Winter 2012 Edition
Aurelius Augustinus [more commonly “St. Augustine of Hippo,” oftensimply “Augustine”] (354–430 C.E.):rhetor, ChristianNeoplatonist, North African Bishop, Doctor of the Roman CatholicChurch. One of the decisive developments in the western philosophicaltradition was the eventually widespread merging of the Greekphilosophical tradition and the Judeo-Christian religious andscriptural traditions. Augustine is one of the main figures through andby whom this merging was accomplished. He is, as well, one of thetowering figures of medieval philosophy whose authority and thoughtcame to exert a pervasive and enduring influence well into the modernperiod (e.g. Descartes and especially Malebranche), and even up to thepresent day, especially among those sympathetic to the religioustradition which he helped to shape (e.g. Plantinga 1992; Adams 1999).But even for those who do not share this sympathy, there is much inAugustine's thought that is worthy of serious philosophical attention.Augustine is not only one of the major sources whereby classicalphilosophy in general and Neoplatonism in particular enter into themainstream of early and subsequent medieval philosophy, but there aresignificant contributions of his own that emerge from his modificationof that Greco-Roman inheritance, e.g., his subtle accounts of beliefand authority, his account of knowledge and illumination, his emphasisupon the importance and centrality of the will, and his focus upon anew way of conceptualizing the phenomena of human history, just to citea few of the more conspicuous examples.
Only four of his seventy-five years were spent outside Northern Africa,and fifty-seven of the remaining seventy-one were in such relativelyout of the way places as Thagaste and Hippo Regius, both belonging toRoman provinces, neither notable for either cultural or commercialprominence. However, the few years Augustine spent away from NorthernAfrica exerted an incalculable influence upon his thought, and hisgeographical distance from the major intellectual and politicalcapitals of the Later Roman Empire should not obscure the tremendousinfluence he came to exert even in his own lifetime. Here, aselsewhere, one is confronted by a figure both strikingly liminal and,at times, intriguingly ambivalent. He was, as already noted, a longtime resident and, eventually, Bishop in Northern Africa whose thoughtwas transformed and redirected during the four brief years he spent inRome and Milan, far away from the provincial context where he was bornand died and spent almost all of the years in between; he was a man whotells us that he never thought of himself as not being in some sense aChristian [Confessions III.iv.8], yet he composed a spiritualautobiography containing one of the most celebrated conversion accountsin all of Christian literature; he was a classically trainedrhetorician who used his skills to eloquently proclaim at length thesuperiority of Christian culture over Greco-Roman culture, and he alsoserved as one of the central figures by whom the latter was transformedand transmitted to the former. Perhaps most striking of all, Augustinebequeathed to the Latin West a voluminous body of work that contains atits chronological extremes two quite dissimilar portraits of the humancondition. In the beginning, there is a largely Hellenistic portrait,one that is notable for the optimism that a sufficiently rational anddisciplined life can safely escape the ever-threatening circumstantialadversity that seems to surround us. Nearer the end, however, thereemerges a considerably grimmer portrait, one that emphasizes theimpotence of the unaided human will, and the later Augustine presents amoral landscape populated largely by themassa 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], many of whichare themselves voluminous and composed over lengthy periods of time,not to mention over 200 letters [listed at Fitzgerald 1999, pp.299–305] and close to 400 sermons [listed at Fitzgerald 1999, pp.774–789]. It is arguably impossible to construct any moderate sized andmanageable list of his major philosophical works that would notoccasion some controversy in terms of what is omitted, but surely anylist would have to includeContra Academicos [Against theAcademicians, 386–387 C.E.],De Libero Arbitrio [OnFree Choice of the Will, Book I, 387/9 C.E.; Books II & III,circa 391–395 C.E.],De Magistro [On The Teacher, 389C.E.],Confessiones [Confessions, 397–401 C.E.],De Trinitate [On The Trinity, 399–422 C.E.],DeGenesi ad Litteram [On The Literal Meaning of Genesis,401–415 C.E.],De Civitate Dei [On The City of God,413–427C.E.], andRetractationes [Reconsiderations,426–427 C.E.].
Born in 354 C.E. in Thagaste (in what is now Algeria), he waseducated in Thagaste, Madauros, and Carthage, and sometime around 370he began a thirteen-year, monogamous relationship with the mother of hisson, Adeodatus (born 372). He subsequently taught rhetoric in Thagasteand Carthage, and in 383 he made the risk-laden journey from NorthernAfrica to Rome, seeking the better sort of students that was rumored tobe 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). The remainderof his years would be spent immersed in the affairs and controversiesof the Church into which he had been recently baptized, a Church thathenceforth provided for Augustine the crucial nexus of relations thathis family and friends had once been. In 391, Augustine was reluctantlyordained as a priest by the congregation of Hippo Regius (a notuncommon practice in Northern Africa), in 395 he was made Bishop, andhe died August 430 in Hippo, thirty-five years later, as the Vandalswere besieging the gates of the city. However, when Augustine himselfrecounts his first thirty-two years in hisConfessions, hemakes clear that many of the decisive events of his early life were, touse his own imagery, of a considerably more internal nature than therelatively 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, he happenedupon Cicero'sHortensius, now lost except for fragments [seeStraume-Zimmermann 1990], and he found himself suddenly imbued with apassion for philosophy [Confessions III.iv.7–8]. It is clearfrom his account of Cicero's effect upon him that his passion was notfor philosophy as often understood today, i.e. an academic, largelyargument-oriented conceptual discipline, but rather as theparadigmatically Hellenistic pursuit of a wisdom that transcended andblurred the boundaries of what are now viewed as the separate spheresof philosophy, religion, and psychology. In particular, philosophy forAugustine was centered on what is sometimes misleadingly referred to as“the problem of evil.” This problem, needless to say, was not the sortof analytic, largely logical problem of theodicy that later came topreoccupy philosophers of religion. For Augustine, the problem was of amore general and visceral sort: it was the concern with the issue ofhow to make sense of and live within a world that seemed so adversarialand fraught with danger, a world in which so much of what matters mostto us is so easily lost [see e.g.Confessions IV.x.15]. Inthis sense, the wisdom that Augustine sought was a common denominatoruniting the conflicting views of such Hellenistic philosophical sectsas the Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics, and Neoplatonists (though this isa later title) such as Plotinus and Porphyry, as well as manyChristians of varying degrees of orthodoxy, including very unorthodoxgnostic 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 no extantwritings from this period of his life, the Manicheans are clearly thetarget of many of the writings he would compose after his conversion tothe more orthodox, if Neoplatonizing, Christianity he encountered underBishop Ambrose of Milan. The Manicheans proposed a powerful, ifsomewhat mythical and philosophically awkward explanation of theproblem of evil: there is a perpetual struggle between co-eternalprinciples of Light and Darkness (good and evil, respectively), and oursouls are particles of Light which have become trapped in the Darknessof the physical world. By means of sufficient insight and asufficiently ascetic life, however, one could eventually, over thecourse of several lives, come to liberate the Light within from thesurrounding Darkness, thus rejoining the larger Light of which the soulis but a fragmented and isolated part.
As Augustine recounts it in theConfessions [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 “booksof the Platonists” [Confessions VII.9.13]. When Augustineeventually comes to write about the Manicheans, there are threefeatures upon which he will focus: their implicit materialism (awidespread feature of Hellenistic thought, the Neoplatonists being anotable exception); their substantive dualism whereby Darkness, andhence, evil, is granted a co-eternal, substantial existence opposed tothe Light; and their identification of the human soul as a fragmentedparticle of the Light. According to Augustine, this latteridentification not only serves to render the human soul divine, therebyobliterating the crucial distinction between creator and creature, butit also raises doubts about the extent to which the individual humansoul can be held responsible for morally bad actions, responsibilityinstead being attributed to the body in which the soul (itself quasimaterial) is trapped. Although Augustine is vehement and at timesmerciless in his repudiation of the Manicheans, questions can still beasked about the influence the Manichean world-view continued to exertupon his understanding and presentation of Neoplatonic and Christianthemes [see “Philosophical Anthropology” below].
