Arquivo para June 25th, 2025
Boethius between knowledge and theology
25
Jun
We have already posted in previous texts about Boethius and Porphyry, Boethius can be thought of as “the last of the Romans and the first of the scholastics”, we’ve already posted about his book Consolation of Philosophy, written during his unjust imprisonment where he was tortured and killed by the Roman regime, but his thinking goes beyond philosophy.
His best-known legacy is that of the “quarrel of universals”, which is not separate from Aristotle’s Categories, since he was the translator into Latin of Porphyry’s Isagoge, which is remembered for its famous Tree of Knowledge, a reduction of his thought, since Porphyry’s analysis of Plotinus’ Aeneid works (Aeneids in Greek means “groups of nine”) written in 6 volumes totals 54 texts.
This creates a golden line thread linking him to Augustine of Hippo, who was also influenced by Plotinus.
By also reading Aristotle, as well as Plotinus, Porphyry will establish a link between the two and thus formulate his idea of knowledge. The three great questions that his philosophy raises are: what is Beauty? what is the Soul? and what is Destiny?
Thus, his theory of knowledge cannot be separated from this teleological vision of knowledge, from which Boethius will draw part of his vision of what the “categories” (Aristotle’s term) are and which is summarized in the quarrel of universals: do universals exist or are they just “names”?
Nominalism and realism, the medieval dialog comes from there, but what was Boethius’ theological thought, beyond his Christian conduct and belief, that led him to be included in the origin of scholasticism and to be referenced in every medieval debate.
His booklet on the Trinity (“How the Trinity is one God and not three gods”) expresses the purpose of rationally clarifying the truth of faith, and does not separate it from reason. In a letter to Pope John I, he writes: “fidem, si poteris, rationemque cojunge“, “combines faith and reason” at the end of a letter.
Boethius wrote: “I have researched the question of the Trinity for a very long time, as far as the forms of the little flame of the mind, which the light of God has deigned to grant us, can do.” Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on this passage explains how Boethius added to the question of the Trinity by using the 4 Aristotelian causes: material (the subject itself, in this case the Trinity), efficient (the lights of God and human intelligence), formal (“having come to structure…”) and final (“having come to structure…”). .“) and final (”I don’t write out of a desire for fame …”).
Boethius made great contributions to the language (Latin of his time) as well as to various philosophical themes, from knowledge to theology. Among the most frequently cited are that of the person as an “individual substance of a rational nature”, of happiness as a “state of perfection consisting in possessing all goods [human and spiritual] and of eternity ”as the total, perfect and simultaneous possession of a life without end”, that is, eternal.
Plotino. Enneads. Vol. I-VII (7 volumes). Tradução de A. H. Armstrong. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966-1988.
Plotino. Enéadas: sexta Enéada: Tomo II – Tratados 6-9. Brazil, Belo Horizonte: Nova Acrópole, 2019.
