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
Philosophy tells Boethius the conclusion of all her thinking in this chapter: “all fortune is certainly good” fortune, because it “is meant either to reward or discipline the good or to punish or correct the bad.” Boethius asks what it means when people talk about “bad fortune,” but Philosophy clarifies that people only use this term to describe situations when the evil are punished, which is actually an opportunity for them to find and pursue the path off virtue. In reality, the virtuous constantly striving to make sure fortune does not get in the way of their virtue, and to choose to learn “discipline and correction” from what might seem to be their own bad fortune.
Essentially, in Book IV, Philosophy has made two primary arguments: first, she has shown that evil is merely an absence of good, and therefore should be considered as “nothing.” And secondly, she has explained that this evil (or lack of perfect good) only appears in the world of Fate, which is how it is compatible with God’s perfect goodness. Fortune is the mechanism by which God keeps Fate in balance with Providence. But this does not contradict Philosophy’s first depiction of fortune, as the goddess Fortune turning a wheel that drives people to face constantly-changing circumstances, because here Philosophy shows that this process of constant change in fact has a purpose, no matter the circumstance: when good people meet good fortune, it is a “reward”; when evil people meet good fortune, it is a means of “correct[ing]” them; when good people meet bad fortune, it is a form of “discipline”; and when evil people meet bad fortune, it is a form of “punish[ment].”
Themes
Philosophy sings of the king Agamemnon, who fought the Trojan War to avenge his brother’s broken marriage and sacrificed his daughter to the gods so that he could go to Troy. Then she sings of Odysseus defeating the cyclops Polyphemus, and of the great labors of Hercules, which won him “a place in heaven as his reward.” She implores the “strong” to follow “the exalted way / Of great example,” to move beyond “earth” to “the stars.”
These “great example[s]” of Greek heroes show how bad fortune provides challenges that force the virtuous to prove their worth and their dedication to goodness. The implication for Boethius is clear: he should see his misfortune as an opportunity to prove his wisdom to God and encourage others to follow in his footsteps.
Themes
