Prose and argument take the place of poetry as the book becomes heavily Neoplatonic and theistic in tone. I understood best the earlier parts of this short works, largely books I -- III of the five books in which it is divided. Here, with philosophy's guidance, Boethius meditates on what makes life worthwhile. He comes to understand that what he had primarily valued in life -- things such as pleasure, power, money, success -- are evanescent and pass away.
They do not produce true happiness because they are not part of what a person is and can be taken away. They are inherently changeable and fickle. In an important passage in Book II, philosophy says p. You are led astray by error and ignorance. I will briefly show you what complete happiness hinges upon. If I ask you whether there is anything more precious to you than your own self, you will say no. So if you are in possession of yourself you will possess something you would never wish to lose and something Fortune could never take away.
In order to see that happiness can't consist in things governed by chance, look at it this way. If happiness is the highest good of rational nature and anything that can be taken away is not the highest good- since it is surpassed by what can't be taken away -- Fortune by her very mutability can't hope to lead to happiness.
He was not the first to use this metaphor, but he made it his own. The figure of the wheel and the emphasis of change and suffering in life reminded me of Buddhist teachings which I have been studying for the past several years. Boethius does not take his philosophy this way but instead develops a Neoplatonic vision of the One or of God which culminates in a beautiful poem at the conclusion of Book III section 9 of the Consolation pp In the remaining portions of the Consolation, Boethius seeks for further understanding of happiness and of the good.
Philosophy's answer becomes more difficult and theological. If focuses on the claimed non-existence of evil, the difference between eternity and time, and the nature of Providence. In rereading the book, I thought Boethius convincingly presented what people today would call an existential or experiential situation -- he was imprisoned far from home and awaiting a gruesome death.
He learns some highly particular and valuable ways of understanding that help him -- and the reader -- with his condition. As he develops his understanding, Boethius and philosophy adopt a Neoplatonic synthesis of Plato and Aristotle that contemporary readers are likely to reject or not understand. There is a further difficult question whether Boethius's teachings are exclusively Neoplatonic and pagan, or whether they are Christian as well. Christianity and Jewish-Christian texts go unmentioned in the Consolation.
Thus, I think the Consolation continues to be read and revered largely because of the situation it develops in its initial pages and because of Boethius's poetically moving teaching of the nature of change, suffering and loss. It is valuable to have the opportunity to see these things.
With change in times and perspective, not all readers will agree with or see the necessity for the Neoplatonic or Jewish-Christian, given one's reading of the work underpinnings with which Boethius girds his teaching of change and suffering. As I mentioned, it is tempting to see parallels with Buddhism. But it is more likely that modern readers will try to work out Boethius's insights for themselves in a framework which is primarily secular.
I thought that much of the early part of the book, for example, could well have been written by Spinoza. The Consolation remains a living book both because of what it says and also because it allows the reader to take Boethius's insights and capture them while moving in somewhat different directions.
Robin Friedman View all 6 comments. Jun 18, Jan-Maat added it Shelves: italy , medieval-history , thinking , religion , classical-and-late-antiquity , 6th-century. Written by Boethius while under arrest for allegedly plotting against the Ostrogothic King.
Boethius writes out conversations, interspersed with poems, between himself and a personification of Philosophy who encourages him to reject concerns with the world and concentrate on the eternal instead. While cursing his evil fortune, Philosophy appears and upbraids Boethius for abandoning her and devoting himself to worldly concerns instead of learning and Christianity.
As the dialogues progress, Boethi Written by Boethius while under arrest for allegedly plotting against the Ostrogothic King. As the dialogues progress, Boethius comes to accept what has happened to him and turns the focus of his attention on to Philosophy and the eternal instead. I've heard the view that Boethius was not a Christian, and the nature of the discussions between Boethius and Philosophy are such that they could be Christian or Pagan.
I would be surprised if there was much here that either Marcus Aurelius or Saint Augustine could take offence to. A good part of me wishes that Boethius had remained fixated on his worldly concerns enough to have left us a detailed account of the politics of the Ostrogothic court at least in his initial laments, but the promise of the Kingdom of God proved too much for him!
Jul 13, Roy Lotz rated it really liked it Shelves: footnotes-to-plato , lets-get-medieval. First of all, this is a beautiful book. Boethius—himself in a horrible situation—strives to use the extent of his philosophic powers to condole others who are suffering, and to maintain a positive view of humanity and the universe.
That the man could have written this while awaiting death shows that he was a true philosopher—I probably would have spent my time in jail writing apologetic letters to Theodoric, begging him to spare me.
As far as philosophy is concerned, Boethius is slightly disappointing. There is virtually nothing in here that is not contained in Plato; and it is argued even less persuasively. Additionally, unlike the great Greek master, Boethius does not put forward counter-arguments against his main points, if only to address them. Although the book is ostensibly a dialogue between himself and Philosophy personified, it mostly takes the form of a monologue of Lady Philosophy.
The doctrines contained in this volume are very soothing to someone in distress; but I suspect they will seem a bit smug and bland to most of us in our day-to-day lives. The writing is splendid, and the poetry a nice counterpoint to the exposition. Besides, whether his philosophy is compelling or not, it is attractive. If they do not instruct, they will at least console.
View all 4 comments. The Consolation of Philosophy is about listening to your inner Voice of Reason. This technique and the ensuing exchange reminded me of similar literary encounters with mythical beings. As reader, may I be that eager eavesdropper! Where is Reason in an oftentimes unreasonable world? What is the reason for suffering? Extreme poverty? Is there reason for things as they are? Or do we perhaps fail to listen to our own quiet inner voice Regardless of beliefs, most people agree Reason exists as a basic necessity for a good life—however one defines that good.
As such The Consolation can be read as allegory, a reminder of so much which we already know and may have forgotten. It is best read under circumstances similar to those under which it was written, i. Boethius was in prison awaiting trial and ultimately execution for treason when he wrote this his last and greatest work. For me, this brought an especial poignancy to his words.
Written as dialogue between two life-long best friends, this advice was profound, as opposed to so much that passes for wisdom or consolation today. Amateur philosopher that I am, there is little I can add to the finer points in this important discussion except to encourage modern readers to be gleaners. Reason is an excellent teacher when we are cooperative listeners. As a final note, the Librivox production would have been much improved if performed as follows: one reader for each of the characters, Boethius and Lady Philosophy, and a third reader serving as a narrator for the poems at the end of each section.
I even have two different versions of it on my shelves to tempt me--this one and the translation by Joel C. Last night the word 'consolation' in the title looked especially appealing and I checked out Librivox to see if there was an audio version.
There is! Unfortunately it's one of those with multiple readers and the quality varies considerably. Even so, this will be an enjoyable Thanksgiving diversion to alternately listen to and read for myself. Boethius was in prison on death-row while writing this book, or at least the AD equivalent of what we today refer to as death-row. By using what I was taught to be the Socratic method , Boethius in this work carries on a conversation with a female personification of philosophy.
She fills the role of a comforter in assuring him that if he trust in the truths of philosophy that he will be able to see his misfortunes as being of little consequence. I actually got the impression that by using the Socratic method he had rationalize the position that evil and misfortune didn't exist. That isn't quite correct, but he does end up feeling sorry for his persecutors because they were not living with a true heart.
Boethius lived at a time in Rome when Christianity was the state religion. Nevertheless with the exception of his reference to God in the singular, his writing sounds more like a Greek philosopher than a Christian theologian. He spends a long time exploring the question of predestination trying to rationalize how humans can have freewill and still have a God who knows the future.
I have little interest in this question, and I can't help feeling impatient when thinkers go through circles dealing with it. The following are some links I found of interest. This first link is to a modern day English rendition of Chaucer's translation from the Latin.
What I found helpful with this was the two dimensional grid at the beginning which summarized the subjects of the various chapters and sections of the book. This second link is to a very good essay on Boethius, and the section on The Consolation is well done.
View 1 comment. Another reread of this classic included in my canon of stranded isle books that can be read periodically to good measure of one's own ride on the wheel of fortune. While there's no great claim to its literary landscape and so too its ideas regarding justice and virtue age old, yet never out of style do we ponder the very things now and forever if we still be. Be well, Boethius, see you round. Perhaps more amazing than the content of this book are the circumstances of it's creation.
