Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 118 - Fate, Hope and Clarity - Boethius.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverhulme Trust, online at www.historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode, Fate, Hope, and Clarity. Boethius. As you might imagine, I find myself reading and working on philosophy in some rather strange places. On trains and buses, at the beach, at the department store while family members are trying on clothes, these are just a few of the places I've cuddled up with Plato or Avicenna. In fact, while I was preparing for this episode, you could have seen me in my kitchen reading about Boethius while making mashed potatoes. But I draw the line at airplanes. They make me too nervous to work, which I realize is silly. I mean, I know that I'm vanishingly unlikely to die in a plane crash. So for me, an hour spent in a plane is an hour wasted, at least as far as philosophy goes. Okay, an hour wasted. This makes me all the more impressed when I consider Boethius, who wrote his greatest philosophical work in the certain knowledge that he was indeed about to die, not while experiencing a plane crash, that would take some pretty quick writing, but while waiting to be executed at the order of the Emperor Theodoric in the year 525 or 6. On the other hand, Boethius got some help that has never been offered to me. While in captivity, he was visited by Lady Philosophy herself. His dialogue with her is recorded in The Consolation of Philosophy, not only his great latest work, but also a work with far-reaching influence on philosophy and literature. In The Consolation, Boethius complains to Lady Philosophy that he has been the victim of political intrigue, and this is true enough. He had occupied a high office under Theodoric, but fell from grace when he leapt to the defense of a Senator named Albinus who had been accused of treason. The nature of the supposed treason reminds us that we are now at the end of antiquity. The Empire is definitively split into two halves, with the western half wobbling, but not yet fallen. Theodoric was a Goth who had taken charge of Italy in the 490s, but he was not recognized by the East as a full Emperor in the West. Thus, Theodoric had a troubled relationship with the court in Constantinople, and was sensitive to the possibility that his independence might be undermined. This is probably what lay behind the charge of treason against Albinus, who had supposedly communicated with the Eastern Court. When Boethius spoke out on behalf of Albinus's faithfulness, he fell from favor. He was taken to Pavia, imprisoned, and, after an incarceration long enough that he could write his masterpiece, executed. Because Boethius did live at the very end of antiquity, and because his writings had such a decisive influence on medieval philosophy, he is often thought of as a medieval author. But even if Boethius was in fact ushering in a new age of thought in Christian Europe, with limited access to philosophical literature and disappearing knowledge of Greek, he was not of the medieval age. He was, rather, a Roman aristocrat, whose thought world was still more like that of Cicero than that of Anselm, Abelard, or Aquinas. You don't have to have a name starting with A to be a medieval philosopher, but it helps. Like Cicero, Boethius was a man with a busy public life, who devoted much of his free time to the study and Latin translation of Greek philosophy. Unlike Cicero, however, his attention was devoted almost entirely to Plato, Aristotle, and commentaries on Aristotle. Even more unlike Cicero, Boethius was a Christian, who wrote works on Trinitarian theology. In the 19th century, scholars doubted whether the author of the Consolation and the Logical Works, which have no overt Christian content, could also have produced these theological writings. But these doubts were ill-founded. In fact, even a casual perusal of Boethius' theological works shows that he is putting his knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy to use, as he explains God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation. But let's start where Boethius would probably want us to, his works on Aristotelian logic. In one of these, he announced his intention to translate all the works of Plato and Aristotle. If this enormously ambitious project had been brought to fruition, medieval philosophy might have looked very different. Theodoric has a lot to answer for. Before his untimely death, Boethius was fairly prolific but still got only as far as Aristotle's logical works. As we know, this was the usual starting place for the study of philosophy in late antiquity, in places like Alexandria. So it's no surprise that Boethius prioritized logic. He wrote translations and commentaries, in some cases more than one commentary on a single work, on Porphyry's introduction and most of Aristotle's organon. He wrote independent treatises too, one corresponding to Aristotle's topics but drawing heavily on Cicero's work of the same name. Boethius' focus on logic is not the only thing he shares with the philosophers of Alexandria. He was a near contemporary of the head of the Alexandrian school, Ammonius, and we often find him making comments about Aristotle that match with the remarks of Ammonius and his pupils. This is probably not because Boethius was in contact with the Alexandrian school, but because he drew on the same sources. Among those sources, the most important was Porphyry. Not only did Boethius write on Porphyry's introduction, he also drew heavily on Porphyry's commentaries on Aristotle. Boethius was a competent, though not terribly innovative, logician. His importance for the history of logic is nonetheless immense, since he became the primary conduit through which Aristotelian logic could reach Latin-reading medieval philosophers. An example of his influence is his decision to discuss a question Porphyry raised but didn't answer in his introduction. As you might remember, Porphyry asked what we should say about the status of universals, fundamental features shared by many individuals such as whiteness or humanity. Boethius' decision to discuss this problem in his commentary ensured that medieval readers would see the metaphysical issue of the status of universals as fundamental in Latin writings about logic. Logic more generally was fundamental for Boethius himself, and he drew on his logical expertise in his works on Christian theology and his consolation. In honor of his interest in the Trinity, I'll give you three examples. The first has to do with Aristotle's