The Catholic Culture Podcast: 189 – St. Boethius, Stoicism and Neoplatonism

Jan 22, 2025

St. Anicius Manlius Severius Boethius’s book The Consolation
of Philosophy, which he wrote in prison while awaiting
martyrdom around the year 524, is one of the single most
influential works for medieval philosophy and theology. But
Boethius also owed much to the pagan philosophy that came before
him.  Thomas Ward has just written a commentary on Boethius’s
dialogue for Word on Fire, entitled After Stoicism: Last Words
of the Last Roman Philosopher.

Topics discussed include:

• Boethius’s debt to Stoic ethics and how he critiques the Stoic
  view of happiness
• The influence of neo-Platonist philosophy on Boethius
• Questions about the account of deification given by Lady
  Philosophy – is it more Platonist than Christian?
• Boethius’s brilliant arguments about how God’s way of knowing
  differs from ours

Links

Thomas Ward, After Stoicism: Last Words of the Last Roman
Philosopher
https://bookstore.wordonfire.org/products/after-stoicism?srsltid=AfmBOopBRfuMW6DMx_iUEH9u2gjSswySJAZ__JrdTznAIpZ3Ptj9mDMJ

Way of the Fathers episode on Boethius
https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/st-boethius-church-father-and-medieval-scholar/

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