Hence, predestination for Augustine is the proverbial elephant in the room. Whether predestination was divinely contemplated prior or incidental to the Fall a point which Augustine never clearly articulates , the following problem arises: If one is to be saved or damned by divine fiat, what difference does it make whether the world possesses the social order of a state? For those predestined for salvation, what is the point of their being refined by the vicissitudes of life in a political state?
In order to prevent the collapse of such a systematic account of the human condition as Augustine provides, the question simply must be set aside as a matter unknowable to finite man. As the social fabric of the world around him unravels in the twilight years of the Roman Empire, Augustine attempts to elucidate the relationship between the eternal, invisible verities of his faith and the stark realities of the present, observable political and social conditions of humanity.
At the intersection of these two concerns, Augustine finds what for him is the central question of politics: How do the faithful operate successfully but justly in an unjust world, , where selfish interests dominate, where the general welfare is rarely sought, and where good and evil men are inextricably and, to human eyes, often unidentifiably intermingled, yet search for a heavenly reward in the world hereafter?
Even though those elected for salvation and those elected for damnation are thoroughly intermingled, the distinction arising from their respective destinies gives rise to two classes of persons, to whom Augustine refers collectively and allegorically as cities—the City of God and the earthly city. Indeed, the object of their love—whatever it may be—is something other than God.
No political state, nor even the institutional church, can be equated with the City of God. What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms? Likewise, the legitimacy of any earthly political regime can be understood only in relative terms: The emperor and the pirate have equally legitimate domains if they are equally just.
Nevertheless, political states, imperfect as they are, serve a divine purpose. The state maintains order by keeping wicked men in check through the fear of punishment. Although God will eventually punish the sins of all those elected for damnation, He uses the state to levy more immediate punishments against both the damned and the saved or against the wicked and the righteous, the former dichotomy not necessarily synonymous with the latter.
In this regard, the institution of the state marks a relative return to order from the chaos of the Fall. Rulers have the right to establish any law that does not conflict with the law of God. Citizens have the duty to obey their political leaders regardless of whether the leader is wicked or righteous. There is no right of civil disobedience. Citizens are always duty bound to obey God; and when the imperatives of obedience to God and obedience to civil authority conflict, citizens must choose to obey God and willingly accept the punishment of disobedience.
Nevertheless, those empowered to levy punishment should take no delight in the task. Hence, Augustine concludes that. Augustine clearly holds that the establishment and success of the Roman Empire, along with its embracing of Christianity as its official religion, was part of the divine plan of the true God. Indeed, he holds that the influence of Christianity upon the empire could be only salutary in its effect:.
Still, while Augustine doubtless holds that it is better for Rome to be Christian than not, he clearly recognizes that officially embracing Christianity does not automatically transform an earthly state into the City of God. Augustine does not wish ill for Rome. He sees Rome as the last bastion against the advances of the pagan barbarians, who surely must not be allowed to overrun the mortal embodiment of Christendom that Rome represents. Nevertheless, Augustine cannot be overly optimistic about the future of the Roman state as such—not because it is Rome, but because it is a state; for any society of men other than the City of God is part and parcel of the earthly city, which is doomed to inevitable demise.
Even so, states like Rome can perform the useful purpose of championing the cause of the Church, protecting it from assault and compelling those who have fallen away from fellowship with it to return to the fold. Indeed, it is entirely within the provinces of the state to punish heretics and schismatics. Wars serve the function of putting mankind on notice, as it were, of the value of consistently righteous living.
This point invites a somewhat more philosophically intriguing question: Is it just to compel men to do good who, when left to their own devices, would prefer evil? If one were forced to act righteously contrary to his or her will, is it not the case that he or she would still lack the change of heart that is necessary to produce a repentant attitude—an attitude that results in genuine reformation?
Perhaps; but Augustine is unwilling to concede that it is better, in the name of recognizing the agency of others, to let them continue to wallow in evil practices. Augustine argues,. The aim towards which a good will compassionately devotes its efforts is to secure that a bad will be rightly directed. For who does not know that a man is not condemned on any other ground than because his bad will deserved it, and that no man is saved who has not a good will?
Exactly how God is to bring about his good purposes through the process of war may not be clear to man in any particular case. Moreover, those of good will shall administer discipline to those erring by moving them toward repentance and reformation. All of this leads conveniently to a second point: War can bring the need to discipline by chastening.
Those of good will do not manifest cruelty in the proper administration of punishment but, rather, in the withholding of punishment. For Augustine, it is always better to restrain an evil man from the commission of evil acts than it is to permit his continued perpetration of those acts.
