Contents:

I) On Augustine

II) On Augustine’s Philosophy

III) On the Interplay of Knowledge and Belief,

Faith and Reason (and Experience)

IV)  On the Soul

V) On the Problem of Evil

VI) Textual Analysis

VII) Study Questions

I) On Augustine (354-430 C.E.):

Saint Augustine was born Aurelius Augustinus in 354 C.E. in Thagaste (a municipality now in Algeria, although then was under Roman rule) and died in Hippo (in North Africa) in 430 C.E., just as the Vandals were attacking the city’s gates.  Augustine is a remarkable figure for philosophy as he was the principle figure in the merging of Greek philosophy, predominately Neoplatonism, with Abrahamic religious traditions.  He became the Bishop of Hippo, in North Africa, and a Doctor and Saint of the Roman Catholic Church.  His influence was immense through the medieval and modern and contemporary periods and spreads beyond just philosophy and theology, for example, his book Confessions is the first known example of autobiography, and is considered a literary exemplar of autobiographical prose for its profound exploration of his anxiety-ridden religious conversion to Christianity. 

Augustine’s childhood:  He was born and first studied at Thagaste to become public official like his pagan father, Patricius.  Monica, his mother, was Christian and provided his mild exposure to Christ.  In his infancy, he determined that words are signs of things, we speak so that our will might be obeyed.  The adult Augustine begs that the innocent errors of children should be corrected; as example of such an error, he remarks that he preferred God’s creatures to God.  We also learn that he preferred grammar to literature.  Around 11 years old, he was sent to Madauras to continue his studies (ars gammatica, read Greek history and myth, Pagan authors), and admits that he loved the Latin classics, especially Virgil, but was quite turned off by the Greeks.  At 16 years old, he was back in Thagaste and experienced a seminal teenage event of rebellion that plagued him throughout his life: he and a pack of boys stole pears from a neighbor’s tree.  None had any desire to eat them, but only to steal them, which led him to wonder if this act of sin was born simply out of lust (an important idea for On Free Choice of the Will).  This leads him to define sin as a fondness for things least good and a turning from things of greatest good (i.e., God).  People, Augustine decided, do not sin for the sake of sin but for some end.  All of these claims, however, clash together around his own act, for what was his end with the pears?  Perhaps it was an activity of sinning as a perverse imitation of God.  This answer would help to explain how sin proves God is the creator and how evil is only done by an exercise of our free will, and how the avoidance of evil can only be accomplished with the help of God’s grace.  This encounter with sin set the 18 year old Augustine into a rather lush life, loving theatrical shows (often questioning why people find pleasure in feeling sorrow while watching tragedy) as he studied rhetoric at Carthage.  There, he also encountered Cicero’s Hortensius (only fragments of this work survive) and was greatly moved and inspired by its wisdom.  This is his first conversion, in a sense, one to philosophy.  Philosophy, for Augustine, was whole pursuit of wisdom, and his obsession with the question of evil was a personal and very visceral question about how to best live one’s life.  Sometime around this period he began a 13-year monogamous relationship with a woman who gave him his son, Adeodatus (born 372).  Yet, the late-teenage Augustine questions why Christ is missing in Cicero?  This leads him to reads the Scriptures, but he finds them completely unconvincing, finds them simple, too humble.  His mother, Monica, dreams he will find his path and she ought to direct him.

In his early 20’s, Augustine becomes a Manichean and remains one for nine to 15 years, depending upon interpretation.  He was attracted to the Manicheans for several reasons, which predominately centered around their argument that the Scriptures are not edifying, thus, one must, instead, follow reason. 

During this time, he taught rhetoric in Thagaste and Carthage and had his child, Adeodatus, with his mistress.  He wrote books on beauty and mereology (the study of wholes and parts), and constantly sought to understand God as a body.  While he could not find an answer, his questioning did begin his doubt of Manichaeism.  The greatest turning argument against it was how it could not be reconciled with the latest findings in astronomy.

Around 381, when Augustine was 29 years old, he took a teaching position in Rome (a risky journey seeking the ‘better’ students rumored to be there) and was there exposed to skepticism.  His students, while he found them somewhat better, they had the habit of refusing to pay for lessons, and so he leaves Rome.  He then moves to Milan, where he encounters St. Ambrose and Neoplatonism (namely in the vein of Plotinus).  Both introductions are incredibly profound.  He learns four integral things from Ambrose: 1) the Scriptures need not be literal, 2) spiritual reality has nothing to do with matter, 3) evil was nothing, a privation, 4) moral evil comes from free will (there is not an evil principle).  However, he cannot lose his skepticism as he sees Catholicism and Manichaeism as equally probable.

