Philosophical Consolation in
Christianity and Islam:
Boethius and al-Kindi
Can philosophy console people in distress? Can phi-
losophy console such people even if they are members
of one of the great monotheistic religions? The first
question has long been disputed among philosophers
and the second between philosophers and believers, and
among philosophers who are also believers. Such
disputes1 have their roots in one’s conception of
philosophy. Is philosophy simply a “theory or contem-
plation”, or is it first and foremost a “way of life”, as
claimed by Pierre Hadot?2 Juliusz Domański has shown
how this alternative led to controversies from Antiquity
to the Renaissance.3 To determine whether philosophy
can console I have chosen to focus on two philosophers,
Boethius (ca. 480-525/526), who wrote the famous
Consolation of Philosophy, though he was a Christian
who penned theological treatises in defense of the faith,
and al-Kindi (ca. 801–866), a Muslim, who authored the
Art of Dispelling Sorrows.
Many readers of Boethius’s Consolation were so
puzzled that Boethius, while in jail and fearing execu-
tion, would offer a purely philosophical consolation
instead of turning to religion, that they argued he did
not write the theological treatises attributed to him.
Even though such a view is now generally rejected,
Henry Chadwick, in his famous 1981 book, Boethius:
The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and
Philosophy, indicates from the beginning a need to raise
the issue of Boethius’s faith in light of the Consolation
of Philosophy, and ends with his own resolution of the
problem.4
The properly philosophical aspect of al-Kindi’s Art
of Dispelling Sorrows did not seem to bother his Muslim
readers and imitators, but, as our colleague Sidney H.
Griffith has so fascinatingly discovered,5 it led Christian
Arab followers borrowing from him pointedly to add
reflections on Christ’s passion.
Both texts are grounded in the same ancient philo-
sophical tradition which recent research has proved to
Topoi 19: 25–34, 2000.
 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Thérèse-Anne Druart
permeate all Hellenistic schools – be it in their Greek
or Latin garb, as manifested so powerfully in Lucretius’s
Epicurean poem, De rerum natura. Among others,
Jackie Pigeaud in her 1981 work, La maladie de l’âme,6
Martha C. Nussbaum in The Poetics of Therapy, a
collection of essays by various authors which she edited
in 1990,7 André-Jean Voelke, in La philosophie comme
thérapie de l’âme (1993),8 and again Martha C.
Nussbaum in The Therapy of Desire, published in 1994,9
have explored this tradition and some of its common
features. It considers philosophy a way of life and the
medicine which can cure the soul’s diseases as bodily
medicine does those of the body. It also uses literary
artistry to gain a broader audience one wishes to convert
to one’s own philosophical stance.
This tradition may well go back to Plato’s Timaeus,
since its last pages deal with the diseases of the body
(81 e–86 a) as well as the diseases of the soul – gener-
ally called α’´νοια or lack of reason, and subdivided into
µανία (madness) and α ’ µαθία (ignorance) – and their
care (86 b–90 d).10 This conception of the diseases of
the soul indicates that at least some of them are linked
to a kind of epistemic deficiency. We know that the
Timaeus deeply influenced the Consolation, since
Boethius refers to it just before the turning point of his
text,11 the famous cosmological poem III, IX, “O qui
perpetua”, inspired by this very text. We also know that,
very early, the Arabic philosophical tradition makes
great use of at least a summary of the Timaeus prepared
by Galen, who was both a physician and a philosopher.12
Besides, a contemporary of al-Kindi, al-Razi (the
Rhazes of Chaucer), who was also both physician and
philosopher as well as very influenced by Galen and the
Timaeus, wrote a Spiritual Medicine.13
Boethius’s and al-Kindi’s grounding in a common
philosophical tradition as well as their parallel situa-
tion in the history of philosophy may explain why both
texts have striking commonalities even though al-Kindi
26 THÉRÈSE-ANNE DRUART
most probably never even heard Boethius’s name and
was blissfully unaware of the existence of the
Consolation. Boethius is known “as the last of the
Romans and the first of the scholastics”, a tag already
given by Lorenzo Valla in the fifteenth century, 14 while
al-Kindi is dubbed “the philosopher of the Arabs” as a
seminal figure in that tradition and one of the few to
be an Arab by blood.15 Both present a text accessible
to beginners and this explains their incredible popularity
in and out of philosophical circles.16 They also use
artistry to render philosophical points more palatable,
such as Boethius’s poems and the character of Lady
Philosophy, presented as a Physician, and al-Kindi’s
stories and literary genre of a letter in reply to an
enquiry. Both distinguish two kinds of remedies for the
soul’s illnesses, light and strong, according to one’s
philosophical acumen. They also offer striking reversals
from received opinions: Boethius, who had decried
misfortune, is led by Lady Philosophy to admit already
in II, 8 that, contrary to common opinion, misfortune
is more beneficial than good fortune, and al-Kindi
reaches a point at which he sees the falsity of the
original definition of sorrow as “a pain of the soul
occurring from the loss of things loved or from having
things sought for elude us”.17 We notice too at a deeper
level that Neoplatonism suffuses both texts.
These nearly uncanny parallels between two texts,
neglected because of the lack of interdisciplinary
research inside the field of philosophy, raise more
serious questions. As philosophers, what positions must
we maintain if we want to accept Boethius’s and al-
Kindi’s views as well as the contention of Hellenistic
philosophy that philosophy can console? I see two of
them which I shall try to explore: 1. sadness, a passion,
is linked to, or caused by, an epistemic defect, false
opinion, and, if this is true, then dispelling the false
opinion and substituting a true one should remove
sadness or at least excessive sadness; 2. human beings
are free, that is to say, have some control over their
passions, thanks to human reason, and so inciting them
to accept true opinions instead of false ones is worth-
while.
