Augustin d\' Hippone

See also: Augustin, Saint-Augustin (homonymy)

Augustin d' Hippone ( Aurelius Augustinus ), or holy Augustin , born with Thagaste (current Souk-Ahras, Algeria) the November 13rd 354, dead the August 28th 430 with Hippone (current Annaba, Algeria), was a Philosophe and Théologie Christian N , bishop Catholique of Hippone, and a Berber writer of Roman expression of the late Antiquité.

It is one of principal the Pères of the Latin Church and one of the 33 Doctorss of the Church. The catholics celebrate his festival on August 28th, birthday of its death. Its tomb is with Pavia. After holy Paul, he is regarded as the most important character in the establishment and the development of Christianity.

Saint Augustin is the only Father of the Church whose works and doctrines gave rise to a system of thought: the Augustinisme. Its influence is marked through the ages, since Paul Orose until Paul Ricœur, while passing by Anselme of Canterbury, Thomas d' Aquin, Luther, Calvin, Pascal, Adolf von Harnack, Hannah Arendt… It was immense on all the history of the Church in Occident: the augustinism impregnated all the philosophical and theological reflection indeed medieval E, then fed the debates at the time of the Protestant Réforme, then still the Jansénisme. The debates caused by the interpretation of the augustinism largely contributed to the modern designs of the Liberté and the human nature.

Life of Augustin

Childhood and youth, from 354 to 383

Augustin tells his youth in his Confessions .

He was born with Thagaste (current Souk-Ahras, Algérie), town of North Africa pertaining to the Roman Empire (province of Proconsulaire, and the old kingdom of Numidie). His/her father, a Roman citizen pagan of the name of Patricius , was modest notable of the city. His/her mother, Monique, a Berber Christian woman of origin , transmitted its Foi to his/her children and gained her husband with Christianity at the end of its life. Augustin had a brother, Navigius, and a sister, future appointed monastery of Hippone. The native tongue of Augustin is the Numide (which it clearly quotes in his work the Confessions), but its culture is Latin and it knows hardly the Greek: raise gifted but disobedient, he hated the school and feared the punishment of his Masters. His/her father, who nourishes great ambitions in his connection, intends it for the lawyer trade, stage for high-civil service. Augustin studies initially with Madaure (current Me daourouch, Algérie) starting from the sixteen years age, where the studies are centered on the eloquence and the memory, which he blamed in his Confessions (delivers I).

His/her father, although of modest condition, joins together the money necessary to send it to Carthage to continue studies appropriate to his early intelligence. It is little before its departure that the famous episode of the flight of the Poire S. is.

It is with Carthage with the end of the year 370. His/her father dies a little later and Augustin becomes protected from Romanianus; he tells the climate of sensuality exacerbated of the city (“ the boiler of the ashamed loves ”), the pleasures of the Amour and the Théâtre:

I liked to like… to like and to be liked they was softer for me if I could also enjoy the body to be it aimé.

But this aspect of its life appears legendary, with the sight of certain passages of the Confessions :

I pretended to have done what I had not done, not to be all the more not judged méprisable that I more innocent and was held for all the more cheap as I was more chaste. It however meets the woman to which there remained faithful during fourteen years, and he had a son, Adéodat, of which he makes an interlocutor in the dialog Of the Master .

Augustin aims then the professorship of Rhétorique. Three events will play a big role in its life:

It reads the Hortensius Cicéron, a work now lost, which causes in him a violent one desire of wisdom: the research of the truth is a deep motivation of the personality of Augustin.
It also starts to read the Writings, of which it considers the writing extremely coarse compared to speaker Roman. Indeed, it reads them in the bad translation of the Latin Bible of Africa ( Vetus Africana ), full with Argot, and little conforms to the literary rules of traditional Latin.
It meets the Manicheans a dualistic religion and adheres to their doctrines during nine years, while remaining however simple listener and this with the great despair of his/her mother who refused a time to receive it in her house; then it was dazzled by the Néoplatonisme of Plotin, in particular by its principle of the Un-Bien .

It turns over to Thagaste in 375 and teaches grammar there. Following a victory in a contest of poetry, it became familiar of the proconsul de Carthage, Vindicius, a doctor who, realizing passion of Augustin for the Astrologie, managed of to divert it while showing to him that the success of some predictions is only the fruit of the chance:

“Since it often arrives, said Vindicien, that while opening with the adventure the book of a poet with the intention to find there some light for which one requires, one falls on such towards which agrees marvelously with what one seeks there, although by composing it this poet had, undoubtedly, anything else in the spirit, it should not be astonished if, thorough by some secret instinct who controls it and without same knowledge what occurs in him, by mere chance finally and not by its own science, the answers of a man agree sometimes with the actions and the adventures ofanother man who comes to question it. ” - the Confessions, Delivers IV, Chap. 3.

He writes his first work, a work of Esthétique, De Bono and Apto , lost today, in 380. He meets the bishop Manichean Faustus before leaving Carthage for Rome. This meeting is for him disappointing because the bishop proves to be only one pleasant impostor.

