Sotd - the 6th of July -
Razor - Schick L2
blade - Schick modern twin (lost count)
soap - Kent hard soap - tallow
brush - Simpsons Chubby 1 - best
post - witch hazel
a/s - Tabac
balm - De Vergulde Hand
scent - Tabac edt.
Result - splendid.
In an act of solidarity with our fine sibling
@Blademonkey - and his heroic month long quest to rid the world of the scourge of MWF - I went for the Kent today - yes - I know - different names - but to my understanding they are the same thing in all but nomenclature and packaging - identical ingredients. A very fine soap indeed - slickness and post feel - the match of artisan soaps costing much more - unless you have an issue with non-vegetarian products - you should try it. I'd be interested P. - assuming you started with a fresh cake - or puck - what remains at the end? Do post a picture. I wanted to use my ATT Calypso today - but I couldn't find any fresh Prolines - I'll have another look before tomorrow's shave. Using the Schick was considerably less than the end of the world - a fine razor. Safe and efficient. A bit dull though? So - no picture today - I can't multi-task - that's a talent my partner has - but I don't - I did research and write something - which you are welcome to read if you are interested. Job done - enjoy your shaves - yours - I.
'
The Consolations of Philosophy'
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius - (b.?475 - d.524) - Senator, Consul, translator and philosopher - born into an elite Roman family - he was related to at least two former emperors - is a good example of the shift from the old classical order to the medieval. He was about as well educated as you could be in western Europe at the time - fluent in Latin and Greek - producing a prodigious body of work on myriad subjects - his translations of Socrates and Plato were pretty much the only ones available until the mid c.12th - his facility with Greek was unusual in his time and place - taken with his distinctly - and unmistakable - Platonic reasoning - leading many to suggest his schooling was in the east - Alexandria is commonly mentioned - but I think this is dubious - it more likely is a result of that his foster father Memmius Symmachus could himself write and speak the language. Initially things went well for Boethius - he married and had a family with Symmachus' daughter - by his mid 20's he was both a senator - granted, a largely ceremonial role by this point - and had been appointed ‘
magister officiarum' to King Theodoric the Great - the second barbarian ruler of what was left of the western Roman empire - in modern terms - the head of the civil service - a lofty position for one so young. His misfortunes start in 523 when he is accused of conducting a treasonous correspondence with the eastern emperor Justin - was there any truth in the allegation? Difficult to say - his fall from grace was likely a combination of factors - Boethius didn't help himself by publicly defending a friend and fellow senator who almost certainly was working against the king - Theodoric was beset by problems at the time - he suspected the eastern emperor was planning to invade his territories - ultimately he was proved right - Justin's successor Justinian did just that in 536 - well he didn't - he never left Constantinople - his general Belisarius did - reducing the Ostrogothic kingdom to virtually nothing. Religious factors played a role - there is pretty much no evidence that Boethius was a Christian - more a Platonist that was sympathetic to it - there is not much difficulty in reconciling the former with the latter - unlike Aristotle. Theodoric was a Christian - just the ‘wrong' sort - Arian not Catholic - this form of faith was being persecuted in the east and slowly but surely the barbarian western kingdoms were accepting the authority of Catholicism - the king was becoming ever more isolated. What would have counted against Boethius was that he was a vocal advocate of reconciliation between the Roman See and that of Constantinople. Either way - after a ‘show trial' - the three men who testified against him were of highly dubious character - he was convicted and imprisoned - Theodoric would decide his fate a year later. During his incarceration he composed his greatest work - one of the most influential philosophical tracts of the entire medieval period - ‘
De consolatione philosophiae' - the ‘
Consolations of Philosophy.' It is often considered to be a Christian book - including by the church - then and now - which regards him a martyr and made Boethius a saint - it isn't - there is not a single mention of Christianity or Jesus in it - there is reference to a ‘
one true good' but this is entirely consistent with a Platonic world view - he doesn't refer to god once. Some seek to find evidence of the influence of St. Paul in it - but this - at best - is a tortuous process and doesn't hold water for me. It takes the form of an imagined dialogue between the author and philosophy - personified as a woman - again - you don't get a much more Platonic construction than that - and concerns itself with the problems of theodicy - how can wrong exist alongside a creator that is the perfect good? - why do bad things happen to good people? - very real issues for Boethius at the time - remarkably there is not the merest hint of self-pity in the text. It is best known for his solution to reconciling human free will with ‘divine' foreknowledge - an argument as elegantly simple as it is deft. There isn't space here to go into it - you can look it up if you are interested. So - the year passed - Boethius was taken to a remote country estate and executed. He was interred next to St Augustine in Pavia - nice - the latter's journey to Christianity was via Neo-Platonism - they would have agreed on much.
