Entirely faithful to Boethius' Latin; Relihan's translation makes the philosophy of the Consolation intelligible to readers; it gives equal weight to the poetry--in fact, Relihan's metrical translation of Boethius' _metro_ are themselves contributions of the first moment to Boethian studies. Boethius finally has a translator equal to his prodigious talents and his manifold vision. --Joseph Pucci, Brown University.

Boethius composed the De Consolatione Philosophiae in the sixth century AD whilst awaiting death under torture, condemned on a charge of treason which he protested was manifestly unjust. Though a convinced Christian, in detailing the true end of life which is the soul's knowledge of God, he consoled himself not with Christian precepts but with the tenets of Greek philosophy. This work dominated the intellectual world of the Middle Ages; writers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Jean de Meun, and (...) Dante were inspired by it. In England it was rendered in to Old English by Alfred the Great, into Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer, and later Queen Elizabeth I made her own translation. The circumstances of composition, the heroic demeanour of the author, and the 'Menippean' texture of part prose, part verse have combined to exercise a fascination over students of philosophy and literature ever since. (shrink)

A Latin-American/Spanish edition of the medieval classic. Boethius' treatises on meditation and beauty are still valid to this very day.

v. 1. Capita dogmatica : traités II, III, IV.

This chapter contains sections titled: Logic and epistemology The eternity of the world Human happiness.

Notkers um 1000 entstandene Bearbeitung der spätantiken »Consolatio Philosophiae« steht in der Tradition der karolingischen Rezeption, die die »Consolatio« zur Vermittlung christlicher Bildung im Rahmen des didaktischen Konzepts der artes liberales nutzt, und bedeutet gleichzeitig eine Innovation: Notker bedient sich tradierter Techniken der Texterschließung, indem er auf die Glossierungstypen lateinischer Textkommentare zurückgreift. Zugleich bezieht er die althochdeutsche Volkssprache in Form von Kommentar und Übersetzung in seine Texterklärung ein und nutzt die Lektüre der »Consolatio« als Ausgangspunkt für theoretische Wissensvermittlung, vor allem (...) auf dem Gebiet des Trivium und philosophisch-theologischer Fragenkomplexe. Seine Bearbeitung ist die erste umfassende Werkinterpretation zur »Consolatio«. Die vorliegende Studie ist die erste Monographie zu diesem Text seit dem Buch von Ingeborg Schröbler (1953). Sie bestimmt Notkers Ort innerhalb der Textgeschichte der »Consolatio« unter Einbeziehung zum Teil noch ungedruckter lateinischer Kommentare und arbeitet in Detailanalysen und im systematischen Überblick die formal-technischen und inhaltlichen Charakteristika seiner Bearbeitung vor dem Hintergrund der St. Galler Bildungstradition, der Unterrichtsmethoden und der wissenschaftlichen Entwicklungen seiner Zeit heraus. (shrink)

In the past Boethius was primarily considered to be the author of the Consolatio, or a theologician or logician. But as a philosopher he was the first to reflect on the concept of person, while Augustinus and others only made use of this concept. It is the purpose of this article to show that it was exactly Boethius’ situation in the late antiquity with its many differing traditions that urged and enabled him to ask himself what person essentially (...) is. His new concept of person (: naturae rationabilis individua substantia) puts person first and strengthens - problematically - the position of substance. (shrink)

This book offers a brief, accessible introduction to the thought of Boethius. After a survey of Boethius's life and work, Marenbon explicates his theological method, and devotes separate chapters to his arguments about good and evil, fortune, fate and free will, and the problem of divine foreknowledge. Marenbon also traces Boethius's influence on the work of such thinkers as Aquinas and Duns Scotus.

Boethius was a Roman senator who rose to high office under the Gothic king Theoderic the Great. He translated into Latin all he knew of Plato and Aristotle, and was profoundly interested in the issues of theology and philosophy. The Consolations were written while he awaited the execution of a tyrannical death sentence. The Consolations of Philosophy have been translated into English by King Alfred, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I. This scholarly study by Henry Chadwick, the first this (...) century since the War, has stimulated new interest in these remarkable works. (shrink)

The Consolations of Philosophy by Boethius, whose English translators include King Alfred, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I, ranks among the most remarkable books to be written by a prisoner awaiting the execution of a tyrannical death sentence. Its interpretation is bound up with his other writings on mathematics and music, on Aristotelian and propositional logic, and on central themes of Christian dogma. -/- Chadwick begins by tracing the career of Boethius, a Roman rising to high office under (...) the Gothic King Theoderic the Great, and suggests that his death may be seen as a cruel by-product of Byzantine ambitions to restore Roman imperial rule after its elimination in the West in AD 476. Subsequent chapters examine in detail his educational programme in the liberal arts designed to avert a threatened collapse of culture and his ambition to translate into Latin everything he could find on Plato and Aristotle. -/- Boethius has been called `last of the Romans, first of the scholastics'. This book is the first major study in English of a writer who was of critical importance in the history of thought. (shrink)

