After Stoicism

The Stoic philosophers of antiquity recognized something we often forget. Good fortune does not guarantee happiness, and bad fortune does not guarantee misery.

Boethius was the last philosopher of ancient Rome and a Christian theologian. He was also an illustrious senator who suffered a spectacular reversal of fortune. Falsely accused of treason and sentenced to death, he spent several months in prison awaiting his execution. For consolation he turned to the Stoics he had spent his life studying. They helped him to remember that the good things he once enjoyed—wealth, power, fame—could not make him truly happy. Also, that the injustice he suffered need not make him miserable.

But the Stoics were not the only philosophers Boethius sought for consolation. The Stoics had taught that the highest happiness we can hope for is tranquility—serene indifference despite all the trials of life. But for Boethius, tranquility was not enough. He reached for something beyond Stoicism. Something that promised true happiness, come what may.

This book is a guide through Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy. It shows how Boethius, in his darkest hour, took everything noble from Stoicism and fused it with a rational and religious conviction that there is a hope for happiness through and beyond the suffering of this life.