The single most decisive event, however, in Augustine'sphilosophical development has to be his encounter with those unnamedbooks of the Platonists in Milan in 384. While there are otherimportant influences, it was his encounter with the Platonism ambientin Ambrose's Milan that provided the major turning point, reorientinghis thought 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 weknow from his own account that they were translated by MariusVictorinus [Confessions VIII.2.3], and there is widespreadagreement that they were texts by Plotinus and Porphyry, although thereis again controversy regarding how much influence is to be attributedto each [O'Connell 1968, pp. 20–26; O'Donnell 1992, vol II, pp. 423–4].These uncertainties notwithstanding, Augustine himself makes it clearthat it was his encounter with the books of the Platonists thatmade it possible for him to view both the Church and its scripturaltradition as having an intellectually satisfying 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 [seeContra Academicos 3.10.43]. But by thetime he composes theConfessions (397–401C.E.), he is alreadyaware that there are significant points of divergence[Confessions VII.20.26], and by the time he composes Book VIIIofDe Civitate Dei (circa 416 C.E.), he still has laudatorythings to say about the Platonic tradition, but it is clear that thepoints of divergence have become more important to him and that heregards the Roman Catholic Church as having sufficient internalresources to address whatever difficulties confront it. Part of thisgradual change of attitude is attributable to his detailed study ofscriptural texts (especially the Pauline letters), as well as hisimmersion in both the daily affairs of his monastic community and therather focused sorts of controversies that confronted the Church in thefourth and fifth centuries. Beyond his already noted, protracted battlewith Manicheanism, there is also his involvement in the North AfricanDonatist controversy [see Brown 1967, pp. 212–225], a controversyconcerning the validity of sacraments administered in the wake of thepersecution of 304–305, and most especially the Pelagian controversywhich engaged him from about 411 until his death in 430 [see Brown1967, pp. 340–52 and the section on “Will” below]. In this latter case,serious issues arose regarding the role of grace and the efficacy ofthe unaided human will, issues that, as we will see, played animportant role in shaping his views on human freedom andpredestination.
These important qualifications notwithstanding, the fact remainsthat this Platonism also provided Augustine with a philosophicalframework far more pliable and enduring than he himself is willing toadmit in his later works. Moreover, this framework itself forms animportant part of the philosophical legacy that Augustine bequeathed toboth the medieval and modern periods.
Augustine'sConfessions is undoubtedly among the most widely read works in medieval philosophy, for both philosophers and non-philosophers. Often hailed as the “first autobiography” and as a “spiritual biography,” it is nonetheless a work that has to be approached with considerable caution, for two main reasons. First, as is the case with all biographies and autobiographies, it is an edited account of an individual's life. Sometimes this feature is easy to overlook, but its significance is obvious enough: in composing such a work, the author is obliged to engage in an editorial process in which certain events and circumstances are highlighted and others omitted. Without this, the work would be rather like a map that is as large as of that of which it is intended to be a map, thus making it not a map at all. In order to bring some coherence to the material at hand, there must be some effort to provide an interpretive framework for the material, focusing on relevant and important highlights while omitting others that would obscure those highlights.
The second reason is more specific to Augustine: trained as a rhetorician, Augustine has a specific rhetorical strategy that needs to be kept in mind as one works through the text. Presented as an extended prayer to God, Augustine is not merely telling the tale of his own life, but also using his life as a concrete example of how an isolated individual soul can extricate itself from this state and Neoplatonically ascend to a unity that overcomes this isolation and attains to rest in God. Also important are the means by which he seeks to accomplish this task: his selection of events is quite deliberate, and he especially focuses upon his immersion and extrication from what he regards as his pre-reflective, materialist and common sense view of the world; the various kinds of relationships that both hinder and aid in this extrication; and the texts that he reads, some of which again aid in the extrication and others of which are obstacles.
With respect to his relations with others, he begins with his ruminations upon infancy and the isolation of the infant, which initially seems to be overcome by the acquisition of language. But as he tells the story inConfessions I, language is itself a double-edged sword: it is an instrument that can immerse us into the world, but it can also, if used rightly, aid in transcending the world of the senses and ascending to the intelligible realm where we find the unity and rest we seek. Of his remarks on friendship, especially noteworthy are the theft of pears in Book II; the death of his anonymous friend in Book IV; his accounts of Nebridius and Alypius; his account of his relationship with his mother, Monica; and, perhaps most significant of all, the “vision of Ostia” that is recounted in Book IX. Intertwined with his reflections on friendship is a progression of texts that leads him to the Neoplatonic ascents of Book VII and Book IX; his initial distaste for biblical texts owing to their rhetorical inelegance; his reading of Cicero, which inflamed him with a passion for philosophy; his attraction to the texts of the Manicheans; his reading of the Skeptics; and, most importantly, his reading of unnamed books of the “Platonists” which helped him to overcome his predisposition to materialism and paved the way for his non-Manichean, non-dualistic solution to the problem of evil, which enabled him to engage in the Neoplatonic ascent and thereby to overcome the fragmented isolation of bodies, the senses, and language. Although Augustine is aware by the time he writes theConfessions that there are differences between Christianity and Neoplatonism, he nonetheless makes its clear that the latter makes it possible for him to regard the former as intellectually credible.
Books VIII and IX continue in this autobiographical vein: Book VIIIis notable 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 IXis notable for the aforementioned “vision at Ostia” inwhich he and his mother together ascend beyond the world of the sensesand language in a manner akin to those ascents recounted in Book VII,but with one notable difference: unlike most Neoplatonic ascents, thisone involves two individuals partaking in the ascent, which enablesthem to communicate in a manner that overcomes the Neoplatonic view ofthe isolated nature of the soul in this world.
The overarching Neoplatonic strategy of the first nine Books goes a long way toward explaining what might otherwise be a strange shift in the remaining four books, in which the autobiography recedes into the background. In Book X, Augustine focuses on the role of memory as a route of access to the transcendence that he is seeking, and Book XI emphasizes time and eternity, presenting the former as a psychological “distention” of the latter which needs to be overcome to reach the unity and rest in God that is the overall theme of theConfessions. This strategy, combined with the related themes of the role of language and texts in his spiritual progress, also explains the fact that Books XII and XIII are devoted to exegesis of the first chapters of Genesis. As noted above, Augustine at first disdained biblical texts owing to their rhetorical inelegance. Now, however, having a framework that enables him to discern their actual inner depth, these texts acquire a prominence and indicate the culmination of that long journey which began with his immersion into the double-edged domain of human speech and written word. Moreover, these final Books, along with the Neoplatonic framework he discovers in Book VII (though, as we have seen, it also governs the structure of theConfessions as a whole), enable him to further probe the puzzles that he raised in the first five chapters of Book I. In short, what once struck Augustine as the texts least worthy of attention have now become the texts of all texts, because they contain the answers to the questions and problems that have propelled him from the very beginning of theConfessions.
For the reader interested in approaching theConfessions with more historical background at their disposal, Brown (2000) and O'Donnell (2006) are reliable and helpful resources.
For many readers, one of the most troubling passages of theConfessions occurs at VI.xv.25 where Augustine briefly discusses the abrupt dismissal of his unnamed companion of thirteen years who is also the mother of his son Adeodatus. As Augustine recounts it (Confessions VI.xiii.23), the dismissal was prompted by his mother's attempt to arrange a respectable marriage for him: one that would aid him in attaining the salvation that baptism could procure. It is also quite possible that it would serve him in the pursuit of a more worldly career.
