Why Read Boethius Today? | Hacker News Reader

Why Read Boethius Today?

aeon.co

57 pointsdiodorus17 comments

I have never read The consolation of philosophy, but this article has revived my interest in the topic.

I discovered the life of Boethius when I read Louis De Wohl's novel "Citadel of God" (1959), which is a narration of St. Benedict's life. One of the main subplots of the novel is the description of how Boethius' widow attempts to take vengeance of the people who accused and made him executed.

One of the takeaways I got from the book was that Boethius' society was in a turmoil, still having deep roots in the "roman" culture (in the sense of the Roman Empire) yet struggling to evolve into what would become the Middle Ages.

The Consolation of Philosophy was required reading for my undergrad Chaucer classes and other Medieval Studies courses, because Boece is Chaucer's translation into Middle English of Boethius' Consolation. For me it was an ancillary study but I ended up going pretty far down the rabbit hole into other ancient philosophical works from there.

Why read Boethius today? The answer, as the author says, is because Boethius is a still a guide to those who want to "seek answers about how to live in relation to our mortality."

Short answer to mortality: Livit lik sabaka fing to decho. (life sucks and then you die)

Catchy, but my attitude to mortality is more optimistic and more resistant to soundbite. Best I can do at the moment, suitable also for our unicellular cousins, is: life is fire, slowed down, with an attitude.

https://dwheeler.com/essays/all-men-are-mortal.html

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNnrTNFWcsg

My takeaway corollary was more like “why bother doing anything? you’re here anyway, find your own bloody purpose”. It’s quite the empowering statement, given the right accent.

If you don't want to go for the real thing, you could do way worse than reading "A confederacy of dunces" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces that is one of the funniest books I ever came across (and kind of based on Boethius)

If you do, an 1897 translation: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14328/14328-h/14328-h.htm

Edit: If they ever make a Confederacy of Dunces movie I am looking forward to posters with the tagline "It ain't the heat, it's the stupidity."

Edit2: Commedia, definitely. Ignatius as Il Dottore?

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1289/0349/files/blog_big-c...

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUMusLPFWPo (Sesame Street measures angles in radians! "He walks backwards, easy as pi")

Boethius will show you that striving is ultimately meaningless, that we must learn to accept.

The book teaches us to accept that which we cannot change. It describes the plight of a just man in an unjust society. It is the very basis for medieval thought.

With the exception of the medieval thought of bellatores, the more intellectual of whom pondered the plight of a just man in a just society.

The book may also be a profitable investment: its theology and geometry has helped a destitute intellectual with an incisive worldview, a seer and philosopher cast into a hostile century by forces beyond her control, to make payroll.

Bonus image: https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/hardback-books-with-a-a...

Dupe of yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24741627.

I wonder why the dupe detector didn't pick this up? Case sensitivity in the title? Too few points?

Ah, how humans try to find reason even in the most absurd situation:

> According to it, the course of history has been arranged by God’s reason, to preserve goodness and eliminate wickedness.

> When evil people apparently prosper, there is a divine purpose to it – perhaps to help them repent, perhaps to use the harm they inflict on others as punishments for those who deserve it, or as a trial to make the good even better.

When evil people apparently prosper, there is a divine purpose to it

Really?

Compare https://xkcd.com/1457/

(Boethius' theology was grounded in his tradition. Having been doomscrolling Solomon's fortune cookie file after the privacy thread yesterday, not only did I find the dude was pro-privacy, I also serendipitously ran across his 28:8, echoed later by Kohelet 2:26, an early commentary on sharing bits vs. hoarding atoms?

> "He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor."

> "For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God." )

Da bosmang da bik, demang im du kapawu unte setashang fo inyalowda, im gonya gif imalowda fo demang im xalte ere kori beltalowda! (SIGINT excerpt from a meeting of a skinny so-called Revolutionary Expropriation Committee. One of our analysts says it's likely a paraphrase of Da Showxating Da Mali Solomong 28:8, while HR notes that if they have sufficient free time to view and requote literature then we should be able to increase quota. Voice vote?)

Da got da buk gif we gut unte sasating unte xush fo gutmang, fo papekawala im gif wowk unte peyeting unte sekrip, fo imalowda gif da ting xiya fo gutmang. -- Da Fewawala 2:26

for more recent commentary on these lines, there's the joke which ends: "Mayn ketzele, I like our new son-in-law. We were talking barely 2 minutes and already he thinks I'm G-d!"

Was this post written with GPT-3?

If we are to take the predicate at face value, evil people prospering is a temporary movement that will globally trend towards good, good being the divine purpose.

I've always meant to read Boethius simply to better understand Ignatius J. Reilly.

I've read that! This passage stood out to me at the time. If you asked me what people knew of the astronomy in the sixth century, I wouldn't have guessed this:

> The whole of this earth’s globe, as thou hast learnt from the demonstration of astronomy, compared with the expanse of heaven, is found no bigger than a point; that is to say, if measured by the vastness of heaven’s sphere, it is held to occupy absolutely no space at all.

Excellent!

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