Written in sections of alternating prose and poetry, The Consolation of Philosophy begins with Boethius describing the conditions in which he actually wrote the book in the year 524: he is sitting in a prison cell awaiting execution for a crime he did not commit. Having spent his life working in the highest echelons of government in Rome, he is miserable at the misfortune that has brought him to his current predicament.
Boethius calls on the Muses, the Greek goddesses of the creative arts, to help him write poetry that adequately captures his despair. But an “awe-inspiring” female figure suddenly shows up and kicks the Muses out of his room. She wears a beautiful but neglected dress, which has been “torn by the hands of marauders” and has the letters Pi (Π) and Theta (Θ) woven into the hemline. She reveals herself to be Philosophy and reminds Boethius that he used to be her attentive student, but that he has since forgotten the wisdom and happiness he gained from her. Weeping, Boethius sings that Philosophy’s reappearance in his life is like sunlight peering out of the sky after a thunderstorm.
Philosophy declares that the wise have always been persecuted “by the forces of evil” for their beliefs, and that now the “wicked and unprincipled men” who control Rome are doing the same to Boethius, who is honest and virtuous. Philosophy promises Boethius that she will heal his misery, and tells him that the “cure” he needs is truth. At the end of Book I, Boethius and Philosophy briefly establish that “God the Creator watches over” the universe, including human beings, who are “rational and mortal animal[s]” with a place in God’s plan. This means that Boethius’s misfortune is “not the haphazard of chance.”
In Book II, Philosophy and Boethius discuss Fortune, whom they personify as a sadistic goddess who gleefully turns a “wheel of chance” that randomly propels people upward to success or downward to ruin. Since fortune is random, Boethius should not take his condemnation and death sentence personally: change is inevitable, and “wealth, honours, and the like” really have nothing to do with people’s happiness. Boethius actually retains all his most important possessions: his family and friends still stand by him, and he has lived a life of prominence, esteem, and honor. Despite these “outstanding blessings,” his perspective is distorted because he “never experienced adversity” until now. Philosophy declares that real happiness lies “within” and briefly explains her argument: humans’ greatest gift is their capacity for reason, because the human soul (or mind) is immortal while the body is temporary. Accumulating inanimate things, pursuing political power, and seeking fame are “puny and insubstantial” distractions compared to the heights that the mind alone can reach. So Fortune and the material things she brings are simply irrelevant to the actual achievement of happiness—they are neither inherently good nor inherently bad, but only useful to remind people “how fragile a thing happiness is.”
In Book III, Boethius and Lady Philosophy break down the nature of happiness in more depth, and they ultimately determine that true happiness is based on a person’s relationship to God. First, Philosophy explains that every human being wants to be happy, and that happiness “leaves nothing more to be desired” because it “contains in itself all that is good.” In their quest for happiness, people pursue five things—“wealth, position, power, fame, [and] pleasure”—but these do not actually make people happy. Wealth does not solve people’s deepest anxieties, and in fact “makes [people] dependent” and greedier than they were before. Political office lets people turn their worst instincts into law, and bad politicians “discredit” the offices they hold. The powerful become paranoid about losing their power, which is more like a curse than a blessing. Fame is usually based on “false opinions” and goes to the most “shameful” people, not the most virtuous. And finally, pleasure-seeking is a lowly, animalistic pursuit that leads people to “great illness and unbearable pain.” In short, people who pursue these five goals are actually seeking after “false happiness.” “True happiness,” Philosophy reminds Boethius, requires complete “self-sufficiency.” A completely self-sufficient being would have some “wealth, position, power, fame, [and] pleasure,” but only as a unity—the happy would not pursue these goals individually. After all, pursuing one of them can throw people out of balance and lead them to give up the others.
What does it take to achieve this unified, “true” kind of happiness? As Plato argued, God is the “supreme good” in the universe, and the supreme good is the same as the sum of absolute “sufficiency, power, glory, reverence[,] and happiness.” So God is these things, and therefore he is “perfect happiness.” People, in turn, can become happy through “the possession of divinity,” or by unifying themselves with God. In a song, Philosophy explains that people must take “refuge” in God’s “shining light” and seek to understand the truth about Him. God “regulates all things” in the universe, which act “in harmony and accord” with Him. And so people naturally desire happiness, goodness, and oneness with God because they want to fulfill their role in His plan for the universe.
Boethius is “very happy” about Philosophy’s picture of the universe, which explains why he can still be blessed and happy, despite his misfortune. But in Book IV, Boethius raises a doubt about God: if He is really all-knowing, all-powerful, and absolutely benevolent, why is there evil in the world? After all, Boethius is sad precisely because evil people have taken control of Rome, while virtuous people like him are sitting in prison.
Philosophy begins her answer by explaining that evil is the same as weakness, because it is unnatural and contrary to God. In fact, wicked people have no power: they have “weakness rather than strength,” because if they were strong (like God) they would do what is good (like God). Humans are evil not because God has made them that way, but because they are less powerful than God, so they sometimes make mistakes and errors. In short, evil is not a real thing that exists in the world: rather, it is the sum of the errors people make when pursuing goodness and happiness in the wrong ways. As a result, Philosophy concludes, “evil is nothing,” and evil people are subhuman. In fact, when the evil are free to “achieve their desires,” this makes them less happy. But when punished, God sets the evil on “the path to right,” making them happier and more virtuous.
But Boethius asks Philosophy why God lets people err in the first place, and why he lets this create chaos that harms virtuous people. Philosophy responds by distinguishing between God’s plan or blueprint for the universe, or Providence, and the way that plan actually plays out in time, or Fate. People can only see the world from the temporal perspective of Fate, so they forget that disagreeable turns of Fate can actually be part of God’s purely benevolent Providence. For example, God can teach the virtuous “self discovery through hardship,” or reward the evil so they learn to “abandon wickedness in the fear of losing happiness.” When people see others do evil, in fact, they can decide “to be different from those they hate […] and become virtuous,” so God can cancel evil out with evil, just as two negatives cancel one another out. Everything God does to people, therefore, “is meant to either reward or discipline the good or to punish or correct the bad.” Therefore, Philosophy concludes, “all fortune is certainly good.”
In Book V, Boethius poses another question about God: if He is responsible for everything and has foreknowledge of everything that people will do, do human beings really have free will? Philosophy clarifies that God’s foreknowledge of events would only prevent humans from having free will if it caused those events to happen. But in reality, Philosophy continues, God’s can know about things that are going to happen without causing them, or without it being necessary that those things are going to happen. This is because God’s capacity for knowledge is greater than humans’. He is capable of divine intelligence, but humans only have reason (in addition to imagination and sense-perception). Because of His higher capacity, God can know what people are going to choose before they have chosen it.
But how is it possible for God to see the future if he does not control it? According to Philosophy, God’s existence is “eternal,” which means He lives outside time. While people see a past, present, and future, God sees all things “as though they are happening in the present.” So He can see human actions without determining them, and without them being uncertain, because such acts are conditionally necessary. This means that, if someone is walking, it is necessary that they’re walking simply because they are walking, and not because anything forced them to walk against their free will. Therefore, God is like “an eye that is present to watch” the whole universe at the same time.
Having fully assuaged Boethius’s concerns about the nature of evil and human free will, Philosophy encourages him to pray to God, “avoid vice,” “cultivate virtue,” and “be good,” since God is “a judge who sees all things.”