The custom of having a “concubine” (concubinatus) was not unusual at the time, and it was virtually indistinguishable from formal marriage. But it could serve as an impediment to social advancement unless it was replaced by the more formal arrangement ofmatrimonium. What seems so troubling about this brief passage are the facts that Augustine never names his companion, that the dissolution of the relationship is treated with such brevity, and that Augustine almost immediately forms a relationship with another woman while waiting almost two years for his prospective, arranged bride to reach legal age for marriage (though the marriage never took place owing to Augustine's subsequent “conversion” recounted in Books VII and VIII).
Hence, the obvious questions: Why the abruptness of the dismissal? Why not enter with his companion of thirteen years into the more respectable relation ofmatrimonium? Why anonymity for someone with whom he had spent thirteen years in a monogamous relationship? Why the headlong rush into another, temporary relationship, whereas his companion returned to Northern Africa vowing never to enter into another relationship? Was their devotion to one another as asymmetrical as Augustine seems to suggest? Was he as callous and as indifferent as the text seems to present him?
If one examines the text closely enough, there do seem to be answers to these questions: some of them historically speculative, others definitely rooted in the text. In a speculative vein (though not without foundation) one must wonder what the mysterious woman's fortunes in Northern Africa would have been had her name been mentioned in the text. Also, what was the social class of his companion? Differences in social class could often prevent the transition from a relation ofconcubinatus to onematrimonium.
On a more textual level, it is obvious that Monica played a significant role in the arrangement of the more respectable marriage for which Augustine was obliged to wait. More importantly, Augustine makes it clear at VI.xv.23 that his companion's vow of chastity is to be regarded as superior to his pursuit of another relationship, which was prompted by lust rather than love, implying that this might not have been true of his relationship with his companion of thirteen years. As for the anonymity of his companion, this is not unusual in theConfessions as a whole. When he does mentions names (e.g. Alypius, Nebridius, Faustus, Ambrose, Monica), they are names that would have been known to contemporary readers of the text. But they also serve as character types: most positive, but some (like the well-known Manichean Faustus) of a more ambivalent sort. The fact that a name is not mentioned does not mean that Augustine's relation with that person is insignificant. A prime example is his protracted discussion of an anonymous friend in Book IV, a pathos-ridden account that leaves no doubt about the importance of the relationship to Augustine. Indeed, given the overall rhetorical strategy of theConfessions, in which his own life stands as a particular instance of the soul's immersion in and extrication from the isolation and fragmented condition brought about by the sensible world, it is more surprising when hedoes mention specific names.
But perhaps of most importance are two textual points which indicate the significance of this relationship to Augustine. The first is that the episode he recounts is of an intensely personal nature, not necessary to the rhetorical strategy of theConfessions as a whole. But even more important is the imagery employed in his account of the separation. He tells us that his “heart” (cor) was still attached(adhaerebat) to her, that it was wounded (conscium et vulneratum), and that the separation “drew blood” (trahebat sanguiem). There are only two passages in the entireConfessions which employ similar imagery: 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 some philosophical import in this otherwise intensely personal passage: it is one example of the Neoplatonic desperation of the individual soul's attempt to overcome its isolation by seeking unity with others, a unity 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 it was indeed under Monica's influence that he dissolved the relationship, it is unclear why, given the importance that he clearly attached to it, he could not have resisted her influence. And if the choice was his own, then he appears even more culpable. But then, given the travail of the soul's journey presented in the first six books of theConfessions,, perhaps this is precisely the point.
A good place to begin examining the larger contours of Augustine's legacy is his account of the impact the books of the Platonists had upon him, i.e., his ontology and the eudaimonism it is intended to support.
In theConfessions, where Augustine gives his most extensivediscussion of the books of the Platonists, he makes clearthat his previous thinking was dominated by acommon-sense materialism [Confessions IV.xv.24; VII.i.1]. Itwas the books of the Platonists that first made it possible for him toconceive the possibility of a non-physical substance[Confessions VII.x.16], providing him with a non-Manicheansolution to the problem of the origin of evil. In addition, the booksof the Platonists provided him with a metaphysical framework ofextraordinary depth and subtlety, a richly-textured tableau upon whichthe human condition could be plotted. It can both account for the obviousdifficulties with which life confronts us, while also offering grounds for a eudaimonismnotable for the depth of its moral optimism. In this respect, theontology that Augustine acquired from the books of the Platonists is,in terms of its intent, not all that different from the materialism ofthe Epicureans, Stoics, and even the Manicheans. What sets theNeoplatonic ontology apart, however, is both the resoluteness of itspromise and the architectonic grandeur with which it complements theworld 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 spite ofthe 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 regarded as theultimate source and point of origin for all that comes below. Equatedwith Being [Confessions VII.x.16], Goodness [e.g.DeTrinitate VIII.5], and Truth [Confessions X.xxiii.33;De Libero Arbitrio III.16], God is the unchanging point whichunifies all that comes after and below within an abiding andprovidentially-ordained rational hierarchy.
Augustine, especially in his earlier works, focuses upon thecontrast between the intelligible and the sensible, enjoining hisreader to realize that the former alone holds out what we seek in thelatter: the world of the senses is intractably private and isolated,whereas the intelligible realm is truly public and simultaneously opento all [De Libero Arbitrio II.7] ; the sensible world is oneof transitory 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 wherein weare safely removed from the eviscerating prospect of losing what andwhom 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 suggest thatthe intelligible realm holds out the prospect of fulfilling our desirefor the unity that we seek in friendship and love, a unity that cannever really be achieved as long as we are immersed in the sensibleworld 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 is forthe Manicheans); rather, it is a more subtle problem of perception andwill: we are prone to view things materialistically and hence unawarethat 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 focus onlyupon the sensible, viewing it as a self-contained arena within whichall questions of moral concern are to be resolved. Because we fail toperceive the larger unity of which the sensible world is itself a part,it easily becomes for us (though not in itself) a realm of moraldanger, one wherein our will attaches itself to transitory objects thatcannot but lead to anxiety [Confessions VII.xi.17–18]. Giventhe essentially rational nature of the human soul and the rationalnature of the Neoplatonic ontology, there is nonetheless room foroptimism. The human soul has the capacity to perceive its own liminalstatus as a being embodied partly in the sensible world while connectedto the intelligible realm, and there is thus the possibility ofreorienting one's moral relation to the sensible world, appreciating itfor the goodness it manifests, but seeing it as an instrument fordirecting one's attention to what is above it [seeConfessionsVII.x.16 and VII.xvii.23]. Augustine's employment of this Neoplatonichierarchy is thus central to his Hellenistic eudaimonism [see O'Connell1972, pp. 39–40; Rist 1994, pp. 48–53; Kirwan 1999, pp. 183–4] whichwould redeem appearances by means of situating them within a moreprimary, 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—both theunderlying order of the appearances and the providentially governedmoral drama within which they appear—natural evils are not evil atall [e.g.Confessions VII.xiii.19 andDe Civitate DeiXI.22]. With respect to the moral evil which is the product of humanagency, these are the culpable products of a will that has becomeattached to lower goods, treating them as if they were higher. Moralevil is, strictly speaking, not a thing, but only the will's turningaway from God and attaching itself to inferior goods as if they werehigher [ibid.]. InDe Civitate Dei, Augustine emphasizes theprivative nature of evil by referring to the will's pursuit of inferiorgoods as being a deficient rather than efficient cause [De CivitateDei, XII.7]. The inherent difficulty of this notion aside [seeRist 1994, pp. 106–8], the point behind it is clear enough: Augustineis using the resources of Neoplatonism to account for the phenomena welabel evil while stressing human responsibility, thus avoiding eithersubstantializing evil (as the Manicheans do) or making it the result ofGod'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 andDe Ordine 2.18.47],the Plotinian picture may have seemed to him as positing too great adistance between the two, thus raising doubts about the ability ofreason to take us towards our desired destination [see Mendelson 1995,pp. 244–45]. The other departure from Neoplatonism moves in theopposite direction. Rather than the danger of making the spiritualdistance between God and the soul too great, there is as well inNeoplatonism a tendency to bridge that gap in a manner troubling tosomeone like Augustine, for whom the creator/creature distinction isfundamental. In Plotinus and other Neoplatonists, the relation of theultimate principle to all that comes below is usually presented interms of a sempiternal process of necessary emanations whereby lowerstages constantly flow from the higher [see Plotinus,EnneadsIV.8.6]. Augustine, not surprisingly, resists this aspect of theNeoplatonic ontology, always insisting upon the fundamentallyvolitional nature of God's activity [e.g.De Genesi adLitteram 6.15.26]. Nor should it be surprising that Augustineshould find himself obliged to depart in important respects from theNeoplatonic tradition. He is, after all, not merely taking over aNeoplatonic ontology, but he is attempting to combine it with ascriptural tradition of a rather different sort, one wherein the divineattributes most prized in the Greek tradition (e.g. necessity,immutability, and atemporal eternity) must somehow be combined with thepersonal attributes (e.g. will, justice, and historical purpose) of theGod of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
For all the changes that affected Augustine between his initialencounter with the books of the Platonists in 384–386 and his death in430, he never abandoned this Neoplatonic ontology's distinction betweenthe physical/sensible and the spiritual/intelligible and its hierarchywithin which these realms are unified. However, these commitments stillleave much room for development as well as for tension and uncertainty.In particular, Augustine's views on original sin and the necessity ofgrace in the face of the Pelagian controversy raised serious questionsabout the efficacy of the human will. Complicating the matter furtheris the question of the soul's origin, a question that has a significantimpact on Augustine's 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 account ofthe 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 the body,and it is the province of the soul to rule the body [e.g.De AnimaeQuantitate 13.22;De Genesi contra Manicheos II.11]. Thispresents a fairly positive conception of the soul-body relation, onethat clearly runs counter to the Manichean picture of the soul'sentrapment. Matters are somewhat less clear, however, when we turn tothe question of how the soul comes to be embodied.
