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Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

• 354 AD born at Tagaste north Africa (Algeria). Father (non Christian) of Roman origin. Mother, Monica (Christian). Augustine grew up in a mixed atmosphere of faith and unfaith.

• From Africa he went to Rome and then in 383 A.D. to Milan. He joined various religious movements

• In Milan, he attended the sermons of the bishop, Ambrose. Augustine was baptized at the age of 33 years and move back to North Africa (with his son and a friend). After his mother death he produced his first writings.

• 391 A.D become priest forming a community.• 396 A.D become Bishop of Tagaste at the coastal

town Hippo (Algeria's border with Tunisia). His sermons were written down by scribes. As bishop, he still lived in community (Communities based on his Rule are the Augustinians).

• After thirty years as a bishop, he appointed a successor. Aged 70 years, he still continued writing.

• At the age of 76 years, he died on 28th August 430 A.D. in Hippo while it was under siege.

• [In the Middle Ages St Thomas Aquinas organized Christian theology, heavily based on St Paul ("the Apostle") and St Augustine ("the Doctor".)]

M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia Adapted from http://www.albatrus.org/

Augustine’s bibliography

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Books:• On Christian Doctrine, 397-426 • Confessions, 397-398 • The City of God, begun ca. 413, finished

426 • On the Trinity, 400-416• Enchiridion • Retractions At the end of his life (ca.

426-428) Augustine revisited his previous works in chronological order and suggested what he would have said differently in a work titled the Retractions, giving the reader a rare picture of the development of a writer and his final thoughts.

• The Literal Meaning of Genesis • On Free Choice

Letters (he wrote many letters to his congregation, some of them with a more theological contend):

• On the Spirit and the Letter • On Nature and Grace • On Man's Perfection in Righteousness • On Marriage and Concupiscence • On the Soul and its Origin • Against Two Letters of the Pelagians • On Grace and Free Will • On the Immortality of the Soul • On the Profit of Believing • On the Morals of the Catholic Church • On Two Souls, Against the Manichaeans • On Baptism, Against the Donatists

M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia

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Epistemology: light of God.

• "If I doubt, I exist -- Si fallor, sum.“• Augustine as a Platonist underrates sensitive

cognition, which he does not make the foundation of intellective knowledge. (Thus he differs radically from Aristotle and Aquinas in this important question.)

• Whence, then, does intellective cognition draw its origin? From illumination.

• As the eyes have need of the light of the sun in order to see sensible objects, so the intellect needs the light of God to know the world of intelligible beings.

• Intellectual knowledge is not the result of the acquisitive operation of the intellect, but a participation or grant of God.

• It is in this participation that Augustine's innatism with regard to ideas consists.

• It follows from this that the intellect, considered in itself, is incapable of acquiring knowledge of intelligible beings, but is made capable of such knowledge through illumination.

• The mystic schools of the Middle Ages were to appeal to this natural inability of the intellect in order to affirm that humility and prayer are the best means to acquiring wisdom.

M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia

http://www.augustinianknowledge.comAdapted from: http://radicalacademy.com/philaugustine1.htm

M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia

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Faith and Reason: Augustine of Hippo

Faith (Christian

Bible)

Reason (Plato’s and Greek

Philosophy)

• “Believe to understand, understand to believe”

• "Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe."

• "Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?"

• "Unless you believe, you will not understand."

• "Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand."

M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia

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Augustine’s Anthropology.

• Augustine affirms the absolute unity and the spirituality of the human soul.

• The soul he affirms that the soul is simple and immortal. – The sensitive soul, besides having the

five senses, is endowed also with a sensitive cognition which is common to animals and which judges the proper object of each of the senses.

– The intellective soul has three functions: being, understanding, and loving, corresponding to three faculties: intellective memory, intelligence, and will. The primacy among these three faculties is given to the will, which in man signifies love.

• The will of man is free. United to the question of the liberty of man is the problem of evil, which for many years tormented the mind of Augustine (metaphysical, physical, and moral evil: theodicy)

Adapted from: http://radicalacademy.com/philaugustine1.htm

M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia

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Political Philosophy City of God

R. Osborne and R. Edner, Philosophy for beginners.

The cosmological argument: Aristotle argument in Middle Ages

• Framed as a formal proof, the first cause argument can be stated as follows:– Everything has a cause. – Nothing can cause itself. – Everything is caused by another thing. – A causal chain cannot be of infinite length. – There must be a first cause. – God was the first cause.

• The cosmological argument infers the existence of God from claims about the entire universe.

• Fundamentally, the argument is based on the claim that God must exist due to the fact that the universe needs a cause.

• In other words, the existence of the universe requires an explanation, and an active creation of the universe by a being outside of the universe—generally assumed to be God—is that explanation.

• It was first defended by Aristotle and translated in Middle Ages to Christianity, being used latter by many modern philosophers as Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Kant…

7M. Torres History of Western Philosophy.

IES Campo San Alberto, Noia

Adapted from Wikipedia

Ontological argument: Anselm (1033-1109)

• An ontological argument for the existence of God is an argument that God's existence can be proved a priori, that is, by intuition and reason alone.

• The argument works by examining the concept of God, and arguing that it implies the actual existence of God;

• The ontological argument was first proposed by Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) in Chapter 2 of the Proslogion.

• He argued that there are necessary beings – things that cannot not exist – and contingent beings – things that may exist but whose existence is not necessary.

• Anselm presents the ontological argument as part of a prayer directed to God.

• He starts with a definition of God, or a necessary assumption about the nature of God, or perhaps both.– God is the greatest possible being and

thus possesses all perfections. – Existence is a perfection. – God exists.

8M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia

Adapted from Wikipedia

Augustine of Hippo: outline points

Christian Plato.

Divine enlightenment

City of God

Natural Knowledge

Knowing to believe and believing to know….

M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia