Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (born: circa 475–7 C.E.,died: 526? C.E.) has long been recognized as one of the most importantintermediaries between ancient philosophy and the Latin Middle Agesand, through hisConsolation of Philosophy, as a talentedliterary writer, with a gift for making philosophical ideas dramaticand accessible to a wider public. He had previously translatedAristotle’s logical works into Latin, written commentaries onthem as well as logical textbooks, and used his logical training tocontribute to the theological discussions of the time. All thesewritings, which would be enormously influential in the Middle Ages,drew extensively on the thinking of Greek Neoplatonists such asPorphyry and Iamblichus. Boethius was not just an intermediary,however. He was an independent thinker, though one working within atradition which put little obvious weight on philosophicaloriginality. Both aspects of Boethius will be considered in thesections which follow.

• 1. Life and Works
• 2. The Logical Project and the Logical Commentaries
• 3. The Logical Text-Books
• 4. The Theological Treatises
• 5. TheConsolation of Philosophy: The Argument of Books I–V.2
• 6. Divine Prescience, Contingency and Eternity
• 7. Interpreting the Consolation
• 8. Boethius’s Influence and Importance
• Bibliography
  • Primary Texts in Latin
  • Selected English (and other) Translations of Primary Texts
  • Selected Secondary Works
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Life and Works

Anicius Severinus Manlius Boethius was born into the Roman aristocracyc. 475–7 C.E.—about the same time as the last RomanEmperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed (August 476). Boethius livedmost of his life under the rule of Theoderic, an Ostrogoth educated atConstantinople, who was happy to let the old families keep up theirtraditions in Rome, while he wielded power in Ravenna.Boethius’s privileged social position ensured that he was taughtGreek thoroughly and, though it is unlikely that he travelled toAthens or Alexandria, the sites of the two remaining (Platonic)philosophical schools, he was certainly acquainted with a good deal ofthe work which had been going on there. He was able to spend most ofhis life in learned leisure, pursuing his vast project of translatingand commenting philosophical texts. The Roman aristocracy was, by hisday, thoroughly Christianized, and Boethius also became involved insome of the ecclesiastical disputes of his time, centring mainlyaround a schism between the Latin and the Greek Churches which wasresolved shortly before his death.

Boethius’s final years are well known to anyone who has read hismost popular work, theConsolation of Philosophy. He agreedto become Theoderic’s ‘Master of Offices’, one ofthe most senior officials, but he quickly fell out with many others atcourt, probably because he attacked their corruption. Accused oftreason and of engaging in magic, he was imprisoned and (probably in526) executed, but not before he had the chance to write his literarymasterpiece.

TheConsolation of Philosophy, a prosimetrum (a prose workwith verse interludes) which recounts, in polished literary language,an imagined dialogue between the prisoner Boethius and a lady whopersonifies Philosophy, contrasts with the rest of Boethius’soeuvre. Besides writing text-books on arithmetic andgeometry, closely based on Greek models, Boethius devoted himself totranslating Aristotle’s logic and commenting on it; he produceda commentary on theCategories and two each onOnInterpretation and on theIsagoge(‘Introduction’) by Porphyry, which had become a standardpart of the logical curriculum. He also composed logical text-books ondivision, categorical syllogisms, and on two branches of logic whichwill require further explanation (see below,Section 3): hypothetical syllogisms and topical reasoning (along with acommentary on Cicero’sTopics). In three of his fourTheological Treatises (often known as theOpusculasacra), I, II and V, Boethius uses his logical equipment totackle problems of Christian doctrine; IV, however, is astraightforward statement of Christian doctrine, a sort of confessionof faith; whilst III is a brief, not specifically Christianphilosophical treatise.

2. The Logical Project and the Logical Commentaries

Boethius’s work as a translator and commentator of Aristotelianlogic might appear to be just the beginning of a wider project,announced in the second commentary onOn Interpretation (c.516), and cut short by his execution, to translate and comment on allthe writings of Plato and Aristotle. Yet Boethius seems to have becomeso engrossed in his role as an expositor of logic, not limitinghimself to a single commentary on each work, and writing extratextbooks, that it is hard not to see it as having diverted him, inany case, from his more grandiose scheme. Indeed, Boethius seems tohave pursued a rather speciallogical project.

The particular, deliberate nature of this project is not cast intodoubt by the fact that Boethius’s logical commentaries, althoughalmost certainly not merely servile translations of marginalia from aGreek manuscript (as James Shiel (1990) has argued), are not at alloriginal in their logical doctrines. For what is important isBoethius’s choice of Porphyry as his main authority in logic. Itwas Porphyry who, two centuries or so earlier, had been responsiblefor making Aristotelian logic an important subject within theNeoplatonic curriculum. He held that it did not conflict with Platonicdoctrine, as his teacher Plotinus had believed, because its area ofapplication was limited to the sensible world, to which everydaylanguage refers. Later Neoplatonists accepted the importance ofAristotelian logic, and the harmony between Platonic and Aristotelianteaching, but they tended to try and discover Neoplatonic doctrineseven in the Aristotelian logical texts. In the case of theCategories, they even imagined that Aristotle had taken hisdoctrine from a Pythagorean writer, Archytas, and that there was anunderlying and wildly metaphysical strand to the text which it was thecommentator’s duty to uncover. Boethius, however, althoughmaking occasional use of later commentaries, usually followedPorphyry: on theCategories he stayed close toPorphyry’s surviving (and quite simple) question-and-answercommentary, whilst the long, second commentary onOnInterpretation is commonly accepted as the best guide toPorphyry’s exegesis, since his own commentary does not survive.Boethius’s commentaries were, therefore, because morePorphyrian, so more Aristotelian than what was being written in Greekin his period.

Boethius’s Porphyrian approach is evident even in the twocommentaries on Porphyry’s ownIsagoge (an introductionto theCategories which had become accepted as a standardpart of the logical curriculum)—one text on which, obviously,Porphyry himself had never commented. Near the beginning of theIsagoge, Porphyry mentions three questions about universals,but declines to discuss them in an introductory work. Do they exist orare they mere concepts? If they exist are they bodily or not, and, ifthey are not, are they separated from sensible things or do they existin them? By Boethius’s time, the Greek commentators haddeveloped a standard way of glossing this passage. They explained thatuniversals could be considered as concepts (universalspostrem—‘following the thing’), as intrinsic tobodily things (universalsin re—‘in thething’) and as really existing and separate from bodies(universalsante rem—‘before the thing’).In most of his work, Boethius follows this way of thinking aboutuniversals (cf. Cross 2012). But here he takes a different approach,turning to a train of thought (1906, 161:14 ff.) which goes back inpart to Porphyry himself and, through him, to the great Aristotelian,Alexander of Aphrodisias.

