Boethius, the patron saint of bullshit detectors

My man, Boethius.

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From Taleb the Philosopher by Joshua P. Hochschild.

Boethius’s ambitious goal to synthesize all of Plato and Aristotle was tragically interrupted by political intrigue. Dante, placing him in Paradise, identifies Boethius only as “the holy soul who made manifest the deceits of the world” (l’anima s­anta che ’l mondo fallace / fa manifesto), which, not to put too fine a point on it, makes Boethius the patron saint of bullshit detectors.

In Paradiso, Boethius joins other holy theologians in a circle as if to comprise a harmonious clock, a “glorious wheel,” alluding perhaps to the more troublesome Wheel of Fortune Boeth­ius made famous in his Consolation of Philosophy. There, Lady Philosophy reminded Boethius that the unforeseen misfortunes of the world cannot harm a true lover of wisdom: Even inscrutable, unpredictable fortune is an instrument and manifestation of God’s perfect Providence. In Latin, temeritas means both rashness and randomness, and Lady Philosophy brings to Boeth­ius not only the consoling stability of reason, but also the authentic courage to face reason’s abusers.

Ancient philosophers were familiar with the limits of reason and the stormy seas of life, and as the figure of Lady Philosophy suggests, Boethius’s treatment of fortune owes at least as much to pagan thought—especially Plato and a Neoplatonism informed by Aristotle—as to Christian teaching. The existential import of chance, fate, and fortune is so closely identified with Greek and Roman thinkers that, when fourteenth-century artisans planned the elaborate inlaid marble floor tiles of the Cathedral of Siena, they framed the Wheel of Fortune with quotations from Euripides, Aristotle, Epictetus, and Seneca.

Seneca is the favored philosopher of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, our most important contemporary theorist of chance, luck, and the vagaries of life. Taleb has made the art of bullshit detection a way of life, and he appreciates Seneca in particular because he found in Stoic teaching not consolation for misfortune so much as spiritual discipline for handling fantastic wealth. (Seneca’s quotation in the Siena marble: Magna servitus est magna fortuna, “Great fortune is a great slavery.”) Taleb is a successful options trader, but he is more proud of what he is not: a sucker, a charlatan, or a slave to money or man. If Boethius represents courage in the face of unfortunate suffering, Seneca evokes disciplined emotional regulation, prudent decision-making, and generous responsibility in the face of great blessings.