READING GUIDE: BOETHIUS, THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY

Edition used: Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, tr. V.E. Watts (Penguin, 1969). Some references are made to the Encyclopaedia Britannica article, 'Plato and Platonism' (reprinted in Supplement).

Boethius (AD 480-524) was a Roman, a Christian, well-educated in neo-Platonist philosophy (possibly in Alexandria - see Pierre Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources [Harvard UP, 1969], chapter 6), who had spent his life in philosophical and political activity. The Roman Empire was Christian, its capital was Constantinople. Italy was ruled, nominally on the Emperor's behalf, by the Goths, who were Arian heretics; their capital was Ravenna, Rome kept its Senate and its Consuls (Boethius was a Consul and a Senator). Boethius had been arrested on a charge of treason and writes this book in prison, where he was later executed.

Read Book I (pp.35-53)
Comments:
* Although Philosophy drives away the Muses of Poetry (p.36) she herself speaks partly in poetry (p.37). (Similarly Plato, Republic 595a ff, drives the poets out of his ideal city because poetry deals in images and fictions, not truth, yet his own dialogues are full of images, myths and fictional conversations). The Consolation of Philosophy (CP) consists of verse passages (metra) alternating with passages of prose (prosae). Hence the conventional reference system: CP, I, m.ii, refers to the verses beginning p. 37; CP, I, pr.ii refers to the prose beginning at the top of p.38. Do not skip the metra.

* Highlight the references to sickness, health, medicine, curing, etc., on pp. 36, 38, 40, 49, 50, 52, 78 (at 36.17 (i.e. p.36, line 17), 36.22, 38.1, 38.12-13, 38.34, 40.33, 49.22, 50.17, 52.2-13, 78.8-9).(Tear off the bottom of a sheet of paper and along the straight edge of this strip put numbers corresponding with every second line on p.36. Use this as a ruler. Measure from first line that is not a heading. Measure through spaces and verse as if it were all ordinary text: thus 38.34 is the line 'examine the face of my physician...'.)

Philosophy is a kind of psychiatry ('soul doctoring' - psyche soul, iatros a physician). This notion goes back to Plato and Socrates. It implies that the point of philosophy is not only to know but to become a better person. Ignorance and illusion (particularly about what things are truly good and truly evil, worth aiming at and avoiding) is vice and unhappiness. Unhappiness is cured by dispelling ignorance and illusion about what is good and evil.

* 'Amnesia who he is' (38.12-14; cf. 51.26). The neo-Platonists pictured the soul as having several levels, the highest of which (intellect) is in contact with the world of Ideas, the lowest with the body. We find our true self by conversion (turning) from lower to higher. The philosopher's aim is to find and maintain his true self. Concern with things that affect the body leads to forgetfulness of the true self. The passions or emotions are the soul's involvement with the body, and they may confuse and delude the mind.

* 'Zeno and Plato' (36.26): Zeno was the founder of Stoicism, which was one of the sources of the ethics of the neo-Platonists; in their view the Stoics had borrowed from Plato (cf. 39.15). Canius, Seneca and Soranus (39.28) were Stoics who opposed the tyrannies of Nero and Caligula. See Tacitus Annals XVI.21 ff, and R. MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order, chs. 1 and 4. Their courageous opposition was supported by the Stoic doctrine that nothing that can be done by another person can inflict real evil on one's self: the only evil is to fail to do the right thing. The Consolation of Philosophy is full of Stoic ethics.

* 'Our general folly' (40.4-8). The general is the mind, the ruling part (hegemonikon) of a well-ordered soul. The citadel is virtue, the useless plunder consists of outward and bodily things which are not truly goods, which foolish people aim at and value. 'Hope and fear' (40.22) relate to such things, 'goods of Fortune' (41.1, 35.16).

* Prosa IV, p.41 ff, relates to Boethius's political activity. Note that it was, he says, inspired by Plato's philosophy (cf. Republic, 347, 519d-520d, 473cd). Like other Senators he also served the administration of the king of the Goths, Theodoric. See the translator's introduction, pp.14-18.

* 'Acts of sacrifice' (45.24): Probably acts of magic or pagan ritual. (It was perhaps expected that philosophers would engage in such practices; see Encyclopedia Britannica article on Plato, PHIL252 Supplement, p. 5 (right-hand side) on theurgy.)

* 'No one else could have done it' (48.18). Nothing truly evil can be inflicted on a person by anyone else or anything else. The only evil is vice, a turning from higher things to lower, resulting in forgetfulness of the true self. Vice is voluntary. The 'lord' and 'king' is God, who in Christian versions of neo-Platonism is the highest level of reality.

