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Book II, Part V
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 turns the conversation to government, which she tells Boethius he does not truly understand. Lots of people wrongly think that holding “high office” and having power are inherently virtuous. But actually, “wicked” rulers create “disaster[s],” and “honest men” are good rulers because of their personal virtues, which means that high office is virtuous only “because of the virtue of the holder.”
Now that she has proven that Boethius’s fortune made him no more nor less of a man, and no happier nor more miserable, Philosophy turns to his other most prized possession: his high status in the Roman government. Like material goods, these kinds of titles get their moral importance from the people who have them, and therefore have no value of their own. Even though many people spend their entire lives pursuing power, it is just another unimportant distraction that Fortune uses to tempt people.
Themes
Philosophy points out how ridiculous it is for people to rule over one another, comparing it to watching “one mouse [giving] himself power and jurisdiction over” other mice. People’s minds are inherently free, and so political power can only act on their bodies and belongings. She recalls the philosopher Zeno mocking his torturers and coming out with the upper hand, and murderous kings who were subjected to the same end they used to dole out.
This example allows people to think about their societies from a comfortable distance—the same kind of distance illustrious Lady Philosophy and God himself have when they contemplate the comparatively insignificant workings of human society. Again, Philosophy’s argument about the true human self hinges on the distinction between the mortal body and the immortal soul or mind—which is free no matter what other humans do to someone’s body. So Zeno offers an example of the value in philosophy, which liberates people's minds and refuses to let them be enslaved, regardless of what happens to those people’s bodies. Philosophy clearly wants Boethius to take the same attitude toward his current punishment and upcoming execution: the government can take away his physical freedom, but they can never take away what is truer and more fulfilling—his freedom of thought.
Themes
In fact, most rulers are evil, and they actually win the most of “fortune’s gifts.” This shows that neither power nor fortune is “intrinsically good,” but both are actually are closer to evil. Philosophy contends that this is because “it is the nature of anything to perform the office [function] proper to it,” rather than its opposite. But wealth, power, and government attract their opposites: greedy, power-hungry, and “unworthy” people, respectively. So these three things—like “Fortune as a whole”—are not inherently good at all
The fact that evil people are rewarded might seem like a profound injustice to most contemporary readers, as it did to Boethius. It is important to clarify that Philosophy believes that “fortune’s gifts” (things like money and power) are neither good nor bad in and of themselves, but are closer to evil than to good because they likely signal that their bearer has done some evil in order to obtain them. If things naturally “perform the office proper to” them, and if evil people are consistently getting wealth and power, then wealth and power are “proper to” evil people, and someone’s possession of wealth or power can suggest that they might be evil. Of course, this argument is unlikely to persuade anyone who rejects Philosophy’s belief in a law of fundamental natural attraction. After all, readers might ask, if power and wealth are human creations, do they have a true “nature” or “proper” function at all?
Themes
In verse, Philosophy recounts the destruction wrought by the murderous emperor Nero, whose “high power” did not “check [his] frenzied lunacy.”
The murderous emperor Nero’s crimes would have been widely known among literate people in the Middle Ages, particularly since their victims were predominantly Christians. This example shows that power did not make Nero noble; instead, Nero used his high office to spread and multiply evil.
Themes
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