Boethius’s Consolation Part 2–Book I

Two images recur throughout the first book of the Consolation. The first is the image of medicine, which presents philosophy as a therapy for the soul. The second image is the citadel of reason, which presents philosophy as a defense against misfortune. The medical image arises first. In the first prose section, Philosophy ejects the theatrical muses from the chamber the first prose section because “not only have they no cures for his pain, but with their sweet poison they make it worse” (135). Philosophy claims that she and her muses will restore Boethius to health, not them.

More Resources

Links to tons of texts by people like Giordano Bruno and Raymond Lull are available on this very nice french site dedicated to early modern scholasticism. They also have lots of links to texts from the 15th to 18th century that might interest some of you.

Boethius on the Sinlessness and Death of Christ

In his Contra Eutychen, Boethius poses an interesting problem: if Adam would not have died if he had not sinned because death is the punishment of sin, how is it that Christ, being sinless and having a human body derived from Adam dies?

Protestantism and Natural Law Theory

I found an excellent article by Stephen Grabill on Protestantism and Natural Law theory here and there are links to other similar articles he has written.

Boethius’s Consolatio (Part I Prefatory Remarks)

This series will focus on Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, the philosophical masterpiece of one of the foundational thinkers of the medieval period. There is a nice short life of Boethius available on wikipedia. I’ll add a few comments of my own to supplement what you find there. For the record, this project is part of a series of reading responses for a class I am doing. Not everything I will say will be original to me because I will also incorporate interesting insights that arise from class discussions and the comments of professor S. For convenience’s sake I won’t try to separate out which comments are my own contribution and which belong to others. (In general, if I claim X and X is a brilliant insight which illuminates the history of neoplatonic philosophy, you are safe to assume that I got X from Professor S.)

Some new resources

There are versions of three medieval logical treatises available for download here.

There is also a fantastic  new directory of latin texts available from Brepolis. Something like 900 authors are represented, but you need an institutional subscription for access and the user interface is quite forbidding. (However there is a 150 pages long user manual for help!)

Boethius Resources

Peter King has made a relatively new translation of one of Boethius’s short theological treatises On The Hebdomads which is available here in English and here in Latin. King has also made available a translation of Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on this text which is available here in English and here in Latin. The rest of Boethius’s works in Latin, including his Consolation of Philosophy and translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge are also linked at King’s page.

Announcing a new series on Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy

Next week I will begin a 10 or 11 part series on Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. Hopefully people will find it interesting.

Two Blog-series on 16th century Protestant Scholastics

Michael Vendsel is now on the fifth installment of a series of posts on the Freedom of the Will in Peter Martyr Vermigli and Francis Turretin at Per Caritatem the blog of Cynthia Nielsen.

Also, WTM of  Der Evangelische Theologe has begun a series on Turretin’s Ecclesiology which looks promising.

Brian Leftow on Anselm’s view of Divine Perfections

“Anselm seeks “names” or “words” – bits of language. He is being careful when he says that he seeks these rather than seeking properties that God has. There are at least two reasons to speak this way. One can be traced to the Monologion’s first argument for God’s existence. This proceeds, again, by first arguing that something plays the role of a property of goodness. “Good” applies to anything other than the property of goodness because it has a property distinct from itself, namely goodness. “Good” does not apply to goodness because it has a property distinct from itself, for goodness is not distinct from itself. “Good” applies to anything else because it has a relation of real dependence on goodness. If it applies to goodness, it does so because goodness is identical to goodness. Identity to goodness and real dependence on goodness are distinct attributes. Nothing can have both. So while one term, “good,” applies to goodness and other good things, it applies in virtue of different attributes. But really, there is an even deeper problem here. What makes goodness good is not a property that goodness has. It is instead the property that goodness is. If intrinsic attributes are by definition “things had” and distinct from the item having them, goodness has no intrinsic attribute of goodness. Nor then does Anselm’s God, who is identical with goodness. “Good” applies to Him, and is a purely intrinsic description. But it does not apply in virtue of an attribute at all. It applies due to what God is, not what He has.”
. . .
“This threatens to leave the perfect-being project pointless: why apply words to God if we do not have any idea what they say when so used? Anselm recognizes the problem (Mon.65). His reply is that we can at best draw conclusions about God based on what is like Him, and say about Him things which are true, but not in the senses in which we understand them (Mon. 65).” (Cambridge Companion to Anselm, pp. 134-135).