Medieval Philosophy
The problem of evil in Augustine of Hippo.
Augustine was one of professors favourites in medieval philosophy/late antiquity. He is one of the most important church fathers. He was very influential in the middle ages, but was also influential to modern philosophy. Descartes, Rousseau, Pascal especially. 20Th century philosophy of Derrida was inspired by Augustine. Wittgenstein as well. At the beginning of the philosophical investigations there is a very long quotation from the confessions. Augustine is a rhetorician, so he is also very interested in language, and philosophises a lot on this point. We are not exactly in the middle ages, it is rather late antiquity. Augustine assists some of the events which we said are important, milestones, for the beginning of the middle ages. He lives at the end of the western roman empire.
Rome is sacked by the goths in 410 ad. During his lifetime. He is a thinker that changes his mind many times, to the point that he is not exactly systematic, he doesn’t have a rigorous system or so. But his thought is developed further thanks to some important events in his lifetime. He both changes his thought often, but it is also kind of like his thought becomes more radical later in his life.
That’s why there are kind of ”three Augustines”. It’s useful to understand that there are different souls in Augustinean thought. There is firstly Augustine the Rhetorician who is a manichee. Then there is Augustine as a young Christian, in which he studies neoplatonism and the theme of order. And lastly Augustine as a mature bishop, in which he struggles against heresies, argues for the primacy of grace and many other topics.
He was born into an aristocratic family in north africa. His mother was a christian and his father was a pagan. He was educated as the upper class at the time in liberal arts. He was born in Tagaste. Later he became a master, ie. teacher, of rhetorics in Milan and Rome.
Confessions written in 397-400 ad.
The purpose with this text is that conversion is possible for everyone. It is meant to be a kind of model path to faith.
In the beginning of the book he is a manichee. Manichaeism is a religion that is later overtaken by christianity. It was very popular during this time. It is an entirely dualistic religion, in which there are two cosmological, moral, metaphysical principles: the good, the light against the bad, the dark. Evil is a metaphysical reality in a constant struggle against good. In his journey to christianity he ends up changing his mind. And one crucial issue for this is the explanation of evil. Manichees explain evil by saying that there is a fundamental principle of it in the world.
In some sense we can see that Augustine’s problem of the pear-stealing, is to see the difference between the real good and the lower good. In this case, the friendship that causes stealing is a lower kind of good. The free will of Augustine in that case was oriented toward a material good, a lower good. At the same time, there is still a lack of regulation, he is ashamed because he acted without any clear motivation. He argues that the final motivation seems to be the sin in itself, but at the same time also carrying on the friendship. The friends in this passage he feels have a lack of regulation.
An example of this: There are some cases where I as a child commit some evil like killing some small animals like ants, a clearly evil act, but which is done in a kind of play. You are playing at evil for the sake of evil. In the case of friendship, there is a book by Stephen King, in which a girl is bullied for no reason, and this is because of a kind of curiosity. What happens when I do something bad? I must try. The solution in saying that you caused evil for social responsibility doesn’t really give a proper explanation. The power of Augustine’s example is very similar to the case of Adam and Eve. Adam was created perfect, without passions, so why did he commit the sin? There is no reason. It is a matter of knowledge and not a matter of will; ie. curiosity, as in Plato wherein doing evil comes from a lack of knowledge.
Usually we seek for multiple reasons, and even Caitiline, the most cruel of the politicians in roman times had some reason for his insane ferocities. Because he wanted more power, honour and so on. Even him did not love crime for crime’s sake. He loved something different for the sake of which he comitted the crime. The reading of saying that the friendship is a lower good, is the most common reading, but there is also a point for the crime itself.
You know what is the good, but you cant do this because of your will. For Augustine the will is sort of an obstacle to reaching the good.
We were created by God so we are good, but we are not God so we lack some being that makes us good, as good and pure being are two faces of the same thing. The good things we do are because we are created by God, and the evil because of us ourselves, ie. because we are lacking something.
What is the efficient cause of evil? There is no efficient cause, the cause of evil is deficient.
Augustine is against the stoic idea of imperturbability. The christian needs to be passionate. Passions are neither good nor bad in themselves, but depend on the objects woward which they are directed. For example the fear of loosing earthly good is bad whilst the fear of someone getting in danger is a good passion.
Friendship can be a good if the ultimate aim of that friendship is god. Otherwise it will most likely just lead to bad things. You love God by loving your friends.
This is called a gradualist ontology, because we start from God and continue downwards until inanimate things. It is clearly neoplatonistically inspired. There are degrees to entities, degrees to that which they are. In God being is perfect. And from there on being emanates downward. This is often known as the great chain of being.
A very important thing to stress is that all things have the place they should have in this chain of being. And each rule and govern the inferior things. At the same time we have a difference from this basic platonic structure. In Platonic structure, the form has a complete being, whereas the rest of reality has a diminished being. This is the core platonic idea we find in Augustine.
In neoplatonism the One is prior to being, which is an important difference in Augustine. The novelty of Augustine is to identify God with being, and this is the metaphysics of the exodus; I am that I am. God defines himself as being. And what is further away from God is less, and as such is less good. What is less good is therefore also fundamentally evil.
Moral evil is is when the devil chooses to direct one’s will toward lower goods.
God composes a sort of beautiful poem of antitheses in the world. Everything can only exist together; a bit like the unity of opposites.
The devil is then a fallen angel that made a sin much like Adam. Someone who became wicked by his own will.
Being is God, but the creator creates out of nothing, and that’s why everything created cannot be God itself or pure being. There is no pantheism.
In the city of God, Augustine says, there are two cities. The city of God and the city of Man. City of God is love towards God, whilst city of Man is love toward lower or earthly good. And you can’t really know which city you are in. He is trying to attack the Pelagian heresy. It says that we an earn salvation through our actions. We don’t need the divine grace, we can act by looking at the good and learning what we have to do. In this he stresses the original sin of Adam, and that human beings cannot be rid of sin itself, no one can be really good without the grace of God. There is also in a sense a very controversial idea of predestintion present in this version of Augustine. Augustine says that God has already decided who is in which city.