I. The Common Path
Boethius offers consolation by means of a dialogue
between Lady Philosophy and himself, who, at the very
beginning, is nearly drowning in floods of tears because
he has lost everything, is now in jail, and expects to be
executed. Lady Philosophy helps him to recover from
his sorrows by recovering (pun intended) philosophical
claims he has forgotten. But to whom is the text
addressed? Surely not to Boethius himself, who must
have fully recovered to be able to write a masterpiece
of such artistry and such philosophical sophistication.
In the Symposium, Plato, wishing to convince the reader
to become a lover of wisdom instead of beautiful boys,
invented the priestess Diotima, a rather pompous if not
ponderous and certainly condescending teacher of the
rather slow pupil Socrates. Following the example of
his master, Boethius creates Lady Philosophy and makes
of himself an addict of emotional poetry and a slightly
disabled learner for philosophy. This literary device
allows unsophisticated readers to identify with Boethius
and to submit willingly to Lady Philosophy’s pontifi-
cating ministrations. The one who will be consoled by
shedding false opinions and be liberated from the bonds
of passion is the reader.
In the same way but with less charm and creativity,
al-Kindi pretends he is responding to the request of an
unspecified friend afflicted with unspecified sorrows
and so allows the reader to identify with his corre-
spondent and to prepare himself for the study of phi-
losophy. Both texts move from common opinions (the
falsest opinions) to popular philosophy (less false
opinions) by means of easy remedies or rhetorical
arguments, to reach finally true opinion, based on
metaphysical stances and more sophisticated arguments,
as well as liberation of the mind from passion. Both
seem to aim mainly at true opinion, since arguments are
not provided for all metaphysical stances. Both, for
instance, assume the immortality of the soul and do not
argue for it in these particular texts.
But are Boethius’s and al-Kindi’s philosophical
stances fairly similar? The answer is a resounding yes.
As John Haldane, for instance, indicates, the
Consolation moves from Stoic arguments, the easy
remedies, to Neoplatonic arguments and stances.18 And
Rafael Ramón Guerrero and Emilio Tornero Poveda
assert that, in the Art of Dispelling Sorrows, al-Kindi
intertwines Stoic and Neoplatonic arguments; we will
show later on that such is the case in commenting on a
particularly telling passage.19
At the beginning (book I, prose 3, 7), Boethius makes
it clear that Lady Philosophy considers both
Epicureanism and Stoicism as inferior schools of
philosophy, enjoying only partial truth compared to
 PHILOSOPHICAL CONSOLATION
Plato and Aristotle, but al-Kindi refrains from stating
overtly his philosophical preferences. Yet, we know that
both are influenced by the Alexandrian school of
philosophy, which defends the compatibility of the
views of Plato and Aristotle.20
Both texts maintain that, in order to console people,
we first need to know the cause of their sorrows, and
that the cause is not the specific event or events which
afflict them, but rather some false opinion which leads
sufferers to think that such events are a source of misery.
Let us now first follow the path of recovery from
false opinion as Boethius presents it, since it not only
contains numerous and clear signposts but also shows
more awareness of what is at stake. This will allow
us later on to make better sense of al-Kindi’s less
organized enterprise.
II. Boethius’s path from false opinion and
II. enslavement to true opinion and freedom
Lady Philosophy at the end of Book I presents a rather
sophisticated and complex diagnostic for Boethius’s
misery or disease.21 Boethius has forgotten who, or
maybe better, what he is. This self-forgetfulness is his
main ailment (I, 6, 17), but is complicated by his having
also forgotten the purpose of things as well as the
manner of the world’s governance (I, 6). The recovery
of these memories, though this is not yet stated, will
be an exercise in recollection. The core sickness of self-
forgetfulness will alone retain our attention. From the
very beginning Lady Philosophy claims (I, 1, 9) that the
passions (affectus) choke the fruits of reason (fructus
rationis; al-Kindi will speak of the fruits of intellect)
and, therefore, that the emotional muses of ordinary
poetry with whom Boethius was spending his time
simply accustom men’s minds (mentes) to their disease
but do not liberate them. Her very first action is then
to expel those muses before examining the patient.
Boethius suffers from lethargy (lethargum, reminding
us of Plato’s waters of the netherworld river of lethe or
oblivion from which souls must drink after having
contemplated the Forms and before returning to earth).
Lethargy is a sickness common to deluded minds and
easily cured by a philosophical awakening or, more
exactly, re-awakening (I, 2, 5–6).
Boethius, still missing the point of the necessity of
a philosophical quest, embarks on a long tale of woes,
but in the midst of it indicates that, before these
27
troubles, philosophy had driven from him any desire for
mortal affairs since he knew philosophy could make him
“like to god” (consimilem deo faceres, I, 4, 38–39). He
also confesses that pain and grief have weakened his
memory (memoriam maeror hebetauit, I, 6, 10). Lady
Philosophy knowingly comments that now he has
strayed far from his homeland (patria, a term that will
come back again and again, as at I, 5, 3, and a theme
which appears also in al-Kindi). That grief has
weakened his memory becomes clear for, when Lady
Philosophy asks him, “Can you tell me what a human
being is?” he replies simply that he knows and admits
that he is “a rational and mortal animal”, and does not
go beyond that even when Lady Philosophy prods him
to enlarge his definition. We are far from the “likeness
to God”.
Having forgotten that he is “like to God”, Boethius
has adopted the false or, perhaps more exactly, partially
false opinion that he is nothing more than a “rational
and mortal animal”. Lady Philosophy hopes to lead him
to a recovery of the full truth, which will be full
recovery from his disease, since, though such false
opinion could be a terminal disease, Boethius’s true
opinion that the governance of the world is subject to
divine reason (divina ratio) will provide the needed
sound grounding. The deceptive passions (fallaces
affectiones, I, 6, 21) have led him to substitute false
opinions for previous true opinions.
