ON THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY
In the summer of 2021, my life underwent a series of transitions. I graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree and a generous financial aid offer to a relatively prestigious evangelical seminary. I lined up a job and was preparing to move out of state to start a new chapter of my life. This time should have been an exciting period, but instead, it was one of deep existential anxiety. In my last semester of college, I experienced what is commonly called a “deconstruction phase.” I no longer trusted the evangelical doctrines that used to give me confidence. Unbeknownst to most of my family, my fiancé and I were seriously contemplating converting to Catholicism or Orthodoxy in search of a more trustworthy authority. I felt uncomfortable admitting that I wasn’t sure what I believed anymore. I had completed a degree in theology and was about to embark on another one, but I wasn’t sure if I believed anything I had been taught! I couldn’t talk to the living, so instead I talked with the dead— through books. In one, I found the comfort and strength to weather the uncertainties that buffeted me.
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, better known as simply “Boethius,” was born sometime in the early 480s CE in Rome. He came from a family of prominent Christian aristocrats in Rome. Boethius’ father died when he was ten. He was then adopted by a Christian, scholar, and politician named Symmachus. In his home, Boethius had access to the finest tutors available, and his education and family connections allowed him to become a competent scholar and politician in his own right. As a scholar, Boethius mastered Greek (rare for an Italian of the period) and wrote several works on philosophy and theology, many of which survive today. His political career was equally impressive. Boethius was a senator by the age of 25, a consul by 33, and head of government and personal advisor to King Theoderic the Great by his early 40s.
Yet Boethius is not remembered primarily for his considerable literary output, his meteoric political career, or his family’s triumphs. Instead, he is remembered for his downfall. In 523, Boethius was appointed the master of all government and palace affairs in Ravenna, then the capital of the Roman kingdom. But within a year, Boethius was imprisoned on charges of treason and sacrilege. He was executed at the age of 44. During his imprisonment, Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, his most famous work. Although not widely read at the time of his death, Consolation has become a staple of philosophical and theological literature ever since. It has inspired diverse figures from Dante to C.S. Lewis.
Consolation takes the form of a conversation between Boethius and “Lady Philosophy,” a personification of the Greek virtue of wisdom. This dialogue style is common in philosophical texts, especially Plato and Aristotle with whom Boethius was so familiar. However, Boethius employs a combination of prose, verse, and a playful sense of humor more typical of satire than philosophical dialogue. And despite Boethius’ sincere Christianity, Consolation never cites the Bible or any other Christian sources. Instead, the text is littered with references to Greco-Roman myth and poetic allusions. Nevertheless, Consolation is heavily informed by its author’s faith and belongs firmly in the tradition of Christian philosophy.
Consolation begins with Boethius in a cell, taunted by muses who enflame his misery. A woman appears and chases the muses away. Boethius soon recognizes her as Lady Philosophy, or Wisdom herself. Seeing his predicament, Lady Philosophy recognizes that Boethius is not ready for “stronger remedies” and promises “gentler ones” to soothe him.[i] First, she helps Boethius identify his problem. According to Lady Philosophy, Boethius’ depression has caused him to forget how the world works. She tells him “since you are unaware of the goal to which creation proceeds, you imagine that wicked and unprincipled people individuals are powerful and blessed.”[ii]
To heal Boethius, Philosophy helps him break down his false beliefs before replacing them with true ones. She helps Boethius recognize that his situation is not as bad as his feelings indicate. First, his family is still safe, something Boethius can take solace in. Second, Boethius knows that Fortune— here personified as a capricious and fickle woman, is inconsistent. Therefore, he should not be surprised or offended that Fortune no longer favors him. When Lady Philosophy sees that Boethius’ depression is lessened, she declares that she must “make the dressings stronger.”[iii]Boethius is now ready for a more powerful remedy.
