St Augustine's Confessions

[Darcy88]

I'm reading St Augustine's Confessions and thought I'd begin a new thread for discussion of this landmark philosophical and religious text.

The two things I find most striking about the text are Augustine's faith and Augustine's style. He really was a man of faith. What an understatement! He's like a Christian Plato, just as fervidly devoted to what he conceives to be the ultimate truth. The epithets and words of praise he applies to God put the love-struck poet with his florid verses on his blushing beloved to utter shame. His faith was ultimately just that - faith, but it was a faith arrived at by a long and determined effort of intellectual maneauvers and philosophical path-taking. He began with the answer already formulated and that answer was God. But he had enough honesty and integrity to not be satisfied until he had proven that faith was no absurdity or compromise.

And his style is an awe to read. He studied rhetoric and even taught it, back when rhetoric was a highly respected and sophisticated art, and so this comes as no surprise. But in my years of studying philosophy I have heard and had many discussions on the best stylists among the philosophers. Never did I hear St Augustine mentioned. This is no doubt due to the religious-centric nature of his writings, but still, the writing is so superb he should be known for his style as much as for his contribution to Western theology. Apparently Albert Camus did his thesis on Augustine and Plotinus, something I find very interesting.

Something that struck me as odd if not as outright stupid was his intense self-loathing, especially concerning his supposed "lustfulness." The man was a normal man. He says from age 19-30 he had the same single lover, if I recall correctly. Not really a Don Juan right? But he constantly upbraids himself over what he regards as his own abject sexual iniquity, going so far as to wish that he'd been castrated as a young man to relieve himself of the guilt and torture of sexuality.

And then he recalls an episode when as a boy he and his friends raided a pear tree, stealing the fruit and laughing hard at this boyish lark. But he writes years later of the event with an attitude of immense shame, immense contrition, as if it had been some grossly evil capital crime. This sense of boundless self-loathing pervades the text and somewhat detracts from my enjoyment and appreciation of it. I really have a hard time taking someone seriously who spends an entire chapter weeping in profound heart-felt repentence over stealing a few pears back when he was a kid.

Anyone who has read or is interested in reading this book should share their thoughts. Would love to hear other people's opinions of St Augustine, be it from a philsophical, religious or literary perspective.

[Frohmankf1]

good luckhttp://www.subeducation.info/avatar2.jpg

[Charles Darnay]

I really like this book. I think you hit it right when you said "Christian Plato" - he was definitely influenced by Plato as well as of course Christianity. I read it mostly for his anecdotes and philosophy. While his ideas (mostly notably his philosophy of Time) usually just devolve into "I am incapable of knowing and must trust in god to tell me", he puts forth some great ideas.

As for Augustine's style, that really depends on the translation you read if you are reading it in translation. I read R.S Pine-Coffin's (an unfortunate surname) translation, and it is not that great in my opinion. But last year I did a first of work translating the first book and the Latin is indeed incredible. Just taking the first sentence:



Magnus es, domine, et laudabilis valde: magna virtus tua, et sapientiae tuae non est numerus. et laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio creaturae tuae, et homo circumferens mortalitem suam, circumferens testimonium peccati sui et testimonium, quia superbis resistis: et tamen laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio creaturae tuae.tu excitas, ut laudare te delectet, quia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te. da mihi, domine, scire et intellegere, utrum sit prius invocare te an laudare te, et scire te prius sit an invocare te. sed quis te invocat nesciens te?

that is rhetoric at its finest.

[Darcy88]

I really like this book. I think you hit it right when you said "Christian Plato" - he was definitely influenced by Plato as well as of course Christianity. I read it mostly for his anecdotes and philosophy. While his ideas (mostly notably his philosophy of Time) usually just devolve into "I am incapable of knowing and must trust in god to tell me", he puts forth some great ideas.

As for Augustine's style, that really depends on the translation you read if you are reading it in translation. I read R.S Pine-Coffin's (an unfortunate surname) translation, and it is not that great in my opinion. But last year I did a first of work translating the first book and the Latin is indeed incredible. Just taking the first sentence:



that is rhetoric at its finest.

Mine says its "based on a translation by P.J Pillkington." I'm no latin scholar so I cannot judge it by anything but readability, and in that category it gets top marks.

I'm only 130 pages in and I have a hunch he moves more to philosophy and away from biography in the book's later chapters.

And maybe once he's firmly ensconced in his Christian faith he'll lighten up a bit and give himself a break. They were only pears!

[Charles Darnay]

Self-loathing was the fashion at of the time.

[Darcy88]

Self-loathing was the fashion at of the time.

It seems very irrational to me. If God created man and made him a sexual being, why should Augustine be so zealously anti-sex and wish he'd been made a eunuch? The whole Christian obsession with sex is something I do not understand, and it can easily be argued that the attitude derives in appreciable part from the writings of Augustine. If you read the scriptures, and focus on the words of Jesus, its hard to locate there much scriptural justification for this antipathy towards sex and the flesh. Its obvious Jesus emphasised over and above sexual purity things like charity, kindness, faith, honesty and devotion, in addition to many more. Adultery is one thing, enjoying sex guilt-free with one's spouse or one's long-time lover is entirely another, in my opinion. Augustine it seems barely made such a distinction. I myself blame Paul for much of this. He never wed, he encouraged other devoted men of God not to wed, even though sex is a natural human thing and a result of how we were made. Would the Christian who harbors much resentment in his heart and who spurns charity really receive a softer judgement from his maker than one who has pre-marital sex or who lusts after some scantily clad girl of summer? I don't think so, but in many sermons preached throughout history and continuing to this day you may note this anti-sex attitude, as though sexual purity is a virtue comparable to charity.

[OrphanPip]

I'm only familiar with The City of God (which is unbalanced, lengthy, and repetitive).

He's not as rigorous a logician as Thomas Aquinas was. Instead, Augustine has a sort of bizarre way of reducing things into dualities, and of trying to morph Platonism into a Christian framework. To an extent, Plato fits well into Christianity, because the idea of a perfect ideal that can't be achieved on Earth is easy to reconcile with Christianity.

So, what you get with Augustine is a form of reasoning that always begins with defining two options, and then being told that one option is the good and Christian option and the only other option is sin and bad. We might think of him as a bit of a pessimist, he doesn't think most people can live up to the standard we should, so we're all kind of **** in his eyes, including himself. Luckily, God is maybe more forgiving than Augustine is.

His work is very much an incorporation of Greek and Roman philosophy into a Christian mindset, it's not always a seamless translation though.

[Darcy88]

To an extent, Plato fits well into Christianity, because the idea of a perfect ideal that can't be achieved on Earth is easy to reconcile with Christianity.

His work is very much an incorporation of Greek and Roman philosophy into a Christian mindset, it's not always a seamless translation though.

Absolutely. In a part I just read he writes of Platonism and Christianity as near identical aside from the fact that Platonism does not have Christ. He said it was Platonism that gave him one of the last big pushes he needed for his mind to embrace Christianity, offering a more intellectual and sophisticated presentation of the same ideas that appear in the Christian scriptures. I've always thought this was the case. Some of Paul's epistles are rather patently Platonist.

To quote Nietzsche, "Christianity is Platonism for the people."

The essences of the two are rather overlapping, but obviously there remain superficial differences so massive they don't seem and may not be so superficial.

[Darcy88]

I am really beginning to suspect that the constant hyperbolic expressions of remorse and shame that appear page after page and often sentence after sentence were a literary device, a stylistic embellishment that Augustine the great rhetorican employed in order to exalt his own story as well as the glory of God. Only a deeply neurotic to the point of being delusional individual could really behold themselves or their formers selves in such a ghastly demeaning light. He makes himself out to have been Charles Manson's evil twin. He was just too darn intelligent to really be that stupid. He makes sex out to be THE WORST, simply unconscionable, heinous, evil to a disgustingly reprehensible degree. I don't buy it. If it was so vital a concern Christ would have devoted half the sermon on the mount to discoursing on it, at least. And God wouldn't have so deeply imbedded and made irresistible man's sexual instinct.

The first 130 pages were a euphoric breeze, carrying me aloft in the manner of Emerson or Nietzsche or Camus. Now its just getting tired, redundant to a Sysiphean extreme. I ought to delight in his seeing the light, in reliving with him his glorious spiritual epiphanies. Instead I'm BORED, earlier I even fell asleep. I hope I get my second wind because other books, such as my shiny new copies of Leaves of Grass and the Portable Conrad, are beckoning to me from the shelf.

[Adolescent09]

I read this book a couple years ago and I too was stunned by his unwavering faith where he stands strong while most others would be fleeting.

[cafolini]

He makes himself out to have been Charles Manson's evil twin. He was just too darn intelligent to really be that stupid.

I agree 100+%. A master of hypocresies. Take the word "evil" away and put "smartass" there.
One of his best: "Joseph had to be a virgin. Otherwise God could not have given him His mother as a spouse."

[G L Wilson]

St. Augustine said, "Hell was made for the inquisitive," amongst other appalling things; therefore he is just like Plato, I agree.