The first step is to make Boethius aware that no one
is in control of his fortune and that he should have
known better than to expect fortune always to smile at
him (II, 1 & 2). A parallel argument is used by al-Kindi,
who substitutes God for fortune.
The second and more important step of the easy
remedy leads Boethius to admit that true happiness is
in himself and not in external and mortal things, since
“nothing is miserable unless you think so” (nihil est
miserum nisi cum putes, II, 4, 18). He is then reminded
that he had been “convinced by many proofs that human
minds are in no way mortal” (II, 4, 28). Therefore, he
can begin to see that strictly speaking he is not a mortal
animal, though his body is, and so he can be reminded
that he is in some way divine in that human beings are
like to God precisely thanks to their immortal minds
(vos autem deo mente consimiles, II, 5, 26). Self-knowl-
edge gives human beings superiority over all other
things, but lack of it makes them lower than the beasts,
for, though it is natural in other animals not to have
self-knowledge, in human beings it is a vice (II, 5, 29).
28 THÉRÈSE-ANNE DRUART
To be sure that the immortality in question not be
reduced to that of fame, dear to the ancients, Lady
Philosophy indicates that the immortality of fame is
metaphorical, since fame can only be long lasting and
is nothing compared to an infinite time and true immor-
tality (II, 7, 17–18).
Book III then presents stronger remedies. Now
Boethius can look beyond partial goods, of which only
few and those only in small quantity are really neces-
sary. He can reflect on the surpreme good or happiness
which is shown to be God and recall that not only is he
“like to God” but even that he can acquire divinity and
become a god. Lady Philosophy cleverly explains what
exactly is meant by this startling expression. “Every
happy human being is a god, even if by nature there is
only one God, but nothing prevents there being very
many by participation” (III, 10, 25). The metaphysics
of participation underpins the very possibility of
recollection and invites the reader to imitate God. Just
as God does not “dilute” himself in external things or
requires them in governing the world, Boethius should
not dilute his mental powers in focusing on external
things but should rather go deeper into self-reflection.
The easy remedies or arguments were based on pre-
misses taken from our experience of, or with, external
things. For instance, experience is how we discover that
survival in nature does not require many external things.
Difficult remedies are based on metaphysical reasoning
grounded in analysis of basic notions. For example,
Lady Philosophy has just presented some kind of onto-
logical proof for the existence of God: we are aware that
external things, fame, etc, are imperfect goods because
we already are aware of perfection (III, 10, 2–4).
Boethius has recovered enough to notice the change in
arguments. So he comments with admiration, “and these
things you set out with proofs not fetched in from
outside, but belonging within and from within, each one
drawing its validity from another”22 (III, 12, 35). Only
such arguments can open to us an understanding of
higher realities, because they reflect divine self-suffi-
ciency (III, 12, 35–38).
But the cure is not yet complete and, therefore, the
dialogue between Lady Philosophy and Boethius must
continue. Boethius has not yet completely forgotten his
inner grief. His grief in fact had an inner and an outer
aspect. The outer aspect focused on external things he
has been deprived of, but he has now understood that
they are not really necessary, and so he can move to deal
with his inner grief, i.e., that though “there exists a good
ruler of the universe, evil can exist at all and even pass
unpunished”23 (IV, 1, 3). Boethius’s grief is no longer
grounded in personal deprivation of external goods but
in a philosophical problem, i.e., an apparent inconsis-
tency between the true opinion that there is a good ruler
of the universe and the fact of the existence of evil, as
well as the fact that moral evil goes unpunished, since
these two facts – if indeed they are facts – would under-
mine God’s goodness and justice (IV, 1, 5). Lady
Philosophy, of course, faces this challenge and promises
Boethius to bring him back to his homeland (IV, 1, 9).
From then on, the Neoplatonic image of the return to
the homeland becomes rather pervasive.
In fact Boethius seems to have forgotten a true
opinion he had recovered in III, 12: since God is all-
powerful but cannot do evil, then evil is nothing
(III, 12, 26–29). Lady Philosophy does not go back to
that point but simply shows how both ignorance and
intemperance incite wicked men to pursue false goods
instead of the true good they really desire and aim at,
and so lead them not to increase their very being and
participation in divinity but rather to their decrease in
being. If they both knowingly and willingly would
pursue false goods, they would not only have little
power but would altogether cease to exist, since they
would be knowingly and deliberately attempting to stop
participating in God and being. So wicked human beings
are punished since their true being, their inner being,
decreases, while good people’s being keeps increasing
so that they become more and more gods by participa-
tion (IV, 3, 8–10). Obviously Boethius adopts the view
that no one willingly does evil. Human beings who do
evil, though still exhibiting the external appearance of
a human body, have in fact lost their human nature,
since their behavior, being self-defeating, is irrational.
“He who having left goodness aside has ceased to be a
human being, since he cannot pass over into the divine
state, turns into a beast”24 (IV, 3, 21). Al-Kindi, on the
other hand, will claim that irrational human behavior is
worse than animal.
