2006 7 MARY T. CLARK De Trinitate Augustine’s purposes In writing De Trinitate Augustine had three main objectives. He wished to dem-onstrate to critics of the Nicene 1 creed that the divinity and co-equality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are rooted in scripture.
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Published February 1st 2003 by New City Press
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Upon reading the first 8 books of Augustin’s ‘On The Trinity’ it’s hard to know what I have learned. In many ways I may ask ‘have I been left with more questions then answers? At times reading this work was frustrating and I found myself saying out loud “What on earth are you talking about you mad man?”. I suffered many times from major reading fatigue because it’s one thing to read these words, but another thing to comprehend Augustin’s intent and the context in which he writes.
On the upside,..more
How do I review a book like this? It has taken me some time to work through this book, but I have found it essential to understanding later writers, particularly St. Thomas Aquinas. In its own right, it is a wonderful read and an intellectual journey for those seeking to live in the mystery of the triune God. Also essnetial for those seeking to understand the development of Trinitarian thought.
Augustine's work on the Trinity truly illustrates the definition of the work 'classic': a book much discussed but never read, either by his adherents or critics. To be fair, even Augustine's adherents admit his style could be improved--shortening passages and limiting some of the more fanciful exegesis (City of God is notorious in this regard). And as some of his critics point out, if you want a good introduction into Trinitarian thinking, Gregory of Nazianzus (or Basil) is clearer and is writin..more
Jul 31, 2018Clayton Hutchins rated it it was amazing
Fantastic, on a number of levels. Tolle lege.
May 20, 2014Erick rated it really liked it
Shelves: church-fathers, church-history, theology
I had read Augustine's City Of God a few years ago and I was impressed with it, although I didn't agree with all of Augustine's points. When I do agree, it is a rather strong agreement. The Trinity (aka De Trinitate) was similar in that when I do agree with Augustine, it is a strong agreement; where I disagreed, it was more a matter of not going with the extremes of his position. For instance, while Augustine is trying to give honor to all three members of the Trinity, his trinitarian theology d..more
Dec 07, 2013Tyson Guthrie rated it liked it
A standard of Western trinitarian theology. I am not convinced by the logic of the double procession (of the Spirit from the Father and Son), but to his credit, Augustine stops short of the ill-fated step of making it necessary to secure the Son’s equality with the Father.
The Hill translation provides copious introductory material and commentary. These are so helpful, they nearly make up for Hill’s pretension. By Hill’s reading every writer before Augustine, and every commentator on Augustine be..more
Finished! A very difficult book, on a difficult topic, but I learned a lot from it. Very valuable.
I love Augustine's style, he really takes you along his thought process. Also loved the footnotes, which were very helpful. It took me a while to get through this book, mostly because lots of sentences are very long and complicated, one really needs to pay attention and focus, to keep track of the argument. I will write a proper review later. I need some time to reflect, recall what I learned and wh..more
I had to Skim this book over about a week, so I didn't get the chance to savor it. Given how dense it was, maybe I actually did myself a favor. Still, very moving and profound insights.
Jul 30, 2015Josh rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Very challenging, but worth the read. Also read in July 2015.
I cannot believe I read this book. THE WHOLE THING. Wow. I respect the effort, I really do, but dude that was BORING. *Laugh’s like Nelson*
Aug 26, 2017Shelby Minick rated it really liked it · review of another edition
A friend told me I would enjoy this work, and added that it had really worked their brain. After reading 'De Trinitate', I can think of no better description to fit my own experience! St. Augustine, in the 15 books comprising this study of Trinitarian doctrine, uses very full terminology and rhetorical sentences to convey his points. Often I found it challenging to work through a paragraph, and I would read a chapter at a time, then mentally digest it for a few hours before continuing. This is..more
Feb 25, 2016Sooho Lee rated it it was amazing
One of the most brilliant minds of the Christian tradition (and beyond!), St. Augustine plunges into the most captivating, yet also the most incomprehensible pillar of the Christian faith--the Triunity of God. Arguably Augustine's most taxing and enigmatical work, The Trinity is a rite of passage for all students and learners of Trinitarian theology (and beyond!). Inflexible in his meticulous bend, Augustine exacts demanding intellectual and spiritual prowess to delve deep into the most wondrous..more
Dec 12, 2012G Walker rated it liked it · review of another edition
When I first got my hands on this translation (published by NCP), I was pretty excited.. And I enjoyed it overall. I take issue with Augustine at several points in his theology.. his understanding of our Lord's sovereignty, his soteriological anthropology etc.. but I now, having read this, I also take issue with his theological method and conclusions regarding the Trinity.. in the end, ultimately too Western for me.. also at times flirts too heavily with autonomous reason and logic and not..more
I like the idea more than the execution.
I am not a theologian, but from what I know--namely from repeated hints by Dr. Leithart--this book has been treated rather unfairly by modern theologians. It is easy without historical background to criticize Augustine for his psychological metaphors of the Trinity, which seem to smack of individualism. However, a closer look will show he is not trying to find the Trinity in all creation, but how three can be one inextricably--acting together. We also owe t..more
Augustine's work on the trinity is obviously a classic and hugely important to Christian theology. It's well worth reading what he actually says rather than just encountering his thoughts via secondary sources that sum up (and therefore often oversimplify or mischaracterize) this massive and complex work. What I particularly want to praise about this book is the translation, notes, and introductory essays which Edmund Hill has provided. This is THE translation to get! It's worth buying just for..more
Feb 21, 2017Michelle Marvin rated it really liked it · review of another edition
A beautiful classic; I wish I could go back in time and listen to Augustine speak. So grateful we have his writing. Four stars are mainly for the translation, which, although it is clear and easy to read, it includes anachronisms such as 'secular scientist,' 'embryonic formation,' and 'psychoanalytic,' that leave me wondering what Augustine really wrote in the Latin. I won't comment about my thoughts on the Trinitarian theology because I think this is a must-read for anyone grappling with unders..more
Jan 11, 2014Robert Gourley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
The most challenging of all St Augustine's works I have read to date. The problem is, simply, that he failed in his efforts to describe and understand The Holy Trinity. It's not, however, that he failed to prove its existence - it was never in doubt, that was not the issue.
'I found that no adequate expression followed whatever understanding I came to; and I was only too well aware that my attempt even to understand involved more effort than result.' (p. 435) But still, a great book, and an hono..more
Fascinating how Augustine considers all the previous ways of theorizing the Trinity and then develops an interpretation that harmonizes and includes a little of all of them. The introduction is just as valuable, because it gives a historical development of the doctrine, beginning with the ways the Hebrews thought of God in the Hebrew Bible, and how this becomes Father, Son, Holy Ghost in the NT. A bit technical and repetitive, as Augustine often is, but his interpretation basically created Trini..more
May 02, 2016Tom rated it liked it
An excellent start as Augustine works through argumentation on the three persons of the Trinity, demonstrating that each is a completely separate person, yet fully divine. In doing so, he also addresses various heresies, particularly those dealing with Jesus. Where it got bogged down for me was when he spent many pages using various aspects of our human nature to somehow be metaphorical of the Trinity. This went on and on and really added no value, at least not to me.
Mar 19, 2017Trey Smith rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Such a beautiful book! Augustine explores an explanation of the Trinity by looking at man as the image of God, a rational mind that contemplates God, by the memory, understanding, and love or will. Though Augustine acknowledges limits of knowledge in this area of inquiry he outlines a beautiful description of the Trinity as the Father, one who loves, the Son, one who is loved, and Holy Spirit, love. I highly recommend this book.
Aug 06, 2017Daniel rated it liked it
While I am usually a big fan of Gussy's works, this volume is a very boring read. So much so, that I would not advise reading it in bed while smoking a cigar. Nonetheless, it contains many valuable theological insights. It is wise to read large portions of it at once because if you try reading small portions over a long period of time, it becomes very wearisome.
Jun 07, 2016Paul rated it it was amazing
Incredible, a tour de force. Imagine Augustine firing at his secretaries. I enjoyed the first part with fiery logic and love of Father and Son and Spirit. The second part almost prattled but I do not want to use that word. Augustine was trying to see the economic Trinity in everything and strained to make it happen.
Feb 03, 2009Patrick marked it as to-read
I started reading this book a couple years ago, but ended up putting down after a while. Surprisingly, it's the first Augustine book that didn't really grab my attention. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood. I'll have to pick it up again later sometime.
A stellar translation of Augustine's De Trinitate with helpful notes by the editor. Well formatted and easier to read than some other translations of this work that I've come across. Augustine himself, of course, is classic.
Mar 04, 2010Bob rated it it was amazing
The essential work of Christian theology on the Doctrine of the Trinity. Augustine argues that because we are created in God's image, our selves, our minds, are essentially trinitarian.
Jan 03, 2009Glen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
A great critical edition of the 'philosophical' half of On the Trinity, but an entirely misguided approach to Augustine in the commentary.
Jul 09, 2012Brittany Petruzzi rated it really liked it
I should have paid more attention, but what I got out of it was fantastic.
Not my favourite book by Augustine.
It may seem like a lot of text to get through to find out in the end that determining how exactly you might understand the Trinity is impossible .. but don't let that stop you.
Holy shit. I mean, HOLY SHIT. Jesus. You know?
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Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, in English Augustine of Hippo, also known as St. Augustine, St. Austin, was bishop of Hippo Regius (present-day Annaba, Algeria). He was a Latin philosopher and theologian from the Africa Province of the Roman Empire and is generally considered as one of the greatest Christian thinkers of all times. His writings were very influential in the development of Western C..more
“The reader of these reflections of mine on the Trinity should bear in mind that my pen is on the watch against the sophistries of those who scorn the starting-point of faith, and allow themselves to be deceived through an unseasonable and misguided love of reason.”
“But Augustine seems to have perceived, though he never explicitly defined this perception, that it is of the essence of Christian truth to be dramatic, to be an encounter cast in dramatic form between God revealing and man believing.” More quotes…
First published Fri Mar 24, 2000; substantive revision Fri Dec 7, 2018
Aurelius Augustinus [more commonly “St. Augustine ofHippo,” often simply “Augustine”] (354–430C.E.): rhetor, Christian Neoplatonist, North African Bishop,Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. One of the decisive developmentsin the western philosophical tradition was the eventually widespreadmerging of the Greek philosophical tradition and the Judeo-Christianreligious and scriptural traditions. Augustine is one of the mainfigures through and by whom this merging was accomplished. He is, aswell, one of the towering figures of medieval philosophy whoseauthority and thought came to exert a pervasive and enduring influencewell into the modern period (e.g. Descartes and especiallyMalebranche), and even up to the present day, especially among thosesympathetic to the religious tradition which he helped to shape (e.g.Plantinga 1992; Adams 1999). But even for those who do not share thissympathy, there is much in Augustine’s thought that is worthy ofserious philosophical attention. Augustine is not only one of themajor sources whereby classical philosophy in general and Neoplatonismin particular enter into the mainstream of early and subsequentmedieval philosophy, but there are significant contributions of hisown that emerge from his modification of that Greco-Roman inheritance,e.g., his subtle accounts of belief and authority, his account ofknowledge and illumination, his emphasis upon the importance andcentrality of the will, and his focus upon a new way ofconceptualizing the phenomena of human history, just to cite a few ofthe more conspicuous examples.
