Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

1. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) • 354 AD born at Tagastenorth 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 yearsand 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/

2. Augustine’s bibliography Books: On Christian Doctrine, 397-426 Confessions, 397-398 The City of God,begunca. 413, finished 426 Onthe Trinity, 400-416 Enchiridion Retractions At theend of hislife (ca. 426-428) Augustine revisitedhispreviousworks in chronologicalorder and suggestedwhat he wouldhavesaiddifferently in a worktitledtheRetractions, givingthereader a rarepicture of thedevelopment 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): OntheSpirit and theLetter OnNature and Grace OnMan'sPerfection in Righteousness OnMarriage and Concupiscence OntheSoul and itsOrigin AgainstTwoLetters of thePelagians On Grace and Free Will OntheImmortality of theSoul OntheProfit of Believing OntheMorals of theCatholicChurch OnTwoSouls, AgainsttheManichaeans OnBaptism, AgainsttheDonatists M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia

3. 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. Adapted from: http://radicalacademy.com/philaugustine1.htm http://www.augustinianknowledge.com M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia

4. Faith and Reason: Augustine of Hippo • “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

5. 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

6. Political Philosophy City of God R. Osborne and R. Edner, Philosophyforbeginners. M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia

7. The cosmological argument: Aristotle argument in Middle Ages Adapted from Wikipedia M. Torres History of Western Philosophy. IES Campo San Alberto, Noia • 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…

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

9. 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