Brian KeeleyPhilosophy, Pitzer College

Office: Broad Hall 107

Boethius’s Consolation of

Philosophy, Book I-III

Schedule Read Books IV & V for next time

Boethius, the person Born: Anicius Manlius Severinus

Boethius (482-524/5).

Born in Rome to a powerful aristocratic family; his father had been a powerful political leader and had become Consul of the Roman Senate before his death when Boethius was only 8 yrs old.

Boethius, the person Boethius adopted by

Symmachus, the head of the most powerful Roman family, who would also become Consul.

Symmachus and Boethius were devoted to one another, and Boethius goes on to marry Symmachus’s daughter.

Boethius, the person

Boethius was very intelligent, and said by historians to be perhaps the most educated person in Italy for a hundred years before and after his life. (!)

Boethius, the person An avid follower of Plato & the

other classic philosophers of Greece & Rome, he entered political life. Following in the footsteps of his families, he too became Consul, as did both of his sons.

He also had an influential intellectual life, authoring a number of treatises, commentaries, and translations of the classic works then available.

Consolation of Philosophy:

The Back-Story First, we have to realize that

Boethius’s father’s generation saw the end of the Roman Empire, at least the Roman Empire as ruled by the RomansRomans. The barbarians had finally defeated Rome.

Consolation of Philosophy:

The Back-Story In Boethius’s time, the Roman

Empire was ruled by the Ostrogoths, led by Theodoric (who was put up to the invasion by the leader of the Eastern Empire based in Constanti-nople, now Instanbul).

Theodoric was Emperor, but was content to let the locals carry on more or less as before, but with him as Emperor.

Consolation of Philosophy:

The Back-Story By the time Boethius became Consul, Theodoric’s relationship with Constantinople had soured.

The next piece of the puzzle is that not only was the Empire split, the Church was split as well. The Pope led a not-very-powerful Roman Catholic Church. The Patriarch led a slightly more powerful Eastern Orthodox Church.

Based where?

Consolation of Philosophy:

The Back-Story

And, Boethius was a Christian.

Christianity in Boethius’s day was different: It wasn't nearly as powerful as it would eventually

become It was beset by divisions. Not just between the two

Churches, but between groups with very different religious ideologies. First of all, there were fights over the appropriate books of the Bible. There were also many fights over interpretations: There were the Monophysites who thought that Jesus was purely divine, and not also human. There were also the Nestorians, who thought that Jesus was of two different and independent natures, both divine and human but not simultaneously. Boethius was on the side of the eventual winners of this debate who argued that Christ is simultaneously fully divine and fully human. (The Doctrine of One God in Three Persons)

Back to the Back-Story Boethius had been promoted

from Consul to Master of Offices to Theodoric, which is sort of like our White House Chief of Staff.

In other words, if you were Roman and wanted an audience with the Emperor, you had to go through Boethius.

He had been office only a year when a member of the Senate was accused of crimes against the Empire due to his attempts to negotiate a reconciliation between the two Churches.

Theodoric believed the charge, but Boethius did not and said, “If he is guilty then the whole Senate is guilty!” Theodoric saw this as a confession of Boethius’s own treason.

Back to the Back-Story

Boethius is then imprisoned on charges of treason, and the “use of black arts”.

Theodoric calls a session of a senatorial court that sentences Boethius to death (although he is not allowed to testify in his own defense).

At this point, Boethius writes his Consolation… under house arrest, awaiting execution.

Back to the Back-Story

The Consolation of Philosophy

Facing all of this, Boethius still intends to argue that his philosophical life is the superior life;

that nonetheless he is better off than his unjust accusers.

Boethius, His Unique Historical Position

Boethius is also a unique character in that he has feet in two different worlds and stands at the beginning of a third.

First, he is immersed in the classical worlds of Roman & Greek philosophy. He is a great admirer of the ancients and their wisdom. He is, perhaps, the last Ancient Philosopher.

Boethius, His Unique Historical Position

Second, he is a Christian.

However, he is a Christian at a time before the Church comes into conflict with the educated and learned. He sees no necessary conflict between the two.

Boethius, His Unique Historical Position

And he stands at the beginning of the “Dark ages” and the Medieval period. Rome is about to collapse, and with it European civilization.

The Church gains ascendancy, in part, because it is the only institution that’s able to hold itself together amidst the chaos.

Boethius, His Unique Historical Position

So, Boethius is the 1st Medieval philosopher.

The Consolation not an obviously Christian text because Christ appears nowhere in it & he never quotes the Bible.

Believes faith & reason work hand-in-hand. This book argues that the principles of reason & logic inevitably lead to the Christian picture of the world.

Boethius, His Unique Historical Position

So in many ways, Boethius stands at the beginning of a tradition that would only come to an end with the Reformation and the birth of the Protestant Church

(Although, truth be told, Roman Catholicism still has strong roots in this tradition, via St. Thomas Aquinas’s “Two Paths”).

Finishing the story For 1000 years, the most widely copied

work of secular literature in Europe.

Major influence on both Dante (compare the character of Philosophy here to Dante's Beatrice) and C.S. Lewis.

Translated into Old English by King Alfred,

…into Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer

…into Elizabethan English by Queen Elizabeth herself.

Let’s look at the book itself:

Its form = a dialogue between the imprisoned Boethius and Lady Philosophy. (So once again, the main

character isn’t exactly what you might think.)

Alternates between poetry & prose. (This is called a “Menippean satire.”)

In the beginning, we find an ailing, imprisoned Boethius being tended by the muses of poetry who are then run off by Lady Philosophy.

This raises our first question: What are we to make of

Philosophy's condemnation of poetry, when Boethius himself writes poetry?

Book I: Setting the Stage

At this point, Philosophy asks Boethius what the heck happened to him, and he spills out his sad story of injustice at the hands of corrupt men.

Philosophy is unimpressed by his self-pity and responds with the prose passage in Ch. 5.

Book I

With the questions in the prose section of Chapter 6, she then diagnoses Boethius problem:

He has forgottenforgotten who he is.

Diagnosing Boethius’s Illness

Things people usually look for to find happiness: Wealth, Positions of honor and power, Glory and reputation (Fame), Health and bodily pleasures

Bks II & III: Fortune:It ain’t all that