The Consolation of Philosophy: Revised Edition (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Ancius Boethius (Author), Victor Watts (Translator, Preface, Introduction)

Book Description

Release date: May 1, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0140447806 | ISBN-13: 978-0140447804

‘Why else does slippery Fortune change
So much, and punishment more fit
For crime oppress the innocent?’

Written in prison before his brutal execution in AD 524, Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy is a conversation between the ailing prisoner and his ‘nurse’ Philosophy, whose instruction restores him to health and brings him to enlightenment. Boethius was an eminent public figure who had risen to great political heights in the court of King Theodoric when he was implicated in conspiracy and condemned to death. Although a Christian, it was to the pagan Greek philosophers that he turned for inspiration following his abrupt fall from grace. With great clarity of thought and philosophical brilliance, Boethius adopted the classical model of the dialogue to debate the vagaries of Fortune, and to explore the nature of happiness, good and evil, fate and free will.

Victor Watts’s English translation makes The Consolation of Philosophy accessible to the modern reader while losing nothing of its poetic artistry and breadth of vision. This edition includes an introduction discussing Boethius’s life and writings, a bibliography, glossary and notes.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Latin

About the Author

Ancius Boethius (c. A.D.480-524) was a Roman philosopher and is considered one of the last authentic representatives of the classical world, in both his life and writings. It is through Boethius' translations that the knowledge of Aristotle has survived in the West. Victor Watts read Classics and English at Merton College Oxford. He is Master of Grey College and part-time Senior Lecturer in the School of English and Linguistics at Durham University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 155 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140447806
• ISBN-13: 978-0140447804
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.4 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,903 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Medieval Thought
  • #5 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Movements & Periods > Renaissance
  • #12 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Religious

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 89 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic of philosophical thought--Key to the middle ages. October 20, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I didn't know exactly what to expect when I first picked up a modern-English translation of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius' _The Consolation of Philosophy_. I knew that Boethius was held to be one of the greatest thinkers of his time--a child prodigy from a distinguished Roman family, a distinguished student of Greek, who essayed to translate all of Plato and Aristotle into Latin, and reconcile their philosophies (a task which he never completed). I knew that _The Consolation_ was held to be one of the most influential books of the middle-ages: translated into English by Geoffrey Chaucer and no less than two English monarchs.

I didn't expect the fusion of allegorical tale, platonic dialogue, and lyrical poetry (the genre is officially called the Menippean Satire)that I found. The issues _The Consolation of Philosophy_ addresses were already the time-worn province of philosophical thought by the time that Boethius essayed to address them: the nature of predestination and free will, why evil men often prosper and good men (as Boethius thought himself) often fall into ruin, the nature of the relationship between time and eternity. And the answers are mostly not new with him either: long chains of sophistical reasonings that prove, among other things, that evil men do not wholly exist, and that by allowing them to obtain their evil desires, God is punishing them more terribly than if he had stopped them. The answers are familiar, in tone, if not in exact content: a mystic-based neoplatonic vision of God as an eternal oneness, to which the soul rises through the layers of being. A somewhat recursively defined and unworldly 'good,' to which all souls aspire. Long passages on the vanity of worldly gain, the fickleness of fortune--all of them are familiar to readers who've read much classical or medieval philosophy.

But much of what feels familiar in _Consolations of Philosophy_ is not familiar from its sources, but from the many works for which it is the basis. It is in Boethius that much of the thought of the the Classical period was made available to the Western Medieval world. Thus, you find things in _The Consolation_ that echo throughout the Western Canon--the female figure of wisdom that informs Dante, the ascent through the layered universe that is shared with Milton, to say nothing of the ideas of the reconciliation of opposing forces that find their way into Chaucer in _The Knight's Tale_, among others.

But beyond the influence of the ideas, what _The Consolation of Philosophy_ has that is lacking in most other philosophical texts is a feeling of the importance of these ideas: Boethius wrote this book while awaiting trial and execution (he was ground to death in a mortar) on charges of treason, and though the book isn't explicitly autobiographical, the problems that it deals with were of the utmost importance to him at the the time, and he didn't have time to spare on superfluities. What results, then, is a philosophy made explicitly to deal with suffering: compact and full of emotion. Whether you read this book as a key to Medieval thinkers, an introduction to Classical thought, or simply as a way of looking at the problems that still concern us to this day, you should, by all means, read it.

47 of 49 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Boethius and The Consolation March 9, 2000

By Nawfal

Format:Mass Market Paperback

This is a must for any student of philosophy. Boethius is the transition from Roman and Neo-Platonic philosophy into the Medieval Period.

I would also recommend this book to those facing doubt in their studies, or college students thinking of quitting. It is a short work, easy to read and great in its comfort.

"Be not overcome by your misfortunes, for the gifts of fortune are fleeting and happiness is not to be found in temporal goods. Only by being like God, who is the highest good, can lasting happiness come to man." Lady Philosophy counsels.

Although the work is neo-Platonic Aristotle and Porphyry are heavily drawn from - so the advanced reader could consider those volumes too.

58 of 63 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A gripping book March 19, 2000

By D. Roberts VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Axel Boethius wrote this book under the most horrifying circumstances imaginable; while awaiting his own rather grisly execution. What surfaces from these extreme and morose circumstances is a true masterpiece of philosophy.

The book is told in the same general style as a Platonic dialogue, with two interlocutors; Boetheius and the personification of Philosophy. Boethius chooses a Lady figure to represent the avatar of Philosophy. Its construction reminds me very much of Diotema's parlance with Socrates in Plato's "Symposium."

In the book, Boethius does a Christianizing interpretation of many classical myths and allegories. My favorite was the spin he put on the myth of Orpheus in the underworld.

This is a fine book in the history of philosophy and religion; a must read for medieval scholars.