Eventually, however, he loses his skepticism by coming to answers to the questions of evil (determines it to be a lack, not a substance).  He proclaimed that his mind was ready to convert, but not his will because of his desire for his mistress.  Either for this reason, or, because during this time he was encouraged to consider an arranged marriage, he separated from his mistress and son.  He abruptly resigned his teaching post (in 386) and renounced his academic ambitions. 

He then hears two momentous stories: 1) Victorinus’ conversion—an African rhetor converted to Christianity; 2) two court attendants meet ascetics, read St. Anthony, and convert on the spot.  Augustine then reads Paul (which aids his complete separation from the mistress and from all sexual relations).  He becomes desperate, however, anxious and torn as to how far he has come towards Christianity, but how it has not yet been the whole move to faith.  With his friend, he sits in a garden, berating himself, wretched and despairing.  He bursts into tears, unable to stop crying; he throws himself beneath a tree.  But, just then, he hears a child’s voice from over his garden wall: “tolle, legge, tolle, legge,” “take it up, read it, take it up, read it.”  He interprets the child’s voice as a command from God.  He reaches for the Bible, opens it at random and reads it.  He converts to Christianity. 

He completely abandons rhetoric, yet spends four months at Cassiciacum writing his earliest works that survive.  His son, Adeodatus, dies at age 17.  Augustine baptized by Bishop Ambrose on Easter Sunday in 387 at 33 years old.  His mother, Monica, who had been utterly delighted at her son’s conversion, then passes away at Ostia, just outside of Rome.  Thereafter, Augustine then returns to Thagaste.  He does not stay there too long, for in 391 he was ordained as a priest in Hippo; then, in 395, he was made Bishop.  He died there in Hippo in August of 430 (just as Vandals were attacking the gates of the city). 

II) On Augustine’s Philosophy:

Augustine left us an enormous amount of writing—over 100 works, over 200 letters, and nearly 400 sermons.  In addition to his Confessions (397-401), some of his most notable writings include: Contra Academicos [Against the Academicians, 386-7], De Libero Arbitrio [On the Free Choice of the Will, written over a long period, ca. 387-95], De Magistro [On the Teacher, 389], and De Civitate Dei [On the City of God, 413-27]. 

There are two key philosophical issues to be explored in Augustine’s work: (1) The interplay of faith and reason and (2) the problem of evil.  We will see these more in the textual analysis, but, we can begin with a brief introduction to them:

III) The Interplay of Knowledge and Belief, Faith and Reason (and Experience):

What should be regarded as authoritative: what we know from religious revelation and hold on the basis of faith, or what we know because of reason and/or experience in the world?  Which of these is knowledge, and which is belief? 

Philosophy differentiates knowledge and belief by their object.  For the Greeks, the object of knowledge was the eternal and immutable; the object of belief was the world of becoming subject to sense experience.  Today, we have inverted these objects, so that we speak of knowledge as about ourselves and the world, whereas belief is about the eternal and divine.  Augustine holds to the Greek view, although this becomes vague when he speaks of what we can know about God at once with using belief as indicating our “faith,” that is, our acceptance of that knowledge.  For example: in chapter one of On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine uses both terms—“But if you know or believe that God is good …” (I, 1, p.1))—when explaining that a belief can be rightly held even if one does not yet know it, while in chapter two, he makes them causally dependent: “Unless you believe, you will not understand” (Isaiah 7:9, I, 2, p.3).  This blends knowledge and faith, not knowledge and belief, in the Greek sense.  Ultimately, however, faith without knowledge is incomplete.

Thus, turn to the faith/reason distinction: Augustine, like Plato, privileged non-dogmatic reason.  The highest truth, for Plato, was a grasp of the form of the Good; likewise, for Augustine, where the Good is God and/or the Happy Life.  One passage where we see this preference for reason:

“I presented my arguments against these men [the Manicheans] … it was impossible to bring up the authority of Sacred Writ in opposition to such perversion … By means of irrefutable argumentation (which I actually accomplished without direct appeal to the truth of any part of the Holy Writ) I showed that God should be praised for all things, and that there are no grounds at all for their belief that there exists two co-eternal natures, one good, one evil …” (Augustine, De dono perseverantiae 6).

However, for both thinkers, the matter is more complex.  Experience and the use of reason permit us to know the Good to some degree, that is, we seek the Good, but grasp it often partially.  This may be due to the degrees our souls have contact with the Good before embodiment, the rigor of our training the mind to ‘see’ the Forms, and shown through the Platonic dialogues’ tradition of ending in aporia, the perplexity of not having an answer.  The beauty of the Forms represents the possibility humanity has to know the truth through instruction and reflection.  We see this need to prefer the experiential as faith in the quotation from Isaiah (“Unless you believe, you shall not understand”), and:

“[Augustine:] … do you think there is anything more excellent than a rational and wise mind?  [Evodius answers:]  Nothing, I think, except God.  [Augustine:]  This is my opinion too.  But though we accept this with the strongest faith, understanding it is a very difficult matter (Ibid.).