With respect to the soul's “origin,” as Augustine frames thequestion, there is a strand of uncertainty that runs unbroken from hisearliest completed post-conversion work [De Beata Vita, 386C.E.] to theRetractationes of 427 C.E. In both works,Augustine professes to be puzzled about the soul's origin [De BeataVita 1.5 andRectractationes 1.1 and 2.45/71], but hisuncertainty is clearly evolving, and the absence of certainty on theissue 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 and166.3–4]. In addition to thestatus 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].
InDe Libero Arbitrio III.20 & 21 (circa 395 C.E.),when Augustine 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 moral evilin the world. Thus, as he later points out inLetter 143(circa 412 C.E.), he is not concerned to adjudicate between thesecompeting hypotheses, but merely to show that each is consistent with anon-Manichean, Neoplatonizing account of moral evil. Nonetheless, thefour hypotheses he does advance are important evidence about how heunderstands the conceptual landscape [O'Daly 1987, pp. 15–20; Mendelson1998, pp. 30–44], and the anti-Manichean polemic notwithstanding, it isinstructive that he makes no attempt to choose between or even to offera 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 God toadminister 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 later presentations of these hypotheses(though not inDe Libero Arbitrio III), Augustine treats thevoluntarist hypothesis as involving both a sin on the soul's part and acyclical process whereby the 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 remains controversyover the extent to which Augustine himself was inclined towards eitherof the hypotheses that required pre-existence [O'Connell 1968, O'Daly1987, pp. 15–20; O'Donnell 1992 II.34–5], but there are passages in theConfessions [seeConfessions I.6–8] and elsewhere[e.g.De Genesi Contra Manicheos 2.8 (circa 388–9 C.E.) andDe Genesi ad Literam Imperfectus Liber 1.3 (circa 393 C.E.)]that have led some to regard it as a possibility he takes veryseriously indeed, perhaps even preferring it, at least until the earlypart of the fifth century [O'Connell 1968; Teske 1991]. Moreover, giventhe Neoplatonic architectonic of theConfessions, this wouldnot be all that surprising, for the notion that the preexistent soulfalls into the body is a conspicuous feature of Plotinus' thought aswell as of Neoplatonism in general [e.g. Plotinus,EnneadsIV.8; Origen,On First Principles 1.4.4]. In this regard, itis also 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 of whathe eventually came to learn of Origen's view, but given the Neoplatonicframework underlying his conception of the soul's origin, it isdifficult to construe the soul's choice of embodiment in positiveterms.
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.
By the time Augustine comes to writeLetter 166 to Jeromein 415, there have been significant developments in his thinking onthis issue. 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 ofDe Genesi ad Litteram, (circa 415–16 C.E.)he has a further objection to the notion of pre-incarnate sin: thispossibility, he writes, is ruled out by Romans 9:11 where we are toldthat the souls of the unborn have done neither good nor evil [DeGenesi ad Litteram 10.15.27]. Whether or not this poses a decisiveobjection pre-existence is an obscure matter. In the discussion ofDe Genesi ad Litteram 10, a version of the sent hypothesisdoes appear as a serious contender, but it is abruptly dropped withoutexplanation, leaving open the question of what lies behind the suddenomission [O'Connell 1987, pp. 227–9; Mendelson 1995, pp. 242–7].Whatever the reasons may be, the fact is that henceforward, in thistext and elsewhere [e.g.De Anima et eius Origine, circa419/20 C.E.], Augustine writes as if there are only two competinghypotheses of the soul's origin, the traducianist and thecreationist.
Matters are further complicated by the fact that inLetter166 andDe Genesi ad Litteram [see especiallyLetter166.27], 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 andDe 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 andDe Genesi adLitteram 10.11–16]. The Pelagian controversy had by this timebrought 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 challenges tothese views. In this context, the case of the infant who dies prior tobaptism seems to present the hardest case of all, and the creationisthypothesis, with its direct account of the soul's relation to God'screative activity, seems singularly at a loss to address it. Augustinefeels obliged to confirm, contra the Pelagians, the condemnation of theunbaptized infant, but on a creationist reading of the soul's origin,this is hard to reconcile with divine justice, especially given thenotion that the unborn have done neither good nor evil. Notsurprisingly, 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. InDeCivitate 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]. Notonly does this avoid the mediation of the traducianist hypothesis, butit also manages to provide a theologically satisfying account of theuniversality of original sin without falling into the difficulties ofGod's placing an innocent soul into a sin-laden body, as would be thecase 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; Rist 1994, pp121–9; Teske 1999 pg. 810]. As noted earlier, when Augustine writes ofthe soul's origin in theRetractationes near the end of hislife, he still asserts the obscurity and difficulty of the issue, andhe is clearly reluctant to take a decisive stand on it. Although hesometimes downplays the seriousness of this uncertainty [e.g.DeLibero Arbitrio III.21.59 andDe Genesi ad Litteram,10.20], there is no getting around the fact that it leaves asignificant lacuna at the heart of his philosophical anthropology, onewhich leaves unanswered crucial questions about how we are tounderstand the embodied status of the human soul. His Neoplatonicframework commits him to the view that the physical/sensible realm isan arena of temptation and moral danger, one wherein the human soulneeds to be wary about becoming too attached to lower goods. However,Augustine's enduring ambivalence on the question of the soul leavesopen the possibility that the physical/sensible realm is more than anarena of danger and that it is in fact a fundamentally alien context,not altogether different from the Manichean view of embodiment as akind of entrapment. The ontological unity of the Neoplatonic hierarchynotwithstanding, there appears to be room in it for a moral dualismthat may be as troubling in the end as that of the Manicheans.
