Augustine- Confessions
Augustine & Learning (Gospel of John 121)
" 'And the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend.' Moreover, the soul of man, although it bears witness of the light, is 'not that light,' but God the Word is himself 'the true light which illuminates ever man coming into the world.' "
Augustine & Learning (Manicheans 43)
"...it was as if some sharp intelligence were persuading me to consent to the stupid deceivers when they asked me: 'Where does evil come from? and is God confined within a corporeal form? has he hair and nails? and can those be considered righteous who had several wives at the same time and killed people and offered animals in sacrifice?' In my ignorance I was disturbed by these questions, and while traveling away from the truth I thought I was going towards it."
Augustine & Learning (Scriptures 40)
"...that the name of Christ was not contained in this book. This name, by your mercy Lord, this name of my Savior your Son, my infant hear had piously drunk in with my mother's milk, and at a deep level I retained the memory. Any book which lacked this name, however well written or polished or true, could not entirely grip me. "I therefore decided to give attention to the holy scriptures and to find out what they were like. And this is what met me: something neither open to the proud nor laid bare to mere children; a text lowly to the beginner but, on further reading, of mountainous difficulty and enveloped in mysteries."
Augustine & Learning (Neoplatonists 121)
"In reading the Platonic books I found expressed in different words, and in a variety of ways, that the Son 'being in the form of the Father did not think it theft to be equal with God', because by nature he is that very thing."
Augustine & Learning (Rhetoric 38 and Philosophy, Cicero specifically 39)
"This was the society in which at a vulnerable age I was to study the textbooks on eloquence. I wanted to distinguish myself as an orator for a damnable and conceited purpose, namely delight in human vanity. Following the usual curriculum I had already come across a book by a certain Cicero, whose language (but not his heart) almost everyone admires."
Augustine & Learning (Reading Virgil pgs. 15-17)
"What is more pitiable than a wretch without pity for himself who weeps over the death of Dido dying for love of Aeneas, but not weeping over himself dying for his lack of love for you, my God, light of my heart, bread of the inner mouth of my soul, the power which begets life in my mind and in the innermost recesses of my thinking..."
Conversion vs. Perversion
(conversion- turning toward/// perversion-turning away) ● perversion of outside world - unreliable/unstable medium because memory can be faulty, but that's all we have ● perversion required to get to conversion - by turning away then only would you turn back ○ perception of images in memory ○ tension of memory in first half of book vs. second half ○ Augustine found something that's already there the whole time ○ everything you think you gain in knowledge you already know ○ you remember what you never experienced ○ coming to truth - recall something that's already there ○ memory brings you back to truth
Confession
A confession is something public. Augustine's confession serves as a model for other people who wish to confess also. Confession is part of the process of redemption because it is an acknowledgment of your transgression. Crime=sin, punishment is what you have to suffer through
Faustus
A highly respected Manichee who Augustine meets while a teacher in Carthage. While he is very modest, Augustine is disappointed by his overblown language and the fact Faustus can't answer Augustine's critiques of Manichean ideology. Thus he helps push Augustine closer to Christianity.
Neoplatonism
A school founded by Plotinus which views God as inherent in all aspects of the world. This makes God infinite, universal, and never changing thing which everything is arranged around. Even moral issues are judged around God—like evil would be defined as being far from God, good would be close to God. The world is defined on a relative scale.
Manicheism
A sect Augustine finds in Carthage. The Manichees believed that God was not all-powerful and evil was a force that kept His power in check. Augustine credits the Manichees with delaying his finding God, and his ultimate disillusionment with them was due to rational philosophy and astronomy that contradicted their cosmology (see Faustus).
