethius,
that creaturely logic breaks down when it tries to comprehend the
Trinity: we have in some way to try to grasp the idea of a relation of
fatherhood or filiation which is reflexive.



Another philosophical question Boethius explores in his discussions of
the Trinity is individuation (as well as more widely the topic of
parts and wholes). Unfortunately, it is not completely clear to what
theory of individuation he subscribes. A quick reading of some
passages would suggest that substances are indviduated by a bundle of
accidents, but there are indications that Boethius may have preferred
a theory of individuation by spatio-temporal position, or one
different from either of these (cf. Arlig, 2009).



Treatise III is also concerned with predication and God. But it
differs sharply from the other treatises, in that it contains nothing
specifically Christian. The question it addresses is how all
substances are good in that they are, and yet are not substantial
goods. Boethius takes it as a fundamental truth that all things tend
to the good, and also that things are by nature like what they desire.
Everything, therefore, is by nature good. But if so, then things must
be good either by participation, or substantially (or
'essentially' as a modern philosopher would say). If they
were merely good by participation, they would be good by accident, not
by nature. But if they are good substantially, then their substance is
goodness itself, and so nothing can be distinguished from the first
good, God. In giving his answer, Boethius makes use of a set of axioms
he states at the beginning of the piece, and undertakes a
thought-experiment in which it is supposed *per impossibile*
that God does not exist. The key to his solution lies in finding a
principled way to distinguish between a thing *a* being
*F* in that it exists, and a thing *a* being
substantially *F*. For *a* to be substantially
*F* means, Boethius's discussion implies, that
'*a* is not-*F*' is inconceivable (we might
say 'logically impossible'). For *a* to be
*F* in that it exists means just that '*a* is
not-*F*' is impossible (we might say 'impossible
given the way the world is set up'). Whereas it is inconceivable
that God is not good, it is merely impossible that everything is not
good.


## 5. The *Consolation of Philosophy:* The Argument of Books I-V.2



The *Consolation of Philosophy* presents interpretative
difficulties of a different order from the logical works or the
theological treatises. Unlike them, it is written in an elaborate
literary form: it consists of a dialogue between Boethius, sitting in
his prison-cell awaiting execution, and a lady who personifies
Philosophy, and its often highly rhetorical prose is interspersed with
verse passages. Moreover, although it is true that elsewhere Boethius
does not write in a way which identifies him as a Christian except in
the Theological Treatises I, II, IV and V, the absence of any explicit
reference to Christianity in the *Consolation* poses a special
problem, when it is recalled that it is the work of a man about to
face death and so very literally composing his philosophical and
literary testament. These questions will appear in sharper focus
 (Section 7)
 when the argument of the *Consolation* has been examined.



Boethius's real predicament sets the scene for the argument of
the *Consolation.* He represents himself as utterly confused
and dejected by his sudden change of fortune. Philosophy's first
job--true to the generic aim of a *consolatio*--is to
console, not by offering sympathy, but by showing that Boethius has no
good reason to complain: true happiness, she wishes to argue, is not
damaged even by the sort of disaster he has experienced. She also
identifies in Book I a wider objective: to show that it is not the
case, as Boethius the character claims, that the wicked prosper and
the good are oppressed.



Philosophy seems to have two different lines of argument to show
Boethius that his predicament does not exclude him from true
happiness. The first train of argument rests on a *complex*
view of the highest good. The first (which is put forward in Book II
and the first part of Book III) distinguishes between the ornamental
goods of fortune, which are of very limited value--riches,
status, power and sensual pleasure--and the true goods: the
virtues and also sufficiency, which is what those who seek riches,
status and power really desire. It also recognizes some non-ornamental
goods of fortune, such as a person's friends and family, as
having considerable genuine value. On the basis of these distinctions,
Philosophy can argue that Boethius has not lost any true goods, and
that he still even retains those goods of fortune--his
family--which carry much real worth. She does not maintain that,
in his fall from being powerful, rich and respected to the status of a
condemned prisoner, Boethius has lost nothing of any worth at all. But
his loss need not cut him off from true happiness, which is attained
primarily by an austere life based on sufficiency, virtue and
wisdom.



Philosophy's second line of argument is based on a
*simple* view of the highest good. She begins to put it forward
in III.10, a turning-point in the discussion, which is preceded by the
most solemn poem of the whole work (III m. 9), an invocation to God in
terms borrowed from Plato's *Timaeus.* Through a number
of arguments which draw out the consequences of the Neoplatonic
assumptions which Boethius accepts, Philosophy shows that the perfect
good and perfect happiness are not merely in God: they *are*
God. Perfect happiness is therefore completely untouched by changes in
earthly fortune, however drastic. But what this second approach fails
to explain is how the individual human, such as Boethius, is supposed
to relate to the perfect happiness which is God. Philosophy seems to
speak as if, merely by *knowing* that God is perfect happiness,
Boethius himself will be rendered happy, although in the next section
it seems that it is by acting well that a person can attain the
good.



Philosophy now goes on (III.11-12) to explain how God rules the
universe. He does so by acting as a final cause. He is the good which
all things desire, and so he functions as 'a helm and rudder, by
which the fabric of the world is kept stable and without decay.'
Philosophy thus pictures an entirely non-interventionist God,
presiding over a universe which is well-ordered simply because he
exists. But how does this account fit with the apparent oppression of
the good and triumph of the wicked, about which Boethius had begun by
complaining? In Book IV.1-4, Philosophy shows, drawing on
Plato's *Gorgias*, that the evil do not really prosper
and they are in fact powerless. Her central argument is that what
everyone wants is happiness, and happiness is identical with the good.
The good have therefore gained happiness, whereas the wicked have not;
and since people have power in so far as they can gain or bring about
what they want, the wicked are powerless. She also argues that the
good gain their reward automatically, since by being good, they attain
the good, which is happiness. By contrast, since evil is not a thing
but a privation of existence, by being wicked people punish
themselves, because they cease even to exist--that is to say,
they stop being the sort of things they were, humans, and become
other, lower animals. Philosophy is therefore able to put forward
emphatically two of the most counter-intuitive claims of the
*Gorgias*: that the wicked are happier when they are prevented
from their evil and punished for it, than when they carry it out with
impunity, and that those who do injustice are unhappier than those who
suffer it.



At the beginning of IV.5, however, there is another change of
direction. Boethius the character is allowed to put forward the
obvious, common-sense objections to the position Philosophy has been
taking: 'which wise man', he asks, 'would prefer to
be a penniless, disgraced exile rather than stay in his own city and
lead there a flourishing life, mighty in wealth, revered in honour and
strong in power?' Philosophy answers by abandoning completely
the explanation developed from III.11 onwards, which presented God as
a non-intervening final cause, and offers instead a view of God as the
efficient cause of all things. Divine providence is the unified view
in God's mind of the course of events which, unfolded in time,
is called 'fate', and everything which takes place on
earth is part of God's providence. Philosophy's change of
direction might seem at first to make Boethius's common-sense
objection even harder to answer, but in fact it is easy enough for her
to explain that apparently unjust rewards and punishments on earth
always serve a good, though to us hidden, purpose: for instance,
exercising good people to increase their virtue, helping the wicked to
repent or, alternatively, letting them bring themselves to ruin. A
less tractable problem raised by Philosophy's new approach is
that it seems to imply that the human will is causally determined.
Unlike many modern philosophers, Boethius did not believe that the
will can remain free, in the sense needed for attribution of moral
responsibility, if it is determined causally. Moreover, Philosophy
insists that the causal chain of providence, as worked out in fate,
embraces all that happens. In V.1, when Boethius asks about chance,
Philosophy explains that events are said to happen by chance when they
are the result of a chain of causes which is unintended or unexpected,
as when someone is digging in a field for vegetables and finds a
buried treasure. Philosophy's solution is to argue (V.2) that
rational acts of volition, unlike all external events, do not
themselves belong to the causal chain of fate. This freedom, however,
is enjoyed only by 'the divine and supernal substances'
and by human beings engaged in the contemplation of God. It is reduced
and lost as humans give their attentions to worldly things and allow
themselves to be swayed by the passions.


## 6. Divine Prescience, Contingency and Eternity



In V.3, however, the character Boethius puts forward an argument,
based on God's foreknowledge of future events, which threatens
to show that even mental acts of willing are necessary and so (as
Boethius the author believed) unfree. He argues that:



> 
> [7] If God foresees all things and cannot be mistaken in any way, what
> providence has foreseen will be, will necessarily happen. [8] So, if
> God foreknows from eternity not just what humans will do but also
> their plans and volitions, there will be no freedom of choice, for
> there will not be able to be any deed, or any sort of volition that
> infallible divine providence has not foreseen. For if volitions are
> capable of turning out differently from how they have been foreseen,
> then there will not be firm foreknowlede of the future, but rather
> uncertain opinion, and I judge it wicked to believe that about God.
> 



Since it is accepted that God is omniscient, and that this implies
that he *knows* what every future event--including mental
events such as volitions--will be, (7) and (8) each seem to rule
out any sort of freedom of the will requisite for attributing moral
responsibility: a consequence the disastrous implications of which
Boethius the character vividly describes.



Philosophy's answer to this difficulty is the most
philosophically intricate and interesting section of the
*Consolation*. It is one part of Boethius's work (perhaps
the only one) which remains of interest in contemporary philosophy (of
religion) and, for that reason, it has often been interpreted
according to a framework provided by more recent thinking about the
problem of divine prescience (see, for example, Leftow 1991, Zagzebski
1991). The following is, rather, an attempt to present the discussion
as it actually proceeds in the *Consolation*.



The first point which needs to be settled is what, precisely, is the
problem which Boethius the character proposes? One way of reading this
discussion is that the argument here is in fact fallacious. According
to this interpretation, the reasoning behind (7) seems to be of the
following form:


9. God knows every event, including all future ones.
10. When someone *knows* that an event will happen, then the
event will happen.
11. (10) is true as a matter of necessity, because it is impossible to
know that which is not the case.
12. If someone knows an event will happen, it will happen necessarily.
(10, 11)
13. Every event, including future ones, happens necessarily. (9,
12)



The pattern behind (8) will be similar, but in reverse: from a
negation of (13), the negation of (9) will be seen to follow. But, as
it is easy to observe, (9-13) is a fallacious argument: (10) and
(11) imply, not (12), but


14. Necessarily, if someone knows an event will happen, it will
happen.



The fallacy in question concerns the scope of the necessity operator.
Boethius, the claim would be, has mistakenly inferred the
(narrow-scope) necessity of the consequent ('the event will
happen'), when he is entitled only to infer the (wide-scope)
necessity of the whole conditional ('if someone knows an event
will happen, it will happen'). Boethius the character is clearly
taken in by this fallacious argument, and there is no good reason to
think that Boethius the author ever became aware of the fallacy
(despite a passage later on which some modern commentators have
interpreted in this sense). None the less, the discussion which
follows does not, as the danger seems to be, address itself to a
non-problem. Intuitively, Boethius sees that the threat which divine
prescience poses to the contingency of future events arises not just
from the claim that God's beliefs about the future constitute
*knowledge*, but also from the fact that they are beliefs about
the *future.* There is a real problem here, because if God
knows now what I shall do tomorrow, then it seems that either what I
shall do is already determined, or else that I shall have the power
tomorrow to convert God's knowledge today into a false belief.
Although his logical formulation does not capture this problem, the
solution Boethius gives to Philosophy is clearly designed to tackle
it.



It is also possible to read the way that the question is posed by
Boethius the character as not involving a fallacy (Marenbon 2013).
Boethius the character is, on this reading, putting forward a sort of
transcendental argument. Boethius considers that when a knower knows a
future event, as opposed to merely having opinion about it, the knower
is judging that the event is fixed, since if it were an event that
could be otherwise, it could be the object of opinion but not
knowledge. If future events could be otherwise, then God, in knowing
them, would in fact be holding a false belief, since he would be
judging that they could not be otherwise. But God has no false
beliefs, and so the world must be such that his beliefs about future
events are not false, and so all future events must be fixed.



Philosophy identifies (V.4) the character Boethius's central
difficulty as lying in the apparent incompatibility between an
event's not having a necessary outcome and yet its being
foreknown. To foresee something 'as if it were certain'
when it is uncertain how it will turn out is 'foreign to the
integrity of knowledge', since it involves 'judging a
thing as being other than it is.' Philosophy counters these
doubts with the principle that 'everything that is known is
grasped, not according to its own power, but rather according to the
capacity of those who know it.' Her view, as she develops it (in
V.5 and V.6), is based on what might be called the Principle of Modes
of Cognition: the idea that knowledge is always relativized to
different levels of knowers, who have different sorts of objects of
knowledge. This relativization is, however, limited. The same item is
not true for one knower and false for another, but the way in which a
given item is known differs according to the powers of the knower.
Philosophy develops this scheme in relation to the different levels of
the soul (intelligence, reason, imagination and the senses) and their
different objects (pure Form, abstract universals, images, particular
bodily things).