This suggests that the foundation for the Good (for knowledge) is faith; reason is the tool that extends and deepens faith.  It can also serve, however, as the preparation for faith, that which initiates faith.  We see this in his Confessions:

“Let me seek you, Lord, by praying to you and let me pray believing in you; since to us you have been preached” (Confessions, I, 1).

Knowledge comes from reason, but, for both Plato and Augustine, it is not a mere intellectual endeavor, but the preeminent struggle one undertakes in life, through experience.  Consider Socrates’ role as the “gadfly,” initiated by his “divine mission” for wisdom because “the unexamined life is not worth living (Apology).  While Augustine cautions, “I judge that knowledge can in no way be evil unless we change the meaning of the word and confuse knowledge with experience.  Experience is not always good …” (I, 7, pp.13-4), both reason and experience must be cultivated because one must control will so that reason reigns and permits faith; as he writes: “… mind can be present in man, and yet not have control” (Augustine, OFCW, I, 9, p.16).  Thus, knowledge is a matter of reason, but necessitates experience: the happy life requires knowing the Good, but, “Those who are happy, who must also be good, are not happy simply because they will to be happy …” (OFCW, I, 14, p.23).

Both thinkers stress this ease by which the lower faculties of the soul can seduce and overrun the order of reason, which permits the attainment of the Good/Happy Life.  For Augustine, one orders the soul through the attainment of the four cardinal virtues: prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice.  The disordered life is when lust (libido) dominates the mind, as seen in this passage:

“… the reign of lust rages tyrannically and distracts the life and whole spirit of man with many conflicting storms of terror, desire, anxiety, empty and false happiness, torture because of the loss of something that he used to love, eagerness to possess what he does not have, grievances for injuries received, and fires of vengeance” (Augustine, OFCW, I, 11, p.18). 

Terror, desire, and anxiety distract us from enlightenment by the Good, which is understanding truth, which is from one’s faith in God (for God is Truth).  Interestingly, this struggle against disordered desire is conducted through desire (seen best in the Confessions: the reign of lust produces the same emotional and spiritual ill-ease as does that produced in the search for knowledge).  Just as one must understand one’s ignorance to be wise, one must understand the negative desire in order to be animated properly by the proper desire to seek knowledge by having faith.  (It is useful, perhaps, to keep in mind the etymological similarities between “educate” and “seduce,” both from the Latin root ducere, “to lead,” where the ex in educere means “to lead out,” and the se of seducer is “to lead away,” presumably both from ignorance or innocence.)  This necessary focus on desire helps to explain Augustine’s obsession with the problem of evil.  

IV) On the Soul:

Plato:       SOUL

{{{Image to be inserted here: circle divided into three parts}}}

1) Division 2) Virtue 3) City Parallel (Timaeus/Republic) 4) Charioteer Metaphor (Phaedrus)

1) Rational   Logos2) Wisdom       3) Guardians/Rulers    4) Charioteer

1) Spirited   Thymos2) Courage        3) Auxiliaries/Soldiers    4) Noble Horse

1) Appetitive   Eros    2) Moderation    3) Craftspeople/Producers    4) Ignoble Horse

The soul, for Plato, is immortal; it separates from the body, which decomposes, and goes to the realm of the forms to await being re-embodied.

Aristotle:

For Aristotle, the soul is the vital principle for life; it is the realization for the body and inseparable from it: “… the soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of a natural body having life in it potentially within it” (De Anima, 412a20-1)—i.e., the soul and body make one substance, unlike Plato’s conception of their being two substances.  The Soul is the form for the body and the body is its matter; their inseparability is because matter itself is potentiality (it is no-thing itself) and form is actuality, but, potentiality and actuality have levels:

1. First Potentiality:  e.g., I cannot speak Mandarin, but have the potential to learn how.
   

2. Second Potentiality/First Actuality:  e.g., I can speak Mandarin, but am not doing so right now.
   

3. Second Actuality:  e.g., I can and am speaking Mandarin right now.
   

Soul has actuality of the first kind: “[Soul is] an actuality of the first kind of a natural organized body” (De Anima, 412b4-5).   Thus, we can say that soul is like a capacity to do something, and this something is to animate the body with which it is unified: “The soul is the first actuality of a natural body that is potentially alive” (De Anima, 412a27).  Thus, soul, as form, is the cause and principle of the body, the matter, as a source of movement, final cause (the reason for the body to be alive), and as a real substance (the formal cause, that which makes it a body).  Due to its inseparability from matter, the soul, for Aristotle, is not immortal, although he does entertain that all of it dies except nous, which is immortal and pre-exists the body.  Like Plato, Aristotle’s soul is tripartite, although differing from Plato’s divisions:

{{{Image to be inserted here: circle divided into three parts}}}

Rational:  exercises all lower powers of soul plus Nous (mind, understanding, or active intellect and passive intellect):  Found only in Humans, who also have Sensitive and Nutritive parts of soul.

