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38 pages 1 hour read

Boethius

Consolation Of Philosophy

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 524

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Book 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Book 5, Chapter 1 Summary

Boethius, eager to understand other issues bound up with the idea of Providence, asks Philosophy if there is such a thing as chance. Philosophy answers that if by chance we mean random events, then there is no such thing as chance. God imposes order upon all things, so there is no opportunity for random events.

But Boethius still wonders if there is anything that could be considered chance or accidental. In reply, Philosophy cites the example of a person digging in the ground to cultivate a field and finding buried gold. What has happened is the result of a conjunction of causes—ultimately controlled by Providence—yet it is not the result of the intention of the people involved. Such an event can be called chance or accidental.

In verse, using metaphors from nature, Philosophy declares that all seemingly chance events are subject to a ruling order. 

Book 5, Chapter 2 Summary

While understanding and accepting Philosophy's reasoning, Boethius wonders whether there is any place in this scheme for the freedom of the human will. Philosophy answers yes, for no rational nature could exist without it.

All creatures that have the power of reason also have the free choice of the will, but in varying degrees. To the extent that they contemplate God and divine things, human souls are more free. However, the more they become entangled in earthly and fleshly matters, the more ignorance darkens their minds; they become slaves to destructive passions, “prisoners to their own freedom” (119). Even so, Providence sees this and arranges rewards according to each man's merit. 

Book 5, Chapter 3 Summary

Boethius is troubled by the seeming contradiction between human freedom and divine foreknowledge. If God foresees all things, then there would seem to be no freedom of the will.

Boethius is not convinced by the argument often used to resolve this difficulty. It claims that “it is not because Providence has foreseen something as a future event that it must happen, but the other way round, that because something is to happen it cannot be concealed from divine Providence” (120). This argument seems to shift the necessity to the other side. And if events could as equally not happen as happen, then in what sense does God foresee them?

The consequences of this difficulty are serious: It would appear to remove all merit or responsibility from human action—virtue is not deserving of reward and evil is not deserving of punishment. Hope and prayer, too, would seem to be pointless, since all events are predetermined. 

Book 5, Chapter 4 Summary

Using tightly argued logic, Philosophy resolves Boethius's doubts concerning predestination and the human will by convincing him that “foreknowledge imposes no necessity on what is going to happen” (125). Where Boethius went wrong is in assuming that knowledge can comprehend nothing unless it is certain (e.g., events which are certain to happen in the future). This is in turn rooted in an assumption that knowledge depends on the capacity of the objects of knowledge to be known. This is all wrong, Philosophy explains: “Everything that is known is comprehended not according to its own nature, but according to the ability to know of those who do the knowing” (126). The greatest and most comprehensive manner of knowing—which only God possesses—is to see in a single glance the form itself of all things, as well everything pertaining to them—their “matter,” “shape,” “universals,” and “particulars.”

In this way, we can say that God can foresee events that are the result of the free choice of the human will. 

Book 5, Chapter 5 Summary

Philosophy continues to describe the difference between the way we see things and the way God—the “supreme intelligence” (131)—sees them. To God, things which have no certain occurrence may be seen by a certain and fixed foreknowledge. Limited human reason must bow before transcendent divine wisdom, just as “the senses and the imagination” (131) must yield to reason.

In verse, Philosophy bids mankind to raise not only his eyes but also his mind and reason to God. 

Book 5, Chapter 6 Summary

In the final chapter of Consolation, Philosophy and Boethius delve further into the nature of God, particularly with reference to the nature of time and eternity. God is eternal, while we live in the dimension of time. That which lives in time “exists in the present and progresses from the past to the future [...] it is in the position of not yet possessing tomorrow when it has already lost yesterday” (132).

By contrast, eternity is the “complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life” (132). As an eternal being, God dwells in a state of eternal now, always present to himself and seeing all things as one simultaneous and immediate present.

Thus, it is a misconception to speak of God “foreseeing” things in the future. It is more correct to say that he “looks forth,” as if he were viewing the world “from a lofty peak” (134), far removed from the dimension of time.

The fact that God scans all events past present and future does not make them necessary, any more than the fact that we see things in the present makes them necessary. To us, living in the dimension of time, some events are future, but for God they are all present.

Philosophy admits that it is a great mystery to understand how God's foreknowledge does not make future events necessary. She explains that what Providence sees will necessarily happen, even though it has no necessity in its own nature: “All things, therefore, whose future occurrence is known to God do without doubt happen, but some of them are the result of free will” (135).

Furthermore, the fact that we have the power to change our minds about what we are going to do does not alter God's knowledge at all. In one single glance he anticipates and embraces all changes. God's knowledge owes nothing to the contingent things he has created and derives its power from nothing “secondary to itself” (136).

To conclude, Philosophy exhorts Boethius, and by extension the reader, to live up to the great “necessity” that is placed upon humanity. Because we live in the sight of the eternal judge of the world, we have a responsibility to avoid vice and cultivate virtue, living in hope and prayer and seeking the good. 

Book 5 Analysis

In the final book, the conversation turns from Providence to the related issues of chance and free will—questions that preoccupied many philosophical and religious minds of Boethius's era: How can we simultaneously affirm that God foresees the future and that human beings choose their actions freely? If God foresees all things, doesn't that imply that all our actions are predetermined?

Since Consolation is a philosophical rather than theological work, Boethius does not delve into what this implication has for Christian salvation, although he does address how the concepts of prayer and hope would be affected. The focus, however, remains on actions, especially moral ones.

Philosophy argues that chance, in the sense of random events, does not exist since God's providence orders all things. Even so, human beings possess freedom of the will as a natural corollary of being endowed with reason. God does not control our actions; we freely choose them. At the same time, God's providence sees all events—past, present, and future—as a simultaneous present, including those which are the result of free will. Although individual actions are freely willed, there is a grand overarching plan orchestrated by Providence.

The book also touches on epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. In Chapter 4, Philosophy contrasts God's immediate and present-centered way of knowing with our limited and piecemeal way. For example, human beings know through several sources: senses, imagination, and reason; whereas God knows through pure intelligence, which perceives all aspects of the truth at once. Included in this argument is Plato's theory of recollection. The poem of Chapter 4 brings out this theme, comparing sense knowledge to “a seal impressed on wax” (129). But, Philosophy asks, how do human beings go beyond mere sense impressions and come to a deeper, analytical knowledge of things? She concludes that the mind “mingles images received with forms it hides within” (129)—the knowledge that Plato believed is hidden deep within the soul and must be brought out through recollection.

In the closing lines of Consolation, Philosophy, with clever irony, brings back the concept of “necessity” with a new meaning: The only “necessity” that exists is our responsibility to pursue good and avoid evil, knowing that we are judged by a supreme and omniscient God.

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