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Boethius
This book offers a brief, accessible introduction to the thought of Boethius. After a survey of Boethius's life and work, Marenbon explicates his theological method, and devotes separate chapters to his arguments about good and evil, fortune, fate and free will, and the problem of divine foreknowledge. Marenbon also traces Boethius's influence on the work of such thinkers as Aquinas and Duns Scotus.
271 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 5, 2022
Boetius är en väldigt intressant tänkare, och denna bok sammanfattar honom väl. Däremot är det just en förklarande sammanfattning - har man möjligheten är det i de allra flesta fall mer gynnsamt att läsa originalförfattaren.
April 9, 2026
Philosophy Matters - Boethius (Great Medieval Thinkers) by John Marenbon
In my mind, I am debating whether to move Boethius from Tier 2 to Tier 1 in my power ranking system for Ancient/Medieval Thinkers. Tier 1 belongs to Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Dante, and Aquinas. These are the seminal thinkers who made major contributions to the development of Western Civilization. I expect these names to be known to anyone with a passing knowledge of history.
Tier 2 includes people such as Anselm, Cicero, Seneca, Tertullian, Lucretius, and Thucydides. It seems that these people are deeper in the weeds. I would expect someone with a college education to know these names.
Tier 3 gets into the weeds. I would put names like Abelard, Scotus, Epictetus, Anaxagoras, and Peter Lombard. These people are important supporting players, but require some attention beyond that of the primary material.
Tier 4 gets truly deep into the weeds, citing names you can find in books by experts, such as John Marenbon, who has provided an encyclopedic overview of Christian views on the salvation of pagans.
Maybe Boethius is top-tier? Prior to two hundred years ago, Boethius would have been Tier 1. Everyone read him. You can find traces of his ideas and, more importantly, his prose, in C.S. Lewis, Aquinas, Thomas More, and Dante. I am sure there are others.
During the last couple of days, I have been discovering how much Aquinas was indebted to Boethius. My Communio group has been reading the section on “felicity” in the Summa Contra Gentiles during the early part of 2026. It is clear that the first two books of The Consolation of Philosophy form the organizational and conceptual spine of Aquinas’s argument. In addition, I have had Aquinas’s commentary on the “Hebdomads of Boethius” for several years without making the connection between Aquinas and Boethius.
Likewise, Aquinas wrote a commentary on Boethius’s Opuscula (The Trinity is One God not Three).
These are connections that were in front of me but invisible to me until I read Marenbon’s book.
Boethius is like the kind of bottleneck that scientists say occurred in human history, when the human population was reduced to around 2,000 people. All previously existing genes collapsed into a tiny pool. Only a tiny fraction of human genes were passed on to the eight billion people who live today.
We can see this in Boethius’s preservation of Plotinus's ideas, particularly the idea that evil is an absence of existence. Boethius also read Augustine and incorporated Augustine’s ideas into his writings.
Even if Boethius did not understand that he was the bottleneck, he was well-sited to play that role. Rome had fallen in the West several years before his birth. Fallen does not mean that the Roman civilization disappeared. What it meant was that the institution of the Western empire was retired because it was no longer consistent with the reality of the Italian peninsula under the political control of the Ostrogothic people and their king. Roman citizens still studied the classics and provided the bureaucratic apparatus. Latin was still spoken in Italy, but the various parts of the West were forming their own vernacular dialects.
Yet, it was clear that the Western Roman Empire had ceased to exist in the West. The lands of the former Western part of the empire were now controlled by the Franks in Gaul, the Visigoths in Spain, and the Vandals in North Africa. Boethius understood that these new people did not have access to the classic past. Accordingly, he conceived the plan of preserving some of classical learning, writing commentaries on Aristotle, and writing works on Math, Astronomy, Geometry, and Music. These subjects formed the basis of the “quadrivium, which became the basis of learning for the next thousand years.[1] Boethius coined the term “quadrivium.”
As the founder of Western education, Boethius seems to deserve a higher tier in the power ranking.
Boethius is also responsible for the idea that a person is an individual with a rational nature, which serves as the basis for Western Trinitarian theology. Boethius also pioneered the idea that God’s eternity means that God possesses life undivided as a unity. This is another key idea Aquinas uses to understand God’s attributes.
This is an informative but dense book. Marenbon provides the reader with an account of Boethius’s life, and then takes the reader through his works, including the opuscula and the Consolation of Philosophy. He provides a detailed reading of the Consolation with a final chapter on its meaning and reception. The final chapter is devoted to Boethius’s influence on the Middle Ages.
The book is interesting, but probably more interesting for those with a background in the subject. I wouldn’t suggest reading this book without first reading the Consolation of Philosophy. On the other hand, reading the sections of this book on the Consolation is a good idea after reading the Consolation to obtain some perspective.
Footnote:
[1] I had a college professor explain that the use of the term “quad” to describe the central area of the college came from Boethius’s quadrivium. The four sides would have been dedicated to each of the quadrivial sciences.
In my mind, I am debating whether to move Boethius from Tier 2 to Tier 1 in my power ranking system for Ancient/Medieval Thinkers. Tier 1 belongs to Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Dante, and Aquinas. These are the seminal thinkers who made major contributions to the development of Western Civilization. I expect these names to be known to anyone with a passing knowledge of history.
Tier 2 includes people such as Anselm, Cicero, Seneca, Tertullian, Lucretius, and Thucydides. It seems that these people are deeper in the weeds. I would expect someone with a college education to know these names.
Tier 3 gets into the weeds. I would put names like Abelard, Scotus, Epictetus, Anaxagoras, and Peter Lombard. These people are important supporting players, but require some attention beyond that of the primary material.
Tier 4 gets truly deep into the weeds, citing names you can find in books by experts, such as John Marenbon, who has provided an encyclopedic overview of Christian views on the salvation of pagans.
Maybe Boethius is top-tier? Prior to two hundred years ago, Boethius would have been Tier 1. Everyone read him. You can find traces of his ideas and, more importantly, his prose, in C.S. Lewis, Aquinas, Thomas More, and Dante. I am sure there are others.
During the last couple of days, I have been discovering how much Aquinas was indebted to Boethius. My Communio group has been reading the section on “felicity” in the Summa Contra Gentiles during the early part of 2026. It is clear that the first two books of The Consolation of Philosophy form the organizational and conceptual spine of Aquinas’s argument. In addition, I have had Aquinas’s commentary on the “Hebdomads of Boethius” for several years without making the connection between Aquinas and Boethius.
Likewise, Aquinas wrote a commentary on Boethius’s Opuscula (The Trinity is One God not Three).
These are connections that were in front of me but invisible to me until I read Marenbon’s book.
Boethius is like the kind of bottleneck that scientists say occurred in human history, when the human population was reduced to around 2,000 people. All previously existing genes collapsed into a tiny pool. Only a tiny fraction of human genes were passed on to the eight billion people who live today.
We can see this in Boethius’s preservation of Plotinus's ideas, particularly the idea that evil is an absence of existence. Boethius also read Augustine and incorporated Augustine’s ideas into his writings.
Even if Boethius did not understand that he was the bottleneck, he was well-sited to play that role. Rome had fallen in the West several years before his birth. Fallen does not mean that the Roman civilization disappeared. What it meant was that the institution of the Western empire was retired because it was no longer consistent with the reality of the Italian peninsula under the political control of the Ostrogothic people and their king. Roman citizens still studied the classics and provided the bureaucratic apparatus. Latin was still spoken in Italy, but the various parts of the West were forming their own vernacular dialects.
Yet, it was clear that the Western Roman Empire had ceased to exist in the West. The lands of the former Western part of the empire were now controlled by the Franks in Gaul, the Visigoths in Spain, and the Vandals in North Africa. Boethius understood that these new people did not have access to the classic past. Accordingly, he conceived the plan of preserving some of classical learning, writing commentaries on Aristotle, and writing works on Math, Astronomy, Geometry, and Music. These subjects formed the basis of the “quadrivium, which became the basis of learning for the next thousand years.[1] Boethius coined the term “quadrivium.”
As the founder of Western education, Boethius seems to deserve a higher tier in the power ranking.
Boethius is also responsible for the idea that a person is an individual with a rational nature, which serves as the basis for Western Trinitarian theology. Boethius also pioneered the idea that God’s eternity means that God possesses life undivided as a unity. This is another key idea Aquinas uses to understand God’s attributes.
This is an informative but dense book. Marenbon provides the reader with an account of Boethius’s life, and then takes the reader through his works, including the opuscula and the Consolation of Philosophy. He provides a detailed reading of the Consolation with a final chapter on its meaning and reception. The final chapter is devoted to Boethius’s influence on the Middle Ages.
The book is interesting, but probably more interesting for those with a background in the subject. I wouldn’t suggest reading this book without first reading the Consolation of Philosophy. On the other hand, reading the sections of this book on the Consolation is a good idea after reading the Consolation to obtain some perspective.
Footnote:
[1] I had a college professor explain that the use of the term “quad” to describe the central area of the college came from Boethius’s quadrivium. The four sides would have been dedicated to each of the quadrivial sciences.
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November 21, 2009Used for Jon's master's thesis.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews