Boethius vs. CHE at the University of Tulsa

AFTER-ACTION REVIEW:

I enjoyed myself tremendously at the Boethius 1500 conference and had some great conversations. A large group of blazer-wearing students from Holy Family Classical School were present for some of Friday's sessions. I had a couple of brief conversations with Dean Jennifer Frey. The presence of the Honors College at TU under her leadership should produce great synergy with the city's growing number of classical schools. I imagine TU graduates becoming teachers in our classical schools, and graduates of the schools heading to TU's Honors College to study classics alongside their chosen majors.

The March 2026 Honors College conference will celebrate America and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

I was proud to see Tulsa Classical Academy well represented by Head of School Ronald Garcia, who participated in a panel on what Boethius can teach us about classical education. Mr. Garcia said that the end (purpose) of education is not clear to everybody. Knowledge should change our hearts. Boethius taught that the end of education is the acquisition of truth. As Head of School, his challenge is to help people make this paradigm shift to delight in the acquisition of truth. Learning the acquisition of wisdom is difficult. Wrestling with truth is the most difficult task we will take on.

In response to a question related to technology in school, TCA's Garcia said that it's a difficult ask for the students and their parents, but there are no phones in the classroom, which clears the path for learning. The classroom is a sacred space. The teacher in that space is the master of these disciplines. The goal is 100% participation, with the teacher asking the questions. That's the culture you have to create, but it isn't easy to do.

Jonathan Arnold, chairman of TU's history department and director of the classical studies program, gave an entertaining presentation on Boethius's political and cultural context in the 6th century Ostragothic Kingdom of Italy under the rule of Theodoric, as seen through the works of contemporary writers Cassiodorus and Ennodius. It was interesting to learn that although the last Roman Emperor was deposed in 476 and the Roman Republic in all but name had been gone for half a millennium, the forms of the Republic -- consuls and senators -- continued, albeit in subservience to a monarch. I'm impressed to learn that scholarship into early medieval Italy is happening right here in Tulsa.

Barbara Wyman of McNeese State University in Louisiana took us into Boethius's book on music and how it brought the ancient Greek understanding of music into the Middle Ages, linking music to the other disciplines of the quadrivium (geometry, astronomy, arithmetic), the topic of an earlier lecture by Ann Moyer of the University of Pennsylvania. Wyman traced these concepts from Pythagoras through Augustine and Boethius to Johannes Kepler's Harmonices Mundi, Athanasius Kircher's Musurgia Universalis, and C. S. Lewis's The Discarded Image. (The popular and fascinating Atlas Obscura website grew out of the Athanasius Kircher Society.) Her presentation featured some intriguing woodcut diagrams from the Glareanus edition of Boethius's works, published in Basel in 1546 and some audio of the Music of the Spheres, the Song of Earth as captured by Voyager. Wyman apologized for traversing some of the same ground that had been covered by other speakers, but as someone new to Boethius, I appreciated her cohesive, high-level introduction.

The highlight of the daytime sessions were presentations by three students from TU's Honors College, linking the Consolation of Philosophy to other works in the Great Conversation: Abby Fakhoury discussed Boethius's choice to present Philosophy as female in light of Pope John Paul II's 1995 Letter to Women, showing how Lady Philosophy embodied the feminine qualities of maternity and sensitivity. Piano performance major Jadyn Fording spoke of music in the Consolation as a "poultice for a pain," used by Lady Philosophy to restore Boethius to sufficient strength for the harsher medicine of philosophical dialogue. Fording, one of two TU music students resident at Montereau retirement community, spoke of the links between music and memory and contrasted the ancient and medieval understanding of music with the modern perspective. Electrical engineering student Paul Eisterhold contrasted Boethius's notion of chance and fortune with the idea of chance and randomness in the 20th century quantum mechanics of Einstein, Bell, Heisenberg, and Schroedinger. I was impressed at how clearly the three students presented their ideas and their insight in interlacing ideas from this early medieval work with their modern counterparts.

It's exciting to have a college-level Great Books program available here in Tulsa. Unlike St. John's College, which offers a single Great Books program for all undergraduates, TU's Honors College program is a four-semester Great Books sequence that can coexist with a wide variety of majors.

At the pre-banquet reception, I enjoyed talking Tulsa history (expressways and the urban destruction they caused) with Jeff Kos and fellow MIT alumnus Michael Blechner. Michael and I first met at an MIT reception celebrating the 25th anniversary of MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. (I was still an undergraduate, he had left teaching to go into technical writing, and I recall that he advised the path of the gentleman scholar -- make a lot of money first and then use it to fund a life of scholarly leisure. Alas, I didn't follow that path.)

The banquet began with a presentation of an icon of St. Severinus Boethius (who was canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 1883) and Lady Philosophy, introduced by its creator, Joseph Bremer. The icon can be seen on the conference home page.

Peter Kreeft spoke to us via Zoom from his home in Massachusetts on ten of many lessons we need to learn from Boethius. He said that Boethius was original for being unoriginal: The first four books of the Consolatio are unoriginal, but in Book V he attempts to reconcile the divine omniscience with human free will.

From my notes:

• In the modern west, tradition is a sneer word.
• The most rebellious philosophy is orthodoxy.
• Tell the truth, and you'll be original.
• My life is not about me.
• America believes in 350 million gods.
• Second things flourish when subordinated to first things, but die when substituted for first things. Beauty flourishes only as a servant of truth.
• Fact, Faith, and Feeling are like three men walking on a wall: As long as Faith keeps eyes on Fact, Feeling follows and all three keep walking, but if Faith turns back to worry about Feeling, Faith and Feeling fall.
• Freud investigates your personality. Boethius investigates your personhood.
• The first step is a step backward in humility. Philosophy begins in wonder: 1. Surprise and confusion. 2. Questioning. 3. Contemplation.
• All pre-modern minds and almost no modern minds assume that there is a universal and objectively real teleology.
• Moderns don't know the purpose of life because we cannot believe any summum bonum exists. We have an absolute allergy to absolutes.
• Darwin has undermind th elogos of creator and creation, design, purpose, and meaning. Non-existence is not a sufficient cause of existence. The effect cannot exceed the cause.
• Human existence is radically different from existence of everything else.
• We are so free we can lose ourselves. ("What doth it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul.") To lose your goodness is to lose your being, your very essence.
• Humans can become sub-human or super-human. Rocks cannot become sub-rock or super-rock. Cats cannot become sub-cat or super-cat.
• Those in hell are not men, but ex-men. The most terrifying words in scripture: "Depart from me. I never knew you." To lose your being known by God is to lose your being. In God, knowledge and love is not only in agreement, but in identity.
• What seems bad fortune is really good fortune. Misfortune teaches; good fortune deceives. Romans 8:32: All things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.
• God is the author of our story. Christ's suffering is the greatest suffering, but his joy is the greatest joy. Suffering makes us wise, and wisdom makes us holy.
• Divine providence gives us the exact amount of good and bad fortune we need (Consolation, Book IV, Prose 6). God knows the strength of our souls and the consequences of our receiving good or bad fortune.
• In Book V, Boethius wrestles with omniscience vs. free will. God does not have "foreknowledge" because he is outside of time as well as space. He is the eternal contemporary of all events.
• Eternity is the whole, perfect, and simultaneous possession of endless life.
• Reason and faith are both roads to wisdom that eventually converge.

Kreeft said that Dostoevsky and Sartre began from the same major premise: If God does not exist, all things are morally permissible. Dostoevsky adds the minor premise: All things are not morally permissible; therefore, God exists. Sartre adds the minor premise: God does not exist; therefore, all things are morally permissible. But Dostoevsky's minor premise is clearly true: All things are not morally permissible.

During the Q&A, Kreeft said that Aquinas's Latin is easy. Augustine's Latin is complex, but it is worth learning Latin just to be able to read Augustine's Confessions. His favorite "modern" philosophers are Chesterton and Pascal. Pascal is honest, clear, and unpredictable. He also appreciates John Henry Newman, Kirkegaard, and William James.