ABSTRACT
This chapter recounts in summary and commentary The Consolation of Philosophy as a dramatic dialogue. It follows the sequence of the discursive drama, with its alternating prose and song (poetry). The narrative opens with Boethius lamenting his imprisonment and death sentence. While in this dejected condition, a godlike woman enters his room or cell. Questioning him about his distress, she decides to heal his confused mind, to make it whole and complete and restore his equanimity. She reveals herself as Philosophia (goddess of philosophy) who nursed him as a young scholar. She begins her healing with an application of reason and song. This steadily increases in dosage. Themes develop consecutively concerning Fortune and its apparent injustices. Philosophia explains that the nature of the Wheel of Fortune is inconstancy but that the Providence of God overrules the Fate of Fortune. Right and wrong ways of pursuing happiness (the Good) are discussed and True happiness is described as the achievement of Goodness, which consists in the knowledge of God as wholeness and as ‘homeland’. The dilemma is raised of evil in a world overruled by God. Philosophia responds with a theodicy, revealing that ultimately Providence overrules Fate. Boethius’ mind opens to see things from a divine perspective. Then, Philosophia explains the dilemma of freedom of will where God has foreknowledge, explained in terms of God’s immediacy of knowledge, which does not affect free will. This concerns the question of the relationship between eternity and time.