The Role of the Intellect
Augustine explores the conflict between his studies/intellect and faith/belief in god. Augustine prioritizes what he studies by examining various texts and their genres: Literature (Virgil)- passionate response, emotionally captivated, he later regrets this reaction, he feels foolish-->serves as a danger by distracting one from finding God Rhetoric- price at being good at rhetoric-->proud of moral-->danger because deception of the self and others Philosophy (Cicero)- seduced intellectually-->disapproval of content of work-->serves as distraction Scriptures- dismissive-->later reacts with depth-->appeals to learned and unlearned man-->intends to reveal wisdom
"You are great, Lord, and highly to be praised (Ps. 47:2): great is your power and your wisdom is immeasurable" (Ps. 146:5). Man, a little piece of your creation, desires to praise you, a human being "bearing his mortality with him" (2 Cor. 4:10), carrying with him the witness of his sin and the witness that you "resist the proud" (1 Pet. 5:5). Nevertheless, to praise you is the desire of man, a little piece of your creation. You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
Augustine sets out his story as a confession, thus not the narrative structure of an autobiography but structured in terms of his life, his sins, his thoughts, and glorification of God. Already, even in these first lines, there are allusions to the tension writing an autobiographical confession when he believes in original sin and the irrelevance of individuality. There's also a huge tension between Augustine's intelligence and pride with the requisite Christian humility; the writing of this, after all, is not directly to God, but also to a reader for didactic purposes, and just in writing this he is in some roundabout way praising himself. Augustine's at least saying, "I'm so great to say God's great."
Confessions by Augustine
Augustine was born and raised in Thagaste, in Algeria (which was at the time was part of the Roman empire). Reflective, Augustine shows tremendous scorn for the society into which he was born, and condemns his grade school for teaching boys the wrong ideals (e.g. materialism rather than a love of God). This is also when he steals a pear with bunch of other boys and broods about it for an inordinate amount of pages. He went to continue his studies in Carthage, where young Augustine was quite embroiled in the material and lustful aspects of life. He also became interested in Manicheism. He then moves back to Thagaste before going on to Rome and Milan. Augustine's main philosophical quandary at this point is his conflicted feelings about Christianity. In Milan he feels he doesn't want to be abstinent and get baptized until the grand conversion scene in a Milan garden (notice how Confession starts with the fall and works its way back to the garden). We read the first X books of Confessions which trace Augustine's life up to his mother's death and events that took place right after his conversion to Christianity.
Sin
Augustine's confession of his sins is the driving theme in the book. To Augustine, sin in it's purest form stems from wanting to be like god, where god's desire (or velle, which means to want) and action (or posse, which means to be able to) are the same. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge in the garden of good and evil they wanted to be like god, where their desire and action were one in the same. When Augustine steals the pear from the pear tree, he is trying to understand what Adam and Eve did.
Monica
Augustine's loyal and very devout mother. She accompanies him when he goes to Carthage, Milan, and Ostia. While she postponed his baptism as a child (because she thought he wasn't ready), she never stopped pushing him along the road to Christianity.
Background info
Background Info: ● Augustine- 354-430 AD, written in 400s ● Written in Latin ● Born and raised in Thagaste, Algeria. A part of the Roman Empire ● Highly educated to interpret literature and narrative ● Confessions was written to be read aloud ● Basis for narrative comes from the structure of an epic poem ● Reject phenomenal to physical ● filled with paradoxes and non-linear moments ○ reason for importance on language ○ conception of God: immaterial
Ambrose
Catholic bishop at Milan whose abstract interpretation of the Bible had an enormous influence on Augustine and helped push him closer to Christianity
Dante/Augustine
Dante gets distracted from his journey in the Inferno because he pities those who are punished, showing an overabundance of emotion. Augustine, too, gets distracted in his early intellectual years when reading the Aeneid because it appeals only to the emotional.
