Medieval Philosophy
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
Born 480 and died 520.
Was executed by the ostrogothic king. Was Roman basically but not really.
Lived under tensions between the king in Ravenna, Thedoric, and the emperor in Constantinople.
There was a decline in Roman traditional culture at this time, however, there was a continuity in the elite. Boethius was executed for being too rowdy at this time. He is both an intellectual and a politican.
As an intellectual and a philosopher, he had a clear scientific programme. He explains his programme in Comentarii in Librum Aristotelis. He wanted to mold the aristotelian programme into latin shape, and wanted to bring Aristotle and Plato into harmony. He wanted Aristotelian philosophy and the platonic dialogues to be done in the roman way of writing. Many of the future authors of the middle ages commented on Boethius’ translation of Aristotle. The Aristotle they knew was the logical one translated by Boethius. The rest the latin medievals couldn’t read.
His philosophy is rather more original than either. Because it mixes many elements of Greek and Latin philosophy. It is quite neoplatonic. But it is also stoic. The first part of the text is just stoicism basically. It is also explicitly christian philosophy which is new. Many scholars before debated whether he was christian, because it is not clear in consolation of philosophy; however when we discovered another theological work it was more clear that he was.
In the consolations of philosophy we see a dialogue between the ’I’ and a lady philosophy. He struggles with his pain and lady philosophy tells him to shut up. Because the material things in life are passions and they are not necessary. The text is written in prosimetrum, prose and metric.
Lady philosophy is trying to heal Boethius intellectual sickness.
She tells him that he shouldn’t consider his faith in itself, but rather how the things are ruled and ordered – because the way things are is the best possible way for them to be. Metaphysical optimism. The idea that this is the best possible world. There is the principle that everything is ruled by God, by a unifying principle, but which is also the God. The One, the Being, The Good, God etc. It explains the fact that what we see, the world in which we are, is good.
The peak of his philosophy is found in book V in which he wants to show how providence rules the world. It fits with freedom of will for Boethius, as well as good and evil.
Aristotle in De Interpretatione (Peri Hermeneias) deals with a similar problem as Boethius. It deals with language, reality and thought. In particular Aristotle is interested in propositions. Propositions are sentences that assert a fact, or describe a state of affair, which is about how things are arranged in reality. These kind of sentences are characterised by being either true or false.
Aristotle has a certain theory of truth in relation to propositions. To be true, the statement has to have a correspondence with reality. ”To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.”
”With regard to what is and what has been it is necessary for the affirmation or the negation to be true or false… but with particular that are going to be it is different”.
Universal propositions regarding the past and present must be true or false. That someone will do something tomorrow can’t really be true or false in the moment that it is uttered. There is no correspondence in reality of what isn’t yet the case in statements.
”Hence, if in the whole of time the state of things was such that one or the other of two contradictory singular statements about the future was true, it was necessary for this to happen, and for the state of things always to be such that everything that happens happens of necessity.”
”nothing of what happens is as chance has it, but everything is and happens of necessity. So there would be no need to deliberate or to take trouble thinking that if we do this, this will happen, but if we do not, it will not.”
If the future tense statement could be true or false, the reality would be determinate, and everything happens as it must. There is then no room for deliberation. And this would turn into fatalism. The solution of Aristotle that we need to drop the principle of bivalence, ie. that all statements are either true or false, in regard to future tense singular statements.
”Everything necessarily will be or will not be; but one cannot divide and say that one or the other is necessary. I mean for example it is necessary for there to be or not to be a sea-battle tomorrow; but it is not necessary for a sea battle to take place tomorrow…”
eg.
Chris will read a book tomorrow; disjunctively either true or false. There is no truth to either proposition now. But it is a tautology that either one will happen.
Necessarily p or not p
For Boethius God knows past present and future. How can he infallible knowledge of things without correspondence ruining why we should ever deliberate on the future.
”For what place can be left for randomness where God contrains all things into His order”.
”We may therefore define chance as the unexected event of concurring causes among things done for some purpose”
In Aristotle chance is the concurring meeting of different chains of causes. His example is the treasures in the field:
A man tills his field and finds a treasure of gold. Is it chance? Yes. But it is not random or chaotic. It is an event that happens as the result of two different causal chains that for different purposes collide with each other. The man who tills, and the one who hides the treasure in the field to hide it.
”Now causes are made to concur and flow together by that order which, proceeding with inevitable connexion, and coming down from its source in providence, disposes all things in their proper places and times.”
Providence binds causes.
”In this close-linked series of causes, is there any freedom of our will, or does this chain of fate also bind even the motions of people’s minds?”
If God orders everything, does free will disappear?
Lady philosophy thinks that it is important not to deny free will because of moral responsibility.
The faculty of judgement, the capcity to choose your act, is part of the rational nature. To express your rational power is part of what the decision-making faculty of judgement is.
Boethius determines the mode of cognition principle. It means that everything which is known is grasped not to as it really is, but according to the capability of the one that knows.
According to this he makes a hierarchy of powers, about which he stresses that we can know different aspects of a thing according to the power involved in understanding it. In the case of sense-perception we can grasp a particular circle as such, with imagination we can grasp any circle at all without perception, and the power of the human being, reason, gives us the ability to have universal knowledge. And then there is God’s proper intelligence. It is the power of seeing things exactly as they are. It’s really a single moment in which God knows everything past present and future and all the qualities of a thing.
And we trust more the higher faculties than the lower ones, and we should trust in the higher faculty of God too. The intelligence of God is however something we lack. God also has eternity. And he has a simultaneous moment of boundless life, which is entirely different from the perpetual mode in which we live the world. Simultaneity verus perpetuity.
God looks down on everything at the same time.
So with mode of cognition principle + eternity = god sees and knows all things as present, but there is a type of necessity attached to the present from our mode of cognition that cannot be made equal to that of God.
So the present that we know has a specific type of necessity.
Because God is eternal, God sees everything as present.
Present is necessary in a conditional way: something that exists or is happening right now cannot not exist or be happening right now, but it did not necessarily have to exist or happen right now.
God knows as present cingent things and events that could have been otherwise, but their presetness to him means he has infallible, necessary knowledge of those contingent things and events necessary by the necessity of the present.