ABSTRACT
A more philosophical reason for Boethius Dacus' interest in every was his concern about scientia, knowledge and science. In his unpublished questions on De anima, Boethius says, unsurprisingly, that only the first cause has the cause of its fixio in itself, and so it is in the fullest sense a substance. Boethius elsewhere explains that just as in the realm of real things some are self-fixing and can provide others with a fixio and satisfy their dependency, so it is in the realms of thought and of language. The ontological relation between fixum and figens thus turns out to be the ground for a more broadly construed relation between the dependent and that which satisfies its dependency. In order to forge the close link between ontology, logic and the theory of knowledge, Boethius had to develop a rather unusual interpretation of the function of every.
