I had just composed a sad piece of poetry regarding my situation, when there appeared to me the Lady Philosophy, a clearly ancient woman, although she had the appearance of someone young. She was wearing a dress of very fine material, although blackened with age, and torn from misusage by the Epicureans and the Stoics. She immediately banished the Muses that had helping me write: “get out you hussies, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves! He is an educated man.” She saw that my condition was not terribly serious, just that I had forgotten who I was.

She asked me what the matter was, and I told her that although I had conducted myself in government virtuously, and had managed to thwart numerous unjust schemes, I had been imprisoned because of accusations of sedition from men who were widely known to be untrustworthy. Then she asked me who I thought Man was. I said that Man is rational, but nothing else. “Ah, there’s your problem then. You have forgotten the divine order and the goal of all things.”

“You came into the world with nothing, but Fortune gave you a noble family, high office, your two sons raised to the position of consul in the same year. You enjoyed it when she smiled on you, but you forgot that her will brings down as well as up. But since you are mourning lost happiness, you know that Fortune cannot be trusted.” I replied that I thought the worst kind of misfortune was to have things taken away. “You are suffering because you believe incorrectly. For one thing, your father-in-law is safe, as is your wife and children, and since you care a lot about them, you are hardly ruined. Besides, the fortunate are not perfectly fortunate: one is unmarried, another is married but childless and someone else will inherit his wealth, one is wealthy but ashamed of his low birth, another is of noble birth but ashamed of his poverty. Nobody is so happy that their situation could not be improved.”

“Happiness is not the highest good, since it can be taken away. Nor is money the highest good, since it gives no pleasure by itself but only in the spending of it, which depletes it. The rich also have to worry about thieves and other ways of losing their money, which poor people do not need to worry about. Beautiful scenes are nice, but they are not yours. Nor is fine clothing the highest good, since people admire the clothes, not you. Things are also not the highest good, since if you have lots of things you have to hire guards and worry about them being taken. High office is not the highest good, either, since the office does not make one virtuous. A high office occupied by an unvirtuous man just displays his folly to the world.”

I replied that she knew I was never ambitious, but wanted to serve virtuously. “What you wanted was fame. But fame is also not the highest good. We live in a tiny section of the universe, and even in that small piece, not so far away are people who have never heard of the fame of Rome, let alone you. Furthermore, they might not even value the same things your culture does. Even within your culture are people who, in their time were famous, who are now not remembered because the books written about them did not survive. I am generally opposed to Fortune, but when she humbles people, she does them a service, to show how unreliable she is. What is more reliable is that the universe is governed/ordered by divine love.”

“Boethius, you cannot find the true happiness you desire because you are “distracted by images”. The supreme good (summum bonum) of men is happiness, which they pursue in five ways. If they desire to have no needs, they pile up money. If they want to be honored, they seek high office or do things they think will get them honored. If they want power, they seek the top office, the orbit of someone as high up as they can find. If they want fame, they become an athlete or statesman. The fifth way is pleasure, which most people want. Some have a mix, such as gaining wealth to get power. However, none of these are actually the good. Wealth does not remove needs: the rich still get hungry, and still get cold in the winter, not to mention the added need to preserve their wealth. You might say that the rich can buy food and clothing, but all that is saying is that it is easier to deal with needs when you are rich. We have already seen that high office does not create honor, for it does not create virtue and wisdom in the officeholder, but it does reveal the lack of it. In fact, the high offices have lost honor because of the disreputable men that have occupied them. Nor do titles confer honor, and outside of Rome: outside of Rome the titles have no value. Power is also not the good. Kings are afraid of other kings, and of their courtiers, since they are reliant on others for their power. If you have to go around with bodyguards, who is the one who is actually afraid? The position near the king is even riskier: Seneca, a wise adviser to Nero, tried to give up his wealth and power after Nero took a dislike to him, but died anyway. Glory is illusory, and much of it is borrowed from others, like your parents, who gave you their family. Fame is fickle, as the mass of men always is. Pleasure is ‘the pains of longings followed by the regrets of satisfaction’ (p. 76) Indulgence brings disease, and even for wholesome pleasures like a wife and children, there is pain: ‘children were invented to be our tormentors (p. 76)'; they are a constant source of worry no matter how they are doing.”

