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Book II, Part II
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 implores Boethius to formulate a rebuttal to Fortune’s arguments, as she presented them in the previous section. Boethius declares that, while Philosophy’s monologues have soothed him, they have not cured his misery. Philosophy agrees but promises to offer a more serious “cure” later on.
Philosophy tries to rope Boethius into the philosophical dialogue, but he is not yet ready: he remains too wounded and overwhelmed by his misfortune. Notably, although Philosophy has insisted that attachment to Fortune is a sign of vice, she sees that it is a trap even the learned Boethius can fall into.
Themes
Philosophy then tells Boethius to stop focusing on his current unhappiness and instead to remember all the good fortune he enjoyed throughout his life—he was adopted by a family of high status, was beloved by much of Rome, and had an ideal family of his own, including two sons who became co-consuls (high-ranking leaders in Rome). So his current streak of bad luck is “the very first time [Fortune] has turned an unfriendly eye upon [him].” So Boethius must consider himself lucky, because he had good fortune for most of his life. And if he thinks this past luck does not count, then neither does his present misery, which also will eventually come to pass. Finally, Philosophy points out, everyone loses Fortune when they die—there is no difference between “quit[ting] her by dying or [Fortune] quit[ting] you by desertion.”
In short, Philosophy forces Boethius into a dilemma: either he has to judge his life based on the totality of his fortune (which, on balance, is good), or he has to discount all fortune because it is only temporary (which means his present misery does not count for anything). Her argument that people lose all fortune when they die might sound like a mere way of adding emphasis, but actually she means it: Boethius believes the soul is eternal, which means that whatever fortune people receive in life will ultimately become irrelevant to their status in the afterlife. What does matter is what a person makes of their fortune, and particularly whether they let it throw them off balance or use it as an excuse to engage in vice. This is because people have free will over their reactions, and should only be judged on things over which they have control.
Themes
In verse, Philosophy again sings of a series of changes in nature: the Sun bathing the world with light and drowning out other stars, flowers growing in the spring and wilting in the winter, and a storm unsettling the sea. She says that because the world is always changing, it is pointless to “put your faith in transient luck / And trust in wealth’s morality!” Truthfully, she adds, “from change [nothing] is ever freed.”
These changes in nature clearly parallel Fortune’s instability, which makes her unpredictable and surprising to human beings, even though she operates according to fixed and unchanging laws. Similarly, while it might seem like an incredible transformation when the Sun rises or a flower grows, these events are merely parts of a continuous, eternal cycle, like the motion of Fortune’s wheel. Philosophy uses these two examples of cyclical change to make an even more general point about the workings of the universe, in which change is a fixed law.
Themes
