Boethius

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Boethius bigraphy, stories - philosopher

Boethius : biography

480 – October 23, 524

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius,The name Anicius demonstrated his connection with a noble family of the Lower Empire, while Manlius claims lineage from the Manlii Torquati of the Republic. The name Severinus was given to him in honour of Severinus of Noricum.Hodgkin, Thomas. Italy and Her Invaders. London: Adamant Media Corporation, 2001. commonly called Boethius"Boethius" has four syllables in English, , the o and e are pronounced separately. It is hence traditionally written with a diæresis, viz. "Boëthius", a spelling which has been disappearing due to the limitations of typewriters. (c. 480–524 or 525 AD), was a philosopher of the early 6th century. He was born in Rome to an ancient and prominent family which included emperors Petronius Maximus and Olybrius and many consuls.Hodgkin, Thomas. Italy and Her Invaders. London: Adamant Media Corporation, 2001. His father, Flavius Manlius Boethius, was consul in 487 after Odoacer deposed the last Western Roman Emperor. Boethius, of the noble Anicia family, entered public life at a young age and was already a senator by the age of 25.General Audience of Pope Benedict XVI, Boethius and Cassiodorus. Internet. Available from http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20080312_en.html; accessed November 4, 2009. Boethius himself was consul in 510 in the kingdom of the Ostrogoths. In 522 he saw his two sons become consuls.Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by H. F. Steward and E. K. Rand. Cambridge: The Project Gutenberg, 2004. Boethius was imprisoned and eventually executed by King Theodoric the Great,The Online Library of Liberty, Boethius. Internet. Available from http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.phpoption=com_content&task=view&id=215&Itemid=269; accessed November 3, 2009. who suspected him of conspiring with the Eastern Roman Empire. While jailed, Boethius composed his Consolation of Philosophy, a philosophical treatise on fortune, death, and other issues. The Consolation became one of the most popular and influential works of the Middle Ages.

Works

De consolatione philosophiae

Lady Philosophy and Boethius from the Consolation, (Ghent, 1485) Boethius’s best known work is the Consolation of Philosophy (De consolatione philosophiae), which he wrote most likely while in exile under house arrest or in prison while awaiting his execution, but his lifelong project was a deliberate attempt to preserve ancient classical knowledge, particularly philosophy.Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by Joel Relihan. Norton: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001. This work represented an imaginary dialogue between himself and philosophy, with philosophy personified as a woman. The book argues that despite the apparent inequality of the world, there is, in Platonic fashion, a higher power and everything else is secondary to that divine Providence. Several manuscripts survived and these were widely edited, translated and printed throughout the late 15th century and later in Europe. Boethius intended to translate all the works of Aristotle and Plato from the original Greek into Latin.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-philosophy/#Boethius

De topicis differentiis

His completed translations of Aristotle’s works on logic were the only significant portions of Aristotle available in Latin Christendom from the sixth century until the 12th century. However, some of his translations (such as his treatment of the topoi in The Topics) were mixed with his own commentary, which reflected both Aristotelian and Platonic concepts.

Unfortunately, the commentaries themselves were lost. In addition to his commentary on the Topics, Boethius composed two treatises on Topical argumentation, In Ciceronis Topica and De topicis differentiis. The first work has six books, and is largely a response to Cicero’s Topica. The first book of In Ciceronis Topica begins with a dedication to Patricius. It includes distinctions and assertions important to Boethius’s overall philosophy, such as his view of the role of philosophy to "establish our judgment concerning the governing of life", and definitions of logic from Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. He breaks logic into three parts, that which defines, that which divides, and that which deduces. He asserts there to be three types of arguments, those of necessity, of ready believability, and sophistry. He follows Aristotle in defining one sort of Topic as the maximal proposition; these are propositions which are somehow shown to be universal or readily believable.Boethius. In Ciceronis Topica. 34 The other sort of Topic, the differentiae, are "Topics that contain and include the maximal propositions"; means of categorizing the Topics which Boethius credits to Cicero.Boethius. In Ciceronis Topica. 35 Book II covers two kinds of topics, those from related things and those from extrinsic topics. Book III discusses the relationship between things studied through Topics, Topics themselves, and the nature of definition. Book IV analyzes partition, designation and relationships between things (such as pairing, numbering, genus, and species, etc.) After a review of his terms, Boethius spends Book V discussing Stoic logic and Aristotelian causation. Book VI relates the nature of the Topic to causes.