How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.
Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.
“Then,” said she, “it is necessary to acknowledge that God is very happiness.” … “But we have also proved that God and true happiness are one and the same.”
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy III.10 (trans. H. R. James, 1897, public domain). (trimmed quote)public domain
God Is Happiness
RationalityArgument · power 90 · 100% accurateIn the gameThe last link of a chain: the source of all good can have nothing better than itself, so it is the highest good — and the highest good has already been shown to be happiness. Therefore God does not HAVE happiness. He is it.
“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.
In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.
“…is not a happy life what all will, and no one altogether wills it not?… And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this is it, and there is no other.”
Augustine, Confessions 10.20–23 (trans. E. B. Pusey, 1838, public domain).public domain
“the desire of the true good is naturally implanted in the minds of men; only error leads them aside out of the way in pursuit of the false.”
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy III.2 (trans. H. R. James, 1897, public domain).public domain
Argument from Desire
Natural TheologyArgument · power 86 · 100% accurateIn the gameNobody has to be taught to want to be happy, and nothing on offer finishes the wanting. Augustine and Boethius, a century apart, both take the permanent hunger as evidence of where the food is.
Strong against
×4The Absurdan argument · why?
Camus grants the hunger and the silence, and calls their collision the absurd. Augustine and Lewis take the same hunger the other way. A hunger for something the world cannot supply is one of the ordinary signs that something else supplies it. Camus wrote his university thesis on Augustine.
×4Totem and Tabooan argument · why?
Freud explains where the longing came from. He never asks the other question — whether a longing this specific, appearing in every culture, is evidence that it has an object.
×2.5Platoa book · why?
Diotima’s ladder in the Symposium climbs from one beautiful body to all of them to beauty itself, because no particular thing ever finishes the wanting. Augustine makes that argument nearly eight centuries later and grants Plato every rung of it. What a Form cannot do is come looking for you.
×2Grace as Examplean argument · why?
Augustine found that nothing he chose could satisfy him until God changed what he loved. Grace did not only teach him. It changed his heart.
×2Penséesa book · why?
Pascal said that his account of man, wretched and great together, came from Augustine.
×2The Ethics of Beliefan argument · why?
A duty to believe only on proof is itself believed without proof — the rule cannot pass its own test!
“This is my art, this the game I never cease to play. I turn the wheel that spins. I delight to see the high come down and the low ascend.”
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy II.2 — Lady Philosophy speaking in the voice of Fortune (trans. H. R. James, 1897, public domain).public domain
The Wheel of Fortune
ExperienceArgument · power 60 · 100% accurateIn the gameFortune speaks in her own defence: the office, the money, the name — she lent them, and lending means taking back. Nothing she gave was ever the reader’s to lose.
“as the innermost of several circles revolving round the same centre approaches the simplicity of the midmost point… things are free from fate in proportion as they seek to come nearer to that central pivot.”
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy IV.6 (trans. H. R. James, 1897, public domain). (trimmed quote)public domain
The Still Centre
RationalityArgument · power 75 · 100% accurateIn the gameProvidence is the fixed centre; fate is the rim, turning. A thing is bound by fate exactly as far as it stands out from the centre — and freed as it is drawn in toward God.
“there are two necessities — one simple, as that men are necessarily mortal; the other conditioned, as that, if you know that someone is walking, he must necessarily be walking.”
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy V.6 (trans. H. R. James, 1897, public domain). (trimmed quote)public domain
The Two Necessities
RationalityArgument · power 90 · 100% accurateIn the gameGod’s foreknowledge no more forces an act than the reader’s watching a man walk forces his walking. “He must be walking, since I see him” binds nothing — and neither does the divine sight.
“eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment.”
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy V.6 (trans. H. R. James, 1897, public domain). The sentence Aquinas takes over whole.public domain
An Eternal Present
Theology ProperArgument · power 95 · 95% accurateIn the gameGod is not stretched out along time, remembering and waiting as the reader does. He holds the whole of unending life at once, in one present. That is what the word “eternal” means.
Strong against
×2.5Summa Theologiaea book · why?
Aquinas defends Boethius’s definition of eternity against the charge that it only says what eternity lacks (Summa I, q.10, a.1).
