The Consolation of Philosophy

by Boethius

was able to devote his powers not to the discovery of a new religion but to the logical exposition of the theology that underpinned it.

‘the divine popularizer’.

it was my nurse in whose house I had been cared for since my youth – Philosophy.

whosoever quakes in fear or hope, Drifting and losing mastery, Has cast away his shield, has left his place, And binds the chain with which he will be bound.

endless false accusations of the barbarians in their continuous and unpunished lust for wealth.

It may be part of human weakness to have evil wishes, but it is nothing short of monstrous that God should look on while every criminal is allowed to achieve his purpose against the innocent. If this is so, it was hardly without reason that one of your household 8 asked where evil comes from if there is a god, and where good comes from if there isn’t.

their end?

R12310302330 Telos?

If you desire To look on truth And follow the path With unswerving course, Rid yourself Of joy and fear, Put hope to flight, And banish grief. The mind is clouded And bound in chains Where these hold sway.’

you are wrong if you think Fortune has changed towards you. Change is her normal behaviour, her true nature.

And if it is impossible to keep her at will and if her flight exposes men to ruin, what else is such a fleeting thing except a warning of coming disaster?

Wealth, honours and the like are all under my jurisdiction.

No man is rich who shakes and groans Convinced that he needs more.’’

No man is so completely happy that something somewhere does not clash with his condition. It is the nature of human affairs to be fraught with anxiety; they never prosper perfectly and they never remain constant.

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.

man towers above the rest of creation so long as he recognizes his own nature, and when he forgets it, he sinks lower than the beasts. For other living things to be ignorant of themselves, is natural; but for man it is a defect.

whenever high office has fallen into the hands of wicked men, the disaster has been greater than flood or volcanic eruption.

You cannot impose anything on a free mind, and you cannot move from its state of inner tranquillity a mind at peace with itself and firmly founded on reason.

incompatible things do not usually associate, and nature rejects the combination of opposites.

Surely you see, then, how cramped and confined the fame is which you are toiling to spread and propagate. You cannot expect the reputation of one of her citizens to succeed in penetrating regions which the glorious name of Rome cannot reach. And what about the fact that the manners and customs of different peoples are so unalike that different peoples will consider the same thing praiseworthy or punishable? A man may be pleased at the publication of his fame abroad, but among many peoples it may not be to his benefit at all to have his reputation spread. So a man will be content when he is famous throughout his own people, and his bright immortal fame will be confined within the bounds of a single nation.

R12311022310 Boethius fails to imagine here, and for this he cannot be ridiculed, how oone day such fame will surpass physical bounds. Today men, although few, achieve renown across borders and cultures. Globalisation has played a substantial role here.

Good fortune deceives, but bad fortune enlightens. With her display of specious riches good fortune enslaves the minds of those who enjoy her, while bad fortune gives men release through the recognition of how fragile a thing happiness is. And so you can see Fortune in one way capricious, wayward and ever inconstant, and in another way sober, prepared and made wise by the experience of her own adversity. And lastly, by her flattery good fortune lures men away from the path of true good, but adverse fortune frequently draws men back to their true good like a shepherdess with her crook.

Do you think it is of small account that this harsh and terrible misfortune has revealed those friends whose hearts are loyal to you? She has shown you the friends whose smiles were true smiles, and those whose smiles were false; in deserting you Fortune has taken her friends with her and left those who are really yours.

R12311032333 Job, Jesus

the most precious of all riches – friends who are true friends.

Love, too, holds peoples joined By sacred bond of treaty, And weaves the holy knot Of marriage’s pure love. Love promulgates the laws For friendship’s faithful bond.

‘You are the greatest comfort for exhausted spirits.

For the desire for true good is planted by nature in the minds of men, only error leads them astray towards false good.

What a splendid thing power is, when we find it insufficient even for its own preservation!

If there is anything good in nobility, I think it is only this: that there is a necessary condition imposed upon the noble not to fall short of the virtue of their ancestors.

‘From one beginning rises all mankind; For one Lord rules and fathers all things born. He gave the sun his light, the moon her horns, And men to earth and stars to deck the sky; He closed in bodies minds brought down from high, A noble origin for mortal men. Why then proclaim your kin and ancestry? Look whence you came and see who made you, God. No man is base except through sin he quit His proper source to cherish meaner things.’

Decide to lead a life of pleasure, and there will be no one who will not reject you with scorn as the slave of that most worthless and brittle master, the human body.

Grant, Father, that our minds Thy august seat may scan, Grant us the sight of true good’s source, and grant us light That we may fix on Thee our mind’s unblinded eye. (25) Disperse the clouds of earthly matter’s cloying weight; Shine out in all Thy glory; for Thou art rest and peace To those who worship Thee; to see Thee is our end, Who art our source and maker, lord and path and goal.’

if one thing is distinct from another, it cannot be the thing from which it is perceived to be distinct.

Each happy individual is therefore divine. While only God is so by nature, as many as you like may become so by participation.’

Providence has given its creatures one great reason to go on living, namely the instinctive desire for the greatest possible self-preservation.

would you like us to bring about a conflict of arguments? Perhaps from a collision of this kind some beautiful spark of truth might leap forth.’

there are two things on which all the performance of human activity depends, will and power.

when a man abandons goodness and ceases to be human, being unable to rise to a divine condition, he sinks to the level of being an animal.

‘The generation of all things, the whole progress of things subject to change and whatever moves in any way, receive their causes, their due order and their form from the unchanging mind of God.

This, then, is the outstanding wonder of the order of fate; a knowing God acts and ignorant men look on with wonder at his actions.

The body of the holy one was built by heaven.

Providence stings some people to avoid giving them happiness for too long, and others she allows to be vexed by hard fortune to strengthen their virtues of mind by the use and exercise of patience.

This is the love of which all things partake, The end of good their chosen goal and close: No other way can they expect to last, Unless with love for love repaid they turn And seek again the cause that gave them birth.’

the one and only means of communication between man and God is removed, that is hope and prayer – if indeed we do obtain for the price of due humility the inestimable return of divine grace. And this is the only way by which it seems men can talk with God and join themselves to that inaccessible light before they obtain it, by means of supplication.

Everything that is known is comprehended not according to its own nature, but according to the ability to know of those who do the knowing.

man himself is beheld in different ways by sense-perception, imagination, reason and intelligence.

a multiplicity of kinds of knowledge

R12311051909 Ways of knowing?

Mere sensation without any other kind of knowing has been given to animals that have no power of movement, like mussels and other shellfish which grow on rocks. Imagination has been given to animals which do have the power of movement and which appear to have some will to choose or avoid things. Reason belongs only to the human race, just as intelligence belongs only to divinity.

Eternity, then, is the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life;

let us follow Plato and say that God is eternal, the world perpetual.

because the will is free from all necessity.

Hope is not placed in God in vain and prayers are not made in vain, for if they are the right kind they cannot but be efficacious.