“If something is self-sufficient, it needs nothing, so it does not need power. Nor does it need honor, because such a being has natural honor. Nor would it lack fame. Having all these, it would be happy. So we see that these five things have different names, but the same substance. Men are naturally drawn to the good, yet men think that if we divide the unity they will get the whole. God is, by definition, the greatest good, so God is perfect happiness, and pursuing happiness is really just pursuing divinity. We cannot become divine, but we can participate in the divine. And since God needs nothing and is good, he orders the universe for good. So evil is really nothing, because there is nothing God cannot do, but because he is the greatest good, he cannot do evil.

I was already recovering from my malaise thanks to her words, but I had some questions, and I asked her why it was that when the wicked rule it is the man of virtue who pays the price? She said that was not the case, that God always rewards the virtuous and punishes the wicked. Both the virtuous and the wicked are pursuing the good, but man of virtue is able to actually obtain it. The wicked, like all men, are seeking the good, but they think that they can achieve it “by the [pursuing] whims of their desires—which is not at all the natural way to obtain the good.” (p. 112) So the virtuous man is strong (because he is capable of achieving the good) and is happy (because he has the good), while the wicked is weak and unhappy. Good is rewarded with happiness, while evil is punished by becoming less than human. One can see the person burning with avarice as a wolf, an angry man who cannot control his anger as a lion, and a man consumed by his lusts as a pig. “All those who have put goodness aside have no right to be called men anymore, since there is nothing divine about them, but they have descended to the level of beasts.” (p. 118)

I responded by saying, “still, I wish the wicked did not have the power to destroy the just”. “In fact,” she replied, “they do not have this power. They have some power to do evil, which results in their unhappiness. A criminal should obviously be punished, rather than the victim, so his evil causes him unhappiness, which the victim does not have. But if the criminal could see properly, he would ask for punishment from the judge to reduce his evil doing, and therefore his misery. So we should actually feel sorry for the wicked.”

“What about what people call Fortune?” She said, “Providence is the divine unity holding all things together in its design. Fate is the temporal working out of that plan, whether by angels or whatever method God uses. Some person might need disaster to prevent them from going to evil, while an evildoer might need success in somethings in order to be drawn to the good. We simply do not have enough insight to know why God does what he does. Adverse fortune is simply a way of strengthening you, and of earning yourself glory (similar to how the call to fight enables the brave to earn glory). ‘You are engaged in mental struggles lest bad fortune oppress you or good fortune corrupt you and make you soft. Whoever falls short or exceeds what is normal holds happiness in contempt and is not rewarded for his efforts. The kind of fortune you want to fashion for yourself is up to you. All fortune that may seem adverse, if it does not test you, punishes.’ (p. 144)”

I responded by asking if there was any room for chance. “No,” she said, “because God orders everything. However, we can use Aristotle’s definition, and call things chance that happen unintentional to their causes. For instance, a man finds a pot of gold in a field. Neither his digging nor the original man’s hiding intended him to find the gold.”

“Does free will exist, then?” I asked. “Certainly. In fact, the closer we are to God, the more free will we have, while as we become a slave to our animal desires we have less free will.” “In that case,” I replied, “how can God have foreknowledge if we have free will?” “That is a good question,” she replied. “The key is understand what is meant by ‘eternal'. To be ‘eternal’ is to perceive past, present, and future at the same time, which is unlike our experience where the future is arriving and the present is something we must let go of as it becomes the past. Plato thought that both God and the universe were eternal, but he was wrong, the universe is perpetual. That God sees the future does not in any way prevent us from having free will.”