Other
Theory of Friendship & Marriage Friendship: pg 60 Marriage: pg 169 - Monica (Mom) - abused -- tolerated it because husband will be Catholic What does Augustine reject? Faustus - knowledge of conventional kind - superficial, not attain wisdom himself, just given what he's told so not authentic Augustine - looking for a different kind of language, not just another "beautiful external" Last 3 books: philosophical/meditation first: emotional conversion then philosophical conversion Time - marks through time with words deliberate use of rhetoric as material Confessions is similar to collage: fills/pastes in words from other authors
"The fruit which we stole as beautiful because it was your creation, most beautiful of all Beings, maker of all things, the good God, God the highest good and my true good. The fruit was beautiful, but not that which my miserable soul coveted. I had a quantity of better pears. But those I picked solely with the motive of stealing. I threw away what I had picked. My feasting was only in the wickedness which I took pleasure in enjoying. I any of those pears entered my mouth, my criminality was the piquant sauce."
This is from the pear incident and expresses Augustine (while he is writing and reflecting) condemning the materialism of his youth that went against God. He also took this incident—as well as his later sins and transgressions, like sex—as a roundabout way of being led to God by being shown the disgrace and chaos of life away from Christianity. He stresses that God was always with him, while he was not always with God.
Conversion
Though the ultimate sin is wanting to be like god and thus having your desires become synonymous with your actions, a point where this does happen and it is not a sin is during conversion. The speech act "I convert" is the one thing that happens with just your speech or will, and thus is unifies the self and will into one.
Traps
all of mankind, not of God - things that bring him out of his self/own body/home ● Girls/ women/ streets/ gangs/ music/ theatre & emotions (pg. 36) / entertainment/ excessive friendship (pg. 56-57) ● Augustine - not easily content - always wants more ○ pg. 42 - poetry deceives the emotions, false home in pseudo-religions (Manichees, Astrologists, Academics, etc.), fiction has own truth ○ pg. 43 - not in own body - so he's not at home, seduction of the eye - takes him out of interiority -- that's the problem with theatre ○ pg. 59 → memory: he relies on himself ("state of mind")
Augustine's vehicle to get him to truth:
confessions, reading ● Ambrose: reads silently - unconventional (pg 93) ● Faustas: discussion of literature important to him, but knowledge is of conventional kind (see "Other" section below) ● pg. 123 & pg. 182 - dissimilarity, seeing through glass darkly ● Augustine in beginning - reflects infancy based on what he saw, so he makes himself every man ○ quest as reader and writer
Language
● "Empty Words"- words that are spoken and hold no meaning ● Augustine was well-educated in both rhetoric and ● Begins with Scripture words, not own words (interesting because supposed to be autobiography)
Conversion: Augustine's Ladder: ascends towards internal world goes from physical to internal/mind via reflection and dialogue
● Augustine's conversion begins with Cicero ● God reaches Augustine through Mom and reading Scripture ● Pg 153 - "pick up and read" ○ Cicero - embraces wisdom itself = way Augustine reads correlates how reading affects him ○ reinforces women as preceding culture (primitive) ○ Mom: primal, original, foundation, basis for everything else, not literary ○ Readings: masculine, literary/educated, constructed societal norms, mankind, civilized ■ physical world losing certainty - boy/girl/or angel? - doesn't know of ○ up until now, he was journeying through texts, now he stops ○ "I neither wished or need to read further" - less quotes after he says this marking - losing touch with reality ○ Once he finds God, he reads the bible differently - he's okay with silence ● Pg 171: Conversion Part II - with Mother and not reading - like beginning of the book - return to similar setting but different context ○ return to something new ○ return to noise of speech/realm of human being ● Scene of Conversion: pg. 182 ● "mirror" - distort - dim resemblance - imitate God ○ representation not reality - images/words/symbols are all referential ○ we're looking through words to find God ● page 187 - conversion: him coming into his own mind, he goes into himself and finds himself within God
Memory
● Book VIII: "The Birth Pangs of Conversion"- actual conversion- 152 ● Significance of the garden? ○ New life, rebirth ● Will vs. Ability ○ Book VIII, (20) ● How does his emotional state change during in the moment of his conversion? ● Language/ Word of God ● Role of Alypius ○ a friend that assists in a discovery ○ serves as a supporting force while remaining silent so that Augustine can ● 142-147- Soul battling against itself ● "And so step by step I ascended from bodies to the soul which perceives through the body, and from there to its inward force, to which bodily senses report external sensations, this being as high as beasts go." ● After the conversion, he begins to accept the god more than the bible ● pg. 7 - questions what he doesn't remember or know ○ Memory → confessions - a lot is at stake with remembering and not remembering ○ Memory is intertwined with journey go on his journey towards conversion alone.
Desire and Bodily Pleasure
● How does Augustine's relationship to passion change before and after his conversion? ● Pear Tree- "I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction. I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake." (II.29)- Second Paragraph in the middle ○ trying to connect to God- similar to the gain of wisdom that followed Adam and Eve ○ desire as a method to try and be like God ○ Condemns himself for the materialism that goes against God that had control of him in his youth ● pg. 151 - Lady countenance - entice him away from temptation ● Reasoned Faith, Unreasoned faith
Aeneas's Journey to Rome vs. Augustine's Journey to Truth
● both involved with reading (Aeneas - reading signs from Gods) ○ Aeneas - no central engagement ● Augustine - more involved with reading of text - central reader - driven by individual curiosity ○ not guided by fate/destiny ○ free will ○ feels very independent ● Both characters are on a journey where they are searching for identity ● Aeneas's journey is much more external while Augustine realizes that he need to focus more inwardly ● This puts Augustine on a spiritual journey rather than a "materialistic" or external journey that Aeneas goes on. ● What are they looking for? (Aeneas/ Augustine) ○ Aeneas- a kingdom - physical journey, has to do with material space ○ Augustine- wisdom, truth, enlightenment - looking for internal truth, spiritual search, not physical (internal)
Return
● page 39 - return to Mom, God, home, himself - through reading, he's coming into awareness of his subjective self and sees where god is in this subjective self ● Augustine denounces rhetorician because great rhetoricians have no substance to the content their speaking about ● Books 1-5: turned away, not knowing that he has to look inwards ● page 32 - pear: "turned away" - language of journey to return ● Both Aeneas's and Augustine's homecoming is redefined as they return to a new place ● page 32 - "dim resemblance" - place of perversion is place of dim resemblance ○ writes Confessions in first person - adds to that finding of the subjective self ○ resembles God but less - superficial and doesn't last, limits - not as full/bright ○ allegory of cave - cast shadow - things (shadows - God's creations) illuminated by illuminator (God) ■ Augustine goes closer to illuminated things instead of illuminator - ■ Augustine believes that you should be interested in yourself because that everyone interested in others but not in one's self gets you closer to God - if you understand yourself, you understand God
Parallel books 6-10 vs. Books 1-5
● repetitive stylistically ● repetition of phrases - rhetorical gestures (memories, cavern, etc.) ● first few books - cover infancy/childhood - represents childhood - gives time/thoughts to childhood - thinker of the origins of time ○ period of searching - searching for wisdom, truth, enlightenment, home - depicts himself as hero, like Aeneas, on a journey (but his goal is different from Aeneas's goal - his goal has more to do with origins and where he comes from) ● Importance of age ○ pg. 104: 30 years old ○ summarizes for rest of the book, remembering beginning of quest ○ Jesus - 30 years old when baptized and begins preaching ● Different view on memories ● Death of friend vs. Death of Mother ○ page 10 - look at sense of memory in beginning ○ Books I - V: cannot remember himself as far back in infancy so he claims he acted the way he did based off of what he sees with babies ■ points out weakness of memory - unstable, uncertain, limiting ○ outside world - external ○ memory - internal - all he knows ■ Books VI - X - he believes memory is all he has, so if memory is all he has then can't be held responsible ● believes a sign/symbol is inherently unstable
