Notes on Boethius Consolation V

This page revised December 6, 2004

How is "chance" defined?

Chance is not an event produced by random motion outside any causal framework (116) but "an unexpected event due to the conjunction of its causes with action which is done for some purpose." (117)

Is it compatible with Providence?

Absolutely compatible, because the convergence of multiple causal sequences is brought about by the order of the universe as a whole, which derives from Providence and assigns all things their own time and place. (117) Note: the definition of chance comes from Aristotle but the idea that nature has a single all-planning author is common to Stoicism and to Christianity.

What necessarily has free will?

All rational beings have free will--the power of judgment and make decisions, to seek what seems desirable and reject the opposite. Following Plato, B. holds that humans are most free when they contemplate the noblest things and less free when they become enslaved to the passions and things pertaining to the body. (118)

What problem does Boethius propose?

The problem concerning God's foreknowledge and human free will: If God foreknows X, then X must happen. If God foreknows what I will desire, think, and do, then what I desire, think and do must happen. If what I desire, etc. must happen, then there is no free will. On the other hand, if there is free will, then the future must be open and God can at most have an uncertain opinion about it and must lack foreknowledge. (119-20)

Perhaps one reason B. feels this very strongly is the influence of the Platonic and Aristotelian doctrine that knowledge (episteme, scientia) concerns what is necessary, not what is contingent or could be otherwise. (121) The solution under discussion distinguishes between

(1) the claim that God's foreknowledge of X causes X's occurrence and

(2) the claim that X's occurrence causes God's foreknowledge of X;

it denies (1) and accepts (2).

According to this solution, God foreknows X because X will happen; it isn't the case that X happens because God foreknows X. B. not only denies (2), for it makes God's knowledge dependent on what mere mortals do, he also denies that this solution, if true, removes the problem. Even if (2) is true and (1) is false, it still seems the case that if X, a future event, is a foreknown event, it is necessary that X happens. (1969:151)

What problem for morality does B. see arising out of the doctrine of foreknowledge?

We cannot propose rewards for the good, punishments for the wicked if they do not deserve them for acts committed out of free will. On this account men are driven to good or evil . . . by the fixed necessity of what is to be. . . . all merit will have been mixed up and undifferentiated. . . . As the whole order of things is derived from Providence, it follows that our wickednes, too, is derived from the Author of all good. (122)

What problem regarding prayer does B. note?

Prayer seems to presuppose the capacity of the person praying to communicate with God so as to affect future events, but God's foreknowledge seems to suggest that future events are predetermined. (122)

What relevance does the question whether there are present knowable events have to the question at issue?

Philosophy points out that we can know events just as they happen, without concluding that those events were necessary. While what I know is in fact true (otherwise I would not know it), the fact that I know it does not imply that it was not made freely. (125; see also 135-36)

[Note on NECESSARY truths: truths are either necessary or contingent. If a proposition is a necessary truth, then it could not possibly be false; if a proposition is contingently true, on the other hand, it happens to be true, but it is possible that it might be false.]

(1) Nec (if A knows that p then p is true)

does not imply

(2) Nec (p is true) The point is that God's foreknowledge of particular events does not impose necessity on what is going to happen, any more than our knowledge of present events imposes necessity on what is happening.

Explain: Everything is known not according to ITS OWN NATURE but by THE ABILITY TO KNOW OF THOSE WHO DO THE KNOWING.

Shape is grasped by touch and sight, color by sight only, etc. We learn about things through various sense faculties, imagination, reason and intelligence [the latter two corresponding roughly to the two highest mental conditions corresponding to Plato's Divided Line] (125-26)

Sense grasps figure concretized in matter; imagination grasps figure apart from matter; reason grasps the figure in terms of its type (universal); intelligence grasps the pure form.

intelligence--pure form

reason--universal in image

imagination--figure apart from matter

sense--figure in matter

Contrary to Plato's Republic, it seems, imagination is higher than sense.

The superior manner of knowledge stands in what relation to the inferior?

The superior manner of knowledge includes the inferior, but it is impossible for the latter to rise to the level of the former. Imagination uses but goes beyond sensation; reason makes use of but goes beyond imagination; intelligence uses the universal concepts which reason reaches but goes beyond reason to grasp the pure forms. (127)

What analogies does B. use as a basis for the claim that divine intelligence views future events other than we do? (130-31)

Just as sense or the imagination cannot "see" what or as human reason perceives, so unaided human reason finds it difficult to understand how divine intelligence "foreknows."

What is eternity?

the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life. (132)

How is it unlike temporal things?

Whatever lives in time exists in the present and progresses from the past to the future, and there is nothing set in time which can embrace simultaneously the whole extent of its life: it is in the position of not yet possessing tomorrow when it has already lost yesterday. In this life of today you do not live more fully than in that fleeting and transitory moment. (132-33) To this Philosophia adds that if the universe is, as Aristotle maintained, without beginning or end in time, still it is not eternal since it suffers the condition be being in time.

How does God possess and comprehend the past and the future?

It embraces and possesses simultaneously the whole fullness of everlasting life, which lacks nothing of the future and has lost nothing of the past. (133)

Is God co-eternal with the universe?

No, even if the universe has no beginning or ending in time, it is nevertheless in time, so it is not strictly speaking eternal at all. Is God older than His creation? No, God ought not to be considered older than His creation; for that implies that God exists in time himself, i.e., the time before creation. God's priority to creation is a consequence of the simplicity of his being--like the simplicity of the Neo-Platonist One. (133)

Does God progress through endless life?

No, his knowledge is unchanging, timeless. Progression through endless life would be in time--perpetuity, not eternity. (133-34)

Does God move or change? No. (134)

Note: pp. 133-34 is so heavily indebted to Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas that it appears to ignore the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of a first day, based on Genesis. Boethius seems to treat the relation of creation to Creator as the attempt by creation to to imitate the Creator as far as possible, perpetuity being an imitation of eternity that falls shore of eternity, rather than treating creation as the result of God's free acct of Creation.

Is "foreknowledge of the future" a good choice of terms for the topic of this discussion?

No, what God knows is not future to Him, His knowledge of the so-called future is actually the knowledge of a never ending presence. (134)

Is there a sense, after all, in which future events are necessary?

Yes. Things which result from human free choice are nevertheless seen by God as present. Now if anybody --God, angel, human or devil--knows something, that which is known must be true. This is not peculiar to God. The only thing here that it is peculiar to God is his presence to events that are in the future [from our perspective in time, not His]. If God or John Jones knows that p, then p must be so, but p's necessity is contingent on God's or Jones' knowing it.

If so, how should we characterize this sense of necessity?

Hypothetical necessity as contrasted with simple necessity. (135-36)

It's really a matter of logical form:

Proposition 1:

Nec (for any proposition p)(if there is an x such that x knows p then p)

If there is somebody who knows p then p must be true,

or more accurately

it is necessary that (for any p, if somebody knows that p, then p)

The "must" actually operates on the whole conditional, not on just a part of it. Language conceals this when it places the "must" in the consequent.

This should be contrasted with Proposition 2:

Nec (p).

or: p must be true

Proposition 2 does not follow from Proposition 1. If it did, then my knowing that Student A came to class today would make the truth that Student A came to class today, considered in itself, necessary, but of course it does not.