A choice excerpt from the esteemed Roman Senator Boethius, whom penned this letter to Lady Philosophy whilst falsely imprisoned for treason. Boethius is acknowledged as a Saint, and is burried in a crypt in Pavia, Italy. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI explained the relevance of Boethius to modern day Christians by linking his teachings to an understanding of Providence.
This audiobook excerpt is from Book V, the notable pinnacle of the philosophy expounded within. Book five contains six parts. Follow Boethius as he logically tracks you through an explanation of the coexistence of Fate Vs. Free Will, which is the existince of Free Will inspite of the omnipresence of Providence, and the subtle but significant difference between looking forward in time to predict something and looking at all things in time simultaneously.
Wiki Excerpt:
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, commonly called Boethius, also Boetius (477–524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, magister officiorum, and philosopher of the early 6th century. He was born about a year after Odoacer deposed the last Western Roman Emperor and declared himself King of Italy. Boethius entered public service under Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great, who later imprisoned and executed him in 524 on charges of conspiracy to overthrow him. While jailed, Boethius composed his Consolation of Philosophy, a philosophical treatise on fortune, death, and other issues, which became one of the most popular and influential works of the Middle Ages. As the author of numerous handbooks and translator of Aristotle, he became the main intermediary between Classical antiquity and following centuries.
My Philosophical Synopsis:
The by and large gist is knowledge of activities occurs in orders of perception. That is, an event is known by the knowledge of it; also, there are orders to knowledge: divine intelligence, man's reason, the imagination, and sense-based experiences. Boethius thinks the way in which we know a thing is determined by the level at which we approach it.
The act of observing a man walking and the sun moving simultaneously above him are both, in his terms, 'necessary' when observed. However, one is volutional, that is free-will based (the man walking) though necessary because of its clear observation, while the other is also necessary, (the sun's movement), but is based on a higher order of cohesion.
So to, the difference between the divine intelligence perceiving an event, which is absolutely necessary but also enables free will, and the difference between rationally understanding something, choosing and experiencing it, is the difference between these two types of necessary, one self-evident (sun moving), the other conditional (man goes for a walk).
The reason these two types of necessary can exist is because Bothius believed God's perception of events aren't in time in the sense of past, present, and future, like the process of putting on your sneakers, and going for a walk, but rather God's glance at an infinite present contains all these subsequent sequences (or orders). In his estimation, the apperception of all events in time is a higher order of knowledge: that is to say divine intelligence, uncaptured in time, perceiving everything as a single moment.
Again, in his opinion this does not-with-stand time relative 'free-will' (man chooses to go for a walk). The higher order perception of all events does not reduce the possibilty to choose any event within it. To unpack that a bit, to perceive a sense-based event is different than to imagine it. To reason over a truth or a law, is more significant than to engage the imagination, and beyond that, to issue forth a law by or order of God, is an even higher order that supersedes our ability to reason over, imagine, or experience it. So this is the essential pecking order Boethius contends exists in the manner that man perceives events.
Boethius concludes that since all is seen in a glance by God, pray fervently, lift up your voice to our creator, and strive to act in accordance with a higher order of knowledge. Since all events are a consequence of the order in which we percieve them, and a higher order perceives more of the picture, Boethius believes that one actually becomes 'more free', and genuinely exercises 'free'-will, when one moves in accordance with this higher order, which is God's divine intelligence. The senator also contends to move against this though allowed, is actually a departure from higher levels of perception of the divine order, representing a 'lack of freedom', which is to say, though acting within our freewill, engenders the opposite, a feeling that imposes its own prison.
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