S7E22 – AH – “Jack’s Bookshelf: Boethius”, After Hours with Dr. Michael Dauphinais

Today on Jack’s Bookshelf we examine “The Consolation of Philosophy” by Boethius with Dr. Michael Dauphinais.

S7E22: “Jack’s Bookshelf: Boethius” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-week

All fortune is good fortune;
for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes,
and so is either useful or just.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

Biographical Information

Dr Michael Dauphinais serves as the Fr. Matthew Lamb Professor of Catholic Theology at Ave Maria University in Florida, and holds degrees from Duke University and the University of Notre Dame. 

He has co-authored with Matthew Levering “Knowing the Love of Christ: An Introduction to the Theology of Thomas Aquinas” and “Holy People, Holy Land: A Theological Introduction to the Bible”. He has also co-edited multiple books dedicated to Thomas Aquinas and published numerous articles and chapters in books in moral, dogmatic, and biblical theology. 

He is also the host of the Catholic Theology Show podcast.

Chit-Chat

• Half Pint with Dr. Michael Dauphinais (“The Voyage of the Dante Treader”)
• The Catholic Theology Show is entering its second year, is making a debut on YouTube, and now sports a new studio.
• Dr. Dauphinais is also launching a new course, called “Love, Friendship, and the Future of Being Human”, looking at cultural change and social relations in the present day, in attempt to recover our lost understanding of what it means to be happy and truly human. Some newer reading in the course includes “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains”, and “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other”, while older books are incorporated as well, such as “The Consolation of Philosophy” and “That Hideous Strength”, along with concepts from “The Abolition of Man”.

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

Toast

• David was enjoying a hazy IPA.
• Dr. Dauphinais had a cup of decaf coffee.

Discussion

01. “Boethius 101”

Q. Who is Boethius?

• Severinus Boethius is a saint within the Catholic tradition, a man who was sentenced to imprisonment and death.
• In “Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians: Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C. S. Lewis”, author Chris Armstrong refers to C. S. Lewis as “Lewis the Boethian.” Out of the most influential books that shaped Lewis’ life, the only medieval one was Boethius’ “The Consolation of Philosophy”. Listeners can hear Matt’s discussion with Chris at S4E37 – AH – “After Hours” With Chris Armstrong.
• Another book Dr. Dauphinais has read is Boethius’ “The Trinity is One God Not Three Gods”.
• Augustine describes the collapse of Rome in the “City of God”, a time that Boethius lived through.
• Visigoth emperors enter the scene, including the Arian Theodoric the Great, who slaughtered over 700 princes at a peace treaty, an event Lewis alluded to in “The Magician’s Nephew”, when Jadis’ father did the same thing. Boethius was working as a sort of diplomat or senator to Emperor Theodoric, and sees the end of civilisation approaching through his rule.

02. “His importance and his works”

Q. What is it that makes Boethius such an important author?

• His work De Trinitate which combatted Arianism

Q. You said that there were two significant works. The first was “On the Trinity”. What was the second?

• The second work is and De consolatione Philosophiae (“The Consolation of Philosophy”), a book Dr. Dauphinais read in graduate school.
• A common criticism of Boethius is that he does not talk about Jesus enough.

03. “What got you hooked?”

Q. If you were initially suspicious of Boethius not focusing much on Jesus, what was it that changed your mind and got you hooked?

• The book’s importance to C. S. Lewis is what hooked Dr. Dauphinais, similar to David’s experience with “Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women”, which made him dive into George MacDonald.
• More than just Faith and Reason, we also need our Passions, which is what Boethius preached.

The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest—Magnanimity—Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

04. “Boethius’ bookshelf”

Q. Earlier you mentioned that he drew upon the Fathers, Augustine in particular. Do we know what books and authors shaped Boethius?

• It is likely that St. Ambrose’s work played a large role in Boethius’ formation, as Boethius summarised many works like Ambrose did. There are also hints of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, due to his inclination to conserve the best of the Roman pagan tradition.

That is why I often find myself at such cross-purposes with the modern world: I have been a converted Pagan living among apostate Puritans.

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

• St. Augustine was influenced by Platonic ideas. He ends his “Confessions” with a treatment of time and eternity, noting how God and his material creation are not in competition with one another. Similarly. Boethis ends “The Consolation of Philosophy” with a consideration of time and eternity.

