The Consolations of Philosophy

I have just watched Polly Toynbee, the current president of the British Humanist Association, give her assessment of the political landscape in the coming year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2008/dec/17/polly-Toynbee

I think the message was bleak but realistic. Thinking about the coming year and our changing fortunes brings to mind the last of the great classical writers of antiquity.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was born in Rome around 480 CE. His family had been Christian going back a century and his ancestors had included two popes and two Roman emperors. Boethius himself was consul in Rome in 510 CE.

Recent scholarship suggests that Boethius was an apostate, abandoning Christianity in favour of paganism, though he is still recognised as a saint in the Roman Catholic church.

He wrote his Consolation of Philosophy in about 524 CE whilst imprisoned, awaiting trial, after which he was executed, accused of treason.

The book is written as a conversation between Lady Philosophy (an embodiment of philosophy) and himself and discusses the transitory nature of fame and wealth. In particular, Boethius popularises the idea of The Wheel of Fortune.

"I know how Fortune is ever most friendly and alluring to those whom she strives to deceive, until she overwhelms them with grief beyond bearing, by deserting them when least expected … Are you trying to stay the force of her turning wheel? Ah! dull-witted mortal, if Fortune begin to stay still, she is no longer Fortune."

The writings of Boethius are often alluded to in literature and film.

I was a big fan of Joy Division and New Order in my youth and

one of my favourite movies is Frank Cottrell Boyce's 24 Hour Party People.

It is a comedy film about the rise and fall of Factory Records and includes a scene with Christopher Eccleston as a tramp under a bridge saying to Tony Wilson, the Factory Records boss, played by Steve Coogan:

“It’s my belief that history is a wheel. ‘Inconstancy is my very essence,’ says the wheel. Rise up on my spokes if you like but don’t complain when you’re cast back down into the depths. Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it’s also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away.”

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=66gmYLtJJuc

Tony Wilson is also portrayed as hosting the game show Wheel of Fortune.

Frank Cottrell Boyce was also the writer of God on Trial which formed the basis of a World Issues day that I took part in at a local school recently.

This was a day of discussion about why there is evil and suffering in the world, one of the themes of Boethius’ book. The Boethian view is taken to be that evil is just the absence of good. I presented the Humanist view, others presented the perspectives of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

I noticed that one of the other speakers, Brian Winston, was a former producer of World in Action, a programme that the above mentioned Tony Wilson worked on. A week earlier I had gone to a talk by Humanist David Boulton who co-incidentally was also a producer of World in Action but I am getting sidetracked...

Boethius can be seen as something of a Humanist because he sought to answer religious questions without reference to Christianity, relying instead on natural philosophy and the classical Greek tradition.

In the book, Lady Philosophy suggests that happiness comes from within and that it is virtue itself that is the only thing one can cling to because it is not dependent on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

That last quote from Shakespeare is one of the many influences Boethius’ writings have had on our culture.

The influence on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is something worth investigating.

The wheel of fortune is also depicted in the Tarot.

Returning to Polly Toynbee's warnings of an imminent turning of the wheel of fortune, some would say that Boethius' writings were a council of despair from a man facing imminent death and that his consolations are philosophical pie in the sky.

The upside is that the wheel continues to turn.