Sensitive:  exercises (1) sense-perception, (2) desire, and (3) locomotion {imagination and memory follow here}:  Found in Animals/Brutes, who also have Nutritive level.

Vegetative/Nutritive:  governs growth and reproduction:  Found alone in Plants, but presupposed in the higher levels of soul.

Saint Aquinas:

Aquinas adopts Aristotle’s conception of the soul as the form of the body, believes this union of soul and body to be good, although it is a union that is split upon one’s death, like Plato’s conception, allowing one’s soul is immortal.  Another difference from Aristotle’s conception is that there is only one rational soul that informs all the determinations (corporeality, vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual operations), which is more akin to Plato’s soul, although, unlike Plato, Aquinas has no innate ideas save natural law, for the mind is otherwise wholly dependent upon sense-experience.

{{{Image to be inserted here: Soul plus Body at left, three parts }}}

        Vegetative Level of Life 

1. Nutrition
   

2. Growth
   

3. Reproduction
   

    Sensitive Level of Life

1. Exterior senses
   

2. Interior Senses
   

3. Locomotion
   

4. Sensitive Appetite
   

            Rational Level of Life

1. Active Intellect
   

2. Passive Intellect
   

3. Will
   

(note: intellect and will only two things to differentiate us from the animals; will (voluntas) is different from sensitive appetite—the latter implies an intelligent creator, the former is a requirement for genuine freedom; will is good: by its nature, it desires the good as such necessarily—which means that it desires God, even if it does not know that God is the true object of its desire when it wills.)

V) The Classic Problem of Evil:

The problem arises from the conflicts that come from three of God’s most essential attributes:

1. God is omniscient  (sees/knows all),
   

2. omnipotent  (all-powerful), and
   

3. omnibenevolent  (all-good).
   

Specifically, the conflict comes from the questions that thus follow: If God is all-good, and evil exists, and he neither is nor does evil, how can he know evil?  If God is all-good, and evil exists, and he neither is nor does evil, then how can he be all-powerful?

Further, God’s omnipotence determines him to be the creator of everything.  However, God is also absolutely good; so, if he created everything, than he must have created evil, but if he is all-good, then he cannot have created evil.  Therefore, since there is evil in the world, either God did not create it, thus not all-powerful, or he did create evil and he is thus not all good. 

Thus, how can evil have come to be and still exist in the world without diminishing God?

V) Textual Analysis:

Book I:  Summary of Integral Issues:

God is not the cause of evil; humans are when they lack learning and understanding of the Good.

Evil is not learned.  Evil is the privation of Good, thus, nothing.

The Source of Evil is Lust (Libido—the result of the Fall).

Lust is: 

1—Love of bodily/physical things one can lose against one’s will.

2—Desire, lust as disorder when inferior disobeys superior.

3—The appetite of the soul by which temporal things are preferred to eternal things.

The Four Cardinal Virtues:

Prudence—knowledge of what should be desired and what should be avoided.

Fortitude—condition of the soul by which we despise hardships and losses of what we don’t control.

Temperance—checks and controls the desire for base things.

Justice—according to which all receive their due; one with Good Will will embrace Justice and be happy; justice encompasses the other virtues.

Happiness—desired by all but achieved through willing and having the four virtues.

Unhappiness—stems from lust after temporal things as opposed to eternal things.

Temporal Law:  rules over unhappy; distributive justice; enforced by fear.

Eternal Law:  rules over happy; commands us to turn away from temporal.

Book I:  Textual Analysis 

(Chapters denoted by marginal numbers in text)

(Will be smoothed out and filled out, soon)

Ch. 1:  Is God the Cause of Evil?

Summary:

God is good, does not do evil.

God is just; He rewards good and punishes evil.

Punishments are evil to those who suffer them, but are not unjust.

Thus, God causes the evil punishments, but this is just because God does not cause the evil that we do.

Evil is not learned since it is the privation of good and it is nothing.

God cannot be the cause of evil but humans are when they lack learning and understanding of the good. 

Miscellaneous Notes:

Note the differentiation in chapters one and two concerning knowledge and belief: it first rises in Augustine’s second comment (“But if you know or believe that God is good …” (I, 1, p.1)), wherein we see a belief can be rightly held even if one does not yet know it.  The second main citation is in the second chapter, when Augustine quotes Isaiah 7:9 (“Unless you believe, you will not understand”).  See the “Faith and Reason” discussion, below, at the end.

