Consolation of Philosophy

written in 524

cornerstone of medieval humanism until the Renaissance

human happiness and the possibility of achieving it

made for more than its own time. Boethius wrote his book in prison

spoke to world which believed in God as the creator and governor of man and the universe, and which regarded man’s life on earth as a troubled exile in an alien land full of false and dangerous diversions from the true path of the soul’s journey toward an eternal life of beatitude.

like some philosophers...in our ...time,...written not only for professionals but for the general reader.

apparent power and success of injustice, fraud, and senseless cruelty against the apparent weakness and failure of reason and virtue

born about 480 into the distinguished Roman family of the Anicii

adopted by...even more distinguished Symmachus, and later married his...daughter Rusticiana.

translate...all the works of Aristotle and Plato with the intention of demonstrating their essential agreement.

study of logic he translated...Porphyry’s Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle,...introduce students to problems of dialectics and epistemological method

**[his] commentary provided the point of departure for the controversy between realists and nominalists on the existence of universals, which was to be so important in later medieval philosophy.

Boethius wrote works on arithmetic, geometry, music, and probably one on astronomy...standard texts in the medieval schools

at least four treatises on...theology

the Consolation of Philosophy in the medieval study of moral philosophy

xii

man of public affairs...Roman administrative system.

Plato’s teaching that the government...ought to be in the hands of...philosophers

Consul in 510, when he was about thirty

Master of the King’s Offices, one of the highest positions in the Western Empire

ruin of this ...scholar and statesmen...are the immediate occasion of The Consolation. In 523

sudden reversal of fortune...disgrace, exile, and finally to execution

Boethius lists four charges...he desired the safety of the Senate;...hindered the use of perjured testimony agaisnt the Senate;...desired the freedom of Rome;...sacrilege by magical contact with evil spirits.

time was one in which the Roman patriot was unusually vulnerable.

Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths...invaded Italy in 489

xiii

Boethius was involved in the efforts to reestablish doctrinal and ecclesiastical unity between Rome and the Empire in the East

might easily have been construed as treasonable by the Arian Theodoric.

xiv

sacrilege, the invocation of evil spirits, is another to which men devoted to the life of the intellect are peculiarly vulnerable...Boethius was a mathematician and astronomer, as well as a philosopher...associated in the public imagination with magic and the probing of forbidden mysteries

THE POET AS PHILOSOPHER

****Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, and from the Neoplatonists, and adapted during the patristic period to the theology of Christian revelation

**Nothing in The Consolation is inconsistent with patristic theology; indeed, precedent for nearly every idea which Boethius proposes can be found in the work of St. Augustine

xvi

**For Augustine, the late Roman version of Platonism was still a powerful antagonist which drove him to polemical criticism of those aspect which he found incompatible with Biblical revelation...cautious praise of those doctrines which he found appropriate

**a hundred years later Boethius could write as a Christian philosopher and classical scholar without apology

conception of Fortune as the feminine personification of changeable, unpredictable fate is drawn from pagan sources, notably from the Roman poets and moralists, where she is described as blind, vagrant, inconstant, meretricious

xvii

**early Christian theologians developed a doctrine which made Fortune a figure of fate, and fate a part of the divine government of the world, thus effectively depriving both fortune and fate of any real existence as independent and potentially destructive forces.

**Augustine...scoffs at the pagan worship of a blind goddess dispensing adversity and prosperity at random; but he applauds those pagan philosophers who understood fate to be that series of ordered causes which carry out the disposition of the divine will, and he quotes with approval the doctrine of Seneca that fate is the manifestation of divine power irresistibly worked out in temporal events.

**A century later, Boethius transformed the pagan goddess into a fictional figure embodying man’s limited hopes of temporal prosperity and his fears of adversity

subjection to fortune is a fact of experience, it is nevertheless possible for the man of reason to bear misfortune with equanimity of spirit

fortune is a specious identification of fate;

xviii

**Drawing upon his extensive reading of the Greek and Roman writers, he attempts a rational reconciliation of man’s feeling that he is victimized by forces beyond his control with his belief in a divine Governor of the universe

**The perfection which belongs to the divine nature, its simplicity, truth and goodness, constitutes at once the model and goal of human nature, the only adequate object of human imitation and desire.