* 'God should look on', 'Where evil comes from if there is a god' (44.14,17). Highlight this - it sets the philosophical question with which the rest of CP is concerned.

* 'Rational principle' (50.20-21), 'end and purpose of things' (51.6), 'it is because happiness' (51.31-33): this foreshadows the answer.

Read pp.54-8.
Comments
* Highlight 'of value' 54.14, 'of yours' 56.20', 'you could never have lost them' 57.15. Boethius accepts the Stoic doctrines that virtue is the only good, that virtue is within our power and not subject to any other person or thing (whether we are virtuous is entirely up to us), that virtue is therefore sufficient, or enough for the good life, i.e. for 'happiness'. ('Happiness' is not merely a cheerful state of mind, but an objectively preferable state of life; this is how Aristotle and other Greek writers used the word eudaimonia, which we translate (roughly) as 'happiness'.)

External goods (so-called goods, the Stoics would say - virtue is the only good), such as wealth, power, glory, health, physical freedom, are subject to the power of other people and things. They called these 'goods of fortune'. According to Aristotle the main constituents of the happy (objectively worthwhile) life is virtuous activity (not just virtue, but activity in accordance with virtue); but Aristotle holds that goods of fortune make some contribution to the happy life - a life of virtuous activity overwhelmed by external misfortunes is not a completely happy life. The Stoics reject this, and hold that virtue is absolutely sufficient for happiness.

Aristotle: Possession of virtue is not the good, 'for possession of virtue seems actually compatible with the greatest sufferings and misfortunes; but a man who was living so no one would call happy unless he were maintaining a thesis at all costs.' (Nicomachean Ethics ('EN' hereafter), I.5, 1096 a1).

The self-sufficient we now define as that which when isolated [i.e. by itself] makes life desirable and lacking in nothing; and such we think happiness to be; and further we think it the most desirable of all things, without being counted as one good among others - if it were so counted it would clearly be made more desirable by the addition of even the least of goods Happiness, then, is something complete and self-sufficient. (EN, I.7, 1097 815-20; from The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes [Princeton University Press, 1984].)

It needs the external goods as well; for it is impossible, or not easy to do noble acts without the proper equipment. In many actions we use friends and riches and political power as instruments and there are some things the lack of which takes the lustre from blessedness, as good birth, satisfactory children, beauty, for the man who is very ugly in appearance or ill-born or solitary and childless is hardly happy, and perhaps a man would still be less so if he had thoroughly bad children or friends or had lost good children or friends by death. As we said, then, happiness seems to need this sort of prosperity, in addition. (EN I.8, 1099 a31-b5)

The Stoics were not satisfied with Aristotle's doctrines. They thought the wise man (equivalent to the virtuous man) must be completely happy (i.e. his life must be completely worthwhile), and for this he must be completely without fear and completely free; his happiness must consist in what is completely his own and not at all in anyone else's power. Compare what is said by Stoics in Cicero's dialogues:

Let us see who are to be described as happy; for my part I think it is those who are compassed about with good without any association of evil, and no other sense underlies the word happy, when we use it, except the fulness of combined good and complete separation of evil. Virtue cannot secure this if there is any good besides itself; for there will come as it were a throng of evils, if we regard them as evils, poverty, obscurity, insignificance, loneliness, loss of property, severe physical pain, ruined health, infirmity, blindness, fall of one's country, exile and, to crown all, slavery; in all these distressing conditions - and more still can happen - the wise man can be involved; for chance occasions them, and chance can assail the wise man; but if these are "evils" who can show that the wise man will be always happy, seeing that he can be involved in all of them at one and the same time? (Tusculan Disputations V.x.29 , tr. J.E. King (William Heineman, London, 1927))

Or is there any question that nothing that can escape our grasp ought to be reckoned as one in kind with that which makes the fulness of a happy life? For nothing of all that goes to make a happy life should shrivel up, nothing be blotted out, nothing fall to the ground. For the man who shall be afraid of the loss of any of such things cannot be happy. For our wish is that the happy man be safe, impregnable, fenced and fortified, and so made inaccessible not only to a little fear, but to any fear at all. For just as the word innocent is applied, not to the man who is guilty of a slight offence, but to the man who is guilty of none; so we must reckon as fearless, not the man who has few fears, but the man who is free from any fear at all. For what is fortitude except a disposition of the soul capable of endurance in facing danger and in toil and pain, as well as keeping all fear at a distance? And these qualities would assuredly not be found unless all good reposed on rectitude and that alone. How, moreover, can anyone, about whom come or can come a throng of evils, enjoy that object of supreme desire and aspiration - security (and security is the term I apply to the absence of distress upon which happy life depends)? How besides can he hold his head erect, in disdain of all the vicissitudes of man's lot, in the spirit we wish the wise man to show, unless he shall think that for him all things depend upon himself? (Ibid., V.xiv.40)

