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Posted: 11 May 2022

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SAINT AUGUSTINE

SAINT AUGUSTINE
In answer to the pagan challenge: “Why did your God create the universe at that arbitrary moment in time?” St. Augustine replied: “But that was when he created time too.”


One of the most attractive personalities in the history of philosophy, Augustine was born in the town of Hippo in North Africa, in what is new Algeria, in AD 354. It was there that he died in AD 430, though between those two dates his travels took him far afield in the Mediterranean world. ~ Page 50

“LORD MAKE ME CHASTE, BUT NOT YET’ ~ St Augustine ~ Page 51

The most interesting philosophizing in the ‘Confessions’ -- appropriately for an authbiography is about nature of time: “If no one asks me [what time is] I know; if they ask and I try to explain, I don’t know.” . . . . Page 50

www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/hum100/augustinconf.pdf
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Augustine was the last great philosopher of Latin antiquity, and many would consider him the greatest. He was also the first philosopher whose Philosophical quest took more the form of digging into his own inner life than of considering the reality outside himself or the society around him. And he contributed not just one but two of the finest books that there are in world literature: the ‘Confessions’ (C AD 400) and the ‘City of God’ (C AD 413-426) ~52

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
2 years ago. Edited 9 months ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Image from Western Philosophy

Augustine
2 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
SYNTHESIS: SAINT AUGUSTINE

The finest representative of blending of classical and Christian ideas, and indeed one of the most brilliant thinkers in the history of the Western world, was Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) www.augustinian.org/saint-augustine plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine Aside from the scriptural writers, no one else has had a greater impact on Christian thought in succeeding centuries. . . . . .

At the age of seventeen, Augustine went to nearby Carthage to continue his education. There he took a mistress with whom he lived for fifteen years. At Carthage, Augustine entered a difficulty psychological phase and began an intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage that led him through experiments with several philosophies and heretical Christian sects. In 383 he traveled to Rome, where he endured illness and disappointed his teaching: his students fled when their bills were due.

Augustine’s autobiography, ‘The Confessions,’ is a literary masterpiece and one of the most influential books in the history of Europe. Written in the form of a prayer, its language is often incredibly beautiful. www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3296/pg3296.txt

‘The Confessions’ described Augustine’s moral struggle, the conflict between his spiritual and intellectual aspirations and his sensual and material self. ‘The Concessions’ reveals the change and development of human mind and personality steeped in the philosophy and culture of the ancient world.

Many Greek and Roman philosophers had taught that knowledge and virtue are the same: a person who really knows what is right will do what is right. Augustine rejected this idea. He believed that a person may know what is right but fail to act righteously because of the innate weakness of the human will. People do not always act on the basis of rational knowledge. Here Augustine made a profound contribution to the understanding of human nature: he demonstrated that a learned person can also be corrupt and evil. ‘The Confessions,’ wirtten in the rhetorical style and language of late Roman antiquity, marks the synthesis of Greco-Roman forms and Christian thought.

A History of Western Society
2 years ago. Edited 9 months ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Augustine was influenced by the Greeks, especially Plato. He believed in Plato’s three part soul. Like Plato, he thought the rational soul represented our pure form, a noncorporeal, almost supernatural, perfect version of ourselves. But Augustine had his own take on the structure. He simplified Plato’s thinking a little, influenced in no smaller part by his years as a Manichaean. @@ He suggested tht there were two parts to the soul, one dark and one light. The bit that couldn’t think, the bit tht acted instinctively, was our dark outer soul – our flesh. The bit that could think, the bit that activated through judgment and deliberation, was our light inner soul. And it was up to us which of these souls would guide us. Unlike the Manichaeans, Aigistome dodm’t think the specific between light and dark parts of the soul was caused by two battling gods. Instead, we caused the split ourselves when we disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. . . . Page 78

A Human History of Emotion
10 months ago. Edited 9 months ago.

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