Boethius by Marenbon John;

Author:Marenbon, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2003-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

THE CONSOLATION, V.3–6

Divine Prescience, Contigency, Eternity

The problem raised by Philosophy’s final remark in V.2 is formulated at the beginning of V.3 by Boethius in this (ambiguous) way:

(1) If God sees all things and can in no way be mistaken, then there necessarily happens what he by providence will have foreseen will be [si cuncta prospicit deus neque falli ullo modo potest, evenire necesse est quod providentia futurum esse praeviderit]. (CV.3.4 [6–8])

and

(2) If things are capable of turning out differently from how they have been foreseen, then there will no longer be firm foreknowledge of the future, but rather uncertain opinion. (CV.3.6 [13–15])

Both of Boethius’s formulations of the Problem of Prescience contain serious ambiguities, as will be discussed. But it would be hard to deny that Boethius has raised a genuine difficulty. If God knows the future now, surely the future is fixed; if the future is not fixed, how can God know it? In this chapter, I shall look in detail at the intricate argument Philosophy develops to solve the Problem of Prescience. I shall begin by explaining how this new problem fits with the Problem of Providence and Philosophy’s solution to it, and at the end I shall return to the link between prescience and providence. In the course of my main analysis of the Problem of Prescience, I shall touch on the question of sources and make comparisons with Proclus and the Alexandrian Neoplatonist, Ammonius, who lived at roughly the same time as Boethius. Probably Boethius was not dependent on Ammonius’s commentaries themselves, but both writers had access to similar material.1

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.