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” need not have anyspiritual connotations. It is, instead, the principle that accounts forthe intuitively obvious distinction between things that are living andthings that are not. To be alive is to have a soul, and death involvesa process leading to the absence of this principle. Thus, not only dohuman beings have souls, but so do plants and other animals [e.g.De Libero Arbitrio I.8;De Quantitate Animae, 70;De Civitate Dei V.10]. Augustine's view is not unlike what onefinds, for example, in Plato'sTimaeus [e.g. 89d-92c] orAristotle'sDe Anima [e.g. 414b-415a] where different levelsof soul are discussed in terms of ascending degrees of complexity intheir capacities, e.g., souls capable only of reproduction andnutrition, or of sensation and locomotion as well, or finally, ofrational thinking. As noted in the previous section, there is anasymmetry in these functional capacities, and reason is seen as higherthan the others.
As the history of Classical Greek philosophy shows, this schemaleaves open a number of possibilities in terms of the relation of souland body (dualism, hylomorphism, and materialism, to cite some of themore obvious 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 that thehuman soul is both immaterial and immortal. It is worth noting in thisconnection 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 a primeexample of an early Christian thinker who felt comfortable with amaterialist ontology [e.g. Tertullian,De Anima 37.6–7]. Thus,while the immortality of the soul is arguably a point of happyconvergence of these two traditions, Augustine's emphasis upon thesoul's immateriality, an emphasis that comes to have enormoushistorical importance, seems largely a contribution of hisNeoplatonism. As we have seen, he insists upon the soul's mutability asbeing necessary to account for moral progress and deterioration;however, it is also clear that there must be limits to this mutability,and a material soul would not only run counter to Neoplatonic ontology,but it would also impose upon the soul a degree of vulnerability thatwould destroy the eudaimonistic promise that made the Neoplatonicontology 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 inDe Libero Arbitrio II [II.3–II.15 ]and elsewhere [e.g.Confessions VII.x.16 and VII.xvi.21] is auseful illustration of his view.
In the psychology that emerges inDe 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 souls capableof understanding, and here, as elsewhere, he is less concerned with aneutral description of the structure of nature than with showing howthe soul may find happiness by extricating itself from an overlyimmersed 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 two extremesis the sense of touch, since two individuals can touch the same part ofan object, but not at the same time. Augustine also emphasizes the factthat even in sight and hearing, the most public of the senses, one'srelation to the object is always perspectival. For example, one'svisual or aural relation to the object imposes limits upon how manyothers can have a similar relation, as well as the nature of therelation they can have. Thus, sense experience, in addition to relatingto objects that are material, mutable, and hence ultimately unreliable,is also intractably private, this latter point being of considerableimportance, as we will see, with respect to Augustine's theory ofillumination.
The senses are coordinated by what Augustine refers to as the “innersense” [De Libero Arbitrio II.3], a faculty that bears someaffinities to Aristotle's common sense [see Aristotle,DeAnima II.6]. The inner sense for Augustine makes us aware that thedisparate information converging upon us from our various senses comesfrom a common external source (e.g., the smell and taste belong to thesame object one is looking at while holding it in one's hand). Theinner sense also makes us aware when one of the senses is notfunctioning properly. In both of these respects, the inner sense bearsan organizational and criterial relation to the senses, not onlycombining the information of the senses, but passing judgment on theresults of this synthesis. It is for this reason regarded as beingabove the other senses [De Libero Arbitrio II.5]. At thispoint, however, we are still at a level shared with non-rationalbeings. It is only when we go above the inner sense and turn to reasonthat we reach what is distinctively human.
As with most thinkers influenced by the Greek philosophicaltradition, Augustine conceives of reason rather austerely, focusingupon the mind'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 reasonis not merely logical and certainly not merely psychological.Augustine, like other thinkers influenced by the Greek tradition, sawan ontological 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's psychologyand epistemology, for even if we assume a kind of isomorphism betweenthe truths of reason and the structure of being, there is an enduringhistorical controversy regarding what structure reason reveals as wellas how the truths of reason relate to the other cognitive capacitiessuch 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 inDe 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 approach toepistemology is conditioned by his own religious and philosophicallyeudaimonistic 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 theContra 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 ofx if one professes not to knowx itself?) [ContraAcademicos 2.7.16–2.8.20], and to offer a set of examples where wedo have certainty regarding the truth [Contra Academicos3.10.23 and 3.11.25]. What Augustine does not do is to engage in anykind of foundationalist construction of basic beliefs, nor does heattempt any kind of systematic defense of our ordinary epistemicpractices so as to vindicate them in the face of skeptical attack. Evenwhen he offers his version of what later becomes known as the Cartesiancogito [e.g.De Civitate Dei XI.26;DeTrinitate 10.14; see alsoDe Libero Arbitrio II.3 andRist 1994, pp. 63–7], he shows no interest in using it to epistemicallyground other beliefs [see Markus 1967, pp. 363–4]. Here, as elsewhere,Augustine is content to attack skepticism on a piecemeal basis [seeMatthews 1972; O'Daly 1987, pg. 171; and Rist 1994, pg. 53].
Another, related, feature of Augustine's epistemology is hiswillingness to accept that much of our belief about the world must as amatter of practical necessity rest upon trust and authority. As hetells us inDe 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, pointing outnot only that we must believe many things that we cannot understand butalso that belief is a necessary condition of understanding [seeContra Academicos 3.20.43;De Libero Arbitrio II.2;and Rist 1994, pp. 56–63]. From a Cartesian foundationalistperspective, this can seem a troublingly circular view. However, we areagain obliged to note that Augustine's epistemological concerns do notlie in vindicating our beliefs about the sensible world in the face ofskeptical doubt, but in utilizing our non-skeptical intuitions aboutthe sensible world to construct an accessible and rhetoricallycompelling account of our relation to the intelligible realm, thelatter serving as the haven towards which his eudaimonism consistentlypoints. It is worth noting, moreover, that even among those who do notshare Augustine's enthusiasm for the transcendental, there are manyphilosophers in this century who would applaud his indifference towardsCartesian foundationalist concerns. Certainly, his views on therelation of belief, authority, and understanding are worthy ofcontemporary attention. But for Augustine himself, the primary concernis to lay the groundwork for what many regard as the least compellingif nonetheless most conspicuous element of his epistemology, thedoctrine of divine illumination [see Markus 1967, pp. 363–73; Nash1969; O'Daly 1987, pp. 199–207; and Rist 1994, pp. 73–9].
