This Philosophy knows her limits, in other words, but the prisoner does not know his. It is good that Donato draws on the works of Proba and Ennodius to show that in the house of the Anicii there is no gap between rhetoric and faith, between philosophy and Christianity. Further, Neoplatonic philosophy draws a distinction between philosophy and wisdom philosophy has limits philosophy should not be taken beyond its limits the use of Aristotelian logic in the Treatises shows that there is a realm for logic and a realm that logic does not address. There is no discord or disjunction it is only in the ninth century (Bovo of Corvey), when there truly is a separate Christian culture, that Latin readers can look at Consolation and wonder where the Christianity is. The thrust of Donato’s last chapter is that Boethius subscribes to a Christian worldview in which Greek philosophy is the language of belief. Donato’s arguments are that Philosophy as she appears in Consolation is the philosophy of the sixth-century synthesis, philosophy as embodied by and lived by the Roman aristocrats who inherit a living neoplatonic tradition. The character Philosophy who adresses the prisoner in Consolation belongs to the sixth century world. This is what Donato means by “a product of late antiquity”. In two neat formulations, Donato puts it this way: ” Philosophy teaches Boethius that the discovery of a problem that philosophy cannot resolve reveals not its deficiency but its domain” (188) “the Consolation reveals not Philosophy’s failures but her boundaries” (189). There is a wisdom beyond Philosophy, and Philosophy knows it and points the way to it she is part of a more far-reaching system. Rather, because in the sixth century and in the neoplatonic tradition philosophy is readily acknowledged to have limits and boundaries, and because there is in the sixth century in general (and in the house of the Anicii in particular) no disjunction between philosophy and Christianity, or between faith and rhetoric, Boethius the author can have Philosophy the interlocutor advocate prayer when her own limits have been reached. In four chapters (Boethius and the Ideology of the Roman Senatorial Aristocracy The Illness and the Healer How does Philosophy Convey her Therapy? Christianity and the Consolation) he argues for this conclusion: Consolation is not about revealing the limits of philosophy as a surprise or as a failure, not about probing philosophy’s limits as a critique of its limited value certainly not about opposing philosophical truth and Christian truth. His is a conservative voice, and his book is a conservative, but surprising, reading. With it-and in the company his three substantial and near-contemporary articles on Consolation, modestly unrecorded in his bibliography- 1 Donato emerges as a new and powerful voice in Boethian studies.
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