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?

Throwback Thursday: Fate and Consequences in 'The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs

One evening last year my daughter's former English teacher asked if i'd ever read The Monkey's Paw. I forget the trigger event, though it may have been discussing The Nonsense Room, a story from my book Unremembered Histories, short stories with a supernatural twist. I'd read it perhaps half a century ago when I was in school, but remembered nothing about it. After revisiting this story I now recommend it here to you.

The Monkey's Paw is essentially a variation of the traditional genie in a bottle genre in which a person can get three wishes. But it's three wishes from the dark side. Not only do the wishes come true, when they do they have unanticipated shocking consequences. The manner in which the tale is told is what grips you. As with all good stories, the reader plunges forward because he or she is eager to see what will happen next.

It begins on a dark, dreary night as the White family waits for a visitor to their out of the way home.  The father and son are playing chess in the parlor while white-haired Mrs. White sits knitting by the fireplace.

The second paragraph, a single sentence, foreshadows the sum total of the story: "Hark at the wind," said Mr. White, who, having seen a fatal mistake after it was too late, was amiably desirous of preventing his son from seeing it.

Chess provides a great variety of life lessons. Decisions must be made all throughout. Consequences of decisions aren't always readily recognizable. All too often they are made with unnecessary haste and dire consequences.

Thus we are conveyed into the story as the White's visitor arrives, a sergeant-major who has spent 21 years abroad in what the Whites believe to be exotic and adventurous places. As they talk, and splash down a few drinks, the topic turns to a monkey's paw that the visitor had mentioned to Mr. White a few days earlier.

The soldier attempts to divert the conversation, though against his better judgment he acknowledges that there is something magical in the matter. He is actually carrying the thing on him at that very moment, but in an effort to be done with it he throws it on the fire.

Mr. White takes fast action and rescues it. The grim visitor is solemn and says, "Better let it burn."

White's impulsiveness becomes the story's turning point, cementing the family's doom.

Like many such stories there's a moral: don't mess with fate. Stephen King's 1000-page 10/23/63 has essentially the same moral, except in a much more massive form. King's story is about a man who goes back in time in an effort to keep JFK from being assassinated.

Hollywood, of course, loves this kind of magical lore in films, in part because the public's craving for it seems endless. I half wonder if the Robin Williams film Jumanji had some of its ideas stimulated by The Monkey's Paw. Kids find a magical game board and start to play, but soon learn that there are unexpected consequences to each move. Sound familiar? There is even a connection to India and other exotic places here.

If you go back to the beginning of the 20th century you can see lots of fascination with "exotic places," which must have been a portion of this story's original appeal, in addition to the creepiness of its premise. Writers like Jack London and Joseph Conrad, among others, capitalized on this interest in all things foreign.

Meantime, as noted earlier, I encourage you to take a few minutes to read The Monkey's Paw. It's an unusual and very compelling story, and a good read.