Augustine presents our grasp of the sensible world as grounded in arelatively unproblematic relation of direct acquaintance [e.gDeMagistro 12.39. See also Burnyeat 1987], although there are placeswhere his view is complicated by his Neoplatonizing conviction that thehigher (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 sensible objects bymeans of its focusing its attention and noticing what is presented toit by the body without being causally affected by the body; in the caseof physical vision, he will even go so far as to adopt theextramissionist view that a visual ray extends from the eye to theobject as opposed to an intromissionist view whereby the eye passivelyreceives something from the sensible object [e.g.De QuantitateAnimae 23.43, circa 388 C.E.]. Even so, direct acquaintance is atsome level still a necessary condition for the formation of beliefsabout the external world, and the relation of the senses to sensibleobjects is regarded as largely unproblematic. InDe Magistro,for example, Augustine argues that the efficacy of language isultimately dependent upon direct acquaintance with the external world,and even our ability to learn from others presupposes that what theytell us can be reduced to elements with which one has had some prioracquaintance [De Magistro 11.37]. For Augustine, as for manyclassical thinkers, language is a kind of third realm entity. Belongingneither to the world nor to mind, it is an instrument used by minds tocommunicate about the world outside them, and direct acquaintance iswhat explains its ability to do so. Thus, learning from others is amatter of being reminded of prior acts with which we have been directlyacquainted [De Magistro 11.36], although this reminding canoccur in such a way as to reconfigure elements from those prior acts,thus accounting for the fact that our knowledge of the world seems tobe 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 serious objections,and the past two centuries have produced ample reasons to be cautiousabout them. Nevertheless, they still have considerable pre-reflectivecurrency, and for all its oddness, Augustine's suggestion that learningis a matter of being reminded of prior acts of direct acquaintancerests upon a set of common sense assumptions. This in itself is animportant point, for as noted above, much of Augustine's strategy inpresenting his epistemology is to exploit the relatively unproblematicnature of our relation to the sensible world, and then to reasonanalogously regarding our relation to the more secure, public world ofintelligible objects. The question we are supposed to ponder is: giventhat learning is really a matter of being reminded, and given that allsuch occasions of being reminded depend upon acts of directacquaintance wherein we are taught by the things themselves [DeMagistro 12.40], what does this imply about our relation to thosetruths that cannot be accounted for by sense perception? In otherwords, if we accept this as a viable model of our epistemic relation tothe external world, how do we proceed from it to explain our access tothose truths whose certainty goes beyond what can be experienced insensible objects? The traditional example here is mathematics [e.g.De Libero Arbitrio II.8], and inDe Libero ArbitrioII, Augustine even argues that our ability to count presupposes anotion of unity that is empirically underdetermined [ibid]. There are,of course, other examples for Augustine besides mathematical andlogical truths. Of equal importance are such truths as the awarenessthat all seek a happiness that goes beyond anything we have experiencedin this life, that good is to be sought and evil avoided, and theawareness that there is something above and more reliable than thehuman mind [seeDe Libero Arbitrio II.9 and 12]. These are thekinds of examples that Augustine regards as obliging us to reject thenotion that our relation to the sensible world is sufficient to accountfor all our beliefs and to believe that there must be more, so to speak,to complete 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 itis therefore easy to read it in an uncharitable light. Viewed withoutsufficient attention to the few details he provides, it can appear asif Augustine has made human cognition into a special act of divinerevelation, thus making the human mind into a merely passive receptacleand God into a kind of epistemic puppeteer. For all its attendantvagueness, however, the doctrine is rather more sophisticated than itmight first appear.
In the account of illumination inDe Magistro, Augustineuses an analogy as old as Plato [seeRepublic VI.508a ff.]according to which the mind's relation to intelligible objects is likethe relation of the senses to sensible objects [seeDeMagistro 12.39; see alsoSoliloquia 1.12 and O'Daly 1987,pg. 204]. In both cases, there is a need for an adventitious object tobe presented to the relevant capacity, as well as the need for anenvironment 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 that occurswithin us by that which is above us. In both cases, the criterion ofsuccess is the discernment of the actual details of the object itself.Perhaps most important of all, both cases clearly allow for and relyupon acts of direct acquaintance, since illumination is, above all,meant to be an account of the conditions necessary for the mind to havedirect 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 to allrational minds, the atheistic mathematician as well as the pious farmermeasuring a field [see Rist 1994, pg. 77]. Nor does it detract from themind's own activity and acuity, any more than a world of adventitioussensible objects detracts from the activity and acuity of the senses.In both sensory and intellectual perception, one can require aconsiderable degree of activity and acuity on the part of theperceiver, 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 is thatit enables us to do two related things that cannot be done by senseperception alone. First and foremost, it explains how our knowledge canhave the kind of necessity that understanding (as opposed to merebelief) requires, a necessity that is always, it seems, empiricallyunderdetermined [see, e.g.De Libero Arbitrio II.8 and O'Daly1987, pp. 180–1]. In this regard, Augustine's illuminationism is aworthy contender among more familiar attempts to make intellectualcognition epistemically secure and reliable. Though it has its owndifficulties, it is not clear that Augustinian illumination is all thatmore extravagant than Platonic recollection of a pre-incarnateexistence [e.g. Plotinus,Enneads V.5], Aristotelian inductionof particulars that somehow leads to necessary and universal truths[e.g. Aristotle,Posterior Analytics II.19], psychologicallyprivate Cartesian innate ideas [Meditations, “ThirdMeditation”], or Kantian transcendental idealism, wherein we areobliged to sacrifice the isomorophism of reality and thought that madenecessity so 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 that Augustinianilluminationism came to have the historical influence that it did, northat Malebranche, writing some twelve hundred years later, would, inhis concern with the psychologistic implications of Cartesian innateideas, turn to Augustinian illuminationism as a model for his vision inGod [see, e.g.The Search After Truth, Bk. II, Part Two,Chapter Six].
The second way in which illumination enables us to surpass what weare able 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'sConfessions andDeCivitate 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 atConfessionsIX.10.23–25 [see “Ontology and Eudaimonism” above]. There, Augustineand his mother Monica manage, albeit fleetingly, to find themselves ina place that is clearly not in space, united in a way that overcomesthe distance imposed by their mortal bodies. This unification is forAugustine the eudaimonistic conclusion through which the pursuit ofknowledge is vindicated and to which it is, ultimately, to besubordinated.
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 life thatis in keeping with the larger order [see Markus 1967 pg. 387]. Reasonis an instrument that is not only capable of acts of theoreticalrepresentation, but its exercise is also regarded as being of enormouspractical significance. There are, to be sure, important and powerfulnon-rational factors that are relevant to our actions (e.g. appetiteand desire), but in a well-ordered life they are to be constrained bythe dictates of reason [see e.g. Plato,Republic IV.441e-4441and Aristotle,Nicomachean Ethics X.7.1177a10–X.9.1179a33].
As we have seen above [e.g.“Ontology and Eudaimonism” &“Psychology and Epistemology”], Augustine is deeply affected by Greekintellectualism, and his own Neoplatonizing Christianity is imbued witha hierarchical structure that emphasizes the reliability of theintelligible in contrast to all that is sensible and physical. However,as Augustine's views on human agency develop, this picture iscomplicated by an increasing emphasis upon non-rational factors thatinfluence our behavior and by a tendency to regard intellectualism asinsufficient to explain the dynamics of human agency. Early inAugustine's career [e.g.De Libero Arbitrio I, circa 387/8C.E.], there is a conspicuous emphasis on the will, and it is here thatone encounters some of the most difficult and obscure aspects of histhought [see Djuth 1999, pg. 881]. Nevertheless, it marks both asignificant divergence from the Greek philosophical tradition and theintersection of the philosophical and religious dimensions of histhought. Moreover, the more Augustine immersed himself in theologicalquestions, the more prominence the nature and role of the will came tohave in his writings, and his reflection upon the limited powers of theunaided will has much to do with the pessimism of his laterwritings.
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 “Ontologyand Eudaimonism”], he credits the books of the Platonists with makingit possible for him to conceive of a non-physical, spiritual reality[Confessions IV.xv.24; VII.i.1]. Likewise, they removed theintellectual stumbling blocks that had made it so difficult for him toaccept the non-Manichean form of Christianity he found in Ambrose'sMilan. 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[seeConfessions 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 marked by asubtlety of introspective analysis that defies any easy explication.Leaving aside the question of the accuracy of his account [O'Connell1969, pp. 4–9 and 101–104; O'Donnell 1992, vol. 3, pp. 3–4 and 55–71],it is clear that Augustine is providing a dramatic account of moraltransformation, one that stresses the role of intellectual discernmentwhile at the same time highlighting his conviction that no amount ofdiscernment is sufficient to account for what we might refer to, forwant of a better phrase, as the phenomenology of internal moralconflict. In terms of this agonistic inner turmoil, the will as bothpresent and emergent [Confessions VIII.v.11 and VIII.x.22] ison an equal footing with 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 ofDeLibero 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 ofDe 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 the fulcrumof moral responsibility [e.g.De Libero Arbitrio III.22].