Rome, Milan; the conversion of Augustin

In Rome, where he is professor of Rhétorique, Augustin is placed at a listener of the Manicheans and attends the sect. But it doubts these doctrines seriously, and inclines to believe the academicians for which the truth is not recognizable. It falls ill at the point to believe itself dying.

In 384, disgusted by the attitudes of its pupils, it gains Milan, where it is found in the middle of a company attended by the Poète S and the Philosophe S, particularly of the Platonic ones. His/her mother ends up joining there. It meets there Ambroise of Milan, the Christian bishop of the city of which it followed the homélies with assiduity. At that time, influenced by the speeches of Ambroise, it decides to break with the Manicheism, not believing to have, in full crisis of doubt, to maintain to me in a sect above which I placed already a certain number of philosophers. The idea of a combat between the evil and the good seemed to him absurd, because the bad principle of the Manicheism could not actually anything against an immutable god and eternal. However, there remained the question of the existence of the Mal permitted by God.

He thought of marrying: a rich person marriage for whom it was to still wait two years, the young girl not having yet the age. Not being able to have patience, it took a new mistress.

It is about this moment that Augustin, tormented by the problem of the Mal, discovers Plato and the Platonic ones. He understands that the evil is nothing, but pagan philosophy remains still far for him of the true way, which is the way of Jesus.

It converts with Christianity in August 386, therefore tardily since it was almost 32 years old (it makes some acts of a religion which it practically knows since always). He says itself in his Confessions that he tétée it with the milk of his mother. In fact, the conversion of Augustin, moreover very dramatic to the psychological level, is less one conversion with Christianity that a conversion with the paulinism. The discovery of the epistles of holy Paul which he did not know, shows to him completely differently not only the Christianity which he knew, but also Judaism. It is remarkable that on a date as late as half of IVe century, one can know Christianity without knowing Paul. We can thus suppose that in Carthage, second city of the Empire, has course a Christianity which ignored holy Paul!

He wants to be made monk. The conversion of Augustin goes hand in hand with the choice of the monastic life. While becoming Christian, it does not plan to become bishop nor even priest.

Its conversion is described in chapter XII of book VIII of the Confessions :

Thus, I said, and I cried in the extreme bitterness of my crushed heart. And here that I hear a voice come from the close house, that of a boy or a girl, I do not know who, on an air of song said and repeated on several occasions: “Take, lily! Take, lily! ” And at once, changing face, I put to reflect intensely, while asking to me whether in a play such an old story was usually of use in the children. But, it did not return to me to have heard it some share. And, driving back the attack of my tears, I rose, seeing of another interpretation to this divine order only the injunction to open the book and of reading the first chapter on which I would fall.

I, indeed, had just learned that Antoine had drawn from the reading of the Gospel during which he had occurred by chance a personal warning as if it were for him which was known as what one read: Goes, sell all that you have, it gives the poor and you will have a treasure in the skies. Come, am me , and that such an oracle had at once converted it with You.

I thus hastened to return to the place where Alypius had sat; because it is there that I had posed the book of the Apostle when I had risen. I seized it, I opened it, and I read in silence the first chapter on which fell my eyes: “Not of feasts nor of drinking bouts; not coucheries nor of vices; not quarrels nor of jealousies. But cover you of the Lord Jesus-Christ and you made not the providers of the flesh in its covetousnesses.

I desired steps in reading more: I did not need any more. This hardly completed verse, at the moment even spread in my heart an alleviating light and all darkness of the doubt was dissipated.

The April 22nd 2007, during a pastoral visit with Pavia, the pope Benoît XVI pronounced a Homélie in which it describes the three stages of the advance of conversion of Augustin saint:

In his book of the Confessions , Augustin described in a way moving the way by his conversion, which with the baptism conferred by the bishop Ambroise in the Cathédrale of Milan, achieved its goal. Who reads the Confessions can divide the way that Augustin had to traverse in a long interior combat, before finally receiving, during the night of Easter 387, with the baptismal fountain, the sacrament which marked the great turning of its life. While attentively following the course of the life of saint Augustin, one can see that conversion was not the one isolated moment event, but well a whole advance. And one can see that with the Baptismal font this advance was not finished yet.

Conversion with the episcopate

After his conversion, Augustin gives up the trade of rhetor, who started besides to deteriorate his health. One of his/her friends placed at his disposal a villa with Cassiciacum close to Milan. It shared this stay with his mother, her son Adéodat, his Navigius brother, and some of his friends. They discussed philosophy, and it is of this stay which date the Against the Academicians , Of the order , the Traité happy life , the Soliloques , and letters.