Sitting in prison for what seems like simply pissing off the wrong people, Boethius began talking to himself. Being unable to fathom why this horrible turn of events has happened to him, unable to come to terms with the trauma of having everything taken from him, he reasons with himself in the form of a Platonic dialogue with Lady Philosophy. The end result is a poignant and moving portrait of one man comi Perhaps more amazing than the content of this book are the circumstances of it's creation.
The end result is a poignant and moving portrait of one man coming to accept his own fate in a seemingly chaotic and meaningless life. His conclusions were to forever influence Christian thought. If you are a student of the works of Aquinas, you will definitely see Boethius in the "Summa Theologica. Yet Boethius was a Neo-Platonist, and so finding meaning behind his tragic circumstances through the lens of philosophy was no doubt near to his heart.
His techniques do bring him to the conclusion that there is in fact a Supreme Good that has ordered the universe, and the book concludes with an encouragement to the reader to look to the heavens as indeed there is an all-knowing God looking down on us all. In the course of five sections, Boethius contemplates such questions as why bad things happen to good people, why evildoers seem to often go unpunished, and why there is free will. His exploration of these persistent questions will likely not convert anyone into a religious zealot, but will not fail to influence your future response to adversity and loss.
Providence, according to Boethius, is the divine reason upon which the universe is ordered, all happening simultaneously for God who is outside space and time, and thus is divine "foresight.
Since we have no ability to understand Providence and can only observe Fate, the latter seems chaotic and cruel. Shortly after completion of this work, Boethius was brutally executed. But could Boethius' imprisonment and execution, though apparently the result of fickle Fortune, be a part of Providence further trying to lead all things to the good?
Would Boethius have written "The Consolation" had he not been unjustly detained? Would the world remember the messages within "The Consolation" for centuries had he not been immortalized by his death? The standard translation from the original Latin is by H. James, but I find his choices to be a bit too flowery and insipid, like the weak scent of lilac in a public restroom. For example, when Lady Philosophy first appears, she finds Boethius surrounded by Muses, and she angrily calls them "play-acting wantons" in the James version.
Wouldn't "hysterical sluts" have packed more punch? But regardless of the language you choose to read this book, I think you'll find "The Consolation of Philosophy" to be a short but meaty work that is way ahead of it's time, and thus worth your own time. Jul 27, E. I never heard of The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius until a couple of years ago when a friend mentioned, somewhat diffidently, that she was reading it. She said just enough to intrigue me and the book looked intriguingly short.
It went onto my mental "read someday" list and that was as far as I got. Until now. I've mentioned the Mythgard classes before, especially those to do with the Lord of th I never heard of The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius until a couple of years ago when a friend mentioned, somewhat diffidently, that she was reading it.
I've mentioned the Mythgard classes before, especially those to do with the Lord of the Rings and Dracula. They are really excellent and they are free. As it turns out The Consolation of Philosophy is not only one of the most influential books through Middle Ages and Renaissance, but strongly influenced J. Tolkien and C. Not to mention that the ideas continue to filter through pop culture and can pop up in unlikely places.
Am thoroughly enjoying this initial reading. It is a cogent look at good versus evil, fortune versus innate worth, and the intertwined nature of God's foreknowledge and free will. Thought provoking and inspirational, all without ever going beyond the bounds of philosophical thought and logic. I will be coming back to this many more times. View all 9 comments. Confused at how to rate this one.
As a work of late Antiquity literature it is a masterpiece beautifully translated by Mr. Slavitt and I am happy to have read it, specially the first three books, which deal with human happiness and how to achieve it.
Readers of self-help books self-help, pffft! As a theological work, it is less than convincing. Too many things are taken for granted or inadequately explained; if God does exist, how are we to know that he would be eternal, or omnipotent?
How does 'useful' equate 'good' certain deontological arguments aside? How can free will and God's foreknowledge co-exist?
Et cetera, et cetera None of the answers provided are satisfying. The song remains the same, I guess. Lastly, a minor complaint, why is it Lady Philosophy who seeks out Boethius and not Sophia herself? From 4 stars for the former reason to 2 stars for the latter I have settled on the obvious compromise. I first read Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy several years ago, before I ended up studying philosophy more formally.