Epictetus was a Greek Stoic, a former slave, who taught in Rome when the emperor was Domitian, a tyrant. On the same theme he wrote:

But what says Jupiter? "O Epictetus, if it were possible, I had made this little body and property of thine free, and not liable to hindrance. But now do not mistake: it is not thine own, but only a finer mixture of clay. Since, then, I could not give thee this, I have given thee a certain portion of myself: this faculty of exerting the powers of pursuit and avoidance, of desire and aversion; and, in a word, the use of the appearances of things. Taking care of this point, and making what is thy own to consist in this, thou wilt never be re strained, never be hindered; thou wilt not groan, wilt not complain, wilt not flatter any one. How then! Do all these advantages seem small to thee?" (Epictetus, Moral Discourses I.i.3, tr. Elizabeth Carter (London, J.M. Dent, 1910))

Him, then, whom it is in the power of another to restrain or to compel, affirm confidently to be not free. And do not mind his grandfathers, or great-grandfathers, or inquire whether he hath been bought or sold; but if you hear him say from his heart, and with emotion, My master, though twelve lictors should march before him, call him a slave. And if you should hear him say, Wretch that I am, what do I suffer! call him a slave. In short, if you see him wailing, complaining, unprosperous, call him a slave in purple. "Suppose then, he doth nothing of all this?" - Do not yet say he is free, but learn whether his principles are liable to compulsion, to restraint, or disappointment, and, if you find this to be the case, call him a slave keeping holiday during the Saturnalia. Say that his master is abroad; he will come presently, and you will know what he suffers. "Xho will come?" Whoever hath the power either of bestowing or taking away any of the things he wished for. "Have we so many masters, then?" - We have. For, prior to all such, we have the things themselves for our masters; now they are many , and it is through these that it becomes necessary that such as have the disposal of them should be our masters too. For no one fears Caesar himself, but death, banishment, loss of goods, prison, disgrace. Nor doth any one love Caesar, unless he be a person of great worth; but we love riches, the tribunate, the pretorship, the consulship. When we love and hate and fear these things, they who have the disposal of them must necessarily be our masters. (Ibid., IV.i)

This should be our study from morning to night, beginning from the least and frailest things, from an earthen vessel, from a glass. Afterwards, proceed to a suit of clothes, a dog, a horse, an estate; from thence to your self, body, parts of the body, children, wife, brothers. Look everywhere around you, and throw them from yourself. Correct your principles. See that nothing cleave to you which is not your own; nothing grow to you that may give you pain when it is torn away. And say, when you are daily exercising yourself as you do here, not that you act the philosopher (admit this to be an insolent title), but that you are asserting your freedom. For this is true freedom. (Ibid., IV.i.13).

Seneca (Stoic philosopher who lived in the time of the Emperor Nero) wrote:

The wise man, nevertheless, unequalled though he is in his devotion to his friends, though regarding them as being no less important and frequently more important than his own self, will still consider what is valuable in life to be something wholly confined to his inner self. He will repeat the words of Stilbo [the Stilbo whom Epicurus' letter attacks], when his home town was captured and he emerged from the general conflagration, his children lost, his wife lost, alone and none the less a happy man, and was questioned by Demetrius. Asked by this man, known, from the destruction he dealt out to towns, as Demetrius the City Sacker, whether he had lost anything, he replied, 'I have all my valuables with me.' There was an active and courageous man - victorious over the very victory of the enemy! 'I have lost,' he said, 'nothing.' He made Demetrius wonder whether he had won a victory after all. 'All my possessions,' he said, 'are with me', meaning by this the qualities of a just, a good and an enlightened character, and indeed the very fact of not regarding as valuable anything that is capable of being taken away. (Letter IX, in Letters from a Stoic, tr. R. Campbell (Penguin, 1969))

So according to these Stoic writers, happiness and freedom require detachment from goods of fortune, willingness to do without them, complete commitment to doing what should be done.

Insert headings:
V (p. 65) is about wealth;
VI (p. 69) is about power;
VII (p. 72) about glory or praise;
the argument is that none of these 'goods of fortune', or external goods subject to the vicissitudes of fortune, is truly good.

Read rest of book II.
Comments
* Highlight 'anything that can be taken away is not the highest good', 63.32-3, and 'possession of yourself' 63.28.

