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The Consolation of Philosophy (III/III)

The Consolation of Philosophy (III/III)

Last updated on: March 22, 2017 at 7:48 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

The Consolation of Philosophy (III/III) 2017-03-21T11:27:31-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Happiness is the Goal

Philosophy gives us a hard truth: money, power, glory, fame cannot make us happy. The entire Earth and all of human history are nothing compared to eternity. God loves us. Jesus entered our history. They have meaning, but they are not enough for a happy life. We need not hate them, but we cannot build our life on them.

Yet philosophy turns us away from despair by pointing us to true happiness. We must learn to love eternal things: ideas, souls, and God. If we do, then we shall find true happiness. We will not hate ourselves, but love what is eternal, fine, and good within us.

Philosophy is after all love of wisdom. And the very order of the cosmos is motivated by the love within the mind of God:

Tribes and nations Love unites By just treaty’s sacred rites; Wedlock’s bonds he sanctifies By affection’s softest ties. Love appointeth, as is due, Faithful laws to comrades true– Love, all-sovereign Love!–oh, then, Ye are blest, ye sons of men, If the love that rules the sky In your hearts is throned on high!*

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus (2004-12-11). The Consolation of Philosophy (Penguin Classics) (p. 46). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

This does not mitigate against science, which Boethius commends. The laws of nature, which an atheist can discover, are the regularities of love. The cosmos is governed by Intellect, but this Person is not whimsical, but wise. His creation, when not corrupted, is governed by regularity, because that allows souls within it freedom.

Of course, if we do not do this education correctly, then we will end up hitting people with the truth instead of discussing, debating, and having a faith that seeks understanding. Boethius interacts with Philosophy himself and is not stamped by a system, Christian or otherwise, to regurgitate “Right Answers.” There is a better way . . . and the very shape of the book shows what that way is.

We must find the hard truths ourselves and not have them imposed on us externally. This a different sort of prison than the stone prison that trapped Boethius. We may have found the truth, but the truth cannot be handed out like candy and gum or memorized for a Scantron test.

Music and Dialog are Necessary to Education

If we want consolation from philosophy, we cannot ignore the form our consolation will take. Method matters, because we are people. We have bodies, we must not ignore them by thinking we can be educated alone or without the broader “great conversation” of many minds. We have hearts and we cannot despise them or our intellects will be unable to control our passions

Again and again, Boethius is taught by music when the hard work of reading, thinking, listening, and conversing is wearing him out. Music is not an add on in classical thought, but a way that we can take medicine for our souls without gagging. Boethius could hear a song when a hard word would have killed him.

God wants us to be happy, please note this truth. If we fast, it is to feast. If we give something up, it is to get something better. Anyone who delights in unhappiness is no Christian. This call to education, to duty, is not a call to self-loathing or submission to tyranny, but to knowledge and liberty.

Now Epicurus, from a sole regard to these considerations, with some consistency concluded the highest good to be pleasure, because all the other objects seem to bring some delight to the soul. But to return to human pursuits and aims: man’s mind seeks to recover its proper good, in spite of the mistiness of its recollection, but, like a drunken man, knows not by what path to return home. (p. 49).

We cannot be happy if we are not liberated. Why? It is the God given nature of a person to reason and reason cannot be put in chains! As the student learns, he or she is given music, but also enters into a dialog with Philosophy for himself and not just listens to lecture. (page 50) Humans cannot be passive in education.

There is a warning here. Strip away what is good from education and it will die. In the same manner, even the greatest office, the greatest dignity, will over time be destroyed by wicked men.

So, then, if dignities cannot win men reverence, if they are actually sullied by the contamination of the wicked, if they lose their splendour through time’s changes, if they come into contempt merely for lack of public estimation, what precious beauty have they in themselves, much less to give to others?’ (p. 56).

We may be for a time (as we should) be able to honor the office under a James Buchanan, but Abraham Lincoln better come quickly or the great office, even of President of the United States, will become no great office at all, being President will be a dishonor and not an honor. A prize given to unworthy people ruins the prize, it does not elevate the winner! In the same way, education without music or dialog is not education and is degraded by ugliness and tyranny.

Nationalism and Racism Block Happiness

There is an odd thing a man can take pride in and hope to find a kind of immortality through: race, nation, or “birth.” These things seem to outlast me and so they seem better. Nationalism is better than self-worship, much less selfish. As a result, as a “better” error, it can do more harm. The good in nationalism (or racism) is love of one’s kin, but the evil uses that good to murder, steal, and destroy.

We must recall:

All men are of one kindred stock, though scattered far and wide; For one is Father of us all–one doth for all provide. He gave the sun his golden beams, the moon her silver horn; He set mankind upon the earth, as stars the heavens adorn. He shut a soul–a heaven-born soul–within the body’s frame; The noble origin he gave each mortal wight may claim. Why boast ye, then, so loud of race and high ancestral line? If ye behold your being’s source, and God’s supreme design, None is degenerate, none base, unless by taint of sin And cherished vice he foully stain his heavenly origin. (pp. 59-60).