Though closely related, the concern with moral responsibility needsto be distinguished from the points raised in the above discussion ofConfessions VII–VIII. In that context, Augustine is stillengaged 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 the choiceinvolves a fundamental moral reorientation running contrary to habitswhich have acquired a necessity all their own [ConfessionsVIII.v.10], but Augustine's discussion of the example suggests that hesees it as more than an idiosyncratic or isolated incident. Rather, itis intended to draw our attention to an introspectively accessiblerange of phenomena that forces us to acknowledge a fundamentallynon-rational component of human volition.
There is, however, a third factor at work here. The problem of evilreceived a rather different treatment in the non-Hellenic religious andscriptural traditions than in the Greek tradition, a contrast that wasnot completely lost on Augustine as he increased his familiarity withthe 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 pledged communitymembership, 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 is oftenhelpful to view his thought as presenting a gradual movement away froma Greek intellectualism towards a voluntarism emphasizing the profoundignorance and difficulty of the human condition, as well as the needfor divine aid to overcome the ignorance and difficulty. At the heartof this shift of emphasis are Augustine's developing views on the will.Not surprisingly, this development often has to be understood againstthe backdrop of the philosophical and theological difficulties thatcome to occupy him over the years.
One of these difficulties is the relation of human free will todivine foreknowledge. While it is tempting to view this as a conflictbetween Athens and Jerusalem, the problem initially arises within theGreco-Roman tradition itself [see Rist 1994, pg. 268]. AlthoughAugustine's initial treatment of the problem atDe LiberoArbitrio III.2–4 seems innocent of this fact, his later treatmentatDe Civitate Dei V.9–10 shows that he was aware of Cicero'sdiscussion of the problem inDe Divinatione andDeFato. It is also worth noting that in later medieval philosophy,we see the mirror-image of this problem in terms of the relation ofdivine freedom and power versus the extent of human knowledge [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 of necessity which underliesthe Greek conception of knowledge. In this particular case, the problemis how to reconcile the absolute necessity that attends God's knowledge(i.e. if God genuinely knows thatx is going to happen, it isimpossible forx not to take place—seeDe Libero ArbitrioIII.4 andDe Civitate Dei V.9) with the idea that there can beno moral responsibility unless it is in my power to choose to do otherthan I in fact do [e.g.De Libero Arbitrio III.3]. On thesurface, 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 bothDe LiberoArbitrio andDe Civitate Dei, Augustine's treatment ofthis problem is complex and at times exceedingly obscure [see Rowe 1964and Kirwan 1989,pp. 95–103], but his aim is clear enough. Augustine isanxious, contra the Manicheans and Cicero, to defend the compatibilityof divine foreknowledge and human freedom by arguing that the freeexercise of the will is among the events foreknown by God and that suchforeknowledge in no way detracts from our culpability for our acts ofwilling [e.g.De Libero Arbitrio III.3 & 4;DeCivitate Dei V.9]. The obscurity of the details notwithstanding,Augustine leaves no doubt that he wants to maintain both that God doeshave foreknowledge of our actions and that we are morally responsiblefor 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 atDe Civitate Dei V.9–10 [see Rist 1994, pp. 268–9],significant developments take place between the time Augustine composesDe Libero Arbitrio III (circa 395 C.E.) andDe CivitateDei V (circa 415 C.E.). In particular, there are two events thathave a momentous impact upon Augustine's work in the late 390's untilhis death in 430. The first is his increasing familiarity withscripture and the resulting modification of his earlier, Neoplatonizingviews in light of what he finds in those texts. Pivotal in this regardisAd Simplicianum (396 C.E.), wherein he focuses on a numberof scriptural passages and begins to formulate his views on theuniversality of original sin and the necessity of grace to overcome itseffects [see Bonner 1972, pp. 15–18 and Babcock 1979, pp. 65–67]. Thesecond set of events center on his involvement in the Pelagiancontroversy, which occupied him from roughly 411 until his death in430. Under the pressures of this controversy and in conjunction withhis interpretation of scriptural and especially Pauline views onoriginal sin and grace, the intellectualistic optimism of his earlierwork was gradually transformed into an exceedingly grim view of thehuman moral landscape.
Pelagius himself is an obscure figure, as is his relation to theview that 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 is unacceptable torequire individuals to perform actions that they cannot in fact perform[Pelagius,Ad Demetriadem 2, op. cit. at Brown 1967, pg. 342;see also Bonner 1972, pg. 34]. The Pelagian insistence upon preservingthe kind of autonomy that seems required by the moral ideals ofChristianity set in motion a fierce controversy about the nature oforiginal sin and the role of grace in overcoming it [Brown 1967,pp.340–364]. In general, Pelagians tended to deny the kind ofinsuperable original sin that Augustine believed he had found inscripture, and they proposed a milder view of grace as being an aid toa will disposed to a Christian life, as opposed to being a necessarycondition for such a disposition in the first place [TeSelle 1999, pg.635]. As is often the case with disputes that have a deep moralurgency, the controversy acquired a ferocity that can seem, from amodern perspective, out of keeping with the subtlety of the points madein it, but it is precisely the sort of dispute that cannot but havelasting effects upon its participants, and Augustine was one of themain participants during the last two decades of his life.
By the time Augustine completedDe Civitate Dei in 427 C.E.,he came even more emphatically to insist upon the conclusion to whichhis discussion inAd 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 [seeRetractationesI.9.3–6]—he presents these views in a manner that is austere anduncompromising. So damaging are the effects of the original sin thatthe human will is free only to sin [De Correptione et Gratia1.2; 11.31; Rist 1972, pg. 223]. Thus, the human race is comprised ofamassa damnata [De Dono Perseverantiae 35; seealsoDe Civitate Dei XXI.12], out of which God, in a mannerinscrutable to us [De Civitate Dei XII.28], has predestined asmall number to be saved [De Civitate Dei XXI.12], and towhom he has extended a grace without which it is impossible for thewill not to sin. While there is some controversy over whether thisgrace is sufficient for redemption and whether it can be resisted[Rist, 1972, pp. 228ff.], Augustine makes clear that it is as much anecessary condition as it is unmerited and inscrutable. The ignoranceand difficulty that afflict our condition inDe Libero Arbitrio III have become more than obstacles to beovercome 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 even thesmallest movement away from sin and towards God. InDe 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 writeDe 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 that arenow taken for granted. Second, the development of Augustine's thinkingon the will, as unsettling as the resulting moral landscape may be,does oblige one to confront questions about what a viable concept ofthe will should involve as well as questions about how to determinemoral culpability in the face of external determination—questionsthat are as easy to overlook as they are difficult to address. Finally,Augustine's reflections on the will had considerable influence uponthose who inherited his vast legacy and on his own account of how weare to understand the drama of human history.
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 is atodds with some of its most basic contours. In the Greco-Roman world ingeneral and in Neoplatonism in particular, the importance of history islargely in the cyclical patterns that forge the past, present, andfuture into a continuous whole, emphasizing what is repeated and commonover what is idiosyncratic and unique. In Augustine, we find aconception of human history that in effect reverses this schema byproviding a linear account which presents history as the dramaticunfolding of a morally decisive set of non-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 is aconspicuous feature of the Greek philosophical tradition. Thus, it isalso hardly surprising that we find Aristotle telling us that poetry ismore philosophical than history because it is more clearly concernedwith universals, whereas history tends to be more concerned withparticulars [Aristotle,Poetics 9.1451b1–7]; nor is itsurprising that Thucydides presents his account of the PeloponnesianWar as providing a pattern of events that will be repeated in thefuture [Thucydides,History of the Peloponnesian War, I.22];or that Plutarch recounts past lives in a manner clearly designed todraw the reader's attention to patterns of virtue and vice rather thanto faithfully recount particular facts [see, e.g. Plutarch,Life ofPericles 1.1–2]; or, for that matter, that Augustine himself wouldtell the tale of his first thirty-two years in the way that he does,more concerned to capture the Neoplatonic drama of the soul's immersionand extraction from the sensible/physical world than with providing afactual account of dates, names, and places.