****In Augustine’s reading, Cicero denies divine foreknowledge in the process of denying fatal determination in order to preserve human free will

**Augustine’s solution is to affirm both divine prescience and human freedom

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as a logician and speculative philosopher, [Boethius] formulated a solution based on the difference between human and idivine knowledge, which was to be authoritative for centuries to come.

THE PHILOSOPHER AS POET

standard texts in the curriculum of the medieval schools ,and models for other exercises in the same form

**medieval estimate of poetry as one of the lower arts ancillary to the more serious pursuit of dialectic in the hierarchy of learning. This same attitude is evident in the violence of Philosophy’s condemnation of the muses of poetry as wholly inadequate to rescue the dreamer from his despair.

xxi

appeal to the Creator of the star-filled universe to govern the destinies of men with that perfect harmony which reles the rest of nature. Ahd at the conclusion of Book Two, Philosophy returns to the same theme to sing of that divine love which is the governing principle of cosmic harmony and therefore ought to govern the souls of men and women.

**greatest poem...Book Three (Poem Nine)...explores the central theological and cosmological ideas of Plato’s Timaeus

**use of the fictional vision as a frame for philosophical speculation

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dream-vision as a poetic mode for the presentation of philosophical ideas had been treated by Macrobius late in the fourth century in his Commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio

(**mentioned in Chaucer)

The figure of Lady Philosophy is recognized at once, by name and description, as the highest natural wisdom which man can aspire to;

****persons in the vision poetry of the later Middle Ages were, for the most part, more realistically drawn than their antecedents in The Consolation, and the circumstances of the visionary encounters with them were more elaborately and imaginatively portrayed. Nevertheless they continued to represent philosophical ideas and moral attitudes moving freely, unbound by realistic demands of space and time, in the realm of poetic imagination.

BOOK I

PROSE I

Her height seemed to vary: sometimes she seemed of ordinary human stature, them again her head seemed to touch the top of the heavens. And when she raised herself to her full height she penetrated heaven itself, beyond the vision of human eyes. Her clothing was made of the most delicate threads, and by the most exquisite workmanship;

woven by her own hands

POEM III

just as when the stars are covered by swift Corus and the sky is darkened by storm clouds, the sun hides and the stars do not shine; night comes down to envelop the earth;. But if Boreas, blowing from his Thracian cave, beats and lays open the hiding day, then Phoebus shines forth, glittering with sudden light, and strikes our astonished eyes with his rays.

PROSE III

Do you suppose that this is the first time wisdom has been attacked and endangered by wicked men? We fought against such rashness and folly long ago, even before the time of our disciple Plato. And in Plato’s own time, his master Socrates, with my help, merited the victory of an unjust death. Afterwards, the inept schools of Epicureans, Stoics, and others, each seeking its own interests tried to steal the inheritance of Socrates and to possess me (in spite of my protests and struggles), as though I were the spoils of their quarreling

POEM IV

He who is burdened by fears and desires is not master of himself...he fastens the chain by which he will be drawn

PROSE IV

I studied nature’s mysteries with you, when you mapped the courses of the stars for me with your geometer’s rod, when you formed my moral standards and my whole view of life according to the norm of the heavenly order

**At the time of the severe famine, when prices were set so exorbitantly high that the province of Campania seemed about to starve, I carried on the people’s fight against the Praetorian prefect himself and, with the King’s approval, I won--the fixed prices were not enforced.

through devotion to justice, I had given up the favor of the courtiers who might have saved me. But who were the accusers who overthrew me? One of them was Basil who had earlier been expelled from the King’s service and was now forced by his debts to testify against me. My other accusers were Opilio and Gaudentius, also men banished by royal decree for their many corrupt practices. They tried to avoid exile by taking sanctuary, but when the King heard of it he decreed...etc.

nor, following the rule of Socrates, can I think it right either to hide the truth or concede a lie

The desire to do evil may be due to human weakness; but for the wicked to overcome the innocent in the sight of God--that is monstrous.

