 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
the stream divides
[ 77 ]
against him. In 524, he imprisoned Boethius and a year or two later put him to
death, without a trial.
Before his imprisonment, Boethius had done important work as a theologian
and translator. His main theological preoccupation was refuting trinitarian and
christological heresies. In his discussion of the Trinity, he introduced Aristotelian
categories to differentiate the three persons. His definition of
person —“a sub-
stance that is individual, of a nature that is rational”—became the standard one in
medieval philosophy. However, more important than either his theology or his
contributions to philosophical terminology was the contribution that he aspired
to make, and that he easily could have made, as a translator of Greek philosophy
into Latin. No one had yet translated much of Plato or Aristotle, including any of
Aristotle’s works on metaphysics, natural philosophy, or psychology.
3
So Boethius
undertook to translate the complete works of Plato and Aristotle. He intended to
show that the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle are compatible.
For some reason that in retrospect is difficult to understand, Boethius decided
to begin this massive project by translating Aristotle’s elementary logic texts,
Categories
and On Interpretation
and then, rather than proceeding immediately
to Aristotle’s more important works, to translate the Isagoge, or commentary on
Categories, by the Neoplatonist Porphyry (233-301). This was supposed to help
readers deal with the logic that Boethius had already translated. He then wrote
his own commentaries on Porphyry, Cicero, and Aristotle’s elementary logic. In
the latter, he frequently appealed to theories from Stoic logic and thus preserved
this important post-Aristotelian theory for the consideration of medieval logi-
cians. In his commentary on Porphyry, he also nourished interest in the problem
of universals. However, due to his untimely death, he got no further in his trans-
lations of Plato and Aristotle. As a consequence, his historical import is much
greater for what he did not do than for what
he did. Had he completed his
intended project of translating Plato and Aristotle, or even translated just one of
Aristotle’s more important contributions to natural philosophy, he might have
profoundly changed the face of medieval philosophy.
While in
prison awaiting his execution, Boethius wrote The Consolation of
Philosophy, which became one of the most widely read books in medieval times.
In it, he dealt with the issue, as a matter of psychology rather than ethical theory,
of how good people to whom bad things happen can nevertheless find meaning
in life. Written in a personal style, the argument is Platonic. Philosophy, per-
sonified as a woman, nurses the prisoner Boethius to the recollection of the Pla-
tonic notion of Good, which “strongly and sweetly” controls and gives order to
the universe. Both fortune and misfortune are subordinate to the Good. Evil as
something that really exists is excluded. Humans have free will, but their having
 |