Philosophy does not at this point follow the most obvious path that
the Modes of Cognition Principle would suggest and declare that it
just depends on the knower whether something is known as certain or
not. Perhaps she accepted that there is something intrinsically
uncertain about future contingents, whoever it is that knows them.
Rather, she reaches her conclusion through a more complex twist of the
argument. Philosophy argues that the temporal relation of the thing
known to the knower--whether it is known as a past, present or
future event--depends on the nature and cognitive power of the
knower. God's way of being and knowing, she argues, is eternal,
and divine eternity, she says, is not the same as just lacking a
beginning and end, but it is rather (V.6) 'the whole,
simultaneous and perfect possession of unbounded life.'



A being who is eternal in this way, Philosophy argues, knows all
things--past, present and future--in the same way as we, who
live in time and not eternity, know what is present. Since, therefore,
contingent events that are future to us are present in relation to
God, there is no reason why God should not know them as certain. But,
if they can be known as certain, are they really contingent? The last
part of Philosophy's argument deals with this problem by
accepting that, as known by God in his eternal present, events are not
contingent, but necessary in a special way that does not involve any
constraint or limitation of freedom. There are, she explains, two
sorts of necessity: simple and conditional. Simple necessities are
what would now be called physical or nomic necessities: that the sun
rises, or that a man will sometime die. By contrast, it is
conditionally necessary that, for instance, I am walking,
*when* I am walking (or when someone sees that I am walking);
but from this conditional necessity it does not follow that it is
simply necessary that I am walking. Although a number of modern
commentators interpret this passage as Philosophy's way of
noticing the scope-distinction fallacy in the original way Boethius
the character presents the problem, she really seems to be making a
rather different point. On an Aristotelian understanding of modality,
which Boethius the author accepted, the present is necessary:
'what is, necessarily is, when it is' (*On
Interpretation* 19a23). Philosophy is arguing that, since God
knows all things as if they were present, future events are necessary,
in relation to their being known by God, in just the way that anything
which is presently the case is necessary. And this necessity of the
present is an unconstraining necessity--those who accepted
Aristotelian modalities did not think that because, when I am sitting,
I am sitting necessarily, my freedom to stand has been at all
curtailed. Indeed, as Philosophy stresses, in themselves the future
events remain completely free. Philosophy is thus able to explain how,
as known by God, future contingent events have the certainty which
make them proper objects of knowledge, rather than opinion, whilst
nevertheless retaining their indeterminacy.



It is important to add, however, that most contemporary interpreters
do not read the argument of V.3-6 in quite this way. (For a
balanced assessment of various interpretations, including the one
offered here, see Sharples 2009; and for a powerful critique of
aspects of the view presented here, see Michon 2015). They hold that
Philosophy is arguing that God is atemporal, so eliminating the
problems about determinism, which arise when God's knowing
future contingents is seen an event in the past, and therefore,
fixed.



However it is interpreted, Philosophy's argument takes a
surprising turn at the very end of the book. When he gave his initial
statement of the problem, Boethius the character had distinguished the
problem at issue--that of divine prescience--from that of
divine predetermination. He had explained (V.3) that, for the purposes
of their discussion, he was assuming that God does not cause the
events he foreknows: he knows them because they happen, rather than
their happening because he foreknows them. He added, though, in
passing, that he did not really accept this view: it is 'back to
front' to think that 'the outcome of things in time should
be the cause of eternal prescience.' Philosophy now returns to
this point, conceding that God's act of knowing 'sets the
measure for all things and owes nothing to things which follow on from
it.' Although Philosophy considers that she has successfully
resolved the character Boethius's problems, the reader is left
asking whether this final concession, which makes God the determiner
of all events, does not ruin the elaborate defence of the contingency
of human volitions she has just been mounting.


## 7. Interpreting the Consolation



One, perfectly plausible, way of reading the *Consolation* is
to take it, as most philosophical works are taken, at face value. On
this reading, Philosophy is recognized as a clearly authoritative
figure, whose teaching should not be doubted and whose success in
consoling the character Boethius must be assumed to be complete. The
apparent changes of direction noted in
 Section 5
 will be taken either as stages in Boethius's re-education or as
unintended effects of the author's wish to make this work into a
compendium of a syncretistic philosophical system, and
Philosophy's own view that she has resolved the problem of
prescience will be accepted as that of Boethius the author.