Writing after the time when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Augustine holds that there is no prohibition against a Christian serving the state as a soldier in its army. Neither is there any prohibition against taking the lives of the enemies of the state, so long as he does it in his public capacity as a soldier and not in the private capacity of a murderer. These losses propelled Augustine into a deeper, more vigorous commitment: he and friends established a lay ascetic community in Thagaste to spend time in prayer and the study of the Scriptures.
In , Augustine traveled to Hippo to see about setting up a monastery in the area. His reputation went before him. The story goes that, seeing the renowned layman in church one Sunday, Bishop Valerius put aside his prepared sermon and preached on the urgent need for priests in Hippo. The crowd stared at Augustine and then pushed him forward for ordination. Against his will, Augustine was made a priest. The laity, thinking his tears of frustration were due to his wanting to be a bishop rather than priest, tried to assure him that good things come to those who wait.
Valerius, who spoke no Punic the local language , quickly handed over teaching and preaching duties to his new priest, who did speak the local language. Within five years, after Valerius died, Augustine became bishop of Hippo.
Guarding the church from internal and external challenges topped the new bishop's agenda. The church in North Africa was in turmoil. Though Manichaeism was already on its way out, it still had a sizable following. Augustine, who knew its strengths and weaknesses, dealt it a death blow.
At the public baths, Augustine debated Fortunatus, a former schoolmate from Carthage and a leading Manichaean. The bishop made quick work of the heretic, and Fortunatus left town in shame. Less easily handled was Donatism, a schismatic and separatist North African church. They believed the Catholic church had been compromised and that Catholic leaders had betrayed the church during earlier persecutions. Augustine argued that Catholicism was the valid continuation of the apostolic church.
He wrote scathingly, "The clouds roll with thunder, that the house of the Lord shall be built throughout the earth; and these frogs sit in their marsh and croak 'We are the only Christians! In the controversy came to a head as the imperial commissioner convened a debate in Carthage to decide the dispute once and for all. Augustine's rhetoric destroyed the Donatist appeal, and the commissioner pronounced against the group, beginning a campaign against them.
It was not, however, a time of rejoicing for the church. The year before the Carthage conference, the barbarian general Alaric and his troops sacked Rome. The impact of his views on sin, grace, freedom and sexuality on Western culture can hardly be overrated. Philosophers keep however being fascinated by his often innovative ideas on language, on skepticism and knowledge, on will and the emotions, on freedom and determinism and on the structure of the human mind and, last but not least, by his way of doing philosophy, which is—though of course committed to the truth of biblical revelation—surprisingly undogmatic and marked by a spirit of relentless inquiry.
His most famous work, the Confessiones , is unique in the ancient literary tradition but greatly influenced the modern tradition of autobiography; it is an intriguing piece of philosophy from a first-person perspective.
Because of his importance for the philosophical tradition of the Middle Ages he is often listed as the first medieval philosopher. But even though he was born several decades after the emperor Constantine I had terminated the anti-Christian persecutions and, in his mature years, saw the anti-pagan and anti-heretic legislation of Theodosius I and his sons, which virtually made Catholic i. Pagan religious, cultural and social traditions were much alive in his congregation, as he often deplores in his sermons, and his own cultural outlook was, like that of most of his learned upper-class contemporaries, shaped by the classical Latin authors, poets and philosophers whom he studied in the schools of grammar and rhetoric long before he encountered the Bible and Christian writers.
Throughout his work he engages with pre- and non-Christian philosophy, much of which he knew from firsthand. Platonism in particular remained a decisive ingredient of his thought. He is therefore best read as a Christian philosopher of late antiquity shaped by and in constant dialogue with the classical tradition. Translations from Greek or Latin texts in this entry are by the author, unless otherwise stated.
Augustine Aurelius Augustinus lived from 13 November to 28 August His mother Monnica d. His father Patricius d. Augustine himself was made a catechumen early in his life. His studies of grammar and rhetoric in the provincial centers of Madauros and Carthage, which strained the financial resources of his middle-class parents, were hoped to pave his way for a future career in the higher imperial administration.
In Carthage at the age of ca. His adherence to Manicheism lasted for nine years and was strongly opposed by Monnica. In he moved to Milan, then the capital of the western half of the Empire, to become a publicly paid professor of rhetoric of the city and an official panegyrist at the Imperial court. Here he sent away his mistress to free the way for an advantageous marriage a behavior presumably common for young careerists at that epoch. At Milan he underwent the influence of Bishop Ambrose — , who taught him the allegorical method of Scriptural exegesis, and of some Neoplatonically inclined Christians who acquainted him with an understanding of Christianity that was philosophically informed and, to Augustine, intellectually more satisfactory than Manicheism, from which he had already begun to distance himself.
