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Hello, in the 6th century AD a successful and intelligent Roman politician called Boethius

found himself unjustly accused of treason.

Trapped in his prison cell awaiting a brutal execution, he found solace in philosophical

ideas about the true nature of reality, about injustice and evil, and the meaning of living

a moral life. His thoughts didn't save him from death, but his ideas

lived on because he wrote about them. He called the book The Consolation of Philosophy.

The Consolation of Philosophy was read widely and the sense of consolation is woven into many

philosophical ideas but what for beethias were the consolations of

philosophy what are they more generally and should philosophy lead us to consolation

or lead us from it.

We'd be to discuss the consolation of philosophy are Roger Scrutin, research professor at the Institute

for the Psychological Sciences, Melissa Lane, Senior University Lecture in History at the University of Cambridge, and

Anthony Graling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College University of London.

Anthony Graling, I understand that the form of the book is a dialogue between Berythius and a grey-eyed

lady. Could you elaborate on that?

The grey-eyed lady is a giveaway. That's Athena, who, um, one of her epithets I think given by Homer and she is a

personification of wisdom which is the goddess of wisdom and therefore the patron saint

of all those who inquire.

It's very important in this connection to remember that the word philosophy and its

etymological origins meant something much more general than we understand by a philosophy now. It meant

...