Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 4.7

. . . “Your anticipation is right; and as doctors are wont to hope, it shows a lively nature now fit to withstand disease. But I see that you are very ready in understanding, and I will multiply my arguments one upon another. See how great is the weakness of these wicked men who cannot even attain that to which their natural instinct leads them, no, almost drives them.

“And further, how if they are deprived of this great, this almost invincible, aid of a natural instinct to follow? Think what a powerlessness possesses these men. They are no light objects that they seek; they seek no objects in sport, objects it is impossible that they should achieve. They fail in the very highest of all things, the crown of all, and in this they find none of the success for which they labor day and night in wretchedness.

“But herein the strength of good men is conspicuous. If a man could advance on foot until he arrived at an utmost point beyond which there was no path for further advance, you would think him most capable of walking: equally so, if a man grasps the very end and aim of his search, you must think him most capable.

“Wherefore also the contrary is true; that evil men are similarly deprived of all strength. For why do they leave virtue and follow after vice? Is it from ignorance of good? Surely not, for what is weaker or less compelling than the blindness of ignorance? Do they know what they ought to follow, and are they thrown from the straight road by passions? Then they must be weak too in self-control if they cannot struggle with their evil passions.

“But they lose thus not only power, but existence all together. For those who abandon the common end of all who exist, must equally cease to exist. And this may seem strange, that we should say that evil men, though the majority of mankind, do not exist at all; but it is so. For while I do not deny that evil men are evil, I do deny that they ‘are,’ in the sense of absolute existence. You may say, for instance, that a corpse is a dead man, but you cannot call it a man. In a like manner, though I grant that wicked men are bad, I cannot allow that they are men at all, as regards absolute being.

“A thing exists which keeps its proper place and preserves its nature; but when anything falls away from its nature, its existence too ceases, for that lies in its nature.

“You will say, ‘Evil men are capable of evil’: and that I would not deny. But this very power of theirs comes not from strength, but from weakness. They are capable of evil; but this evil would have no efficacy if it could have stayed under the operation of good men. And this very power of ill shows the more plainly that their power is nothing. For if, as we have agreed, evil is nothing, then, since they are only capable of evil, they are capable of nothing.”

“That is quite plain.” . . .

—from Book 4, Prose 2

It may seem odd to suggest that evil is really nothing, and that those who do evil are powerless. I have heard many students proclaim, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard!” But if something is good simply by being itself, then evil, as its opposite, will be the failure of something to be itself. By extension, if virtue is a power of living well, then vice is a weakness in living well.

Perhaps the difficulty comes from thinking that evil is therefore somehow “imaginary”, or that its effects are not at all “real”. Yes, its effects are quite real, but as the result of an absence, not of a presence.

Just like the hole in a doughnut is real only in relation to what exists around it, so evil is only real in relation to what is good. It is not in itself a presence, but a privation, the negation of what should be present according to a thing’s nature.

I first came across this sort of argument in St. Augustine’s Confessions, where he struggled to make sense of which things in life were good, and which things in life were bad. Was spirit good, and matter evil? Was there some line dividing different types of beings that were beneficial or harmful? Can I even say that a man is evil in himself, or that his thoughts and actions could more rightly be considered evil?

Boethius here presents an argument very similar to Augustine’s, one I am sure he must have been quite familiar with. We speak of darkness as the absence of light, or hunger as the absence of being fed, and we can also speak of evil as the absence of good. Things are never the problem; the problem is in our failure to make the right use of things, to fulfill them, to complete the very purpose within their natures.

I am misled into believing that wicked people are powerful, because I am looking at all the wrong indicators of what is strong or weak. I see that they claim to own so many things, or to have so much influence over others, even as they really possess none of those things at all.

People may employ things in certain ways, though always in a manner that abuses those things contrary to their nature, and most importantly in a manner that abuses their own nature.

In the simplest of terms, I should not think of a man as being strong if he is starving his soul, or somehow bigger if he is hacking away more and more bits of his humanity. He is becoming less, not more.

If I am living with vice, is it perhaps because I am ignorant of the good? That is a weakness, an absence of the wisdom that should be a part of my rational nature. Is it because I am incapable of controlling my desires? That too is a weakness, an absence of the choice that should be a part of my will.

Slowly but surely, I abandon my very identity as a person. Is there still something there? Yes, but it is the shadow of man, not a complete man at all. It is as if I am throwing myself off a cliff, into the void, abandoning all that I was made to be, falling into emptiness.

That is rather frightening, as it should be, and it should remind me of what I still can be. No one else has been the cause of the inner corruption, except myself. Those judgments I thought would increase me were only diminishing me, in the deepest sense of what it means for me to exist, as a creature given the purpose to know and to love.

Written in 10/2015