Participation and the Good: A Study in Boethian Metaphysics by Siobhan Nash-Marshall (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 481 perfection is in part a matter of his commanding (and necessarily commanding) what is-independently of his will-good for his creatures. It is not a matter of God's doing what is morally obligatory, since only dependent beings are subject to obligation. Thus Crusius's account of morality is not circular. But neither is it blatantly contrary to morality. Indeed, Crusius warns that "We should guard against the mistaken belief that divine punishments and rewards are necessary so that the law may be obligatory, in that fear of the former and hope of the latter would drive man to obedience.... For through this ... all true obedience would be destroyed" (§194). So whatever merit there may be in Kant's argument, it has no force at all as a reply to Crusius. The great virtue of this book is that Hare consistently tries "to do philosophy through its history" (x). This is not the work of a contemporary analytic philosopher who occasionally decorates his arguments with a historical reference; nor is it the work of a historian of ideas who occasionally analyzes an argument. On the contrary, Hare works out his most engaging philosophical insights through his historical investigations, and he develops his most provocative readings of the history of philosophy by attending carefully to philosophical analysis. Although I have raised some objections to the specifics, there is no denying that Hare's approach produces distinctive and interesting results that repay dose examination. The University ofIowa Iowa City, Iowa THOMAS WILLIAMS Participation and the Good: A Study in Boethian Metaphysics. By SrOBHANNASHMARSHALL . New York: Crossroad, 2000. Pp. 306. $49.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8245-1852-7. At first sight, there is every reason to expect that Siobhan Nash-Marshall's new monograph will be a valuable addition to Boethian studies. Although Professor Nash-Marshall shows little interest in one side of Boethius' work, his writings on the liberal arts, especially logic, she dearly knows his theological treatises and the Consolation ofPhilosophy very well, and she has read a good deal of the extensive modern literature on the area, especially that concerned with the detailed interpretation of the third theological tractate. Such familiarity should, perhaps, be taken for granted in the author of a specialized study. But another excellent feature of Nash-Marshall's discussion is as rare as it is welcome. Nash-Marshall takes Boethius seriously as a philosopher in his own right. She avoids-avoids, perhaps, to a fault-the approach so common where this writer is concerned, in which such attention is paid to his sources and to his 482 BOOK REVIEWS influence that he ends by being treated as a mere conduit for ancient ideas to be transmitted to the medieval world. Yet, despite these signs of promise, Participation and the Good is a frustrating book which, so I shall argue, for all its good intentions and its author's obvious intelligence and learning, does little to increase our understanding of Boethius. The problems start with the professed aim of the book. Nash-Marshall states very dearly (1) that "our main object in this book is to determine and define the Boethian doctrine of participation." But, as she does not herself dispute, participation is not a theme that Boethius himself discusses explicitly and at length, in the way that, for instance, he explicitly considers the doctrine of the Categories in his De Trinitate or the question of divine prescience and human free will in book 5 of the Consolation. Certainly, participation plays quite an important part in his metaphysics, but Boethius tends to use the notion here and there, without trying to define or analyse it. In order to overcome this difficulty, Nash-Marshall decides that she will first of all investigate Boethius's ideas about the good, since they are dosely connected with participation in his thinking. Here, at least, Nash-Marshall has a subject that will bear detailed discussion, since both the third of his theological treatises, and the whole of the Consolation, are explicitly about the good. The result of the strategy, however, is that only a quarter ofthe book's pages are given to discussing what is supposed to be...