Yet there are a number of reasons which suggest that Boethius's
intention as an author was more complex. First, it would have been
hard for his intended audience of educated Christians to ignore the
fact that in this dialogue a Christian, Boethius, is being instructed
by a figure who clearly represents the tradition of pagan Philosophy,
and who proposes some positions (on the World Soul in III m.9, and on
the sempiternity of the world in V.6) which most Christians would have
found dubious. Boethius the character says nothing which is explicitly
Christian, but when in III.12 Philosophy says, echoing the words of
Wisdom viii, 1 that 'it is the highest good that rules all
things strongly and disposes them sweetly', he expresses his
delight not just in what she has said but much more 'in those
very words' that she uses--a broad hint to the reader that
he remembers his Christian identity even in the midst of his
philosophical instruction.



Second, the genre Boethius chose for the *Consolation*, that of
the prosimetrum or Menippean satire, was associated with works which
ridicule the pretensions of authoritative claims to wisdom. Elements
of satire on the claims of learning are present even in the vast,
encyclopaedic *Marriage of Mercury and Philology* by the
fifth-century author Martianus Capella, which Boethius clearly knew.
Ancient authors thought carefully about genres, and it is hard to
think that Boethius's choice was not a hint that
Philosophy's authority is not to be taken as complete. And,
third, in the light of these two considerations, the changes of
direction, incoherencies and ultimate failure of the long argument
about prescience, when the question is suddenly recast as one about
predestination, all suggest themselves as intentional features, for
which the interpreter must account.



Some recent interpreters, such as Joel Relihan (1993, 187-194;
2007), have gone so far as to suggest that the *Consolation*
should be understood ironically as an account of the insufficiency of
Philosophy (and philosophy) to provide consolation, by contrast with
Christian faith. Such a view seems too extreme, because Boethius the
author has clearly taken great pains with the philosophical arguments
proposed in the text, and the main lines of Philosophy's
thinking fit well with the metaphysics glimpsed in the theological
tractates and even, at moments, in the logical commentaries. It is
plausible, however, to hold that Boethius wished, whilst acknowledging
the value of philosophy--to which he had devoted his life, and
for which he presented himself as being about to die--to point
its limitations: limitations which Philosophy herself, who is keen to
emphasize that she is not divine, accepts. Philosophy, he might be
suggesting, provides arguments and solutions to problems which should
be accepted and it teaches a way of living that should be followed,
but it falls short of providing a coherent and comprehensive
understanding of God and his relation to creatures. Boethius the
character should be satisfied, but not completely satisfied, by
Philosophy's argument. And if this is Boethius the
author's position in the *Consolation*, then it fits
closely with the theological method he pioneered in the *opuscula
sacra.*


## 8. Boethius's Influence and Importance



The influence of each area of Boethius's philosophical writing
was vast in the Middle Ages. Along with Augustine and Aristotle, he is
*the* fundamental philosophical and theological author in the
Latin tradition.



In logic, Boethius's translations of Aristotle and Porphyry
(except for that of the *Posterior Analytics*, which was lost)
remained standard throughout the Middle Ages. His
commentaries--especially that on the *Categories*, the
second commentary on the *Isagoge* and the second, more
advanced commentary on *On Interpretation*--were the main
instruments by which logicians from the ninth to the twelfth centuries
came to understand the Aristotelian texts he had translated, and to
grapple with their problems and the wider range of related
philosophical issues raised by the late ancient tradition. Even
twelfth-century philosophers as independently-minded as Abelard and
Gilbert of Poitiers were deeply indebted to these commentaries. The
logical text-books were equally important. Before the *Prior
Analytics* became generally available in the later twelfth
century, students learned syllogistic from Boethius's monographs
on it. The theory of topical argument, acquired especially from *On
Topical Differentiae*, provided a framework for twelfth-century
philosophers in propounding and analysing arguments, and from the
combination of studying topical argument and the theory of
hypothetical syllogisms as Boethius presented it, Abelard was led
towards his rediscovery of propositional logic (cf. Martin (1987)).
From the thirteenth century, onwards, however, both Boethius's
commentaries and his treatises became less influential. *On Topical
Differentiae*, and *On Division*, continued to be studied,
but not the treatises on categorical and hypothetical syllogisms.
Users of the commentaries were infrequent, but they include Thomas
Aquinas.