The ensuing period of uncertainty and doubt—depicted in the Confessiones as a crisis in the medical sense—ended in summer , when Augustine converted to ascetic Christianity and gave up both his chair of rhetoric and his further career prospects.
After a winter of philosophical leisure at the rural estate of Cassiciacum near Milan, Augustine was baptized by Ambrose at Easter and returned to Africa, accompanied by his son, some friends and his mother, who died on the journey Ostia, About five years later ca.
This ecclesiastical function involved new pastoral, political, administrative and juridical duties, and his responsibility for and experiences with an ordinary Christian congregation may have contributed to modify his views on grace and original sin Brown ch. But his rhetorical skills equipped him well for his daily preaching and for religious disputes.
Throughout his life as a bishop he was involved in religious controversies with Manicheans, Donatists, Pelagians and, to a lesser extent, pagans. Most of the numerous books and letters he wrote in that period were part of these controversies or at least inspired by them, and even those that were not e.
Polemics against his former co-religionists, the Manicheans, looms large in his work until about ; the debate with them helped to shape his ideas on the non-substantiality of evil and on human responsibility. The Donatist schism had its roots in the last great persecution at the beginning of the fourth century. By way of his assiduous writing against the Donatists, Augustine sharpened his ecclesiological ideas and developed a theory of religious coercion based on an intentionalist understanding of Christian love.
Pelagianism named after the British ascetic Pelagius was a movement Augustine became aware of around He and his African fellow-bishops managed to get it condemned as a heresy in While not denying the importance of divine grace, Pelagius and his followers insisted that the human being was by nature free and able not to sin possibilitas. Augustine continued to pursue these issues in dialogues on the immateriality of the soul De quantitate animae , , language and learning De magistro , — , freedom of choice and human responsibility De libero arbitrio , begun in and completed perhaps as late as and the numeric structure of reality De musica , — After the start of his ecclesiastical career he abandoned the dialogue form, perhaps because he realized its elitist and potentially misleading character G.
Clark ; Catapano Of the works from his priesthood and episcopate, many are controversial writings against the Manicheans e. Augustine is however most famous for the five long treatises with a wider scope he composed between and The Confessiones ca. The monumental apologetic treatise De civitate dei begun in , two years after the sack of Rome, and completed in argues that happiness can be found neither in the Roman nor the philosophical tradition but only through membership in the city of God whose founder is Christ.
Two long series on the Psalms Enarrationes in Psalmos , ca. This kind of philosophy he emphatically endorses, especially in his early work cf. He is convinced that the true philosopher is a lover of God because true wisdom is, in the last resort, identical with God, a point on which he feels in agreement with both Paul 1 Corinthians and Plato cf.
De civitate dei 8. In case of doubt, practice takes precedence over theory: in the Cassiciacum dialogues Monnica, who represents the saintly but uneducated, is credited with a philosophy of her own De ordine 1,31—32; 2.
In his early work he usually limits this verdict to the Hellenistic materialist systems Contra Academicos 3. Out of arrogance the philosophers presume to be able to reach happiness through their own virtue De civitate dei He thereby restates the old philosophical questions about the true nature of the human being and about the first principle of reality, and he adumbrates the key Neoplatonic idea that knowledge of our true self entails knowledge of our divine origin and will enable us to return to it cf.
Plotinus, Enneads VI. He is more reticent about Manichean texts, of which he must have known a great deal van Oort From the s onwards the Bible becomes decisive for his thought, in particular Genesis, the Psalms and the Pauline and Johannine writings even though his exegesis remains philosophically impregnated , and his mature doctrine of grace seems to have grown from a fresh reading of Paul ca.
The most lasting philosophical influence on Augustine is Neoplatonism. In the twentieth century there was an ongoing and sometimes heated debate on whether to privilege Plotinus who is mentioned in De beata vita 4 or Porphyry who is named first in De consensus evangelistarum 1.
In any event, the importance of this problem should not be overrated because Augustine seems to have continued his Neoplatonic readings after For the philosophy of mind in the second half of De trinitate he may have turned to Neoplatonic texts on psychology. Plato, Timaeus 28d ; the ontological hierarchy of God, soul and body Letter Rist A distinctly Platonic element is the notion of intellectual or spiritual ascent.
