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Adventures in Philosophy |
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The Great Thinkers of Western Philosophy |
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Aurelius Augustinus (picture) was born at Tagaste in preconsular Numidia in 354. His father, Patricius, was a pagan; his mother, Monica, a Christian. After his first studies in his native city, he went to Carthage, with the financial aid of Romanianus, to complete his studies in rhetoric. At the same time, however, he fell a slave to his youthful passions and even became connected with the Manichaean religious sect. After completing his studies, he first established his school at Tagaste, and later at Carthage, where he taught rhetoric for eight years, at the same time studying philosophy and the natural sciences. In 383, desirous of honors and a more disciplined group of students, he evaded his mother's vigilance, abandoned Carthage, and went to Rome. He did not find there, however, the satisfaction he sought; nor did his students bring him any remuneration. He therefore sought the directorship of rhetoric in Milan. This he obtained, and transferred to that city in 384. There his saintly mother joined him. The Bishop of Milan at that time was Ambrose, and the prayers of Augustine's mother, together with the eloquence of Ambrose, reportedly triumphed over the tormented spirit of the young Augustine. In 387 he asked to receive baptism. The sacrament was conferred by Ambrose on Easter of that year. Augustine's spiritual conversion had been preceded by an intellectual one. Dissatisfied with the doctrinal vanity of Manichaeism, he abandoned the sect. After a brief period in the Skeptic Academy, he had given himself to the study of Neo-Platonism, in which he grasped the idea of the spirituality of God and the concept of evil as the privation of good. Thus his baptism signalized the complete and absolute conversion of Augustine to Christianity. Augustine had already renounced his teaching office, and now he left Milan to return to Tagaste and live in solitude. He undertook the journey home in company with his son, Adeodatus, Monica, and some friends, and stopped en route at Ostia, where his mother died. After her death, he resumed his journey toward Africa and arrived ultimately at Tagaste, where he sold his worldly goods, distributed the proceeds to the poor, and attempted to live the life of perfection according to the standard of the Gospel. In 391 Augustine went to Hippo, probably to select a suitable place for himself and his friends who had been living a common life of study and devotion at Tagaste in a monastery built by Augustine. In Hippo, at the will of the people, Augustine was ordained a priest. The newly ordained priest, while continuing his monastic life, entered into the mission of the apostolate, preaching against vice and voicing his formidable opposition to the heresies which at that time were harassing Africa. Consecrated coadjutor Bishop of Hippo in 395 and titular Bishop of the same city in the following year, Augustine transformed his episcopal residence into a monastery, in which he lived together with his clerics, who assisted him in giving religious instructions and carrying on all forms of charitable works. Always ready to argue on theological, philosophical and moral questions, he took part in all the difficult theological disputes which disturbed the Church in Africa. He opposed Donatism, which denied the validity of sacraments administered by ecclesiastics in the state of sin, and advocated a church of pure and perfect men, withdrawn entirely from the life of the world. He vigorously argued against Pelagianism, which exalted the absolute liberty of the human will and denied original sin and the necessity of divine grace. He fought against Manichaeism, the doctrine which he has formerly espoused, and the Skepticism of the Academicians whom he had once joined when his mind was assailed by doubt. A fatal illness overtook Augustine in the year 430, at a time when the Vandals, barbarians of exceptional ferocity, were laying siege to the city of Hippo. Augustine was seventy-five years old, and had spent thirty-four years as Bishop of Hippo. The literary output of St. Augustine was prodigious. The prevalent purpose of his writings is dogmatic and moral; i.e., he dwells on the problems which most directly concern the answer to the question of life. But because of his particular tendency to consider the problems of life in connection with speculative knowledge, he treats philosophical problems to some extent in every one of his works. From the point of view of philosophy the most important are: the Confessions in thirteen books, a profound and suggestive autobiography; Soliloquia, in two books; De immortalitate animae; De libero arbitrio; Contra Academicos; De beata vita; De magistro. His two masterpieces are De civitate Dei (City of God) and De Trinitate (On the Trinity), and despite the prevalent dogmatic and apologetic character of these works, they are very rich in philosophical considerations. Augustine's style is human and provocative, thus rendering his books suitable for all times.