05. “Digging deeper”

Q. You’ve mentioned the Trinitarian work, and “The Consolation of Philosophy” quite a bit. Could you unpack these two more, particularly the latter?

Boethius (480–524) is, after Plotinus, the greatest author of the seminal period [c205–c533], and his De Consolatione Philosophiae was for centuries one of the most influential books ever written in Latin. It was translated into Old High German, Italian, Spanish, and Greek; into French by Jean de Meung; into English by Alfred, Chaucer, Elizabeth I, and others. Until about two hundred years ago it would, I think, have been hard to find an educated man in any European country who did not love it. To acquire a taste for it is almost to become naturalized in the Middle Ages.

C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image

• There are five books, with each being a progressive theraputic endeavour. Boethius, the “miserable” character, meets Lady Philosophy, similar to how Dante inserted himself into “The Divine Comedy”.
• Philosophia tells Boethius that he needs to remember his telos, and she offers him a series of remedies and exercises to restore the rule of the logos (reason) over the thumos (spiritedness/passions).
• Dr. Dauphinais recalls the scene from “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” where Eustace is turned into a dragon – becoming his own sin – and Reepicheep, attempting to console him, talks about Fortune’s Wheel; a reference to “The Consolation of Philosophy”.

On the evenings when he was not being used as a hot-water bottle he would slink away from the camp and lie curled up like a snake between the wood and the water. On such occasions, greatly to his surprise, Reepicheep was his most constant comforter. The noble mouse would creep away from the merry circle at the campfire and sit down by the dragon’s head…There he would explain that what had happened to Eustace was a striking illustration of Fortune’s wheel, and that if he had Eustace at his own house in Narnia…he could show him more than a hundred examples of emperors, kings, dukes, knights, poets, lovers, astronomers, philosophers, and magicians, who had fallen from prosperity into the most distressing circumstances, and of whom many had recovered and lived happily ever afterward. It did not, perhaps, seem so very comforting at the time, but it was kindly meant and Eustace never forgot it.

C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, How the Adventure Ended

And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Job 1:21

• While hiking the Camino, Dr. Dauphinais and his wife prayed the Prayer of St. Teresa of Avila.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

• Lewis points out a concept from St. Thomas Aquinas about free will, providence, and the eternal gaze of God in “The Problem of Pain”, as well as in “Mere Christianity”.

06. “Influencing Lewis”

Q. Let’s transition and talk about Boethius’ influence on Lewis. You’ve mentioned Lewis’ top ten books and Chris Armstrong, and Jason Baxter said something similar. In what ways did Boethius influence Lewis?

• S5E55 – “The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis” – After Hours with Dr. Jason M. Baxter
• C. S. Lewis loved Dante, and Dante also makes reference to Boethius’ “wheel of fortune” in the “Divine Comedy”.
• Dr. Dauphinais asserted that the pagan search for God is nearer to Christianity than the post-modern rejection of God, Christianity, and nature. Lewis makes this point in “The Abolition of Man” and “Till We Have Faces”.
• Lewis understood the beauty of virtue, and explained it well in his stories, particularly in “The Chronicles of Narnia”.

But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, “Courage, dear heart,” and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.

C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

• God does wish for us to be happy, but not in the way we expect. Lewis showed this through Aslan in “The Last Battle”:

“You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be,” [Aslan said].

Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”

“No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?”

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them….

“The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.

C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle

• When we live as we ought, we tend to live as we wish. The reverse is demonstrated in “The Screwtape Letters”:

“I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.”

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

07. “How to begin?”

Q. If someone has never read Boethius, would you recommend that they start with “The Consolation of Philosophy”, and is there any particular translation that you’d recomend?

• “The Consolation of Philosophy” from Ignatius Press

08. “A Consolation observed”

• Dr. Dauphinais believes that Lewis’ “A Grief Observed” is a contemporary “Consolation of Philosophy”, because they both begin in sorrow, until the characters are reminded of providence.

Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.

C. S. Lewis, Letter (May 30th, 1916)

Wrap-Up

More information

• The Catholic Theology Show Podcast
• The Catholic Theology Show Podcast (Apple)
• The Catholic Theology Show (YouTube)
• AquinasCenter.org
• AveMaria.edu

Concluding Thoughts

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