On the Consolation of Philosophy

For Boethius, teaching was his 
motivation in life and in prison.

When I was in school one of my big takeaways was, "When you don't know what a word means, write it down and look it up." I'm almost certain this began in grade school, maybe as early as second, third or fourth grade. Back then we had dictionaries; today we have dictionary.com. It's an invaluable habit to instill in our young people. It's also a useful for expanding one's vocabulary. Do we teach this today? I don't know, but we should. Reading is an essential skill that goes hand-in-hand with thinking.

So, this blog post is derived from a corollary habit that flows out of that first one. "When you hear a name--whether person, place or thing--a batch of times, write it down and make a point to look up who or what it is." This is how we learn, how we grow, how we get a better picture of the world. 

I recently saw a reference to On the Consolation of Philosophy and it made me curious because it was such a cool title for an essay. Here's what I learned by means of our current internet resources.

* * * 

On the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (c. 524 CE) is a prison dialogue in prose and verse between the imprisoned author—facing execution under false charges—and Lady Philosophy, who appears to heal his despair.

She argues that true happiness lies in the eternal Good (God), not in fickle Fortune—wealth, power, fame, or pleasure. Evil is powerless; the wicked are miserable in their vice. All events serve divine providence, which harmonizes free will and fate. Boethius is consoled: turn inward, seek the One, and rise above the wheel of Fortune.

* * * 

This naturally leads to the next question. Who was Boethius?

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480–524 CE) was a Roman statesman, philosopher, and theologian whose life bridged the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of medieval Christendom, around a half century after Augustine of Hippo.

Born into a noble patrician family in Rome shortly after the empire's collapse (476), Boethius was orphaned young and raised by the aristocrat Symmachus. A prodigy fluent in Greek, he mastered Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists. Under Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great, he rose to high office: consul (510), then magister officiorum (master of offices)—essentially prime minister. In other words, he was a Somebody.

He planned to translate and harmonize all of Plato and Aristotle into Latin, completing logic works (including commentaries on Porphyry and Aristotle’s Categories) that preserved Greek philosophy for the Latin Middle Ages. He also wrote treatises on music, arithmetic, and theology (Opuscula sacra).

In 523–524, he was accused of treason for defending a senator against charges of plotting with Byzantine Emperor Justin I. As a result Boethius was imprisoned in Pavia. While awaiting execution, he wrote his masterpiece, The Consolation of Philosophy—a dialogue with Lady Philosophy that wrestles with fate, free will, and true happiness, issues that thinking people still wrestle with today.

Executed in 524 (likely tortured and clubbed to death), he was later venerated as a Christian martyr (St. Severinus Boethius, feast day Oct 23). His works helped shape medieval thought—cited by Aquinas, Dante (who places him in Paradise in the Divine Comedy), Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I.

Bottom Line: Boethius is considered the last great Roman philosopher and the first medieval scholastic—a man who, facing death, turned despair into a timeless meditation on fortune and the eternal Good.

Extra Point: If you were imprisoned, with access to pen and paper, what would your last message to the world consist of?