Please join us for a public lecture, “Lady Philosophy on Human Immortality in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy,” with visiting scholar Michael Wiitala (Cleveland State University) on Thursday, February 27 from 5-6:30 pm in Eddy 200.

Roman philosopher Boethius (480-524 CE) wrote the Consolation of Philosophy while imprisoned on false charges of treason that ultimately led to his execution. He wrote it as a dialogue he imagines between himself and Lady Philosophy. Just as the Platonic dialogues, the Consolation is designed to induce its readers to engage in philosophy for themselves, offering arguments that are sometimes based on premises acceptable to the interlocutors that the critical reader might nevertheless wish to more fully examine. One such premise in the Consolation is the claim that the “characters” (mentes) of humans are immortal. Lady Philosophy does not offer an argument in defense of this claim, but rather reminds Boethius he has already been persuaded of it by many arguments. In this lecture, Michael Wiitala will reconstruct what such arguments for the immortality of a person’s character or disposition might have been, drawing on things Lady Philosophy says later in the Consolation and on the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions that she represents.