I greatly appreciated it back then, and, when I recently felt the urge to revisit it, I decided to try this new translation by David R. Slavitt, figuring that I'd not only reread it, but also re-experience it which is what a new translation often helps you do. The translation is very contemporary and verging on the informal, which makes it highly readable. I personally I first read Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy several years ago, before I ended up studying philosophy more formally.
I personally lean towards the formal when it comes to works like these, but it wasn't distracting on the whole, excepting perhaps one or two instances where word choice appeared conspicuously removed from what Boethius might have chosen in his time. The verses came across as especially well translated better, it seems to me, than the translation I previously read.
As for the work itself, I was less impressed by the philosophy of the Consolation this time around, which was probably inevitable. Nevertheless, the beauty of both the poetry and the prose, as well as the immense poignancy of the occasion a man sentenced to death, most likely wrongfully, seeking solace in philosophy and flights of the mind , was just as—if not more—remarkable this time around.
Apr 11, Mark Rizk Farag rated it liked it. I want to start this short and incoherent review with a thought experiment. I want you imagine you have worked all your life to become among the most rich, powerful and influential people in your nation. A politician of great influence who managed not only to achieve greatness, but to bestow it upon your family. You run shoulders with Kings and are a person of great knowledge and acts.
Then one day, this is all suddenly taken from you. You are falsely accused of a crime you did not commit and you I want to start this short and incoherent review with a thought experiment. You are falsely accused of a crime you did not commit and you go from one of the most powerful people in your nation, to being on death row.
Everything you worked for, all your hopes and dreams, your comforts, all gone. This is the story of Boethius. What do you do in this situation? Indeed many of us would cry, lost hope, despair or descend into madness with the pressure, loss and impending doom. Boethius on the other hand, wrote a book. This in and of itself is an amazing achievement. And not any old scruffy book either, a book full of the wisdom of the ancient sages that came before him, with poetry and largely in the style of a Socratic dialogue which is impressive given that he lived in the middle ages!
If that isn't impressive enough, Boethius along with Augustine is one of the authors credited with keeping Aristotle and Plato in the public lexicon and discourse in the west during the medieval period and beyond, at a time when much of Philosophy was lost. A quick reading of some passages would suggest that substances are indviduated by a bundle of accidents, but there are indications that Boethius may have preferred a theory of individuation by spatio-temporal position, or one different from either of these cf.
Arlig, Treatise III is also concerned with predication and God. But it differs sharply from the other treatises, in that it contains nothing specifically Christian. The question it addresses is how all substances are good in that they are, and yet are not substantial goods. Boethius takes it as a fundamental truth that all things tend to the good, and also that things are by nature like what they desire.
Everything, therefore, is by nature good. If they were merely good by participation, they would be good by accident, not by nature. But if they are good substantially, then their substance is goodness itself, and so nothing can be distinguished from the first good, God. In giving his answer, Boethius makes use of a set of axioms he states at the beginning of the piece, and undertakes a thought-experiment in which it is supposed per impossibile that God does not exist.
The key to his solution lies in finding a principled way to distinguish between a thing a being F in that it exists, and a thing a being substantially F. Whereas it is inconceivable that God is not good, it is merely impossible that everything is not good.
The Consolation of Philosophy presents interpretative difficulties of a different order from the logical works or the theological treatises. Unlike them, it is written in an elaborate literary form: it consists of a dialogue between Boethius, sitting in his prison-cell awaiting execution, and a lady who personifies Philosophy, and its often highly rhetorical prose is interspersed with verse passages.
Moreover, although it is true that elsewhere Boethius does not write in a way which identifies him as a Christian except in the Theological Treatises I, II, IV and V, the absence of any explicit reference to Christianity in the Consolation poses a special problem, when it is recalled that it is the work of a man about to face death and so very literally composing his philosophical and literary testament.
These questions will appear in sharper focus Section 7 when the argument of the Consolation has been examined. He represents himself as utterly confused and dejected by his sudden change of fortune.
She also identifies in Book I a wider objective: to show that it is not the case, as Boethius the character claims, that the wicked prosper and the good are oppressed. Philosophy seems to have two different lines of argument to show Boethius that his predicament does not exclude him from true happiness.