[Darcy88]

I did get that second wind. I am back to deeply enjoying the work. I'm realizing that Augustine's journey was not merely a journey towards God and Christianity. It was a general spiritual process of attaining new heights of ascetic "purity." He was a philosopher, a thinker, and so many such men throughout history have been characteristically monkish. If you devote yourself heart and soul towards "truth," not merely religious truth but simply spiritual philosophical "truth," you often gravitate instinctively towards increasing asceticism. Nietzsche writes specifically of this in I think Beyond Good and Evil but I'm not sure. If Augustine had been a Platonist or a Cynic or a Stoic rather than a Christian, he'd have waged the same battle against the temptation of the flesh. Socrates was famed for his staunch continence. He was a hero of the stoics and many aspects of stoicism show up later in Christianity (in my opinion.) I mean would anyone as intelligent as Augustine really regard the state of marriage as one that is low and compromised, not to be valued highly and just as highly desired? No. He knew that in order to live the kind of zealous absolute life of devotion to God (or truth) he had to rid himself of all worldly incumbrances, a wife being a chief one. Folly in my eyes. Moderation, rich well-rounded fullness, is no less noble than all out categorical zeal. It takes strength to dive into rough rapids and not drown. Men like Augustine forwent entering the waters of life.

Also, I've always thought you could take Plato's trinity of truth and beauty and good and equate it to God. If you do that and you substitute a divine Christ for a wise Socrates you in essence have Christianity. Crude as that break-down may sound, I think there's some truth to it.

[Charles Darnay]

Also, I've always thought you could take Plato's trinity of truth and beauty and good and equate it to God. If you do that and you substitute a divine Christ for a wise Socrates you in essence have Christianity. Crude as that break-down may sound, I think there's some truth to it.


So did a large group of Romans. Neo-Platonism was a big thing in the 4th-5th century AD. St. Augustine was in part responsible for this movement. It began as an attempt to recognize that Socrates'/Plato's idea of the forms really was a Christian idea. Later on in history, it became a way to express the Christine ideals without the "Catholic God" - sort of a pre-Reformation movement.

[Darcy88]

So did a large group of Romans. Neo-Platonism was a big thing in the 4th-5th century AD. St. Augustine was in part responsible for this movement. It began as an attempt to recognize that Socrates'/Plato's idea of the forms really was a Christian idea. Later on in history, it became a way to express the Christine ideals without the "Catholic God" - sort of a pre-Reformation movement.

Interesting. Neo-Platonism is one school of ancient Philosophy I know nothing about. I've always been meaning to read Plotinus.

[Charles Darnay]

Pseudo-Dionysius (more commonly known as Dionysius the Areopagite) is an interesting late Neo-Platonist.

[Darcy88]

Pseudo-Dionysius (more commonly known as Dionysius the Areopagite) is an interesting late Neo-Platonist.

I've heard of Pseudo-Dionysius. Karen Armstrong discusses him in length in her book History of God. Now I see why Camus' thesis was on Augustine AND Plotinus. It seems so obvious now I can't believe I failed to make the connection.

[Darcy88]

Last night I read a chapter of Augustine and then 30 or so pages of Whitman's Song of Myself. The contrast was like December to August, elephant to ant. They come from diametrically opposing philosophical perspectives. Several stanzas of Whitman directly attack the attitude of men like Augustine. I'll edit them into this post later when I have time.

Augustine was a man of profound shame, Whitman was a man wholly shameless. Augustine was focused, his eyes trained to the fervid fire of God. Whitman was diverse and scatted, his eyes roving over the infinity of twinkling stars. I've never encountered books or men flung so distantly apart, to opposite poles of the spiritual sphere. The fact that I randomely read them one after the other on the same night astonishes me. I don't know who I sympathize more with. Both men make good compelling arguments.

[Charles Darnay]

I would never have placed those two together, but that is a really interesting distinction. I will have to reread "Song of Myself".

