Until recently, my experience with books has been lukewarm at best. Reading has always been something I’ve enjoyed, yet it was never something I prioritized. Consequently, I only read what was required for school. This essentially was my relationship with books until my sophomore year of high school when I was influenced by many of my older peers. I witnessed them having the most interesting conversations about various works of literature and science. I was enamored by what they had to say, strove to follow their example. Furthermore, I was privileged enough to have a TAC graduate as one of my instructors, exposing me to a variety of great books that fueled my interest. He also brought the Socratic Method into the classroom which continued …show more content…
Further in Book I, Lady Philosophy questions Boethius about the good to which all things are directed. Boethius answers when he says “I answered that I knew all things came from God.” Because the intellect is ordered to knowing God who is a supernatural end, it is superior to temporal passions, which are ordered to temporal ends. However, thanks to the power of the intellect working in accord with the human will, man can use passions to bring about a spiritual good higher than their original end. This, at least, is the theoretical order of things. For, Lady Philosophy further mentions that man’s passions are disordered; they don’t work in accord with the intellect. This causes man to make decisions that are evil and against reason. As a result of this disordered relationship between the passions and the intellect, men begin to take partial, temporal goods such as, money, fame, power, and pleasure and make them the whole good. They fill their desire for the supreme good with lesser goods that are desired by the passions and are thus never satisfied. Lady Philosophy recognizes and makes efforts to explain this principle to Boethius lest he fail to recognize the origin of his despair. For Boethius despairs in the loss of his worldly possessions. “He is not yet ready to receive the higher truths Lady Philosophy has to offer. Nonetheless, it is critical that Boethius detaches from these worldly things; he cannot receive the higher truths without emptying himself of the lower, partial truths. This detachment is what every human being must experience if they are going to pursue the truth in a serious way. This applies not only to the intellectual life, but to the spiritual life as