The first train of argument rests on a complex view of the highest good. The first which is put forward in Book II and the first part of Book III distinguishes between the ornamental goods of fortune, which are of very limited value—riches, status, power and sensual pleasure—and the true goods: the virtues and also sufficiency, which is what those who seek riches, status and power really desire. On the basis of these distinctions, Philosophy can argue that Boethius has not lost any true goods, and that he still even retains those goods of fortune—his family—which carry much real worth.
She does not maintain that, in his fall from being powerful, rich and respected to the status of a condemned prisoner, Boethius has lost nothing of any worth at all.
But his loss need not cut him off from true happiness, which is attained primarily by an austere life based on sufficiency, virtue and wisdom. She begins to put it forward in III. Through a number of arguments which draw out the consequences of the Neoplatonic assumptions which Boethius accepts, Philosophy shows that the perfect good and perfect happiness are not merely in God: they are God.
Perfect happiness is therefore completely untouched by changes in earthly fortune, however drastic. But what this second approach fails to explain is how the individual human, such as Boethius, is supposed to relate to the perfect happiness which is God.
Philosophy seems to speak as if, merely by knowing that God is perfect happiness, Boethius himself will be rendered happy, although in the next section it seems that it is by acting well that a person can attain the good. Philosophy now goes on III. He does so by acting as a final cause. But how does this account fit with the apparent oppression of the good and triumph of the wicked, about which Boethius had begun by complaining? In Book IV. Her central argument is that what everyone wants is happiness, and happiness is identical with the good.
The good have therefore gained happiness, whereas the wicked have not; and since people have power in so far as they can gain or bring about what they want, the wicked are powerless.
She also argues that the good gain their reward automatically, since by being good, they attain the good, which is happiness. By contrast, since evil is not a thing but a privation of existence, by being wicked people punish themselves, because they cease even to exist—that is to say, they stop being the sort of things they were, humans, and become other, lower animals.
Philosophy is therefore able to put forward emphatically two of the most counter-intuitive claims of the Gorgias : that the wicked are happier when they are prevented from their evil and punished for it, than when they carry it out with impunity, and that those who do injustice are unhappier than those who suffer it.
At the beginning of IV. Unlike many modern philosophers, Boethius did not believe that the will can remain free, in the sense needed for attribution of moral responsibility, if it is determined causally.
Moreover, Philosophy insists that the causal chain of providence, as worked out in fate, embraces all that happens. It is reduced and lost as humans give their attentions to worldly things and allow themselves to be swayed by the passions.
He argues that:. Since it is accepted that God is omniscient, and that this implies that he knows what every future event—including mental events such as volitions—will be, 7 and 8 each seem to rule out any sort of freedom of the will requisite for attributing moral responsibility: a consequence the disastrous implications of which Boethius the character vividly describes. The following is, rather, an attempt to present the discussion as it actually proceeds in the Consolation. The first point which needs to be settled is what, precisely, is the problem which Boethius the character proposes?
One way of reading this discussion is that the argument here is in fact fallacious. According to this interpretation, the reasoning behind 7 seems to be of the following form:. The pattern behind 8 will be similar, but in reverse: from a negation of 13 , the negation of 9 will be seen to follow. But, as it is easy to observe, 9—13 is a fallacious argument: 10 and 11 imply, not 12 , but. The fallacy in question concerns the scope of the necessity operator.
Boethius the character is clearly taken in by this fallacious argument, and there is no good reason to think that Boethius the author ever became aware of the fallacy despite a passage later on which some modern commentators have interpreted in this sense. None the less, the discussion which follows does not, as the danger seems to be, address itself to a non-problem.
Although his logical formulation does not capture this problem, the solution Boethius gives to Philosophy is clearly designed to tackle it.
It is also possible to read the way that the question is posed by Boethius the character as not involving a fallacy Marenbon Boethius the character is, on this reading, putting forward a sort of transcendental argument. Boethius considers that when a knower knows a future event, as opposed to merely having opinion about it, the knower is judging that the event is fixed, since if it were an event that could be otherwise, it could be the object of opinion but not knowledge.
If future events could be otherwise, then God, in knowing them, would in fact be holding a false belief, since he would be judging that they could not be otherwise.
