It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Originally posted by silent thunder
the classical era was drawing to a close, and it somehow seemed "everything has already been done." People were struggling with eclecticism, relativism, and decadence.
Originally posted by filosophia
Regardless, the metaphysics of Boethius is interesting to note
Senses - perceives things part by part
imagination - perceives sense knowledge without the need of sense objects
Reason - comprehends universal characteristics of real things
Intelligence - comprehends "simple form" the totality of knowledge, not uniform throughout all species.
What's interesting about this system is that the higher knowledge contains the lower, but without using the lower. So intelligence comprehends reason, imagination, and senses without using reason, imagination, or the senses. It is like an innate knowing once it is learned.
I who wrought my studious numbers
Smoothly once in happier days,
Now perforce in tears and sadness
Learn a mournful stain to raise.
Lo, the Muses, grief-dishevelled,
Guide my pen and voice my woe;
Down their cheeks unfeigned the teardrops
To my sad complainings flow!
These alone in danger's hour
Faithful found, have dared attend
On the footsteps of the exile
To his lonely journey's end.
These that were teh pride and pleasure
Of my youth and high estate
Still remain the only solace
Of the old man's mournful fate.
Old? Ah yes; swift, ere I knew it,
By these sorrows on me pressed
Age hath come; lo, Grief hath bid me
Wear the garb that fits the best.
O'er my head untimely prinkled
These white hairs my woes proclaim,
And the skin handgs loose and shrivelled
On this sorrow-shrunken frame.
Blest is death that intervenes not
In the sweet, sweet years of peace,.............more but I'll stop here