Lady Philosophy And Boethius: An Analysis

In The Consolation of Philosophy, the teacher Lady Philosophy and the student Boethius develop a relationship of learning through dialogue that enables the Boethian prisoner to attain his spiritual goal. Lady Philosophy is a good teacher. Instead of telling the philosophical truth directly to Boethius, she chooses to maintain a discussion between her and her student based on Boethius’s arguments. Through the discussion, Lady Philosophy at first finds out the errors of Boethius’s assumptions and then guides him to understand the nature of goods in a deeper way. As the dialogue moves on, Boethius gradually grows as a good student from complaining about his imprisonment to asking questions on a universal level, and he finally learns the method to attain his spiritual goal, God.
When Lady Philosophy shows up and tells Boethius, “This is the time for treatment not mere complaining” (Book I, p.6), Boethius still insists on complaining about his imprisonment. He says that he used to discuss “all kinds of interesting matters, both human and divine” with Lady Philosophy in the library of his house (Book I, p.10-11). However, as he follows Lady Philosophy’s education that “the government would be well run by philosopher kings”, his reward is imprisonment (Book I, p.11). Boethius cries in his poem, “ The innocent suffer penalties proper to malefactors and wicked men sit upon thrones” (Book I, p.19). Here Boethius’s statement is based on his personal sorrow rather than logic. Boethius focuses more on things that seem to be true according to his own experiences. He only considers his own imprisonment as injustice but neglects to explore what is real good on a universal level. Fortunately, Boethius has a good teacher who corrects his errors and guides him to think