Neoplatonism & Consolation of Philosophy

[Anonymous No.10159883]

Somebody on here once remarked that "you can trace a direct connection between plato/neoplatonists to the scholastics via boethius". Can anyone speak to this?

I'm about to read Consolation of Philosophy and would like to know what I'm getting into, and what other works would pair well with it. I'm currently reading The Enneads by Plotinus and Parmenides by Plato.

[johnathan armstrong brannigan !Y4n2LCfJnM No.10159909]

just read the fucking dialogue-poem
who even reads that sort of thing without having an idea of what its contexct was?
OP, you're a retard

[Anonymous No.10159923]

>>10159909
>namefag

lmao

[johnathan armstrong brannigan !Y4n2LCfJnM No.10159929]

>>10159923
i'm a tripfag
get it straight, queer

[Anonymous No.10159966]

>>10159929

Alright, big man.

[Anonymous No.10160141]

>>10159929
you're both
kys

[Anonymous No.10160489]

>>10159883
i think you need augustine to fill that gap. boethius gave us what we knew of aristotle.

[Anonymous No.10160643]

>>10159923
>>10159966
>reddit spacing

[Anonymous No.10160662]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sic5OdUIkgk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA5_VgJAceU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpBvJs4Pu-4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uQnOESB8t4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIzbbg4YYLw

[Anonymous No.10160680]

>>10159883
Partially, yes. Boethius intended goal, which came to a hault with his death, was to translate the full ouvre of Plato and Aristotle and show in commentarial form their complete concord.

Middle Platonism, along with Plotinus and Porphyry, only advocated a partial concord between the two – credit for advocating a full concord is due to Iamblichus, the most influental Neoplatonist of Late Antiquity, and it is likely from him that he inherited this notion.

Iamblichus was first and foremost a Pythagorean, inspired by the mystical works of Nicomachus of Geresa. These works of Nicomachus, of whom the later Neoplatonist Proclus claimed to be a reincarnation of, was paraphrased by Boethius in his De Institutione Arithmetica and De Institutione Musica, the former avaliable in translation as Boethian Number Theory by Michael Masi. This treatise was the fundamental work in the tradition of the Seven Liberal Arts.

The Medieval world, with very few exceptions (see: Michael Psellos, Gemistos Plethon, Nicholas of Cusa) had a few distinct treatises of Neoplatonism avaliable, before Marsilio Ficino translated the major works into Latin:

>Commentary on the Timaeus, Calcidius
>Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, Macrobius
>Marriage of Philology and Mercury, Martianus Capella

There were also two Arabic treatises, both ascribed to Aristotle, but which were in fact a monotheistic paraphrase of Plotinus and Proclus respectively: The Theology of Aristotle (Enneads IV-VI) and Liber di Causis (Elements of Theology).

All of these treatises were brought together in a systematic fashion by Bernadus Silvestris in his Cosmographia, by the way.

Boethius, on the other hand, was not so much a source for Christian Neoplatonism (see: Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximos the Confessor, Eriugena, Aquinas) but rather, besides his arithmetical and musical works, he was valuable for his commentaries on the works of Aristotle and Cicero – Boethius was an important thinker both in Logica Vetus, when the West had a very scant ammount of material avaliable, and Logica Nova, when much material was rediscovered.