In The Consolation of Philosophy Book I, Chapter 6, Philosophy provides her diagnosis of Boethius's condition. She prefaces her diagnosis by indicating that it will take the form of a Socratic dialogue: "'Let us begin, then, she said, 'with a few simple questions that will help in the diagnosis.'" (I, 6, p. 23). She asks: (i) "'Is it your view that life is a series of chance events? Or do you think it has an order and a rationale?" (id.); (ii) "You say that you believe in a God that governs the world, but how do you suppose he does this? By what means…." (id.); (iii) "Do you remember the purpose of things and the goal of Nature's order?" (ibid., 24); and (iv) "[W]hat is a man?" (id.)
Her overarching diagnosis is that Boethius has "forgotten" what and who Boethius is. These failures explain both "why and how [he] is ill." (I, 6, p. 24, emphasis added). The things he has forgotten are so grave that they can lead to "serious illness … [and] even death." (id.) Yet it is unclear from the surface of the text why "forgetting" certain philosophical doctrines (such as Philosophy's theodicy) actually heal a person in Boethius's particularly extreme plight. This short paper proposes that the most charitable reading of Philosophy's treatment of Boethius – the man himself – is one in which Boethius is actually seeking emotional healing in his actual historical plight, and that the Philosophy's medicine in fact does so. Philosophy confesses that a chasm divides between the realm of philosophy and the realm of human misery. But Philosophy also supplies the resources to bridge that chasm. I propose that that bridge is hope. Philosophy's arguments help Boethius intellectually grasp that relief is possible – even if difficult – and once internalized and thereafter maintained by spiritual discipline, despair may be held at bay, and the spirit opened to Jesus.
Boethius appears to be a living contradiction of Philosophy's promise. He was motivated to enter public life by moral duty, yet the world – including Philosophy herself – betrayed him: "And is this the reward you had for me, telling me that I should accept Plato's opinion that governments would be well run if there were philosopher-kings?" (I, 4, p. 11). Boethius implies that he naively "listened to [Philosophy] and went into public life, figuring that I could apply in the real world those ideas we had been discussing in the library." (id., emphasis added). Boethius does, then, make an empirical demand upon philosophy: what is its use if it cannot help someone in the real world? – or worse, does Philosophy lay a snare for idealists if its students are led to ruin by a fundamentally unjust world?
This contradiction in turn implies a distinction. On the one hand, nowhere can the reader charitably doubt that Boethius has in any way failed to intellectually grasp the doctrines of philosophy during the challenges of his life before imprisonment. In his earlier life, he surely also intellectually internalized these doctrines. He thought and lived as a Philosopher. But, he did so when his fortunes were better. He refused to lie to preserve his own safety at the expense of the integrity of the Roman state (I, passim); he quickened the resentment of his colleagues by earning a reputation as an idealist unwilling to compromise (I, 4, p. 12). Yet during all this his sons were made co-consuls. On balance, then, Philosophy and fortune continued to pay off. The first half of Book I even gives a sense that Boethius was proud of the resentment he earned from his colleagues because it was a mark of his own integrity. (St. Paul might have worried that Boethius was praying in public.) But this all changed, and now, at his nadir, he is no longer maintaining the mindfulness of philosophy's teachings despite his ability to recall it content.
So the forgetfulness of Book 1, Chapter 6 is not one in which Boethius just casually "forgot" the goal of the universe in a way such that he could simply have his memory refreshed -he did not just "forget" that justice does in fact regulate human fairs. To the contrary, he disbelieved the proposition entirely: "[I]f actions are judged only by outcomes, then those who are, like me, unfortunate or unlucky are likely to be immediately abandoned by men of goodwill." (I, 4, p. 17).
Boethius's illness is not esoteric. It is not a rarefied intellectual form of illness that inflicts men of great status and power when the fortunes of fate reverse upon the just. It is an illness that all persons at some times suffer from, and at some times die from. He is lost in despair. He has given up. He has lost hope because he does not see a way out. Showing a person lost in despair that daylight is even possible is a necessary first step to begin climbing out of the darkness. Just the possibility of daylight softens the infinity of despair, and once hope enters the soul, God's peace is at least visible.
The Consolation thus straddles the psychological / philosophical divide, just as Howard Thurman's mature works would later do so. Boethius's demands that Philosophy's doctrines "apply in the real world" are indeed met. She offers "medicine" and "treatment." At the risk of straining the translation, she poignantly does not offer a "cure." She does not provide just an intellectual argument that only works when times are sufficiently good.
This may explain why Boethius does not recognize Philosophy when she initially appears. How could a philosopher, both intellectually competent in the discipline and forged in the high affairs of the Roman Empire, not recognize Philosophy? If She began by walking Boethius through The Republic, Boethius could surely say, "I know where this is going." So what he does not recognize in Philosophy is that she is a living and breathing resource for persons like Boethius held in the grip of despair.
The distinction between intellectual recollection and emotional internalization of philosophy may also explain why the Muses must be banished before Philosophy can begin to heal Boethius. They represent unfocused emotions. Psychological depression and affective disorders often supply their own fuel, and the patient, being a curious and rational animal, cannot help but search for features of the external world that account for such crushing changes in her internal experience. Yet those features have often not changed, which closes the feedback loop into despair proper: that I can never be well again. The Muses gain exclusive leadership.
But Philosophy does not endorse a Stoic-like suppression of all emotion. Such would preclude the internalization of Her medicine. Emotion is the bridge between intellectually grasping something and intellectually internalizing that something. Emotions are not just indispensable, they are constitutive of being human. But if emotions govern without intellectually supplied constraint, they will obscure "the fruits of reason"; they will be the "useless thorns of intemperate passion." (I, 1, p. 4).
Transposed to the modern world, Philosophy's exchange with the Muses, and her medicine of hope, is no less ambitious, and no less inaccurate, than the claim than that the person gripped by despair will not strive for a way out – or even search for a reason to try – unless she is persuaded that a way out is possible. "In the absence of all hope ambition dies, and the very self is weakened, corroded." (Thurman, Howard. Jesus and the Disinherited (Boston: Beacon Press), 46).
In Boethius's case, seeing the possibility of a cure begins with philosophical reflection moving in dialogue form. But it does not involve just reading Plato left to right. The structure of Consolation is thus deliberately peculiar. It surely need not have been designed in such a composite fashion (of arguments, dialogue, poetry) if its ambition was simply to "prove" what true happiness consists in: proof is not persuasion. If Boethius believes that the judgment of the world upon just men is always unfair, that the wicked prosper and the just are killed, how is he not to despair that the mechanism which governs the world is disconnected from Jesus? And what horrors would that imply?
Not all persons will find succor in the Consolation, but some will, and those that will and are thereby strengthened are then better positioned to console their fellows. And while the medicine – the dialogue – may need to be tailored to the patient, certain physicians may have recourse to this work and its historical context to reinforce their own spirits when confronting human despair. A historical man facing brutal execution and the elimination of all his accomplishments did indeed find the love of God, and the Consolation provides one successful roadmap for doing so.