1. Context
Only four of his seventy-five years were spent outside NorthernAfrica, and fifty-seven of the remaining seventy-one were in suchrelatively out of the way places as Thagaste and Hippo Regius, bothbelonging to Roman provinces, neither notable for either cultural orcommercial prominence. However, the few years Augustine spent awayfrom Northern Africa exerted an incalculable influence upon histhought, and his geographical distance from the major intellectual andpolitical capitals of the Later Roman Empire should not obscure thetremendous influence he came to exert even in his own lifetime. Here,as elsewhere, one is confronted by a figure both strikingly liminaland, at times, intriguingly ambivalent. He was, as already noted, along time resident and, eventually, Bishop in Northern Africa whosethought was transformed and redirected during the four brief years hespent in Rome and Milan, far away from the provincial context where hewas born and died and spent almost all of the years in between; he wasa man who tells us that he never thought of himself as not being insome sense a Christian [Confessions III.iv.8], yet hecomposed a spiritual autobiography containing one of the mostcelebrated conversion accounts in all of Christian literature; he wasa classically trained rhetorician who used his skills to eloquentlyproclaim at length the superiority of Christian culture overGreco-Roman culture, and he also served as one of the central figuresby whom the latter was transformed and transmitted to the former.Perhaps most striking of all, Augustine bequeathed to the Latin West avoluminous body of work that contains at its chronological extremestwo quite dissimilar portraits of the human condition. In thebeginning, there is a largely Hellenistic portrait, one that isnotable for the optimism that a sufficiently rational and disciplinedlife can safely escape the ever-threatening circumstantial adversitythat seems to surround us. Nearer the end, however, there emerges aconsiderably grimmer portrait, one that emphasizes the impotence ofthe unaided human will, and the later Augustine presents a morallandscape populated largely by the massa damnata [DeCivitate Dei XXI.12], the overwhelming majority who are justlypredestined to eternal punishment by an omnipotent God, intermingledwith a small minority whom God, with unmerited mercy, has predestinedto be saved. The sheer quantity of the writing that unites these twoextremes, much of which survives, is truly staggering. There are wellover 100 titles [listed at Fitzgerald 1999, pp. xxxv–il], manyof which are themselves voluminous and composed over lengthy periodsof time, not to mention over 200 letters [listed at Fitzgerald 1999,pp. 299–305] and close to 400 sermons [listed at Fitzgerald1999, pp. 774–789]. It is arguably impossible to construct anymoderate sized and manageable list of his major philosophical worksthat would not occasion some controversy in terms of what is omitted,but surely any list would have to include Contra Academicos[Against the Academicians, 386–387 C.E.], De LiberoArbitrio [On Free Choice of the Will, Book I, 387/9C.E.; Books II & III, circa 391–395 C.E.], DeMagistro [On The Teacher, 389 C.E.],Confessiones [Confessions, 397–401 C.E.],De Trinitate [On The Trinity, 399–422 C.E.],De Genesi ad Litteram [On The Literal Meaning ofGenesis, 401–415 C.E.], De Civitate Dei [OnThe City of God, 413–427C.E.], and Retractationes[Reconsiderations, 426–427 C.E.].
Born in 354 C.E. in Thagaste (in what is now Algeria), he was educatedin Thagaste, Madauros, and Carthage, and sometime around 370 he begana thirteen-year, monogamous relationship with the mother of his son,Adeodatus (born 372). He subsequently taught rhetoric in Thagaste andCarthage, and in 383 he made the risk-laden journey from NorthernAfrica to Rome, seeking the better sort of students that was rumoredto be there. Disappointed by the moral quality of those students(academically superior to his previous students, they nonetheless hadan annoying tendency to disappear without paying their fees), hesuccessfully applied for a professorship of rhetoric in Milan.Augustine’s professional ambitions pointed in the direction of anarranged marriage, and this in turn entailed a separation from hislong-time companion and mother of his son. After this separation,however, Augustine abruptly resigned his professorship in 386 claimingill health, renounced his professional ambitions, and was baptized byBishop Ambrose of Milan on Easter Sunday, 387, after spending fourmonths at Cassiciacum where he composed his earliest extant works.Shortly thereafter, Augustine began his return to Northern Africa, butnot before his mother died at Ostia, a seaport outside Rome, whileawaiting the voyage across the Mediterranean. Not too long after this,Augustine, now back in Thagaste, also lost his son (389). Theremainder of his years would be spent immersed in the affairs andcontroversies of the Church into which he had been recently baptized,a Church that henceforth provided for Augustine the crucial nexus ofrelations that his family and friends had once been. In 391, Augustinewas reluctantly ordained as a priest by the congregation of HippoRegius (a not uncommon practice in Northern Africa), in 395 he wasmade Bishop, and he died August 430 in Hippo, thirty-five years later,as the Vandals were besieging the gates of the city. However, whenAugustine himself recounts his first thirty-two years in hisConfessions, he makes clear that many of the decisive eventsof his early life were, to use his own imagery, of a considerably moreinternal nature than the relatively external facts cited above.
From his own account, he was a precocious and able student, muchenamored of the Latin classics, Virgil in particular[Confessions I.xiii.20]. However, at age nineteen, hehappened upon Cicero’s Hortensius, now lost except forfragments [see Straume-Zimmermann 1990], and he found himself suddenlyimbued with a passion for philosophy [ConfessionsIII.iv.7–8]. It is clear from his account of Cicero’s effectupon him that his passion was not for philosophy as often understoodtoday, i.e. an academic, largely argument-oriented conceptualdiscipline, but rather as the paradigmatically Hellenistic pursuit ofa wisdom that transcended and blurred the boundaries of what are nowviewed as the separate spheres of philosophy, religion, andpsychology. In particular, philosophy for Augustine was centered onwhat is sometimes misleadingly referred to as “the problem ofevil.” This problem, needless to say, was not the sort ofanalytic, largely logical problem of theodicy that later came topreoccupy philosophers of religion. For Augustine, the problem was ofa more general and visceral sort: it was the concern with the issue ofhow to make sense of and live within a world that seemed soadversarial and fraught with danger, a world in which so much of whatmatters most to us is so easily lost [see e.g. ConfessionsIV.x.15]. In this sense, the wisdom that Augustine sought was a commondenominator uniting the conflicting views of such Hellenisticphilosophical sects as the Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics, andNeoplatonists (though this is a later title) such as Plotinus andPorphyry, as well as many Christians of varying degrees of orthodoxy,including very unorthodox gnostic sects such as the Manicheans.
Augustine himself comes to spend nine years as a hearer among theManicheans [see Brown 1967, pp. 46–60], and while there are noextant writings from this period of his life, the Manicheans areclearly the target of many of the writings he would compose after hisconversion to the more orthodox, if Neoplatonizing, Christianity heencountered under Bishop Ambrose of Milan. The Manicheans proposed apowerful, if somewhat mythical and philosophically awkward explanationof the problem of evil: there is a perpetual struggle betweenco-eternal principles of Light and Darkness (good and evil,respectively), and our souls are particles of Light which have becometrapped in the Darkness of the physical world. By means of sufficientinsight and a sufficiently ascetic life, however, one couldeventually, over the course of several lives, come to liberate theLight within from the surrounding Darkness, thus rejoining the largerLight of which the soul is but a fragmented and isolated part.
As Augustine recounts it in the Confessions [seeConfessions V.3.5 and V.7.13] and elsewhere [e.g. DeMoribus Ecclesiae Catholicae 1], he became disenchanted with theinability of the Manichean elect to provide sufficiently detailed andrigorous explanations of their cosmology. As a result, he began todrift away from the sect during his sojourn in Rome, flirting forawhile with academic skepticism [Confessions V.xiv.25] beforefinally coming upon the Platonizing influence of Ambrose and the“books of the Platonists” [Confessions VII.9.13].When Augustine eventually comes to write about the Manicheans, thereare three features upon which he will focus: their implicitmaterialism (a widespread feature of Hellenistic thought, theNeoplatonists being a notable exception); their substantive dualismwhereby Darkness, and hence, evil, is granted a co-eternal,substantial existence opposed to the Light; and their identificationof the human soul as a fragmented particle of the Light. According toAugustine, this latter identification not only serves to render thehuman soul divine, thereby obliterating the crucial distinctionbetween creator and creature, but it also raises doubts about theextent to which the individual human soul can be held responsible formorally bad actions, responsibility instead being attributed to thebody in which the soul (itself quasi material) is trapped. AlthoughAugustine is vehement and at times merciless in his repudiation of theManicheans, questions can still be asked about the influence theManichean world-view continued to exert upon his understanding andpresentation of Neoplatonic and Christian themes [see“Philosophical Anthropology” below].
The single most decisive event, however, in Augustine’s philosophicaldevelopment has to be his encounter with those unnamed books of thePlatonists in Milan in 384. While there are other importantinfluences, it was his encounter with the Platonism ambient inAmbrose’s Milan that provided the major turning point, reorienting histhought along basic themes that would persist until his deathforty-six years later. There has been controversy regarding just whichbooks of the Platonists Augustine encountered [O’Connell 1968, pp.6–10; O’Donnell 1992, vol. II, pp. 421–423; Beatrice,1989], but we know from his own account that they were translated byMarius Victorinus [Confessions VIII.2.3], and there iswidespread agreement that they were texts by Plotinus and Porphyry,although there is again controversy regarding how much influence is tobe attributed to each [O’Connell 1968, pp. 20–26; O’Donnell1992, vol II, pp. 423–4]. These uncertainties notwithstanding,Augustine himself makes it clear that it was his encounter with thebooks of the Platonists that made it possible for him to view both theChurch and its scriptural tradition as having an intellectuallysatisfying and, indeed, resourceful content.
As decisive as this encounter was, however, it would be a mistakesimply to view Augustine’s writings as the uncritical application of aNeoplatonic framework to a static body of Christian doctrine. In hisearliest writings [e.g. Contra Academicos, 386 C.E.],Augustine is amazingly confident with regard to the compatibility ofthe two traditions [see Contra Academicos 3.10.43]. But bythe time he composes the Confessions (397–401C.E.), heis already aware that there are significant points of divergence[Confessions VII.20.26], and by the time he composes BookVIII of De Civitate Dei (circa 416 C.E.), he still haslaudatory things to say about the Platonic tradition, but it is clearthat the points of divergence have become more important to him andthat he regards the Roman Catholic Church as having sufficientinternal resources to address whatever difficulties confront it. Partof this gradual change of attitude is attributable to his detailedstudy of scriptural texts (especially the Pauline letters), as well ashis immersion in both the daily affairs of his monastic community andthe rather focused sorts of controversies that confronted the Churchin the fourth and fifth centuries. Beyond his already noted,protracted battle with Manicheanism, there is also his involvement inthe North African Donatist controversy [see Brown 1967, pp.212–225], a controversy concerning the validity of sacramentsadministered in the wake of the persecution of 304–305, and mostespecially the Pelagian controversy which engaged him from about 411until his death in 430 [see Brown 1967, pp. 340–52 and thesection on “Will” below]. In this latter case, seriousissues arose regarding the role of grace and the efficacy of theunaided human will, issues that, as we will see, played an importantrole in shaping his views on human freedom and predestination.
These important qualifications notwithstanding, the fact remains thatthis Platonism also provided Augustine with a philosophical frameworkfar more pliable and enduring than he himself is willing to admit inhis later works. Moreover, this framework itself forms an importantpart of the philosophical legacy that Augustine bequeathed to both themedieval and modern periods.
2. Reading The Confessions
Augustine’s Confessions is undoubtedly among the most widelyread works in medieval philosophy, for both philosophers andnon-philosophers. Often hailed as the “firstautobiography” and as a “spiritual biography,” it isnonetheless a work that has to be approached with considerablecaution, for two main reasons. First, as is the case with allbiographies and autobiographies, it is an edited account of anindividual’s life. Sometimes this feature is easy to overlook, but itssignificance is obvious enough: in composing such a work, the authoris obliged to engage in an editorial process in which certain eventsand circumstances are highlighted and others omitted. Without this,the work would be rather like a map that is as large as of that ofwhich it is intended to be a map, thus making it not a map at all. Inorder to bring some coherence to the material at hand, there must besome effort to provide an interpretive framework for the material,focusing on relevant and important highlights while omitting othersthat would obscure those highlights.
The second reason is more specific to Augustine: trained as arhetorician, Augustine has a specific rhetorical strategy that needsto be kept in mind as one works through the text. Presented as anextended prayer to God, Augustine is not merely telling the tale ofhis own life, but also using his life as a concrete example of how anisolated individual soul can extricate itself from this state andNeoplatonically ascend to a unity that overcomes this isolation andattains to rest in God. Also important are the means by which he seeksto accomplish this task: his selection of events is quite deliberate,and he especially focuses upon his immersion and extrication from whathe regards as his pre-reflective, materialist and common sense view ofthe world; the various kinds of relationships that both hinder and aidin this extrication; and the texts that he reads, some of which againaid in the extrication and others of which are obstacles.
With respect to his relations with others, he begins with hisruminations upon infancy and the isolation of the infant, whichinitially seems to be overcome by the acquisition of language. But ashe tells the story in Confessions I, language is itself adouble-edged sword: it is an instrument that can immerse us into theworld, but it can also, if used rightly, aid in transcending the worldof the senses and ascending to the intelligible realm where we findthe unity and rest we seek. Of his remarks on friendship, especiallynoteworthy are the theft of pears in Book II; the death of hisanonymous friend in Book IV; his accounts of Nebridius and Alypius;his account of his relationship with his mother, Monica; and, perhapsmost significant of all, the “vision of Ostia” that isrecounted in Book IX. Intertwined with his reflections on friendshipis a progression of texts that leads him to the Neoplatonic ascents ofBook VII and Book IX; his initial distaste for biblical texts owing totheir rhetorical inelegance; his reading of Cicero, which inflamed himwith a passion for philosophy; his attraction to the texts of theManicheans; his reading of the Skeptics; and, most importantly, hisreading of unnamed books of the “Platonists” which helpedhim to overcome his predisposition to materialism and paved the wayfor his non-Manichean, non-dualistic solution to the problem of evil,which enabled him to engage in the Neoplatonic ascent and thereby toovercome the fragmented isolation of bodies, the senses, and language.Although Augustine is aware by the time he writes theConfessions that there are differences between Christianityand Neoplatonism, he nonetheless makes its clear that the latter makesit possible for him to regard the former as intellectuallycredible.