* A premise: If possessing x makes y good, then x is more good than y in itself (67.33-4). Another premise: If y cannot possess x, then x cannot make y good (68.8-9, 65.13, 66.22-3). Highlight 'you' 66.17, 'yours' 66.23, 'yours' 67.6, 'external' 67.24, 'their own' 67.28, and read pp.65-8 again.

* Compare Aristotle:

People of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is, roughly speaking, the end of the political life. But it seems too superficial to be what we are looking for, since it is thought to depend on those who bestow honour rather than on him who receives it, but the good we divine to be something of one's own and not easily taken from one. Further, men seem to pursue honour in order that they may be assured of their merit; at least it is by men of practical wisdom that they seek to be honoured, and among those who know them, and on the ground of their excellence; clearly, then, according to them, at any rate, excellence is better. (EN, I.5., 1095 b22-30; emphasis added)

* Compare 70.19-21 with Epictetus quoted above.

* Compare 71.20-72.7 with 66.22-3, 68.8-9. Goods of fortune do not make good the persons who 'possess' them, because they do not become qualities of that person.

* pp.76-7, on friendship and the reference to 'Love who rules the sky' perhaps show the influence of Christian rather than Stoic ideas (contrast Seneca quoted above on Stilbo's valuation of friends, wife and children).

The theme of book II is that in losing the goods of fortune you lose nothing that was really yours, and therefore nothing that can make your life worthwhile. Book III asks: What does make life worthwhile? It begins by arguing again that wealth, honour, etc. cannot. This involves some repetition of ideas from book II.

Insert headings:
III (p. 82): 'Wealth - cf. p. 65 ff)'
IV (p. 85): 'Honourable office - cf. pp. 69-70'
V (p. 87): 'Political power - cf. pp. 70-1'
VI (p. 89): 'Fame - cf. 72 ff'
VII (p. 90): 'Pleasure'
VIII (p. 91): 'Summary'

Read book III to p. 93.
Comments
* Highlight: 78.18-21 'The destination I am trying to bring you to true happiness'; 79.27-8 'Happiness is the state made perfect by the presence of everything that is good'; 80.27-8 'wealth, position, power, fame, pleasure'; 81.2-3 'self-sufficiency'; 81.23, 81.28 'nature'.

* Note that 'happiness' (eudaimonia, beatitudo) does not mean simply a cheerful state of mind, but a state of life: to be happy is to be living a worthwhile life. Pp. 82-93 set aside false conceptions of what makes life worthwhile, the rest of book III will say what true happiness is.

* Highlight 84.13-15 'Wealth makes him dependent on outside help'; 86.2-4 'Virtue immediately transfers public offices cannot'; 91.13-14 'These roads to happiness are side-tracks'.

* Compare Aristotle:

Every action and pursuit is thought to aim at some good [goal]: and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim If, then, their is some end [goal] of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence or life? Let us state what is the highest of all goods achievable by action. Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness but with regard to what happiness is they differ To judge from the lives that men lead, most men seem (not without some ground) to identify the good, or happiness, with pleasure People of superior refinement and of active dispositions identify happiness with honour But it seems too superficial to be what we are looking for, since it is thought to depend on those who bestow honour rather than on him who receives it, but the good we think to be some of one's own and not easily taken from one. Further, men seem to pursue honour in order that they may be assured of their merit; at least it is by men of practical wisdom that they wish to be honoured, and among those who know them, and on the ground of their virtue; clearly, then, according to them, at any rate, virtue is better But even this [virtue] seems somewhat incomplete; for possession of virtue seems actually compatible with being asleep, or with lifelong inactivity, and, further, with the greatest sufferings and misfortunes; but a man who was living so no one would call happy, unless he was maintaining a thesis at all costs The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else

Since there are evidently more ends than one, and we choose some of these (e.g. wealth, flutes, and in general instruments) for the sake of something else, clearly not all ends are complete ends; but the chief good is evidently something complete. Therefore, if there is only one complete end, this will be what we are seeking, and if there are more than one, the most complete of these will be what we are seeking. Now we call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more complete than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else, and that which is never desirable for the sake of something else more complete than the things that are desirable both in themselves and for the sake of that other thing, and therefore we call complete without qualification that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else. Now such a thing happiness, above all else, is held to be; for this we choose always for itself and never for the sake of something else, but honour, pleasure, reason, and every excellence we choose indeed for themselves (for if nothing resulted from them we should still choose each of them), but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, judging that through them we shall be happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself. From the point of view of self-sufficiency the same result seems to follow; for the complete good is thought to be self-sufficient. Now by self-sufficient we do not mean that which is sufficient for a man by himself, for one who lives a solitary life, but also for parents, children, wife, and in general for his friends and fellow citizens, since man is sociable by nature The self-sufficient we now define as that which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing; and such we think happiness to be; and further we think it most desirable of all things, without being counted as one good thing among others - if it were so counted it would clearly be made more desirable by the addition of even the least of goods; for that which is added becomes an excess of goods, and of goods the greater is always more desirable. Happiness then is something complete and self-sufficient and is the end of action. (EN I.1-7)