The theological treatises were probably already known by the pupils of
Alcuin at the court of Charlemagne around 800, and a tradition of
glosses to the text probably goes back to the School of Auxerre in the
later ninth century. The *opuscula sacra* provided a model for
early medieval thinkers who wanted to use their logical training in
thinking about Christian doctrine. Anselm was certainly aware of them,
though he looked more closely to Augustine; Abelard's first
theological work, the *Theologia Summi Boni*, despite its
originality, is clearly inspired by Boethius's first treatise
(on the Trinity). In the 1140s, Gilbert of Poitiers expounded his
metaphysics and his view of theology in a detailed exegesis of the
*opuscula sacra*, which came to be the standard commentary,
although the treatises were also commented on by other, more
Platonically-minded twelfth-century scholars. Although the
*opuscula sacra* were not formally a part of the theology
curriculum in most later medieval universities, they continued to be
studied, and Aquinas wrote commentaries on Treatises I and III.



Though the influence of these other works was great, the popularity
and importance of the *Consolation* far exceeded it. The text
already echoes in what must be one of the earliest pieces of genuinely
medieval Latin philosophy, the little treatise 'On True
Philosophy' with which Alcuin prefaced his *De
grammatica*, and it remained a favourite through the later Middle
Ages and into the Renaissance. Not until the time of Gibbon had it
been reduced to an object of the historian's condescending
admiration. One measure of the extent and character of its readership
is the translations, not merely into almost every medieval vernacular,
but also into Greek and even Hebrew. Among the translators were two of
the greatest vernacular writers of the whole epoch: Jean de Meun, who
put the *Consolation* into Old French in the later thirteenth
century, and Chaucer, who translated it into Middle English about a
century later. As their involvement suggests, Boethius's
dialogue was a text which popularized philosophy outside the
universities, and its literary features, as well as its arguments,
inspired imitations and creative adaptations, from Alain of
Lille's *De planctu Naturae* ('Nature's
Lament') to, more distantly, Dante's *Convivio* and
even Chaucer's *Troilus and Criseyde.* Philosophers and
theologians, too, used the work; it was part of the school syllabus
from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, and although
Aristotle's treatises left no room for it in the university
curriculum, it continued to be studied by students and teachers there.
For example, Aquinas's account of the highest good in his
*Summa Theologiae* IaIIe builds on the *Consolation*,
and the definition of eternity given by Philosophy in Book V became
the starting-point for almost every later medieval discussion of God
and time. Moreover, the *Consolation* continued to be important
in philosophical discussions right up to the end of the seventeenth
century (cf. Belli 2011).



The *Consolation* had many medieval commentaries--mostly
on the whole text, although some just examined Book III, m. 9. In the
tenth and eleventh centuries, the commentary written by Remigius of
Auxerre was the most widely read (and often adapted). William of
Conches's commentary, written in the 1120s, became standard in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the commentary by the English
Dominican, Nicholas Trivet, from the beginning of the fourteenth
century, was the most popular in the late Middle Ages. One of the
central problems which faced any commentator was the relation of the
text to Christian teaching. Remigius and, in a subtler way, William
both took Boethius, whom they knew to be a Christian, to be putting
forward Christian doctrine without seeming to do so; Trivet's
approach is less syncretistic, although he finds nothing unacceptable
for Christians in the *Consolation.* 



The preceding paragraphs in this section might seem to indicate that
there is no doubt about Boethius's importance as a philosopher.
Yet the very size of his medieval influence has led to an attitude,
widespread among historians of philosophy (see especially Courcelle
(1967)), which makes Boethius almost disappear as a figure in his own
right. He is seen, rather, as a conduit through which Greek
philosophical ideas were transmitted to the Latin tradition. Of
course, one aspect of Boethius's influence is indeed that he
made available ideas and arguments deriving from Plato, Aristotle,
Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyry and Iamblichus. But he was also an
individual thinker, with pronounced tastes and views, no less (if no
more) original than his Greek contemporaries; and also, in the
*Consolation*, one of the rare philosophers whose thought, like
Plato's, cannot be neatly separated from the complex literary
form in which it is expressed.