But God has no false beliefs, and so the world must be such that his beliefs about future events are not false, and so all future events must be fixed. Philosophy identifies V. This relativization is, however, limited. The same item is not true for one knower and false for another, but the way in which a given item is known differs according to the powers of the knower.
Philosophy develops this scheme in relation to the different levels of the soul intelligence, reason, imagination and the senses and their different objects pure Form, abstract universals, images, particular bodily things. Philosophy does not at this point follow the most obvious path that the Modes of Cognition Principle would suggest and declare that it just depends on the knower whether something is known as certain or not.
Perhaps she accepted that there is something intrinsically uncertain about future contingents, whoever it is that knows them. Rather, she reaches her conclusion through a more complex twist of the argument. Philosophy argues that the temporal relation of the thing known to the knower—whether it is known as a past, present or future event—depends on the nature and cognitive power of the knower.
A being who is eternal in this way, Philosophy argues, knows all things—past, present and future—in the same way as we, who live in time and not eternity, know what is present. Since, therefore, contingent events that are future to us are present in relation to God, there is no reason why God should not know them as certain.
But, if they can be known as certain, are they really contingent? There are, she explains, two sorts of necessity: simple and conditional. Simple necessities are what would now be called physical or nomic necessities: that the sun rises, or that a man will sometime die.
By contrast, it is conditionally necessary that, for instance, I am walking, when I am walking or when someone sees that I am walking ; but from this conditional necessity it does not follow that it is simply necessary that I am walking.
Philosophy is arguing that, since God knows all things as if they were present, future events are necessary, in relation to their being known by God, in just the way that anything which is presently the case is necessary. And this necessity of the present is an unconstraining necessity—those who accepted Aristotelian modalities did not think that because, when I am sitting, I am sitting necessarily, my freedom to stand has been at all curtailed.
Indeed, as Philosophy stresses, in themselves the future events remain completely free. Philosophy is thus able to explain how, as known by God, future contingent events have the certainty which make them proper objects of knowledge, rather than opinion, whilst nevertheless retaining their indeterminacy. It is important to add, however, that most contemporary interpreters do not read the argument of V. For a balanced assessment of various interpretations, including the one offered here, see Sharples ; and for a powerful critique of aspects of the view presented here, see Michon When he gave his initial statement of the problem, Boethius the character had distinguished the problem at issue—that of divine prescience—from that of divine predetermination.
He had explained V. One, perfectly plausible, way of reading the Consolation is to take it, as most philosophical works are taken, at face value. On this reading, Philosophy is recognized as a clearly authoritative figure, whose teaching should not be doubted and whose success in consoling the character Boethius must be assumed to be complete. First, it would have been hard for his intended audience of educated Christians to ignore the fact that in this dialogue a Christian, Boethius, is being instructed by a figure who clearly represents the tradition of pagan Philosophy, and who proposes some positions on the World Soul in III m.
Boethius the character says nothing which is explicitly Christian, but when in III. Second, the genre Boethius chose for the Consolation , that of the prosimetrum or Menippean satire, was associated with works which ridicule the pretensions of authoritative claims to wisdom.
Elements of satire on the claims of learning are present even in the vast, encyclopaedic Marriage of Mercury and Philology by the fifth-century author Martianus Capella, which Boethius clearly knew. And, third, in the light of these two considerations, the changes of direction, incoherencies and ultimate failure of the long argument about prescience, when the question is suddenly recast as one about predestination, all suggest themselves as intentional features, for which the interpreter must account.
Some recent interpreters, such as Joel Relihan , —; , have gone so far as to suggest that the Consolation should be understood ironically as an account of the insufficiency of Philosophy and philosophy to provide consolation, by contrast with Christian faith.
It is plausible, however, to hold that Boethius wished, whilst acknowledging the value of philosophy—to which he had devoted his life, and for which he presented himself as being about to die—to point its limitations: limitations which Philosophy herself, who is keen to emphasize that she is not divine, accepts. Philosophy, he might be suggesting, provides arguments and solutions to problems which should be accepted and it teaches a way of living that should be followed, but it falls short of providing a coherent and comprehensive understanding of God and his relation to creatures.