Lady Philosophy then turns her attention to “Fortune’s goods”: money, physical beauty, honor, power, and so on. One by one, Philosophy forces Boethius to admit that each of these goods is not only temporary but has no value in and of itself. Only human perception makes gold, jewels, or fine clothing desirable. And positions of honor and power only reflect the virtue of the people who hold them. Boethius mourns his betrayal and the loss of his wealth, his estate, and his prestige. Yet, according to Lady Philosophy, Fortune did not hurt Boethius by abandoning him. Instead, Fortune has done Boethius a favor by removing her mask. “Adverse Fortune,” Philosophy says “is always truthful, and shows by her mutability that she is inconstant.”[iv] By revealing worldly goods as penultimate, Fortune has helped Boethius see the world more clearly. In Book 3, Boethius admits under pressure that he never felt truly happy even before his downfall. Even at his most triumphant, Boethius always felt like he was missing something.[v]
Penultimate goods cannot deliver true happiness because each one is incomplete and leaves the owner anxious about losing what they have. Therefore, Philosophy tells Boethius he must seek the ultimate good, which “lacks nothing outside itself.”[vi] Boethius acknowledged earlier in the dialogue that God is the source of all being.[vii] Because God is the source of all things, God alone is complete in Godself. God alone lacks nothing, and therefore God is true happiness.[viii] Since happiness is the greatest good people can have, per Consolation, God must also be the greatest good.[ix] Real security and happiness are only found when people are united in thought and deed with God. When one acts and thinks in accordance with the will of God, one is united with the Good. This is the “stronger cure” that Philosophy promised Boethius. From here, she reinforces that cure with discussions on the problem of evil[x] and divine providence and free will.[xi] Philosophy’s strong remedy is the key to meeting the spiritual confusion of our day.
Even though Consolation says much about God, the book remains religiously neutral. You don’t need to be a Christian to appreciate the insights Boethius and Philosophy uncover. This is a feature, not a bug. Boethius’ religiously neutral language is part of why this book impacted me so profoundly when I was suspicious of theological language. The doctrinal formulations that I had relied on for security no longer felt reliable. There I was, about to enter seminary, and I felt my faith being undermined by uncertainty, and by extension, my entire sense of self. I had lost my prior source of certainty and had no clue where to find a new one.
Enter Boethius and Lady Philosophy. Boethius’ situation was different from mine. He was imprisoned; I was free. Whether he knew Theoderic would have him killed is uncertain, but the possibility must have weighed on him. He must have also been afraid for his family.[xii] But I think Boethius’ sense of self was also endangered. He felt abandoned by his friends, peers, and Fortune. Before his imprisonment, he saw the world as a place where the just prospered and the wicked suffered. His ordeal shattered that assumption. His sense of the world was ripped away, and no alternative was offered until Lady Philosophy came with her cures.
I also lost my sense of the world, and Boethius’ existential dread resonated with me. Like Boethius, I found comfort in Philosophy’s words about penultimate and ultimate goods. Doctrinal formulations are penultimate, even though they are meant to help us understand the ultimate. I believed in the gospel but relied on having the “right ideas” to be certain of God’s reliability. When my certainty in those ideas crumbled, my trust in God’s faithfulness suddenly became unstable. If I was wrong about things that I had once been so sure of, how could I trust anything? In Consolation, I saw that our perception of the ultimate is not the same as the ultimate itself. Our doctrines about God are not God. I realized that God’s goodness is not conditional upon us having the right thoughts in our heads. The process of demolishing and rebuilding my ideas about God was painful, but I went through that process confident that God was good. No matter how uncertain I was or what errors I made, God remained good and true, calling me closer to truth. The spiritual anxiety of our time cannot be erased, but it can be overcome. Over fifteen hundred years after its composition, The Consolation of Philosophy continues to offer a comforting light in the darkness of doubt and anxiety.
[i] Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. P.G. Walsh, Oxford World Classics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1.5.12.
[ii] Boethius, Consolation, 1.6.21.
[iii] Boethius, Consolation, 2.5.1.
[iv] Boethius, Consolation, 2.8.3-4.
[v] See Boethius, Consolation, 3.3.
[vi] Boethius, Consolation, 3.9.13.
[vii] Boethius, Consolation, 1.6.11.
[viii] Boethius, Consolation, 3.10.17.
[ix] Boethius, Consolation, 3.10.43.
[x] See Boethius, Consolation, book 4.
[xi] See Boethius, Consolation, book 5.
[xii] For good reason; Theoderic had Boethius’ adopted father Symmachus executed shortly after Boethius died.