Augustine thinks that by turning inwards and upwards from bodies to soul i. Whether the condensed versions in the Confessiones 7.
An early version of the Augustinian ascent is the project—outlined in De ordine 2. As late as De civitate dei 8 ca. In spite of these important insights, Platonism cannot however lead to salvation because it is unable or unwilling to accept the mediation of Christ. It is, therefore, also philosophically defective De civitate dei As a part of his cultural heritage, Augustine quotes him and the other Latin classics as it suits his argumentative purposes Hagendahl Retractationes 1.
Unlike the original Stoics and Academics, Augustine limits the discussion to sense impressions because he wants to present Platonism as a solution to the skeptic problem and to point out a source of true knowledge unavailable to the Hellenistic materialists.
To refute the Academic claim that, since the wise person can never be sure whether she has grasped the truth, she will consistently withhold assent in order not to succumb to empty opinion, he thinks it sufficient to demonstrate the existence of some kind of knowledge that is immune to skeptical doubt. Modern critics have not been very impressed by these arguments e. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.
To him it matters to have shown that even if maximal concessions are made to skepticism concerning the unknowability of the external world attainable by the senses, there remains an internal area of cognition that allows for and even guarantees certainty.
This is why Contra Academicos ends with a sketch of Platonic epistemology and ontology and with an idiosyncratic if not wholly unparalleled reconstruction of the history of the Academy according to which the Academics were in fact crypto-Platonists who hid their insight into transcendent reality and restricted themselves to skeptical arguments to combat the materialist and sensualist schools dominant in Hellenistic times until authentic Platonism emerged again with Plotinus Contra Academicos 3.
The only realities that meet the Hellenistic criterion of truth and guarantee absolute certainty by being self-evident are the Platonic Forms Contra Academicos 3.
De diversis quaestionibus 9; Cary a: 55— Even if I were in error in uttering this proposition, it would still be true that I, who am in error, exist De civitate dei Horn 81—87; Matthews 34— The argument does not yet appear in Contra Academicos but is easily recognized as a development of the argument from subjective knowledge Contra Academicos 3. The scope of the argument in Augustine is both wider and narrower than in Descartes. The Augustinian cogito lacks the systematic importance of its Cartesian counterpart; there is no attempt to found a coherent and comprehensive philosophy on it.
On some occasions, however, it works as a starting point for the Augustinian ascent to God De libero arbitrio 2. De vera religione 72—73, where Augustine even makes supra-rational Truth the source and criterion of the truth of the cogito itself. The most impressive example is the second half of De trinitate.
I am as certain that I will as I am certain that I exist and live, and my will is as undeniably mine as is my existence and my life. De duabus animabus 13; Confessiones 7. Like Plato and his followers, Augustine thinks that true knowledge requires first-hand acquaintance; second-hand information, e.
In the case of sensible objects—which, strictly speaking, do not admit of knowledge at all but only opinion—such first-hand acquaintance is possible through sense perception. Cognition of intelligible objects, however, can be neither reached empirically by means of abstraction nor transmitted to us linguistically by a human teacher see 5. The paradigm of this kind of cognition are mathematical and logical truths and fundamental moral intuitions, which we understand not because we believe a teacher or a book but because we see them for ourselves De magistro 40, cf.
De libero arbitrio 2. The condition of possibility and the criterion of truth of this intellectual insight is none other than God a view attributed, with explicit approval, to the Platonists in De civitate dei 8. Augustine mostly explains this Platonizing theory of a priori knowledge by means of two striking images: the inner teacher and illumination. The former is introduced in the dialogue De magistro ca.
The latter appears first in the Soliloquia 1. De trinitate Rist 78— The later version in De trinitate explicitly presents divine illumination as an alternative to Platonic recollection and situates it in the framework of a theory of creation.
Gilson ch. Letter Thus, while all human beings are by nature capable of accessing intelligible truth, only those succeed in doing so who have a sufficiently good will De magistro 38 —presumably those who endorse Christian religion and live accordingly. Like all human agency, striving for wisdom takes place under the conditions of a fallen world and meets the difficulties and hindrances humanity is subject to because of original sin.
De immortalitate animae 6; De trinitate Plotinus, Enneads IV. If, as in De immortalitate animae 6, recollection is taken to prove the immortality of the soul as it did in the Phaedo , it is hard to see how preexistence should not be implied.