Read prosa IX, pp.93-7.
Comments
* This section sets out the form or nature of true happiness, what it is like; prosa X will say where that form is to be found. Highlight 93.30-1 'what true happiness is like'; 96.30-2 ' the nature where to find'; 99.1-3 ' form where'.

* The argument of this section is that the nature of happiness is to be all good things unified. Highlight 94.3 'one and undivided', 95.5-6 'differ in name but not in substance'. Similarly the morning star and the evening star are the same thing under different names (cf. 47.6-8). Similarly, in Protagoras 329 ff Plato suggests that all the virtues - courage, temperance, etc. - may all be different names for the same thing (viz. knowledge of what is good and what is evil).

* But nothing that we experience in this world unites all good things. Highlight 96.22-4 'anything among these mortal and degenerate things'. The things of this world are 'shadows' (96.26) of the true good. Compare Plato, Republic, 514-6 ('the cave'): most of us mistake for reality the shadows of the things which we will see only if we 'turn' toward the sun, i.e. toward the Form of the Good (Republic, 508c, 517b).

READ metrum ix (pp. 97-8), with translator's note. Comment

* The main point to see in this passage is the hierarchical universe: At the highest level God ('O thou'), identified with Plato's Form of the Good; below that (lines 8-20 - using the numbers the translator has provided) the world that comes from God, and turns back to God (lines 20 to the end). This poem foreshadows the answer to the question raised by the preceding prosa, viz. where is the nature of true happiness realised? - answer, In God, the true Good.

Read X, p. 99-104.
Comments
* 'In the natural world' (99.5-6) translates in rerum natura, which simply means in reality, with no emphasis on 'natural'. So the first question is whether such a good really exists. Lines 99.11-21 are an argument that it does: imperfect goods exist, so the perfect good must exist, since the imperfect 'takes its origin' or 'issues' from the perfect.

* Second argument (99.22-100.5): God is the perfect good, since creation derives from the perfect good (last argument), and God is the creator (see especially 99.29-32).

* Third argument, or set of arguments (100.13-102.2): God is simply identical with his own happiness, i.e. with the supreme good.

* Corollary (102.5-17): God is good and happy through himself, other things are good and happy by participation in the divinity (just as in Plato's philosophy the Form of Beauty is beautiful through itself but other things are beautiful by participating in the Form of Beauty.)

* Highlight 102.24, 'parts', 102.25 'one', 102.26 'under which'. ('Under which the others may be classed' translates ad hoc cetera referantur, which means more literally 'To which the others may be referred', a vague expression.) The contrast is not very clear. He means: Is happiness made up of these parts, or is related to them in some other way? The answer (pp.103-4) is that the various aspects of happiness are sought as being good, so they are not parts; happiness is not a composite whole but something simple: it is identical with the Good, which is God.

(Part of metrum X (p. 104) in Chaucer's translation is on the cover of the Readings book.)

Read XI (pp.104-9)
Comments
* Unity and goodness are identical. In seeking to preserve themselves things seek to preserve their unity, i.e. they seek the good. Compare the opening of Aristotle's NE (quoted above): ' the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim' (1094 a2)

* Highlight 108.2 'Take unity away and existence ceases'. In the neo-Platonic philosophy unity is more basic than being; the cause of unity is the cause of being, degrees of unity are degrees of being.

Read to end of Book III
Comments
* Compare 109.16-20 'what you said you did not know governed' with 44.9-18 and 50-2, especially 51.6-9. The rest of CP gives Philosophy's answer to this question and her answer to Boethius' objections.

* Highlight 110.10-11 'one who could unify'; 110.33 'by Himself'; 111.2 'by goodness'; 111.16 'willingly'; 112.17 'evil is nothing'.

