The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

The by and large gist is knowledge of activities occurs in orders of perception. That is, an event is known by the knowledge of it; also, there are orders to knowledge: divine intelligence, man’s reason, the imagination, and sense-based experiences. Boethius thinks the way in which we know a thing is determined by the level at which we approach it. The act of observing a man walking and the sun moving simultaneously above him are both, in his terms, ‘necessary’ when observed. However, one is volutional, that is free-will based (the man walking) though necessary because of its clear observation, while the other is also necessary, (the sun’s movement), but is based on a higher order of cohesion.