In Book 3 Section 10 of the Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Philosophy makes six important points that I'd like
you to watch for as you read these pages. Her first point is that the perfect good does in fact exist.
She says on page 86: "We now will look at where perfect happiness can be found... But that the perfect good,
the source of all good, exists is impossible to deny." And here's her argument.
"Anything that is imperfect is imperfect because it is lacking in some way and falls short of perfection.
Therefore we can reason that if there is a class of things in ... which there are imperfections,
there must also be in that class the perfect thing. Without the perfect thing it
could not even be imagined how the imperfect ones could exist."
So we have here an argument from perfection, from imperfection. Because imperfect things
exist, the perfect thing must exist. This is an argument which may make us suspicious.
There are some criticisms we can make of it and I think we'll make those at a later point.
What I want to point out right now is that this idea of a perfect being,
in terms of which others are to be understood as imperfect, is really central to the entire cosmology,
to the entire world-picture, of Roman Christianity. God is perfect, God is good,
the world that God made was originally perfect and good, and since then it has fallen
from it. So we understand evil as a departure from the plan, a loss of the primordial goodness,
a fall, if you will, into imperfection.
Provided we understand the limitations and sufferings of this world as being imperfections,
we relate them then to the perfect being, which imperfection necessarily implies.
Now, we may resist defining limited being as imperfect in this way. We may put this up,
put this world picture up against a different cosmology, a world picture which would hold that order
has emerged gradually over millions of years out of chaos, but Lady Philosophy explicitly denies that idea.
Here on page 86 she writes: "The universe did not begin with diminished, unfinished, and imperfect things,
but began with perfections from which it lapsed into the present diminished and exhausted state."
Perhaps later on we'll put these two cosmologies head-to-head and compare them
and see which we find more persuasive. Lady Philosophy's position is going to be that this
cosmology which holds that order emerged gradually out of chaos is irrational. It's less rational than
believing that there is a perfect order from which the present state of things is a lapse or a fall.
I would like to draw your attention to that and to the argument Lady Philosophy makes on page 86.
The next important point she makes is that God is the perfect good. This is on page 87.
She says: If we want to know where this can be found, "we must think in this way.
We can demonstrate that God is good by looking at how men conceive of God, than whom nothing can be
better." Her argument here then is essentially that because God is the highest possible being,
the highest conceivable being, whatever good God possesses must be perfect good.
We can't say that God, the highest being, is only sort of good or occasionally good or good in
some ways but not in others. If there's any good in God at all it must be perfect,
because of the definition and understanding of God as the highest being. That definition of God, again,
we may critique, we may resist, we may think of reasons for rejecting it. We'll do that later on. Right now,
in terms of understanding Lady Philosophy, from this idea of God as the highest conceivable being
follows that God is the perfect good. And her next important point is that this goodness is in fact
part of the substance, of the essence, of the very nature of God. She says, at the bottom of 87:
where does God get this good from? Does he receive it from outside of himself?
If he does, then whatever being gave it to him would be higher than him,
and we have already defined God as being the highest possible being, so the goodness of God
cannot have its source outside of God, it must be inside God. And furthermore,
if it is within him but it's not part of his essence, then it must be joined to his essence by some power,
and whoever has that power to join goodness to the essence of God is again greater than or more powerful
than God, and that conflicts with our initial definition of God.
So we conclude then on page 88 that "There is no question that the author of all things is inherently
and in his substance the highest good." So not only is God the perfect good, and the highest good,
this highest good is actually part of the very built in nature or being of God.
This is not just a role God happens to fill, like the office of the presidency.
This is what God is most fundamentally in God's being. The next point Lady Philosophy makes
is that the highest human good, and happiness, and God, are all the same thing.
This is at the top of page 89: "God and happiness are the highest good." So when we're talking about
what the highest human good is, we came to the conclusion earlier than it could be
nothing in this world that could satisfy us, and the answer is that it's God.
God and goodness and the highest human good are all the same thing.
This then tells us, and also the middle page 89, that people who pursue happiness are really pursuing
God, and they have been all along. This is a similar point to one that we see made by St.
Augustine in his Confessions, when he says: Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.
when Saint Augustine says: All the times I was chasing after happiness and pleasure,
and seeking honor and wisdom, and all sorts of worldly goods, I was, I understand now,
Augustine says, that was I ultimately seeking God. But I was, it was futile and I was
miserable and unhappy, because I wasn't seeking God in the right way.
Boethius is making a similar point I think here, that the frantic pursuit people have of the different things
they think will make them happy is ultimately a kind of confused pursuit of God,
who is the highest good, who is ultimate happiness. Lady Philosophy also says something interesting here
about divin(iz)ation. She says the bottom of page 89 that we don't become God,
but there is this way in which, "there is nothing that prevents the acquisition of divinity
by participation in his divinity." This idea that we humans, in drawing closer to God,
can become similar to God, we can enter by participation into the happiness of the
Divine life, and I think this is part of a philosophical portrait of what Heavenly existence is like,
about what salvation is like. It's eternal happiness in the presence of God, participating in the Divine Life
in some fashion. We'll talk about that perhaps later on. The final point Lady Philosophy makes in this
section is that when we desire a thing in this world, what we really desire is not the thing itself,
but the goodness in the thing. And since goodness is identical with God,
we're really wanting God through that thing that we are pursuing, whether it's horseback riding,
which is her example, or health, or pleasure. Ultimately what we are looking for,
and what we really desire, what is driving us towards it, is that we see some glimmer of goodness in it.
Recognizing then that that goodness is God, and that that desire for that goodness in us is a desire for
God, this then should be able to transform our entire attitude. The poem that ends this section
on pages 91-92 celebrates the liberation of prisoners. What we've just gotten here is the kind of knowledge
that should set us free. She says: "Come out, you prisoners, loosed from your chains and
shame, come out together, into the light and air, freed from the bonds of desire."
What's happened? This allows us to make sense of this: the fact that God and
goodness and happiness are identical, and that our desire for, chasing after all the things
that we have wanted in this world, is ultimately about our desire for God.
This is what this poem is celebrating. It ends by saying: "The grandeur of heaven
eludes the corrupted soul, and only those who can see with their eyes and their
minds can observe this light, brighter than any sun." So I think here is the breakthrough moment in
Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, where we're invited to share with Boethius in realizing that
this is the ultimate nature of human reality, this is the nature of the cosmos,
this is where we can understand ourselves and our inability to be happy with things in this world:
by turning towards God and correcting our idea of happiness to correspond to the truth that Lady
Philosophy reveals here. So that's my quick commentary on Book 3
Section 10 of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy.
I hope you found it helpful. Thanks for watching today; goodbye.