Neo-Platonic philosophy was the field of exercise for the mind of Augustine previous to his conversion, and it was the same philosophy which prepared him for conversion. Even after his conversion, he remained a Platonist, and for the solution of major problems he appealed to the Platonic concept. But such adherence does not signify merely simple acceptance; rather, it involves interpretation and a transformation of the very principles of Platonism within the limits of the needs of Christian thought. In this work of adapting ancient thought to Christianity, Augustine precedes Thomas Aquinas, for just as Aquinas undertook to lay down the thought of Aristotle as the rational basis of religion, so Augustine did the same with the teaching of Plato and Platonism. The central point of Platonism was the participation of the soul in a supra-sensible world (Ideas, Nous). Through this participation the intellect acquired the notion of the intelligible and hence was made participant of wisdom. Augustine accepts this participation, but the one who grants or imparts these intelligible notions to the soul is God, the Truth of God, the Word of God, to whom are transferred all Platonic Ideas. In the Word of God exist the eternal truths, the species, the formal principles of things, which are the models of created beings. In the intellectual light imparted to us by the Word of God we know both the eternal truths and the ideas of real beings. This the famous illumination to which Augustine makes appeal, as we shall see, in the solution of major problems. Furthermore, we observe that philosophy is considered by Augustine as the science for the solution of the problem of life; hence his thought mainly revolves around God and the soul, and consequently also around the problem of evil, which must be solved in order that one may know the nature of the soul. In a word, the thought of Augustine is more concerned with the solution of religious, ethical and moral problems than with those of pure speculation.
III. Theory of Knowledge (Epistemology) Augustine, who during his formation in philosophy had made contact with the Skepticism of the Academicians, knew that the problem of knowledge involved two difficulties, one regarding the existence of the knowing subject (which fact was denied by the Academicians), and the other regarding the origin of knowledge itself. As for the first question, Augustine overcame the Skepticism of the Academy and arrived at the affirmation of the existence of the knowing subject with the famous argument: "If I doubt, I exist -- Si fallor, sum." Regarding the second question, i.e., the origin of knowledge, Augustine as a Platonist underrates sensitive cognition, which he does not make the foundation of intellective knowledge. (Thus he differs radically from Aristotle and Aquinas in this important question.) Whence, then, does intellective cognition draw its origin? From illumination. As the eyes have need of the light of the sun in order to see sensible objects, so the intellect needs the light of God to know the world of intelligible beings. Eternal truths, ideas, species, formal principles are imparted to our intelligence by Wisdom, the Word of God. Intellectual knowledge is not the result of the acquisitive operation of the intellect, but a participation or grant of God. It is in this participation that Augustine's innatism with regard to ideas consists. It follows from this that the intellect, considered in itself, is incapable of acquiring knowledge of intelligible beings, but is made capable of such knowledge through illumination. The mystic schools of the Middle Ages were to appeal to this natural inability of the intellect in order to affirm that humility and prayer are the best means to acquiring wisdom.