[cafolini]

I did get that second wind. I am back to deeply enjoying the work. I'm realizing that Augustine's journey was not merely a journey towards God and Christianity. It was a general spiritual process of attaining new heights of ascetic "purity." He was a philosopher, a thinker, and so many such men throughout history have been characteristically monkish. If you devote yourself heart and soul towards "truth," not merely religious truth but simply spiritual philosophical "truth," you often gravitate instinctively towards increasing asceticism. Nietzsche writes specifically of this in I think Beyond Good and Evil but I'm not sure. If Augustine had been a Platonist or a Cynic or a Stoic rather than a Christian, he'd have waged the same battle against the temptation of the flesh. Socrates was famed for his staunch continence. He was a hero of the stoics and many aspects of stoicism show up later in Christianity (in my opinion.) I mean would anyone as intelligent as Augustine really regard the state of marriage as one that is low and compromised, not to be valued highly and just as highly desired? No. He knew that in order to live the kind of zealous absolute life of devotion to God (or truth) he had to rid himself of all worldly incumbrances, a wife being a chief one. Folly in my eyes. Moderation, rich well-rounded fullness, is no less noble than all out categorical zeal. It takes strength to dive into rough rapids and not drown. Men like Augustine forwent entering the waters of life.

Also, I've always thought you could take Plato's trinity of truth and beauty and good and equate it to God. If you do that and you substitute a divine Christ for a wise Socrates you in essence have Christianity. Crude as that break-down may sound, I think there's some truth to it.

Then, should we ask once and for all (for you to answer), "there are no mental illnesses?"

[Darcy88]

I would never have placed those two together, but that is a really interesting distinction. I will have to reread "Song of Myself".

Whitman extolls pride and upbraids shame. To Augustine God was everything, to Whitman everything was God. It just shook my mind like one minute I'm sitting by a serene ripple-less sea of philosophy and the next minute that same sea is suddenly shaken into a fury of tsunami rising after tsunami in a wild domino-like way.

Between Song of Myself and Confessions there is a starker difference than that between Genealogy of Morals and the Republic.

[cafolini]

I would never have placed those two together, but that is a really interesting distinction. I will have to reread "Song of Myself".

I never liked W. But as liars go, aren't all good atoms the same, and all men equal to fish?

[cafolini]

I've heard of Pseudo-Dionysius. Karen Armstrong discusses him in length in her book History of God. Now I see why Camus' thesis was on Augustine AND Plotinus. It seems so obvious now I can't believe I failed to make the connection.

Dion was heavily involved, also. The final task was to get rid of The State's functionaries having to call the program.

[G L Wilson]

Dion was heavily involved, also. The final task was to get rid of The State's functionaries having to call the program.

The City of God is an enigma rapt in a mystery. It has no program.

[cafolini]

The City of God is an enigma rapt in a mystery. It has no program.

Next Cardinal, pleaaase!
Hurry!!! Or we might have to give another chance to Cauchon.

[Darcy88]

Then, should we ask once and for all (for you to answer), "there are no mental illnesses?"

I don't know what you mean. Care to clarify and elaborate?

[cafolini]

I don't know what you mean. Care to clarify and elaborate?
I can't. I have too much brain to deal with Saint Agustine. I would preffer to play three-in-a-row and then do some serious studies. Even morbid Aquinas is better at fishing with pure and useless logic.

[Darcy88]

I can't. I have too much brain to deal with Saint Agustine. I would preffer to play three-in-a-row and then do some serious studies. Even morbid Aquinas is better at fishing with pure and useless logic.

That's not fair. He is worth reading purely for his astonishingly lovely rhetoric. Maybe its just the translation, I don't know, but the writing is superb, up there with Emerson.

[cafolini]

That's not fair. He is worth reading purely for his astonishingly lovely rhetoric. Maybe its just the translation, I don't know, but the writing is superb, up there with Emerson.

Clarity is not the sole morality of art. That caused Ezra Pound to fall in love with Mussolini. Let's not forget and slowly go back to getting hooked to the useless consistency of rhetoric.

If as the Greek said,
the name is the archetype of the thing,
in the letters of r-o-s-e we'd find the rose
and the whole Nile in the word "Nile." ~ J. L. Borges
:out::rofl:

[Darcy88]

Clarity is not the sole morality of art. That caused Ezra Pound to fall in love with Mussolini. Let's not forget and slowly go back to getting hooked to the useless consistency of rhetoric.

If as the Greek said,
the name is the archetype of the thing,
in the letters of r-o-s-e we'd find the rose
and the whole Nile in the word "Nile." ~ J. L. Borges
:out::rofl:

I don't buy that. Brilliant rhetoric is brilliant rhetoric and is worth reading if for no other reason that to enjoy its rhetorical brilliance.

[cafolini]

I don't buy that. Brilliant rhetoric is brilliant rhetoric and is worth reading if for no other reason that to enjoy its rhetorical brilliance.

:banana:

[hanzklein]

I found the book a complete bore mostly and also consider Augustine to be an inferior philosopher compared to what I'm usually used to. None of his arguments are captivating now. I simply can't take him seriously for someone so 'dedicated to the truth' to dogmatically defend religion.