categories. As you'll remember, Aristotle there classifies types of predicates or terms that apply to things. One class of predicates is relation, which would include for instance master and slave, or father and son. I don't choose that second example randomly. In a treatise called On the Trinity, Boethius realizes that he can exploit the notion of a relation to explain the difference between the Trinitarian persons, father, son, and Holy Spirit. First though, he is careful to argue that God is in indivisible unity. Unlike created things, like a human who is composed out of both body and soul, God is, as Boethius puts it, nothing but what He is. Thus, if we say that God is good, we mean not that God is a substance of which goodness is predicated, as white would be predicated of a piece of paper, or as a form, like the soul, is predicated of a body. Rather, we mean that God is simply goodness itself. This looks like a good way of securing God's utter simplicity. Anything we can say about God will refer to a nature that is identical with God Himself. But that seems to raise problems for the doctrine of the Trinity. If the Father is identical to God, and so is the Son, then won't the Father be identical with the Son, so that we have one and not two persons? Yes and no, says Boethius. They will indeed be identical, but now exploiting Aristotle, there is still a relation between them that is sufficient to produce the difference in persons. The difference doesn't make God into two distinct beings, because adding relations to something doesn't affect what it is in itself. For instance, I might go stand next to you, so that you bear to me the relation of being to my left. If I then go around the other side, you'll have the relation of being to my right. But you remain unchanged in yourself throughout. In fact, you may not even notice. I'll be very quiet, because I'll probably be reading about philosophy the whole time. In the same way, God is subject to relations like fatherhood and sonhood without this turning Him into more than one thing. After all, as Boethius points out, a thing can bear a relation to itself, such as the relation of self-identity. This gives us some idea of what is happening in the Trinity, though not a full understanding, because we never experience something like the Trinitarian relationship among created things. This mention of created things takes us to another theological work by Boethius on why things are good in virtue of their existence. Here, Boethius is going to make use of another weapon from his logical arsenal. This one he borrows from Porphyry, the proper or inseparable accident. Here, the idea is that, even if a feature cannot be removed from something in reality, it may be possible to remove it conceptually. The standard example is a human's ability to laugh. Porphyry also gave the example of a scar, which, before the invention of laser surgery, couldn't be taken away from the scarred person. The point is that, since such features can at least be removed in our thought, they can't be essential to the thing that has the feature. If the scar on my thumb miraculously disappeared, I would still be me and would still be human. Thus equipped, let's turn to this theological treatise about why things are good. What Boethius wants to explain here is the fact that everything that exists, insofar as it exists, is good. Obviously, the first thing we might want to explain is why Boethius would think this is true. One way of explaining it would be that he is accepting the understanding of goodness and evil pioneered by Plotinus and accepted by Augustine, who is one of Boethius's favorite authors. On this view, evil is just an absence of being, the failure of something to realize its nature to the extent that it could and should. But that means that insofar as anything does exist, it must be good. If it lacked goodness entirely, it would simply cease to be. Boethius is happy to accept this, which gives him a problem. He doesn't want to say things are good in their very essence. If part of what it is to be me is for me to be good, the way that part of what it is to be me is for me to be rational and alive, then I would be good in exactly the same way as God. For God is, as we saw, good in himself. Boethius solves the difficulty by asking us to imagine a situation that can never occur, where all created things exist but God, who is goodness itself, does not. In this case, claims Boethius, things would no longer be good by virtue of existing. They would still be good alright, remember that if they didn't they would cease to exist entirely. But the goodness would only be an inseparable accident, like humans' ability to laugh or my scar. This is because goodness is not part of what it is to be, say, a human, a giraffe, or any other created thing. This is one way that they differ from God. Goodness is thus conceptually separable from being human or giraffe, even if it is not separable in reality. Thus, it is only thanks to the presence of God, as Creator, that things are good insofar as they exist. It isn't entirely clear what Boethius means here. One plausible interpretation would be that he is showing his Platonist leanings and thinks that created things continue to exist by participating in God, who is goodness itself, like participating in a Platonic form of good. Goodness comes to them from the outside, as it were, bestowed by God rather than belonging to their own natures. But it is still intimately bound up with their existence, because they only exist at all, thanks to the will of God, the first good. Our third and final logical theme is the problem of truths about the future, which seem to make future events inevitable. As we've seen, Aristotle first broached this issue in his On Interpretation, with the famous example of the sea battle, and Boethius takes up the question in his commentary on that work. The reading of Aristotle he offers is also found in Greek commentators like Ammonius. According to this reading, Aristotle solves the difficulty by saying that there are only indefinite truths about future events. Unfortunately, it again isn't quite clear what Boethius means. He may mean that according to Aristotle, present statements about the future are indefinite because they are going to turn out true or false, but it isn't yet decided which. Thus, if I say, I will watch a Buster Keaton movie tomorrow, then this will certainly wind up being either true or false, but will not become true or false until I actually watch the movie or fail to do so. Alternatively, Boethius might mean