Boethius then acknowledges the logical validity of
the arguments and Lady Philosophy happily praises his
logical acumen. She also makes it clear that she adopts
the views defended in the Timaeus that vice is a disease
of the soul and should be pitied, not punished. Leaving
aside this topic, Boethius, now fully confident in his
reasoning powers, enters into the complex topics of
God’s predestination and the freedom of the will, which
too are part of his medicine (IV, 6, 4). Surreptitiously
 PHILOSOPHICAL CONSOLATION
Lady Philosophy begins to slip in the theme of divine
simplicity and indicates that the unfolding of temporal
order, or fate, is simply a reflection of divine provi-
dence. Therefore, all things that are subject to fate are
subject to providence, but some things subject to
providence are above the ordering of fate or nature: the
closer a being is to divine simplicity, the freer from
the snares of fate. Lady Philosophy then can begin to
introduce a new mode of knowing, “Understanding”
(intellectus), which is to “the exercise of reason”
(ratiocinatio) as eternity is to time (IV, 6, 17).
Philosophy becomes in some way a participation in
God’s thinking and it is not surprising that Lady
Philosophy claims now that the “ruler and healer of
minds”25 (rector ac medicator mentium deus, IV, 6, 29)
is none other than God. The length of the argument
tiring Boethius, Lady Philosophy will provide a draught
of philosophical poetry and a summary of the conclu-
sions we have reached so that Boethius and his readers
may be ready to face the final book.
Book V begins with Lady Philosophy recalling that
she had promised to return Boethius to his homeland
(patria, V, 1, 4). She argues that all natural events are
predetermined and also that there is free will and so
the chain of fate does not bind the motions of human
spirits. Up to now the ability of the will to turn from
consideration of external things to self-knowledge and
better understanding of God’s thinking had been
affirmed but never proven to exist. Any rational nature,
she argues, must have free will, since to be rational
implies the ability to judge, which itself implies the
ability to pursue what it judges desirable and to flee
what it judges harmful. The argument is grounded on
epistemology and the whole book will carefully explore
the epistemic underpinnings of its metaphysics. Though
all rational natures have the ability to judge, they do not
all have the same accuracy in their judgment nor the
same ability to achieve what they desire, and so they
do not all have the same degree of free will. Only divine
substances have penetrating judgment, uncorrupted will,
and efficacious ability to achieve what they desire
(V, 2). We have now unpacked from the definition of
the human being as rational one more important trait.
The human being is a god not only by participating in
the divine mind but also by participating in divine
freedom. The more we contemplate the divine mind the
freer we are to reach our true good, God, but if we turn
our mind to external things and our body, the less free
we are (V, 2). If we stoop to peer at lower things then
29
our minds are befogged by clouds of unknowing (insci-
tiae nube caligant) and are disturbed and grieved by the
pernicious passions by means of which we enslave our-
selves. We then become captives of our own freedom
(sunt quodam modo propria libertate captivae, V, 2, 10).
The return to the homeland is not only a passage from
false opinion to truth, thanks to a form of recollection,
but also a recovery of the freedom we had abdicated.
The cure is succeeding and poem three recalls Meno’s
paradox, celebrates recollection, and argues that the
level of our grasp of reality is based on which power
of the soul we are using. Poem four, too, will reflect
on epistemic positions since it will contrast the view of
the Stoics, who think that the mind is purely passive
and, therefore, a blank tablet, with a view granting to
the mind the ability to use whichever power it wishes
in order to determine how it will know realities. Such
a power is called an efficient cause (V, IV, 26–29).
Human beings have not only senses and imagination
but also reason and even, it seems, thanks to meta-
physics, some share in divine intelligence (intelligentia),
at least to this extent, that they are able to know it exists
and is utterly simple (V, 4). Chapter 5 will provide the
necessary study of human knowing. Human beings are
not simply rational beings, but, by participation, they
can share in or have some glimpse of divine intelli-
gence, which alone allows philosophy to resolve the
apparent incompatibility between God’s foreknowledge
and human freedom. All problems are solved on the
epistemological grounds of a more refined division of
modes of knowing and a conception of the human mind
as not purely passive but rather able to determine which
cognitive power it will use. Our knowing is not
determined by the nature of the object known but rather
by the nature of the power used to know it. The higher
the faculty, the less dependent on the nature of the
object. Intelligence looks at the Form itself which is
utterly simple and no longer at its reflections in multiple
and temporal instantiations. The higher the power, the
closer to God’s Intelligence, which does not in any way
depend on its object. Divine simplicity is linked to
eternity, which is not to be confused with perpetuity.
Since every judgment is the act of one judging, it must
be the case that each performs his task not from some
other’s power but from his own (V, 4, 39).
Lady Philosophy now can provide glimmers of divine
understanding and, therefore, distinguish temporality
from true eternity, and perpetuity from the simplicity
of God’s eternal present (V, 6, 14–15). God’s providence
30 THÉRÈSE-ANNE DRUART
is not really foreknowledge, since it is outside of time,
but rather an actual vision of events.
These epistemological reflections ground the division
into two types of events: those consequent upon the
necessity of things and, therefore, predetermined by
God, and the other consequent on the power of those
who act, and so the freedom of the will remains entire
(V, 6, 44).
Boethius’s mind has now reached, or nearly reached,
its homeland, God’s very own thinking, and knowledge,
thanks to the recovery of true opinions. The process of
recollection and recovery is complete; there is no longer
any need for the refreshment another poem would bring,
and Lady Philosophy ends by telling people to hope and
pray to live in accordance with these views.
The path on which Boethius takes his reader is clear.
It is an attempt to cause recollection by helping the
reader to recall what a human being is, namely, a god
by participation, to make use of the divine freedom he
participates in so that he will actively turn his mind to
the contemplation of God, the mind’s homeland, and to
live in accordance with such true opinions. The reader
will no longer waste time with mortal things or allow
his mind to be befuddled by passions. The epistemo-
logical concerns are underlined. Stoic epistemology,
which makes of the mind something purely passive, is
rejected, and to the Aristotelian division into the three
basic cognitive powers of senses, imagination, and
reason, is added another and divine power, intelligence,
through which metaphysics makes us participate in, or
at least be aware of, some aspects of divine knowledge.
