Boethius - Consolation of Philosophy

Once again into the fray... I jump in to add amateur thoughts to a crowded sphere of intellectual flatulence.  And very few have as much flatulence to share as I do, so here I come! I've often thought of and tried to maintain some kind of presence but you have to find a something you enjoy writing about and it turns out that bad choices, good beer, and a Jerry Springer life will only carry your motivation so far!  Good stories... bad motivation.  

But one of my best motivations in life is to explore, to learn, to read as much as possible. I first encountered Boethius when I had read Ravenna by Judith Herrin ahead of a trip to the area in October 2024.  I had vaguely remembered his name from distant history, but not focused any attention his direction. When I encountered his influence strongly again in Dante's Divine Comedy, I thought it was time to see for myself a sampling of his work in The Consolation of Philosophy.   

It's certainly not any intent of mine to lend new scholastic insights to someone who has been debated and scrutinized by professors and enthusiasts for centuries, but to anyone who hasn't encountered Boethius yet, I'd like to shine a spotlight on this remarkable early Christian living in the time immediately after the fall of Roman rule as his people would've known it and under the rule of the Ostrogothic King Theodoric.  

Theodoric was an Aryan Christian Ostrogoth leader who had been at various times under the tutelage of and at odds with the Eastern Romans in Constantinople before being prompted to go into Italy and oust King Odoacer who had deposed the last recognized western emperor.  Theodoric was for decades a quite able ruler intent on preserving Roman structures and styling himself as an emperor of the west in all but name, working closely with the eastern emperor.  Boethius was a remarkable scholar and courtier of Theodoric, serving as a senator, a consul and a  personal advisor.  A great number of ancient Greek translations to Latin can be attributed to Boethius and you can trace his affinity for Greek philosophy to these days of such elaborate research.  Boethius also foresaw splits developing between the Sees in Rome and Constantinople and worked towards trying to reconcile them.  Unfortunately for Boethius, during the end of Theodoric's reign, the king had become quite temperamental, to the point of paranoia. When ex-consul Albinus was accused of treasonous correspondence with Eastern Emperor Justin I, the unimpeachable Boethius stood up for him - causing him to no longer be unimpeachable as other "witnesses" who had long harbored resentment towards him bore what one can assume to be false witness against him. Theodoric had his long time trusted advisor tossed into prison in Pavia in 523AD. While in prison, Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy.  In 524AD, he was brutally executed. His remains are currently entombed in San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro (along with St Augustine) in Pavia.  

Consolation of Philosophy was to me many flavors from a brilliant mind.  He lays out in the very beginning the names and events that condemned him to prison, which appealed to me as a rare look at a directly sourced 6th century historical record. Then it becomes a remarkable glimpse into the mind of a man stripped of everything and condemned to die... and trying to make sense of how this could happen to him, a just man, while the evil men who bore false witness against him and the one who perpetuates such evil and tyranny are allowed to walk free. It walks you through the reasoning of Fate, Divine Will vs Free Will, his foundation of Greek philosophy and how he reconciles it to Christian theology. 

A bit about the philosophical observations I didn't want to forget... He lays out a very Greek notion reconciled a bit with Christianity of the 6th century in that all people want to be good, so it would be natural that evil-doing people going unpunished are more miserable than those receiving punishment. We might laugh at that notion today, but they had not learned about psychopathy and sociopathy yet.  

The next big takeaway was about Fortune vs Fate. A quote I loved was, "All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.”

The last takeaway for me was about Divine Will and all knowing prophesy vs Free Will. Do we actually have free will if there is an all knowing presence that predicts and orders everything? That one is perhaps the hardest one to wrap your arms around if you’re a believer. The best way I can put it briefly is that humans have rational thought and reason which is given to us by God. As long as we are contemplating higher purposes, we are acting on free will. When we chase base desires, we are slaves to our animal instincts or “sin” for lack of a better word. Boethius seemed to me to lay out an argument that because the Divine Will is timeless and infinite, you can’t think of it as a single prophesy like Elijah. In other words, yes there is a future, but it’s not written in stone because of our freedom to choose (there are infinite paths possible). And God sees all of these futures at once. At least that’s how I interpreted it. 

One last note of interest is they say Dante used quite a bit of Boethius (along with St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine) as major foundations for his work in the Divine Comedy, and goodness, when  I read it through the second time, it really did start to become more apparent; especially in his discourses about fate and Free Will.  

That's it!  I know this one was rather long for a "first post" but it was a serious and important piece I had to get down before I lost or forgot my notes.  There are several others banging around in my head I'll try to get out soon.  Divine Comedy is a big one...  Bonhoeffer is almost finished.  Vita Nuova too.  And yes, I do read lighter funnier things too like Catechism of the Catholic Church.

(j/k!)