Hello, I'm Dr. Anadale and I teach philosophy at Mount St. Mary's University and Seminary
in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
Today I want to talk briefly about Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Book One.
Now, this is a work that was written in the early 6th century AD, so about 900 years after
the execution of Socrates.
And in it Boethius, a Christian philosopher and former high official in the Roman government,
is in prison awaiting his execution.
He has been condemned by the Emperor unjustly and is now waiting for his sentence to be
carried out, a sentence of death.
So the book begins with Boethius feeling sorry for himself: he's lamenting his fate.
He has called to him the Muses, the goddesses of poetry, and he is doing what any Roman
gentleman would do: he is writing poetry about his sad fate.
“Oh I've been condemned by the Emperor, oh woe is me, oh how terrible it is to be
tortured to death,” which is what he's facing.
When suddenly there's a blinding flash of light and Lady Philosophy appears.
She is tall and noble and beautifully dressed in a shining robe.
The first thing Lady Philosophy does is to dismiss the Muses.
She says to them, “You are making his condition worse and not better. Get out!”
And they leave. More about that in a moment.
Boethius then, after some conversation, tells Lady Philosophy his story.
He relates the story of his sad fate in some detail.
He talks about intrigue at court, “people told lies about me to the Emperor,” he says.
“The Emperor believed them and did not believe me.
He exiled me and now I'm facing death…”
Several things bother Boethius about this and he lets them out in this initial story.
He's bothered that evil is able to succeed.
Evil men have won, they have succeeded in driving a good man from the court.
But, he says, even more than the triumph of evil “in a world that”, he says, “I
thought was ruled by God,” even more than that is the fact that philosophy itself is
despised and hated by people in power.
People are saying “philosophy is useless for living a good life, philosophy is useless
for governing the state or governing the Empire,” and Boethius says, “I feel bad that philosophy
now has fallen into disrepute along with me.”
Now, Lady Philosophy’s initial reaction is to say to Boethius, “Your case is much
worse than I thought it was.
You are far worse off than I initially thought when I came here.”
Keep in mind here that Lady Philosophy is a kind of spiritual healer.
She's here to restore Boethius to a kind of intellectual health which he's lost.
And she says, “You've not just been banished from Rome, but you've been banished from yourself.
There's some kind of self-exile that you have imposed upon yourself here.
That's what you need to recognize and recover from. You've lost contact with your native land.”
She's talking here about philosophy, about Boethius’ identity as a philosopher in the
Socratic mode.
And it's now, facing the fate of Socrates, execution unjustly, that Boethius is going
to have to learn again how to think like Socrates, how to adopt this Socratic system of values
that we saw when we looked at Plato's Apology, which was written nine centuries before.
So, a few questions to leave you with at the end of Book One.
In the first action of Lady Philosophy, she dismisses the Muses.
What is going on symbolically in this story?
Lady Philosophy represents reason and philosophy, of course, and she's confronting the Muses,
who are the goddesses of poetry and the expression of emotion through creative speech.
But the first thing she does is to attack them, to say they're making Boethius less
healthy, not more healthy.
And she sends them away, Boethius says, “They hung their heads in shame as they departed.”
What is the author, Boethius the author, trying to tell us about the relative value of philosophy
and poetry in terms of coming and helping us deal with adversity or with difficulty
or with evil in our lives? That's the first question.
The second question: What precisely has Boethius forgotten about himself?
What key piece of self-knowledge is he missing and how will remembering it restore him to health?
How will it make him feel better, console him, given that he can't possibly avoid execution?
What does he need to remember in order to face execution the way a philosopher should,
the way Socrates did?
That's my commentary for today. Thanks for watching; goodbye.