Next year — or perhaps the year after, since the historical record is not clear — will be the fifteen-hundredth anniversary of the death of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, who was brutally tortured and then executed on the orders of his former employer, Theoderic, King of Italy. In the history of philosophy, Boethius is both important and famous, but not for the same reasons. His importance lies in the scholarly work of his earlier life, when he translated several Greek works into Latin, including texts by Aristotle, and wrote commentaries on other important classical works, particularly on logic, as well as some early Christian theological studies. These translations and commentaries were highly influential in the philosophical and theological thought of the next millennium, leading one contemporary scholar to describe him, along with Augustine and Aristotle, as the fundamental philosophical author in the Latin tradition. Despite his influence, as a person he plays a very minor role in most histories of philosophy, being viewed today mostly as a conduit of Greek thought to medieval Europe rather than as an important thinker in his own right.
The work for which he is famous, and which remains easily available today in English translation, is the Consolation of Philosophy, a literary text written while he was in prison in Ravenna, awaiting execution. Written as a dialogue between the author and a woman who personifies “philosophy”, part in prose and part in poetry, the book asks us to consider what true happiness consists of, and how we should understand life’s sudden reversals of fortune. For a man who came from a leading patrician family in Rome and had been appointed to a position as a senior royal official, but who now faced imminent death for defending a senator accused of treason, and whose erudition and scholarship had attracted unjust accusations of participation in occult practices, this was a real and pressing question.
The book does, however, present an interpretative puzzle, since Boethius does not provide a theological defence of the goodness of God amidst the presence of evil in the world, as one might have expected; as Augustine would no doubt have done. Instead, the woman who speaks for philosophy presents the arguments of the classical pagan schools, which consider what we can truly understand about the world and what real freedom of action we have in a universe where the causes of much of what happens to us lay outside of our power. Some commentators have understood Boethius to be drawing our attention to the limited degree of consolation that philosophy on its own can provide in the absence of faith. Others consider that he used his final work as an opportunity to provide an anthology of the best of the secular wisdom of the Greeks. What is certain is that the book has been widely read and admired for hundreds of years, and that it offers us one sort of answer to the perennial question of how we are to face injustice and suffering with dignity, and how we might find some measure of meaning in a world in which we have little control.
In the centuries that have passed since Boethius’s death, religious beliefs and the theological arguments used to support them have fallen out of favour, at least in Europe. When life does not go as we had hoped, and when we are confronted by instances of injustice and suffering, most of us do not fall back on faith to provide solace. Some of us, however, continue to find the ancient pagan schools of philosophy helpful in thinking about how the universe operates, and how humans might find sources of meaning and grounds for happiness despite the vicissitudes of life. Michel de Montaigne’s Essays provide a good example of an early modern author who draws on the resources of the ancient world to deal with the moral questions of the contemporary world. Another exemplar is David Hume.
The instability of fortune is a consideration not to be overlooked or neglected, Hume advises us. He might well have been reflecting upon his own reputation and standing. As a young man, he published A Treatise of Human Nature, which introduced a psychological basis for our understanding both of human character and the study of the natural and social world. The book did not sell well – fewer than 1,000 copies – and most of the reviews were negative, excepting the anonymous review that Hume wrote of his own work. His later Enquiries were better received, but insufficient to secure his appointment to a Chair of Philosophy in Glasgow, for which he was rebuffed having already been turned down for a Chair in Edinburgh. His Dialogues on Natural Religion remained unpublished until after his death. Despite being thwarted (during his own lifetime) in his ambition to become an influential philosopher, Hume pursued an alternative literary career. He was famous in his day as a historian – publishing a six-volume History of England — and an essay writer, regularly reprinting his Essays Moral, Political, and Literary during his lifetime. These works were widely read and admired, both in the United Kingdom and in France, where Hume lived for a while, working as Secretary to the British Ambassador.
Paradoxically, today few people read Hume’s History, and not many read the Essays. The Dialogues, considered too hostile to religion to be published three hundred years ago, are now treated as little more than received wisdom. The man who was judged by the conservative clerics of his day to be unacceptable for appointment as a university teacher, has recently been criticised for his views on racial essentialism, and a building owned by the University of Edinburgh that was named in his honour has now been renamed. By contrast the Treatise, now widely read, is regarded as a foundational text in the development of empirical philosophy and the modern social sciences. For Hume, who died at home in his own bed, the instability of fortune was less extreme than for Boethius, but both men experienced notable success and failure during their lifetimes, and both appeared to find some consolation for this fact from the ancient pagan philosophers.
Hume’s clearest statement of his own ‘philosophy of life’ comes in his essay, The Sceptic, first published in 1742. It forms the final part of a quartet of essays named after philosophical sects from the ancient world. Hume tells his readers that his aim was not to expound upon the teachings of ancient philosophers, but rather to present the sentiments that each sect represents, sentiments which he says naturally form themselves in the world, and which present different ideas of human happiness. While each essay can be read as Hume’s understanding of the way in which a longstanding philosophical approach to life could best be articulated in contemporary language, there seems little doubt that he was most greatly attracted to the sentiments of the fourth and final essay.
The first – The Epicurean – is also named as The man of elegance and pleasure, and it describes an approach to life which gives priority to the sensual pleasures of the natural world, of friendship and good company, and of sexual love. The second – The Stoic – also called The man of action and virtue, describes a life of industry and achievement, and the pursuit of virtue for its own sake. This essay reads a little like an introduction to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published one hundred and fifty years later. The third – The Platonist – or The man of contemplation, describes the retreat from public life and the rejection of worldly success, in favour of philosophical reflection upon the universe and its divine perfection. This is akin to the religious option, although Hume makes clear his greater admiration for private religious devotion rather than the public practice and popular promotion of religious ideas.
In my copy of Hume’s Essays, these three short texts combined take up only twenty pages. By contrast, The Sceptic, the fourth and final essay, which has no alternate title, takes up twenty-two pages, and is written in a more personal and persuasive style. His summary of the basic principle of sceptical thought runs as follows: that there is nothing, in itself, valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed; but that these attributes arise from the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection. Since things in the world – physical objects or human activities – have no value in themselves, all depends on the passion with which we pursue our goals and the enjoyment we achieve in attaining them. Hume’s claim that no given state of affairs is inherently preferable to any another, that it all depends on the sentiment we attach to them, might not seem to offer much of a consolation to Boethius.
In the closing section of The Sceptic, Hume discusses philosophy’s weaknesses, by which he means our limited ability to change our passions through the process of reflection, and our tendency to give greater precedence to immediate enjoyment over those objects whose enjoyment is most distant. Nonetheless, while the benefits of a philosophical temper might be limited, they are not negligible. Hume advises his readers, By habit and study acquire that philosophical temper which both gives force to reflection, and by rendering a great part of your happiness independent, takes off the edge from all disorderly passions, and tranquillizes the mind. He concludes by reminding us that human life is governed more by fortune than reason; and that death, although perhaps they receive him differently, yet treats alike the philosopher and the fool.
Boethius and Hume remain important influences on contemporary thought. Although many of the texts they wrote are no longer read except by niche scholars, they both changed the way later generations of thinkers approached certain questions, in logic, in metaphysics, and in social theory. In addition, they both remain famous for the lessons they imparted in their search for a way to make sense of the disorder and confusion of human life. When confronted with personal injustice and by the inexplicably random distribution of good fortune in life, we might turn to philosophy in the hope that it will console us. Perhaps the most important form that consolation might take is the provocation to live as well as we can, and not to dwell too much among philosophical thoughts that cannot change our circumstances. As Hume notes wryly, While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone.