Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus (c.480– 525), Roman philosopher and Aristotelian translator and commentator. He was born into a wealthy patrician family in Rome and had a distinguished political career under the Ostrogothic king Theodoric before being arrested and executed on charges of treason. His logic and philosophical theology contain important contributions to the philosophy of the late classical and early medieval periods, and his translations of and commentaries on Aristotle profoundly influenced the history of philosophy, particularly in the medieval Latin West. His most famous work, The Consolation of Philosophy, composed during his imprisonment, is a moving reflection on the nature of human happiness and the problem of evil and contains classic discussions of providence, fate, chance, and the apparent incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human free choice. He was known during his own lifetime, however, as a brilliant scholar whose knowledge of the Greek language and ancient Greek philosophy set him apart from his Latin contemporaries. He conceived his scholarly career as devoted to preserving and making accessible to the Latin West the great philosophical achievement of ancient Greece. To this end he announced an ambitious plan to translate into Latin and write commentaries on all of Plato and Aristotle, but it seems that he achieved this goal only for Aristotle’s Organon. His extant translations include Porphyry’s Isagoge (an introduction to Aristotle’s Categories) and Aristotle’s Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations. He wrote two commentaries on the Isagoge and On Interpretation and one on the Categories, and we have what appear to be his notes for a commentary on the Prior Analytics. His translation of the Posterior Analytics and his commentary on the Topics are lost. He also commented on Cicero’s Topica and wrote his own treatises on logic, including De syllogismis hypotheticis, De syllogismis categoricis, Introductio in categoricos syllogismos, De divisione, and De topicis differentiis, in which he elaborates and supplements Aristotelian logic.
Boethius shared the common Neoplatonist view that the Platonist and Aristotelian systems could be harmonized by following Aristotle in logic and natural philosophy and Plato in metaphysics and theology. This plan for harmonization rests on a distinction between two kinds of forms: (1) forms that are conjoined with matter to constitute bodies – these, which he calls ‘images’ (imagines), correspond to the forms in Aristotle’s hylomorphic account of corporeal substances; and (2) forms that are pure and entirely separate from matter, corresponding to Plato’s ontologically separate Forms. He calls these ‘true forms’ and ‘the forms themselves.’ He holds that the former, ‘enmattered’ forms depend for their being on the latter, pure forms. Boethius takes these three sorts of entities – bodies, enmattered forms, and separate forms – to be the respective objects of three different cognitive activities, which constitute the three branches of speculative philosophy. Natural philosophy is concerned with enmattered forms as enmattered, mathematics with enmattered forms considered apart from their matter (though they cannot be separated from matter in actuality), and theology with the pure and separate forms. He thinks that the mental abstraction characteristic of mathematics is important for understanding the Peripatetic account of universals: the enmattered, particular forms found in sensible things can be considered as universal when they are considered apart from the matter in which they inhere (though they cannot actually exist apart from matter). But he stops short of endorsing this moderately realist Aristotelian account of universals. His commitment to an ontology that includes not just Aristotelian natural forms but also Platonist Forms existing apart from matter implies a strong realist view of universals. With the exception of De fide catholica, which is a straightforward credal statement, Boethius’s theological treatises (De Trinitate, Utrum Pater et Filius, Quomodo substantiae, and Contra Euthychen et Nestorium) show his commitment to using logic and metaphysics, particularly the Aristotelian doctrines of the categories and predicables, to clarify and resolve issues in Christian theology. De Trinitate, e.g., includes a historically influential discussion of the Aristotelian categories and the applicability of various kinds of predicates to God. Running through these treatises is his view that predicates in the category of relation are unique by virtue of not always requiring for their applicability an ontological ground in the subjects to which they apply, a doctrine that gave rise to the common medieval distinction between so-called real and non-real relations. Regardless of the intrinsic significance of Boethius’s philosophical ideas, he stands as a monumental figure in the history of medieval philosophy rivaled in importance only by Aristotle and Augustine. Until the recovery of the works of Aristotle in the mid-twelfth century, medieval philosophers depended almost entirely on Boethius’s translations and commentaries for their knowledge of pagan ancient philosophy, and his treatises on logic continued to be influential throughout the Middle Ages. The preoccupation of early medieval philosophers with logic and with the problem of universals in particular is due largely to their having been tutored by Boethius and Boethius’s Aristotle. The theological treatises also received wide attention in the Middle Ages, giving rise to a commentary tradition extending from the ninth century through the Renaissance and shaping discussion of central theological doctrines such as the Trinity and Incarnation. See also ARISTOTLE , COMMENTARIES ON ARISTOTLE , FUTURE CONTINGENTS , PHILOSO — PHY OF RELIGION , PLAT. S.Ma.