Boethius, time and eternity

Medieval manuscript of
Consolation of Philosophy

1,500 years have passed since the death of Boethius, but the event has gone unnoticed. A century ago, this would not have happened, as history was still being studied. In our times, however, history is despised. And we know what happens to those who despise it, in a phrase attributed to George Santayana: those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was a politician and philosopher of the 5th and 6th centuries, who held important positions in the Ostrogothic kingdom that emerged in Italy shortly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In his political activity, Boethius was successively senator, consul and advisor to the Ostrogothic king Theodoric.

In 523, after denouncing the corruption of the Ostrogothic kingdom, Boethius lost the confidence of Theodoric, who had him imprisoned, accused of treason. A year later (in 524) he had him tortured and executed. He was then about 44 years old.

While awaiting execution, Boethius wrote his most famous work, Consolation of Philosophy, which for over a millennium was considered one of the most influential books of Western philosophy during the Middle Ages and part of the Modern Age.

In this work, which I have read twice, Boethius clarifies very important concepts:

1. The temptations that affect man and push him to evil can be classified into a few types: a) pleasure; b) power; c) wealth; d) glory and e) rank. Any other temptation can be reduced to one of these. Each of us is attracted to a different degree by each of these temptations, and human beings can be classified according to their dominant temptation, which can become so powerful that it practically eliminates the attraction of the others. Boethius explains this issue in chapter II of book III of his work.
2. The difference between an indefinitely long time and eternity. Before Boethius, these two concepts were confused. To distinguish them, in chapter VI of book V of his work, Boethius defines eternity as the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment. On the other hand, a world in which time has no beginning or end (as Aristotle believed) cannot be considered eternal. The most appropriate word that can be applied to it, in the English language, is everlasting. Here we can detect the influence of Saint Augustine, who pointed out a century before Boethius that time is part of creation, and that God exists outside of time.

G.K. Chesterton

1,500 years after Boethius’ death, we continue to make the same mistake and confuse eternity with endless time. One example suffices to demonstrate this. G.K. Chesterton’s masterpiece (in my opinion) is titled in English The everlasting man, whose correct translation into Spanish is El hombre perdurable. Chesterton (who had undoubtedly read Boethius) used the correct English word in his title. Well, this work has been translated into Spanish with the wrong title El hombre eterno (The eternal man). I would not be surprised if the person responsible for this translation has not read Boethius, or has not grasped one of the most important points of his philosophy.

3. Boethius then addresses the problem of predestination and free will, explaining it precisely by the difference between indefinite time and eternity, which he has just pointed out. It is regrettable that more than a millennium later this problem continues to worry many thinkers and has even caused important divisions in Christianity.

As I have said in other posts, the problem of time is one of the most important that we should resolve. Unfortunately, those who try to do it haven’t usually read Boethius, so they are over fifteen centuries behind their time.

The same post in Spanish

Thematic Thread on Science and History: Previous Next

Manuel Alfonseca