For an ancient philosophy, Stoicism is wildly popular right now. Silicon Valley tech barons and young men in weight rooms across the country are searching for guidance, and they often find it among the maxims of Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. Something about these tough-minded thinkers satisfies their souls’ longings.
But Baylor philosophy professor Thomas M. Ward believes this toughness is not enough. In his engaging new book, After Stoicism, he argues that the Stoic pursuit of inner tranquility falls short of true happiness. While he concedes that the philosophical school certainly has its merits, it does not provide the one thing human beings need most: hope. Ward instead turns to the “last of the Roman philosophers,” Anicuis Manlius Severinus Boethius, and his great book The Consolation of Philosophy for a more hopeful vision of human flourishing.
To his very great credit, Ward writes not just as an academic philosopher but as someone concerned with how we live our day-to-day lives. As such, he shows immense sympathy to those attracted to Stoicism as a guide for self-improvement. In an age of comfort and luxury, this ancient school’s enjoinders to practice virtue can dislodge us from the unreflective and decadent stupor that seems to surround us. The doctrine of self-mastery preached by these sages, Ward acknowledges, has serious merits.
Despite these advantages for living, though, Ward concludes that Stoicism is finally a “noble despair.” Metaphysically, it adopts a sort of fatalism and looks doubtfully at the idea of free will. And ethically, Ward writes, “it encourages a ghastly sort of detachment even from close friends and family.” Stoic apathy isolates adherents and turns them into something almost inhuman. In its most extreme forms, it even inspired many to commit suicide. Surely this is not the highest peak of flourishing to which human nature aspires.
Dissatisfied with this harsh way of life, Ward turns instead to Boethius for friendly criticism. Born in AD 480 during a period historians now call “late antiquity,” Boethius was a politician and scholar who dedicated his life to preserving the old wisdom of the Roman Empire and the wider classical world. He translated many Greek works into Latin, for example, and wrote original treatises on everything from logic to music. Furthermore, Boethius became one of the greatest Christian interpreters of the Stoic tradition. All the while he also served as a high-ranking elected official in the Ostrogothic regime ruling the western provinces, defending a sense of political continuity with the Old Rome.
Despite his honorable service, what made Boethius different from the Ostrogoths was his dedication to Christian orthodoxy. The ruling king, Theodoric, was a devotee of the Arian heresy, and during his reign he became increasingly afraid that the Byzantines in the East would overthrow him in a bid to restore their trinitarian faith as the dominant force in the known world. Over time, this paranoia turned Theodoric against the staunchly orthodox Boethius—he falsely accused him of treason, then ordered his imprisonment and eventual execution.
While under house arrest, Boethius composed the text that Ward spends most of After Stoicism interpreting, The Consolation of Philosophy. Although somewhat neglected today, the Consolation is a foundational work of the Western tradition, and Ward deserves immense credit for retrieving its wisdom for a modern world wracked by many of the same spiritual problems Boethius himself faced. Here one can find all the nobility Stoicism offers with none of the heart-rending despair.
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The book begins with a Prisoner wallowing in his sorrows until something almost supernatural happens. In the depths of his anguish, a woman—called Lady Philosophy throughout the dialogue—appears to him to end his lamentations. She intends to put him through a kind of therapy by recalling the wisdom he learned so he can endure the trial before him. The rest of the Consolation depicts, in prose and verse, the conversation between the Prisoner and Lady Philosophy.
The text is absolutely littered with references to Stoic thought, but it nonetheless offers something altogether different. The Stoic view of happiness is essentially negative: If we can kill or suppress our inner desires, we can end our suffering. But Ward argues that, in contradistinction, the “Boethian view is essentially positive, implying the absence of suffering but also the presence of virtue and joy.” What emerges from the conversation between the Prisoner and Lady Philosophy is a way of thinking about suffering that can truly take us up out of ourselves.
Much of that conversation revolves around the idea of fortune. At the outset of their dialogue, the Prisoner is cursing his bad fortune and mourning the loss of his good fortune. A true Stoic, such as Seneca, would tell the Prisoner that his error is caring too much—a posture of apathy would keep him steady no matter how the wheel of fortune turns, because there is “no real good” in any kind of fortune. But Ward reads Boethius differently; in the dialogue, he suggests that the goods the wheel brings us may not be sufficient for perfect happiness, but that does not mean we should reject them outright.
From these musings about fortune, the Prisoner and Lady Philosophy turn to an investigation of ideal happiness. Ward says that in the argument the lesser goods that fortune brings us (such as sufficiency, power, honor, renown, joy) become “images of the true good.” By understanding the way these goods participate in the highest good, “Lady Philosophy slowly builds up the definition of happiness part by part” until we understand that “happiness, it turns out, is God.” It is by becoming more like Him that human beings can achieve true satisfaction.
Fittingly, then, the Consolation ends with what Lady Philosophy calls “the greatest of all questions”: Why would a perfect God allow evil to happen in a world He created? Justifying the ways of God to men is a monumental task, and the argument that follows this great question is difficult to summarize. It ends, however, in a defense of free will—and a rejection of Stoic fatalism. Ward concludes that reconciling divine foreknowledge and human freedom is Lady Philosophy’s great achievement. This conclusion points to the infinite goodness of God and, therefore, the surest ground of hope.
*****
By taking the text this seriously, Ward is opposing a major trend in Boethian scholarship: reading the Consolation as a satirical work. Scholars such as Joel Relihan hold that Boethius set out to show the shortcomings of philosophy, mocking classical Stoicism and encouraging Christians to look instead to their faith for a truer comfort. Ward, however, sees “no reason to accept this dichotomy between faith and philosophy, and no reason to think Boethius accepted the dichotomy.” He points to theological works Boethius wrote that use philosophical methods to defend orthodoxy. In short, there is no reason to believe he held there was some sort of enduring antagonism between Athens and Jerusalem.
But even on the edges of Ward’s interpretation, a careful reader can detect a more radical teaching: that the “best that philosophy can do, when it comes to divine things, is not nearly good enough.” God is incomprehensible, and frail human minds can never fully understand Him on this side of eternity. “Philosophy, grasped through reason, can get us to the hope that there is a God who is wise and good, and who therefore will make all good,” Wards writes. “But theology, grasped by faith, fill outs and extends that hope: in Jesus, the man of sorrows, above all, we see the ‘firstfruits’ of God’s awesome plan—eternal life of joyful communion with God.” In his hour of darkness, Boethius required both philosophy and theology to endure.
The Boethian union of philosophy and theology in pursuit of understanding reveals the greatest of Stoicism’s insufficiencies: its prideful spirit. Like so many of the ancients, the Stoics did not believe meekness was blessed—instead, they sought to attain a “greatness of soul” by mastering their own passions. But this vainglorious pursuit of personal excellence is doomed to end in tragedy, even suicide, because full self-sufficiency is impossible. The human spirit requires a hope outside itself to withstand the worst kind of suffering.
Ward’s revival of Boethius is so necessary in this moment because this false sense of self-sufficiency is such a big part of what makes Stoicism popular. The school’s new adherents believe they can elevate themselves out of a decadent society, but such pride is not true strength. As Boethius understood, the restoration of order, both in the commonwealth and in our own souls, requires a source of inspiration outside the self.