Along with Augustine and Aristotle, he is the fundamental philosophical and theological author in the Latin tradition. His commentaries—especially that on the Categories , the second commentary on the Isagoge and the second, more advanced commentary on On Interpretation —were the main instruments by which logicians from the ninth to the twelfth centuries came to understand the Aristotelian texts he had translated, and to grapple with their problems and the wider range of related philosophical issues raised by the late ancient tradition.
Even twelfth-century philosophers as independently-minded as Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers were deeply indebted to these commentaries. The logical text-books were equally important. The theory of topical argument, acquired especially from On Topical Differentiae , provided a framework for twelfth-century philosophers in propounding and analysing arguments, and from the combination of studying topical argument and the theory of hypothetical syllogisms as Boethius presented it, Abelard was led towards his rediscovery of propositional logic cf.
Martin On Topical Differentiae , and On Division , continued to be studied, but not the treatises on categorical and hypothetical syllogisms. Users of the commentaries were infrequent, but they include Thomas Aquinas. The power of wealth is not something that is your own, but rather a function of that wealth, so then how can it make you happy? Honor and power can be bestowed upon you by someone who is not a fair judge of either, so these are not the path to happiness either.
The beauty of Nature, too, is incapable of giving true happiness because we cannot take credit for Nature. It is entirely the construction of God, and therefore we can only admire it but cannot claim it for our own. If one desires fancy clothing, or a long line of servants, the good of either the skill of the tailor, or, if they are honest, the honesty of the servants cannot be truly owned by the possessor, so they are not the path to happiness either.
The only things which a person may truly possess are the blessings of his or her own intellectual inquiry and soul. Since these are internal blessings, it is argued, they can never be taken away, and are wholly owned by the thinker. God, Philosophy says, made human beings to rule the Earth, but not to attempt to adorn themselves with inferior things.
God has given humankind an intellect by which to inquire into philosophical things, not to concern themselves with goods which can only be inferior to the worth of their own minds. Add to this that the human soul is immortal, and cannot and never will be satisfied by a temporal happiness from earthly things, which would only last until the death of the body.
Boethius counters that he never wanted any of the temporal blessings for his own sake. He is not an ambitious man, but only entered public life out of a sense of duty. But Lady Philosophy reminds Boethius that he did enjoy his honors, and, while they were well-deserved, it is important that everyone remembers that the gifts of Fortune are inconstant and can be easily taken away.
After death, the soul will look back on what was so important in life and consider it to be insignificant. In this life, it is probably better for the soul to have bad fortune, for that does not enslave the soul as much as good fortune does.
Philosophy relents slightly from her strict censure of Fortune's gifts near the end of Book II, when she says that bad fortune gives another great gift; the knowledge of one's true friends, the ones who truly love you.
This wisdom, she says, could not be bought for any price while one had good fortune. She ends the book with a hymn about how love binds the earth together. The beginning of Book II contains a subtle hint to the reader that Boethius was a spiritual and philosophical man before his honors and possessions were taken away by imprisonment.
When Philosophy says that Boethius, in the favors of Fortune, had "nothing much of value" it is clear that Boethius has always had, or at least affected to have, a disdain for worldly things.
A man who was born into a patrician family, with a famous name and extraordinary powers of intellect, who never wanted for money, and experienced royal favor and advancement for much of his life may well have had disdain for worldly possessions, honors, and achievements.
If Boethius were still a pagan Roman, the gifts of the goddess Fortuna would have been things to pray for, and, if received, things for which he would have given praise to the gods. But the teachings of Catholic Christianity were such that none of the gifts of Fortune health, long life, a loving and healthy family, as well as honors, wealth, and preferment were to be valued as much as the love of God and spiritual enlightenment.
Boethius is espousing a wholly Christian position here, couched in the language of philosophy. The psychological progression of Boethius here is plain to see. He slowly allows his emotions to quieten, letting himself rest while he turns his thoughts back to the logic of Philosophy's argument.
His sorrow is still acute and not assuaged, but he thinks he has possibly found the way to convince himself that his lot is not so bad. Boethius, throughout his life, was very interested in logic, and wrote several books on the subject. He believed wholeheartedly in its powers, and The Consolation of Philosophy can be viewed as a logical justification for much of Christian doctrine. The enshrinement of Symmachus , Boethius's father-in-law, and Boethius's wife, Rusticiana , as paragons of moral purity seem to give comfort to Boethius.
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