We explain who Saint Augustine was, where he was born and what his contributions were to philosophy and theology. Also, its characteristics and outstanding works.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430), better known as Saint Augustine, was a philosopher, theologian and Christian bishop born in Tagaste. Together with Saint Jerome, Saint Gregory and Saint Ambrose, He is considered one of the most important Fathers of the Catholic Church and “Doctor of Grace”,
His work, as well as his life, has been studied by many thinkers, theologians and philosophers. Philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt or Jacques Derrida mention it in many important points of their works. Augustine is known for two of his most famous worksthe Confessions (written between the years 397 and 398) and City of God (written between 412 and 426).
After its formation in the 4th century, in 1244, the pontificate of Pope Innocent IV established a religious order that arose under the monastic experience of Saint Augustine, known as the Order of Saint Augustine.
See also: Scholasticism
Life of Saint Augustine
Augustine was born on November 13, 354 in Tagaste, North Africa, current Souk Ahras, an Algerian town. His parents were Patricio Aurelius, a pagan, and Monica of Hippo, a Christian and known today as Saint Monica. It is assumed that Augustine and his family were Berbersan ethnic group from North Africa, even though at home, due to Roman influence, only Latin was spoken.
A fervent reader of Terence, Plautus, Seneca, Cicero and Virgil, Augustine was educated in Madaura, today Mdaorouch, between 366 and 369. Due to financial difficulties, his parents did not send him to study in Carthage. He spent that time in Tagaste, dedicating himself to what he called “the crooked paths along which those who turn their backs to God and not their faces walk.”
In 370, thanks to Romanianus, Tagaste's patron, he traveled to Carthage to study. In 372 had a son, Adeodatus (in Latin “gift from God”), with a Carthaginian woman with whom he lived between the ages of 16 and 30.
From the age of 19 to 28, Augustine belonged to the Manichaean sect. through them knew the dualistic theory of two substances, good, identified with light, and evil, identified with darkness. He taught grammar and rhetoric in Carthage, Rome and Milan. In 384, in Milan, the reading of the Neoplatonists, such as Plotinus, gradually distanced him from Manichaeism. The sermons of the Archbishop of Milan, Saint Ambrose, had a decisive influence on his thinking.
In 386 he retired with his mother, son and friends to the house of his friend Verecundus, in Lombardy. In 387 he had himself baptized by Ambrose and consecrated himself to the service of God. In 388 he returned to Africa and in 391 he was ordained a priest in Hippo by Bishop Valerius. At that time he wrote many texts, among which His discussions with the Manichaeans, Pelagians, Donatists, Arians and pagans stand out..
Towards the end of 395, after the death of Valerius, Augustine was appointed bishop of Hippo. In those years he wrote Letters to friends, adversaries, foreigners, faithful and paganswhich was highly celebrated by his contemporaries. Also then, he wrote the Soliloquiesthe Confessions and The city of Goda text that collects Augustine's responses to the accusations that Christianity received of being responsible for the misfortunes of the empire at the hands of the Goths.
In 429, various barbarian invasions began in North Africa, resisted by Augustine in his episcopal city, Hippo. In the third month of the siege, he fell ill and died.
Intellectual journey and thought of Saint Augustine
Augustine was a prolific author. He wrote more than one hundred worksamong which the Confessions, About the Trinitytheir Cards and City of God. These books are the result of his intellectual biography and his subsequent conversion to Christianity, since his intellectual life did not begin at the hands of the Church.
For ten years, Augustine remained a Manichaeist, following the principles of good and evil as ontological dualism preached by the founder of the sect, Mani. From his Manichean stage he went on to a brief stay in academic skepticism. Finally, upon arriving in Milan, he met Ambrose and began his first readings of the Neoplatonists, such as Plotinus.
The Neoplatonists had a decisive influence on Augustinian philosophy, since led him to conceive evil not as a substance but as the lack of a good there where that good should be given.
After his subsequent conversion to Christianity, Augustine's philosophy stands as the construction of a series of theoretical discussions on different axes: beauty, good and evil, order, time, memory. They are all related in different ways. For example, health is the order of the body, beauty is the radiance of order, and peace is its serenity. If evil were thought of in these terms, it could be said that it is a disorder produced by the absence of an ordered good at a certain point in life.
Saint Augustine's thought is organized, then, in a clear intellectual journey.
- A rhetorical training.
- The discovery of philosophical problems through Cicero.
- An approach and subsequent adherence to Manichaeism.
- An abandonment of Manichaeism as unsatisfactory in relation to the problem of good and evil.
- A brief stay in academic skepticism.
- The approach to Christianity through the preaching of Ambrose of Milan.
- The deep and intellectual adherence to Neoplatonism.
- The conversion to Christianity.
Works of Saint Augustine
All of Augustine's works They were written after his conversion to Christianity in Milanexcept for a short treatise on beauty called Neat and fitalready lost and about which very little is known.
By making a historical reconstruction of his philosophical production, one can identify a first period that passes during his retirement to Casiciacoafter falling ill in Milan. The following works are part of this period: About the order, About happy life, About the immortality of the soul and Against academics.
Upon returning to Milan, Augustine wrote the Soliloquiesmonologue that begins by establishing the need to know the soul and God. He also wrote his treatise Of musicone of his most difficult works, About free willagainst the Manichaeans, On the genesis against the Manichaeanswhich is oriented to the same place, and Master's degreea dialogue about language and knowledge.
From Milan Augustine left for Hippo, where he was first ordained a priest and then a bishop. There he wrote his most famous works, among which is Confessionswhere he develops and exposes his theory on memory, time and good. At that time he also worked in On various issues (where he established his philosophical position regarding various topics) and About Christian doctrine and About the trinitywhich are theological works.
The most important of his works is The city of Godwhich he finished shortly before he died and after publishing Retractions. In it he develops an idea inherited from Plotinus, which maintains that the measure of time is temporalitywhat happens in the clocks, what happens to each one.
What you are interested in showing is how time is a dimension of the soul: It's what happens when time passes, how you look at it. The story of the two cities also appears there, one that comes from Abel (the figure of the nomad, and the one who founded the city of God) and Cain (the figure of the sedentary, and the one who founded the eternal city or of the devil).
Some of his most recognized works
- Neat and fit
- About the order
- About happy life
- About the immortality of the soul
- Against academics
- Soliloquies
- Of music
- About free will
- On the genesis against the Manichaeans
- Master's degree
- Confessions
- On various issues
- About Christian doctrine
- About the trinity
- Retractions
- The city of God
Reception of the work of Saint Augustine
Augustine's work had a determining importance in European philosophical, religious and cultural history. He was one of the first to use faith as a starting point for philosophical reflection.. Both the breadth of the topics worked on and his philosophical and personal approach meant, for future generations and even today, a radical change in the way of thinking and writing.
The Confessions of Saint Augustine They are a clear example of the Augustinian influence on later philosophy. Its intimacy, the autobiographical model of interiority, together with various elements, allowed include introspection as an important tool for literature.
City of Godfor its part, also influenced later thinkers. Descartes was one of the philosophers who were most influenced by the ideas presented in that work. There he found a clear antecedent to his fundamental principle of cogito ergo sum (“I think therefore I am”), summarized in the si enim fallar, sum Augustinian (“if I make a mistake, I exist”).
Beyond those philosophers who found inspiration for their thinking in Augustinian work, such as Descartes, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt or Jacques Derrida, Augustine's work profoundly marked the coming Christian theological schools.
This happened in such a way that, a posterioriwhen reviewing the history of Christian philosophical-theological thought, two large groups are observed: Platonic-Augustine thought and Aristotelian-Thomistic thought (influenced, the latter, by the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas).
Continue with: Idealism
References
- Agustín, S. (1979). The Confessions, I, 1, 1. Mexico: Porrúa.
- Agustín, S. (2016). The city of god. Books I-VII (Vol. 364). RBA Books.
- Arendt, H., & de Haro, AS (2001). The concept of love in Saint Augustine (Vol. 188). Madrid: Meeting.
- Descartes, R. (1904). Metaphysical meditations (Vol. 22). Direction and Administration.
