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 repeats that a thing “is known” based on “the nature of those who comprehend it,” and then asks how something divine will comprehend and know things. First, humans know “that God is eternal,” and being eternal means “the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life.” A temporal being has a past, present, and future, but it cannot “embrace simultaneously the whole extent of its life”—instead, it lives through a series of “fleeting and transitory moment[s].” This means that even something immortal which exists “in time” is not “eternal” in the sense that God is, because it still exists from moment to moment—its past has already happened, and its future has yet to happen.
At last, Philosophy begins to investigate what God’s intelligence actually looks like, to the limited extent that rational argument is capable of doing so. She identifies God’s relationship to time as the crucial difference that allows Him to have “eternal” and “simultaneous[]” knowledge of the past, present, and future. An easier way of thinking about this is that, because He constructed the universe and its timeline, God lives outside of time, and is capable of looking at any different moment in His universe, whenever He wants. Meanwhile, humans live inside this world that God looks upon from the outside, and so experience things as happening linearly in time.
Themes
Philosophy clarifies that God is not exactly older than the world, but rather has a completely different way of relating to time, by virtue of his very nature. Changing throughout time, the world tries to join God in his “presence of unchanging life.” But it can never do this, and so instead it mimics God’s presence “by attaching itself to some sort of presence in this small and fleeting moment.” This gives the world the appearance of being like God. In short, as Plato argued, while “God is eternal, the world is perpetual.”
This passage is Philosophy’s attempt to explain that what Plato called the world of “Forms” or “Ideas”—the absolute truths and qualities that give all things their meanings and qualities—is eternal and outside time, with God. It would not quite be correct to say that God lives in this world, nor that he is this world, but they clearly exist on the same plane of “unchanging life.” Therefore, when people receive true knowledge (which, Plato argued, is always knowledge of the Forms), they are ”attaching [themselves] to some sort of [Godly] presence”—which is why philosophy and the wisdom it brings are means by which people can connect to God and take part in divinity.
Themes
Because God has “eternal presence,” God knows through “the immediacy of His presence.” This means He sees everything, including the past and future, as if it’s happening in the present, and His foreknowledge is really “the knowledge of a never ending presence,” which Philosophy calls “providence or ‘looking forth’ [rather] than prevision or ‘seeing beforehand.’”
Because God looks on from outside time, he can know what lies in humans’ future, even though humans build their own futures through their free will. This is how his superior intelligence resolves the seeming contradiction between free will and foreknowledge. Philosophy reminds the reader that “providence” simply is the timeless totality of the universe, as God has created it, and so it is correct to say that Providence is the cause of Foreknowledge (which is only ever knowledge of Fate, since it is knowledge of things that happen in human time).
Themes
Boethius asks why, just because God sees something, that thing “becomes necessary.” For instance, people can see things without making them necessary, so God should be able to have “divine foreknowledge [without] chang[ing] the nature and property of things.” He should see whether things are necessary, but not everything He sees will be necessary.
Boethius is clarifying that the kind of knowledge God has about the future is like the kind of knowledge that humans have about the past. One can know that the Roman Empire fell, for instance, without it having been necessary (or unavoidable) that the Roman Empire fell.
Themes
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Philosophy replies that something can be “necessary when considered with reference to divine foreknowledge,” but not necessary at all “in itself.” She explains this by distinguishing between two kinds of necessity: “simple” necessity, like the fact that people must be mortal, and “conditional” necessity, like “if you know someone is walking, it is necessary that [they are] walking”—even though walking is not part of the “nature” of a human being, but rather results from “a condition which is added” (the knower’s knowledge). So the person is walking “of [their] own free will,” but because they are in fact walking, it is necessary that they are walking.
Philosophy introduces the distinction between “simple” and “conditional” necessity, which comes from Aristotle, in order to show how God’s knowledge is still true knowledge of things, rather than the “clouded opinion” that is the best anyone else can achieve about events that are not completely certain to happen. Essentially, something is conditionally necessary if it is definitely true, but could have been otherwise. This conditional necessity means that it is necessary that a thing is true, but not that this thing is necessarily true (i.e., that it had to have been true no matter what). If something did have to be true no matter what, then it would be an example of simple necessity. To continue with the previous example, while humans can know that it was not simply necessary that the Roman Empire fell—because it could have not fallen—it is conditionally necessary that it has fallen—because, in fact, it did fall.
Themes
So something’s place in Providence, or God’s plan for all things, is conditionally but not simply necessary, because although it will definitely happen, “it has no necessity in its own nature.” When God foresees “future events which happen of free will,” like someone choosing to walk, He actually perceives them as happening in the present. His “divine knowledge” does not cause these events, which means that they’re still examples of freedom. So while everything that God sees “will without doubt happen,” not all of these things are products of “the [simple] necessity of things [in themselves]”—some are products of human free will. These actions of free will can be taken as conditionally necessary, “with reference to divine foreknowledge,” but not necessary when “considered by themselves.” This is similar to how any sense-perception looks “universal if considered with reference to [human] reason, but individual if considered in itself.”
Philosophy’s response to Boethius’s objection is now complete. First, because God’s knowledge is conditionally necessary, He knows what people will do not because these people have to do these things (which would mean they have no free will over their choices), but because He simply knows that people will definitely choose to do them. Secondly, He can have this knowledge because He is “eternal” and lives outside time; He sees past, present and future as one. Therefore, in conclusion, God has perfect foreknowledge and humans have free will. There is no contradiction between the two. Philosophy’s reference to sense-perception offers an analogy for human beings. Say that someone looks at a red rose; they can think about this rose rationally, in terms of the “universal” property of redness that it possesses, or “in itself,” in terms of the specific properties of that individual rose. Similarly, a human action is necessary within God’s universal plan—because it is conditionally necessary—but not necessary on its own, from the perspective of the person taking the action, because it is freely chosen and not simply necessary.
Themes
While people have the power to make choices, Philosophy continues, they cannot do so without God foreknowing it, “just as [they] cannot escape the sight of an eye that is present to watch.” God knows about all the decisions people will make, purely through “His own immediacy,” and not because of people’s decisions. Therefore, people still have their freedom of will and are responsible for their decisions, which means that God doles out punishment and reward based on people’s actual moral worth. People’s hopes and prayers will be heard, and it is still worthwhile and noble to “avoid vice […] and cultivate virtue.” In conclusion, Philosophy tells Boethius, he has immense reason to be a good person, since God is always watching and judging.
In conclusion, Philosophy tells Boethius and his readers how to think about their relationship to God: He is always “present to watch” what people do. He does not decide for them, but He does reward and punish them for what they do ultimately choose. Therefore, Philosophy’s arguments about the importance of being good and virtuous still carry all their weight, for it is through goodness combined with prayer and philosophical reflection that people can achieve the happiness that God promises for them, and reunite their souls with Him when they die.
Themes