The active capacity of the mind to direct itself in dif-
ferent ways and to different objects is grounded in free
will, considered indispensable to explain judgment. The
mind’s liberation from passions, such as sadness, allows
it to develop its freedom or ability to move from lower
objects to higher and through the contemplation of
God’s thinking and freedom to be more than rational in
sharing in divine intelligence.
III. Al-Kindi’s path from false opinion and
III. enslavement to true opinion and freedom
Let us now consider al-Kindi’s Art of Dispelling
Sorrows, which begins by stating that to find a cure
for sorrow we need to know its cause, and therefore
provides a causal definition: “sorrow is a pain of the
soul occurring from the loss of things loved and from
having things sought for elude us” (p. 31); this will be
equated with the loss of external things and the inability
to acquire them. Immediately al-Kindi contrasts two
worlds: the world of generation and corruption, which
is also called nature or the world of sense perception,
the world in which we live, and the world of intellect,
which we can contemplate. Focussing on the world of
intellect would grant us imperishable goods, but goods
of this world of nature are naturally transitory because
linked to generation and corruption. Hence, if we look
for perpetual and stable possessions in the world of
nature, we are asking from it what it cannot yield and,
therefore, we are looking for what we should know does
not exist, which is a sign of lack of intellect (p. 32).
In order to escape sorrow and be joyful, we need to
be content with what nature yields, and, given that we
cannot change nature, we need to change our habits, i.e.,
our way of looking at external things, since in fact
nothing in the world of nature should sadden us. We are,
therefore, required to be stoics and to put ourselves in
harmony with nature. Al-Kindi argues that nothing in
nature should sadden us by showing that people think
they will find happiness in various things. The hedonist
looks for it in food, drink, women, and fashionable
clothes, and deems a loser anyone who does not share
his interests. The gambler is convinced happiness lies
in his favorite activity, though it will lead to ruin,
sadness, and a waste of time, and so he cannot under-
stand those who do not share his viewpoint. The same
goes for the highway robber, who leads such a dan-
gerous life and risks crucifixion, and even, worst of all,
for the crossdresser, who unnaturally tries to turn
himself as far as possible into a woman yet thinks his
way of life is the best (pp. 33–34).
These discrepancies result from the fact that nothing
is by nature pleasant or unpleasant but is judged to be
so by convention or usage. Education can easily replace
the habit of looking at some events as unpleasant by the
habit of considering them as pleasant since it is in
accordance with nature. This recalls Boethius’s state-
ment that something is miserable only if one thinks it
to be so (II, 4), since everything participates in the good
and tends to it, but al-Kindi, lacking a metaphysics of
participation, limits himself to arguments based on
experience.
As al-Kindi thinks we are only our soul, while the
body is a mere instrument, we should take much greater
care of our soul than of our body, and cure it from
diseases, such as sorrows.26 Why sorrow is a disease is
 PHILOSOPHICAL CONSOLATION
not explained, but curing the disease is easy since it
(
simply requires the firm decision ( azm) to correct our
bad habits. Besides, if we reflect on the traditional
sources of sorrows, as expressed in the introductory
definition, we will realize (p. 35) that some depend on
actions which are up to us and so it is up to us to change
them, whereas others not being up to us it will be up to
us to be content with them. We have here assertions of
the existence of some level of freedom, but al-Kindi will
not argue for that view. The conclusion is then reached
that sadness is something purely conventional and not
natural (p. 37) and, therefore, can and even must be
avoided since al-Kindi also asserts that harming one’s
soul is a form of utmost ignorance and injustice (p. 35).
So let us keep in harmony with nature and accept that
anything in it is purely transitory. If we want nature to
be other than it is we will be lacking in intellect and
worse than animals, which, though irrational, have a law
(nâmûs) which adapts them to their state, whereas
human beings lacking in intellect show neither order nor
coherence in their actions. Therefore, since our soul is
not transitory, we should not pursue external transitory
things, but things of the soul. Why al-Kindi claims that
the soul is immortal remains unexplained.
Having now been persuaded to change our habits, we
can understand that we should get rid of our initial
definition, which was a false opinion even if al-Kindi
never calls it so. If indeed sorrow is caused by the loss
of external things or the inability to acquire them, it
follows that, whether we acquire them or not, we will
necessarily be sad, since if we have them we will sorrow
because we lose them or are afraid we will, and if we
do not have them we sorrow because we want them. But
al-Kindi has already argued that sadness is not by nature
and, therefore, is not necessary but rather something up
to us, and not only is it up to us but we are morally
bound to avoid it since it would harm our soul. This
leads to a contradiction that the intellect cannot accept.
Since the initial definition makes sadness necessary,
though it is not so, and in fact we should do what we
can to avoid it, we should, therefore, reject this defini-
tion. This marks the beginning of the difficult remedies.
This first part of the text rests on stoic arguments
fairly similar to those presented by Epictetus at the
beginning of his Manual, and entices us to change our
habits since sorrow is purely conventional and to
jettison our initial definition.
We do not need to be sad and in order to reach
joy we should reduce our external possessions to a
31
minimum as well as our desire for them. Here again
nature, and animals in particular, give us the example
since nature, or more exactly the creator (the creator’s
existence is assumed and the connection between it and
nature remains unexplained), provides enough, even for
animals as big as elephants and whales. Human beings,
who should rule the animals, in fact often cannot even
rule themselves (p. 41) and so are not content with a
necessary minimum which nature will provide. Such
lack of self-mastery is a sign of a lack of intellect. In
fact, bothering about external things more than neces-
sary distracts us from paying attention to what is really
useful and permanent, i.e., our immortal soul, and leads
to a lack of perpetual life (p. 42).