It is not likely that I would have sought the protection of evil spirits at a time when you were forming in me that excellence which makes man like God

POEM V

Boethius concludes with a prayer

hold the stars in their assigned paths, so that sometimes the shining moon is full in the light of her brother sun and hides the lesser stars; sometimes, nearer the sun she wanes and loses her glory

**Nothing escapes Your ancient law; nothing can avoid the work of its proper station. You govern all things, each according to its destined purpose. Human acts alone, o Ruler of All, You refuse to restrain within just bounds. Why should uncertain Fortune control our lives

PROSE V

Philosophy suggests that the source of the prisoner’s trouble is within himself and begins to reassure him.

POEM VI

**God assigns to every season its proper office; and He does not permit the condition He has set to be altered. Every violent effort to upset His established order will fail in the end.

PROSE VI

Philosophy begins to remind Boethius of certain basic truths which will place his misfortunes in proper perspective.

**I cannot suppose that its regular operation can be the result of mere chance; indeed, I know that God the Creator governs his work, and the day will never come when I can be shaken from the truth of his judgment.’ I replied

only men were outside God’s care

You are confused because you have forgotten what you are, and , therefore, you are upset because you are in exile and stripped of all your possessions. because you are ignorant of the purpose of things, you think that stupid and evil men are powerful and happy

POEM VII

So it is with you. If you want to see the truth in clear light, and follow the right road, you must cast off all joy and fear. Fly from hope and sorrow. When these things rule, the mind is clouded and bound to the earth.

BOOK II

PROSE I

You have put yourself in Fortune’s power; now you must be content with the ways of your mistress. If you try to stop the force of her turning wheel, you are the most foolish man alive. If it should stop turning, it would cease to be Fortune’s wheel.

PROSE II

Philosophy shows that it is the nature of Fortune to change.

**Why should I alone be deprived of my rights? The heavens are permitted to grant bright days, then blot them out with darknights; the year may decorate the face of the earth with flowers and fruits, then make it barren again with clouds andfrot; the sea is allowed to invite the sailor with fair weather, then terrify him with storms. Shill I, then, permit man’s insatiable cupidity to tie me down to a sameness alien to my habits? Here is the source of my power, the game I always play: I spin my wheel and find pleasure in raising the low to a high place and lowering those who were n top. Go up, if you like, but only on condition that you will not feel abused when my sport requires you fall. Didn’t you know about my habits?

POEM II

No man can be rich who cries fearfully and considers himself to be poor

PROSE IV

if you find that among all the gifts of Fortune your most precious possessions are still safely yours, thanks to God’s providence, can you justly complain of misfortune?

No one is so completely happy that he does not have to endure some loss. Anxiety is the necessary condition of human happiness since happiness is never completely achieved and never permanently kept.

how shoddy is the enjoyment provided by mortal things. they forsake those who are content with them, and they do not satisfy those who are discontented. Why then do men look outside themselves for happiness which is within?

If happiness is the highest good of rational natures, and if nothing which can be lost can be a supreme good (because it is obviously less good than that which cannot be lost), then clearly unstable Fortune cannot pretend to bring happiness.

PROSE V

when you judge vile things to be your goods, you lower yourself beneath them by your own estimate and so deservedly become so.

POEM V

This poem has long been recognized as a conflation of important commonplace ideas drawn from Virgil’s Georgics, the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Tibullus.

PROSE VI

Philosophy goes on to show that Fortune’s gifts of honors and power are transitory and not good in themselves.

**honor is not paid to virtuous men because of their rank; on the contrary, it is paid to rank because of the virtue of those holding it.

**Since there is no doubt that wicked men are often honored, it is obvious that the kind of honor which can be achieved by the wicked is not good.

you choose to call things by false names, even though the things in question may be quite different, and the tings are then found to contradict their names by their effects.

PROSE VII

Even the fame won by virtuous men in the performance of honorable public service is of slight value.

PROSE VIII

Philosophy argues that misfortune is more beneficial than good fortune, for good fortune deceives, but misfortune teaches.

POEM VIII

This is a classic statement of the medieval idea that love is the principle of harmony in the universe. Divine love established and governs the changing and potentially discordant universe; it should also govern the microcosm, man, in his relations with others.

love which rules the earth and the seas, and commands the heavens

**Love binds together people joined by a sacred bond; love binds sacred marriages by chaste affections; love makes the laws which join true friends. o how happy the human race would be, if that love whic rules the heavens ruled also your souls

BOOK III

PROSE I

Philosophy promises to lead Boethius to true happiness.