* That evil is non-being was a neo-Platonist doctrine. Plotinus:

Evil cannot have place among Beings ; these are good. There remains, only, if Evil exist at all, that it be situate in the realm of Non-Being By this Non-Being, of course, we are not to understand something that simply does not exist, but only something of an utterly different order from Authentic- Being an image of Being or perhaps something still further removed than even an image Some conception of it would be reached by thinking of measurelessness as opposed to measure, of the unbounded against bound, the unshaped against a principle of shape, the ever-needy against the self- sufficing. (Plotinus, Enneads, I.viii.3, tr. MacKenna and Page (Faber and Faber, London, 1956), pp. 67-8)

Plotinus holds that matter is evil. Christian neo-Platonists did not accept this. Otherwise their account of evil is similar. The following is Gilson's account of Augustine on evil:

An evil nature is one in which measure, form or order is vitiated, and it is only evil in exact proportion to the degree in which they are vitiated Evil is the privation of a good which the subject should possess, a failure to be what it should be and hence, a pure nothingness Since evil is nothing, it could not even be considered apart from some good. For evil to exist, there must be a privation; hence, there must be a thing which is deprived of something Thus, whenever we speak of evil, we implicitly assume the presence of some good which is not all that it should be and is therefore evil. Evil is not merely a privation: it is a privation residing in some good as in its subject. ( E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine (Random House, New York, 1960), p. 144)

* 'Internal proof', 'arguments not sought from without' (p. 113): According to Aristotle real knowledge is based on principles proper to the subject matter, not on broad generalisations; each science has its own special principles. See his Posterior Analytics, I.7, I.9 (75 a38 ff, 76 b38 ff). Arguments based on premises applicable to many different kinds of subject matter are merely 'dialectical' or probable.

Read I of book IV, pp. 116-8
Comments
* Highlight 116.12-13 'in spite evil can still exist'. This re-states the problem raised at the beginning, p. 44. The theses Philosophy puts forward in 116.28-117.2 ('the good are always strong ') will be the answer. Insert the following headings:
II (p. 118): The good are strong, the wicked weak
III (p. 123): The good are always rewarded and the wicked punished
IV (p. 127): Punishment is good for the wicked

Read II, III and IV, pp. 118-132
Comments
* The main source of these three sections is Plato's Gorgias. In that dialogue Socrates argues that if skill in rhetoric enables a person to do wrong and escape punishment it is not worth having: power to do wrong is really lack of power (the wicked may have power to do as they choose, but they will not thereby achieve their ultimate purpose, to enjoy what is good), and those who do wrong are benefitted by punishment since it makes them better. It is preferable to suffer wrong than to inflict it.

* Highlight 119.25-6 'all men, good and bad alike, strive to reach the good'; cf. pp. 104-8 above. Also 124.33-4 'goodness is its own reward the punishment of the wicked is their very wickedness'. Notice 129.27-130.4.

But Boethius is still not convinced: the problem first raised at p. 44 and restated at the beginning of book IV arises again in another form:

Read the rest of book IV
Comments
* The Stoics, developing the ideas of Socrates, had held that virtue is the only good, vice the only evil. But they had reintroduced other goods and evils into their doctrine under another name, holding that some things neither good nor evil are 'to be preferred', others 'not to be preferred'. Similarly Boethius says here that however much the good are always happy and the wicked miserable, still 'no wise man prefers' exile, poverty, etc. So why does God's providence allow such things to be inflicted on the good?

* Providence and fate (135.9-137.14): Fate is the participation or reflection in lesser things of God's providence. Providence in God is simple, its expression in the multiplicity of created things is an order (an order is an arrangement of many elements), an order or chain of causes.

* Highlight 135.11-12 'unchanging mind'. In Plato's philosophy change is a sign of imperfection. God is unchanging, the mover of other things who himself never moves. See 97.10 ('timelessness unchanging'), 110.18 ('unmoving'), 113.15 ('unmoved'). Highlight also 135.12 'oneness': God is absolutely simple, without parts; whatever he is is identically and simply himself. Highlight 135.31 'order', 'simplicity'. God's existence is not spread out in space or in time: lower beings exist through time, but his being is timeless. Highlight 135.34 'in time', 136.12 'time'.

* Note the image of the centre point, which has no parts: 136.21 'the simplicity of the centre'. Imagine this as a point source radiating light as far as it will extend into darkness, the outermost extent being shadowy - this is a neo-Platonist image of the universe 'emanating' (from Latin emanare, to spread itself) from God.

* Highlight 137.15-16 'It is because upset'. This is the answer to the question on p. 133. Highlight 138.11-12 'what suits each person', 138.14-15 'a knowing God wonder at his actions', 141.8-9 'if you could see anywhere'.

