What is the consolation of philosophy about?

Boethius, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Boethius answers

The work begins where I found myself: stripped of office, of wealth, of reputation, imprisoned and awaiting death on charges I hold to be false. Lady Philosophy appears at my bedside and drives off the elegiac Muses who had been feeding my self-pity, and what follows is a sustained dialectical ascent from that grief toward something the grief had obscured.

The first movement is a diagnosis of Fortuna and her gifts. Riches, power, honour, fame, pleasure — these are what men pursue, and they pursue them by different roads yet all strive toward the same end, which is happiness.1 The desire for the true good is naturally inborn; the trouble is that men are led astray after false goods, mistaking the instruments of fortune for the thing itself.2

A man who seeks riches alone squanders his power and deprives himself of pleasures to protect what he has accumulated, and in doing so achieves neither sufficiency nor peace.3 The same argument runs through each of the false goods in turn: whoever seeks one of them apart from the others does not even grasp the one he desires.4 The second movement, which is the heart of the work, turns this negative diagnosis into a positive identification.

If none of the false goods separately, nor all of them together, can confer what they promise, then true happiness must be sought elsewhere.5 True and perfect happiness is that which makes a man sufficient, powerful, respected, famous, and joyful all at once — not by accumulating five separate things but by possessing the one thing of which these are merely imperfect images.6

That one thing, as Plato's Timaeus already pointed to and as the great hymn in Book III makes explicit, is God — the Creator who governs the universe in perpetual order, from whom all things draw their being, and toward whom the rational soul naturally tends even when mistaken notions lead it astray.7 The third movement addresses what this means for a creature like me, earthly and yet capable of glimpsing the source.

Every natural thing seeks its own way back to its beginning and is glad in the returning.8 Human souls have some image, however hazy, of their true origin and their true end; natural inclination draws them toward the true good even when they cannot name it clearly.9 The consolation philosophy offers is not the restoration of fortune's gifts — it is the recovery of what fortune never gave and therefore can never take away.

Sources

  1. The whole concern of men, which the effort of a multitude of pursuits keeps busy, moves by different roads, yet strives to arrive at one and the same end, that of happiness.
    Consolation of Philosophy and Theological Tractates, pp. 130–131
  2. the desire for the true good is naturally inborn in the minds of men, but they are led astray after false goods.
    Consolation of Philosophy and Theological Tractates, pp. 130–131
  3. He who in flight from want seeks riches, takes no pains over power, prefers to be base and obscure, and also deprives himself of many pleasures, even natural ones, in case he lose the money he has acquired.
    Consolation of Philosophy and Theological Tractates, pp. 146–149
  4. since each one of these is essentially the same thing as the rest, whoever seeks one of them apart from the others does not even grasp that one he desires.
    Consolation of Philosophy and Theological Tractates, pp. 146–149
  5. happiness is by no means to be sought in these things, which are believed to provide each desirable thing separately.
    Consolation of Philosophy and Theological Tractates, pp. 149–151
  6. that is true and perfect happiness which makes a man sufficient, powerful, respected, famous and joyful. And so that you may know that I have inwardly understood this, that which can truly provide one of these—since all are really the same—that I recognize unequivocally as full happiness.
    Consolation of Philosophy and Theological Tractates, pp. 149–151
  7. as is my Plato's opinion in the Timaeus, we ought to implore God's help in even the least of matters... O you who in perpetual order govern the universe, Creator of heaven and earth.
    Consolation of Philosophy and Theological Tractates, pp. 149–151
  8. Each thing seeks its own way back / And coming back is glad; / None is consigned to any ordered course / Save that which links the end to the beginning / And makes its cycle firm.
    Consolation of Philosophy and Theological Tractates, pp. 134–137
  9. you also, earthly creatures that you are, have some image, though hazy, in your dreams of your beginning... Your natural inclinations draw you towards that end, to the true good, though mistaken notions of many kinds lead you away from it.
    Consolation of Philosophy and Theological Tractates, pp. 134–137