People have long turned to myriad sources as consolation for the thorny task of being human. From poetry and painting to music and sculpture, the arts are filled with expressions of humanity to soften misfortune and comfort the suffering. Literature is similarly sympathetic; what is the western canon but a catalogue of accounts of what it means to be human? And in philosophy, a field practically invented to help make sense of the human condition, consolations have been a popular genre. Perhaps the most famous was Boethius’s The Consolations of Philosophy , in which he reconciled his time in prison...