Read book V, prosa I
(Book V in another translation is printed in volume 1, Readings. Look up some of the important passages to see how they can be translated differently.)
Comment
* According to the Greek atomists (Democritus and Epicurus) the atoms out of which things are constituted were moving downwards through space but 'swerved' and came into collision, and thus the world came into being. This 'swerve' had no cause: it happened by chance. So in their theory 'by chance' means 'without any cause'. Aristotle, Plotinus (Enneads III.1.1), and here Boethius, reject the idea that anything ever happens without a cause. Aristotle suggests that a thing we say happens by chance happens by the unexpected coincidence of several lines of causation.

But then, if everything is caused, including human actions and volitions, is there any free will?

Read pp. 149-50.
Comments
* The power to judge that some object is desirable or undesirable is freedom, even though there will be some chain of causes that makes us think of this object and regard it as desirable or undesirable. There is no suggestion here that to be free we must be able to switch without any reason, and without the influence of any new cause, from desiring to not desiring.

Read pp.150-4.
Comments
* Highlight 151.17-18 'whatever the order of causes, the coming to pass of things foreknown is necessary'. In other words, the question whether foreknowledge causes the events or vice versa is irrelevant - 'whatever the order of causes ': if there were such a thing as an uncaused event, then if someone could know beforehand that it was going to happen, its happening would be necessary, it would have to happen. If someone knows something, then that something has to be true. It is possible to think something that is not true, but it is not possible to know it unless it is true; this is because of what 'know' means - you cannot know what is not true. So if I know that some future event will happen, then, necessarily, it will happen. A corresponding statement can be made also of present events. If I know that Socrates is sitting, then, necessarily, Socrates is sitting (whatever causes his sitting, whatever causes my knowing, and even if neither has any cause).

* Re-read 151.21-31. If Socrates is sitting, then, necessarily, the statement 'Socrates is sitting' is true; on the other hand, if 'Socrates is sitting' is true, then, necessarily, Socrates is sitting. So even if it is true (as it is) that Socrates' sitting makes the statement true and not vice versa, still, from the truth of the statement it can be inferred: 'then, necessarily, Socrates is sitting'. The same applies to true statements about the future. Re-read to 152.12.

* Highlight 152.15-17 'destined', 'not certain', 'is'. Suppose there is some sort of 'non-necessary happening' (perhaps a 'chance' in the Epicurean sense) that can be foreseen - i.e. it can be foreseen that it will happen but in some undetermined or chance way. Re-read 152.13-153.3. If God foresees these chance events as certain then his knowledge falsifies; if he foresees them as uncertain, then he has no more foresight than human beings do.

* If everything we will do is not only foreseen but pre-determined then reward, punishment, prayer, hope become irrational (153.3-154).

* The source of these arguments is Aristotle. He maintains that, taking a statement about the future and its negation, it is not necessary that one be true and the other false. For if one of the two must be true the future becomes necessary:

For if one person says that something will be and another denies this same thing, it is clearly necessary for one of them to be saying what is true - if every affirmation is true or false It follows that nothing either is or is happening, or will be or will not be, by chance but everything of necessity So there would be no need to deliberate or to take trouble. (Aristotle, On Interpretation, ch. 9, 18 a28 ff)

Read pp.155-157.5
Comments
* 'You yourself have investigated it' (155.3): In his commentary on Aristotle's On Interpretation.

* 'only source cannot but happen' (155.16-17), 'foreknowledge is a sign happen' (155.31): Allusions to the argument of the previous section - if 'Socrates will sit' is known it is true, and if it is true then Socrates must sit. 'Even if there were no foreknowledge' (155.31): even if no one knew it it would still be true. (Cf. Aristotle: 'Nor, of course, does it make any difference whether any people made the contradictory statements or not if in the whole of time the state of things was such that one or the other was true, it was necessary for this to happen'; On Interpretation, 18 b35 ff.)

* 'If there is no necessity' (156.5): this is what Philosophy will show - that there is no necessity in the appropriate sense. 'So the first thing to do' (156.3) is a misleading translation that makes it sound as if Philosophy will try to do this; rather, it is what those who maintain necessity must do - they must show that there is necessity before they take foreknowledge as a sign of necessity - or they will be arguing 'from without'. 'But we all agree without' (156.7-9): See comment above on 'Internal proof', p. 113.

