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Continuing on the Consolation (524 CE).
We discuss chiefly books 3 and 4, which present the classical one-dimensional model of the good: We all tend toward the good (or what we think to be good, and if we're wrong about what that is, then we can be judged as failing in our aim toward the good), which is happiness, which (because God created everything and the creator must always be better than the created) is in fact God. By being virtuous, we "become gods" through participation in God, who is wholly simple. So, likewise all these things that we apparently aim for like fame, wealth, pleasure… all these, insofar as they are not illusions of happiness, really must amount to the same, singular thing: happiness, i.e., God. And if bad things seem to happen to good people, well, that's an illusion, because evil can't actually really exist in this designed-by-God-and-therefore-perfect world.
Book 5 is about free will, and we don't really cover it; see ep. 119 of the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast.
Listen to part 1 first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!
End song: Carrie Akre's "Last the Evening" from the album of that name from 2007. Hear Carrie interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music Ep. 17.
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Evan Hadkins says
February 20, 2017 at 10:00 pmThe Bible verse that the stuff about ‘not getting more than you can handle’ is from Paul, “God is faithful and will not suffer you to be tempted beyond what you are able to bear”.
Paul wasn’t bothered that this may mean your death. He reputedly went to Rome even though a prophet told him he would die if he did.
Du-leuze says
February 26, 2017 at 4:14 am“Boethius applies to eternal Being the terms comprehendere and complectiri (cf. Consolation of Philosophy, Prosa VI ). The nominal couple complicatio-explicatio, or the adjectival complicative-explicative, take on great importance in Boethius’s commentators, notably in the twelfth-century School of Chartres. But it is above all in Nicholas of Cusa and in Bruno that the notions acquire a rigorous philosophical character: cf. de Gandillac, La Philosophie de Nicolas de Cues”.
This footnote from chapter 11: “Immanence and the Historical Components of Expression”, of the Deleuze’s “Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza”, shows the true Boethius’ contribution to the philosophy.
Will Seth finally show us his Spinoza knowledge, “the most radical temptation for constituting the pure ontology”?