We then embark on a beautiful and long allegory of
a voyage with a stopover at which people of intellect
leave the ship just long enough to gather what is
absolutely necessary and return immediately to get the
most comfortable seats, whereas others are more or less
distracted by things they may acquire, among them fruit
and flowers, which some bring back on the ship. They
have accumulated so much stuff that they have barely
space enough and so may die smothered by their
possessions before reaching their homeland (watan),
and even if they survive they are nevertheless seriously
inconvenienced by the fruit, which begins to rot and to
get smelly and so will have to be thrown overboard.
Some of the passengers even get so absorbed in eating
fruit that they forget they want to reach a destination
and, therefore, neglect the recalling – or should I say
recollection? – of their homeland (dhikr watanihi), and
so will miss the boat.
This allegory, occupying nearly two full pages, rests
on ch. 7 of Epictetus’s Manual, which occupies 13 lines
in the Loeb edition. Not only does al-Kindi greatly
expand the various ways in which people react and add
a stopover, but he also substitutes for what seems
originally to be a passage to death a passage to one’s
homeland (watan) which reminds us of Boethius’s
frequent reminders that we should reach our patria.
Somehow the Stoic text has been vastly expanded and
completed with the Neoplatonic notion of return to the
homeland, but without justification or even explanation.
There is some kind of lack of glue between Stoic
arguments and a barely sketched Neoplatonic meta-
physics.
What that homeland is remains unexplained, but
external possessions are declared to deceive the intel-
lect (p. 43) and to rob people of their liberty. Finally,
32 THÉRÈSE-ANNE DRUART
al-Kindi kindly explains to us that this is an allegory
of our passage from this world of corruption to the true
world, our homeland, in which there is no pain, no loss,
no lack. We expect him then to explain that death is
not an evil since it liberates our soul for the true world,
the world of intellect, but surprisingly al-Kindi returns
to Stoic views and argues that death is no evil because
it is in the nature of human beings to die, since by def-
inition so to speak they are living, rational, and mortal.
If we would not die we would not be human beings.
Death mistakenly saddens us because we ignore what
life and death truly are, aspects of nature.
Switching his ground once again and without further
ado he then speaks of death as leading to the world of
intellect, which is without sensible pains and sensible
possessions, which cause all the pains of body and soul
(p. 45).
Anyone who focusses on external things makes bad
use of choice and is lacking in intellect (p. 46), and we
reach the conclusion that what decreases our external
possessions is in fact a gain rather than a loss (similarly,
Boethius had come to acknowledge that misfortune is
more beneficial than good fortune in II, 8). A person
without external possessions is free from anger and
passion (shahwat) which are the causes of evils and
pains. This is how we should reach our permanent
homeland, and may God let us enjoy the fruits of reason
– recall by contrast the rotten fruit of the world of
corruption – and deliver us from ignorance. Recall, too,
that Boethius at the beginning had said that passions
choke the fruits of reason.
IV. Some final reflections
Obviously, al-Kindi tries to lead his reader from the
false opinion that acquisition of external things is what
we should aim at and, therefore, that death is to be
feared, to the true opinion that we should aim at the
world of intellect. Such a change in our conception of
the end of human life will cure us from our sadness,
which is a disease of the soul caused by fear and desire.
Yet, al-Kindi shows no sign of being aware that this is
what he is doing, nor does he reflect in any way on his
method for curing the soul.
There may be a hint that this process of replacing
false opinion by true opinion may be a form of recol-
lection, as we saw when in the allegory he talks about
people who forget that they want to reach their
homeland and get so absorbed in eating fruit at the
stopover that they do not recall their homeland (dhikr
al-watan, an expression which may suggest recollec-
tion). This would not be impossible since, in the early
1980s, Gerhard Endress announced the recovery of one
of his treatises dealing with recollection.27 The treatise
is brief, a sort of catechism, and rather sketchy. It seems
to use Aristotelian epistemology for the acquisition of
concepts based on experience, but recollection in what
concerns mathematical concepts or primary indemon-
strable premises, such as, maybe, the principle of non-
contradiction, which he often uses. Such first
intelligibles are given by the First Intellect. This text
too emphasizes that there are two worlds: the sensible
world and the world of intellect. Yet, we should be fairly
cautious in using evidence taken from other Kindian
texts since, to my knowledge, we have no clue to
establish their chronological sequence in relation to this
text.
The Art of Dispelling Sorrows does not address in
any way the question of its epistemological underpin-
nings and moves abruptly from Stoic arguments to
Neoplatonic views.28 How we come to know that there
are two worlds or that the soul is immortal is never
alluded to. Nor does the text reflect on the logical
quality of the arguments, a feature of some passages in
Boethius, though al-Kindi does maintain that there are
easy and more difficult remedies.
In his Treatise on the Intellect, al-Kindi claims that
Plato and Aristotle are in agreement in their concep-
tion of the intellect, but the text mainly borrows
elements from Aristotle and presents rather obscure
views. There is a First Intellect, which clearly is not part
of the human being but the source of intelligibles.
Jolivet argued that such intellect cannot be God,29 and
the assertion in On First Philosophy that God is neither
soul nor intellect because the multiplicity of intelligi-
bles would undermine divine simplicity30 confirms
Jolivet’s interpretation. The way Boethius articulates a
metaphysics of participation, combining it with episte-
mology, is not accessible to al-Kindi, whose conception
of God’s transcendence excludes even the language of
likeness. Participation becomes emanation, a passive
reception.
Like Boethius, al-Kindi asserts human freedom, but
he does so in a Stoic context and does not relate it to
his Neoplatonic metaphysics or his conception of God.
Up to a point al-Kindi does not seem able to articu-
late any kind of continuity between the sensible world,
 PHILOSOPHICAL CONSOLATION
or nature, and the world of intellect. Therefore, how and
why we can move from the lower to the higher remains
obscure. His conception of recollection, as far as it can
be construed, seems to be a mere supplement to what
Aristotelian epistemology does not explain too well, i.e.,
the acquisition of mathematical concepts and immate-
rial intelligibles. Again, there is no bridge clearly
presented between these two types of epistemology, and
the mind seems essentially passive in its reception of
first intelligibles. Boethius, on the contrary, indicated in
his fifth book that higher levels of cognition subsume
the lower and that the mind can actively attempt to
move from one level to another. It is the fact that the
mind is aware of the limitations and imperfections of
any sensible object for satisfying our need for the true
good which leads Boethius to claim that this reveals in
us a preconception of perfection, which alone allows
us to establish that sensible goods indeed lack perfec-
tion and so cannot satisfy us. We are, therefore, encour-
aged to look for what can truly satisfy us, the primary
good or God, who subsumes all that is present in partial
and material goods. In Boethius, transitions are easy:
this world and artistic beauty can be springboards for
reaching higher levels and, therefore, philosophical
poetry may help us to reach the highest summits.
Al-Kindi, on the contrary, in many passages incites
the reader to Stoic acceptance of the material world as
it is and does not seem to realize that this does not fit
too well with other lines in which he invites him to look
for the world of intellect, while remaining rather silent
about how such a thing is possible.
In Boethius there is a convergence of ethics, meta-
physics, and epistemology grounded in a metaphysics
of participation and human freedom which allows us to
increase our degree of participation in God so that we
become more and more “like to God” (consimiles Deo)
and even become gods, at least in some sense, even if
God’s own divinity is carefully distinguished from
participating divinity. As Boethius was a Christian, well
aware of the Incarnation and of the fact that Christ has
both a human and a divine nature, such language could
be used and the possibility of moving from the material
world to the immaterial or divine world is not unex-
pected and not construed as a threat to God’s transcen-
dence. Such integration was reassuring for a Christian,
and the text became part and parcel of Christian culture
in the Middle Ages, be it in Latin, in the vernacular, or
in artistic representations in churches. After all, did not
Neoplatonism lead Augustine to Christianity?
33
Al-Kindi, on the contrary, is in a much more diffi-
cult position. Philosophy is a new discipline in his
cultural and religious milieu. He probably does not have
many texts at his disposal, and the texts he does have
are in broken Arabic. He is struggling to create an idiom
suitable for philosophy. Boethius had none of those
problems. It is not surprising, therefore, that al-Kindi
feels less at ease with his material and cannot yet
integrate very harmoniously some of his metaphysical
positions, epistemological stances, and ethical reflec-
tions. He does make the reader give up a false opinion
for a true one and claim that it is up to him or her to
make the change, but how Stoic arguments can be inte-
grated in Neoplatonic metaphysics and combined with
epistemology remains unexplained. Clearly, Boethius
subsumed the Stoic arguments as first steps on the way
to recollection, but al-Kindi often simply juxtaposes.
Al-Kindi emphasizes the gap between God and crea-
tures. As a Muslim he wants to avoid the great sin of
shirk, i.e., of associating anything to God, and, there-
fore, he refuses to speak of likeness to God or to
consider God an intellect, etc. Incarnation for him would
be a form of shirk. Careful to emphasize the disconti-
nuity between God and all other beings, he has trouble
explaining continuity and transition. There is no smooth
passage from the world of sense to the world of intel-
lect, since the world of sense does not seem to contain
even glimpses of the truth. The Art of Dispelling
Sorrows, a work of some length, shows this. Other texts,
being very brief, deal only with a particular point and
so do not raise the question, at least internally, but his
incomplete though much longer On First Philosophy
indicates that al-Kindi was working on integrating
various positions and developing his own approach to
philosophy.
Kindian discontinuity, particularly between the world
of intellect and God, may explain why his Christian
readers felt the inadequacy of philosophical consolation
and used it as “an occasion to suggest that Christian and
biblical faith could best address the issues so provoca-
tively and popularly raised by the philosopher”.31
Whether or not philosophy can console remains an open
question.
Notes
1
For contemporary views, see for instance, W.V. Quine, “Has
Philosophy Lost Contact with People,” in his Theories and Things.
Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
34 THÉRÈSE-ANNE DRUART
1981, pp. 190–193, and Sybille Krämer, “Melancholie – Skizze
zur epistemologischen Deutung eines Topos,” Zeitschrift für
philosophische Forschung, 49 (1994), pp. 397–419.
2
Hadot, Pierre, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises
from Socrates to Foucault, ed. with an intro. by Arnold I. Davidson
and transl. by Michael Chase. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995 and Qu’est-
ce que la philosophie antique? (Folio, 280). Paris: Gallimard, 1995.
3
La philosophie, théorie ou manière de vivre? Les controverses de
l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, forward by Pierre Hadot (Pensée antique
et médiévale, Vestigia 18). Fribourg, Switzerland: Editions
Universitaires & Paris: Cerf, 1996.
4
Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 68 and pp. 247–253.
5 19
“The Muslim Philosopher al-Kindi and his Christian Readers:
Three Arab Christian Texts on ‘The Dissipation of Sorrows’,”
Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 78,
n. 3 (1996), pp. 111–127.
6
Subtitle: Etude sur la relation de l’âme et du corps dans la
tradition médico-philosophique antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
7 21
Subtitle: Hellenistic Ethics in its Rhetorical and Literary Context,
special issue of Apeiron, 23, n. 4 (1990).
