The Consolation of Philosophy

by Boethius

I who once wrote songs with joyful zeal Am driven by grief to enter weeping mode. See the Muses, cheeks all torn, dictate, And wet my face with elegiac verse.

These poems do not make a lot of sense to modern readers. One reason is that the poems were written in a meter (beats, BOOM boom boom). Remember that the Romans were fond of poetry and would write things like directions for how to operate a ship as a poem. Finally, note that the Romans never read silently ; even when they were alone they read aloud

Is it the library of my house which you chose yourself as a place of sure repose and where you so often used to sit with me discussing all the topics of philosophy?

Boethius lives in Spartan conditions but aparently has access to a library

‘If I have fully diagnosed the cause and nature of your condition, you are wasting away in pining and longing for your former good fortune. It is the loss of this which, as your imagination works upon you, has so corrupted your mind. I know the many disguises of that monster, Fortune, and the extent to which she seduces with friendship the very people she is striving to cheat, until she overwhelms them with unbearable grief at the suddenness of her desertion. If you can recall to mind her character, her methods, and the kind of favour she proffers, you will see that in her you did not have and did not lose anything of value.

Here Fortune is introduced. Later she will be personified. In the book, Fortune represents the fleeting nature of external goods and worldly success. Her unpredictability teaches that true happiness lies not in her gifts but in inner virtue and philosophical understanding, ultimately rooted in the divine.

If you are trying to stop her wheel from turning, 1 you are of all men the most obtuse. For

As note 1 points out, Boethius was not the first to come up with the image of the wheel of fortune. Many writers in the middle ages, like Dante Chaucer as well as painters used this image. Of course, in our own time the wheel of fortune is a television game show that does not mention the fact that Boethius was an important person who popularized the metaphor.

I asked what it was and she told me that it was true happiness. ‘Your mind dreams of it,’ she said, ‘but your sight is clouded by shadows of happiness and cannot see reality.’ I begged her to lead on and show me the nature of true happiness without delay. ‘For you,’ she said, ‘I will do so gladly. ‘But first I will try to describe and sketch an idea of the cause of happiness. Then, with a proper vision of that, you will be able to turn your gaze in a different direction and recognize the pattern of true happiness.

is clear, therefore, that happiness is a state made perfect by the presence of everything that is good, a state, which, as we said, all mortal men are striving to reach though by different paths. For the desire for true good is planted by nature in the minds of men, only error leads them astray towards false good.

It is worth noting that this definition of happiness is a secular one; Boethius was certainly capable of giving a Christian definition.

And through all of this it is clear that the only thing men desire is happiness.

First, one should distinvuish between short term and long term happiness. EUDAIMONIA. Second there are people who argue the purpose of life is not happiness. Viktor Frankl claims that the purpose of life is meaning/purpose.

‘So first I will ask you a few questions,

Boethius again organizes his argument in the form of a Socratic discussion.

he illustrated the fears of kingship to Damocles by making a sword dangle over his head by a single hair.

The famed sword of Damocles

‘But the greatest cause of my sadness is really this – the fact that in spite of a good helmsman to guide the world, evil can still exist and even pass unpunished. This fact alone you must surely think of considerable wonder. But there is something even more bewildering. When wickedness rules and flourishes, not only does virtue go unrewarded, it is even trodden underfoot by the wicked and punished in the place of crime. That this can happen in the realm of an omniscient and omnipotent God who wills only good, is beyond perplexity and complaint.’

Here is the major theme of this book: the problem of evil. I will note that anyone who takes religion and the philosophy of religion seriously should be able to answer the question. However, serious thinkers understand that there is not really a good answer to the question of how a benevolent god would allow suffering and evil.

‘And you recall that happiness is the good itself and similarly that since they seek happiness, all men desire the good?’

In my opinion, this concept that all men desire "the good" is a decidedly Platonic way of thinking, as opposed to a Christian way of thinking.

moment ago we decided that there is nothing with greater power than the supreme good.’

Again, this way of thinking strikes me as Platonic or neo platonic rather than Christian.

In this poem we have an account of the ascent of the soul to God, which must be understood in terms of the Boethian cosmos.

It is worth reading this note on p 156 thoroughly and thinking about Boethius' cosmology or conception of the universe. How would say this differs from the way we think about the topic now. Would you say he has a Christian way of thinking here?