In any event, it is imprecise to say, as it is sometimes done, that Augustine gave up the theory of recollection because he realized that preexistence was at variance with Christian faith. In De civitate dei Augustine emphatically rejects Platonic-Pythagorean metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls as incompatible with eternal happiness and the economy of salvation, and in De trinitate Yet it is a fallacy to claim that recollection entails transmigration.
The early Augustine may have believed in preexistence perhaps simply as a corollary of the immortality of the soul , but there is no evidence that he believed in the transmigration of souls; conversely, his rejection of transmigration did not prevent even the late Augustine from considering preexistence—at least theoretically—an option for the origin of the soul Letter He rejects the rationalism of the philosophers and, especially, the Manicheans as an unwarranted over-confidence into the abilities of human reason resulting from sinful pride and as an arrogant neglect of the revelation of Christ in Scripture De libero arbitrio 3.
Against the fideism he encountered in some Christian circles cf. Philosophical argument may be of help in this process; yet as Augustine notes as early as in Contra Academicos 3. Confessiones 7. The Augustine of the earliest dialogues seems to have entertained the elitist idea that those educated in the liberal arts and capable of the Neoplatonic intellectual ascent may actually outgrow authority and achieve a full understanding of the divine already in this life De ordine 2.
In his later work, he abandons this hope and emphasizes that during this life, inevitably characterized by sin and weakness, every human being remains in need of the guidance of the revealed authority of Christ Cary b: — Faith is thus not just an epistemological but also an ethical category; it is essential for the moral purification we need to undergo before we can hope for even a glimpse of true understanding Soliloquia 1.
Without belief in the former sense, we would have to admit that we are ignorant of our own lineage Confessiones 6. The belief that a person we have not seen was or is just may trigger our fraternal love for him De trinitate 8.
Thus, while no doubt faith in revelation precedes rational insight into its true meaning, the decision about whose authority to believe and whom to accept as a reliable witness is itself reasonable De vera religione 45; Letter Even so, belief may of course be deceived De trinitate 8.
In ordinary life, this is inevitable and mostly unproblematic. A more serious problem is the justification of belief in Scripture, which, for Augustine, is the tradition and authority auctoritas , not potestas of the Church Contra epistulam fundamenti 5. He follows the Stoics in distinguishing between the sound of a word, its meaning and the thing it signifies De dialectica 5; De quantitate animae 66; cf. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos 8. In his handbook of biblical exegesis and Christian rhetoric, De doctrina christiana 1.
Language is defined as a system of given signs by means of which the speaker signifies either things or her thoughts and emotions Enchiridion Augustine therefore begins with a sketch of his theology and ethics centered around the notions of love of God and neighbor before he sets out his biblical hermeneutics which, again, posits love as the criterion of exegetical adequacy Pollmann ; Williams The words of the Bible are external signs designed to prompt us to the more inward phenomenon of love and, ultimately, to God who is beyond all language and thought.
He upheld the teachings of the Bible, but he realized that maintaining them in the intellectual and political climate of his age required a broad liberal education. In his struggle against evil, Augustine believed in a hierarchy of being in which God was the Supreme Being on whom all other beings, that is, all other links in the great chain of being, were totally dependent.
All beings were good because they tended back toward their creator who had made them from nothing. Humans, however, possess free will, and can only tend back to God by an act of the will. Man's refusal to turn to God is, in this way of thinking, nonbeing, or evil, so although the whole of creation is good, evil comes into the world through man's rejection of the good, the true, and the beautiful, that is, God.
The ultimate purpose of education, then, is turning toward God, and Augustine thought the way to God was to look into oneself. It is here one finds an essential distinction Augustine makes between knowing about something cogitare , and understanding scire. One can know about oneself, but it is through understanding the mystery of oneself that one can come to understand the mystery of God.
Thus the restless pursuit of God is always a pursuit of a goal that recedes from the seeker. As humans are mysteries to themselves, God is understood as wholly mysterious. To be a teacher in the context of this struggle was, for Augustine, an act of love. Indeed, he advised teachers to "Imitate the good, bear with the evil, love all" , p. This love was required, for he knew the hardships of study, and the active resistance of the young to learning.
He also considered language to be as much a hindrance as a help to learning. The mind, he said, moves faster than the words the teacher utters, and the words do not adequately express what the teacher intends.
Additionally, the student hears the words in his own way, and attends not only to the words, but also to the teacher's tone of voice and other nonverbal signs, thus often misunderstanding the meaning of the teacher. The teacher, thus, must welcome students' questions even when they interrupt his speech.
0コメント