Impuissance des méchants
Here’s the translation: The paradoxical thesis of Book IV of Boethius: the wicked are weak, not strong. All men, good or bad, naturally strive for the same end, the *sovereign good*; but the good attain it through the natural means—virtue—while the wicked, reduced to unnatural means, precisely miss what they most desire. The power to harm is therefore not true power: since evil “is nothing,” he who can only do evil can do nothing. The villain who seems to gain everything fails at the only thing that matters. This must be distinguished from the Stoic *eph’ hēmin*, which concerns what I control (assent), not true power; and from the favors of *Fortune*, which leave the wicked happy but forever incapable of good.
Car si le mal n’est rien, comme je l’ai démontré il n’y a qu’un instant, les méchants ne pouvant que le mal, on doit conclure qu’ils ne peuvent rien.
The argument begins with a fact already established in Book III: all men, “without distinction, wicked or good, strive with equal vigor to attain the good.” The aspiration is universal; what differs is the path. The good take the natural way—virtue—and reach their goal; the wicked rush toward it through “the most varied passions,” which are not the natural means—and miss the mark.
Boethius illustrates this with an image of walking. A man who uses his feet moves forward; another, deprived of this means, “tries to walk on his hands” and gets nowhere. The second is no stronger for having struggled more: he is weaker, since he lacks the proper organ for his end. The same goes for the wicked. The highest good, which occupies them day and night, is precisely what the villains “are powerless to attain.”
Then comes the tight turn of the verbatim. The power to harm may seem like strength; it is the opposite. The wicked “can do evil, and they could not do so if they had retained the power of good men.” Since evil is nothing—lack of being, not substance—to be capable only of evil is to be capable of nothing. The ability to do evil “has nothing in common with power,” because all true power relates to the good as its end.
Hence the harshest conclusion: those who renounce “the common end of all that exists” likewise cease to exist. Not that they vanish: just as we call a corpse “a dead man” without being able to call it simply “a man,” the vicious retain the name without the full reality. Crime is not a portion of power subtracted from the good; it is a degradation of being.
To be distinguished from the Stoic eph’ hēmin. Epictetus divides the world between what depends on me and what does not: the sage is free because he governs his assent, whatever happens outside. Boethius does not speak of this inner mastery; he speaks of real power, of the capacity to attain—or fail to attain—the sovereign good. The wicked may well command external things and yet, by that very measure, remain radically powerless.
Also to be distinguished from the favors of Fortune. The prosperous tyrant is not undone by the wheel that will turn: he is undone, here and now, by the fact that he never obtains what he truly wants. His worldly success does not diminish his powerlessness; it disguises it.