Theodicy Augustine proves the existence of God through a priori and a posteriori arguments. However, if we keep in mind what has been said about illumination, the more convincing arguments for Augustine will be those a priori proofs drawn from the presence within us of this special illumination. In fact, the presence of this illumination is proof of the existence of God. Such a priori arguments can be reduced to the following formula: We are conscious of possessing within ourselves ideas and formal principles which are by nature universal and necessary, outside the confines of time and space, eternal. But such universal and necessary principles cannot take their origin from the external world nor from us, who, as contingent beings, are devoid of these characteristics of universality and necessity. Therefore, such universal principles presuppose God, who is a necessary being, unlimited by space and time. The universal principles are communicated to us by Him, by the Wisdom of God, the Word of God. As we said above, Augustine also appeals to a posteriori arguments, when, for instance, from change and the imperfections of beings he rises to the perfect being, the being above all change, God. Regarding the nature of God, Augustine assumes a position opposed to all the errors of Platonism. For Augustine, God is immutable, eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, absolutely devoid of potentiality or composition, a pure spirit, a personal, intelligent being. The mystery of the Trinity of God induces Augustine to consider God as being, knowledge, and love; and since the world has been created by God, it reveals a reflection of these three attributes of God: every creature should consist essentially of being, knowledge, and volition. Cosmology Against the dualism of Plato and against the pantheism of the Stoics and the Neo-Platonists, for whom the world was a physical derivation or emanation of God, Augustine affirms that the world was created by God from nothing, through a free act of His will. With regard to the manner in which creation was effected by God, Augustine is inclined to admit that the creation of the world was instantaneous, but not entirely as it exists at present. In the beginning there were created a few species of beings which, by virtue of intrinsic principles of reproduction, gave origin to the other species down to the present state of the existing world. Thus it seems that Augustine is not contrary to a moderate evolution, but that such a moderate evolution has nothing in common with modern materialistic evolutionist teaching. Connected with the creation of the world is the problem of time, for time has its beginning with creation. But what is time? What is its real nature? Augustine observes that time is essentially constituted of a past, a present, and a future; without this division it would be impossible to speak of time. But the past is not existent, for it has passed; nor does the future exist, for it has yet to come; the present is the moment which joins the past with the future. Now it would be foolish to deny the reality of time. We speak of time as long or short, and that which has no reality cannot be either long or short. To solve the difficulty Augustine has recourse to the intellective memory, which records the past and foresees the future. Thus both the past and the future are made present to the memory, and here time finds its reality of length and brevity. For Augustine, then, as the Scholastics were to say later, time is a being of reason with a foundation in things which through becoming offer to the mind the concept of time as past, present, and future. Psychology Augustine affirms the absolute unity and the spirituality of the human soul. And yet, considering Augustine's Platonic tendency, the union of the soul with the body is somewhat extrinsic. In regard to the origin of the soul, Augustine's teaching varies from creationism to traducianism. According to creationism, the soul of each man is created immediately by God in the very moment it comes to animate the body. On the other hand, according to traducianism the soul of every man proceeds from the souls of the parents. Augustine, for polemical motives in his controversy with Pelagius (who denied original sin), leans toward traducianism. In regard to the nature of the soul he affirms that the soul is simple and immortal. The sensitive soul, besides having the five senses, is endowed also with a sensitive cognition which is common to animals and which judges the proper object of each of the senses. The intellective soul has three functions: being, understanding, and loving, corresponding to three faculties: intellective memory, intelligence, and will. The primacy among these three faculties is given to the will, which in man signifies love. The will of man is free. United to the question of the liberty of man is the problem of evil, which for many years tormented the mind of Augustine. Three kinds of evil can be distinguished: metaphysical, physical, and moral, and each of them consists in a deficiency in being, a descent toward non-being. Metaphysical evil is the lacking of a perfection not due to a given nature and hence is not actually an evil. Under this aspect, all creatures are evil because they fall short of full perfection, which is God alone. Physical evil consists in the privation of a perfection due to nature; e.g., blindness is the privation of sight in a being which ought to have sight according to the exigencies of its nature. Augustine, under Platonic and Stoic influence, justifies the presence of physical evil in the general order of nature, in which dissonance serves to greater accentuate the general harmony. The solution, certainly, is not very pleasant. The only true evil is moral evil; sin, an action contrary to the will of God. The cause of moral evil is not God, who is infinite holiness, nor is it matter, as the Platonists would have it, for matter is a creature of God and hence good. Neither is the will as a faculty of the soul evil, for it too has been created by God. The cause of moral evil is the faculty of free will, by which man is able to deviate from the right order, to oppose himself to the will of God. Such opposition gives moral evil reality -- negative, metaphysical reality in the sense of decadence of the order established by God, and hence decadence of being or descent toward non-being. Sin, from the very fact that it is a decadence of being, carries in itself its own punishment. By sinning man injures himself in his being; for he falls from what he ought to be. As a result of this fall there exist the sufferings which he must bear, such as remorse in the present life, and the sufferings which God has established in the life to come for those who violate the laws laid down by His will.
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