Mattia Preti’s Boethius Consoled by Philosophy has returned to our shores, and with it came the calling to revisit the work it depicts, The Consolation of Philosophy, written by the Roman philosopher Boethius in the sixth century AD. The Consolation is a work of enduring relevance, dealing with themes all too familiar despite its medieval origin, confronting its readers throughout the centuries with questions about the nature of truth and what it means to be a human being.

Boethius is the main character of this work, languishing in a prison cell after being accused of treason by the Ostrogoth Theoderic. We first meet him as a man overcome by melancholy and despair, grieving the energetic and inspired self he used to be in his youth and cursing his impending fate. While bemoaning his clouded mind awash with tears, he is visited by Lady Philosophy. Obfuscated as he is, he does not recognise her.

She notices the fickle Muses surrounding him whom she accuses of “enticing men to their destruction”. Upon expelling them, she turns to Boethius and considers his ailment: “Dull-witted is his mind, alas!” She does not lament for long, however, maintaining that “this is no time for complaints, but for healing.” She diagnoses him with a condition common to “duped minds” – “He has forgotten for a moment who he is.” She wipes away his tears and he recognises her.

The issue of forgetfulness is very prevalent in the Consolation, and is perhaps what makes it so timeless. Boethius became prey to the ruse of Fortune, the Janus figure who takes from us as quickly as she gives. He was duped into thinking that the purpose of human existence is the amassment of material goods and earthly pleasures, thus confusing fortune with real happiness.

For all his earlier familiarity with Lady Philosophy, who instructed him throughout his life, he has now forgotten how to conduct himself in accordance with the philosophical teachings he has learnt. His attachment to Fortune and the transient goods she had afforded him made him forget the insight granted by his discipline.

Lady Philosophy’s diagnosis is particularly sticking – what can be more terrifying than forgetting who one is? Boethius had come to associate himself with the gifts of capricious Fortune, attributing his humanity to them. To recall his true nature, Lady Philosophy invokes him to dispense with this false attribution and look for truth in what is eternal rather than in what is impermanent – in other words, to seek the right kind of consolation.

Perhaps some of us can relate to Boethius more than others, but all of us can recognise something of themselves in him. Our lamentations are quite similar.

He has forgotten for a moment who he is

Some of us may feel we have fallen prey to the rat race, clicking infernally at computer screens, numbed or seduced by material gains or gifts of fortune, quick to slip into despair whenever these may disappear, as they often do.

Only recently, in fact, has a pandemic pulled the rug from under our feet and made us all too aware of the transience of everything we clutch so tightly.

If I have learnt one thing from COVID-19, it is that we are neither as in control, autonomous, or prepared as we’d like to think we are, and the future is nowhere near as predictable as we thought.

What we deem important may have also changed, perhaps, although I for one am quite stubborn about my illusions. The pandemic may have been a spoke in the wheel of this era’s mantra of acceleration and progress at all costs, bidding us instead to take pause and pay attention, but we may very well soon forget all about it.

Speaking in an interview on an episode of the Dutch series Of Beauty and Consolation, the late philosopher Roger Scruton described consolation as a uniquely human need. “It is a sense of being fully at home in the world, and this seems to imply that in much of our lives we are not fully at home if we spend so much of our efforts in seeking consolation, as if we were sundered from our nature and from the world in which we live in a state of alienation… in a sense of wandering, as if we were detached from what we truly are…

“There is a need in all of us to come back to what we truly are and rest there. I take it that is what we mean by consolation – a kind of transcendental homecoming from all the bittiness and fragmentariness of our ordinary experience to some condition of peace and reconciliation… of being at peace with the world and therefore with ourselves.”

Scruton had earlier posited that “all our unhappiness and alienation comes from the attempt to be an individual above everything else, whereas consolation comes when one relaxes into a sense of something greater than oneself…”

I have often recognised this sense of peace in my grandfather, whom I lost on January 4. Hailing from Valletta and sailing the world twice over in his youth, he lived his life as a man well aware of what is transient and what is eternal.

A devout Catholic, he could contextualise everything perfectly within his faith. Nothing was ever too big for him to manage, not even life and death, because he had access to things far greater. Nothing scared him because everything in his experience reverberated with what he knew to be true. Had Lady Philosophy ever come to pay him a visit, he would have had no trouble recognising her.

I am as yet more like Boethius than my grandfather, awash with shadows like in Preti’s painting, but I am consoled by the knowledge that there are antidotes to alienation and mnemonic devices ready at hand, if only I were to avail of the proper guidance.

Lara Zammit holds a Master’s degree in philosophy.