Eleonore Stump

Boethius is mainly remembered for his Consolation of Philosophy, but he certainly was a prolific writer. Quite a bit of his output has survived. He's one of the major formative philosophers for the subsequent scholastic movement of the middle ages. His status as one of the encyclopedists is the reason why I'm getting acquainted with his more obscure works right now.

This work is philosophically Aristotelian, but Aristotelian by way of Themistius and Cicero. Both Themistius and Cicero wrote on the Topics and Categories of Aristotle. Boethius spends some time comparing and contrasting the former writers and adding his own thoughts on the subject. His major purpose with this work is to lay out means for finding arguments. He differentiates between rhetorical and dialectical philosophical purposes early on and is primarily concerned with the latter. He seems to have been most idiosyncratic in the way he dealt with the differentiae.

To be perfectly honest, this isn't an incredibly engaging work. It deals with categorical and topical minutiae that is quite dry and probably only matters to specialists. That said, I was quite impressed with, not only Eleonore Stump's translation, but with her notes and essays. She certainly attempted to make the subject matter more accessible. I can't fault her effort at all. Her input certainly added to this book overall.

If someone wants to be acquainted with streams of Aristotelian thought and the way it influenced the scholastics, or just wants to be better acquainted with Boethius, I might recommend this book. I doubt the average reader would want to delve into discussions that often seem to be semantical and not all that practical in matters of logic.… (mehr)

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the work of Augustine of Hippo, both in his own period and in the subsequent history of Western philosophy. Until the thirteenth century, when he may have had a competitor in Thomas Aquinas, he was the most important philosopher of the medieval period. Many of his views, including his theory of the just war, his account of time and eternity, his understanding of the will, his attempted resolution of the problem of evil, and his approach to the relation of faith and reason, have continued to be influential up to the present time. In this volume of specially-commissioned essays, sixteen scholars provide a wide-ranging and stimulating contribution to our understanding of Augustine, covering all the major areas of his philosophy and theology.… (mehr)