Approached from this angle, what wants an explanation is why onewould subordinate 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 embrace oneapproach wholly to the exclusion of the other, as even a cursoryreading of hisConfessions 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 inDe 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 theConfessions aswell, even when Augustine is especially laudatory of the Platonists, heis emphatic that there is much that these books leave out. They cannot,for example, speak about those historical truths definitive to theChristian view of redemption through the incarnation and passion ofChrist [Confessions VII.ix.13–14; see Bittner 1999, pg. 346].Augustine is acutely aware that scripture has an historical dimension,and he is sensitive as well to the tensions between the scripturaltradition and the Neoplatonic framework upon which he is relying, atension that comes to eclipse much of the intellectualistic optimism wefind in his earliest completed post-conversion works, e.g. theContra Academicos of 386 C.E. [seeContra Academicos3.20.43 and “Context” above].
As we have seen, Augustine's increasing familiarity with thecontents of scripture leads him to focus more and more upon thehistorical dimension of this tradition, a dimension alien to theintellectualism of the books of the Platonists. We have already seenthis development reflected in his interest in the fall and thesubsequent necessity of grace set forth in theAd Simplicianumof 396 C.E. But it is in Augustine's sprawlingCity of God[De Civitate Dei, 413–427 C.E.] that one finds his mostextensive and focused treatment of human history [see Rist 1994, pp.203–255]. It is important to bear in mind, however, that Augustine doesnot provide a philosophy of history of the sort that one might find ina Vico, Hegel, or Marx; his concern is not with articulating a notionof history 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 is thetemporal playing out of a divine justice in which the end is as fixedas the beginning [see Bittner 1999, pg. 348]. While it is not for us toknow all the details of the plot or its conclusion [De CivitateDei XX.2], we can nonetheless discern the general direction of thedrama, as well as the juridical nature of the conclusion at whichaims.
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 [seeDe 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 whereby Godmakes apparent what all in fact deserve [De Civitate DeiXXI.12]—and thus human history is composed of the progress of twocities, 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 Dei XX.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.gDe 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 joy wecan 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 torment proportionalto the extent of sin [De Civitate Dei XXI.16], although theduration is equal in all cases: they must suffer without end, for tosuffer any less would be to contradict scripture and undermine ourconfidence in the eternal blessedness of the small number God has saved[De Civitate Dei XXI.23].
InDe Civitate Dei as in the earlierContraAcademicos, 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 as weknow and experience it [De Civitate Dei XXI.26]. Much,however, has obviously changed. Gone is the confidence that the “harborof philosophy” [e.g.Contra Academicos 2.1.1] is the havenwherein we can find the rest that we seek, and gone is the idea thatthe rational life will lead us to our eudaimonistic end; gone as wellis the breathless excitement with which Augustine would enjoin othersto pursue the life of rational enquiry [e.g.Contra Academicos2.2.5]. In place of all this is a moral landscape that seems evensadder and more unsettling than the sense of loss it was originallyintended to relieve. And yet, even at the very end ofDe CivitateDei, Augustine makes clear that he still regards this as alandscape which holds out the prospect of an incomparable vision andrest from all anxiety, a renewed condition that defies all mortalestimation [De Civitate Dei XXII.30; see also XX.21]. Now theaging Bishop of Hippo, Augustine still shows a trait he first exhibitedas a youthful convert at Cassiciacum: a keen sense of the moraldarkness that surrounds us and a philosophical penchant for theunexpected turn of thought by which he would have us escape it.
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 [seeRetractationes I.9.3–6]. What is more, he diesjust 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 from thoseof the Manicheans whom Augustine had opposed so many years before[Bonner, 1999]. And here, perhaps, is an irony as cruel as it isintriguing: eleven centuries later, when the Church to which Augustinehad devoted the last four and a half decades of his life was to splitin a manner that still shows no signs of reconciliation, both sideswould appeal to Augustine as an authority on questions of doctrine[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.
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 aloudas he writes. For those who want arguments and evidential support, itis there to be had, sometimes in repetitive abundance; for thosesensitive to and appreciative of the power of poetic imagery, that toois abundantly in place. Indeed, as Robert O'Connell says, “Augustineconstructed more through a play of his teeming imagination than by thehighly abstract processes of strict metaphysical thinking” [O'Connell1986, 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” that can be neatlytaxonomized. This is, of course, true of most major philosophers, butit seems incontestably true of Augustine. In place of tidy boundaries,there is instead the “jangle” of the corpus itself and the enormousinfluence it comes to have. This influence is to be found, for example,throughout early medieval philosophy (e.g. Boethius and John ScotusEriugena), and in Anselm of Canterbury, including in what later came tobe known as the ontological argument [Proslogion, ChaptersI–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, apivotal 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 thecogito [Matthews 1992] and elsewhere [Matthews1999b]. And, of course, few philosophers have invoked Augustine asexplicitly and as frequently as Malebranche [see, e.g. “Preface” toThe Search After Truth]. More recently, one of the mostinfluential works of twentieth century philosophy, Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical Investigations, opens with a lengthy quotationfrom Augustine'sConfessions and a discussion of the pictureof language that Wittgenstein sees invoked in it [Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations, Part I, pars 1–3 & 32]. Andif this selective historical sampling were not enough, there is anenormous body of secondary literature devoted to Augustine rangingacross disciplinary boundaries and across divisions within thephilosophical community itself. In 1999 alone, there appeared, amongnumerous other works, a 900 page encyclopedia devoted to Augustine as areligious and philosophical figure [Fitzgerald, 1999] and a volume ofessays by several prominent philosophers in the analytic traditionexploring Augustine's relation to a variety of topics includingconsequentialism, Kantian moral philosophy, and just war theory (animportant issue which unfortunately falls outside the scope of thepresent discussion) [Matthews 1999]. If one examines the diverseinterests of those influenced by Augustine together with the enormousbody of secondary literature on Augustine, one finds again what onecannot fail to discern in the Augustinian corpus itself: a diversity asamazing as it is broad, one that defies any attempt at neat summary ortidy explication, a diversity as rich as it is discordant. It isunlikely that this is the legacy that Augustine would have wanted toleave behind, 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.
The most common and most complete (but uncritical) edition of Augustinein Latin is the seventeenth century Maurist edition of Augustine'sOpera Omnia which is reprinted in volumes 32–47 of J.P.Migne'sPatrologiae Cursus Completus,Series Latina(Paris 1844–64), referred to below asPL. Morecritical texts are gradually emerging in four main series:
Given the voluminous number of Augustine's texts, the following list isconfined to those especially relevant to the present article. In whatfollows, the Migne volume [PL] will be provided aswell as those of any of the other above editions that have appeared.For information on Augustine texts not listed here, the reader isreferred to Fitzgerald 1999, pp. xxxv–xlii, and the reader can alsofeel free to contact the author via the email address listed at the endof this article.
The following list is of standard and available English translations ofthe works cited above. Again, there is no attempt to be exhaustive, andreaders seeking information for titles not listed should consult therelevant entry in Fitzgerald 1999 or contact the author via the emailaddress at the end of this article.
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 author welcomessuggestions for further additions.
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.
divine: illumination |medieval philosophy | Neoplatonism |Plotinus |political philosophy: medieval |skepticism: ancient |skepticism: medieval
