The Consolation of Philosophy is a prolonged screening of the kind of happiness. Brought low by the rotation of fortune’s gear, Boethius wants to fluctuate within his muse, Philosophy, for an explication of his bad luck and asks her to offer him what actual happiness is. The debate and reasons that ensue are convoluted. It is troublesome to define what, exactly, Philosophy asks about the kind of real happiness: Does she debate that fortune is an essential ingredient of real happiness, or does she dispute that right happiness is independent of fortune and totally self-sufficient?
Suggest another road, does Philosophy in the end claim that Boethius can be glad without the treats of fortune, or does she ask that he is really unable to find something worth mourning? Philosophy follows on to demonstrate that what many in the universe think of as good; respect (honor), strength, independence from need(wealth), reputation, enjoyment, or those with puzzled or complex passions, such as the willingness for wealth for the intention of power and enjoyment, or force for the aim of money and reputation, and even those who want a wife and children for the entertainment they get. Strength and Beauty of the body award power and fame. All of these passions are for true happiness. She starts by debating that the human’s ultimate target is real happiness. She further debates that God, in morality of his figure, must be specified with the highest good. She understands that, since God and welfare are both the highest good, “God is happiness itself.”
Thus, according to the monolithic consideration, real happiness stays in a space which is untouchable by the illusions of fortune. The treats of fortune are not needful conditions of this form of monolithic happiness. Philosophy asks that mortals trick themselves if they anticipate to gain true happiness over the treats of fortune. She thinks that things such as honor, riches, kingdoms, glitter, and physical enjoyment “seem to give mortals images of the true good, perhaps, or some imperfect goods, but the true and perfect good they cannot bestow.” Since the treats of fortune are not essential for real happiness, then Boethius, according to the monolithic respect, has no cause to mourn his disaster. He has missed nothing of any real value.
Philosophy moves through each of the assumed wares of earth. Physical fairness is a fancy, formed by the other people's willingness to sight grace in the body. Moreover, somatic strength and beauty are easily and readily lost, by time and sickness. Wealth is an origin of anxiety. A man in high position welcomes honor, but the position does not give a value for the owner. Often, Philosophy says, high office originates depravity and pollutes rather than raises the officeholder. If a king has a force, the steady gaining of more power would fetch more happiness. But there is no control on ground which governs all of humanity, so the inseparable scarcity of power in power itself awards misadventure on those with force.
Philosophy conceives the treats of fortune from three diverse corners. She debates that the treats of fortune are neither instrumentally worthy nor adequate for real happiness because they are temporal, they cannot relate to us and they are not essentially good. Each of these sides of Philosophy’s debate awards a destructive consideration of what she later calls is an essential characteristic of right happiness. Philosophy debates that fortune can never give rise to real happiness purely because the kind of fortune is totally paradoxical to the kind of right happiness. True happiness, she calls, is the grand excellence, and the grand excellence cannot be possessed away. The treats of fortune, on the other side, can be possessed away. Since valid happiness and the treats of fortune are extensively different, the treats of fortune will not be appropriate for real happiness, nor they will be instrumentally worthy for the individual who demands valid happiness.
Fame, in reality, is a deceptive thing, nothing is more deceptive than unfair reputation. Also, the reputation of an individual being can never be distributed to all the inhabitance of the universe, just as force can't be over all world. Fame of family doesn't also award a virtue. Bodily enjoyment is of the least interest to Philosophy. Philosophy inspects it with disrespect, and tells that its "pursuit is full of anxiety and its fulfillment full of remorse." It is harmful to health, and even the valuable enjoyment of a wife and kids can also get many disasters. Because these wares are not ideal, they are incapable to award typical welfare to any individual being.
She debates that real happiness is similar with God and the Good. She assumes that because an incomplete Good lives, there must also remain “a steadfast and perfect good.” Furthermore, since God also owns the ideal Good, God and this Good must be similar. Finally, since real happiness and the Good are similar, “true happiness is located in this highest God." With this debate, Philosophy shifts beyond arguing the kind of actual happiness in unfavorable terms to a more specified definition. She debates that the constancy that the treats of fortune deficiency is a defining feature of the notions of which real happiness is involved: the Good that must remain is “steadfast,” and God is endless. Like Philosophy’s debates about the volatile kind of the treats of fortune, her debate of their externality assists to build a negative determination of real happiness. By the end of Book II, we realize both that real happiness cannot be temporal and that it is not constructed in things outward to the logical human entity. In Book III, Philosophy evolves the final demand in positive expressions. She debates that one of the features of valid happiness that it is unlike the foreign treats of fortune (but like the logical human being), it is “one and simple by nature” and “has no parts."
This outcome dovetails carefully with Philosophy’s later debate that real happiness is the grand Good. If it is the status that the treats of fortune are not substantially Good, then, we want to request, what is? Philosophy’s answer to this potential issue is to discuss that real happiness is itself the Good. All individual beings, she says, “strive to reach only one single goal: true happiness. And that is the good thing. . . . It is in fact the highest of all good things and it contains all good things within itself." The debate of the inefficiency of the treats of fortune for real happiness in Book II supplies a passive characterization of real happiness, while Book III supplies a favorable determination of true welfare as God and the Good.
Since in each type of being there is a supreme potential good, and since individual being too is a confirmed type of being, there must be a supreme potential good for a person, not a utility which is supreme in the whole sensation, but one that is supreme for a person. The goods which are attainable to a person are restricted and do not expand to infinity. By means of cause we will demand to define what the supreme Good is which is attainable to man. Boethius recognizes the Supreme Good with God, with happiness and the final origin of all happiness.
All goods found in the universe and contributing to gladness are just sides of God’s goodness. It is self-obvious to Boethius that supreme goodness can only be understood in God, as God is the supreme ideal being, than whom no more ideal. It is also self-clear that the Supreme Good is happiness, or perfect happiness, since ideal happiness lives in God and is similar with God. On the other hand, this Supreme Good is a man, and the best road of reaching this man and getting in attitude therewith is a position of humility and devotion. Real happiness is the continuation of God over mental and religious means. The supreme good is conceived by Boethius, and the only good utility is pursuing. All physical goods are dummy goods, only our soul and brains can lead us to the real good of the spirit: God.