Ch. 2.  What Must be Believed about God?

Is not God at least indirectly responsible for humans doing evil since he created them?  He agrees to examine the problem of evil while accepting by faith that God is not it source. 

Everything that exists is from God, but God is not the cause of sin.

Ch.3.  Inordinate Desire / Lust is the Source of Evil:

What is the cause of evil?  Augustine asks Evodius about what is evil doing, and prompts him to list some deeds that he knows takes to be evil.  Evodius names adultery, murder, sacrilege, and then says there are many more.  Augustine takes up adultery and pushes Evodius to say why … how is it that he knows it to be evil?  They consider three reasons before settling on a fourth one:

(1) Adultery is not evil because the law forbids it,

(2) nor because people punish it,

(3) nor because people should not want for others what they do not want for themselves (note: this involves a posting of the Golden Rule and Augustine’s revelation of its flaw);

(4) instead, adultery is evil because of lust (libido) and so are all evil deeds. 

Inordinate desire/Lust is the source/cause of evil.  Thinking and doing an evil deed both involve lust and are equally sinful. 

Libido is a result of the fall not as a punishment but as an automatic result of the act of disobedience.  Definitions of Libido:

1)  Love of the things one can lose against his will (Bk.I, Ch.4)—only bodily/physical things, not spiritual; spiritual/mental things cannot be taken by force.

2)  Desire—implies that lust is a disorder since the inferior disobeys the superior.

3)  The appetite of the soul by which temporal things are preferred to eternal things—We feel shame when we desire sexual intercourse since the higher parts are disobeyed by the lower ones and they are embarrassed.  Shame is universal for humans.  But procreation is not evil as the Manicheans thought since it produced more matter and matter is evil.

Ch.4.  What of Certain Crimes Committed out of Fear?  What is an Evil Desire?

Inordinate Desire/Lust [libido] = Cupidity/Desire [cupiditas].  Desire  fear.  Desire seeks; fear avoids.  Deeds committed out of fear are not evil, so fear is not a source of evil as lust is.  Fear is to avoid X so one does Y; lust or desire is pursuing something actively.  In every evil deed, lust is the dominant factor; yet, one who desires to live without fear does not have an evil desire, yet, to wish to live without fear is the desire of both good and evil people.  The difference is that the good seek it by turning desire away from things that cannot be possessed without the fear of losing them.  Evil people try to live without fear by removing obstacles so they may safely rest in these sorts of things.  Lust/Libido is love of things one can lose against his will. 

Ch.5.  What of the Legal Killing of Criminals?

Evodius suggests that perhaps just human laws are really unjust in the framework of divine providence: E—How defend a person who kills even if s/he kills without lust?  A—Why defend when no law accuses?  E—What about God’s law?  How, before divine providence) are these people free of sin when their hands are still bloody?  Maybe they are innocent among humans, but guilty before God…?  A—A sublime answer, but wrong.  Augustine counters this position by saying that the punishment of criminals and self-defense are not evil.

Ch.6. Eternal Law & Human Law:

The Laws put into writing help people.  People and nations change.

If a nation is well ordered, it ought to allow its citizens elect magistrates—be democratic.  If the nation is not well ordered, but taken over by corruption and the like, then it ought to be controlled by a tyranny.  So temporal laws can change justly as nations and people change.  The eternal law, however, cannot be changed.  The eternal law is impressed on people’s minds (think of Plato’s forms); it is that law by which it is just that everything be ordered in the highest degree.  Just human laws are derived from eternal laws.  Justice is order in the highest degree. 

Ch.7.  Eternal Law and the Highest Ordering if Human Life.  Living and Knowing that one is alive:

It is one thing to live and another to know that you live.  Therefore, humans have reason, whereas animals do not, yet there are senses that we share.  Knowledge of life is more excellent than life alone.  Knowledge cannot be evil.  The consequence of this discussion is that there is in nature, an order of beings, a hierarchy, since there are higher and lower things.

Ch.8. Reason should be Master in human Life:

Reason should rule the other parts.  Beasts and humans both pursue pleasure and avoid pain but this is not the highest activity of man.  When reason rules desires and emotions this is in accordance with eternal law, which is the highest order.—eternal law commands us to use reason—

Ch. 9.  What distinguishes the Wise from the Foolish?

The wise person is the one in whom reason rules and the foolish person is the one in whom reason does not rule.  Superiority not in body, but in spirit.  Reason and mind can be interchangeable, only the mind can use reason, and reason cannot be without mind.  But, mind can be present in a person and that person not be rational, or wise. 

