Boethius has lost his place in the world, and Lady Philosophy tells him that he has forgotten who he is. Fortune had given him so much that he began to expect permanence from things that could never promise it. Now those things are gone, and the muses helping him turn his misery into poetry are making his despair worse.

In this lesson on Book I of The Consolation of Philosophy, Dr. Andrew Snyder follows Lady Philosophy’s first efforts to restore his sight. Her treatment begins with recovering what it means to be human: a rational creature receptive to divine reason, with a place in an ordered cosmos. The inward light she calls him to remember has its source in God. Trying to manufacture meaning out of ourselves leaves us isolated from the reality in which we could find our bearings.

Through the medieval picture of the heavens and Socrates' faithfulness even unto death, we consider what remains ours when fortune turns. We ought to receive the good things of this life with gratitude and hold them in an open hand. Our freedom depends on how we relate to the eternal good, and Lady Philosophy’s diagnosis leads us toward Kierkegaard’s account of despair in The Sickness unto Death.

This episode shares a lesson from Life, Death, and Meaning with Beowulf and Boethius. The full course is coming to the Mythic Mind Fellowship, including eight videos that have not otherwise been released.