Works of Cassiciacum

In the Against the Academicians , work which is composed of two books and which puts in scene the pupils of Augustin defending for and against, Augustin attempt to refute the theses of the Nouvelle Academy, school Plato ician whose chief was Arcésilas. For these philosophers, the man cannot know the Vérité and the wise one is that which suspends its judgment. Augustin puts the questions to know if we are obliged to know the truth, and if the possibility of being happy without knowing it would exempt to us to seek it. However, since the happy life is “ the life in conformity so that there is the best and of more perfect in the man ” one could not be happy, as supports it Cicéron, in a state of research which does not succeed. To say that we are impotent to discover the truth, it is to say that faculties which return to us higher than the animals are useless. Augustin reviews hellenistic philosophies, then exposes the thesis of Plato in connection with the two worlds, one understandable and true and which is concealed with the directions, the other which is only probable and copies the first. However, it is according to him divine world which the light descends which clarifies the heart, and all that is good imitates the higher areas. Augustin indicates that the New Academicians hid this truth, to withdraw it from the attacks of their adversaries, and have pretends to support a dogmatic skepticism (this thesis of history of philosophy was discussed a long time and it seems that it is finally false, if one believes Victor Brochard of it, in the Greek Skeptics ). But it is in the final analysis God who allows us, in our search of the truth, to contemplate celestial realities, because the human reason is too weak; the thought of Augustin is thus a synthesis of Plato ism and Christianisme:

In some manner that I have wisdom, I see that I do not know it yet. However, being still only with my thirty-third year, I should not despair to acquire it one day; also I am solved to apply me to seek it by a general contempt of all that the men look at ici-bas like goods. I acknowledge that the reasons of the Academicians frightened me much in this company; but I am, this seems to me, enough armed against them by this discussion. It is not doubtful for anybody that two reasons determine us in our knowledge: authority and reason. For me, I am persuaded that one must, in no manner, to deviate from the authority of Jesus-Christ, because I do not find any more powerful. As for the things which one can examine by the subtlety of the reason (because, of the character of which I am, I impatiently wish not to believe only the truth, but to see it by the intelligence), I hope to find at Platonic much ideas which will not be opposed to our sacred mysterieies.

Augustin also writes the two books of the treaty Of the order , where it tackles the question of the immutable order of the universe, whose harmonious character escapes to us if we do not contemplate the unit of it; those which remain about the multiplicity of the things have the limited spirit and see everywhere only confusion and horrible chance. Thus we are astonished by the disorder which seems to violate the order of the things, but a thing absolutely against the order is impossible, because all has a reason of its achievement and nothing can exist apart from the order, in measurement, where to exist, a thing must tend towards the unit. Our reason is also such an aspiration with the unit and rest of the immutable truth. It is for Augustin a Axiome that the more one thing has unit, the more it is invincible: however, the permanence and the unit of the reason testify to its absolute constancy by comparison with the things of this world, and show the immortality of the heart consequently; the following quotation illustrates it, and shows the influence of the thought of Augustin on Descartes:

If thus the reason is immortal (and me which distinguishes and binds all these things, it is me which am the reason), I concluded that what in me is called mortal is not me. However if the heart is not the reason, and that however, using of my reason, I can become better, the heart is thus immortal. When it is made sufficiently beautiful, it will dare to be presented in front of God, the source from where truth rises, the father of the truth.

However, in spite of the order and the unit, the Mal exists, and seems difficult to reconcile with the universal divine order and the any power of God.

Starting from November 13rd, 386, day of its birthday, Augustin begins with his friends a discussion on the bliss which gave place to the treaty of the happy Vie , where he explains why the bliss ici-bas consists in the perfect knowledge of God: the men are on a sea and seek the truth which they meet in the port of the Philosophie, if they are not let involve by vanity.

Lastly, the last work of Augustin going back to this time are the Soliloques , where Augustin discusses with itself:

I wrote them according to my taste and my love, to find the truth on the things which I wished more to know, questioning me myself and answering me, as if we were two, Reason and me, though I was alone: from there the name of Soliloquies given to this work. ( Retractations )

In this work, the reason is regarded there as the eye of the heart which must purify sensitive things by the Christian virtues which are the faith, charity and the hope, to rise with the understandable truths; this platonism is obviously initially of Christian inspiration, since the Platonic sun is God, whose light allows intellectual and moral contemplation: My God, made that I know you and that I know myself!

And one recognizes a celebrates philosopher in the following quotation:

Reason: But you which want to know you, know you if you exist?
Augustin: I it sais.
Reason: From where do you know it?
Augustin: I it ignore.
Reason: Are you aware of you like simple or made up being?
Augustin: I it ignore.
Reason: Do you know if you are put moving?
Augustin: I it ignore.
Reason: Do you know if you think?
Augustin: I it sais.
Reason: It is thus true that you think?
Augustin: That is true.

Augustin thus makes reside the certainty in the intimate obviousness of our thought, which is distinguished from the testimony of the directions, and it defines the Vérité as what is, any truth having its eternal and immutable existence as a God:

Who is rather blind of spirit not to recognize that the geometrical figures live within the truth itself?

The certainty which our reason reaches testifies thus that the latter takes part of the eternity of the truth, and than our heart is immortal. This argumentation was taken again by Augustin when it was of return to Milan, in the Traité immortality of the heart , and later in the City of God, delivers XI, 26, it says:

In this triple insurance, I do not fear any the arguments of the academicians saying to me: What! and if you were mistaken? Because if I am mistaken, I am. Who does not exist, certainly cannot be mistaken either; consequently, if I am mistaken, it is that I am. Moment thus that I am if I am mistaken, how to mislead me by believing that I am, when it is certain that I am if I am mistaken. Since thus I existed by misleading me, even if I were mistaken, without any doubt, I am not mistaken in what I know that I exist. In the same way while saying: I know that I know myself, I am not mistaken either, because it is same manner that I know my existence and that I also know that I know myself.