Boethius begins with an argument against universals as an object ofenquiry. Everything that really exists is one in number, but nothingthat is common to many at the same time can be one in number. Butuniversalsare common to many at the same time. And souniversals do not exist in reality, but in thought alone. Thoughts,Boethius continues, are of two sorts: those which derive from theirobject in the way it is (call them ‘correspondingthoughts’) and those which do not. If the thoughts that areuniversals were corresponding thoughts, then universals would alsoexist in reality. Since they do not, universals are non-correspondingthoughts, and non-corresponding thoughts are empty. Enquiry intouniversals (and therefore into the five predicables studied in theIsagoge) should therefore be abandoned. Boethius’s wayof tackling this objection is to challenge just the very final stage.Non-corresponding thoughts, he argues, are not empty if they areabstractions. Consider a mathematical object such as a line or apoint, which the mathematician contemplates by abstracting from thematerial body of which it is part. No such thing exists in reality asan immaterial line or point, and yet the mathematician’s thoughtis not empty or misleading. The case is similar if we disregard theaccidental features of some particular thing (John Marenbon, forinstance) and are left just with his nature of man. This line ofreply, as Alain de Libera (1999, 159–280) has shown, goes backto Alexander of Aphrodisias or his followers. Boethius, however, goeson to give it his own particular twist, by suggesting that theuniversals produced by abstraction are not merely the constructions ofthe mind, but do grasp reality as it is. Although this line fits oddlywith the argument from which Boethius set out, he may already beanticipating the Principle of Modes of Cognition, which he proposes intheConsolation (seeSection 6 below).

The long, second commentary onOn Interpretation is veryprobably based, as explained above, on Porphyry’s lostcommentary. It thus provides a full account of Porphyry’ssemantics—a semantics based on Aristotle, because he takesordinary language to be concerned with material things rather thanwith the intelligible world. There is also an extended discussion ofthe sea-battle passage in Chapter 9. According to the principle ofbivalence, ‘There will be a sea-battle tomorrow’ is eithertrue or false. But, if it is true, then therewill be asea-battle tomorrow; if false, therewill not be one. Eitherway, is it not therefore a matter of necessity? Boethius’sstrategy is to say that ‘There will be a sea-battletomorrow’ is indeed either true or false, but, because thesea-battle is a contingent event, its truth or falsehood is onlyindefinite. What does this position amount to? There are variousinterpretations of how it should be understood. Perhaps the mostplausible is that Boethius holds that, if an evente iscontingent, then the sentence ‘e will take place’is false, even if it turns out thate does in fact happen,because ‘e will take place’ implies thate will take place necessarily. But a qualified sentence suchas ‘e will take place contingently’ is true justin case it is not necessary thate happens, andeactually happens.

3. The Logical Text-Books

The two most interesting of Boethius’s logical text-books arethe treatises on topicaldifferentiae (c. 522–3) and onhypothetical syllogisms (516–22), since each gives an insightinto an area of late ancient logic for which there are otherwise few,if any, sources.

From Aristotle’sTopics, logicians of late antiquityhad elaborated a system of topical argument, which had beenconsiderably influenced by the needs of Roman lawyers. The focus oftopical theory is ondiscovering arguments, and thesearguments are not usually formally valid, but merely plausible. Thetopicaldifferentiae are the classifications of types of sucharguments; knowing thedifferentiae gives the arguer a readymeans to hit upon a persuasive line of reasoning. Suppose, forexample, I want to argue that we should praise Cicero. I start tryingto think what information I have which might help me to argue thispoint, and I remember that everyone is full of praises for anotherorator, Demosthenes. Then I turn over in my mind the list of topicaldifferentiae and I see that thedifferentia‘from equals’ will provide me with the argument Ineed:

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 everydifferentia, is a‘maximal sentence’ (maxima propositio), in thiscase: ‘equal things are to be judged equally.’ The maximalsentence can be taken as an indication of how to put together theargument; it might also be added to the argument in order to make itformally valid, but Boethius did not envisage maximal sentences beingused in this way. Rather, the topical arguer produces arguments ofdiffering strength, depending on how close to being a logical truth isthe maximal sentence associated with thedifferentia he isusing. Some maximal sentences do indeed state fundamental laws ofreasoning (includingmodus ponens andmodustollens); others state what are at best rules of thumb and, inthe case of the topic ‘from authority’—theinjunction to accept as true what the wise, or experts or the majoritybelieve—not even that.

Boethius’s two main authorities, Cicero and Themistius, giverather different lists of the topicaldifferentiae, and oneof the tasks of his text-book is to show that their schemes do reallycoincide. In his commentary on Cicero’sTopics, writtenshortly before, Boethius expounds the same theory, but leaves himselfplenty 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 histreatiseOn hypothetical syllogisms its special interest. Asyllogism is ‘hypothetical’ when one of its premisses is amolecular sentence which uses ‘if’ or ‘or’(understood as exclusive disjunction) as a connective. So, forexample, 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 ofsimple sentence logic:p→q; ¬q; therefore¬p. Since it was the Stoics who, in antiquity, developeda sentence logic, by contrast with Aristotle’s term logic, itwould appear that Boethius’s treatise on hypothetical syllogismsis the tributary of Stoic logic. This conclusion is true to the extentthat the tradition Boethius inherited goes back in part to Stoicroots. By the time it had reached Boethius, however, Stoic andPeripatetic elements had become hopelessly confused (cf. Speca 2001).As C.J. Martin (1991) has shown, Boethius himself lacked theconceptual 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 ordenied of a vague subject ‘it’. The treatise itself ismainly devoted to a laborious calculation of the various differentpossible forms of hypothetical syllogism involving two, three (with afirst premise such as ‘If it isA, then if it isB, it isC’) and four terms (with a firstpremise such as ‘If, if it isA then it isB,then, if it isC then it isD’).

4. The Theological Treatises

The threeopuscula sacra written to analyse points ofChristian doctrine seem to have been occasioned by events of the time.Treatise V, against Eutyches and Nestorius, was apparently inspired bya letter (c. 513) from a group of Greek bishops, proposing aChristological formula which, they hoped, would unite the Western andEastern Churches. The two treatises on the Trinity (II is a partialsketch for I) are probably related to the intervention in 519 by agroup of Scythian monks, also designed to heal the schism. The workshave, however, an interest far beyond their contributions to theimmediate doctrinal debate. They pioneer a method of using logicalanalysis in a theological context which Augustine had anticipated butnot developed. Both heretical positions (for examples, the views aboutChrist and human nature held by Eutyches and Nestorius) and orthodoxChristian doctrine are subjected to rigorous scrutiny, using thetechniques of Aristotelian logic and, where necessary, ideas fromAristotelian physics. The heretical ideas are shown to contain logicalcontradictions. As for the orthodox understanding of God, it does notfit within the classifications of Aristotelian logic and naturalscience, but Boethius tries to chart exactly how far thesedistinctions, which are accommodated to the created world, also applyto the deity, and at what point they break down and provide us merelywith an analogy.

This way of thinking about God is made especially clear in the longertreatise on the Trinity (I). When God is said to have an attribute,how is this predication to be understood? For created things, on theAristotelian scheme, a predication is either substantial (when thegenus, species ordifferentia is predicated of something:‘Socrates is an animal/man/rational’) or accidental, whenthe predicate is any accident in any of the nine Aristoteliancategories of accident. Augustine had already acknowledged thatnothing is predicated of God accidentally. Predications about him maybe relative, as when he is called ‘Father’ or‘Son’, or substantial. Even when a quality or quantity isattributed to him, the predication is substantial. When we say of acreated thing that it is great or good, we are affirming that itparticipates in greatness or goodness: it is one thing for the thingto exist, another for it to be great or good. But God is greatnessitself and goodness itself, and so, when we say, ‘God isgood’ or ‘God is great’, we are not affirming anyattribute of him beyond what he is as a substance. This Augustinianview is faithfully set out in the brief Treatise II.

In Treatise I, Boethius develops this scheme. In especial, hedistinguishes between predications in the categories of Substance,Quantity and Quality, which are proper and intrinsic, and those in theother six categories, excluding Relation, which he calls improper andextrinsic. The intuitive idea behind the distinction seems to be thatpredications in these other categories concern only how the subjectrelates to other things; only substantial, quantitative andqualitative attributes characterize the thing itself. Boethius goes onto say that, whereas all proper, intrinsic predications about God aresubstantial, extrinsic, improper predications about him are not: theydo not concern what either God or his creaturesare, but arerather about exterior things.

The discussion of Relation shows particularly clearly how Boethiusapplies logic to analysing God as far as he can, and then shows whereand how the logic fails. He needs to explain how it can be true thatthe same, one God is both the Father and the Son. He does so byclaiming that a predication of Relation, such as ‘is theFather’, does not concern the substance of the things related:thata is related tob in no way changesaorb. Moreover, there are some relationships which a thingcan have to itself—for example, that of equality. Being-a-fatherand being-a-son are not, among created things, such relations: no onecan be his own father or his own son. But it is here, says Boethius,that creaturely logic breaks down when it tries to comprehend theTrinity: we have in some way to try to grasp the idea of a relation offatherhood or filiation which is reflexive.

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

Treatise III is also concerned with predication and God. But itdiffers sharply from the other treatises, in that it contains nothingspecifically Christian. The question it addresses is how allsubstances are good in that they are, and yet are not substantialgoods. Boethius takes it as a fundamental truth that all things tendto the good, and also that things are by nature like what they desire.Everything, therefore, is by nature good. But if so, then things mustbe good either by participation, or substantially (or‘essentially’ as a modern philosopher would say). If theywere merely good by participation, they would be good by accident, notby nature. But if they are good substantially, then their substance isgoodness itself, and so nothing can be distinguished from the firstgood, God. In giving his answer, Boethius makes use of a set of axiomshe states at the beginning of the piece, and undertakes athought-experiment in which it is supposedper impossibilethat God does not exist. The key to his solution lies in finding aprincipled way to distinguish between a thinga beingF in that it exists, and a thinga beingsubstantiallyF. Fora to be substantiallyF means, Boethius’s discussion implies, that‘a is not-F’ is inconceivable (we mightsay ‘logically impossible’). Fora to beF in that it exists means just that ‘a isnot-F’ is impossible (we might say ‘impossiblegiven the way the world is set up’). Whereas it is inconceivablethat God is not good, it is merely impossible that everything is notgood.

5. TheConsolation of Philosophy: The Argument of Books I–V.2

TheConsolation of Philosophy presents interpretativedifficulties of a different order from the logical works or thetheological treatises. Unlike them, it is written in an elaborateliterary form: it consists of a dialogue between Boethius, sitting inhis prison-cell awaiting execution, and a lady who personifiesPhilosophy, and its often highly rhetorical prose is interspersed withverse passages. Moreover, although it is true that elsewhere Boethiusdoes not write in a way which identifies him as a Christian except inthe Theological Treatises I, II, IV and V, the absence of any explicitreference to Christianity in theConsolation poses a specialproblem, when it is recalled that it is the work of a man about toface death and so very literally composing his philosophical andliterary testament. These questions will appear in sharper focus (Section 7) when the argument of theConsolation has been examined.

Boethius’s real predicament sets the scene for the argument oftheConsolation. He represents himself as utterly confusedand dejected by his sudden change of fortune. Philosophy’s firstjob—true to the generic aim of aconsolatio—is toconsole, not by offering sympathy, but by showing that Boethius has nogood reason to complain: true happiness, she wishes to argue, is notdamaged even by the sort of disaster he has experienced. She alsoidentifies in Book I a wider objective: to show that it is not thecase, as Boethius the character claims, that the wicked prosper andthe good are oppressed.

Philosophy seems to have two different lines of argument to showBoethius that his predicament does not exclude him from truehappiness. The first train of argument rests on acomplexview of the highest good. The first (which is put forward in Book IIand the first part of Book III) distinguishes between the ornamentalgoods of fortune, which are of very limited value—riches,status, power and sensual pleasure—and the true goods: thevirtues and also sufficiency, which is what those who seek riches,status and power really desire. It also recognizes some non-ornamentalgoods of fortune, such as a person’s friends and family, ashaving considerable genuine value. On the basis of these distinctions,Philosophy can argue that Boethius has not lost any true goods, andthat he still even retains those goods of fortune—hisfamily—which carry much real worth. She does not maintain that,in his fall from being powerful, rich and respected to the status of acondemned prisoner, Boethius has lost nothing of any worth at all. Buthis loss need not cut him off from true happiness, which is attainedprimarily by an austere life based on sufficiency, virtue andwisdom.

Philosophy’s second line of argument is based on asimple view of the highest good. She begins to put it forwardin III.10, a turning-point in the discussion, which is preceded by themost solemn poem of the whole work (III m. 9), an invocation to God interms borrowed from Plato’sTimaeus. Through a numberof arguments which draw out the consequences of the Neoplatonicassumptions which Boethius accepts, Philosophy shows that the perfectgood and perfect happiness are not merely in God: theyareGod. Perfect happiness is therefore completely untouched by changes inearthly fortune, however drastic. But what this second approach failsto explain is how the individual human, such as Boethius, is supposedto relate to the perfect happiness which is God. Philosophy seems tospeak as if, merely byknowing that God is perfect happiness,Boethius himself will be rendered happy, although in the next sectionit seems that it is by acting well that a person can attain thegood.

Philosophy now goes on (III.11–12) to explain how God rules theuniverse. He does so by acting as a final cause. He is the good whichall things desire, and so he functions as ‘a helm and rudder, bywhich 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 heexists. But how does this account fit with the apparent oppression ofthe good and triumph of the wicked, about which Boethius had begun bycomplaining? In Book IV.1–4, Philosophy shows, drawing onPlato’sGorgias, that the evil do not really prosperand they are in fact powerless. Her central argument is that whateveryone 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 aboutwhat they want, the wicked are powerless. She also argues that thegood gain their reward automatically, since by being good, they attainthe good, which is happiness. By contrast, since evil is not a thingbut a privation of existence, by being wicked people punishthemselves, because they cease even to exist—that is to say,they stop being the sort of things they were, humans, and becomeother, lower animals. Philosophy is therefore able to put forwardemphatically two of the most counter-intuitive claims of theGorgias: that the wicked are happier when they are preventedfrom their evil and punished for it, than when they carry it out withimpunity, and that those who do injustice are unhappier than those whosuffer it.

At the beginning of IV.5, however, there is another change ofdirection. Boethius the character is allowed to put forward theobvious, common-sense objections to the position Philosophy has beentaking: ‘which wise man’, he asks, ‘would prefer tobe a penniless, disgraced exile rather than stay in his own city andlead there a flourishing life, mighty in wealth, revered in honour andstrong in power?’ Philosophy answers by abandoning completelythe explanation developed from III.11 onwards, which presented God asa non-intervening final cause, and offers instead a view of God as theefficient cause of all things. Divine providence is the unified viewin God’s mind of the course of events which, unfolded in time,is called ‘fate’, and everything which takes place onearth is part of God’s providence. Philosophy’s change ofdirection might seem at first to make Boethius’s common-senseobjection even harder to answer, but in fact it is easy enough for herto explain that apparently unjust rewards and punishments on earthalways serve a good, though to us hidden, purpose: for instance,exercising good people to increase their virtue, helping the wicked torepent or, alternatively, letting them bring themselves to ruin. Aless tractable problem raised by Philosophy’s new approach isthat it seems to imply that the human will is causally determined.Unlike many modern philosophers, Boethius did not believe that thewill can remain free, in the sense needed for attribution of moralresponsibility, if it is determined causally. Moreover, Philosophyinsists 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 theyare the result of a chain of causes which is unintended or unexpected,as when someone is digging in a field for vegetables and finds aburied treasure. Philosophy’s solution is to argue (V.2) thatrational acts of volition, unlike all external events, do notthemselves 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 reducedand lost as humans give their attentions to worldly things and allowthemselves 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 threatensto show that even mental acts of willing are necessary and so (asBoethius the author believed) unfree. He argues that:

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

Since it is accepted that God is omniscient, and that this impliesthat heknows what every future event—including mentalevents such as volitions—will be, (7) and (8) each seem to ruleout any sort of freedom of the will requisite for attributing moralresponsibility: a consequence the disastrous implications of whichBoethius the character vividly describes.

Philosophy’s answer to this difficulty is the mostphilosophically intricate and interesting section of theConsolation. It is one part of Boethius’s work (perhapsthe only one) which remains of interest in contemporary philosophy (ofreligion) and, for that reason, it has often been interpretedaccording to a framework provided by more recent thinking about theproblem of divine prescience (see, for example, Leftow 1991, Zagzebski1991). The following is, rather, an attempt to present the discussionas it actually proceeds in theConsolation.

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

9. God knows every event, including all future ones.
10. When someoneknows that an event will happen, then theevent will happen.
11. (10) is true as a matter of necessity, because it is impossible toknow 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 anegation of (13), the negation of (9) will be seen to follow. But, asit 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 willhappen.

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 willhappen’), when he is entitled only to infer the (wide-scope)necessity of the whole conditional (‘if someone knows an eventwill happen, it will happen’). Boethius the character is clearlytaken in by this fallacious argument, and there is no good reason tothink that Boethius the author ever became aware of the fallacy(despite a passage later on which some modern commentators haveinterpreted in this sense). None the less, the discussion whichfollows does not, as the danger seems to be, address itself to anon-problem. Intuitively, Boethius sees that the threat which divineprescience poses to the contingency of future events arises not justfrom the claim that God’s beliefs about the future constituteknowledge, but also from the fact that they are beliefs aboutthefuture. There is a real problem here, because if Godknows now what I shall do tomorrow, then it seems that either what Ishall do is already determined, or else that I shall have the powertomorrow to convert God’s knowledge today into a false belief.Although his logical formulation does not capture this problem, thesolution Boethius gives to Philosophy is clearly designed to tackleit.

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

Philosophy identifies (V.4) the character Boethius’s centraldifficulty as lying in the apparent incompatibility between anevent’s not having a necessary outcome and yet its beingforeknown. To foresee something ‘as if it were certain’when it is uncertain how it will turn out is ‘foreign to theintegrity of knowledge’, since it involves ‘judging athing as being other than it is.’ Philosophy counters thesedoubts with the principle that ‘everything that is known isgrasped, not according to its own power, but rather according to thecapacity of those who know it.’ Her view, as she develops it (inV.5 and V.6), is based on what might be called the Principle of Modesof Cognition: the idea that knowledge is always relativized todifferent levels of knowers, who have different sorts of objects ofknowledge. This relativization is, however, limited. The same item isnot true for one knower and false for another, but the way in which agiven item is known differs according to the powers of the knower.Philosophy develops this scheme in relation to the different levels ofthe soul (intelligence, reason, imagination and the senses) and theirdifferent objects (pure Form, abstract universals, images, particularbodily things).

Philosophy does not at this point follow the most obvious path thatthe Modes of Cognition Principle would suggest and declare that itjust depends on the knower whether something is known as certain ornot. Perhaps she accepted that there is something intrinsicallyuncertain about future contingents, whoever it is that knows them.Rather, she reaches her conclusion through a more complex twist of theargument. Philosophy argues that the temporal relation of the thingknown to the knower—whether it is known as a past, present orfuture event—depends on the nature and cognitive power of theknower. God’s way of being and knowing, she argues, is eternal,and divine eternity, she says, is not the same as just lacking abeginning 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 allthings—past, present and future—in the same way as we, wholive in time and not eternity, know what is present. Since, therefore,contingent events that are future to us are present in relation toGod, 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 lastpart of Philosophy’s argument deals with this problem byaccepting that, as known by God in his eternal present, events are notcontingent, but necessary in a special way that does not involve anyconstraint or limitation of freedom. There are, she explains, twosorts of necessity: simple and conditional. Simple necessities arewhat would now be called physical or nomic necessities: that the sunrises, or that a man will sometime die. By contrast, it isconditionally 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 issimply necessary that I am walking. Although a number of moderncommentators interpret this passage as Philosophy’s way ofnoticing the scope-distinction fallacy in the original way Boethiusthe character presents the problem, she really seems to be making arather different point. On an Aristotelian understanding of modality,which Boethius the author accepted, the present is necessary:‘what is, necessarily is, when it is’ (OnInterpretation 19a23). Philosophy is arguing that, since Godknows all things as if they were present, future events are necessary,in relation to their being known by God, in just the way that anythingwhich is presently the case is necessary. And this necessity of thepresent is an unconstraining necessity—those who acceptedAristotelian modalities did not think that because, when I am sitting,I am sitting necessarily, my freedom to stand has been at allcurtailed. Indeed, as Philosophy stresses, in themselves the futureevents remain completely free. Philosophy is thus able to explain how,as known by God, future contingent events have the certainty whichmake them proper objects of knowledge, rather than opinion, whilstnevertheless retaining their indeterminacy.

It is important to add, however, that most contemporary interpretersdo not read the argument of V.3–6 in quite this way. (For abalanced assessment of various interpretations, including the oneoffered here, see Sharples 2009; and for a powerful critique ofaspects of the view presented here, see Michon 2015). They hold thatPhilosophy is arguing that God is atemporal, so eliminating theproblems about determinism, which arise when God’s knowingfuture contingents is seen an event in the past, and therefore,fixed.

However it is interpreted, Philosophy’s argument takes asurprising turn at the very end of the book. When he gave his initialstatement of the problem, Boethius the character had distinguished theproblem at issue—that of divine prescience—from that ofdivine predetermination. He had explained (V.3) that, for the purposesof their discussion, he was assuming that God does not cause theevents he foreknows: he knows them because they happen, rather thantheir happening because he foreknows them. He added, though, inpassing, that he did not really accept this view: it is ‘back tofront’ to think that ‘the outcome of things in time shouldbe the cause of eternal prescience.’ Philosophy now returns tothis point, conceding that God’s act of knowing ‘sets themeasure for all things and owes nothing to things which follow on fromit.’ Although Philosophy considers that she has successfullyresolved the character Boethius’s problems, the reader is leftasking whether this final concession, which makes God the determinerof all events, does not ruin the elaborate defence of the contingencyof human volitions she has just been mounting.

7. Interpreting the Consolation

One, perfectly plausible, way of reading theConsolation isto take it, as most philosophical works are taken, at face value. Onthis reading, Philosophy is recognized as a clearly authoritativefigure, whose teaching should not be doubted and whose success inconsoling the character Boethius must be assumed to be complete. Theapparent changes of direction noted inSection 5 will be taken either as stages in Boethius’s re-education or asunintended effects of the author’s wish to make this work into acompendium of a syncretistic philosophical system, andPhilosophy’s own view that she has resolved the problem ofprescience will be accepted as that of Boethius the author.

Yet there are a number of reasons which suggest that Boethius’sintention as an author was more complex. First, it would have beenhard for his intended audience of educated Christians to ignore thefact that in this dialogue a Christian, Boethius, is being instructedby a figure who clearly represents the tradition of pagan Philosophy,and who proposes some positions (on the World Soul in III m.9, and onthe sempiternity of the world in V.6) which most Christians would havefound dubious. Boethius the character says nothing which is explicitlyChristian, but when in III.12 Philosophy says, echoing the words ofWisdom viii, 1 that ‘it is the highest good that rules allthings strongly and disposes them sweetly’, he expresses hisdelight not just in what she has said but much more ‘in thosevery words’ that she uses—a broad hint to the reader thathe remembers his Christian identity even in the midst of hisphilosophical instruction.

Second, the genre Boethius chose for theConsolation, that ofthe prosimetrum or Menippean satire, was associated with works whichridicule the pretensions of authoritative claims to wisdom. Elementsof satire on the claims of learning are present even in the vast,encyclopaedicMarriage of Mercury and Philology by thefifth-century author Martianus Capella, which Boethius clearly knew.Ancient authors thought carefully about genres, and it is hard tothink that Boethius’s choice was not a hint thatPhilosophy’s authority is not to be taken as complete. And,third, in the light of these two considerations, the changes ofdirection, incoherencies and ultimate failure of the long argumentabout prescience, when the question is suddenly recast as one aboutpredestination, all suggest themselves as intentional features, forwhich the interpreter must account.

Some recent interpreters, such as Joel Relihan (1993, 187–194;2007), have gone so far as to suggest that theConsolationshould be understood ironically as an account of the insufficiency ofPhilosophy (and philosophy) to provide consolation, by contrast withChristian faith. Such a view seems too extreme, because Boethius theauthor has clearly taken great pains with the philosophical argumentsproposed in the text, and the main lines of Philosophy’sthinking fit well with the metaphysics glimpsed in the theologicaltractates and even, at moments, in the logical commentaries. It isplausible, however, to hold that Boethius wished, whilst acknowledgingthe value of philosophy—to which he had devoted his life, andfor which he presented himself as being about to die—to pointits limitations: limitations which Philosophy herself, who is keen toemphasize that she is not divine, accepts. Philosophy, he might besuggesting, provides arguments and solutions to problems which shouldbe accepted and it teaches a way of living that should be followed,but it falls short of providing a coherent and comprehensiveunderstanding of God and his relation to creatures. Boethius thecharacter should be satisfied, but not completely satisfied, byPhilosophy’s argument. And if this is Boethius theauthor’s position in theConsolation, then it fitsclosely with the theological method he pioneered in theopusculasacra.

8. Boethius’s Influence and Importance

The influence of each area of Boethius’s philosophical writingwas vast in the Middle Ages. Along with Augustine and Aristotle, he isthe fundamental philosophical and theological author in theLatin tradition.

In logic, Boethius’s translations of Aristotle and Porphyry(except for that of thePosterior Analytics, which was lost)remained standard throughout the Middle Ages. Hiscommentaries—especially that on theCategories, thesecond commentary on theIsagoge and the second, moreadvanced commentary onOn Interpretation—were the maininstruments by which logicians from the ninth to the twelfth centuriescame to understand the Aristotelian texts he had translated, and tograpple with their problems and the wider range of relatedphilosophical issues raised by the late ancient tradition. Eventwelfth-century philosophers as independently-minded as Abelard andGilbert of Poitiers were deeply indebted to these commentaries. Thelogical text-books were equally important. Before thePriorAnalytics became generally available in the later twelfthcentury, students learned syllogistic from Boethius’s monographson it. The theory of topical argument, acquired especially fromOnTopical Differentiae, provided a framework for twelfth-centuryphilosophers in propounding and analysing arguments, and from thecombination of studying topical argument and the theory ofhypothetical syllogisms as Boethius presented it, Abelard was ledtowards his rediscovery of propositional logic (cf. Martin (1987)).From the thirteenth century, onwards, however, both Boethius’scommentaries and his treatises became less influential.On TopicalDifferentiae, andOn Division, continued to be studied,but not the treatises on categorical and hypothetical syllogisms.Users of the commentaries were infrequent, but they include ThomasAquinas.

The theological treatises were probably already known by the pupils ofAlcuin at the court of Charlemagne around 800, and a tradition ofglosses to the text probably goes back to the School of Auxerre in thelater ninth century. Theopuscula sacra provided a model forearly medieval thinkers who wanted to use their logical training inthinking about Christian doctrine. Anselm was certainly aware of them,though he looked more closely to Augustine; Abelard’s firsttheological work, theTheologia Summi Boni, despite itsoriginality, is clearly inspired by Boethius’s first treatise(on the Trinity). In the 1140s, Gilbert of Poitiers expounded hismetaphysics and his view of theology in a detailed exegesis of theopuscula sacra, which came to be the standard commentary,although the treatises were also commented on by other, morePlatonically-minded twelfth-century scholars. Although theopuscula sacra were not formally a part of the theologycurriculum in most later medieval universities, they continued to bestudied, and Aquinas wrote commentaries on Treatises I and III.

Though the influence of these other works was great, the popularityand importance of theConsolation far exceeded it. The textalready echoes in what must be one of the earliest pieces of genuinelymedieval Latin philosophy, the little treatise ‘On TruePhilosophy’ with which Alcuin prefaced hisDegrammatica, and it remained a favourite through the later MiddleAges and into the Renaissance. Not until the time of Gibbon had itbeen reduced to an object of the historian’s condescendingadmiration. One measure of the extent and character of its readershipis the translations, not merely into almost every medieval vernacular,but also into Greek and even Hebrew. Among the translators were two ofthe greatest vernacular writers of the whole epoch: Jean de Meun, whoput theConsolation into Old French in the later thirteenthcentury, and Chaucer, who translated it into Middle English about acentury later. As their involvement suggests, Boethius’sdialogue was a text which popularized philosophy outside theuniversities, and its literary features, as well as its arguments,inspired imitations and creative adaptations, from Alain ofLille’sDe planctu Naturae (‘Nature’sLament’) to, more distantly, Dante’sConvivio andeven Chaucer’sTroilus and Criseyde. Philosophers andtheologians, too, used the work; it was part of the school syllabusfrom the ninth to the twelfth centuries, and althoughAristotle’s treatises left no room for it in the universitycurriculum, it continued to be studied by students and teachers there.For example, Aquinas’s account of the highest good in hisSumma Theologiae IaIIe builds on theConsolation,and the definition of eternity given by Philosophy in Book V becamethe starting-point for almost every later medieval discussion of Godand time. Moreover, theConsolation continued to be importantin philosophical discussions right up to the end of the seventeenthcentury (cf. Belli 2011).

TheConsolation had many medieval commentaries—mostlyon the whole text, although some just examined Book III, m. 9. In thetenth and eleventh centuries, the commentary written by Remigius ofAuxerre was the most widely read (and often adapted). William ofConches’s commentary, written in the 1120s, became standard inthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the commentary by the EnglishDominican, Nicholas Trivet, from the beginning of the fourteenthcentury, was the most popular in the late Middle Ages. One of thecentral problems which faced any commentator was the relation of thetext to Christian teaching. Remigius and, in a subtler way, Williamboth took Boethius, whom they knew to be a Christian, to be puttingforward Christian doctrine without seeming to do so; Trivet’sapproach is less syncretistic, although he finds nothing unacceptablefor Christians in theConsolation.

