Please join us for this week's History of Philosophy Works-in-Progress Luncheon! This week's presenter is doctoral student Nicholas Babich (Department of English, concentration in Medieval Literature, Notre Dame), with a presentation on "Meditation and the Rhetoric of Conversion in the Consolation of Philosophy".
Each meeting consists of a presentation by a graduate student or faculty member on a project that they are working on in the history of philosophy, followed by a period of comments/questions from other participants. The workshop is designed to give contributors the opportunity to develop ideas and receive helpful feedback on projects/papers in a friendly and low stakes environment.
Lunch is provided for registered attendees. Sign up here!
Abstract: Scholarship has long acknowledged Boethius' debt to Augustine in his construction of the Consolation of Philosophy. More specifically, they have found its structure and some of his methods akin to the method of mediation in the Soliloquies, and recent scholarship has seen a profound similarity between Augustine's doctrine of spirituality and Boethius'.
I propose that this method is partially manifested in the construction of the Consolation's narrative, which manifests a spirituality which is neither Platonic nor stoic. Rather, the narrative of the Consolation enacts a kind of meditative method that tests the bounds of contemplation according to secular lights. Platonism and stoicism (and all manner of other systems of thought) are tried, and then found wanting. In a radical narrative shift, Boethius' interlocutor, Philosophia, declares that she can do no more for the prisoner Boethius awaiting his death. Rather, if he desires true consolation, he must live worthily and pray for God's grace.
This narrative trajectory, which I call conversion of narrative, is of great rhetorical significance, providing a means by which sacred and secular narrative content can interact. To articulate the mechanism of conversion of narrative in terms that are not only theological, I enlist the work of Paul Ricoeur, showing a means by which conversion of narrative can exist both in theological and literary-rhetorical methodological spaces.
Originally published at historyofphilosophy.nd.edu.