In book 3 section 9 of The Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Philosophy, having finished
with the refutation of the partial, incomplete, ideas of happiness, now turns to the question
of teaching Boethius the meaning of perfect happiness.
And so she says on page 79, “I have said enough, I imagine, about the false ideas of happiness.
And if you have been following me and have understood my observations, the next step
is to show what true happiness is.”
So Boethius says, I've had a glimpse of this “but I should be happy to have some further
explanation” for why fame and beauty and power and wealth are incomplete forms of happiness.
She says at the top of page 80, “The explanation is this: what is simple and undivided by nature
human error manages to divide and distort.
What is true and perfect becomes then false and imperfect.”
Again, it's our mistakes and thinking about the good that has led to our failing to achieve it.
Once we correct those mistakes we'll have a clear path to pursuing and acquiring perfect happiness.
Over the next few pages, Lady Philosophy walks Boethius through a process of thinking about
what these partial ideas of happiness are part of, and we begin by uniting the ideas
of self-sufficiency and power.
She observes that if someone is self-sufficient then he must not have any need for further power.
If he needed power from outside of himself he would not be self-sufficient but rather
dependent upon others.
And so power and self-sufficiency turn out to be the same thing, we find them together,
they're a package deal.
Additionally, on the same page she reasons that whoever has power and self-sufficiency
is then most worthy of honor and respect.
So in seeking power or honor or respect or self-sufficiency, we would really be seeking
this same united state of affairs.
It's also deserving of fame and renown, we find.
And then she says, at the top of page 81, “Let us add one more quality, for that which
is self-sufficient, powerful, famous and worthy of respect would also be most happy, isn't
that right?”
He says, well yes of course.
So she says this is the state that we're talking about, “the condition in which the names
of all those things, self-sufficiency, power, fame, respect, and pleasure, are different,
but their substance is the same.”
“This state… is what men divide as they try, in their misguided way, to get a part
of it, although in fact it has no divisible parts.
Their mistake is not trying to obtain the whole thing.”
So it's a package deal, we need to seek the entirety of this summum bonum to acquire this
state of self-sufficiency, of power, etc. all together, rather than seeking one individual
aspect of it.
That's the intellectual mistake that leads people to misery, Lady Philosophy says.
"Whoever…" on page 82, “Whoever seeks one of these things apart
from the others doesn't even get the one he was hoping for.”
And we've seen that in sections 3 through 8: the person who pursues self-sufficiency
by piling up wealth only makes himself more dependent on others, to spend his wealth,
to guard his wealth, etc.
He doesn't achieve the good that he's trying to achieve by pursuing wealth and so his activity
is futile and ultimately frustrating.
So we come to the end of this line of reasoning at the bottom of page 82 and we turn there
to the question of perfect happiness.
Lady Philosophy says, “Then you understand the forms of false happiness and their causes.
But the time has come for you to turn your mind in the other direction, where you will
find true happiness, as I promised you a while back.”
Now here's a further iteration of some cave imagery, thinking back to Plato's allegory
of the cave.
Just as the prisoners are not going to find true reality by examining the shadows in front
of them more closely, Boethius and any other human being is not going to find true happiness
by pursuing pleasure, wealth, power, all the things that they have been pursuing.
They're going to need to turn in the other direction, toward the thing of which these
shadows are an ultimate copy, toward the ultimate summum bonum of which these partial ideas
of happiness are mere fragments and shadows. That's the way to become happy.
So we're about to make this reorientation of the self towards the correct object.
So let's take a look at how that's going to go, then.
“Excellent,” says Boethius.
“And now I see that while you were explaining false happiness, you also made it clear that
true happiness would be that which makes a man self-sufficient, powerful, respected,
famous, and happy.
Only that would be what we would call a full and true and perfect happiness.
And all of these, I have come to realize, are fundamentally the same.”
So he's adopted this view of the world that Lady Philosophy has proposed to him.
She says, “Very nearly perfect.
All you need to be the ideal pupil is to add one thing.”
So let's look at it.
What is this one key insight that Boethius needs to add in order to begin his progress
toward perfect happiness?
She tells us on page 83: “Do you think that there is anything in this changeable and mortal
world that can provide a condition such as you have described?”
And Boethius says, “Almost certainly not.
What you have been saying makes it clear that no further argument or discussion is required.”
So nothing in the physical world, nothing in the material world, nothing in the temporal
world that we live in, could possibly provide this state of perfect happiness.
We're going to need to look at the transcendent realm, we need to get outside of the cave,
to use Plato's imagery.
We're going to need to turn towards the divine, we need to understand something about the
relationship of the human being to God in order to understand the summum bonum that
we're looking for.
That's the key insight of this part of the book.
And this section of the book ends with a recognition that we need now to turn toward God.
And we have a long poem or song from Lady Philosophy about that turn toward the maker
of all things and the governance of the universe.
That's what the next part of book 3 is going to be about.
That's all for today. Thanks for watching; goodbye.
[Music]