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Book III, 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 tells Boethius that he and other “earthly creatures […] dream of your origin,” pursuing their happiness through instinct but without a clear picture of what this requires. She asks whether the ways people try to achieve happiness—meaning money, status, power, fame, and pleasure—actually get them there. If not, then people are actually “snatching at a false appearance of happiness” by pursuing these things.
Philosophy contrasts two tendencies that she considers natural for human beings: on the one hand, they have an innate drive for happiness and fulfillment, which comes from their “origin” (God). On the other hand, their attempts to fulfill this natural drive almost inevitably fail because people usually pursue the wrong goals. The exception would be goals chosen through wisdom—meaning reasoned philosophical reflection—which are actually aligned with what truly makes humans happy.
Themes
Philosophy asks Boethius a series of questions. First, she asks if, when he was wealthy, he was worry-free. He responds that he has never been entirely worry-free, and agrees with Philosophy that his life was either missing something, or had something he did not want. Philosophy explains that this means he was never self-sufficient, and so his situation proves that money doesn’t actually free people from wanting more. In fact, money makes people “need outside help”—the help of a government that protects their money against others who might want to take it. So, in reality, “wealth […] in fact makes [people] dependent,” while having little money frees people of needs to be satisfied. Everyone has to eat and drink—money temporarily satisfies, but does not eliminate, these needs. And so “riches create a want of their own,” rather than making people genuinely self-sufficient or leading to true happiness.
In the next part of Book III, Philosophy goes through each of the five mistaken human goals—“wealth, position, power, fame, [and] pleasure”—and explains what makes each unworthy of human pursuit. Here, her argument against the pursuit of wealth depends on her previous argument that happiness implies self-sufficiency—if someone has happiness, they would not need to add anything else to their lives in order to live the best possible life. Here, she clearly shows that money is never enough to make people self-sufficiently happy—rather, it is a means to the fulfillment of basic human needs, and has no value beyond this.
Themes
In a short verse, Philosophy sings about how “the rich” can never satisfy their greed and spend their lives pursuing “fickle fortunes” that disappear when they die.
Although the fact that money can’t buy happiness is repeated so often that it often loses its power to persuade, here Lady Philosophy tells her readers in slightly-less clichéd terms that, if their life goals revolve around accumulating money—like so many people in the 21st century—they are probably going to live disappointing and unsatisfying lives. They should take note of this and change course as soon as possible.
Themes