The preceding paragraphs in this section might seem to indicate thatthere 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 ownright. He is seen, rather, as a conduit through which Greekphilosophical ideas were transmitted to the Latin tradition. Ofcourse, one aspect of Boethius’s influence is indeed that hemade available ideas and arguments deriving from Plato, Aristotle,Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyry and Iamblichus. But he was also anindividual thinker, with pronounced tastes and views, no less (if nomore) original than his Greek contemporaries; and also, in theConsolation, one of the rare philosophers whose thought, likePlato’s, cannot be neatly separated from the complex literaryform in which it is expressed.

Bibliography

Primary Texts in Latin

• De institutione musica, G. Friedlein (ed.), Leipzig:Teubner, 1867.
• De arithmetica, H. Oosthout and J. Schilling (eds.),Turnhout: Brepols, 1999 (Corpus Christianorum series latina 94a).
• Commentaries onOn Interpretation, C. Meiser (ed.),Leipzig: Teubner, 1887, 1880.
• Commentaries onIsagoge, S. Brandt (ed.), Vienna/Leipzig:Tempsky/Freitag, 1906 (Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum38).
• De divisione, J. Magee (ed.), Leiden/Boston/Cologne:Brill, 1998 (Philosophia antiqua 77).
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• De topicis differentiis, D.Z. Nikitas (ed.), inBoethius: De topicis differentiis kai hoi buzantines metafraseistou Manouel Holobolou kai Prochorou Kudone,Athens/Paris/Brussels: Academy of Athens/Vrin/Ousia, 1969 (CorpusPhilosophorum Medii Aevi. Philosophi Byzantini 5).
• Introductio ad syllogismos categoricos, C. ThomsenThornqvist (ed.), Gotheburg: University of Gothenburg, 2008 (Studiesgraeca et latina gothoburgensia 69).
• An edition of theCategories commentary by M. Asztalos is(and has for many years been) in preparation; at the moment, the workmust still be read in the edition found in J.-P. Migne,PatrologiaLatina 64.
• Opuscula Sacra andDe consolatione Philosophiae,C. Moreschini (ed.), revised edition, Munich/Leipzig: K.G. Saur,2005.

Selected English (and other) Translations of Primary Texts

• Bower, C. M., 1989,Boethius: Fundamental of Music, NewHaven and London: Yale University Press.
• Guillaumin, J. Y., 1995,De institutione arithmetica,edition with French translation, Paris: Belles Lettres, 1995.
• Magee, J. (ed.), 1998,Boethius. De divisione,Leiden/Boston/Cologne: Brill, 1998 (Philosophia antiqua 77). FullEnglish translation.
• Relihan, J. C., 2001,Boethius, ‘Consolation ofPhilosophy’, Hackett: Indianapolis.
• Spade, P.V. (trans.), 1994,Five Texts on the MediaevalProblem of Universals: Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus,Ockham, Indianapolis, Ind./Cambridge, Mass.: Hackett. The passageon universals from the second commentary to theIsagoge.
• Stewart, H.F, E.K. Rand, and S.J. Tester, 1973,Boethius: theTheological Tractates; the Consolation of Philosophy, Cambridge,Mass./London: Harvard University Press.
• Stump, E., 1978,Boethius’s ‘De topicisdifferentiis’, Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.Full English translation and commentary.
• –––, 1988,Boethius’s ‘InCiceronis Topica’, Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.Full English translation and commentary.