Ch. 10.  No one can force the Soul to be a slave to lust:

The virtuous mind cannot be forced to lust since it is stronger, armed with virtue.  The Just cannot force another to be a slave to lust b/c it would weaken itself, corrupt itself, and not be strong enough to seduce the other.   The superior always rules over the inferior or the weak because it is the perfection of the universe that forbids the weaker from ruling the stronger.  We prefer virtue to vice, and the stronger the virtue the more noble it is.

Ch.11 and 12.  A Soul merits Punishment when it Voluntarily submits to Lust: & The Lustful Suffer in the Present Life:

Whatever is equal or superior to the mind (ordered mind) is just so it cannot make the mind subject to lust so it follows that being lustful is due to free choice of the will.  So punishment for sins is both just and justified since one is responsible for his actions since he has free will.  Lustful people suffer in this life justly by having weariness and angst—long description on margin pages 77-78.  Augustine establishes that there is free will since some people have their reason rule and cannot be forced to lust and others have their emotions and appetites ruling and are lustful.  Since we can choose between good (rule of reason) and evil (lust) we have a will.  And we must use this will to choose the good.

Ch.13. It is by Willing that we Live a Happy or an Unhappy Life: 

It is by willing that we live a happy life by having the four cardinal virtues or live the unhappy life.  Happy man is the lover of good will and who rejoices in true and sure goods.  (A happy person is a wise person and the one who loves good will, so a wise person who has all the virtues loves good will). 

The Four Cardinal Virtues:

Prudence: knowledge of what should be desired and what should be avoided.

Fortitude: the condition of the soul by which we despise all hardships and losses of things that have not been placed under our control. 

Temperance:  Checks and controls the desire for those things that it is base to desire.

Justice:  according to which all men receive their due. 

The one with the GOOD WILL will embrace JUSTICE as if there was nothing better, take delight in it, and be happy, because it can be thought of as encompassing the other virtues.  A man cannot be just and be contrary to the others. 

It is, however, a curious notion of justice, for Augustine says that Justice, like a mental or spiritual quality, cannot be taken away from a person against his or her will (I, 13)…  Can we not rob a Just person of Justice?  What sort of Justice must this be for this statement to be true?

Ch.14. Why are so few Men Happy when all want to be?

What does the temporal law command?  What does the eternal law command?  How do the domains of these laws relate to our personal happiness or unhappiness?

Notice the Platonic influence here—All desire the Happy Life, and it is by WILL that we merit a happy or unhappy life.  No one KNOWINGLY wills unhappiness, but many are in a state of will where unhappiness results even though they do not want it.  Thus, all people desire to be happy but most are unhappy since they do not will to live rightly.

Ch.15.  The Love of Temporal things and the Love of eternal things.  Unhappiness stems from the lust after temporal things.

—Compare with 13 on Justice and Freedom—

What sort of conception of JUSTICE does Augustine have?

--God is just, punishes evil justly (ch.1).

--But many (apostles) have been punished by (temporal) law for just deeds (ch.3).

--Sometimes (war, defense) murder just & punishment by (temporal) law unjust (chs.3-4).

--Unjust laws are not laws (ch.5).

--Just laws can be made by unjust people (ch.5).

--Good nations deserve democracy, Evil nations deserve tyranny (ch.6).

--See ch.13: is there an ambiguity?

What sort of conception of FREEDOM does Augustine have?

--True freedom is for the Happy only, but there is a lesser freedom for the unhappy (ch.15).

The temporal law rules over those who are unhappy (although they are also subject to the eternal law) and the eternal law rules over those who are happy (they do not need to be ruled by the temporal law since they are already of good will) (ch.15). 

TEMPORAL LAW:

The temporal law commands: the BODY (with its goods, i.e. its health, senses, strength, and beauty), FREEDOM (not true freedom for those happy under eternal law, but the freedom accorded to those under temporal law who think they are free because they have no immediate master), FAMILY, STATE (the state itself, which is regarded like the parent of a large family), HONORS (including praise and popular favor), and finally, POSSESSIONS (things we own and can sell or give away) (I, 15, p.25). 

Temporal law is mainly about distributive justice, but does not need a long discussion here. 

The POWER of the Temporal Law is to take away these temporal things as punishment; it maintains order through FEAR (which establishes moderation), and it changes as the people it rules change.  Thus, punishment is ONLY punishment if people have an inordinate love for what could be taken away from them. 

People can make good use or evil use of temporal things.  The evil ones get entangled with things and the good use them rightly without getting caught up in them.  So, do not blame the woman because of the existence of adulterers, the wine b/c of drunks, the food b/c gluttons; it’s not the things but people who make evil use of them.

