Part 2: Sufficiency and Satire: Reading the Consolation through the Menippean Form
A guest post by Dan McClain. Dan is a doctoral student of theology at the Catholic University of America and blogs at The Land of Unlikeness.
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Let’s get didactic
The idea that Boethius’ use of poetry is not so simply wrangled into Philosophy’s service, but is actually functioning as part of a larger satirical structure, is not the popular answer to the difficult question of how exactly we are to read the Consolation. Wayne Hankey takes it as a given that Boethius is writing a straightforward consolation: “The Consolation of Philosophy records the purely philosophical doctrine which persuaded and comforted, and would persuade and comfort, Christians even in extremis for a millennium and a half.” Chadwick, whose text has provided a standard interpretation of Consolation for philosophy and theology for the past twenty years, also takes a literal reading of the Consolation. The title alone tells its genre and the object of the consolation, Philosophy, is the consoler. He takes Boethius at face value when he says that he is trying to make the interpretive task easier for the reader by including poetry, and suggests that the meter sections merely extend the arguments. Boethius uses poetry, “with the intention of lightening the reader’s task with a difficult subject.” But does this mean that we are to simply mine the poems for content similar to that in the prose sections? Chadwick seems to say yes. “The poems normally have subtle links with the prose sections that precede or follow them.” Beyond this, as Joel Relihan says, tongue in cheek, “it seems much safer to confound Philosophy and pedantry and attribute [the Consolation's] perceived dullness to high-mindedness.” Chadwick notes that the Consolation resembles other works written in a Menippean Satire format (a combination of prose with poetry that is lighthearted or pokes fun at the matter of the prose), like Capella’s Marriage of Philology and Mercury, which also is about a kind of pilgrimage. He applies the same interpretive formula to these as well. Hermeneutically speaking, Chadwick doubts that Boethius is performing anything unusual, ironic or groundbreaking by employing the Menippean format.
Philosophers are not the only ones that have read the Consolation this way. Even recent literary theoristsexpound on it in light of its supposed genre, taking a literal tack to the characters’ arguments. Jo-Marie Claassen, in Displaced Persons (1999), believes that the title and genre of the Consolation are pretty straightforward. There is nothing ironic or subtle about Boethius’ turn from an Ovidian elegiac to Philosophical dialogue. Rather, this turn is transparently underscored by his rejection to use anything “remotely Ovidian” until the last poem of Book III (III.m.12). There, Boethius recounts Orpheus’ heroic, yet tragic, descent into hell to rescue his lover, Eurydice. Orpheus is successful in recovering Eurydice, but is warned against looking upon her until they surface from the cave, which in his love Orpheus is unable to do, thus losing Eurydice. “Who can give lovers laws? / Love is a greater law unto itself.” Claassen reminds us that the singer Orpheus gains the freedom of Eurydice through song, but is unable to keep her, “incapacitated by the very emotion, romantic love, that had sent him to look for her.” Both T. F. Curley and Claassen argue that Boethius’ inclusion of this poem, his final tribute to the elegiac, is his way of forgoing, once and for all, the possibility of ascent through poetry. He resolutely identifies the Orphic character with his state at the beginning of the Consolation. He has since recommitted himself to Philosophy. He now has no pretension that poetry might harbor some ability foreign to or greater than Philosophy’s own abilities. “Ovidian ‘truth’ apparently pales before the ‘truth of philosophy’.”
Claassen gives no defense for her particular typological interpretation of Orpheus. One wonders if Orpheus must be read as an exemplar of the poets, or if it is clear that Boethius read him that way? Nor does she explain her sharp dichotomy between poetry and philosophy. Does Boethius tell the poem in order to draw attention to poetry as such, or does he tell the poem to reference – and possibly counterpoint – the end of the tragic Orphic quest? More problematic is her understanding of how Boethius reads the Orphic figure. Whereas Claassen would have us read Boethius as replacing Orpheus, qua poetry, with Philosophy, one finds countless instances of philosophers and theologians in the Christian tradition reading Orpheus as a Christological figure-Jesus Christ, the perfect Orpheus, is able to rescue his lover, the world, from hell. And while we do not have an overt hermeneutic of the Orphic type, Claassen gives no support for why one should so easily dismiss that Boethius’ interpretive methods might have been concomitant with his Christian theological commitments.
Claassen concludes that Philosophy is ultimately successful in her act of consolation. She leads Boethius to the good, a sign that the author Boethius had already found peace with his imprisonment and impending death._ Claassen is confident of this interpretation, even despite the complexities of the Menippean format. As I will demonstrate below, however, the satirical and dialogical structure of the Consolation create nuances, resonances, and complexities for which Claassen can only unsatisfactorily account in her straightforward, didactic reading. By neglecting the impact of the dialogue, the Menippean form, and similarities to Biblical wisdom literature in her interpretation, she is forced to either ignore the weaknesses in Philosophy’s arguments, or dismiss them as poor writing on Boethius’ part.
10 Responses so far
11:40 pm
Dan,
Thanks for your provocative posts on this topic. I’m puzzled by a couple of things.
On your Menippean reading the Consolation contains “a subtle and far more complex subversion of Philosophy’s sufficiency” to lead us to apprehend the ultimate good. Boethius is often read as an early Scholastic who believes that philosophy alone can prove most, if not all, truths of Christianity on purely rational grounds. Your reading suggests an understanding of Boethius that shifts away from this sort of hyper-rationalism…but towards what? So far, the Menippean reading is fully consonant with the orthodox middle or late Scholastic view that philosophy cannot prove all ultimate truths because many of the them are only grasped on the basis of revelation–though philosophy can play a role in helping us understand such truths as far as humanly possible. Of course, that would situate the Consolation firmly in the medieval commentary tradition(albeit of a later era), which I take it you would reject as a reading of the work. But then exactly how does the view of philosophy on the Menippean reading of the Consolation differ from this more orthodox view?
You also observe that “Boethius never allows Philosophy to finish her quest or present a unified argument,” and that “one finds significant gaps in her overall presentation, due in part to the character of Boethius’s voracious questioning.” Here it seems important to keep two points about philosophy in mind: first,unlike poetry, which you can appreciate without writing poetry, you can’t truly appreciate a piece of philosophy without doing philosophy, which involves critically engaging the claims and arguments made by the philosopher (or, in this case, Philosophy). Second, by its very nature philosophy is a skeptical enterprise. When a philosopher is presented with some philosophical claim or argument, her default responses include “Why do you think that?”;”How do you cash out that claim?”; and “Is that really a good argument for what you say?” Hunting for significant gaps in the reasoning lies at the very heart of the discipline. No matter how rigorous and lucid a piece of philosophy is, as long as there are philosophers there will always be “voracious questioning” about it!
In light of these points, the fact that Boethius keeps strenuously objecting to Philosophy is itself a philosophical activity–even if it makes us of poetry. (Something even Plato does.) Consequently, it’s hard to see how the Menippean reading offers a subversion of philosophy, rather than a continuation of it.
Perhaps you plan to address some of these concerns in your future post(s).
Best regards,
Peter
11:47 pm
PS:
Of course, I meant “even if it makes use of poetry”!
Peter
2:23 pm
Peter, great questions. Thanks for your participation.
I’ll just run down your questions and answer them in order. I’m much more linear than Boethius, I suppose.
1. You’re right that my reading of Boethius, to some extent places him in the medieval tradition. Or rather, we can see the medievals and following after him, although I’m skeptical about lumping all medievals together. But a friend of mine at CUA is actually working on a diss. on Medieval aesthetics, pointing out that Aquinas and others are not nearly as logo-centric as modern theology and philosophy have tended to make them. These thinkers are, like Boethius, working in a rich Aesthetic Melieu, coming out of the robust classical era. To think of them as disembodied heads who had little to no experience with the arts, not to mention being influenced by the arts, is like saying Aquinas was not influenced in his thinking by liturgy. Rather, Aquinas saw his own work, as Eugene Rogers has pointed out, as flowing from and returning to a larger liturgical and ecclesiological scheme. But I even suggest at the beginning of the paper that it was the medievals like Chaucer and Dante who get Boethius, and the moderns don’t. Whether all medieval philosophers and theologians read him like I’m suggesting I doubt, because I’m not just suggesting a return to Chaucer but also adopting something like a metaxological reading (William Desmond). I”m not sure what you mean by the commentary tradition. If by commentary you mean that he’s doing something constructive within the commentary framework, then yes.
2. Peter, you’re right that questioning philosophical arguments is very much a continuation of philosophical thinking. But remember that Philosophy herself is claiming an exhaustive grasp of the good (not the muses, the tarts!). The question isn’t about theology vs. philosophy at the beginning of the book, but between poetry and philosophy: which has priority. Philosophy is herself very clear. This is no philosophical argument, but rather one of disciplines. In this regard, Boethius is not only making a philosophy argument but giving us a hint of how he structures the humanities.
While I’d encourage you to read on for more on Menippean satire, especially for the stuff on subversion, my argument is not really that analytic here as it is historical. One needs to attend not only to their own reading of the philosophical aspects of the Consolation, but also the genre. The two can’t be separated, but they have been so often. We need to stop thinking we can read the Cons. as if genre isn’t important, or as if philosophical argument is what Boethius intended us to receive as the primary mode of the book. That be like reading the Republic as a didactic textbook and not as a dialogue. We read Aristotle and Plato differently. Why? Genre.
5:47 pm
Dan,
Thanks for your answers. I’ll try to keep my reply concise.
Aquinas and other high Scholastics are certainly influenced by art, the liturgy, and additional forms of human experience not limited to philosophical inquiry. Nonetheless, it is their position that natural human reason, unassisted by revelation, can arrive at some truths about God, such as that He exists, is simple, is endowed with intellect and will, that He is the highest good, and so forth. Moreover, their arguments for these conclusions typically do not reply upon poetry or other forms of artistic expression. On your reading of Boethius, does he share their view? Or do you take it to be the aim of the Consolation to subvert even this limited confidence in philosophy as natural theology? On your reading, does Boethius think that philosophy’s attempts to determine, e.g., whether God is timeless or whether divine foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom are fundamentally misguided? Does he believe that poetry sheds light on these questions in a way that traditional philosophy can’t? How, exactly?
It still seems to me that subverting the hyper-rationalistic thesis that Philosophy provides an exhaustive grasp of the good is a broadly philosophical result, in the way that later Wittgenstein’s attempts to show how philosophical problems about rule-following, the mind, and so forth are rooted in a failure to heed our ordinary uses of words are broadly philosophical investigations. Ditto for showing that poetry has priority over philosophy when it comes to the truth about goodness and other ultimate matters.
Best regards,
Peter
10:57 pm
Peter, in re: your question: “On your reading, does Boethius think that philosophy’s attempts to determine, e.g., whether God is timeless or whether divine foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom are fundamentally misguided? Does he believe that poetry sheds light on these questions in a way that traditional philosophy can’t? How, exactly?”
I don’t try to answer this question at all. Although, my gut response is to go with Marenbon on this that Boethius still reserves a large place for Philosophy, as you’ll see in the next section. Nevertheless, whether or not Philosophy does those things is beside the point, as Boethius is challenging Philosophy to make sense of his fate, not whether God exists or not. She wants to lead him to the Good. Can she cash out her claims or not?
I’m trying to stick to the plot of the Consolation: the thesis is not that poetry has priority over philosophy, but whether philosophy is exhaustive. I understand your more macro concern about the philosophical tradition at large, but that’s just not a concern in this paper.
Thanks again,
Dan
9:26 am
Dan,
With all due respect, if you’re presenting a reading of the Consolation according to which it subverts Philosophy’s attempt to lead Boethius–or anyone else who follows her methods–to the good (and by implication, whether philosophy is exhaustive, and thus can determine the answers to questions like whether God is in time or whether divine foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom, both of which are discussed in the Consolation), then I expect at least two things:
(1) an exegetical argument to the effect that the Consolation can plausibly be read as subverting Philosophy’s attempt to lead Boethius to the good
(2)a clear explanation of how the Consolation is supposed to subvert Philosophy’s attempt to lead Boethius to the good.
Furthermore, if the Menippean reading is ultimately to make any difference in how we approach questions about the good and other traditionally philosophical topics, then we will also need:
(3)a critical assessment of whether the Consolation actually succeeds in subverting Philosophy’s attempt to lead Boethius to the good.
I’m not saying you should do all three things in your paper; perhaps you plan to focus on (1) and perhaps (2). Yet there are broader issues at stake here, and a full assessment of the proposed Menippean reading requires that all three desiderata be met.
Best regards,
Peter
4:57 pm
Peter,
With all due respect, you are jumping the gun; there are 2 more posts to come. Further, you are being rather demanding of a mere series of blog posts. That said, I certainly understand your concerns, although I might not sympathize with all of them, and beg your patience. Please read the rest of the posts as Cynthia posts them.
Respectfully.
dwm
7:19 pm
Dan,
I look forward to reading your subsequent posts on this topic, which I hope will address the concerns I’ve raised. But I still expect you to address them.
As for whether I’m being overly demanding of blog posts, truth is truth–whether in the blogosphere or elsewhere.
Peter
7:51 pm
Hi Dan,
Thanks again for this series on Boethius. I know very little of Boethius, so my comment will be rather general, yet still applicable. In my recent reading of Augustine’s Confessions, I was struck by Augustine’s assessment of the role of philosophy and wonder whether Boethius might have a similar view. Again, I speak out of great ignorance of Boethius. For example, in book VII of the Confessions, Augustine says of the Platonists that they can point us to the Truth, to God, but cannot show us how to have intimate union with Him. As he explains, the Platonists are those “who see the goal but not the way to it and the Way to our beatific homeland, a homeland to be not merely described but lived in” (VII.20, 26; p. 181 Boulding translation). So perhaps we could say that Platonism (and hence reason unaided by divine revelation) is able to pick out truths about God and point us to Him, but Christianity alone offers a mediator between God and human beings–and as Augustine highlights in book VII, the Platonists’ teaching was sorely lacking with regard to Christology, viz., the incarnation, Christ’s humiliation, and the idea of a sacrificial atoning death.
Again, thanks for your series–I love the part about “the Christian tradition reading Orpheus as a Christological figure-Jesus Christ, the perfect Orpheus, is able to rescue his lover, the world, from hell.”
Best wishes,
Cynthia
2:26 pm
Cynthia, Thanks for your comment. Yeah, I was struck by the Orpheus connection myself, esp the idea of a narrative having such an influence over Christian tradition (Boethius thru Dante). Or in other words, that story telling, or more specifically, the conversion of story telling would be so important to someone like Boethius. In the next section, I’ll cover John Marenbon and Joel Relihan. Both of them point to this aspect of the Consolation.
As for your comparison to Augustine, it depends on whether you go with Marenbon or Relihan. Marenbon is convinced that Boethius is both complimenting and subtly chastizing Philosophy, whereas Relihan is pretty convinced that Boethius is chasing her out of town. But you’re right to point to the fact that Philosophy does identify the good. But, as Relihan makes very clear in his _Prisoner’s Philosophy_, Boethius chooses to return to the world rather than ascending with Philosophy, and so Philosophy in V.6 has to ask Boethius to look at the world differently, indeed, through God’s eyes as something other than a prison, rather than ascending out of the world. So, yes, there is a (proper) function of Philosophy to point away from herself toward revelation. At least, this is the reading proffered by some.
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