Selected Secondary Works

• Arlig, A., 2009, ‘The Metaphysics of Individuals in theOpuscula sacra,’ in Marenbon 2009, 129–54.
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• Belli, M., 2011,Il centro e la circonferenza. Fortunadel De consolatione philosophiaedi Boezio tra Valla eLeibniz, Florence: Olschki (Le corrispondenze letterarie,scinetifiche ed erudite dal rinasimento all’ moderna. Subsidia14).
• Boehm, T., T. Jurgasch, A. Kirchner (eds.), 2014,Boethius asa Paradigm of Late Ancient Thought, Berlin/Boston: DeGruyter.
• Chadwick, H., 1981,Boethius. The Consolations of Music,Logic, Theology, and Philosophy, Oxford : Oxford UniversityPress.
• Courcelle, P., 1967,La Consolation de Philosophie dans latradition littéraire, Paris: ÉtudesAugustiniennes.
• De Libera, A., 1999,L’Art desgénéralités. Théories del’abstraction, Paris: Aubier.
• De Rijk, L.M., 1988, ‘On Boethius’ Notion of Being. AChapter of Boethian Semantics,’ in N. Kretzmann (ed.),Meaning and Inference in Medieval Philosophy, Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1–29 (Synthese Historical Library32).
• Donato, A., 2013,Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy asa Product of Late Antiquity, London/New York: Bloomsbury.
• Dronke, P., 1994,Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante.The Art and Scope of the Mixed Form, Cambridge, Mass./London:Harvard University Press.
• Ebbesen, S., 1990, ‘Boethius as an AristotelianCommentator,’ in Sorabji (1990), 373–91.
• Fuhrmann, M. and Gruber, J., 1984,Boethius, Darmstadt;Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (Wege der Forschung 483).
• Galonnier, A. (ed.), 1984,Boèce ou la chaîne dessavoirs. Actes du colloque international de la FondationSinger-Polignac, Louvain-la-neuve, Leuven and Paris; Institutsupèrieur de philosophie and Peeters (Wege der Forschung483).
• Gibson, M. (ed.), 1981,Boethius. His Life, Thought andInfluence, Oxford: Blackwell.
• Gruber, J., 2006,Kommentar zu Boethius De ConsolationePhilosophiae, 2nd edition, Berlin/New York: De Gruyter (Texte undKommentare—eine altertumswissenschaftliche Reihe 9).
• Hoenen, M.F.M. and Nauta, L. (eds.), 1997,Boethius in theMiddle Ages. Latin and Vernacular Tradition of the ‘ConsolatioPhilosophiae’, Leiden/New York/Cologne: Brill (Studien undTexte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 58).
• Huber, P., 1976,Die Vereinbarkeit von göttlicherVorsehung und menschlicher Freiheit in der Consolatio Philosophiae desBoethius, Zurich: Juris.
• Huygens, R.B.C., 1954, ‘Mittelalterliche Kommentare zumO qui perpetua…,’Sacris Erudiri, 6:373–427.
• Kaylor, N. and Phillips, P. E. (eds.), 2012,A Companion toBoethius in the Middle Ages, Leiden: Brill.
• Kretzmann, N., 1985, ‘Nos Ipsi Principia Sumus:Boethius and the Basis of Contingency,’ in T. Rudavsky (ed.),Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy:Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspectives, Dordrecht: Reidel,23–50.
• –––, 1998, ‘Boethius and the Truth aboutTomorrow’s Sea Battle,’ in D. Blank and N. Kretzmann(trans.)Ammonius on Aristotle on Interpretation 9 withBoethius on Aristotle on Interpretation 9, Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 24–52.
• Leftow, B., 1991,Time and Eternity, Ithaca/London;Cornell University Press.
• MacDonald, S., 1988, ‘Boethius’s Claim that allSubstances are Good,’Archiv für Geschichte derPhilosophie, 70: 245–79.
• Magee, J., 1989,Boethius on Signification and Mind,London/New York/Copenhagen/Cologne: Brill (Philosophia Antiqua52).
• Maioli, B., 1978,Teoria dell’essere edell’esistente e classificazione delle scienze in M.S. Boezio.Una delucidazione, Rome: Bulzoni (Università degli studidi Siena, Facoltà di Magistero: sede di Arezzo—Quadernidell’Istituto di scienze filosofiche 4).
• Marenbon, J., 2002,Boethius, New York: Oxford UniversityPress.
• –––, 2003, ‘Rationality and Happiness:interpreting Boethius’sConsolation ofPhilosophy,’ in J. Yu and J.J.E. Gracia (eds.),Rationality andt Happiness: from the Ancients to the EarlyMedievals, Rochester: University of Rochester Press,175–97.
• ––– (ed.), 2009,The Cambridge Companion toBoethius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2013, ‘Divine Prescience andContingency in Boethius’sConsolation ofPhilosophy’,Rivista di storia della filosofia,68: 9–19.
• Michon, C., 2015, ‘La prescience et la liberté, letemps et l’éternité. Un relecture du dernier livre(V) de laConsolation de Philosophie’, in A. Giavattoand F. le Blay (eds.),Autour de la Consolation dePhilosophiede Boèce, Neuilly: Atlande, 127–63.
• Martin, C.J., 1987, ‘Embarrassing Arguments and SurprisingConclusions in the Development of Theories of the Conditional in theTwelfth Century,’ in J. Jolivet and A. De Libera (eds.),Gilbert de Poitiers et ses contemporains: aux origines de lalogica modernorum, Naples: Bibliopolis, 377–400 (Actes duseptième Symposium européen d’histoire de lalogique et de la sémantique médiévales, Centred’études supérieures de civilisationmédiévale de Poitiers, 17–22 Juin 1985).
• –––, 1991, ‘The Logic of Negation inBoethius,’Phronesis, 36: 277–304.
• –––, 1999, ‘Non-Reductive Arguments fromImpossible Hypotheses in Boethius and Philoponus,’OxfordStudies in Ancient Philosophy, 17: 279–302.
• Minio-Paluello, L., 1972,Opuscula: The Latin Aristotle,Amsterdam: Hakkert.
• Minnis, A.J. (ed.), 1987,The Medieval Boethius. Studies inthe Vernacular Translations of ‘De ConsolationePhilosophiae’, Cambridge: Brewer.
• ––– (ed.), 1993,Chaucer’s Boece andthe Mediaeval Tradition of Boethius, Cambridge: Brewer (ChaucerStudies 18).
• Obertello, L., 1974,Severino Boezio, Genoa; AcademiaLigure di Scienze e Lettere.
• Relihan, J., 1993,Ancient Menippean Satire, London andBaltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Relihan, J., 1997,The Prisoner’s Philosophy: life anddeath in Boethius’s Consolation, Notre Dame, Ind.:University of Notre Dame Press.
• Schlapkohl, C., 1999,Persona est naturae rationabilisindividua substantia. Boethius und die Debatte über derPersonbegriff, Marburg: Elwert (Marburger TheologischeStudien).
• Schrimpf, G., 1966,Die Axiomenschrift des Boethius (DeHebdomadibus) als philosophisches Lehrbuch des Mittelalters,Leiden: Brill (Studien zur Problemgeschichte der antiken undmittelalterlichen Philosophie 2).
• Schurr, V., 1935,Die Trinitätslehre des Boethius imLichte der ‘Skythischen Kontroversen’, Paderborn:Schöningh (Forschungen zur christlichen Literatur undDogmengeschichte 18,1).
• Sharples, R., 2009, ‘Fate, prescience and free will,’in Marenbon (2009), 207–272.
• Shiel, J., 1990, ‘Boethius’ Commentaries onAristotle,’ in Sorabji (1990), 349–72.
• Sorabji, R., 1983,Time, Creation and the Continuum,London: Duckworth.
• ––– (ed.), 1990,Aristotle Transformed: TheAncient Commentators and Their Influence, London: Duckworth.
• Speca, A., 2001,Hypothetical Syllogistic and Stoic Logic(Philosophia Antiqua 87), Leiden: Brill.
• Troncarelli, F., 1981,Tradizioni perdute. La‘Consolazione Philosophiae’ nell’alto medioevo,Padua: Antenore (Medioevo e umanesimo 42).
• –––, 1987,Boethiana aetas. Modelli graficie fortuna manoscritta della ‘Consolatio Philosophiae’ traIX e XII secolo, Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso(Biblioteca di scrittura e civiltà 2).
• William of Conches, 1999,Glosae super Boetium, ed. L.Nauta, Turnout: Brepols (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis158: Guillelmi de Conchis opera omnia II).
• Zagzebski, L.T., 1991,The Dilemma of Freedom andForeknowledge, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Other Internet Resources

• Boethius, maintained by James J. O’Donnell, Georgetown University(includes a line-by-line commentary on theConsolation).
• Spade, P.V. (1996) ‘Boethius against Universals: The Arguments in theSecond Commentary on Porphyry’ (in PDF). See alsoMediaeval Logic and Philosophy website, maintained by Paul Spade, Indiana University.

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