ETERNAL LAW:

A person who wills to live rightly loves eternal things in consistency with eternal law.  So happiness and eternal things go together.  Eternal law commands us to turn away from temporal things.  External goods and temporal goods are good if they are means not ends.

As we learned in chapter six, Eternal Law is also known as “Highest Reason;” it is “impressed on our minds;” “… it is that law by which it is just that everything be ordered in the highest degree” (I, 6, p.11).

Cannot be changed, ought always to be obeyed, it is that through which evil people deserve a wretched life and the good people deserve and receive a good life (I, 14, p.23).

Ch.16.  Summary and Conclusion:

Thu, there is eternal law and temporal law that punish according to the willed direction of one’s love to eternal or temporal things (I, 16, pp.27-8).

To do evil is to turn away from (neglect) eternal (unchanging, divine, truly everlasting) things and to desire temporal (uncertain and changing) things.  It is having lust that is the cause of evil doing (sins). 

Evodius raises the skeptical objection that if evil doing is due to free will why then did God give free will to humans?  This is taken up in Book II.

Book II:  Textual Analysis 

Summation:

Why did God give us free will if it is by that which we sin?  God gave us free will so that we may choose the Good.

If Freedom is Good, why can we use it for evil?  To answer, we must, 1) prove god’s existence, 2) determine if all good things are from god, 3) examine possible goodness of free will.

1) Proof

2) All Good Things Come From God

3) Freedom of Will, though it may be abused, is Good and Divinely Given, Since w/o it No One May Live Rightly (i.e. is Free Will amongst the Good Things?)

Freedom of the Will is an Intermediate Good:

Virtues (unchangeable):Great GoodsCanNOT be Used for Evil

Powers of Spirit:Intermediate GoodsCan Be Used for Evil

Physical Beauty:Lowest GoodsCan Be Used for Evil

Analysis:

Ch. 1:

E: Why did God give us free will if it is by that that we sin?

A: Do we know God gave it to us?  HOW do we know this, by authority or by understanding?

A: How do we know that we have existence by God?

E: his response:

(1) God is just.

Justice punishes those within its jurisdiction.

We are of God because God punishes and God is just.

(2) Everything good is from God.

Humans are good (because we can will rightly to be good).

Humans are from God.

Ch. 2:

E: But why can we pervert will to do evil? 

Note the comparison between justice and will: “No one can use justice to live wickedly” (II, 2, 30).  Justice is good.  But, will can be used to live wickedly.  Is free will good?

In Augustine’s response, note the adoption of Plato’s theory that learning is recollection: “… as Truth, the greatest teacher of all, teaches you within” (II, 2, 30).

A: Was it a good gift?  Yes, absolutely, because God gave it and God is beyond reproach. 

E: But, prove it … I believe this, but do not understand it.

A: Are you certain that God exists?  (invocation of Psalm 14:1, 53:1: the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.  This will be Saint Anselm’s starting place, as well, for a proof of God’s existence).

E: I believe it, I do not know it.

Note the continued discussion on the differences between belief and knowledge. 

Ch. 3:

The order of questions over the rest of Book II:

(1) How is it manifest that God exists?

(2) Do all things, insofar as they are good, come from God?

(3) Should free will be counted amongst these good things?

(1) God’s Existence … the build up to the proof:

Pre-proof I)

Do you exist?

Following consequently:

You are alive.

You understand.

Existence; life; understanding:  which of these is superior?

They answer this by working out the theory of the tripartite soul, basically a synthesis of Plato’s and Aristotle’s soul, leaning more heavily to the latter in terms of divisions, more to the former in the insistence upon control by reason over the other two parts.

Pre-proof II)

Establish the Bodily Senses; determine to what each pertains; determine that some objects are perceived by one sense and some objects perceived by multiple senses.

Pre-proof III)

Establish the existence of the Inner Sense; it is not a bodily/external sense, but receives their data and presides over them; we understand it by reason, but it is not reason itself; they differentiate reason from inner sense; inner sense identified as an agent of reason …

Ch. 4:

they determine that Inner Sense also senses itself, as well as collecting the data of the external senses.  Perception is not knowledge; animals have the inner sense as well as bodily senses.

Thus:

External senses: perceive the material

Inner sense: perceives the data from the external senses and senses itself

Reason: perceives everything and itself.

Ch. 5:

They say they are starting the proof, but this is still build up to the proof proper.

Pre-proof IV)

Augustine maps the delineation of existence, life, and understanding onto the delineation of bodily senses, inner sense, and reason.

They establish that the inner sense is a judge, and a judge is superior to a thing judged (II, 5, 39).

Ch. 6:

They assert (saying it needs no argument) that reason judges inner sense.

This, up to here, has established that reason is the highest of our faculties, and the greatest thing thus far enumerated. 

