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MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY 2

3 min read

MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY 2:

AUGUSTINE’S CONFESSIONS

  • North Africa, went to Italy young, law, rhetorics
  • Around his birth: Christianity one religion among many, prospering Rome
  • By his death: Christianity official religion, vandals
  • very productive writer

CONFESSIONS (397-400):

  • philosophical, but also about Christian persuasion
  • autobiographical
  • Manicheanist, then Neoplatonist, finally Christian
    [Manicheanism: dualistic Persian religion popular in Rome at his time, good is incorporeal, evil is corporeal, with both existing on the same ontological level, the fight between good and evil is eternal. 12th-13thC it returned and triggered the Church’s anti-abortion stand, since the Manicheanists were anti embodying a soul]

The Pears:

  • a young Augustine steals pears from a pear tree
  • reminiscent of Eden’s apple tree; showcases ancient and Christian moral theories;
  • the pear thief is not like Plato’s evildoer (evil as a result of lack of knowledge), but a new kind of evildoer: someone who knows what he’s doing is evil, but decides to nevertheless go along with it, abandoning the moral codes God has put into us all
  • lack of motive, theft for the sake of theft; done only because its wrong to do it
  • a moral slippery slope

His theory of the will:

  • we do things for two reasons via his ACTION THEORY
  • Subjective Aspect (pleasure, love, enjoyment) & Objective Aspect (beauty, honour, power)
  • but the pear story lacks an objective aspect
    [He gives two possible answers: he did it due to peer pressure, or wanted to imitate God]

3 main questions:

  • Why do we do bad things?

  • Why are we unhappy?

  • How can we avoid being unhappy?

  • we live without true peace, corporeal life as a kind of test

  • exploration of human nature’s paradoxes

Happiness:

  • we all want the same happiness, yet go about it so differently
  • we must will happiness in an orderly fashion, seeking the unperishable
  • realizing your nature, realizing your purpose (functioning at the highest level, flourishing, eudaimonia)

Structure of reality:

  • a spectrum, gradual degrees of existence
  • God > Angels > Humans > Animals > Plants > Innanimate Things
  • only God exists perfectly, anything below can be much more perfect
  • Being = Goodness (the more something is, the better it is)
  • those above rule those below (as the soul rules the body)
  • when a soul governs the body properly one lives/wills ordinately, thus achieving happiness
  • bad soul-governance leads to a life of sin, etc

Inordinate Desire:

  • the soul, in controlling the body, is passing down a God-ordained causal order, which when broken leaves the body detatched from God
  • soul > body
  • if you love God you’ll never be unhappy
  • we ought to will in God, in accordance with God

Freedom of the Will:

  • willing is both the source of happiness and unhappiness
  • you ought to will what God wills to gain more existential power, thus goodness
  • the will is good and comes from God, bodies and evil spirits cannot overpower it, and good spirits wouldn’t in the first place
  • thus nothing forces the will to do evil, it chooses to
  • you choose to enslave yourself to sin
  • evil is something you will, you choose to let weaker things overpower you

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