Books VIII and IX continue in this autobiographical vein: Book VIII isnotable for its complex and provocative accounts of Augustine’sinternal struggle of the will with respect to embracing his new-found,more orthodox form of Christianity, as well as his reading of ICorinthians 7:27–35, which finally completes his conversion.Book IX is notable for the aforementioned “vision atOstia” in which he and his mother together ascend beyond theworld of the senses and language in a manner akin to those ascentsrecounted in Book VII, but with one notable difference: unlike mostNeoplatonic ascents, this one involves two individuals partaking inthe ascent, which enables them to communicate in a manner thatovercomes the Neoplatonic view of the isolated nature of the soul inthis world.
The overarching Neoplatonic strategy of the first nine Books goes along way toward explaining what might otherwise be a strange shift inthe remaining four books, in which the autobiography recedes into thebackground. In Book X, Augustine focuses on the role of memory as aroute of access to the transcendence that he is seeking, and Book XIemphasizes time and eternity, presenting the former as a psychological“distention” of the latter which needs to be overcome toreach the unity and rest in God that is the overall theme of theConfessions. This strategy, combined with the related themesof the role of language and texts in his spiritual progress, alsoexplains the fact that Books XII and XIII are devoted to exegesis ofthe first chapters of Genesis. As noted above, Augustine at firstdisdained biblical texts owing to their rhetorical inelegance. Now,however, having a framework that enables him to discern their actualinner depth, these texts acquire a prominence and indicate theculmination of that long journey which began with his immersion intothe double-edged domain of human speech and written word. Moreover,these final Books, along with the Neoplatonic framework he discoversin Book VII (though, as we have seen, it also governs the structure ofthe Confessions as a whole), enable him to further probe thepuzzles that he raised in the first five chapters of Book I. In short,what once struck Augustine as the texts least worthy of attention havenow become the texts of all texts, because they contain the answers tothe questions and problems that have propelled him from the verybeginning of the Confessions.
For the reader interested in approaching the Confessions withmore historical background at their disposal, Brown (2000) andO’Donnell (2006) are reliable and helpful resources.
3. The Mysterious Woman From Northern Africa
For many readers, one of the most troubling passages of theConfessions occurs at VI.xv.25 where Augustine brieflydiscusses the abrupt dismissal of his unnamed companion of thirteenyears who is also the mother of his son Adeodatus. As Augustinerecounts it (Confessions VI.xiii.23), the dismissal wasprompted by his mother’s attempt to arrange a respectable marriage forhim: one that would aid him in attaining the salvation that baptismcould procure. It is also quite possible that it would serve him inthe pursuit of a more worldly career.
The custom of having a “concubine” (concubinatus)was not unusual at the time, and it was virtually indistinguishablefrom formal marriage. But it could serve as an impediment to socialadvancement unless it was replaced by the more formal arrangement ofmatrimonium. What seems so troubling about this brief passageare the facts that Augustine never names his companion, that thedissolution of the relationship is treated with such brevity, and thatAugustine almost immediately forms a relationship with another womanwhile waiting almost two years for his prospective, arranged bride toreach legal age for marriage (though the marriage never took placeowing to Augustine’s subsequent “conversion” recounted inBooks VII and VIII).
Hence, the obvious questions: Why the abruptness of the dismissal? Whynot enter with his companion of thirteen years into the morerespectable relation of matrimonium? Why anonymity forsomeone with whom he had spent thirteen years in a monogamousrelationship? Why the headlong rush into another, temporaryrelationship, whereas his companion returned to Northern Africa vowingnever to enter into another relationship? Was their devotion to oneanother as asymmetrical as Augustine seems to suggest? Was he ascallous and as indifferent as the text seems to present him?
If one examines the text closely enough, there do seem to be answersto these questions: some of them historically speculative, othersdefinitely rooted in the text. In a speculative vein (though notwithout foundation) one must wonder what the mysterious woman’sfortunes in Northern Africa would have been had her name beenmentioned in the text. Also, what was the social class of hiscompanion? Differences in social class could often prevent thetransition from a relation of concubinatus to onematrimonium.
On a more textual level, it is obvious that Monica played asignificant role in the arrangement of the more respectable marriagefor which Augustine was obliged to wait. More importantly, Augustinemakes it clear at VI.xv.23 that his companion’s vow of chastity is tobe regarded as superior to his pursuit of another relationship, whichwas prompted by lust rather than love, implying that this might nothave been true of his relationship with his companion of thirteenyears. As for the anonymity of his companion, this is not unusual inthe Confessions as a whole. When he does mentions names (e.g.Alypius, Nebridius, Faustus, Ambrose, Monica), they are names thatwould have been known to contemporary readers of the text. But theyalso serve as character types: most positive, but some (like thewell-known Manichean Faustus) of a more ambivalent sort. The fact thata name is not mentioned does not mean that Augustine’s relation withthat person is insignificant. A prime example is his protracteddiscussion of an anonymous friend in Book IV, a pathos-ridden accountthat leaves no doubt about the importance of the relationship toAugustine. Indeed, given the overall rhetorical strategy of theConfessions, in which his own life stands as a particularinstance of the soul’s immersion in and extrication from the isolationand fragmented condition brought about by the sensible world, it ismore surprising when he does mention specific names.
But perhaps of most importance are two textual points which indicatethe significance of this relationship to Augustine. The first is thatthe episode he recounts is of an intensely personal nature, notnecessary to the rhetorical strategy of the Confessions as awhole. But even more important is the imagery employed in his accountof the separation. He tells us that his “heart”(cor) was still attached(adhaerebat) to her, that itwas wounded (conscium et vulneratum), and that the separation“drew blood” (trahebat sanguiem). There are onlytwo passages in the entire Confessions which employ similarimagery: his account of the death of his anonymous friend at IV.vi.11,and his account of the death of his mother at IX.xii.30.
Given the imagery employed here, there does look to be somephilosophical import in this otherwise intensely personal passage: itis one example of the Neoplatonic desperation of the individual soul’sattempt to overcome its isolation by seeking unity with others, aunity that can ultimately only be found in the unity with God(IV.ix.14 and XI.xxix.39).
Needless to say, this does not completely exonerate Augustine. If itwas indeed under Monica’s influence that he dissolved therelationship, it is unclear why, given the importance that he clearlyattached to it, he could not have resisted her influence. And if thechoice was his own, then he appears even more culpable. But then,given the travail of the soul’s journey presented in the first sixbooks of the Confessions, perhaps this is precisely thepoint.
4. Ontology and Eudaimonism
A good place to begin examining the larger contours of Augustine’slegacy is his account of the impact the books of the Platonists hadupon him, i.e., his ontology and the eudaimonism it is intended tosupport.
In the Confessions, where Augustine gives his most extensivediscussion of the books of the Platonists, he makes clear that hisprevious thinking was dominated by a common-sense materialism[Confessions IV.xv.24; VII.i.1]. It was the books of thePlatonists that first made it possible for him to conceive thepossibility of a non-physical substance [ConfessionsVII.x.16], providing him with a non-Manichean solution to the problemof the origin of evil. In addition, the books of the Platonistsprovided him with a metaphysical framework of extraordinary depth andsubtlety, a richly-textured tableau upon which the human conditioncould be plotted. It can both account for the obvious difficultieswith which life confronts us, while also offering grounds for aeudaimonism notable for the depth of its moral optimism. In thisrespect, the ontology that Augustine acquired from the books of thePlatonists is, in terms of its intent, not all that different from thematerialism of the Epicureans, Stoics, and even the Manicheans. Whatsets the Neoplatonic ontology apart, however, is both the resolutenessof its promise and the architectonic grandeur with which itcomplements the world of visible appearances.
In the books of the Platonists, Augustine encountered an ontology inwhich there is a fundamental divide between the sensible/physical andthe intelligible/spiritual [Confessions VII.x.16]. In spiteof the dualistic implications, this is clearly not intended to be adualistic alternative to the moral dualism of the Manicheans and othergnostics [see, e.g. Plotinus, Enneads II.9]. Instead, thedivide is situated within what is supposed to be a larger, unifiedhierarchy that begins with absolute unity and progressively unfoldsthrough various stages of increasing plurality and multiplicity,culminating in the lowest realm of isolated and fragmented materialobjects observed with the senses [see Bussanich 1996, pp. 38–65;O’Meara 1996, pp. 66–81]. Thus, for Augustine, God is regardedas the ultimate source and point of origin for all that comes below.Equated with Being [Confessions VII.x.16], Goodness [e.g.De Trinitate VIII.5], and Truth [ConfessionsX.xxiii.33; De Libero Arbitrio III.16], God is the unchangingpoint which unifies all that comes after and below within an abidingand providentially-ordained rational hierarchy.
Augustine, especially in his earlier works, focuses upon the contrastbetween the intelligible and the sensible, enjoining his reader torealize that the former alone holds out what we seek in the latter:the world of the senses is intractably private and isolated, whereasthe intelligible realm is truly public and simultaneously open to all[De Libero Arbitrio II.7] ; the sensible world is one oftransitory objects, whereas the intelligible realm contains abidingrealities [De Libero Arbitrio II.6]; the sensible world issubject to the consumptive effects of temporality, whereas theintelligible realm is characterized by an atemporal eternity whereinwe are safely removed from the eviscerating prospect of losing whatand whom we love [Confessions XI.xxxix.39; see alsoConfessions IV.xii.18]. Indeed, in the vision at Ostia atConfessions IX.x.23–25, Augustine even seems to suggestthat the intelligible realm holds out the prospect of fulfilling ourdesire for the unity that we seek in friendship and love, a unity thatcan never really be achieved as long as we are immersed in thesensible world and separated by physical bodies subject to inevitabledissolution [see Mendelson 2000]. The intelligible realm, with God asits source, promises the only lasting relief from the anxiety promptedby the transitory nature of the sensible realm.
Despite its dualistic overtones, the overall unity of the picture iscentral to its ability to provide a resolution of the problem of evil.The sensible world, for example, is not evil, nor is embodiment itselfto be regarded as straightforwardly bad. The problem that plagues ourcondition is not that we are trapped in the visible world (as it isfor the Manicheans); rather, it is a more subtle problem of perceptionand will: we are prone to view things materialistically and henceunaware that the sensible world is but a tiny portion of what is real[Confessions IV.xv.24], an error Augustine increasinglyattributes to original sin [De Libero Arbitrio III.20; DeCivitate Dei XIII.14–15]. Thus, we have a tendency to focusonly upon the sensible, viewing it as a self-contained arena withinwhich all questions of moral concern are to be resolved. Because wefail to perceive the larger unity of which the sensible world isitself a part, it easily becomes for us (though not in itself) a realmof moral danger, one wherein our will attaches itself to transitoryobjects that cannot but lead to anxiety [ConfessionsVII.xi.17–18]. Given the essentially rational nature of thehuman soul and the rational nature of the Neoplatonic ontology, thereis nonetheless room for optimism. The human soul has the capacity toperceive its own liminal status as a being embodied partly in thesensible world while connected to the intelligible realm, and there isthus the possibility of reorienting one’s moral relation to thesensible world, appreciating it for the goodness it manifests, butseeing it as an instrument for directing one’s attention to what isabove it [see Confessions VII.x.16 and VII.xvii.23].Augustine’s employment of this Neoplatonic hierarchy is thus centralto his Hellenistic eudaimonism [see O’Connell 1972, pp. 39–40;Rist 1994, pp. 48–53; Kirwan 1999, pp. 183–4] which wouldredeem appearances by means of situating them within a more primary,if often unacknowledged context.
With respect to questions about specific instances of natural andmoral evil, this ontology is even more subtle. Natural evils areattributed to the partiality of our perspective, a perspective that isoften the result of our myopic materialism and tendency to focus uponour own self-interest. Understood within the larger context—boththe underlying order of the appearances and the providentiallygoverned moral drama within which they appear—natural evils arenot evil at all [e.g. Confessions VII.xiii.19 and DeCivitate Dei XI.22]. With respect to the moral evil which is theproduct of human agency, these are the culpable products of a willthat has become attached to lower goods, treating them as if they werehigher. Moral evil is, strictly speaking, not a thing, but only thewill’s turning away from God and attaching itself to inferior goods asif they were higher [ibid.]. In De Civitate Dei, Augustineemphasizes the privative nature of evil by referring to the will’spursuit of inferior goods as being a deficient rather than efficientcause [De Civitate Dei, XII.7]. The inherent difficulty ofthis notion aside [see Rist 1994, pp. 106–8], the point behindit is clear enough: Augustine is using the resources of Neoplatonismto account for the phenomena we label evil while stressing humanresponsibility, thus avoiding either substantializing evil (as theManicheans do) or making it the result of God’s creative activity.