Pre-proof V)

Augustine then asks if there is anything superior to understanding?

He then gets Evodius to concede that if there is anything superior to understanding, and thus, is superior to all things, then that thing is God (II, 6, 41).

Ch. 7:a more proper transition into the Proof of God’s Existence proper …

Proof I)

They then establish that they have the same sort of senses, but that each has his or her own external and then internal senses and then reason.

External Senses:

Sight and hearing: can share the one object of perception in our activity of perceiving it;

Taste and smell: cannot share the one object; our perception consumes the object;

Touch: like sight and hearing, we can share the object, but not at the same time.

Private versus Public distinction has been broached and is now established:

Sight, hearing, and touch are “public,” in that all can have them in common through our individual senses.

Taste and smell are “private,” in that each consumes one’s own object in the act of this perception by each their own senses.

Ch. 8:

A: Is reason public or private?  Is there anything that is public for reason?

E: yes, many things, e.g., “The order and truth of number is present to all who think, so that those who make calculations try to grasp it by their own reason and understanding” (II, 8, 44).

Proof II) (Number)

This starts an extensive elaboration of number and one …

(note the similarities to Neo-Platonism’s use of Plato’s Timaeus and Pythagoras.)

Note: cf., II, 8, 44: ‘X is like an image of a visible thing’ … this is a form of speech Augustine uses (and Descartes in particular and others after steal) to designate what we would call an “idea.”  It is a slightly limited definition of idea, however, hearkening ideas as like photographs that we store in our memories, which would then be like caverns of file cabinets full of these pictures …

Augustine wants to know if the idea of number is adventitious (comes from outside of us, through experience alone) or is wholly rational (comes through the light of the mind alone).  Evodius suggests that number can be demonstrated empirically (e.g., one apple, two apples, three apples, etc.), but that mathematical operations are strictly rational (e.g., the basics of arithmetic, any mathematical principles).

Augustine pushes him to reject the bodily and see that all about number is only rational by arguing that the idea of number itself grounds us even counting things in the world, grounds even conceiving of multiple, because we must know ‘one’ in order to know ‘two,’ etc.  We know order as fixed and unchangeable; this is a principle, a law, something only know, and not first adventitious.

So what is the source of the idea of number?  The mind’s grasp of a truth that is beyond just it and common to all.  “We see it by an inner light of which the bodily sense knows nothing” (II, 8, 46)—yes, he uses sensory language to describe knowing.

Proof III) (Wisdom)

Ch. 9:

What about Wisdom?  Public or Private? 

Tangent: what is wisdom?  Augustine: Wisdom is “… the truth in which the highest good is discerned and acquired” (II, 9, 47).  (Note: Augustine adopts the Platonic sense of good and error … error is a mistake of the good.)

Comparison of Wisdom to Happiness.

Is there one wisdom, or many wisdoms?

Almost tangent: many goods or highest good?  Either way, Augustine argues, there is one wisdom to know the good, even if one wants to argue there are only ever many goods.

Ch. 10:

More Textual Analysis of Book II, coming soon ...

VI) Study Questions:

Book I:  Introductory Textual Questions:

1. 1.What are the two senses of evil?
   

2. 2.Is God the cause of our doing evil?
   

3. 3.Is God just when he punishes evil doing?
   

4. 4.Why is adultery or homicide evil?
   

5. 5.What is the cause of our doing evil (I, 1, p.1; 11, p.17)?
   

6. 6.Is evil learned?
   

7. 7.What is lust?
   

8. 8.Is lust different from fear?
   

9. 9.How is the wish to live without fear different for good and evil people?
   

10. 10.Is an unjust law still a law (I, 5, p.8)?  But, why are many condemned for just deeds (I, 3, p.5)?
    

11. 11.What are the differences between human law (temporal law) and eternal law (divine law)?
    

12. 12.How ought law operate in good versus evil nations?
    

13. 13.How do we know eternal law?
    

14. 14.How and why is it one thing to live and another to know that you live (I, 7, p.12)? 
    

15. 15.Why can knowledge not be evil?
    

16. 16.Why can the virtuous mind not be seduced (I, 7, p.13; 10, p.16)?
    

17. 17.What is the well-ordered soul (I, 8, pp.14-5)?
    

18. 18.What is good will (I, 12, p.19)?
    

19. 19.What are the four Cardinal Virtues and how do they relate to the type of life one leads (I, 13, pp.20-1)?
    

20. 20.What is required, beyond willing happiness, to live the happy life (I, 14, p.23)?
    

21. 21.How does willing the good and living the happy life relate to the two laws (I, 15, pp.24-5)?
    

22. 22.How does temporal law punish (I, 15, p.26)?
    

23. 23.
    

24. 24.