Boethius on Free Will - Essay Example

Boethius on Free Will Over the ages, the issue of free will has been widely contested by philosophers and a variety of conclusions have been arrived at, despite the fact that there still exist many differing opinions on the subject. The problem from which the question of free will emerges can be explained thus; God is an all seeing and all-knowing God who cannot be deceived, as such, whatever he foresees, needs must be true, and this includes all the actions of man, thoughts and desires. In this case, the infallible providence of God is privy to all future events and whatever actions a rational creature sets out to do have actually been predetermined. However, this is going against the concept of freedom of choice, this is because the premise for legitimate free will would comprise of a non-predetermined course of things since freedom can be loosely defined as a the will by a rational creature to determine its own life and destiny independently. Thus, concisely if God is all knowing, cannot be wrong, and he knows of the human destiny and future action, then it translates that man’s future is predetermined in Gods knowledge of its occurrence and in these premise the concept of free will is fallacious. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius is one of the sages who have had significant impact on this debate; he posited a solution for this problem which he claims was shown to him in a vision by lady philosophy while he was locked up in prison. On free will he says the fact that humans are capable of reasoning means they possess free will, reason enables them to make logical judgments which translate to decisions (Flew, 175). Therefore, they have the ability and capacity to decide what should be included or excluded from their lives. He further classifies freedom thus; humans are freest when contemplating philosophically and least free when engaged in addictive behavior and bound in earthly fetters. However lady philosophy tells him that, God can foresee our future and puts everyone in the situations that are best fitted for their present needs in his infinite and infallible wisdom. However, this begs the question which had been earlier discussed before that, if the infallible God knows our actions and it is impossible that he is wrong, how then can we claim to have free will, this is because to justify perfect foresight, either what is going to happen must be foresees by him or what he sees must invariably come to pass, nevertheless in either case, human freedom is nullified. The solution offered by lady philosophy and which Boethius proposes is that God does not “know” or see things in the same way as man, he is eternal and the past present and future are simultaneous to him. He does not exist in the same temporal dimensions as humans thus despite the fact that tomorrow is yet to be, he sees it as we do the present, therefore he knows what will happen without directing it to happen (Flew 176).  Therefore, the knowledge of God transcends all that is in the temporal and spatial realms as perceived by man and it exists in the simplicity of a simple present, thus Gods knowledge is not future knowledge but awareness of a consistent present. In other words, one should not think of providence as the causative agent in the cause of things, they happen independently and providence only foresees them because they will happen not to make them happen. In my opinion, Boethius’ reasoning is not tenable, his arguments go round in circles and coming back to the same point, because he wants to justify two diametrically opposed ideas and makes it appear that both are logical. At the end of the day, if we agree God all knows, his transcendence of time will not change the fact that humans are immersed in it, thus events in his continuous present are occur to humans in different times. Thus, the fact that thing happen as they do, and God presumably is aware of them means free will remains and illusion. However, to borrow from a biblical reasoning, God knows an individual even when they are in their mother’s womb, following the logic of the argument that God is all knowing, he also knows the individuals fate even on the day of their death and after. Let us then consider the life of a violent criminal, before he was born, God knew he was going to become a criminal and he would die a violent death committing a crime without a chance for repentance and going by Christian doctrine be judged for his crimes and cast in hell. The justification for judging him will be the fact that he had the freedom to decide if to be a criminal or not but chose the wrong path hence he is deserving of the punishment. However, if one thinks about it logically, did he really have freedom? We have determined that in Gods knowledge, he was a criminal before he was born and was cast to hell for dying a sinner, all this awareness was in place even before he had become that person. In case he would have decided to repent and change his ways, God would have known that before he was born and predicted his life accordingly. Thus to this individual, if Boethius’ argument is followed to a logical conclusion, did not really have any choice since the only way he could have escaped the predestination would have been by proving God wrong, which would be the engenderment of free will, but considering that will Gods infallible nature that is impossible, freedom of choice can then not exist side by side with an all knowing and seeing God. The same scenario that exists for the “evil” individual mentioned above will also apply to someone who leads a righteous life and dies while carrying out the will of God, they will be rewarded. However, God knew they would lead such a life even before they were born and thus they could only have strayed of the right path if God was wrong, which again is impossible considering his infallible nature. This is what had initially lead Boethius to question the need for prayer since it has already been proven that God already knows everything, he knows what you will pray for if you will pray and he knows if he will give it to you all not. Thus, whenever God is considered all knowing, freewill departs and men are but mere puppets bound to carry out the destiny providence determined for them even before they were born with no control over the end results. Nevertheless this opposition to the possibility of the duality of an all-knowing God and freedom of choice is based on logical human reasoning. Herein then a flaw is evident whereby human beings can only find reason in logic and thus through logical thinking the duality is impossible, one can argue that to God, time exists as a continuum and there is only the present (a concept impossible for humans). In this case, one can take an illogical approach and postulate that God knows and at the same time does not know the future hence his knowledge does not necessarily determine events, this may appear illogical, and indeed it is to humans. However, if we can assume in argument that God can transcend time and space, there is no reason not to argue he can transcend human logic and reality. Work Cited Flew Antony “An introduction to Western philosophy: ideas and argument from Plato to Sartre” Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971. Print. Read More