‘Think again of precious stones: does their gleam attract your eyes? But any excellence they have is their own brilliance, and belongs not to men: wherefore I am amazed that men so strongly admire them. What manner of thing can that be which has no mind to influence, which has no structure of parts, and yet can justly seem to a living, reasoning mind to be beautiful? Though they be works of their creator, and by their own beauty and adornment have a certain low beauty, yet are they in rank lower than your own excellence, and have in no wise deserved your admiration.
The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius
I’ve never understood the fascination for gold, jewelry and the like. I don’t mean the aesthetic appreciation for them; that’s something else entirely. That too I lack but I can imagine someone finding them pretty in the way someone might admire art or scenery. But obsession and fascination – in particular craving for them, the lengths to which one can go to acquire them is different.
‘Out of all these possessions, then, which you reckon as your wealth, not one can really be shown to be your own. For if they have no beauty for you to acquire, what have they for which you should grieve if you lose them, or in keeping which you should rejoice? And if they are beautiful by their own nature, how are you the richer thereby? For these would have been pleasing of themselves, though cut out from your possessions. They do not become valuable by reason that they have come into your wealth; but you have desired to count them among your wealth, because they seemed valuable.
The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius
Either these things have some beauty, that is, some value of their own, or they don’t. If they don’t, then the craving to acquire and own them is a delusion. For if they have no beauty for you to acquire, what have they for which you should grieve if you lose them, or in keeping which you should rejoice.
I’ll assume they do have some value, even if I don’t see it myself. But that changes nothing. Whatever value they have is their own, not mine. They were valuable before I acquired them, they will be valuable after they pass on from me; my ownership adds nothing to them. For these would have been pleasing of themselves, though cut out from your possessions. They do not become valuable by reason that they have come into your wealth; but you have desired to count them among your wealth, because they seemed valuable.
Nor does my ownership of them add anything to me, though I might bask in their glory thinking that I acquire their value, thus adding to my own. But we are separate entities, my possessions and I; their beauty is no more my beauty than a pious servant’s prayers are his master’s. And if they are beautiful by their own nature, how are you the richer thereby?
What that thought really reveals about me is that I have little or no value of my own; I depend upon these items as one depends upon a crutch. Like the moon, I am not luminescent; I bask in the sun’s reflected glory.
My ownership adds no value to these things, just as it adds none to me.
‘Again, you think that you appear beautiful in many kinds of clothing. But if their form is pleasant to the eyes, I would admire the nature of the material or the skill of the maker. Or are you made happy by a long line of attendants? Surely if they are vicious, they are but a burden to the house, and full of injury to their master himself; while if they are honest, how can the honesty of others be counted among your possessions?
The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius
This is harder to argue but I think the same applies to clothing too, one of those items far closer to us than others, close enough to mistake it to be a part of us. ‘I look good / bad in this’. Yet I – I the human being – am the same, under whatever the material is. How I am is independent of the clothing; but perhaps you could argue how I look isn’t. Which is in a way to say the entire goal of this exercise of clothing is literally ‘dressing up’ my ordinariness into something more beautiful. Transforming what I really am into something that looks more attractive; whether this transformation is good or bad is irrelevant here.
It’s the material or the design that is capable of transforming this ordinary person into something apparently beautiful. But if their form is pleasant to the eyes, I would admire the nature of the material or the skill of the maker. The beauty is in the clothing. By wearing it, I believe I acquire it, add it to my own. That wasn’t the case with other trinkets, why should this be any different? But even if you don’t agree, you’ll concede it’s so only as long as I don the garment. Take it off and I go back to my ordinary, blemished state; the beauty of the clothing returning back to it – it never was mine.
What holds for the acquisition of items holds for the ‘acquisition’ of people and positions. Someone works for me, his malice or incompetence is my headache but not my sin, just as his honesty and competence help me, but aren’t my virtues. There’s a difference between the two, as St. Clare in Uncle Tom’s Cabin points out – owning a religious slave won’t win him any points with god.
And ‘position’ and titles are no different.
Consider how great was the power in Rome of old of the office of Præfect: now it is an empty name and a heavy burden upon the income of any man of Senator’s rank. ‘The præfect then, who was commissioner of the corn-market, was held to be a great man. Now there is no office more despised. For, as I said before, that which has no intrinsic beauty, sometimes receives a certain glory, sometimes loses it, according to the opinion of those who are concerned with it. If then high offices cannot make men venerated, if furthermore they grow vile by the infection of bad men, if changes of time can end their glory, and, lastly, if they are held cheaply in the estimation of whole peoples, I ask you, so far from affording true beauty to men, what beauty have they in themselves which men can desire?
The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius
A position bestows nothing to the one who occupies it. Nothing intrinsically, that is, though it may offer him status or wealth (temporarily). But of itself, it is limited. Temporally – what is coveted today is frequently dust tomorrow. Spatially – I may be the cat’s whiskers in my little pond but step out of it and I find myself a nobody. If changes of time can end their glory, and, lastly, if they are held cheaply in the estimation of whole peoples.
And even within these narrow confines of space and time, there is nothing in a position that carries back to me. For, as I said before, that which has no intrinsic beauty, sometimes receives a certain glory, sometimes loses it, according to the opinion of those who are concerned with it. Perhaps the title is admired; perhaps even for good reason – but that doesn’t mean I possess those qualities that brought this admiration. My office can’t raise my value. Yet, the position can lose whatever value it does have when one rotten apple occupies it, so weak is it. High offices cannot make men venerated, if furthermore they grow vile by the infection of bad men.
‘Does the beauty of landscape delight you?’
‘Surely, for it is a beautiful part of a beautiful creation: and in like manner we rejoice at times in the appearance of a calm sea, and we admire the sky, the stars, the sun, and the moon.’
‘Does any one of these,’ said she, ‘concern you? Dare you boast yourself of the splendid beauty of any one of such things? Are you yourself adorned by the flowers of spring? Is it your richness that swells the fruits of autumn? Why are you carried away by empty rejoicing. Why do you embrace as your own the good things which are outside yourself? Fortune will never make yours what Nature has made to belong to other things’
The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius
And so it is with nature and culture. It may be that these possess some beauty; there’s nothing wrong (or right) in admiring it. But it might be worth remembering that it’s not mine, no matter how beautiful it may be. Are you yourself adorned by the flowers of spring? Nor is it to my credit in any way; I haven’t done anything to bring it into existence. Is it your richness that swells the fruits of autumn?
All the pristine landscapes I click myself in, all the different places and ‘cultures’ I proudly proclaim I’ve ‘experienced’; their beauty, if any, is theirs, not mine, no matter how much I may seek to flaunt it, subtly or otherwise. Why do you embrace as your own the good things which are outside yourself?
Recognition
‘..but there is one thing which can attract minds, which, though by nature excelling, yet are not led by perfection to the furthest bounds of virtue; and that thing is the love of fame and reputation for deserving well of one’s country’,
The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius
There’s a difference between ‘recognition’ and fame. Recognition seems to imply you deserve something – your quality is ‘recognized’ by people. Fame might or mightn’t be deserved. The archetype of the fame-seeker was Herostratus, who burnt the Temple of Artemis for no other reason than to gain notoriety.
Praise for virtue, on the other hand, is a kind of recognition. And it’s easy and almost natural to want. If I’ve done something, whether it’s helping someone, or performing some feat I think people would be impressed by, it’s almost as though I ought to get some recognition for it. After all, I’m only revealing a truth, a fact yet concealed, to others. The recognition is something I’ve earned through my deeds, not something I seek undeservedly. The love of fame and reputation for deserving well of one’s country’.
‘You know not how to act rightly except for the breezes of popular opinion and for the sake of empty rumours; thus the excellence of conscience and of virtue is left behind, and you seek rewards from the tattle of other men. Listen to the witty manner in which one played once upon the shallowness of this pride. A certain man once bitterly attacked another who had taken to himself falsely the name of philosopher, not for the purpose of true virtue, but for pride of fame; he added to his attack that he would know soon whether he was a philosopher, when he saw whether the other bore with meekness and patience the insults he heaped upon him. The other showed patience for a while and took the insults as though he scoffed at them, until he said, “Do you now see that I am a philosopher?” “I should have, had you kept silence,” said the other stingingly. But we are speaking of great men: and I ask, what do they gain from fame, though they seek glory by virtue? what have they after the body is dissolved at death? For if men die utterly, as our reason forbids us to believe, there is no glory left to them at all, since they whose it is said to be, do not exist. If, on the other hand, the mind is still conscious and working when it is freed from its earthly prison, it seeks heaven in its freedom and surely spurns all earthly traffic: it enjoys heaven and rejoices in its release from the of this world.’
The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius
If I look deeper, I find that, in some cases, it’s the desire for recognition that drives the deed. The reason I’m doing it is so that I can think of myself as good, or, even better, tell people (subtly) and have them think of me as good. Like the pseudo – philosopher who stoically bears every insult, waiting to crow his triumph of patience to the world and be recognized for it.
It’s essentially virtue with a motive. And that’s perhaps not a bad thing, especially if you judge by the consequences. If recognition, or the desire for recognition, drives people to be good and helpful, what’s wrong? The consequence is after all a world with more helpful people in it.
Whether it is or isn’t bad is again irrelevant here. It’s more interesting to ask why it’s a thing at all. What do I gain from someone else’s recognition, their opinion? You seek rewards from the tattle of other men. I don’t think there’s anything there; it doesn’t change who I am. What someone else thinks about me doesn’t make me any better, nor does it make me worse.
What seeking their recognition can do, though, is distort my own incentives. You know not how to act rightly except for the breezes of popular opinion and for the sake of empty rumours. I find myself doing not what I want, but something else entirely. Something I don’t really want, but something I want others to think I have done. To know if that’s the case I just need to ask – would I still do something even if I couldn’t tell anyone I’d done it?
‘Is there then no good which belongs to you and is implanted within you, that you seek your good things elsewhere, in things without you and separate from you? Have things taken such a turn that the animal, whose reason gives it a claim to divinity, cannot seem beautiful to itself except by the possession of lifeless trappings?
The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius
How plainly and how widely do you err by thinking that anything can be adorned by ornaments that belong to others! Surely that cannot be. For if anything becomes brilliant by additions thereto, the praise for the brilliance belongs to the additions. But the subject remains in its own vileness, though hidden and covered by these externals.’
I was interested to see my take on these ideas was already pretty much put forth a millennium and a half back by someone in the direst of circumstances. That person, Boethius, died 1,500 years ago, brought down from the heights of power of Rome by those who apparently opposed him because of his virtue. Languishing in prison, without a trial, depressed and awaiting to be eventually tortured and executed, he wrote to himself a consolation, not an emotional balm meant to soothe, but a calmly reasoned analysis.