that a statement like, I will watch a Buster Keaton movie tomorrow is right now true rather than false, but not necessarily true. So I could truly say that I will in fact watch the movie without this meaning that it is inevitable that I watch the movie. After all, the truth I'm asserting here is contingent, because I could easily have decided not to watch a Buster Keaton movie, unwise though that would be. If on the other hand I said 2 plus 2 will equal 4 tomorrow, what I am saying now will already be necessarily true. A more famous discussion of this issue occurs at the end of that jailhouse classic, The Consolation of Philosophy. Here though we are dealing with the version of the difficulty discussed by Augustine. Once we admit that God knows future events with certainty, don't we have to conclude that there are indeed present truths about those events, and that the truths are necessary? Boethius arrives at this point only after a long dialogue with his visitor Lady Philosophy. At first the prisoner Boethius is too distraught to worry about these logical niceties. Lady Philosophy has comforted him with a regime of arguments, first offering him gentle medicines and then more severe ones. The gentle medicines include getting Boethius to reflect on respects in which he remains fortunate. For instance, his family is still alive, even if he will shortly be killed. Lady Philosophy moves on to show Boethius that there is no point lamenting about the way the wheel of fortune turns. That is in the nature of fortune, after all, which stays the same only in that it is constantly changing, raising up the lowly and casting down the powerful. Lady Philosophy sounds very like Marcus Aurelius when she dismisses the role of chance in the universe or says that we should never value anything that can be taken away from us. A more Augustinian note is sounded when Lady Philosophy gives her positive account of happiness. It lies not in virtue and self-mastery, as Epictetus or Marcus might say, but is to be identified with God himself, which may remind us of Augustine's City of God. Still, pagan Hellenic sources are never far from Lady Philosophy's mind. She seems to have read Plato's Gorgias closely, as she comforts Boethius by telling him that the wicked of this world only seem to be powerful and happy. In fact, the good alone are powerful and do what they want, whereas the wicked suffer from their own wickedness. What would be good for them, as Plato held, would be corrective punishment. There's more than a hint of Plotinus mixed into Lady Philosophy's medicine too, perhaps filtered through Augustine. For here we find again the idea that evil itself is nothing, and therefore that the wicked are simply failing to do anything when they perform evil actions. Seen from the point of view of divine providence, the world contains no evil. Admittedly, it does contain suffering, but even this is sent by providence, either as a test for the good or a punishment for the evil. So far, so optimistic, but it does lead Boethius to this difficulty about providence itself. If God providentially knows everything that will happen, then isn't everything necessary? Lady Philosophy admits that it seems so, because God obviously cannot be wrong about anything. Since it seems that He could not have certainty about things that are in themselves uncertain, there is no possibility that the things He knows be otherwise. Thus all things that God knows, including future events, are necessary, but God knows everything, therefore everything is necessary. Towards a solution, Lady Philosophy points out that if you see something happening presently, that doesn't make what you are seeing necessary. She gives the example of a chariot race. If the motions of the chariot drivers are not even necessary while they are occurring, then much less could they be necessary before they occur. Moreover, as they are occurring, you can be certain that what you are seeing is happening. This shows that in a way, certainty is indeed compatible with the absence of necessity. The problem is that future events don't seem to be like this. From our point of view, they are still open or unsettled in a way that a present event is not. But our point of view is not the same as God's. Appealing to a distinction that was introduced by the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, Boethius has Lady Philosophy say that the way things are known is appropriate not to what is known, but to the knower. Thus events that seem uncertain to us could be certain for God. This is because God does not really know future events as future events. He never changes, so that unlike us, He has knowledge that does not alter from moment to moment. Instead, He sees all things, the things that for us are past, present, and future, with a single simultaneous knowledge. Boethius makes the point in Latin by saying that God's knowledge is not praevidencia, knowing in advance, but providencia, which means knowing from a commanding vantage point, like someone surveying things from a high mountain. This idea too is originally Neoplatonic, albeit that again, Boethius could have found it in Augustine. God has an unchanging relationship towards things that change in time, and as Plotinus said, a being who lives such an unchanging life can be called eternal. At first blush, this might seem to make the problem even worse. Now we are saying not only that God knows now what I will do tomorrow, but that He knows eternally and unchangingly what I will do tomorrow. If the sea battle argument makes my actions look inevitable, this argument looks like it could make my actions immutably inevitable. But Lady Philosophy draws the opposite conclusion. God's eternity means He sees every event occurring as if it were present for Him. His seeing tomorrow's chariot race is just like your seeing today's chariot race. So we should no more think that His foreknowledge implies necessity in a future event than we should think that our ordinary present knowledge implies necessity in a present event. This is an ingenious suggestion for solving the problem of divine foreknowledge, so much so that I think we wouldn't be spinning our wheels by thinking about it a bit more. We'll do just that in our next and final episode on ancient Christian philosophy, and indeed, ancient philosophy in general, by turning to the world's leading expert on Boethius's philosophy. I suspect that John Marin Bond already knows what he's going to say next time about Boethius and divine foreknowledge here on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.