Flourishing

            I had to make coffee twice on Thursday morning because I had finished up the last of the Folgers but there wasn’t enough for a cup. I had planned on opening up the Maxwell House to get the third tablespoon that was needed for decent coffee, but I forgot and made a weak brew. Once I tasted it I had to start all over again.

            I didn’t have time to finish my coffee before getting ready to leave for class. Once I had my bike in the hall and I was all dressed, deodorized and tooth brushed, I had time to finish the coffee. I discovered that the aftertaste of mint toothpaste combined with coffee tastes like sage.

            The heat wave was way over. I wore trousers, a shirt and my leather jacket to ride to campus but I removed the long sleeved shirt once I got to the Bahen Building. I did a bit of writing while I waited outside the room for the algorithm class to be over. Once it was finished the students were lingering in the area where I wanted to sit, so I stood off to the side. I think the instructor thought that I was the incoming pressure because he asked if I needed the blackboard. It’s odd that he thought to ask even though he never automatically feels obligated to clean up after himself in that regard. I told him that since I was waiting for a seat anyway I’d erase the board.

            I realized when I opened up my backpack that I’d forgotten to bring my notebook. I’d brought it to the kitchen table to put it in but then I went for my laptop and then the notebook slipped my mind. Looking desperately for some kind of paper to use I realized that there was plenty of space in my 2017 daily planner. To get the whole lecture I only needed to use up until March 15^th. If this had been the 80s, when there was still lots of work for models, there would have been much less room.

            Professor Black handed out our essay assignment. Interestingly it was not based on one of our syllabus readings. I’d never come across an essay topic that was based on separate text.

            Of working on our paper she advised us not to look for formal mistakes in Augustine’s thinking but to try to zero in on what he is pointing to. Figure out and analyze the concepts that he is putting forward.

            Our lecture was on Boethius. He was born in Rome around 480 and he was an ethnic Roman when the empire was being ruled by an Ostrogoth king named Theoderic. The king recognized that Romans had experience in government and so he continued on with the Roman senatorial structure. Boethius was appointed a consul and so he and Theoderic were best buddies until thirteen years later he was accused of treason. Some of his friends had been arrested for trying to overthrow Theoderic but when Boethius came to their defence it was considered that he had incriminated himself. He was imprisoned and eventually executed, dying before he turned 50.

            He wrote Consolation of Philosophy while in prison after Lady Philosophy came to console him in a dream.

Unlike Augustine, Boethius excelled in Greek. He translated most of the works of

Plato and Aristotle, with commentary. A feature of Neoplatonism was to try to harmonize Plato and Aristotle and to use Aristotle as an introduction to Plato as if their arguments had not been in conflict. He translated Aristotle’s logical works as well as Porphyry’s Isagoge, which was a textbook in Greek on Aristotle’s logic. Later these translations were referred to as “the old logic” because their themes were not Christian.

            He wrote theological treatises on the Trinity and whether the members of the Trinity were persons. “Person” can be defined as individual substance of a rational nature, excluding those that are lower than human.

            Boethius has been referred to as the last Roman.

            Philosophers are confused by The Consolations because it is more pagan than Christian. Lady Philosophy is presented as a rational rather than a religious figure.

            He had been depressed because of his imprisonment until Lady Philosophy arrived to tell him to snap out of it and use your reason. She is described as having a majestic countenance with flashing eyes of bright colour. She is a boundless figure of varying height. She can penetrate the heavens at her full stature. Her clothing is of delicate thread that she wove herself into an everlasting fabric. At the lower edge of her robe, which had been torn by the hands of violent men, was the letter pi (for the practical) and at the top was theta (for theory), with a ladder in between. The Consolations is written like the Platonic dialogue between Socrates and Diotima. The work also contains poems. By the 12^th Century The Consolation had become very influential.

            Lady Philosophy convinces Boethius that there is a plan to his suffering. While discussing the true nature of happiness they wrestle with the problem of evil. She argues that people who do evil are so unhappy that they are almost non-beings. This is still a problem though because suffering is an overarching theme from Aristotle and a specific theme from Plato. They establish Aristotle’s view of happiness (eudaemonia) in the sense of flourishing rather than having a great time. These are the nicomachean ethics of virtue and contemplation. Aristotle says that happiness must be self-sufficient and autonomous. But even Aristotle recognizes that one can be virtuous and contemplative but in extreme circumstances that might not be enough to make one happy. Plato says in his Gorgias that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. So Beothius is better off than those that are torturing him. She says that if you start to look at evil people, they are powerless to the point of being almost nothing. They are the least able to attain happiness because they lack self-control. They willingly turn from what is good to the point of ceasing to exist. They seek nothing and become nothing like a corpse.

            All vices are animal-like. Powerful and evil people should be punished because that gives them a chance to change.             But what is the purpose of virtuous people suffering? Punishment won’t make a good person better. Why do bad things happen to good people? We don’t have the full story. If we knew the whole plan we would understand. Chance occurrences have an explanation that we don’t know. Boethius is talking about fate, which refers to events as seen by us, which is an incomplete picture. Fate is the web of occurrences. You were going to take a plane but missed it and the plane crashed. That same web when viewed from an eternal perspective is providence. Providence is the unmoving and simple form that becomes complex when it unfolds. Lady Philosophy says that every providence is good and so maybe he needs to be in prison for it to be fulfilled. He is convinced but does not understand.

            Is there a place for human freedom in a deterministic picture? She says that within providence there is room for freedom and that nothing is random.

I asked Professor Black after class about her having picked reading material for the essay that is different from that in the syllabus and she said she usually does it that way, with related but different material.

            I rode down Beverley to Queen and in Grange Park behind OCADU and the AGO I saw that after several decades they had moved the Henry Moore sculpture from the front of the gallery to the park. I guess now if a three year old with a hammer came by to bang on it like my daughter once did, no security guards would come along to try to stop her.

            I stopped at Freshco to buy grapes, canned peaches, peameal bacon, mustard, apples and yogourt.

            I cooked the frozen ground pork that I’d gotten from the food bank in a litre of chicken broth, then I added a chopped up butternut squash and two leeks. It was a little bland, so I added a carton of Thai tomato-coconut soup and some cayenne. That woke up the flavour.