The paper studies the relation between systems of modal logic and systems of consequential implication, a non-material form of implication satisfying "Aristotle's Thesis" (p does not imply not p) and "Weak Boethius' Thesis" (if p implies q, then p does not imply not q). Definitions are given of consequential implication in terms of modal operators and of modal operators in terms of consequential implication. The modal equivalent of "Strong Boethius' Thesis" (that p implies q implies that p does (...) not imply not q) is identified. (shrink)

In this article I present the analysis of the syncategorematic term ‘omnis’ in the commentaries on the Topics by the Parisian masters of Arts Boethius of Dacia and Radulphus Brito. I shall focus on the different relations between subject, predicate and particular instances that obtain in universally quantified statements, and in particular on the relations that obtain in universally quantified statements with an empty subject. I also attempt to highlight some continuities and ruptures with respect to this problem in (...) its 13th-century treatments, by comparing Boethius and Brito’s analyses with the earlier analyses put forth by Peter of Spain and William of Sherwood. (shrink)

While Boethius's definition of the person, ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’, plays a significant role in Christian theology and anthropology, its reception is by no means uncritical. In the last hundred years, virtually every element in it has been critiqued by theologians and secular scholars. Nevertheless, its context suggests that his understanding of the person is potentially far richer than supposed. This paper places Boethius's definition of the person in its historical framework and in the context (...) of his own thought, especially Contra Eutyches and Consolation of Philosophy, in order to demonstrate that despite shortcomings, it represents a dynamic and holistic characterisation of the person. (shrink)

Boethius (480-524) Boethius was a prolific Roman scholar of the sixth century AD who played an important role in transmitting Greek science and philosophy to the medieval Latin world. His most influential work is The Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius left a deep mark in Christian theology and provided the basis for the development of mathematics, … Continue reading Boethius →.

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

Apart from his Consolation of Philosophy, perhaps the most well known text of Boethius is his discussion of universals in the Second Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge.1 In that passage, he first reviews the arguments for and against the existence of universal entities, and then offers a theory he attributes to Alexander of Aphrodisias, a kind of theory called in recent times “moderate realism,” according to which there are no universal entities in the ontology of the world, but nevertheless there (...) is an objective, non-arbitrary basis for the formation of our universal or general concepts about that world. At the very end of the passage, Boethius adds the intriguing comment that he has presented this view not necessarily because it is his own, but because it is the one that fits Aristotle’s.. (shrink)

Boethius’s short treatise On the Highest Good represents one of the remarkable and important variants of ethical aristotelianism, enriched in Boethius by neo-platonic and augustinian themes. The idea of the “philosophical way”, which exclusively can lead to blissfulness, encompassing theory as well as practice, was dismissed by theologians – counselors of Bishop Tempier. The result was an edict published in 1277, which among others condemned the ideas articulated in the treatise On the Highest Good. On closer view it (...) appears, however, that the “philosophical way” does not contradict the Christian way. Contrary to Thomas Aquinas or Bonaventura Boethius as a “professional philosopher” did not manage to include philosophy into theology. However, this is not to conceive the two as two contradicting disciplines, but rather as two different perspectives on one and the same thing. Therefore they can not be in conflict. (shrink)

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

Die "Consolatio Philosophiae," spatantikes Meisterwerk des Boethius, fungiert seit ihrer Wiederentdeckung durch Alkuin am Ende des 8. Jahrhunderts als Ausgangspunkt zahlreicher Kommentare und Ubersetzungen, die fur die europaische Geistesgeschichte pragend sind. Dieses Buch beleuchtet eine noch grossenteils unerforschte Texttradition: Franzosische Consolatio-Versionen des Mittelalters und der Fruhen Neuzeit bilden den Gegenstand der Analyse, bei der translatorische Strategien, diskursive Vernetzungen mit anderen Texten und Traditionen sowie sprachhistorische Entwicklungen sichtbar werden. Zur umfassenden Ermittlung komplexer Sinnstiftung werden jeweils historisches Umfeld, Paratextualitat und Textstruktur (...) sowie lexikalische und metrisch-rhetorische Besonderheiten der Ubersetzungen herausgestellt. (shrink)