* Skip over the intervening material and read 166.25-168.2 'For there are two kinds of necessity ': There is a difference between necessitation by causes and necessitation by logical inference; the former is incompatible with freedom, not the latter. The difference can be seen by considering the meaning of the 'must' or 'necessarily' occurring in statements like this: 'If "Socrates is sitting" is true, then, necessarily, Socrates is sitting' - or 'then Socrates must be sitting', or 'then Socrates is indeed sitting'. This is the necessity of inference. Sometimes when we put forward evidence for some hypothesis we say, 'So it must be true' - i.e. given the evidence the hypothesis is inescapable. This is a conditional necessity - the hypothesis is inescapable if the evidence is correct. It is not a necessity of causation: our evidence does not cause the happening we infer - the evidence may consist in traces that event has left behind, i.e. in effects. ('He must have been here; otherwise why are his fingerprints here?') The necessity of inference is not incompatible with freedom. If Socrates sits voluntarily, because he chooses to, then since it is true that he is sitting voluntarily he must be sitting voluntarily (otherwise it would not be true), but he must be sitting voluntarily (that he is sitting voluntarily is what is true). Go back to p.157.

Read pp. 157.5-163 (and translator's footnotes)
Comments
* Highlight 157.10-11 'not according to its own nature', 'the ability to know'. Philosophy is going to argue that although the objects known are in the future and uncertain, God's knowledge of them is eternal and certain because such is the mode in which God knows things - the characteristics of eternity and certainty belong to God's knowledge not from the nature of the things known but from the nature of the knower.

* Highlight 159.25 'action', 160.8-10 ('But if the active mind lies all passive' - the doctrine rejected), 161.3-8 active power hides within'). In human knowledge mind is active even in sensation, supplying 'species' or 'forms' to grasp what the senses offer.

Read pp. 163 to the end of the book.
Comments
* Highlight 163.21 'mode, 163.25 'manner'. The mode or manner of God's knowledge is described in 165.13-27 'Since, therefore, peak above them'.

* Highlight 163.25-6 'Eternity, then, everlasting life'. The important word here is 'simultaneous', i.e. not spread out through time. Plotinus:

We know it [eternity] as a Life changelessly motionless and ever holding the Universal content [time, space, and phenomena] in actual presence All its content is in immediate concentration as at one point That which neither has been nor will be, but simply possesses being; that which enjoys stable existence as neither in process of change nor having ever changed - that is Eternity. Thus we come to the definition: the Life - instantaneously entire, complete, at no point broken into period or part - which belongs to the Authentic Existent by its very existence this is Eternity. (Plotinus, Enneads III.7.3, pp. 224-5)

* 'As Aristotle thought' (164.9), 'that Plato believed' (164.21). Aristotle held that the world is eternal, meaning that it lasts through a time that never began and will never end (i.e. that it is 'perpetual', 165.12). See Aristotle, Physics, book VIII. Plato in Timaeus seems to think that the Demiurge (the divine being who made the world) made the world and time together a finite time ago:

Now the nature of that Living Being [the World-Soul] was eternal, and this character it was impossible to confer in full completeness on the generated thing [the world]. But he [the Demiurge] took thought to make, as it were, a moving likeness of eternity - that to which we have given the name Time Time came into being together with the Heaven [the outermost sphere of ancient astronomy], in order that, as they were brought into being together, so they may be dissolved together, if ever their dissolution should come to pass the Heaven has been and is and shall be perpetually throughout all time. (Timaeus 37c-38c)

The neo-Platonists assimilated Plato's doctrine to Aristotle's and attributed to Plato also the doctrine that the world is eternal, or rather perpetual. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions held that the world was created a finite time ago. This is presumably Boethius's opinion also; here he uses the hypothesis of the world's eternity to illustrate the difference between eternity and perpetuity.

* 'Changing in time is an attempt to imitate' (164.30): Compare Plato, 'a moving likeness of eternity', in the passage just quoted.

* Highlight 165.15-16 'His knowledge transcends all temporal change'. God knows future events in his eternal present. Because they are present to him he knows these events with certainty, as we also may after they have happened; his knowledge does not make them involuntary or presuppose that they are, any more than our knowledge of present things does.

* 'Man walking' (166.7): a voluntary act. 'Sun rising' (166.8): a non-voluntary event.

* 'Two kinds of necessity' (166.25-6): See comment on pp.155-7 above. Compare Aristotle:

Now that which is must needs be when it is, and that which is not must needs not be when it is not. Yet it cannot be said without qualification that all existence and non-existence is the outcome of necessity. For there is a difference between saying that that which is, when it is, must needs be, and simply saying that all that is must needs be (On Interpretation, ch. 9, 19 b23-28 (emphasis added)

* 'And since this is so' (168.28 ff): This answers the passage beginning 'Therefore, human thoughts and actions have no freedom' (153.5 ff).

For more on the topics of the Consolation, see Anselm, De concordia.