Saint Augustine’s Core Philosophical Concepts
Human Happiness and Free Will
God is the ultimate object of human happiness. Humanity seeks happiness, but cannot find it solely within itself. Individuals are also required to transcend themselves in the realm of love, because God alone is the proper object to provide true happiness, as a free being. Humanity can only find true happiness in God, but often lacks an adequate understanding, leading individuals to choose mutable goods as their life’s goal instead of adhering to the immutable good. In such cases, individuals turn away from the real object of their happiness, but do so freely. This is the result of a personal decision, for which they are fully responsible.
The Origin of Evil
Saint Augustine’s concept of freedom also addresses a problem that greatly concerned him: the origin of evil. (Is God responsible for the existence of evil in the world?) Saint Augustine offers a solution consistent with the philosophy of Plotinus. Evil is not a positive entity or reality, but rather a privation or absence of good. Consequently, not being a positive being itself, it cannot originate from God. Both evil and good have their origin in the free will of human beings. However, God, in His infinite goodness, can bring good even from evil.
The Nature of Humanity
Saint Augustine presents a dualistic conception of humanity: body and soul are inseparable yet functionally distinct substances. The soul is a self-sufficient substance. Augustine states that humanity, created in God’s image, embodies Eternity, Truth, and Love. The soul consists of three faculties or powers:
- Memory: which makes the past present;
- Intelligence: which seeks truth; and
- Will: which strives for happiness.
From this dualism, or perhaps from the misuse of free will, arise the world’s ills suffered by humanity, particularly hatred, selfishness, slander, suspicion, and even crime against one another. Human nature is receptive and open to receiving God’s action, which manifests as an inner drive and desire for its own regeneration.
Arguments for God’s Existence
God is the primary object of Saint Augustine’s philosophy. The main argument for God’s existence in Saint Augustine’s philosophy is the presence within humanity of universal, necessary, and immutable truths. The foremost of these is the aspiration for truth and human happiness itself. This also includes the first principles of reason, mathematical axioms, and ideas such as justice. These eternal truths are unchanging and necessary. God appears as the necessary being, demanded by the very universality and necessity of these eternal truths. Saint Augustine posited that exemplary ideas reside in the divine intelligence, manifesting in time according to God’s designs and creative action. God introduced into matter what Saint Augustine called seminal reasons (rationes seminales). Matter carries within itself the seeds or roots from which things originate. In all beings, this is the mark of God, as they respond to His ideas and originate as specimens from the seeds imprinted by Him in matter. This leads Saint Augustine to his doctrine of exemplarism, where divine beings bear within themselves the imprint of God.
Augustinian Epistemology: Knowledge and Illumination
Regarding knowledge, Saint Augustine distinguishes between sensory knowledge and intellectual knowledge, the latter dealing with ideas of universal validity. Sensory knowledge is produced by the lower reason (which informs the body and connects with mutability). However, the soul is not satisfied with this; it turns inward to discover eternal and immutable truths, which can only be founded upon an eternal God. The object of the higher reason is the knowledge of God. Only this knowledge truly fulfills the soul’s longing for truth and happiness. It is through the higher reason, connecting with divinity, that true knowledge occurs through illumination. This process requires humanity to transcend itself (autotranscendence) in three stages:
- Separation from the material world.
- Introversion or spiritual discovery.
- The leap to the transcendent, to God, who encompasses both the exterior and interior worlds.