Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Consolation of Philosophy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Classical Philosophy and Medieval Christianity
Wisdom, Fortune, and Happiness
The Problem of Evil
Human Free Will and God’s Foreknowledge
Summary
Analysis
Boethius begs Philosophy to explain the roots of evil, and she replies that his question is incredibly complex, but she will attempt to outline the answer to it before “weav[ing] together the close-knit arguments” later on.
Philosophy has already presented a theory of how and why people become and do evil. Now, Boethius is trying to answer a slightly different question: why does God let His creations stray from His perfect benevolence?
Themes
Philosophy begins by explaining that the development and motion of everything begins with “the unchanging mind of God,” who has “a plan for the multitude of events,” which is also known as “Providence” or “Fate,” depending on the perspective. “Providence” refers to “the divine reason itself,” God’s total plan for the world, as considered from God’s own perspective. In contrast, “Fate” refers to “the planned order inherent to things,” which change throughout time, in line with God’s total plan of Providence. Providence is like an artisan’s mental blueprint of the work they seek to create, while Fate is like the whole process of making it. Namely, Providence is a “simple and unchanging plan of events,” but “Fate is the ever-changing web […] of all the events which God has planned.”
As becomes abundantly clear in Book V, Philosophy’s complex distinction between Providence and Fate essentially hinges on time: Providence is a snapshot of perfect order, and Fate is the way that order is actualized and fulfilled through time. Essentially, this means that God’s Providence is completely and absolutely good, with nothing lacking, and therefore no evil whatsoever mixed into the universe’s perfect order. However, it is possible for evil to come in and out of existence over time, and in fact it can even be part of God’s way of fulfilling the complete order of Providence. This idea is similar to how the universe remains in order through constant change and the balance of opposites, and it explains how individual instances of evil can exist despite the universe being under God’s control.
Themes
As a result of the distinction between Providence and Fate, Philosophy continues, some things are below Providence but above the changing events of Fate. Namely, these things are “close to the supreme Godhead,” and do not change much during the unfolding of Fate. Humans are incapable of seeing the order in the universe because they are caught up in the changes of Fate, but in fact everything tends “towards the good.” However, evil people and things falter and stray from “the good” through “mistake and error.” Yet they are still caught up in an overall “search for the good.”
The universe’s unchanging laws and characteristics, which are not ordinarily noticed by humans because they are simply always around and never come into or out of existence, are examples of things that are below Providence” but not quite within Fate. Clearly, one of Greek philosophy’s main purposes as a discipline was to help people grasp and understand these laws, so that they could see the true nature of God and the universe and better orient their “search for the good.” Now, the sciences study these laws, but they were part of philosophy in Boethius’s time.
Themes
Philosophy returns to Boethius’s initial question about why the good seem to get punished and the wicked rewarded. First, humans cannot fully know “who is good and who is bad.” And secondly, they forget that different kinds of sickness require different kind of remedies, and by extension different kinds of wickedness need different kinds of treatment from “God, the mind’s guide and physician.” So what Boethius sees as the good being punished and the wicked rewarded is actually “a knowing God act[ing] and ignorant men look[ing] on with wonder at his actions.” Philosophy offers a number of examples: much apparent injustice is actually God’s way of “bring[ing people] to self discovery through hardship,” for instance, and when the wicked prosper, this can be His way of teaching them to “abandon wickedness in the fear of losing happiness.”
The discussion of Providence and Fate allows Philosophy to slightly update the argument she has already made, that everyone always gets their due because of God. Nothing is evil in Providence, but in Fate, God sometimes has to introduce evil to keep things in balance. Here, Philosophy makes something of a power move: since God is superior to humans, humans sometimes will fall short of understanding what He is trying to do. But because they are capable of knowing that he exists and has this power, they should trust in His Providence. This is not a reason to reject reason and choose blind faith, but rather only a reminder that reason—although infallible about what it does cover—ultimately has its limits.
Themes
Get the entire The Consolation of Philosophy LitChart as a printable PDF.
In short, the answer to Boethius’s question is this: through Providence, God has “evil men making other evil men good.” When evil people are treated unjustly, they want to be better themselves. God knows how to use evil to create good—to use Fate to bring things that stray from Providence back in line with it. While people cannot understand this process completely, they can know that “God […] orders all things and directs them towards goodness,” and that Providence does not include any evil at all.
Because Fate unfolds through time and undergoes change, it will never be static or perfect, like the absolute, eternal order of Providence. So matching evil with evil and good with good is, in fact, God’s way of maintaining the absolutely good order of Providence, because it gives everyone what they deserve. Therefore, having “evil men making other evil men good” is God’s way of cancelling out two negatives to create a positive—he is merely eliminating the kinks or imperfections in His system.
Themes
Philosophy notes that Boethius looks tired and sings a song to console him. She sings of God’s perfect order, which He conducts from “the highest point of heaven” and which can be seen through the timely motions of the stars. God creates order by combining opposite elements, like wet and dry, hot and cold, lightness and heaviness. God sets things into motion and “when they wander brings them back.” All things “would fall apart” without His “love,” and “repa[y]” this love by returning to Him upon their deaths.
The order that Philosophy sings about here is clearly divine Providence, and again she uses the consistent laws of the universe as proof that, although everything is constantly changing and moving around, in reality the laws that underlie that motion are fixed and perfect. Fate is the means that “brings [things] back” to the balance of Providence after “they wander” away, and it is only in this world of Fate—the temporal world in which humans live—that evil appears.
Themes
