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Book III, Part VIII
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
Now that Philosophy has taught Boethius about “false happiness,” she will explain genuine happiness. First, she argues that “self-sufficiency” implies power: anything with “some weakness […] need[s] the help of something else,” whereas anything powerful would not need outside support. Then, she asks Boethius whether a self-sufficient and powerful being is “contempt[ible], or […] supremely worthy of veneration.” He agrees that it is the latter, and also that a revered, powerful, self-sufficient thing would “be unsurpassed in fame and glory” and, most of all, “supremely happy.” Philosophy concludes that “sufficiency, power, glory, reverence and happiness” are all one and the same: they have different names, but the same underlying meaning. Boethius agrees.
At long last, Philosophy gives Boethius the answer he has been waiting for all along. Having considered the five false paths to happiness separately, now she looks at them together and explains why they all imply one another. She has already explained that perfect happiness requires self-sufficiency (because no perfectly happy person would ever need anything they do not already have). She explains here that self-sufficiency comes with “veneration” and “fame and glory,” which means that perfect happiness—by virtue of requiring self-sufficiency—also comes with these things. Therefore, a “supremely happy” person will have all the things that pursuers of “wealth, position, power, fame, [and] pleasure” were seeking all along—and yet, this person will do so without ever pursuing any of these five goals. (Although Lady Philosophy does not explicitly mention pleasure here, she soon begins talking about “joy.”)
Themes
However, Philosophy argues, “human perversity” separates out these five goals and tries to pursue them separately. But because these things are really an indivisible whole, humans are “attempting to obtain part of something which has no parts.” This throws them off balance: for instance, someone might sacrifice self-sufficiency and glory in their quest for power, and thereby sacrifice the very power they seek. Boethius realizes that, in contrast, one must pursue these five things together, which Philosophy confirms would mean “seeking the sum of happiness.” Boethius ecstatically declares that he now understands: “true and perfect happiness is that which makes a [person] self-sufficient, strong, worthy of respect, glorious and joyful.”
There is a striking parallel between Philosophy’s analysis of “human perversity” here and Boethius’s comments on Philosophy herself at the beginning of the book: people pursue false versions of happiness by tearing the five goals apart from one another, just as Roman society has mistreated Lady Philosophy by tearing pieces off of her dress—which symbolizes their tendency to take specific, convenient ideas from Ancient Greek philosophers without considering those thinkers’ overall conclusions and insights. Like happiness, the wisdom of Philosophy truly “has no parts,” and to try and take just part of it is to destroy the integrity of the whole. In fact, philosophy’s purpose is precisely to help people achieve happiness—and, since Philosophy soon argues that “the sum of happiness” involves philosophical reflection, in fact these two metaphors are two versions of the same story. That is, “perversity” separating out happiness's parts is the same thing as “marauders” destroying Philosophy’s dress.
Themes
Philosophy praises Boethius’s insight, but tells him that he needs to “add one thing.” She asks whether “these mortal and degenerate things” can lead to what they have described as “perfect happiness,” and Boethius agrees that they cannot. Philosophy argues that the physical world can “offer [humans] only shadows of the true good” and asks Boethius where he thinks this “true happiness” can be found. She notes that “Plato was pleased to ask for divine help even over small matters” in the dialogue Timaeus, and Boethius agrees that he should “pray to the Father of all things.”
Philosophy now explicitly tells Boethius that true happiness is about the activity of the immortal soul or mind alone, and unrelated to the body’s actions in the physical world of “mortal and degenerate things.” She references Plato not only by citing the Timaeus, but also by citing his famous allegory of the cave from the Republic, in which he argued that what people experience in the physical world consists of mere “shadows of the true good,” which resides in a higher realm of “Forms” or “Ideas.” While it may seem strange that Philosophy transitions immediately from discussing a (Pagan) Greek philosopher to discussing “the Father of all things,” who appears to be the Christian God, in fact Plato believed in some version of the same deity, whom he called the “demiurge” (meaning “craftsman” or “creator”). Although Rome has gone from persecuting Christians to outlawing all other faiths in just a few centuries, which might make it seem that there is an eternal conflict between reason and faith, in fact for Boethius there is no clear distinction between the conclusions that people will reach through Christianity and the ones they will reach through philosophy.
Themes
Philosophy tells Boethius that he is correct and starts singing a hymn based heavily on Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. She praises God, whose “everlasting reason” and absolute power allowed Him to create the world out of nothing. She sings that God contains the “highest good,” is the “height of beauty,” and turns “perfect parts [into] a perfect whole” by combining opposites harmoniously. As “soul,” God permeates nature and controls everything, sending “souls and lesser lives” out into the world before eventually receiving them back. She asks God to give His worshippers a clear picture of him and the “true good” that he embodies.
This poem, widely considered the most beautiful of the Consolation as well as the book’s central turning point, is in fact an elaborate prayer to God—both the God of Plato and that of the Christians. Philosophy returns to a number of previous motifs that she has already introduced into her discussion with Boethius—like the complementarity between opposing “perfect parts,” the soul’s circular return to its origin, the “everlasting reason” that humans have received from God, and most of all the nature of the “highest good.” But now, she explicitly connects all of these to God and makes it clear that the “highest good” comes from people somehow connecting themselves to God—presumably, through hymns and prayers (like this one), but also through argument and reflection (like in the rest of the book). Accordingly, with its combination of poetry and argument, the Consolation itself can be seen as documenting and enacting (the author) Boethius’s worship—it is his attempt to attain happiness through prayer to and reflection about God.
Themes
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