We must not seek happiness in our folks or make them the end of our lives or we will ruin a small pleasure and small virtue by making something it cannot be.

Modern Education’s Love of Pleasure Blocks Happiness

We must never confuse happiness with pleasure, though that is easy to do. Sadly, much of our industrialized culture seeks to avoid pain always and find pleasure. Yet sometimes pleasure makes us very unhappy. We enjoy a thing and then it causes us pain, even if it is only because the pleasure is withdrawn!

We have the “one hour” rule in our house: will this pleasure make us happy one hour from now?

This is the way of Pleasure: She stings them that despoil her; And, like the wingéd toiler Who’s lost her honeyed treasure, She flies, but leaves her smart Deep-rankling in the heart. (p. 60).

We can have pleasures, but we cannot be satisfied with them. We cannot make one meal all the food we ever eat, but even worse we cannot turn food into the ground of our happiness. Pleasure points to happiness, the way a sign might point to Disneyland, but a man should never confuse the sign with the theme park.

Pleasure will pass by on our road and then our happiness will vanish as well.

We need true happiness. What is it? Where do we find it?

True Happiness

We wish to be happy. We can only be happy if we ground our happiness in what we cannot lose or will not change. Happiness comes from finding what is independent, worthy of honor, sweet and powerful.

For, unless I am mistaken, that is true and perfect happiness which crowns one with the union of independence, power, reverence, renown, and joy. And to prove to thee with how deep an insight I have listened–since all these are the same–that which can truly bestow one of them I know to be without doubt full and complete happiness.’ (p. 66).

The answer is obvious. We wish to love, but also to be loved. Only God is eternal, good, and personal enough to give us true happiness. God is the end and beginning of happiness:

Oh, grant, almighty Father, Grant us on reason’s wing to soar aloft To heaven’s exalted height; grant us to see The fount of good; grant us, the true light found, To fix our steadfast eyes in vision clear On Thee. Disperse the heavy mists of earth, And shine in Thine own splendour. For Thou art The true serenity and perfect rest Of every pious soul–to see Thy face, The end and the beginning–One the guide, The traveller, the pathway, and the goal. (pp. 68-69).

God is not just the beginning and end, God is the way!

‘Then,’ said she, ‘it is necessary to acknowledge that God is very happiness.’

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus (2004-12-11). The Consolation of Philosophy (Penguin Classics) (p. 71). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

If happiness is good, the greatest good, then we can only find happiness by becoming good. Sadly, we cannot merely will ourselves to be good. We want eternal, perfect happiness. The best news is that this perfect Good has come to us and is willing to help us become as He is.

We can become like God. Theosis, the term for becoming as God is, forms the path of happiness.

So every man who is happy is a god; and though in nature God is One only, yet there is nothing to hinder that very many should be gods by participation in that nature.’ ‘A fair conclusion, and a precious,’ said I, ‘deduction.'” (p. 71).

If a group rejects happiness, it is no church. If a community thinks that you can buy happiness or that happiness is anything temporal, then it is not church. Instead, we must know our own natures, our created end, and that end is happiness! All of the Father’s world is made for our happiness, because happiness is becoming good, becoming like Father God:

‘The end and aim of the whole universe. Surely it is that which is desired of all; and, since we have concluded the good to be such, we ought to acknowledge the end and aim of the whole universe to be “the good.”‘ (p. 78).

The good man will be happy, even if later the king clubs him to death:

Rage the wicked, then, never so violently, the crown shall not fall from the head of the wise, nor wither. Verily, other men’s unrighteousness cannot pluck from righteous souls their proper glory. (p. 97).

Oddly this means that:

‘That absolutely every fortune is good fortune.’ (p. 117).

So we find ourselves like picked soldiers called when in “bad” fortune to exercise our virtue, in fact, to show it is virtue. If we were always rewarded for the good, then we could never be sure we had become moral adults. The moral adult loves the good for its own sake, and enjoys the prizes of goodness, but does not demand them.

We are not mature enough in our own virtue to be confident that we are being good for the sake of goodness and not just as a means to get treats. At times then, misfortunate is a school for souls.

Please note that this is not the only reason for misfortune, nor is it the role of a local friend of Job to show up and point out that we should rejoice in the our sorrows, because “God is testing us.” There are many reasons that “bad things happen to good people” and outsiders should not hasten to judge what is the cause.

We can control our “fate” by controlling our response to it:

It rests with you to make your fortune what you will. Verily, every harsh-seeming fortune, unless it either disciplines or amends, is punishment.’ (p. 119).

Perhaps, we should end with this song:

Brave hearts, press on! Lo, heavenward lead These bright examples! From the fight Turn not your backs in coward flight; Earth’s conflict won, the stars your meed! (p. 122).

_________________

* Note the echo of this in Dante.

Based on a class taught at The Saint Constantine School. Part I is here. Part II is here.

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