The Consolation of Philosophy is a really well-written work on suffering, which Boethius wrote during his imprisonment in 523, which ended with his execution by Theodoric. He gives a simple and clear analysis of what people desire and how they go about trying to seek it. Not only are there no wasted words, but the ideas have been clearly distilled into their essence. The logic sometimes does not follow smoothly to a modern reader, since some of the things that apparently seemed obvious 1500 years ago we have different views on. This is most notable in the last two books, and the idea the evil doers intrinsically suffer while the virtuous are intrinsically happy. That said, there is also a clear element of truth to it, even though I think the idea is too simple.

In a book of number of notable ideas, the best is that men are, in essence, seeking divinity. I’m not sure that I’m sold on the argument that God is truly happy because he has no needs, and has power, honor, etc., but God being completely joyful is consonant with Christianity’s view of God. From a Christian context, Boethius’ argument that men are essentially seeking divinity is particularly poignant, since 1 Peter also says that we can participate in the divine nature (a phrase the translator used for Boethius, too), yet men pursue these shadows of goodness instead of Goodness itself. And as Maximus the Confessor says later (interpreting Gregory of Nazianzus), this causes us to “slip down” and become sub-human.

It is hard to consider this book Christian, since there are exclusively Classical references (which are copious, and even usually cite their source!). It would also be hard to write a Christian book on unjust suffering without featuring Jesus as a central figure, who also was cut down in the prime of life, at the height of his career, due to unjust accusations, and brutally executed. Surely suffering has some deeper meaning than “virtue is true happiness, but be assured that the wicked are unhappy” if even God had to experience it. Yet, at the same time, this book is fairly compatible with Christianity; as noted above Christian thinkers have said very similar things. Boethius was the adopted son of Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, a wealthy statesman, who was both a lover of Rome (he compiled a history of Rome, now lost) as well as an ardent Christian (and also executed by Theodoric, a year after Boethius). Perhaps this explains why Boethius kept Christianity out of it, or perhaps he was aiming for a broader audience, or perhaps he was more a cultural Christian.

This was one of the most popular books in the Middle Ages, which is how I got interested in it. C.S. Lewis went so far as saying “To acquire a taste for [Consolation] is almost to become naturalised in the Middle Ages.” (The Discarded Image) Indeed, his style of writing is similar to Boethius’ in that he writes simply, and with illustrations that anyone can understand. His logical arguments have a certain similarity, both in flow and ideas. Probably the most easily seen influence on Middle Ages was the prevalence of Fortune’s wheel, which shows up in many medieval manuscripts. The idea was apparently not original to Boethius, but he certainly gives a compelling vision of it, as well as a place in the cosmos, as the implementer of God’s divine intentions. And in a world full of kings like Theodoric, who had the power to make you wealthy or ruin you, and who were influenced by a scheming Court, people were likely in need to Boethius’ counsel.

This is a fantastic book. It is insightful and well-written, although I thought that Books 4 and 5 did not really support the theme very well (which may very well be because I do not think like an ancient Roman). The first three books, however, left me in awe, and the last two are certainly not less well-written. These days this is a little-known book, which is a shame, because I think it ought to be required reading for everyone who is upset about their situation. (You might not agree with everything, but it will give a new perspective, especially in light of our culture which seeks to avoid suffering at all costs.) Not only is this a hundred-year book, it is a multi-millenial book, and justifiably so.


Review: 10
Fantastic. The ideas have been distilled and clearly articulated. The rhetorical device of a conversation also adds a little plot interest, although, strangely, to book ends abruptly, without Boethius thanking Lady Philosophy for healing him. Perhaps he was executed before it was finished. I can also recommend the translation (at least as someone who cannot evaluate the original Latin): it flows very well, and it is clear that he spent some time on the poetry, which attempts to match rhythm.
▶ Notes

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