For all that Augustine takes from the books of the Platonists, thereare two points where he conspicuously departs from their ontology.Frequently, Plotinus asserts that the ultimate principle, The One, isitself of such absolute unity and transcendence that, strictlyspeaking, it defies all predication and is itself beyond Being andGoodness [see, for example, Plotinus, Enneads, VI.9.3].Augustine himself does not comment upon this feature of Plotinus’thought, and thus one can only conjecture as to his reason forresisting it, but given his repeated emphasis upon the soul’s relationto God [e.g. Soliloquia 1.2.7 and De Ordine2.18.47], the Plotinian picture may have seemed to him as positing toogreat a distance between the two, thus raising doubts about theability of reason to take us towards our desired destination [seeMendelson 1995, pp. 244–45]. The other departure fromNeoplatonism moves in the opposite direction. Rather than the dangerof making the spiritual distance between God and the soul too great,there is as well in Neoplatonism a tendency to bridge that gap in amanner troubling to someone like Augustine, for whom thecreator/creature distinction is fundamental. In Plotinus and otherNeoplatonists, the relation of the ultimate principle to all thatcomes below is usually presented in terms of a sempiternal process ofnecessary emanations whereby lower stages constantly flow from thehigher [see Plotinus, Enneads IV.8.6]. Augustine, notsurprisingly, resists this aspect of the Neoplatonic ontology, alwaysinsisting upon the fundamentally volitional nature of God’s activity[e.g. De Genesi ad Litteram 6.15.26]. Nor should it besurprising that Augustine should find himself obliged to depart inimportant respects from the Neoplatonic tradition. He is, after all,not merely taking over a Neoplatonic ontology, but he is attempting tocombine it with a scriptural tradition of a rather different sort, onewherein the divine attributes most prized in the Greek tradition (e.g.necessity, immutability, and atemporal eternity) must somehow becombined with the personal attributes (e.g. will, justice, andhistorical purpose) of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Author by: Dave Adkins Language: en Publisher by: Xlibris Corporation Format Available: PDF, ePub, Mobi Total Read: 76 Total Download: 592 File Size: 46,7 Mb Description: I took two years of Latin at Grinnell (Iowa) High School and two years of French at Cornell College, but I never really committed to using these languages.
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For all the changes that affected Augustine between his initialencounter with the books of the Platonists in 384–386 and hisdeath in 430, he never abandoned this Neoplatonic ontology’sdistinction between the physical/sensible and thespiritual/intelligible and its hierarchy within which these realms areunified. However, these commitments still leave much room fordevelopment as well as for tension and uncertainty. In particular,Augustine’s views on original sin and the necessity of grace in theface of the Pelagian controversy raised serious questions about theefficacy of the human will. Complicating the matter further is thequestion of the soul’s origin, a question that has a significantimpact on Augustine’s philosophical anthropology.
5. Philosophical Anthropology
With respect to Augustine’s desire to find a viable alternative to theawkward and intractable moral dualism of the Manicheans, there can belittle question that his embracing of Neoplatonism is a positivedevelopment. Not only does it allow him to account for evil withoutsubstantializing it, but it also provides him with a unified accountof the moral drama that constitutes the human condition. Even so, thismetaphysical architectonic is prone to tensions of its own, some ofwhich lend themselves to a kind of moral dualism not altogether unlikethat of the Manicheans.
For Augustine, the individual human being is a body-soul composite,but in keeping with his Neoplatonism, there is an asymmetry betweensoul and body. As a spiritual entity, the soul is superior to thebody, and it is the province of the soul to rule the body [e.g. DeAnimae Quantitate 13.22; De Genesi contra ManicheosII.11]. This presents a fairly positive conception of the soul-bodyrelation, one that clearly runs counter to the Manichean picture ofthe soul’s entrapment. Matters are somewhat less clear, however, whenwe turn to the question of how the soul comes to be embodied.
With respect to the soul’s “origin,” as Augustine framesthe question, there is a strand of uncertainty that runs unbroken fromhis earliest completed post-conversion work [De Beata Vita,386 C.E.] to the Retractationes of 427 C.E. In both works,Augustine professes to be puzzled about the soul’s origin [DeBeata Vita 1.5 and Rectractationes 1.1 and 2.45/71], buthis uncertainty is clearly evolving, and the absence of certainty onthe issue should not be interpreted as neutrality or indifference.
It is also important to note that, for Augustine, this evolvinguncertainty is itself to be understood against the backdrop of otherpoints about which he never seems to waver after 386. He becameadamant, for example, that the soul is to be identified with neitherthe substance of God, nor with the body, nor with any other materialentity [Letters 143 and 166.3–4]. In additionto the status of the soul as both created and immaterial (both pointscontrasting with the Manicheans), he also insists upon the mutabilityof the human soul, a feature that not only serves to distinguish itfrom its creator but one that he views as necessary to explain thepossibility of moral change, be it for better or worse [Letter166.3; Confessions IV.xv.26].
In De Libero Arbitrio III.20 & 21 (circa 395 C.E.), whenAugustine first attends to the question of the soul’s origin in amanner that focuses upon particular possibilities, he does so as partof an anti-Manichean theodicy intended to show that it is the humansoul rather than God that is responsible for the presence of moralevil in the world. Thus, as he later points out in Letter 143(circa 412 C.E.), he is not concerned to adjudicate between thesecompeting hypotheses, but merely to show that each is consistent witha non-Manichean, Neoplatonizing account of moral evil. Nonetheless,the four hypotheses he does advance are important evidence about howhe understands the conceptual landscape [O’Daly 1987, pp. 15–20;Mendelson 1998, pp. 30–44], and the anti-Manichean polemicnotwithstanding, it is instructive that he makes no attempt to choosebetween or even to offer a tentative ranking of them.
Interestingly enough, two of the four hypotheses require the soul’sexistence prior to embodiment. On the first, the soul is sent by Godto administer the body (henceforth the “sent” hypothesis);on the second, the soul comes to inhabit the body by its own choice(henceforth the “voluntarist” hypothesis). In laterpresentations of these hypotheses (though not in De LiberoArbitrio III), Augustine treats the voluntarist hypothesis asinvolving both a sin on the soul’s part and a cyclical process wherebythe soul is subject to multiple incarnations [Letter 166.27].The other two hypotheses, the “traducianist” and the“creationist,” do not involve pre-existence, but there isnonetheless a significant contrast between them. On the traducianistaccount, all souls are propagated from Adam’s soul in a manneranalogous to that of the body, thus linking each soul to all previousones by a kind of genealogical chain. On the creationist hypothesis,however, God creates a new soul for each body, thus creating a kind ofvertical link between God and each individual soul.
These hypotheses do not exhaust the logical possibilities, but theywere the main contenders in Augustine’s time. There remainscontroversy over the extent to which Augustine himself was inclinedtowards either of the hypotheses that required pre-existence[O’Connell 1968, O’Daly 1987, pp. 15–20; O’Donnell 1992II.34–5], but there are passages in the Confessions[see Confessions I.6–8] and elsewhere [e.g. DeGenesi Contra Manicheos 2.8 (circa 388–9 C.E.) and DeGenesi ad Literam Imperfectus Liber 1.3 (circa 393 C.E.)] thathave led some to regard it as a possibility he takes very seriouslyindeed, perhaps even preferring it, at least until the early part ofthe fifth century [O’Connell 1968; Teske 1991]. Moreover, given theNeoplatonic architectonic of the Confessions, this would notbe all that surprising, for the notion that the preexistent soul fallsinto the body is a conspicuous feature of Plotinus’ thought as well asof Neoplatonism in general [e.g. Plotinus, Enneads IV.8;Origen, On First Principles 1.4.4]. In this regard, it isalso not surprising that Augustine should have come to identify thehypothesis of the soul’s voluntary descent into the body as involvingboth sin and cyclicism. Not only are these features reminiscent ofwhat he eventually came to learn of Origen’s view, but given theNeoplatonic framework underlying his conception of the soul’s origin,it is difficult to construe the soul’s choice of embodiment inpositive terms.
There is a puzzle at the heart of Augustine’s philosophicalanthropology, however, that raises serious questions about how we areto construe the human condition. Depending on which of the fourhypotheses one were to choose, our condition can be regarded as adivinely ordained exile and trial (the sent hypothesis), theconsequence of sin conjoined with an almost immediately self-inflictedpunishment (the voluntarist hypothesis), or as some kind of relativelynatural habitat (the traducianist and creationist hypotheses). In thelatter case, there remain questions about how to construe the soul’screation in relation to God’s activity (mediated in traducianism,direct in creationism) as well as about how at home the soul is in therealm of nature.
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By the time Augustine comes to write Letter 166 to Jerome in415, there have been significant developments in his thinking on thisissue. While he does not here sharply distinguish between the twohypotheses involving pre-existence, he is clearly bothered by thecyclicism he has increasingly come to associate with pre-existence,especially as it raises the prospect of a moral landscape whereinpre-incarnate and post-mortem sins are a genuine possibility, for thiswould entail that that there can be no security even for those who diein a state of grace [Letter 166.27]. Moreover, by the time hewrites Book 10 of De Genesi ad Litteram, (circa 415–16C.E.) he has a further objection to the notion of pre-incarnate sin:this possibility, he writes, is ruled out by Romans 9:11 where we aretold that the souls of the unborn have done neither good nor evil[De Genesi ad Litteram 10.15.27]. Whether or not this poses adecisive objection pre-existence is an obscure matter. In thediscussion of De Genesi ad Litteram 10, a version of the senthypothesis does appear as a serious contender, but it is abruptlydropped without explanation, leaving open the question of what liesbehind the sudden omission [O’Connell 1987, pp. 227–9; Mendelson1995, pp. 242–7]. Whatever the reasons may be, the fact is thathenceforward, in this text and elsewhere [e.g. De Anima et eiusOrigine, circa 419/20 C.E.], Augustine writes as if there areonly two competing hypotheses of the soul’s origin, the traducianistand the creationist.
Matters are further complicated by the fact that in Letter166 and De Genesi ad Litteram [see especially Letter166.27], Augustine makes clear his antipathy to the traducianisthypothesis, an antipathy that, while unexplained, seems to go beyondthe materialism in which Tertullian had originally cast it.Creationism, however, hardly offers an unproblematic alternative. BothLetter 166 and De Genesi ad Litteram reveal concernover the question of the acquisition of original sin, an issue thatbecomes all the more pressing when one considers the plight of theinfant who dies unbaptized [Letter 166.16 and De Genesiad Litteram 10.11–16]. The Pelagian controversy had by thistime brought to the fore the issues of grace and moral autonomy, andAugustine is now adamant in insisting upon the necessity of grace andinfant baptism in the face of what he regards as Pelagian challengesto these views. In this context, the case of the infant who dies priorto baptism seems to present the hardest case of all, and thecreationist hypothesis, with its direct account of the soul’s relationto God’s creative activity, seems singularly at a loss to address it.Augustine feels obliged to confirm, contra the Pelagians, thecondemnation of the unbaptized infant, but on a creationist reading ofthe soul’s origin, this is hard to reconcile with divine justice,especially given the notion that the unborn have done neither good norevil. Not surprisingly, the Pelagians themselves favor the creationisthypothesis, for it seems to fit best with their views on theindividual’s ability to fulfill the moral obligations of the Christianlife [TeSelle 1972, pg. 67; Bonner 1972 pp. 23 & 30].
It is thus, again, not surprising that there is an unofficial fifthhypothesis that can be found elsewhere in Augustine’s works. In DeCivitate Dei, for example, Augustine suggests that God createdonly one soul, that of Adam, and subsequent human souls are not merelygenealogical offshoots (as in traducianism) of that original soul, butthey are actually identical to Adam’s soul prior to assuming their ownindividual, particularized lives [De Civitate Dei, 13.14].Not only does this avoid the mediation of the traducianist hypothesis,but it also manages to provide a theologically satisfying account ofthe universality of original sin without falling into the difficultiesof God’s placing an innocent soul into a sin-laden body, as would bethe case in a general creationism. To what extent this constitutes aserious contender for Augustine’s attention remains a matter ofcontroversy [O’Connell 1987, esp. pp. 11–16; Rist 1989; Rist1994, pp 121–9; Teske 1999 pg. 810]. As noted earlier, whenAugustine writes of the soul’s origin in the Retractationesnear the end of his life, he still asserts the obscurity anddifficulty of the issue, and he is clearly reluctant to take adecisive stand on it. Although he sometimes downplays the seriousnessof this uncertainty [e.g. De Libero Arbitrio III.21.59 andDe Genesi ad Litteram, 10.20], there is no getting around thefact that it leaves a significant lacuna at the heart of hisphilosophical anthropology, one which leaves unanswered crucialquestions about how we are to understand the embodied status of thehuman soul. His Neoplatonic framework commits him to the view that thephysical/sensible realm is an arena of temptation and moral danger,one wherein the human soul needs to be wary about becoming tooattached to lower goods. However, Augustine’s enduring ambivalence onthe question of the soul leaves open the possibility that thephysical/sensible realm is more than an arena of danger and that it isin fact a fundamentally alien context, not altogether different fromthe Manichean view of embodiment as a kind of entrapment. Theontological unity of the Neoplatonic hierarchy notwithstanding, thereappears to be room in it for a moral dualism that may be as troublingin the end as that of the Manicheans.
6. Psychology and Epistemology
While Augustine remains vague about how we are to understand ourembodied status, there is never any question that human life is to beconceived in terms of the categories of body and soul and that anadequate understanding of the soul is necessary for an appreciation ofour place within the moral landscape around us. Here Augustine is onceagain best understood in light of the Greek philosophical tradition[see O’Daly 1987, pp. 11–15], in which “soul” neednot have any spiritual connotations. It is, instead, the principlethat accounts for the intuitively obvious distinction between thingsthat are living and things that are not. To be alive is to have asoul, and death involves a process leading to the absence of thisprinciple. Thus, not only do human beings have souls, but so do plantsand other animals [e.g. De Libero Arbitrio I.8; DeQuantitate Animae, 70; De Civitate Dei V.10].Augustine’s view is not unlike what one finds, for example, in Plato’sTimaeus [e.g. 89d-92c] or Aristotle’s De Anima [e.g.414b-415a] where different levels of soul are discussed in terms ofascending degrees of complexity in their capacities, e.g., soulscapable only of reproduction and nutrition, or of sensation andlocomotion as well, or finally, of rational thinking. As noted in theprevious section, there is an asymmetry in these functionalcapacities, and reason is seen as higher than the others.
As the history of Classical Greek philosophy shows, this schema leavesopen a number of possibilities in terms of the relation of soul andbody (dualism, hylomorphism, and materialism, to cite some of the moreobvious examples), as well as room for disagreement concerning thesoul’s prospect for continued existence upon the dissolution of thebody (Aristotelians tended towards and Epicureans actually embraced amortalist position, whereas Platonists and Stoics were somewhat moreoptimistic). For Augustine, however, it is virtually axiomatic thatthe human soul is both immaterial and immortal. It is worth noting inthis connection that while the Christian scriptural tradition clearlyalludes to the idea of post-mortem existence, the issue of the soul’simmateriality is another matter. It is not obvious that the scripturaltradition requires this, and Tertullian (160–230 C.E.) is aprime example of an early Christian thinker who felt comfortable witha materialist ontology [e.g. Tertullian, De Anima37.6–7]. Thus, while the immortality of the soul is arguably apoint of happy convergence of these two traditions, Augustine’semphasis upon the soul’s immateriality, an emphasis that comes to haveenormous historical importance, seems largely a contribution of hisNeoplatonism. As we have seen, he insists upon the soul’s mutabilityas being necessary to account for moral progress and deterioration;however, it is also clear that there must be limits to thismutability, and a material soul would not only run counter toNeoplatonic ontology, but it would also impose upon the soul a degreeof vulnerability that would destroy the eudaimonistic promise thatmade the Neoplatonic ontology so attractive in the first place.
In keeping with the intellectualism of the Greek philosophicaltradition, Augustine’s psychology focuses upon the asymmetrical anddominant relation that reason is supposed to exert over othercapacities. Unlike post-Humean and post-Freudian views whereinconsiderable attention is focused upon the role of the non-rationalinfluences that govern our thought, Augustine takes over the ancientGreek confidence in the superiority of the rational over thenon-rational. As we will see in the next section, Augustine’s views onthe will tend to complicate things by qualifying the extent of hisintellectualism, but certainly in epistemic contexts hisintellectualism tends to hold sway. In this regard, the psychologicalhierarchy elaborated in De Libero Arbitrio II[II.3–II.15 ] and elsewhere [e.g. Confessions VII.x.16and VII.xvi.21] is a useful illustration of his view.
In the psychology that emerges in De Libero Arbitrio II,Augustine posits a three-fold hierarchy of things that merely exist,things that exist and live, and things that exist, live, and possessunderstanding [De Libero Arbitrio II.3]. While he elsewhereallows that plants have souls, his primary interest is in soulscapable of understanding, and here, as elsewhere, he is less concernedwith a neutral description of the structure of nature than withshowing how the soul may find happiness by extricating itself from anoverly immersed relation to nature. This being the case, Augustine’spsychology tends to focus upon cognitive capacities, beginning withsense perception and working up to reason. The criteria governing thehierarchy are the relative publicity of the object of the cognitivecapacity [De Libero Arbitrio II.7 & 14], the reliabilityof the capacity and its object [De Libero Arbitrio II.8 &12], and, corresponding to both of these, the relative degree ofimmateriality and immutability of the object [De LiberoArbitrio II.8 & 14]. Relying upon the criterion of relativepublicity, Augustine begins by noting that even among the senses thereis a hierarchy of sorts, for vision and hearing seem considerably lessprivate than both smell and taste, wherein part of the object mustactually be taken into one’s body and consumed during the process[De Libero Arbitrio II.7]. Likewise, it seems possible to seeor hear the same object at the same time. In between these twoextremes is the sense of touch, since two individuals can touch thesame part of an object, but not at the same time. Augustine alsoemphasizes the fact that even in sight and hearing, the most public ofthe senses, one’s relation to the object is always perspectival. Forexample, one’s visual or aural relation to the object imposes limitsupon how many others can have a similar relation, as well as thenature of the relation they can have. Thus, sense experience, inaddition to relating to objects that are material, mutable, and henceultimately unreliable, is also intractably private, this latter pointbeing of considerable importance, as we will see, with respect toAugustine’s theory of illumination.
The senses are coordinated by what Augustine refers to as the“inner sense” [De Libero Arbitrio II.3], afaculty that bears some affinities to Aristotle’s common sense [seeAristotle, De Anima II.6]. The inner sense for Augustinemakes us aware that the disparate information converging upon us fromour various senses comes from a common external source (e.g., thesmell and taste belong to the same object one is looking at whileholding it in one’s hand). The inner sense also makes us aware whenone of the senses is not functioning properly. In both of theserespects, the inner sense bears an organizational and criterialrelation to the senses, not only combining the information of thesenses, but passing judgment on the results of this synthesis. It isfor this reason regarded as being above the other senses [DeLibero Arbitrio II.5]. At this point, however, we are still at alevel shared with non-rational beings. It is only when we go above theinner sense and turn to reason that we reach what is distinctivelyhuman.
As with most thinkers influenced by the Greek philosophical tradition,Augustine conceives of reason rather austerely, focusing upon themind’s ability to engage in deductive reasoning, where logicalnecessity is the criterion of adequacy. The point is an important one,for it helps explain the belief that reason is distinctively human(intuitively, we may want to attribute instrumental reasoning to otherspecies, but there is still reluctance to attribute mathematicalreasoning to them), as well as our tendency to place such enormoussignificance upon the fact that humans are capable of reasoning.Understood in this austere sense, i.e. in terms of the mind’s abilityto recognize logical necessity, reason is not merely one instrumentamong many; instead, it becomes the means whereby the human soul comesinto contact with truths that are devoid of the mutability afflictingthe objects of the senses. For Augustine, reason is the cognitive apexof the human soul, not only because it distinguishes us from othercreatures, but more importantly for the way it distinguishes us: itgives us access to truths that are of an absolutely reliable sort[De Libero Arbitrio II.8].
It is also important to note that the necessity revealed by reason isnot merely logical and certainly not merely psychological. Augustine,like other thinkers influenced by the Greek tradition, saw anontological dimension in the truths of reason, i.e., an isomorphismbetween the necessity that governs our thinking and the necessity thatgoverns the structure of that about which we are thinking. It is atthis point that we come upon the intersection of Augustine’spsychology and epistemology, for even if we assume a kind ofisomorphism between the truths of reason and the structure of being,there is an enduring historical controversy regarding what structurereason reveals as well as how the truths of reason relate to the othercognitive capacities such as sense perception and imagination.
As we have seen, from 384 onwards Augustine accepted a Neoplatonicaccount of the ontological and moral condition in which we findourselves. Moreover, the psychology sketched in De LiberoArbitrio II and elsewhere reflects an ascending hierarchy ofcapacities (sense perception, inner sense, and reason), providing apsychological analogue to the ontological hierarchy. Not surprisingly,Augustine’s epistemology reflects these strongly Neoplatonictendencies, but here, as elsewhere, it would be a mistake to viewAugustine’s thought as an uncritical application of an inheritedframework; as is often the case in other areas, Augustine’s approachto epistemology is conditioned by his own religious andphilosophically eudaimonistic concerns.
In particular, Augustine’s epistemology seeks to exploit thepsychological hierarchy with the aim of showing the reader how tonavigate through the corresponding ontological hierarchy, therebyenabling us to reap the moral benefits of his ChristianizedNeoplatonism. This point is important, for it helps to explain whyAugustine can seem, at times, so overtly indifferent towards questionsthat are central from the perspective of later (especiallypost-Cartesian) epistemology. A case in point is Augustine’s treatmentof Academic skepticism. As already noted, Augustine flirted withAcademic skepticism, and one of his first extant works, ContraAcademicos (circa 386 C.E.) is a focused, if at timesidiosyncratic argument against Academic skepticism. Leaving asideAugustine’s claim that the Academic skeptics were really Platonicrealists attempting to conceal their view from those too simple tograsp its subtlety [e.g. Contra Academicos, 3.17.37 andLetter 1.1], the overall argumentative thrust of the text isnonetheless instructive [see also Kirwan, 1983].
In the Contra Academicos, as elsewhere, Augustine attacksskepticism as an obstacle on the road to a eudaimonistically-construedhappiness. Thus he is content to show that there are problems in theskeptic’s claim to live by the likeness of truth (how can one know thelikeness of x if one professes not to know x itself?)[Contra Academicos 2.7.16–2.8.20], and to offer a setof examples where we do have certainty regarding the truth [ContraAcademicos 3.10.23 and 3.11.25]. What Augustine does not do is toengage in any kind of foundationalist construction of basic beliefs,nor does he attempt any kind of systematic defense of our ordinaryepistemic practices so as to vindicate them in the face of skepticalattack. Even when he offers his version of what later becomes known asthe Cartesian cogito [e.g. De Civitate Dei XI.26;De Trinitate 10.14; see also De Libero Arbitrio II.3and Rist 1994, pp. 63–7], he shows no interest in using it toepistemically ground other beliefs [see Markus 1967, pp. 363–4].Here, as elsewhere, Augustine is content to attack skepticism on apiecemeal basis [see Matthews 1972; O’Daly 1987, pg. 171; and Rist1994, pg. 53].
Another, related, feature of Augustine’s epistemology is hiswillingness to accept that much of our belief about the world must asa matter of practical necessity rest upon trust and authority. As hetells us in De Magistro, we cannot hope to verify all ourbeliefs about history and even many beliefs about the present are amatter of trust [De Magistro 11.37]. Here as elsewhere, heemphasizes the role of belief as opposed to understanding, pointingout not only that we must believe many things that we cannotunderstand but also that belief is a necessary condition ofunderstanding [see Contra Academicos 3.20.43; De LiberoArbitrio II.2; and Rist 1994, pp. 56–63]. From a Cartesianfoundationalist perspective, this can seem a troublingly circularview. However, we are again obliged to note that Augustine’sepistemological concerns do not lie in vindicating our beliefs aboutthe sensible world in the face of skeptical doubt, but in utilizingour non-skeptical intuitions about the sensible world to construct anaccessible and rhetorically compelling account of our relation to theintelligible realm, the latter serving as the haven towards which hiseudaimonism consistently points. It is worth noting, moreover, thateven among those who do not share Augustine’s enthusiasm for thetranscendental, there are many philosophers in this century who wouldapplaud his indifference towards Cartesian foundationalist concerns.Certainly, his views on the relation of belief, authority, andunderstanding are worthy of contemporary attention. But for Augustinehimself, the primary concern is to lay the groundwork for what manyregard as the least compelling if nonetheless most conspicuous elementof his epistemology, the doctrine of divine illumination [see Markus1967, pp. 363–73; Nash 1969; O’Daly 1987, pp. 199–207; andRist 1994, pp. 73–9].
Augustine presents our grasp of the sensible world as grounded in arelatively unproblematic relation of direct acquaintance [e.g DeMagistro 12.39. See also Burnyeat 1987], although there areplaces where his view is complicated by his Neoplatonizing convictionthat the higher (e.g. the mind) cannot be affected by the lower (e.g.the body) [e.g. De Genesi ad Litteram XII.16 circa 415 C.E.].In fact, he will in places explicate the mind’s relation to sensibleobjects by means of its focusing its attention and noticing what ispresented to it by the body without being causally affected by thebody; in the case of physical vision, he will even go so far as toadopt the extramissionist view that a visual ray extends from the eyeto the object as opposed to an intromissionist view whereby the eyepassively receives something from the sensible object [e.g. DeQuantitate Animae 23.43, circa 388 C.E.]. Even so, directacquaintance is at some level still a necessary condition for theformation of beliefs about the external world, and the relation of thesenses to sensible objects is regarded as largely unproblematic. InDe Magistro, for example, Augustine argues that the efficacyof language is ultimately dependent upon direct acquaintance with theexternal world, and even our ability to learn from others presupposesthat what they tell us can be reduced to elements with which one hashad some prior acquaintance [De Magistro 11.37]. ForAugustine, as for many classical thinkers, language is a kind of thirdrealm entity. Belonging neither to the world nor to mind, it is aninstrument used by minds to communicate about the world outside them,and direct acquaintance is what explains its ability to do so. Thus,learning from others is a matter of being reminded of prior acts withwhich we have been directly acquainted [De Magistro 11.36],although this reminding can occur in such a way as to reconfigureelements from those prior acts, thus accounting for the fact that ourknowledge of the world seems to be extended by such descriptions.
However odd such a model might seem, it is important to note theplausibility of some of the assumptions that underlie it: (a) languageis an instrument that mediates our relation to the world and to otherminds; (b) there is a distinction between signs and what they signify;and (c) our relation to the sensible world is based on directexperience. Each of these assumptions is subject to seriousobjections, and the past two centuries have produced ample reasons tobe cautious about them. Nevertheless, they still have considerablepre-reflective currency, and for all its oddness, Augustine’ssuggestion that learning is a matter of being reminded of prior actsof direct acquaintance rests upon a set of common sense assumptions.This in itself is an important point, for as noted above, much ofAugustine’s strategy in presenting his epistemology is to exploit therelatively unproblematic nature of our relation to the sensible world,and then to reason analogously regarding our relation to the moresecure, public world of intelligible objects. The question we aresupposed to ponder is: given that learning is really a matter of beingreminded, and given that all such occasions of being reminded dependupon acts of direct acquaintance wherein we are taught by the thingsthemselves [De Magistro 12.40], what does this imply aboutour relation to those truths that cannot be accounted for by senseperception? In other words, if we accept this as a viable model of ourepistemic relation to the external world, how do we proceed from it toexplain our access to those truths whose certainty goes beyond whatcan be experienced in sensible objects? The traditional example hereis mathematics [e.g. De Libero Arbitrio II.8], and in DeLibero Arbitrio II, Augustine even argues that our ability tocount presupposes a notion of unity that is empiricallyunderdetermined [ibid]. There are, of course, other examples forAugustine besides mathematical and logical truths. Of equal importanceare such truths as the awareness that all seek a happiness that goesbeyond anything we have experienced in this life, that good is to besought and evil avoided, and the awareness that there is somethingabove and more reliable than the human mind [see De LiberoArbitrio II.9 and 12]. These are the kinds of examples thatAugustine regards as obliging us to reject the notion that ourrelation to the sensible world is sufficient to account for all ourbeliefs and to believe that there must be more, so to speak, tocomplete the picture.
That something more is provided by the doctrine of illumination, thethesis that God plays an active role in human cognition by somehowilluminating the individual’s mind so that it can perceive theintelligible realities which God simultaneously presents to it.Augustine is notoriously vague as to the precise details and mechanicsof this divine illumination [see, e.g. Nash 1969, pp. 94–124],and it is therefore easy to read it in an uncharitable light. Viewedwithout sufficient attention to the few details he provides, it canappear as if Augustine has made human cognition into a special act ofdivine revelation, thus making the human mind into a merely passivereceptacle and God into a kind of epistemic puppeteer. For all itsattendant vagueness, however, the doctrine is rather moresophisticated than it might first appear.
In the account of illumination in De Magistro, Augustine usesan analogy as old as Plato [see Republic VI.508a ff.]according to which the mind’s relation to intelligible objects is likethe relation of the senses to sensible objects [see DeMagistro 12.39; see also Soliloquia 1.12 and O’Daly1987, pg. 204]. In both cases, there is a need for an adventitiousobject to be presented to the relevant capacity, as well as the needfor an environment that is conducive to the successful exercise of therelevant capacity. In the case of vision, for example, this would belight; in the case of the mind’s discernment of intelligible objects,Augustine characterizes this, relying upon Platonic imagery of whichPlotinus is also fond [see Plotinus, Enneads V.3.8 andSchroeder 1996, pp. 341–3], as an intellectual illumination thatoccurs within us by that which is above us. In both cases, thecriterion of success is the discernment of the actual details of theobject itself. Perhaps most important of all, both cases clearly allowfor and rely upon acts of direct acquaintance, since illumination is,above all, meant to be an account of the conditions necessary for themind to have direct acquaintance with intelligible objects.
Seen in this light, Augustine’s view hardly seems to reduce humancognition to special acts of divine revelation [see O’Daly 1987, pp.206–7]. Illumination is instead something that is available toall rational minds, the atheistic mathematician as well as the piousfarmer measuring a field [see Rist 1994, pg. 77]. Nor does it detractfrom the mind’s own activity and acuity, any more than a world ofadventitious sensible objects detracts from the activity and acuity ofthe senses. In both sensory and intellectual perception, one canrequire a considerable degree of activity and acuity on the part ofthe perceiver, and in both cases one can treat failed perception as afunction both of the extent to which the capacity is possessed by theperceiver and the perceiver’s efforts to employ it. What setsillumination apart from more familiar cases of sense perception isthat it enables us to do two related things that cannot be done bysense perception alone. First and foremost, it explains how ourknowledge can have the kind of necessity that understanding (asopposed to mere belief) requires, a necessity that is always, itseems, empirically underdetermined [see, e.g. De LiberoArbitrio II.8 and O’Daly 1987, pp. 180–1]. In this regard,Augustine’s illuminationism is a worthy contender among more familiarattempts to make intellectual cognition epistemically secure andreliable. Though it has its own difficulties, it is not clear thatAugustinian illumination is all that more extravagant than Platonicrecollection of a pre-incarnate existence [e.g. Plotinus,Enneads V.5], Aristotelian induction of particulars thatsomehow leads to necessary and universal truths [e.g. Aristotle,Posterior Analytics II.19], psychologically private Cartesianinnate ideas [Meditations, “Third Meditation”],or Kantian transcendental idealism, wherein we are obliged tosacrifice the isomorophism of reality and thought that made necessityso attractive in the first place [e.g. Critique of PureReason, “Preface” to the First and Second Editions].Indeed, viewed in this regard, it is not all that surprising thatAugustinian illuminationism came to have the historical influence thatit did, nor that Malebranche, writing some twelve hundred years later,would, in his concern with the psychologistic implications ofCartesian innate ideas, turn to Augustinian illuminationism as a modelfor his vision in God [see, e.g. The Search After Truth, Bk.II, Part Two, Chapter Six].
The second way in which illumination enables us to surpass what we areable to accomplish by means of sense perception alone is even moretightly connected to Augustine’s Neoplatonizing eudaimonism. For soulswhich have become immersed in the sensible world and which are therebyseparated from other souls by bodies, illumination is crucial to ourattempt to recapture our lost unity. Unlike the perspectival andprivate realm of sense perception, illumination holds out the prospectof fulfilling the yearning to which Augustine’s eudaimonism gives suchprominence, the yearning to find a realm wherein we can overcome thevulnerability that besets us and the moral distance that divides usfrom one another. Both Augustine’s Confessions and DeCivitate Dei in their own ways portray this sort of philosophicaland spiritual pilgrimage, and one would be hard pressed to find abetter example than the vision at Ostia at ConfessionsIX.10.23–25 [see “Ontology and Eudaimonism” above].There, Augustine and his mother Monica manage, albeit fleetingly, tofind themselves in a place that is clearly not in space, united in away that overcomes the distance imposed by their mortal bodies. Thisunification is for Augustine the eudaimonistic conclusion throughwhich the pursuit of knowledge is vindicated and to which it is,ultimately, to be subordinated.
7. Will
As already noted, a conspicuous feature of the Greek philosophicaltradition is its intellectualism. Not only is nature seen as governedby patterns that are accessible to the human mind, but human agency isconceived in terms that stress the role played by reason in a lifethat is in keeping with the larger order [see Markus 1967 pg. 387].Reason is an instrument that is not only capable of acts oftheoretical representation, but its exercise is also regarded as beingof enormous practical significance. There are, to be sure, importantand powerful non-rational factors that are relevant to our actions(e.g. appetite and desire), but in a well-ordered life they are to beconstrained by the dictates of reason [see e.g. Plato,Republic IV.441e-4441 and Aristotle, NicomacheanEthics X.7.1177a10–X.9.1179a33].
As we have seen above [e.g.“Ontology and Eudaimonism”& “Psychology and Epistemology”], Augustine is deeplyaffected by Greek intellectualism, and his own NeoplatonizingChristianity is imbued with a hierarchical structure that emphasizesthe reliability of the intelligible in contrast to all that issensible and physical. However, as Augustine’s views on human agencydevelop, this picture is complicated by an increasing emphasis uponnon-rational factors that influence our behavior and by a tendency toregard intellectualism as insufficient to explain the dynamics ofhuman agency. Early in Augustine’s career [e.g. De LiberoArbitrio I, circa 387/8 C.E.], there is a conspicuous emphasis onthe will, and it is here that one encounters some of the mostdifficult and obscure aspects of his thought [see Djuth 1999, pg.881]. Nevertheless, it marks both a significant divergence from theGreek philosophical tradition and the intersection of thephilosophical and religious dimensions of his thought. Moreover, themore Augustine immersed himself in theological questions, the moreprominence the nature and role of the will came to have in hiswritings, and his reflection upon the limited powers of the unaidedwill has much to do with the pessimism of his later writings.
An example of Augustine’s increasing emphasis upon the will can befound in his account of his intellectual and moral transformation inConfessions VII–VIII. As we have seen[“Context” and “Ontology and Eudaimonism”], hecredits the books of the Platonists with making it possible for him toconceive of a non-physical, spiritual reality [ConfessionsIV.xv.24; VII.i.1]. Likewise, they removed the intellectual stumblingblocks that had made it so difficult for him to accept thenon-Manichean form of Christianity he found in Ambrose’s Milan.However, when Augustine tells the story of his conversion inConfessions VII and VIII, he makes clear that although heceased to have any genuine intellectual reservations regarding theChurch [Confessions VII.xxi.27 and VIII.i.1], he remainedunable to commit himself to the path he could see to be the right one[see Confessions VII.xx.26, VII.xxi.27, and VIII.i.1].Throughout his discussion, Augustine indicates that certainty is notthe issue; he regards his predicament as falling outside the scope ofintellectual assent. The ensuing discussion of his struggle is surelyone of the most famous in Christian literature [ConfessionsVIII in toto, esp. VIII.viii.19–VIII.xii.30], and it is markedby a subtlety of introspective analysis that defies any easyexplication. Leaving aside the question of the accuracy of his account[O’Connell 1969, pp. 4–9 and 101–104; O’Donnell 1992, vol.3, pp. 3–4 and 55–71], it is clear that Augustine isproviding a dramatic account of moral transformation, one thatstresses the role of intellectual discernment while at the same timehighlighting his conviction that no amount of discernment issufficient to account for what we might refer to, for want of a betterphrase, as the phenomenology of internal moral conflict. In terms ofthis agonistic inner turmoil, the will as both present and emergent[Confessions VIII.v.11 and VIII.x.22] is on an equal footingwith our powers of rational discernment.
There are three distinct features that explain why the will comes tohave such prominence in Augustine’s thinking. In Book I of DeLibero Arbitrio, Augustine endeavors to construct ananti-Manichean theodicy [De Libero Arbitrio I.2], one thataccounts for the presence of moral evil in the world without eithersubstantializing it or finding its source in divine activity. In thisregard, the will is what makes an action one’s own, placing the burdenof responsibility on the one performing the action [De LiberoArbitrio I.11]. By the time he composed Book III of De LiberoArbitrio, however, Augustine had come to conceive of the humancondition in terms of the ignorance and difficulty that attend it[De Libero Arbitrio III.18], and these features tend tocomplicate the libertarian optimism of Book I by raising questionsabout whether it is even possible for us to overcome the ignorance anddifficulty. But even here, the will is intended to serve as thefulcrum of moral responsibility [e.g. De Libero ArbitrioIII.22].
Though closely related, the concern with moral responsibility needs tobe distinguished from the points raised in the above discussion ofConfessions VII–VIII. In that context, Augustine isstill engaged in constructing an anti-Manichean portrait of the humancondition, but he is equally concerned with the aspect of agency thatfalls outside the scope of a purely rational or intellectual analysis.This aspect of the discussion is heightened by the fact that thechoice involves a fundamental moral reorientation running contrary tohabits which have acquired a necessity all their own[Confessions VIII.v.10], but Augustine’s discussion of theexample suggests that he sees it as more than an idiosyncratic orisolated incident. Rather, it is intended to draw our attention to anintrospectively accessible range of phenomena that forces us toacknowledge a fundamentally non-rational component of humanvolition.
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There is, however, a third factor at work here. The problem of evilreceived a rather different treatment in the non-Hellenic religiousand scriptural traditions than in the Greek tradition, a contrast thatwas not completely lost on Augustine as he increased his familiaritywith the former [e.g. Ad Simplicianum, circa 396 C.E. andConfessions VII.ix.14]. Here, one finds less emphasis uponrational analysis and logical argumentation than upon pledgedcommunity membership, trans-generational authority, obedience todivinely-sanctioned standards, and, in some cases, an overt suspicionof intellectualism together with an emphasis upon the necessity ofdivine aid for moral transformation. This part of Augustine’sinheritance helped to divert his attention away from the strictlyrational features of human agency, and to invite him to think aboutrationality in new ways.
While it is no doubt a mistake to compartmentalize the religious andphilosophical aspects of Augustine’s classical inheritance, it isoften helpful to view his thought as presenting a gradual movementaway from a Greek intellectualism towards a voluntarism emphasizingthe profound ignorance and difficulty of the human condition, as wellas the need for divine aid to overcome the ignorance and difficulty.At the heart of this shift of emphasis are Augustine’s developingviews on the will. Not surprisingly, this development often has to beunderstood against the backdrop of the philosophical and theologicaldifficulties that come to occupy him over the years.
One of these difficulties is the relation of human free will to divineforeknowledge. While it is tempting to view this as a conflict betweenAthens and Jerusalem, the problem initially arises within theGreco-Roman tradition itself [see Rist 1994, pg. 268]. AlthoughAugustine’s initial treatment of the problem at De LiberoArbitrio III.2–4 seems innocent of this fact, his latertreatment at De Civitate Dei V.9–10 shows that he wasaware of Cicero’s discussion of the problem in De Divinationeand De Fato. It is also worth noting that in later medievalphilosophy, we see the mirror-image of this problem in terms of therelation of divine freedom and power versus the extent of humanknowledge [see, e.g. The Condemnation of 1277; Henry of Ghent,Quodlibet VIII, qu.9; John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio I,dist. 42]. In both cases, the problem is attributable to the notion ofnecessity which underlies the Greek conception of knowledge. In thisparticular case, the problem is how to reconcile the absolutenecessity that attends God’s knowledge (i.e. if God genuinely knowsthat x is going to happen, it is impossible for x not totake place—see De Libero Arbitrio III.4 and DeCivitate Dei V.9) with the idea that there can be no moralresponsibility unless it is in my power to choose to do other than Iin fact do [e.g. De Libero Arbitrio III.3]. On the surface,freedom to do otherwise seems to rule out the possibility offoreknowledge, and conversely, foreknowledge seems to rule out thepossibility of freedom to do otherwise. In both De LiberoArbitrio and De Civitate Dei, Augustine’s treatment ofthis problem is complex and at times exceedingly obscure [see Rowe1964 and Kirwan 1989,pp. 95–103], but his aim is clear enough.Augustine is anxious, contra the Manicheans and Cicero, to defend thecompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom by arguingthat the free exercise of the will is among the events foreknown byGod and that such foreknowledge in no way detracts from ourculpability for our acts of willing [e.g. De Libero ArbitrioIII.3 & 4; De Civitate Dei V.9]. The obscurity of thedetails notwithstanding, Augustine leaves no doubt that he wants tomaintain both that God does have foreknowledge of our actions and thatwe are morally responsible for them.
Augustine’s view becomes even more complicated, however, due totheological and doctrinal concerns. While the issue of predestinationis not invoked in the discussion of divine foreknowledge and humanfreedom at De Civitate Dei V.9–10 [see Rist 1994, pp.268–9], significant developments take place between the timeAugustine composes De Libero Arbitrio III (circa 395 C.E.)and De Civitate Dei V (circa 415 C.E.). In particular, thereare two events that have a momentous impact upon Augustine’s work inthe late 390’s until his death in 430. The first is his increasingfamiliarity with scripture and the resulting modification of hisearlier, Neoplatonizing views in light of what he finds in thosetexts. Pivotal in this regard is Ad Simplicianum (396 C.E.),wherein he focuses on a number of scriptural passages and begins toformulate his views on the universality of original sin and thenecessity of grace to overcome its effects [see Bonner 1972, pp.15–18 and Babcock 1979, pp. 65–67]. The second set ofevents center on his involvement in the Pelagian controversy, whichoccupied him from roughly 411 until his death in 430. Under thepressures of this controversy and in conjunction with hisinterpretation of scriptural and especially Pauline views on originalsin and grace, the intellectualistic optimism of his earlier work wasgradually transformed into an exceedingly grim view of the human morallandscape.
Pelagius himself is an obscure figure, as is his relation to the viewthat has come to bear his name (Bonner 1972, 31–35), but at theheart of the Pelagian position seems to be an emphatic insistence uponthe principle that “ought implies can,” i.e. that it isunacceptable to require individuals to perform actions that theycannot in fact perform [Pelagius, Ad Demetriadem 2, op. cit.at Brown 1967, pg. 342; see also Bonner 1972, pg. 34]. The Pelagianinsistence upon preserving the kind of autonomy that seems required bythe moral ideals of Christianity set in motion a fierce controversyabout the nature of original sin and the role of grace in overcomingit [Brown 1967, pp.340–364]. In general, Pelagians tended todeny the kind of insuperable original sin that Augustine believed hehad found in scripture, and they proposed a milder view of grace asbeing an aid to a will disposed to a Christian life, as opposed tobeing a necessary condition for such a disposition in the first place[TeSelle 1999, pg. 635]. As is often the case with disputes that havea deep moral urgency, the controversy acquired a ferocity that canseem, from a modern perspective, out of keeping with the subtlety ofthe points made in it, but it is precisely the sort of dispute thatcannot but have lasting effects upon its participants, and Augustinewas one of the main participants during the last two decades of hislife.
By the time Augustine completed De Civitate Dei in 427 C.E.,he came even more emphatically to insist upon the conclusion to whichhis discussion in Ad Simplicianum had led him, i.e., thatoriginal sin is both universally debilitating and insuperable withoutthe aid of unmerited grace [De Civitate Dei XIV.1].Furthermore, there is a predestination at work that is as rigorous asthe foreknowledge by which God knows its results [De CivitateDei XIV.11]. Here too Augustine insists that we are morallyculpable for the sinful choices that the will makes [De CivitateDei XIV.3], but under the pressures of the Pelagiancontroversy—a controversy in which he will find his earlierwords being cited against him [see RetractationesI.9.3–6]—he presents these views in a manner that isaustere and uncompromising. So damaging are the effects of theoriginal sin that the human will is free only to sin [DeCorreptione et Gratia 1.2; 11.31; Rist 1972, pg. 223]. Thus, thehuman race is comprised of a massa damnata [De DonoPerseverantiae 35; see also De Civitate Dei XXI.12], outof which God, in a manner inscrutable to us [De Civitate DeiXII.28], has predestined a small number to be saved [De CivitateDei XXI.12], and to whom he has extended a grace without which itis impossible for the will not to sin. While there is some controversyover whether this grace is sufficient for redemption and whether itcan be resisted [Rist, 1972, pp. 228ff.], Augustine makes clear thatit is as much a necessary condition as it is unmerited andinscrutable. The ignorance and difficulty that afflict our conditionin De Libero Arbitrio III have become more than obstacles tobe overcome by means of our will [De Libero Arbitrio III.22];they are now impassible barriers we have inherited from Adam, andwithout unmerited grace we are utterly incapable of initiating eventhe smallest movement away from sin and towards God. In De LiberoArbitrio I, Augustine suggests that the will is confronted by arational choice between a life spent in the pursuit of what istemporal, changing, and perishable, and a life spent in the pursuit ofwhat is eternal, immutable, and incapable of being lost [De LiberoArbitrio I.7]. By the time he comes to write De Gratia etLibero Arbitrio in 426 C.E., in the midst of the Pelagiancontroversy, we find a vastly different picture. Here too the will iscentral, and here too we are culpable for our sins, but gone is theearlier optimism. The post-Adamic will is no longer in a position toinitiate any choice of lives; the fact that we have any choice at allis entirely a product of unmerited grace [see, e.g. De Gratia etLibero Arbitrio xx and xxi], a grace that will be given to only asmall number whom God has predestined to be saved out of the vastnumber who are eternally lost.
Being more a matter of theology than philosophy, it can be temptingfor those interested in Augustine as a philosopher to turn away fromhis later thinking on the will, but one has to be careful in doing so.To begin with, the boundary between the philosophical and thetheological is not as clear in Augustine as it is in laterphilosophers, and part of what makes Augustine such a fascinatingthinker is his refusal to compartmentalize his thought in ways thatare now taken for granted. Second, the development of Augustine’sthinking on the will, as unsettling as the resulting moral landscapemay be, does oblige one to confront questions about what a viableconcept of the will should involve as well as questions about how todetermine moral culpability in the face of externaldetermination—questions that are as easy to overlook as they aredifficult to address. Finally, Augustine’s reflections on the will hadconsiderable influence upon those who inherited his vast legacy and onhis own account of how we are to understand the drama of humanhistory.
8. History and Eschatology
It is an irony that the man who bequeathed a Neoplatonic world view tothe West also gave us a way of conceptualizing human history that isat odds with some of its most basic contours. In the Greco-Roman worldin general and in Neoplatonism in particular, the importance ofhistory is largely in the cyclical patterns that forge the past,present, and future into a continuous whole, emphasizing what isrepeated and common over what is idiosyncratic and unique. InAugustine, we find a conception of human history that in effectreverses this schema by providing a linear account which presentshistory as the dramatic unfolding of a morally decisive set ofnon-repeatable events.
For the present day reader, it is easy to overlook both theplausibility of the cyclical view and the sorts of considerations thatmight stand in the way of the linear model with which we have becomemore familiar. Not only are there the obvious patterns of the seasonsand the regularities discernible in astronomical phenomena, but, at adeeper level, there is the indispensable role that regularity and therecognition of common features play in our efforts to make the worldintelligible. Moreover, the emphasis upon the common-qua-universal isa conspicuous feature of the Greek philosophical tradition. Thus, itis also hardly surprising that we find Aristotle telling us thatpoetry is more philosophical than history because it is more clearlyconcerned with universals, whereas history tends to be more concernedwith particulars [Aristotle, Poetics 9.1451b1–7]; noris it surprising that Thucydides presents his account of thePeloponnesian War as providing a pattern of events that will berepeated in the future [Thucydides, History of the PeloponnesianWar, I.22]; or that Plutarch recounts past lives in a mannerclearly designed to draw the reader’s attention to patterns of virtueand vice rather than to faithfully recount particular facts [see, e.g.Plutarch, Life of Pericles 1.1–2]; or, for that matter,that Augustine himself would tell the tale of his first thirty-twoyears in the way that he does, more concerned to capture theNeoplatonic drama of the soul’s immersion and extraction from thesensible/physical world than with providing a factual account ofdates, names, and places.
Approached from this angle, what wants an explanation is why one wouldsubordinate indispensable patterns and regularities in order toemphasize what is idiosyncratic and unique . Here, as in the case ofthe will, it is important to understand that Augustine is bringingtogether two quite disparate traditions, and here again one needs totake note of his efforts to capture the data of revelation he seesembedded in Judeo-Christian scripture. If one approaches these lattertexts as presenting a Christian drama of the soul’s salvation, onecannot help but focus upon the unique, non-repeatable events thatdefine the drama, e.g., the fall recounted in the early chapters ofGenesis, the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ in thesynoptic and Johannine gospels, and the final judgement foretold inRevelations. One must, however, exercise some caution here. Thecyclical and linear approaches are matters of emphasis rather thanmutually exclusive alternatives, and the scriptural traditions uponwhich Augustine relies are certainly not devoid of cyclical motifs[e.g. Ecclesiastes 3.1–8], nor does Augustine himself embraceone approach wholly to the exclusion of the other, as even a cursoryreading of his Confessions reveals. And, of course, thehistorically unique life of Christ becomes a pattern for the Christianlife in general [e.g. De Civitate Dei XXII.5]. These pointsnotwithstanding, there can be little question that Augustine providesan account of human history that is at times resolutely linear, atendency which can be traced to the Judeo-Christian scripturaltradition.
Already in De Magistro (389 C.E.) Augustine is keenly awarethat much of what we need to believe falls outside the austerestandards of his Platonic conception of knowledge and understanding.Among the most prominent of these are beliefs based on scripture[De Magistro 11.37; cf.12.39]. In the Confessions aswell, even when Augustine is especially laudatory of the Platonists,he is emphatic that there is much that these books leave out. Theycannot, for example, speak about those historical truths definitive tothe Christian view of redemption through the incarnation and passionof Christ [Confessions VII.ix.13–14; see Bittner 1999,pg. 346]. Augustine is acutely aware that scripture has an historicaldimension, and he is sensitive as well to the tensions between thescriptural tradition and the Neoplatonic framework upon which he isrelying, a tension that comes to eclipse much of the intellectualisticoptimism we find in his earliest completed post-conversion works, e.g.the Contra Academicos of 386 C.E. [see ContraAcademicos 3.20.43 and “Context” above].
As we have seen, Augustine’s increasing familiarity with the contentsof scripture leads him to focus more and more upon the historicaldimension of this tradition, a dimension alien to the intellectualismof the books of the Platonists. We have already seen this developmentreflected in his interest in the fall and the subsequent necessity ofgrace set forth in the Ad Simplicianum of 396 C.E. But it isin Augustine’s sprawling City of God [De CivitateDei, 413–427 C.E.] that one finds his most extensive andfocused treatment of human history [see Rist 1994, pp. 203–255].It is important to bear in mind, however, that Augustine does notprovide a philosophy of history of the sort that one might find in aVico, Hegel, or Marx; his concern is not with articulating a notion ofhistory that views its progress as intelligible, or that sees it asdeveloping according to immanent processes that are themselvesaccessible and worthy of study. Human history, for Augustine, issubsumed by the larger context of an eschatology wherein history isthe temporal playing out of a divine justice in which the end is asfixed as the beginning [see Bittner 1999, pg. 348]. While it is notfor us to know all the details of the plot or its conclusion [DeCivitate Dei XX.2], we can nonetheless discern the generaldirection of the drama, as well as the juridical nature of theconclusion at which aims.
The drama is, for the most part, a hauntingly somber one. Due to theuniversal contagion of original sin wherein all have sinned in Adam,humanity has become a mass of the deservedly damned [De CivitateDei XXI.12] who have turned away from God and towards the rule ofself [see De Civitate Dei XIII.14; XIV.3 & 13]. By meansof an utterly unmerited grace, God has chosen a small minority out ofthis mass—the smallness of the number is itself a means wherebyGod makes apparent what all in fact deserve [De Civitate DeiXXI.12]—and thus human history is composed of the progress oftwo cities, the city of God and the city of Man [e.g. De CivitateDei XIV.28; XV.1 & 21; see Cranz 1972]: those who by means ofgrace renounce the self and turn towards God, as opposed to the vastmajority who have renounced God and turned towards the self [DeCivitate Dei XIV.28]. In this life, we can never be sure of whichindividuals belong to which city [e.g. De Civitate DeiXX.27], and thus they are intermingled in a way that thwarts any moralcomplacency. While the visible church bears a special relation to thecity of God, membership in the Church is no guarantee of salvation[e.g. De Civitate Dei XX.9], and the history that is visibleto us is merely a vestige of the moral drama that takes place behindthe scenes, defying the scrutiny of our weak and often presumptuousreason [De Civitate Dei XX.21 & 22]. What is certain isthat the linear movement of human history aims at the eventualseparation of the two cities [e.g. De Civitate Dei XX.21& 28], in which the members of each city are united with theirresurrected bodies [e.g De Civitate Dei XXI.1 & 3 andXXII.21] and given their respective just rewards: for the smallminority saved by unmerited grace, there is the vision of God, a joywe can only dimly discern at the moment [De Civitate DeiXXII.29]. For the overwhelming mass of humanity, there is the seconddeath wherein their resurrected bodies will be subject to eternaltorment by flames that will inflict pain without consuming the body[De Civitate Dei XXI.2–4], the degree of tormentproportional to the extent of sin [De Civitate Dei XXI.16],although the duration is equal in all cases: they must suffer withoutend, for to suffer any less would be to contradict scripture andundermine our confidence in the eternal blessedness of the smallnumber God has saved [De Civitate Dei XXI.23].
In De Civitate Dei as in the earlier ContraAcademicos, Augustine is a eudaimonist who enjoins us to seek ahappiness understood in terms of our objective relation to anhierarchical structure [e.g. De Civitate Dei XIV.25 andXX.21], and he still invokes philosophy, rightly understood, as aninstrument that can help us move towards this end [De CivitateDei XXII.22]. Moreover, he still views the world we experience asonly a small part of reality, and here too Augustine sees our earthlylives as perfected in a realm that is outside the flux of history aswe know and experience it [De Civitate Dei XXI.26]. Much,however, has obviously changed. Gone is the confidence that the“harbor of philosophy” [e.g. Contra Academicos2.1.1] is the haven wherein we can find the rest that we seek, andgone is the idea that the rational life will lead us to oureudaimonistic end; gone as well is the breathless excitement withwhich Augustine would enjoin others to pursue the life of rationalenquiry [e.g. Contra Academicos 2.2.5]. In place of all thisis a moral landscape that seems even sadder and more unsettling thanthe sense of loss it was originally intended to relieve. And yet, evenat the very end of De Civitate Dei, Augustine makes clearthat he still regards this as a landscape which holds out the prospectof an incomparable vision and rest from all anxiety, a renewedcondition that defies all mortal estimation [De Civitate DeiXXII.30; see also XX.21]. Now the aging Bishop of Hippo, Augustinestill shows a trait he first exhibited as a youthful convert atCassiciacum: a keen sense of the moral darkness that surrounds us anda philosophical penchant for the unexpected turn of thought by whichhe would have us escape it.
9. Legacy
In the long and difficult controversy with the Pelagians, Augustinefound his own earlier writings on the will cited by his opponents asevidence that he himself once advocated the view he came so vehementlyto oppose [see Retractationes I.9.3–6]. What is more,he dies just as the Vandals are besieging the gates of Hippo, leavingunfinished yet another work against Julian of Eclanum, a Pelagianopponent of considerable intellectual resources who had, among otherthings, accused Augustine of holding views indistinguishable fromthose of the Manicheans whom Augustine had opposed so many yearsbefore [Bonner, 1999]. And here, perhaps, is an irony as cruel as itis intriguing: eleven centuries later, when the Church to whichAugustine had devoted the last four and a half decades of his life wasto split in a manner that still shows no signs of reconciliation, bothsides would appeal to Augustine as an authority on questions ofdoctrine [Muller 1999; Grossi 1999].
Leaving aside the relative merits of these accusations and appeals,their mere existence is only possible because of the diversity andastonishing range of Augustine’s thought over the course of hislifetime. Augustine’s movement from a largely Hellenistic eudaimonismto the increasingly somber eschatology of his later works is much morethan a mere shift of position. It is the emergent product of a mindcontinually immersed in controversy and ever obliged to rethink oldpositions in light of new exigencies, obliged to turn yet again thestone turned so many times before.
Augustine De Trinitate Summary
First and foremost in Augustine’s legacy is the voluminous body ofwork that encompasses this movement, revealing a range of thought onlya handful of philosophers have managed to achieve. The diversitycontained in this body of work defies any easy or succinct synopsis,and anyone who approaches it will find a range of ideas that canalternately intrigue, surprise, and sometimes even disarm and shock.One will also find a range of genres and styles, ranging from textscrafted with great rhetorical subtlety to texts that seem to“jangle” with the “music” [O’Connell 1987, pg.203] of one who is thinking aloud as he writes. For those who wantarguments and evidential support, it is there to be had, sometimes inrepetitive abundance; for those sensitive to and appreciative of thepower of poetic imagery, that too is abundantly in place. Indeed, asRobert O’Connell says, “Augustine constructed more through aplay of his teeming imagination than by the highly abstract processesof strict metaphysical thinking” [O’Connell 1986, pg. 3].
But if that vast, multifaceted corpus is the basis of Augustine’slegacy, it is also the ultimate obstacle to any attempt at neatlypackaging or compartmentalizing it within some “ism” thatcan be neatly taxonomized. This is, of course, true of most majorphilosophers, but it seems incontestably true of Augustine. In placeof tidy boundaries, there is instead the “jangle” of thecorpus itself and the enormous influence it comes to have. Thisinfluence is to be found, for example, throughout early medievalphilosophy (e.g. Boethius and John Scotus Eriugena), and in Anselm ofCanterbury, including in what later came to be known as theontological argument [Proslogion, Chapters I–IV].Augustine’s influence is plainly discernible in Bonaventure [e.g.Itinerarium Mentis in Deum] and others in the thirteenthcentury who sought an alternative to the Aristotelianism then gainingcurrency (e.g. John Peckham and Henry of Ghent). Even Thomas Aquinas,a pivotal figure in the rise of Aristotelianism, takes care to addressand to accommodate Augustine’s view on illumination among many otherissues. In the modern period, the echoes in Descartes are conspicuous,both in the cogito [Matthews 1992] and elsewhere [Matthews1999b]. And, of course, few philosophers have invoked Augustine asexplicitly and as frequently as Malebranche [see, e.g.“Preface” to The Search After Truth]. Morerecently, one of the most influential works of twentieth centuryphilosophy, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations,opens with a lengthy quotation from Augustine’s Confessionsand a discussion of the picture of language that Wittgenstein seesinvoked in it [Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations,Part I, pars 1–3 & 32]. And if this selective historicalsampling were not enough, there is an enormous body of secondaryliterature devoted to Augustine ranging across disciplinary boundariesand across divisions within the philosophical community itself. In1999 alone, there appeared, among numerous other works, a 900 pageencyclopedia devoted to Augustine as a religious and philosophicalfigure [Fitzgerald, 1999] and a volume of essays by several prominentphilosophers in the analytic tradition exploring Augustine’s relationto a variety of topics including consequentialism, Kantian moralphilosophy, and just war theory (an important issue whichunfortunately falls outside the scope of the present discussion)[Matthews 1999]. If one examines the diverse interests of thoseinfluenced by Augustine together with the enormous body of secondaryliterature on Augustine, one finds again what one cannot fail todiscern in the Augustinian corpus itself: a diversity as amazing as itis broad, one that defies any attempt at neat summary or tidyexplication, a diversity as rich as it is discordant. It is unlikelythat this is the legacy that Augustine would have wanted to leavebehind, but it is a legacy of a sort that only a handful ofphilosophers have managed to achieve. The obvious ironynotwithstanding, the discordance and diversity are both measures of,and testimony to, an intellectual depth and range seldom equaled inthe history of western philosophy.
BibliographySelected Latin Texts and Critical Editions
The most common and most complete (but uncritical) edition ofAugustine in Latin is the seventeenth century Maurist edition ofAugustine’s Opera Omnia which is reprinted in volumes32–47 of J.P. Migne’s Patrologiae Cursus Completus,Series Latina (Paris 1844–64), referred to below asPL. More critical texts are gradually emerging infour main series:
Given the voluminous number of Augustine’s texts, the following listis confined to those especially relevant to the present article. Inwhat follows, the Migne volume [PL] will be providedas well as those of any of the other above editions that haveappeared. For information on Augustine texts not listed here, thereader is referred to Fitzgerald 1999, pp. xxxv–xlii, and thereader can also feel free to contact the author via the email addresslisted at the end of this article.
Selected English Translations
The following list is of standard and available English translationsof the works cited above. Again, there is no attempt to be exhaustive,and readers seeking information for titles not listed should consultthe relevant entry in Fitzgerald 1999 or contact the author via theemail address at the end of this article.
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St Augustine De Trinitate Pdf GratisSelected General Studies
The following is a list of works that can be helpful as introductions,guides, or general studies of Augustine’s thought. The list representsa variety of viewpoints and approaches to Augustine, but it makes noattempt at being exhaustive. Interested readers should also consultMarkus 1967 in “Select Secondary Works” below. The authorwelcomes suggestions for further additions.
Selected Secondary Works
The following provides a list of works relevant to topics covered inthe present article, and most of the works listed are referred to atsome point in the body of the article. The author welcomes suggestionsfor further additions. Interested readers should also note that thereis an annual bibliographical survey of literature on Augustine in theRevue des Etudes Augustininnes.
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De Trinitate Augustine Full TextRelated EntriesAugustine On The Trinity
divine: illumination | medieval philosophy | Neoplatonism | Plotinus | political philosophy: medieval | skepticism: ancient | skepticism: medieval
St Augustine De Trinitate Pdf OnlineAcknowledgments
The editors would like to thank Vikram Kumar for his assistancewith the Bibliography update of December 2018.
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