Posted by
Boris Tiraspolsky on Thursday, April 09, 2009 1:20:30 AM
"When we don’t know who we are, we forget the real purpose of things. We imagine that “the wicked and the criminal have power and happiness.” But they don’t. Man comes into the world with nothing, and he leaves with nothing. What is there to lament? The happiness of good fortune is false happiness. Philosophy shows that our high expectations are ridiculous: “If after freely choosing her [Fortune] as the mistress to rule your life you want to draw up a law to control her coming and going?” The Goddess Fortuna says to the fallen man, “Yes, rise upon on my wheel if you like, but don’t count it an injury when by the same token you begin to fall, as the rules of the game will require. You must surely have been aware of my ways.”
When Fortune Turns Against Us
by J. R. Nyquist
The last surviving work of classical antiquity,
The Consolation of Philosophy, was written by Ancius Boethius (
c. A.D. 480-524), a Roman official imprisoned in the wake of a political conspiracy.
The Consolation was the most influential philosophical book of the Middle Ages. In it, the doomed prisoner reflects on the
real meaning of life: “While I was quietly thinking … to myself and giving vent to my sorrow with the help of my pen, I became aware of a woman standing over me.” The woman was Philosophy, appearing in female form. Philosophy, wrote Boethius, was a “nurse in whose house I had been cared for since my youth.” He turned to Philosophy and poured out his story as an innocent man falsely accused, imprisoned and awaiting execution. Philosophy patiently listened, then put the following question to Boethius: “Do you believe that this life consists of haphazard and chance events, or do you think it is governed by some rational principle?”
Continued...