8
Subtitle: Etudes de philosophie hellénistique, foreword by Pierre
Hadot (Pensée antique et médiévale, Vestigia 12). Fribourg,
Switzerland: Editions Universitaires & Paris: Cerf.
9
Subtitle: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press.
10
On bodily and spiritual medicine in the Timaeus, see Catherine
Joubaud, Le corps humain dans la philosophie platonicienne: Etudes
à partir du “Timée”, with an intro. by Luc Brisson. Paris: Vrin, 1991
and Thérèse-Anne Druart, “The Timaeus Revisited,” in Plato and
Platonism, ed. by J. Van Ophuijsen (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1999), pp. 163–178 and particularly
175–178.
11
Boethii Philosophiae Consolatio, ed. by Ludovicus Bieler
(Corpus Christianorum, Series latina, XCIV). Turnhout: Brepols,
1957, III, 9, 32, and IX.
12
Galeni Compendium Timaei Platonis, ed. and Latin transl. by
Paul Kraus and Richard Walzer (Plato Arabus, 1). London: Warburg
Institute, 1951.
13
English translation as The Spiritual Physick of Rhazes by Arthur
J. Arberry. London: John Murray, 1950. See also Thérèse-Anne
Druart, “The Ethics of al-Razi (865–925),” Medieval Philosophy and
Theology, 6 (1997), pp. 47–71.
14
Chadwick, p. xi.
15
The best brief introduction to al-Kindi is probably the one by
Felix Klein-Franke in History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. by Seyyed
Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, Part I (Routledge History of World
Philosophies, I) (London & New York: Routledge, 1996), pp.
165–177.
16
See for instance, Pierre Courcelle, La consolation de philosophie
dans la tradition littéraire: antécédents et postérité de Boèce. Paris:
1967, and for al-Kindi, Abdurrahman Badawi, Histoire de la philoso-
phie en Islam, vol. II, Les philosophes purs (Etudes de philosophie
médiévale, 60). Paris: Vrin, 1972, pp. 473–477 and Griffith.
17
The Art of Dispelling Sorrows has been edited twice on the basis
of one and the same manuscript: 1. (to which I shall refer) by H.
Ritter and R. Walzer, Studi su al-Kindi II: Uno scritto morale inedito
di al-Kindi (Memorie della R. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei,
Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, 335, ser. VI, vol.
VIII, fasc. I). Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1938, with
an Italian translation, p. 31; 2. by Abdurrahman Badawi in his Traités
philosophiques par al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Bajjah, Ibn ’Adyy, 3rd.
ed. (Beirut: Dar Al-Andaloss, 1983), pp. 6–32. There is a Spanish
translation under the title “El arte de la consolación” by Rafael
Ramón Guerrero and Emilio Tornero Poveda in their Obras filosó-
ficas de al-Kindi (Madrid: Editorial Coloquio, 1986), pp. 156–171
and a French paraphrase by A. Badawi in his Histoire de la philoso-
phie en Islam, vol. 2, Les philosophes purs (Paris: Vrin, 1972), pp.
456–469. English translations are mine.
18
“De Consolatione Philosophiae,” Philosophy, Supplement, suppl.
32, 1992, pp. 31–45.
Obras filosóficas de al-Kindï, transl. by Rafael Ramón Guerrero
and Emilio Tornero Poveda, p. 154.
20
See Pierre Courcelle, “Boèce et l’école d’Alexandrie,” Mélanges
de l’école française de Rome, 52 (1935), pp. 185–223 and Thérèse-
Anne Druart, “Al-Kindi’s Ethics,” Review of Metaphysics, 47 (Dec.
1993), pp. 347–357.
On philosophical consolation in Boethius, see Thomas
Schumacher, “Heilung im Denken. Zur Sache der philosophischen
Tröstung bei Boethius,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und
Theologie, 40 (1993), pp. 20–43.
22
Translation taken with slight modifications from Boethius, The
Consolation of Philosophy, transl. by S. J. Tester (Loeb Classical
Library). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978.
23
Tester’s translation with a slight modification.
24
Tester’s translation.
25
Tester’s translation.
26
On al-Kindi’s conception of the soul’s salvation, see Jean Jolivet,
“La topographie du salut d’après le Discours sur l’âme d’al-Kindî,”
in Le voyage initiatique en terre d’Islam. Ascensions célestes et
itinéraires spirituels, ed. by Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi
(Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, section des sciences
religieuses, vol. 103). Louvain-Paris: Peeters, 1996, pp. 149–158.
27
See Gerhard Endress, “Al-Kindî’s Theory of Anamnesis. A New
Text and Its Implications,” in Islão e arabismo na península ibérica.
Actas do XI Congresso da União Europeia de arabistas e islamól-
ogos (Evora–Faro–Silves, 29 Set.–6 Out. 1982), ed. by Adel Sidarius
(Evora: Universidade de Evora, 1986), pp. 393–402, and “Al-Kindî
über die Wiedererinnerung der Seele – Arabischer Platonismus und
die Legitimation der Wissenschaften im Islam,” Oriens, 34 (1994),
pp. 174–221.
28
See Cristina D’Ancona Costa, “Aristotelian and Neoplatonic
Elements in Kindî’s Doctrine of Knowledge,” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly (ACPQ), 73 (Winter 1999), pp. 9–35.
29
See L’intellect selon Kindî (Publications de la “Fondation de
Goeje”, 22). Leiden: Brill, 1971, p. 143.
30
Oeuvres philosophiques et scientifiques d’al-Kindî. Vol. 2:
Métaphysique et cosmologie, ed. and transl. by Roshdi Rashed and
Jean Jolivet. Leiden-Boston-Cologne: Brill, 1998, ch. IV, Arabic,
p. 95, l. 5, French transl. p. 94.
31
See S. Griffith, p. 113.
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