In a prison dank and dark, somewhere outside the town of Pavia in northern Italy, a middle-aged man whiles away his final days, writing. His execution looms, and he knows it. Understandably, he feels quite sorry for himself, reflecting on the injustice of a ruler who believed falsehoods about him—falsehoods that have landed him, after a life of extreme privilege and significant political power, in this jail. Forsaken (as he believes) by both God and other men, he wonders: Did it have to end thus?
Suddenly he realizes he is not alone. A beautiful lady, larger than life, clearly superhuman, appears to him. She introduces herself as Philosophia, the spirit of philosophy—or love of wisdom. Appropriately for the patron spirit of the discipline that goes back to Plato and Socrates, she embarks on bold dialogue with Boethius, part in prose and part in poetry, all with the goal of getting him out of his funk. By the end of this unusual book-length dialogue, he feels better. True, he’s still imprisoned. But now he’s ready to face death knowing it will not change who he is—his conscience is clear, and his good character is known to God, even if not to some men.
Today, October 23, 2024, marks 1,500 years since the death of Boethius, the troubled writer in question. A Roman aristocrat and prominent statesman before his dramatic fall, his political accomplishments mean nothing to us today. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, so have gone all political and military greats of ages past. Historians can continue to be impressed, but even they must be selective in bestowing their interests. Besides, most Americans can’t name all this young country’s presidents, much less political greats of other times and places.
By contrast, Boethius’ dialogue with Lady Philosophy, The Consolation of Philosophy, has had remarkable staying power. From its moment of publication on, it enthralled and encouraged readers through the European Middle Ages into the present. One sign of its significance is its well-accepted status as the traditional bookend of classical Roman literature—after Boethius, we speak of medieval writers, not Roman on late antique. Boethius, without knowing it, became a period, not a comma—the decisive end of one literary era and the beginning of the next.
This literary significance may seem a bit shrug-worthy today, but I contend that there is more. History does not advance in a straight line but in circles, Yeats-worthy gyres, each recalling and respinning another. This is as true of people as of the greater trends and sociocultural developments through which they live. And so what makes Boethius a particularly interesting and relevant figure for this moment, a millennium and a half after his death, is his unwavering commitment to intellectual honesty and to cultivating his own character even when falsely accused of treason—and ultimately executed based on these accusations.
Who Is Good?
It is appropriate that the two bookends of classical literature, its beginning and its end, Homer and Boethius, were both concerned with the question of character: Who is good? It is, we could note, a timeless question, an admission of our nature reflecting the imago Dei, whether we know it or not. In conversation with the rich young ruler in Luke 18:18–19, Jesus reminds us, “No one is good—except God alone.” Still, human pride and desire for approval—a desire, ultimately, for God to tell us “well done”—drive us to wonder: Am I good? And (like the rich young ruler) we wonder, furthermore: What else do I need to do? What is the minimal checklist for acing this assignment?
There is the related quandary of who decides, who judges, our goodness. By asking Jesus specifically, the young ruler acknowledges a key truth: It is God’s judgment alone that really matters. Whenever we allow other people to decide on our character, we are opening ourselves up to the possibility of false judgment—that either in doing evil we are judged good, or (as Boethius learned to his great pain) in doing no wrong, we are judged to be evil.
Perhaps this was one of the most difficult aspects of his imprisonment for Boethius—this knowledge that he was not guilty of the treason against the emperor of which he stood accused. So how does one live with such a stain on one’s character and reputation while knowing that it is not the truth?
It is appropriate that Boethius deals with this question by looking back at classical Greco-Roman literature. This is, one could say, the question at the heart of the entire tradition. In the Iliad, the bookend that is the beginning, heroes of the Trojan War struggle with this same question: Who is good? The answer of the heroic code in epic ultimately is: It doesn’t matter who is good; it only matters who is best! The heroes spend the Trojan War competing no less against each other than they do fighting against the enemy. Because their excellence is externally projected and externally judged—you are what others say you are!—it doesn’t matter if a hero thinks he is good or even best. All that matters is what everyone else thinks.
Through Christ—and through his conversations with the Lady Philosophy who represents the best of pagan wisdom filtered through biblical principles—Boethius comes to terms with goodness defined otherwise. Seeing himself as a humble believer rather than an epic hero, Boethius finds the comfort of Christ, the only one truly, perfectly Good. Virtue, he realizes over the course of his meandering conversation with Philosophia, is not in the eye of the beholder. Virtue is something that no false judgment can ever take away from the one who has it.
The world can reject Boethius without shaking his eternal security. His character remains the same while imprisoned as it was when he was a highly regarded statesman. He has not changed. Most important, God knows the truth and is in control.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness may be as American as apple pie, but questions revolving around these concepts occupied Boethius as well during his imprisonment.
Nestled in the middle of the book is a dialogue between Boethius and Philosophia about happiness. Why discuss happiness over anything else—and at that moment? Philosophia explains:
The whole concern of men, which the effort of a multitude of pursuits keeps busy, moves by different roads, yet strives to arrive at one and the same end, that of happiness. Now that is the good which, once a man attains it, leaves no room for further desires. And it is the highest of all goods, containing in itself all that is good, for if there were anything lacking to it, it could not be the highest good, since there would remain something outside it which could be desired. So it is clear that happiness is that state which is perfect since all goods are gathered together in it.
All other goals, dreams, desires are part and parcel of this one—the pursuit of happiness. It is happiness that is “perfect,” in the sense of containing all else, lacking nothing.
But is this happiness ever achievable in this life? What do we need to be fully and undeniably happy? Philosophia’s questions to Boethius reveal the imperfections of his previous life of power and wealth. He has never had a day when he wasn’t worried, he confesses. Neither power nor money, in other words, were able to buy his happiness. Something else was required.
Could it be the Achilles answer—glory? No, not that either, Philosophia asserts. “How deceptive that often is, how base! … For too many men have often acquired a great reputation because of the mistaken notions of the mob—and what can be imagined baser than that?” Being recognized as the best of the Achaeans did not bring Achilles happiness. All it did was lead him to an early grave.
And so Philosophia gently but surely leads Boethius to rule out all other possible sources of happiness. There is no list to follow, and no recipe. Instead, the “Sunday School” answer is correct. Happiness can come only from the “Father of all things,” Philosophia concludes.
Seeking Wisdom
In the end Boethius realizes that, although his reasons for writing this book are personal, this is not a story about him. It is, rather, about God. In his strange co-opting of the format of Platonic dialogue, Philosophia represents a distinctly Christian ideal of wisdom. She exemplifies the good, the true, and the beautiful in a way that pagan (or modern secular) philosophy never could. Paradoxically, however, Philosophia also owes her existence to pagan philosophy and pagan philosophers such as Socrates. She is not shy either about citing Plato, affectionately referring to him as “my Plato” on occasion and reconciling his views to her own. Christians since Jesus’ day could, after all, look at pagan wisdom and grasp from it glimpses of truth, even if without Christ such truth could be seen only through a mirror, darkly.
Like Boethius, we can look around us and be forced to admit that we live in a contentious time. But people like Boethius remind us that every time is contentious in its own way. Amid political and personal dramas and tragedies, some of which can affect us deeply, we too need Lady Philosophy to remind us that we cannot control other people. We can, however, cultivate our own character by focusing on the good, the true, and the beautiful—in Christ.