Baptism of Augustin

The stay of Augustin with Cassiciacum had lasted of August 23rd, 386 until March 23rd, 387. Augustin returned then to Milan and prepared with the baptism by reading Isaïe on the councils of Ambroise. It is during this time that he wrote the Traité on the immortality of the heart mentioned above, and other works which were lost of sound living so that he seems.

He was baptized by Ambroise, bishop of Milan, in the night from April 24th to 25th 387:

How much I was moved! That tears escaped from my eyes, when I intended to resound in your church the mélodieux chorus of the anthems and the canticles which it unceasingly raises towards you! While these celestial words penetrated in my ears, your truth entered by them gently my heart; the heat of my piety seemed to become sharper about it; my tears always ran, and I tested pleasure to spread them. ( Confessions, delivers 9)

Died of his/her mother, Monique

Augustin left Milan to return in Thagaste about August or September 387, with his mother, Adéodat and his friends. But, shortly after their arrival with Ostie, from where they were to embark for Africa, Monique fell sick and died. Augustin reports the last maintenance to us which it had with his mother:

we thus spoke there only, with an unutterable softness; forgetting the past, occupied future, we sought between us, near this truth which is yourself, which was to be the eternal life of the saints, that the eye did not see, that the ear did not hear, and who is never assembled in the heart of the man. We opened the mouth of the heart to receive celestial water of this fountain of life which is in you, so that while being flooded according to our measurement, we included/understood some manner such a large thing. (...)
Such was our maintenance; and if the form and the words were not the same ones, you know, Seigneur, that this day, lasting this speech, the world and all its pleasures appeared quite cheap to us. Then my mother known as: “My son, for what looks at me, plus nothing does not charm me in this life. I am unaware of what I must do still here, and why I am there, after my hope of this century was accomplished. There was only one thing for which I wished to remain a little in this life, it was to see you Christian catholic before dying. My God granted that beyond my wishes to me; I see you his servant, nonglad to have scorned the terrestrial happiness; what do I thus make here?

She died after nine days of disease at the 56 years age.

After the death of his mother, Augustin decided to go to Rome. One is unaware of the reasons of this decision. There remained one year there before returning in Africa during summer 388.

Return in Africa

Returned to Africa, after five years of absence, he lived in community not far from Thagaste with his friends and his disciples. He engages then in defense of the Church, by writing the Mœurs of the Catholic church , the Mœurs of the Manicheans , where he compares the behavior of the Christians and the Manicheans, and Of the Nobility of soul , that he had started to compose with Rome. He is given for task to initially cure by the Raison the Manicheans who, according to the Christians, insult the Writings. Reason allows us to return us good while following virtue, which, only, carries us towards a reality out of us, which is God, the sovereign well. But the reason is impotent to include/understand the nature of divine realities, and it needs the authority of the word of God, Old and New Testament which the Manicheans reject on many points:

I could, according to the mediocrity of my lights and my forces, to discuss in detail all the words which I have just reported, and to expose you here what God made me the grace learn from the wonders that they contains, wonders whose expression often remains above the weakness of the language. But it is necessary well to be kept some, as long as you will be of provision to bark against the divine books. The Gospel defends us to present the holy things to the dogs. You do not offend if I speak to you as follows: I barked formerly myself; I was of these dogs about which the Gospel speaks.

The visit of the Roman monasteries gives him the idea to transform the family home into monastery: the Garden (in 391), with the imitation of the Garden of Épicure. It is at that time that his/her Adéodat son dies, towards the 17 years age.

Augustin bishop

He becomes priest then coadjutor of Valère, bishop of the town of Hippone before succeeding to him in the Roman Province of Africa. In 399, the pagan temples are closed. On this occasion, it writes the Catéchèse of the Beginners . In 395, it starts a theological quarrel with Jerome, translator of the Vulgate starting from the Hebraic Bible. He considered that nothing had been able to escape the Seventy. He thus did not see the utility of it. It is true that Augustin was poor hellenist and not hébraïsant a whole; in fact of Bible, he knew only the Vetus Africana , in which the specialists agree to say that it is not a model of fidelity. He could not realize that the Seventy only had not translated but also supplemented and not continued the Hebraic Bible. Another quarrel opposed it to the scholar of Bethlehem concerning the comment of the Épître to Gallates, on the passage of the reprimand with Pierre sat at table with the Gentils. He dies at the time of the seat of Genséric chief of the troops Vandales in 430.

He writes two important rules:

for the monastery of Thagaste;
for the clergy (secular) of Hippone.

Doctrines

Its sources

the Bible, the Tradition of the Church, in particular holy Cyprien de Carthage and holy Ambroise of Milan
the Manicheism
Plato, Plotin, the neoplatonism

Fundamental concepts

The fundamental concepts of the reflection of Augustin saint are the following:

the Faith, adhesion of the heart making us seize the principles first and putting to us in possession of the truth (the faith, if it precedes the intelligence, is not likely to ruin the reason); faith is belief in something of invisible, and Augustin answers those which affirm that one can to believe in what fall not under direction (external or direction interns) that we always believe in certain things that we do not perceive, such as, for example, the benevolence of a friend. The human spirit cannot thus do without faith, unless living as an animal ( Of the faith to the things which one does not see , §1). The faith with the invisible things in itself irrational, but is thus not formed part, in a way reasonable and necessary, human life:

However, to believe that one is not loved because the love is not seen, not to return affection for affection because one believes oneself about it exempted, it is not there an act of wisdom, but an odious reserve; and if we do not believe so that we do not see, if we deny the wills of the men, because they escape our eyes, it results from it such a disorder in the company that all will be reversed basic in roof.

the Love, which consists in wishing something for itself. Augustin distinguishes the self-love and the love from God. Only the love of god is a love authentic and right because it does not deteriorate our to be but on the contrary increases it. The love is charity and is opposed to the concupiscence. It is a movement of the heart towards what she wishes, and in this direction, the natural appetite of the heart is the love which involves it towards God (idea that will take again later Thomas d' Aquin, and with the limit Baruch Spinoza within the limits of the particular definition that the latter will establish of “God”). See also Entéléchie.

the free will and the grace. Freedom is for Augustin correspondence between the human Volonté and the divine will; it is thus not a choice, but a kind of need to conform to the divine order. There exist however two kinds of freedom: the perfect freedom which precedes the fall where the man is entirely free, because it does itself well the , that it is this although it realizes; an imperfect freedom, after the fall, which testifies to the corruption of the human Nature, in other words of the misuse of its will. When the man is good despite everything, it is not its fact, but by the grace of God.

the Reason, conceived like discursive faculty, not entering in conflict with the faith, but supplementing it: it is necessary, indeed, to include/understand to believe;

the Memory, source of the personal identity, is a Faculté of the Pensée, Conscience of the Temps spent, present and to come. This faculty allows the intelligence and the Volonté. It is by the memory that the heart remembers itself and takes again possession of itself. When the heart seeks itself, after being itself lost by concupiscence, it is found by the memory, which is then a movement to be it towards God.

concept to become historical explicitly formulated in:

the Supersessionisme (or Théologie of substitution), expressed against the Judaism
the fact that, by the Incarnation, God intervened in the natural course of the world is a fundamental event which gives its direction to the city of the men and its becoming towards the City of God. See time and the History in the city of God

It is one of the independent sources of the doctrines of the Original sin and the Exclusivisme, of the contempt of the world and doctrines " culpabilisant" the human exercise of the Sexuality. Of aucuns also allot to him:

the origin of the misogyny in the religions of authority resulting from the Christianity
a responsibility in the Christian anti-semitism.

the War right , improperly named Holy war, as shows it this passage of Letter 185 of Augustin with Boniface, military prefect in load of the repression of the donatists:

The martyrs are those whose Lord said: " Happy those which suffer persecution for justice " (Matthieu V, 10) It is thus not those which suffer persecution for iniquity and for the impious division of the Christian unit which are truly martyrs, but those which are persecuted for justice. Agar also suffered persecution on behalf of Sara (Genesis, XVI, 6). That which persecuted was holy, that which was persecuted was not it. (...) If we examine the thing even more attentively, it will be seen that it was rather Agar which, by its pride, persecuted Sara that Sara did not persecute Agar by punishing it (...) If we want to thus be in truth, say that the persecution exerted by the irreligious people against the Church of Christ is unjust, while there is justice in the persecution inflicted to the irreligious people by the Church of Jesus-Christ. (...) The Church persecutes to withdraw error, the irreligious people to precipitate there. Lastly, the Église persecutes its enemies and continues them until it reached them and demolished in their pride and their vanity, in order to make them enjoy the benefit of the truth, the irreligious people persecute while returning the evil for the good, and while we keep in mind only their safety eternal, they seek to remove us our portion of happiness on the ground. They breathe so much the murder which they remove the life with themselves, when they cannot remove it with the others. The Church, in its charity, works to deliver them perdition to preserve them death; they, in their rage, seek all the means of making us perish, and to appease their need for cruelty, they commit suicide themselves, as not to lose the right which they believe to have to kill the men.

Saint Augustin by the concept of war right intends to answer persecutions which the Church undergoes, by a war against the irreligious people, in order to remove the “weapons of the lie to them” and to demolish their “pride and their vanity”. He is not question which the Church puts at dead anyone since Augustin has " always and of all its forces pushed back the capital punishment for the hérétiques". Saint Augustin preaches neither crusade nor holy war, it exposes simply a political vision according to which when the Church is threatened, it is then normal that the State is made guarantor of its protection; in the same way it is favorable to the war when that Ci makes it possible to obtain peace.

One does not seek peace to make the war, but one makes the war to obtain peace. Would be thus peaceful as a combatant, in order to lead those which you know with the benefit of peace, by gaining over them the victoire 189

the Private property. The New Testament is almost dumb on the question but whereas the Christians shared their goods, holy Augustin defends by the dogma the private property: he supports that the Original sin changed the nature of the man what makes the collective ownership impossible. The latter was consequently condemned like heretic.

The problem of time

Augustin remains known as author of the famous joke What is this thus that time? If nobody asks it to me, I know it; but if it me is asked it and that I want to explain it, I do not know it any more (Confessions). Also celebrates for the following quotation: “What authorizes to think that time is, it is that it tends not to be more.”

But he seeks all the same to clear this mystery. He admits with the philosophers that for the man Three times ago, the present of the past, the present of the future and the present of the present , but refuses to regard that God can be, as the man, prisoner of time , and in particular impotent to know the future. It estimates that the whole of the moments of the universe must be, for this last, omnia simul : all is present at the same time, simultaneous, without succession, eternal.

Chapter 11 of the Confessions states clearly that for Augustin God drew from nothing in concert the matter like time: how indeed to define anything which resembles time in the absence of matter?

The problem of the evil

A sentence of the City of God summarizes the position of Augustin on the question of God, his creatures, and the choice of the evil by those:

God would not have created only one of the angels - what I say, only one of the men! - of which it had expected that they would be malicious, if he had not known as well with which use of the goods he could make them be useful, and how he could by raising there the continuation of the centuries by kinds of antitheses, like one does it for a very beautiful poem. (XI, 18)

Original sin

Refusal of sexuality and " misogynie"

Sexuality

ATU Ranke-Heinneman ( COp cit. at the foot of the page) explains that it is very exaggerated to allot 100% of the responsibility on the matter to him. Indeed, the Christianity of IVe century develops its morals starting from the néo- Plato ism and of the medical designs of the Stoïcisme. Those impose the menstrual taboo which functions of IVe at the XIXe century. A development more packed on this subject in Body, sex and kind. In addition, the medicine of Galien de Pergame 129 - 210 of the common era imagines that the emission of sperm weakens the man (within the meaning of to vir ) while the open woman would be of an unrestrained desire and does not know this problem.

Contrary to many Fathers of the Church who had condemned sexuality like an evil in oneself, a consequence of the Fall or an invention of the devil, Augustin recognized that sexuality was to necessarily belong to the original Ideal of God for the man and the woman, but that they had diverted it her original function. For Augustin, which constitutes the sin, it is not the sex act, but the carnal and egoistic motivation, which treats the other into object. Augustin thus identifies the sin of the flesh to the concupiscence:

Thousands of young people and young girls scorn the marriage and live in chastity without nobody being surprised, whereas Plato, to have done as much of it, says one, was at this point intimidated by the perverse ideas of his time that it sacrificed to nature to abolish this past (...) In the cities and the cities, finally in the boroughs, the villages, the countryside even and the fields particular, one accepts and one openly wishes to be diverted terrestrial goods towards God single and true, so much so that each day, by the whole world, with one voice or almost, mankind answers: “The hearts are in top, close to the Lord”. (Augustin d' Hippone, Of will vera religione , III. 3 and V)

Women or wisdom

For Augustin, the frequentation of the women for pleasure and paternity is an obstacle for the heart:

Under some features that you represent it to me, it was filled of all the gifts, it is only I would be also solved to avoid only the trade of a woman. Because it is nothing, I feel it, which cuts down the rise of the spirit more that the caresses of a woman and this union of the bodies which is gasoline of the marriage. This is why, if it is one of the duties of the wise one, which I did not still examine, to seek to have children, that who link with a woman with this only aim appears worthier me to be admired than to be imitated; because there is more danger in this attempt than of happiness to succeed there. Also I obliged rather precisely and rather usefully, I believe, for the freedom of my heart, not to wish, not to seek, not to take any woman. ( Soliloquies , §10)

This quotation could also be close to another: “The total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation”.

Women and men

Relation with the Judaism

It was seen that Augustin d' Hippone contributed to develop the doctrines of the Théologie of substitution, or Supersessionisme. It followed in that the doctrines which had outlined Justin of Nablus, Tertullien, and Jean Chrysostome.

If thus these people were not destroyed until whole extinction, but dispersed on all the surface of the ground, it is to be useful to us, by spreading the pages where the Prophète S announce the benefit which we received, and who is used to strengthen the Foi in the infidels. (...) They are thus not killed, in the sense that they did not forget the Writings which one read and which one intended to read on their premises. So indeed they forgot the Holy Scriptures completely, that they do not include/understand a remainder, they would be put at died according to the judaïque rite even; because, not knowing the law more nor the Prophet S, they would become useless to us. They thus were not exterminated, but were dispersed; so that not having the faith which could save them, they were at least useful for us by their memories. Our enemies by the heart, they are by their books, our supports and our Témoin S. ( Of the faith to the things which one does not see , § 6)

Saint Augustin maintained the relations with the Rabbin S of his area and for points of translation of the Hebrew consulted them, as its correspondence with Saint Jerome attests some.

In addition, Augustin opposed so that one persecutes the Juif S, and would have also considered that the latter convert with the Christianisme with the Fin of times.

Exclusivism

The attacks of Augustin against the Manichéens are omnipresent in the work of the “father of the grace”. Several of its treaties are entirely devoted there, and allusions to the Manicheism are everywhere in the other various treaties, sermons, letters, writings; naturally also in its major works which are the Confessions and the City of God . They are there also, obviously, in the Of will vera religione .

An important part of the work of Augustin fights the Hérésie S . The Church triumphing uses this term to indicate certain tendencies of incipient Christianity which did not prevail and deviate from the faith such as definite by the ecclesiastical authority (in particular Councils). Augustin fights Mani itself which said disciple of Christ, even if the Manicheism is extremely far away from the Gospel. He fights the donatists and the pélagiens, whose doctrines are Christian. Moreover, they are said “Christian” but all dispute this name; their adversaries, them, name them donatists or pélagiens .

Augustin is sometimes in favor of the constraint against the Hérétique S:

The force of the habit was a chain which they would never have broken, if they had not been struck terror of the secular powers and if this salutary terror had not applied their spirit to the consideration of the vérité.

Even of persecution when he writes with the military Préfet in load of the repression of the donatists:

The persecution exerted by the irreligious people against the Church of Christ is unjust, while there is justice in the persecution inflicted to the irreligious people by the Church of Jesus-Christ. (...) The Church persecutes by love; irreligious people by cruelty. (...) Enfin the Church persecutes its enemies, and does not cease continuing them that it did not reach them and demolished, i.e., that it did not make them put the weapons of the lie low, and that it did not establish them in the truth; they on the contrary return the evil for the good to us, and with the place that is only to get the eternal life to them that we work, they seek to remove us the temporal life; they breathe only murder and that carnage; and that goes even to such an excess that when they cannot appease their fury by removing the life with the others, they remove it with themselves. (Augustin d' Hippone, Letter 185 in Boniface

Influence on the history of philosophy

For the the Middle Ages, to see Holy Bonaventure and the article Augustinisme.

For the 17th century, to see in particular: Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz.

The number of readers of Augustin saint is innumerable: it is a major author. At the 20th century, p.ex. Camus wrote a DEA on Augustin saint.

The thesis of Hannah Arendt was devoted to " Love at Augustin".

An error of appreciation augustinienne: antipodes

In the field of the History of the ideas in physics, and although he was not physicist, holy Augustin remains known for his refusal to admit the theory of the antipodes and to have publicly qualified it ridiculous . All the marine people for a long time noted, of course, the rotundity of the sea, and adapted their headlights and the tops of their ships consequently. Augustin refused nevertheless to see there a proof of the rotundity of the Earth (known since Aristarque de Samos, of which it could not be unaware of work and who had even calculated an estimate of his size). Undoubtedly it estimated this curve like the analog at gigantic size of a water drop or effect of meniscus of glass too filled: the Greeks, since they had not written anything on the question, had quite simply not seen the phenomenon, and drew from the convexity of the sea a delirious and false conclusion.

This personal opinion that he taught with which wanted to hear it, not constituting a point of dogma, did not engage however its responsibility for bishop, not more than the latter authorized it with exciper of an unspecified authority in this field. One restricted oneself to announce what he thought of the subject.

Here in which Augustin terms formulated it:

“As for their fabulous opinion that there are antipodes, i.e. men of which the feet are opposed to ours and who live this part of the ground where the sun raises when it lies down for us, there is no reason to believe in it. Also they do not advance it on the report/ratio of any historical testimony, but on conjectures and reasoning, because, they, the ground say being round, are suspended between the two sides of the vault of heaven, the part which is under our feet, placed under the same conditions of temperature, cannot be without inhabitants. But when it would be shown that the ground is round, it would not follow only the part which is opposite for us was not covered with water. Moreover, it would not be it, which need which she was inhabited, since, on a side, the Writing cannot lie, and that, other, there is too much nonsense to say that the men crossed so vast extended from sea to go to populate this other part of the world”. ( Quoted of God , delivers 16)

By explaining why it is to better do confidence with the men of faith for the questions of dogma and in Aristote (thus with its spherical Ground idea) for the questions relating to nature, Thomas d' Aquin will diplomatically repudiate Augustin on this precise point a few centuries later.

Point of view and judgments

The Roman Catholic church

Augustin is known as holy Augustin , bishop of Hippone. Its influence on the theology of the Roman Catholic church is paramount. The Augustinisme impregnated all Middle Ages and inspired the majority of the debates and later systems of thought.

Regarded as one of the Fathers of the Church, it was also always counted among the Doctorss of the Church.

The orthodoxe Church

Augustin d' Hippone and Jerome de Stridon are celebrated together on June 15th in the orthodoxe Church. This festival is secondary, on June 15th is indeed the day of the saint Amos prophet and Guy saint in the whole of the orthodoxe Churches. It thus seems that this memory is mentioned only locally, in Romania for example.

The Roumanians tend to decorate the churches of frescos Latin authors like the Greeks of their pagan philosophers (Plato, Socrate, Héraclite, because of the use whom they made of the term logos ).

Place in the Orthodox Church: With Corrective * copte point of view of

North-Africans

The figure of Augustin saint is very popular in the ground which saw it being born and dying. It is " most famous of Algériens" , as that was underlined at the time of a great international scientific conference in Algiers and Annaba, in 2001 (" Africanity and universality of Augustin" saint;).

The Berber ones/Amazigh recognize as a Augustin one as of their and part of their inheritance. It is also the case of the Algerians in general, like, to a certain extent, of the Tunisians.

According to some the transformation of the church Saint-Augustin of Algiers into museum or another place of Memory and History rather than into mosque would have doubtless contributed to bring closer the sensitivities and the points to sights.

Humanistic of the Age of Enlightenment

Concept of Humanism having significance only relative - for this reason, it is not exclusive besides Christianity in any of its forms. One will thus give the point of view of the men of the Lumières:

Point of view of Pierre Bayle

He considers exclusivism or augustinism, and shows himself naturally, as a Protestant, critical towards the Catholic church.

“the engagement where is the Roman church to respect the system of Augustin saint throws it in an embarrassment which holds much the ridiculous one. It is if manifest with any man who examines the things without prejudice and with the lights necessary, that the doctrines of Augustin saint and that of Jansénius, bishop of Ypres, are only one and even doctrines, which one cannot see without indignation that the court of Rome praised to have condemned Jansénius, and nevertheless to have preserved at Augustin saint all his glory. They are two completely incompatible things. Much more, the council of Thirty, by condemning the doctrines of Calvin on the free will, necessarily condemned that of Augustin saint, because there is calvinist who denied, or who could deny the contest of the human will and the freedom of our heart to the direction that holy Augustin gave to the words of contest and co-operation and freedom.
There is calvinist who does not recognize the free will, and his use in conversion, if one hears this word according to the ideas of Augustin saint. Those which the council of Thirty condemned do not reject the free will that as it means the freedom of indifference. The thomists also reject it under this concept, and do not leave pass for very-catholics. Here another scene of comedy. The physical predetermination of the thomists, need for saint Augustin, that of the Jansenists, and all and sundry claim that one them calumny, when one shows them to teach the same doctrines as Calvin. If it were allowed the man to judge thoughts of its next, one would be extremely tempted to say that the doctors are here of large actors, and that they are not unaware of that the council of Thirty condemned only one dream, which was never assembled in the spirit of the calvinists, or which he condemned holy Augustin and the physical predetermination; so that, when one praises oneself to have the faith of Augustin saint and never not to have varied in the doctrines, one makes it only to keep the decorum, and to avoid the dissipation of the system that a consent of the truth necessarily produces. There are people for whom it is a great happiness that the people does not worry to be made return account on the doctrines, and which it of it is not even able. It is more often mutinerait against the doctors, than against the maltotiers. " If you do not know, one would say to them, that you mislead us, your stupidity deserves that one sends to you to plow the ground; and, if you know it, your spite deserves that one puts to you between four walls, with the bread and water. But there is nothing to fear: the people only ask to be carried out according to the accustomed train; and, if they asked some more, they would not be able to enter under discussion: their business did not enable them to acquire a so great capacity. ”
Pierre Bayle, historical and critical Dictionary , (1698), article “Augustin”

Point of view of Isaac de Beausobre

For me, that the sky preserved Spirit of the Church, which do not know larger although freedom to think, of softer occupation than the research of the Truth, nor of greater pleasure quer that of finding and saying it, for me, say I, I studied the history of the Church with less prejudice than it was possible to me. And like the history of the sects in fact a very considerable part, as soon as I removed the stringcourse of the prejudice, I realized soon that it had not moreover falsified of it there and I looked at these distort stories of an eye quite different from that which one has habit to look at them. As I like much, by the grace of God, the religion of our Saver and that I give all my attention to confirm it, extravagances, the impudicities, the abominations which one allotted to quantity of companies which called upon the name of Jesus-Christ, appeared to me as many insults as one made with Christianity. I pus lira without indignation these stories obviously fabulous of old the sects, only one charge with the envi with monstrous errors and infamous ceremonies. All that is the work of an indiscreet zeal, of an impudent credulity, very often of precipitation and heard evil. (...) Let us start with a common reflection but unfortunately too true. At all times, the sects rivals mutually showed profane or ridiculous mysteries. The pagan ones showed the Jews of them; the Jews showed the Christians and published of them everywhere that the incestes of Oedipus and the feasts of Thyeste were their crowned ceremonies. The Christians rejected these crimes on the Gnostic ones. We know them by Plotin which fought them. This severe and regular philosopher does not reproach them any of these crimes. He taxes them only with pride and notices that their general maxim was that it was necessary to look with God and to imitate it (...)
At all events, it was the old one and constant use of all the sects to calumniate itself mutually; the Greeks do it with regard to Latin, Latin with regard to the Greeks and the Greeks and Latin with regard to the Eastern communities. One knows what one published against the Of Vaud ones and Albigensians and at the beginning of the 16th century against the Lutherans and Réformés. if the Roman Church had come to end to extirpate them as of their birth, they would pass today for the most infamous heretics, from where I concluded that one should not add faith slightly so that some of the Fathers tell us Mysteries of the Manicheans. The most common charge and oldest is that they used of magic. One finds it in the Acts of Archelaüs. The reason made it fall, I will make fall that from the obscenity, even more incredible than the autre.
I will not repeat what Cyrille and holy Augustin say to us of Eucharistie manichéenne… (Isaac de Beausobre, History of Manichée and the Manicheism , Amsterdam, 1739)

Random links: