St Augustine

Ryan N. S. Topping, Richard Bailey

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781472504883
• eBook ISBN: 9781472504876
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

After setting Augustine's thought firmly within the context of his life and times, Ryan Topping examines in turn the causes of education (the purposes, pedagogy, curriculum, and limits of learning) as Augustine understood them. Augustine's towering influence over Medieval and Renaissance theorists – from Hugh of St Victor, to Aquinas, to Erasmus – is traced. The book concludes by drawing Augustine into dialogue with contemporary philosophers, exploring the influence of his meditations on higher education and suggesting how his ideas can reinvigorate for our generation the project of liberal learning.

Part 1

Intellectual Biography

Chapter 1

Approaching Augustine

Introduction

With over 300 scholarly books and articles dedicated to his life and thought each year, Augustine is one of the few ancient thinkers who continue to excite. In every age he has exercised an influence in the West on Catholics and Protestants, as well as scholars otherwise alienated from Augustine’s religion, who regularly look to him for insight. While Augustine’s reputation is secure, familiarity with the basic suppositions of his thought is far less common among those with no professional obligation to be better informed. Indeed, and not just among those unacquainted with his works, many associate Augustine primarily with his reputation for capricious conclusions about women, about hell, and about sex. However one appraises Augustine on such topics, the disproportionate attention that they receive in conversations over coffee and in classrooms (whenever his name comes up) surely tells us far more about the preoccupations of our own time than about Augustine. A neophyte approaching Augustine without the benefit of years of study is bound to wonder what past ages found attractive. Must you share Augustine’s religion to find his philosophy persuasive? What from among his reflections on education remains relevant for own time? The laudable aim of this series, and hence of this book, is to initiate readers into the tradition of philosophical thinking about education in the West. Part of the task of the interpreter who aims to reach more than a specialized audience is to build bridges, where possible, as well as to identify sign posts and themes that provide a basic orientation to Augustine’s thought. That is the purpose of this introductory chapter. Only in the midst of describing something of Augustine’s biography, the circumstances of his writing, and his intellectual development will it then be possible to turn to his specifically educational ideas with profit and with pleasure. This encouragement is needed especially when we realize that, by some descriptions of philosophy, Augustine has no educational philosophy at all.

Augustine’s life and times

Edward Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (1788) consigned the period of the Late Roman Empire to virtual historical oblivion for many generations of European scholars (O’Donnell, 2001, 8). That trend has now passed. Recent years have witnessed an awakened interest in ‘late antique studies.’ No longer do historians view the end of the ancient world as a simple narrative of decline and fall, of the advance of barbarism over civility, and as an age without intellectual contributions. With the mid-twentieth-century work of scholars such as Peter Brown and Henri Marrou, interest in Augustine’s life and times has dramatically increased, and so with it our understanding of the period of the close of Roman rule and its transition to the successor empires. Subsequent chapters will give attention to Augustine’s development of educational concepts; here we begin by sketching only the barest outline of his life.1

By Augustine’s time, Roman North Africa had enjoyed the benefits of empire for several hundred years. United in prosperity and by culture, in a significant way in the fourth century Rome was Athens was Carthage. Educated people read the same books. They shared the same philosophical ideas. And they were awarded similar privileges. Augustine’s African birth did not separate him from Greco-Roman civilization. He was steeped in the common rhetorical and philosophical tradition of Latin late antiquity that looked back, among others, to Cicero, to Virgil, and to Varro. By the time of his birth, for instance, Augustine’s family had been Roman for a century and a half.2 He was as Roman as the children of fifth and sixth generation Irish immigrants to Boston today are American. In secular learning, Roman Africa looked back to Apuleius of the third century and would look forward to Martianus Capella in the fifth.3 Christianity in Africa, too, had a distinguished history. Augustine and his contemporaries built upon a theological tradition that was carried across the Mediterranean to their shores by Christian missionaries of the second century. From the third century, Africa could boast of Tertullian and the martyr bishop St. Cyprian among its sons (Daniélou, 1980; Merdinger, 1997). Immersed in the particular history and struggles of the African continent, Augustine nonetheless shared in the larger experience of the Catholic Church and of the Roman Empire in his time.

Born of a Christian mother and a pagan father in A.D. 354, Augustine lived and died between two worlds and two ages, between pagan antiquity and the Christian Middle Ages. From his small town of Thagaste, now in modern Algeria, Augustine went on to study grammar in Madauros, then rhetoric in Carthage. As a young man he took up teaching posts in Rome and eventually in the Western Imperial capital of Milan. After his conversion, Augustine walked away from his official appointment as court rhetorician in Milan. Throwing aside what promised to be a brilliant career, Augustine spent the 9 months after leaving his post on retreat with friends in preparation for baptism at the hands of Ambrose at the Easter vigil of 387.

Prior to his conversion, Augustine had been attached to a religious sect founded by a Persian prophet, Mani (A.D. 216–277). The Manichees taught that matter and spirit were controlled by competing gods. They also promoted a rational approach to religion that depended on reason, not on faith (util. cred. 3.7; Coyle, 2001). Unlike the Catholics, Mani and his disciples, adopting an early version of the historical-critical method of scriptural interpretation, appealed only to those portions of the Bible which appeared amenable to reason (util. cred. 3.7). What led, ultimately, to Augustine’s disenchantment with the sect was his philosophical examination of their cosmological claims. As a feature of their system Manichees claimed not only knowledge of religion but also of science, and in particular, that they could predict the motions of the heavens. As Augustine discovered, however, these predictions compared unfavorably with Greek scientific and philosophical models (conf. 5.3.3–4). Moreover, at about the same time Augustine discovered a Christian community in Milan whose members attracted him both by the sanctity of their lives and the sharpness of their intellects (conf. 5.12.22; 6.9.15). The Milanese circle was comprised of Christians who fused Platonic philosophy with the allegorical interpretation of the Bible. At the heart of this community presided Ambrose (ca. 340–397).

It was Augustine’s contact with Ambrose, above all, that drew him at last out of his association with the Manichees into the community of the Catholic Church. Augustine saw this meeting as providential. ‘I was led to him by you, unaware that through him, in full awareness, I might be led to you’ (conf. 5.13.23). Adept in classical philosophy, Ambrose was a forceful preacher and a skilful diplomat. His preaching opened up to Augustine a new method of reading Scripture. Although the allegorical method was already well known in the East at least since Origen, Augustine had no experience of it, and, as is not uncommon among young people, despite having a devout mother, Augustine himself had no idea that Christianity included within itself a coherent philosophical outlook. Prior to meeting Ambrose, Augustine’s acquaintance with Catholic philosophy had been mediated to him through the lens of its Manichean opponents. Now, Catholic doctrine at least became credible. ‘More and more my conviction grew that all the knotty problems and clever calumnies which those deceivers of ours had devised against the divine books could be dissolved’ (conf. 6.3.4).4

In the months leading up to his baptism on 24 April 387 Augustine organized his first experiment in Christian community, at Cassiciacum.5 This is the name of the tiny Italian Villa, 21 miles North-East of Milan where for 9 months Augustine and a small group of family and friends enjoyed precious days of prayer mixed with lively conversation. During the day they read Virgil and discussed philosophy. At night Augustine wrote books. Important for the history of Western education and theories of knowledge, the four texts from this period are known as the Cassiciacum dialogues (which we shall return to in subsequent chapters). Augustine had given up a spectacular career as a teacher. After the long struggle that had brought him to faith, Augustine hoped that his new life would consist of quiet contemplation in the company of friends. This was, after all, the ancient philosophical ideal of otium, or philosophical leisure. Events did not unfold as he had planned. After baptism Augustine never returned to Cassiciacum, although he did form another community, this time nearer to home, in Thagaste. These servi Dei, servants of God, as they were called, were all laymen, dedicated to prayer and study, and it was among these that Augustine lived a semimonastic life for 2 years. But in 391, and quite against his will, Augustine had to abandon this too. He was ordained a priest, and 4 years after that, bishop of Hippo. In a homily some years later, Augustine candidly recounted before his people how it was that he came into the public ministry:

I, whom by God’s grace you see before you as your bishop, came to this city as a young man; many of you know that. I was looking for a place to establish a monastery, and live there with my brothers. I had in fact left behind all worldly hopes, and I did not wish to be what I could have been; nor, however, was I seeking to be what I am now. I have chosen to be nobody in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tents of sinners (Ps. 84.10). I separated myself from those who love the world; but I did not put myself on an equal footing with those who preside over Churches. Nor did I choose a higher place at the banquet of our Lord, but a lower, in significant one; and he was pleased to say to me, Go up higher (Lk 14.10). So much, though, did I dread the episcopate, that since I had already begun to acquire a reputation of some weight among the servants of God, I wouldn’t go near a place where I knew there was no bishop. I avoided this job, and I did everything I could to assure my salvation in a lowly position, and not to incur the grave risks of a high one. But, as I said, a servant ought not to oppose his Lord. I came to this city to see a friend, whom I thought I could gain for God, to join us in the monastery. It seemed safe enough, because the place had a bishop. I was caught, I was made a priest, and by this grade I eventually came to the episcopate. (s. 355.2)6

Once a bishop, Augustine’s days were spent preaching, writing, and administering an unwieldy diocese in a modest provincial town. In 430, as the Vandals laid siege to his city and to his people, Augustine lay dying, his last 10 days spent alone in his room, weeping and praying over the seven penitential psalms in preparation for his final departure. The city held out for at least 14 months. Shortly after the siege the Vandals destroyed the city by fire (v. Aug. 28).

In bare form, the above describes Augustine’s life and times. If all we knew of Augustine came from what others said of him, he would remain an attractive figure among the great philosophers and saints in the Western tradition. But that of course is not all we know of him. What Augustine thought most important for others to know about himself he conveniently and beautifully set out in his Confessions.

Of all Augustine’s writings, the Confessions exercise a unique attraction both because of its compelling argument and the attractive way that its story is told. But like a river from its current, in Augustine’s telling one cannot separate the two: narrative and argument combine into one form. From the opening lines, the reader finds himself swiftly caught up in a tale that is at once Augustine’s and the reader’s own. All that Augustine expects from us, his readers, is curiosity mixed with a natural interest in our own happiness. From there Augustine catches his readers by moving seamlessly between his particular life – the events, the feelings, the frustrations unique to Augustine of Hippo – and the universal aspirations that all people suffer and, since Christ, can hope to fulfill. The argument of the Confessions is announced in its opening lines. Magnus es domine, et laudabilis valde. ‘You are great Lord and worthy to be praised’ (conf. 1.1.1). The supreme good is also the one object most worthy of our affection. Into this scale, from Creator to creatures, has been inserted man, homo. Man is unique because he bears the capacity to know and to mirror in himself, through the structure of his own affections, the right ordering of creation. Et laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio creaturae tuae. ‘And man desires to praise you, a little portion of your creation’ (conf. 1.1.1). To discover this task is to know our greatest work; to complete it is to achieve our deepest satisfaction.

Augustine believes this vocation to be common to all people. He believes it is one that also must be nurtured. The location of man between beasts and the divine is a common enough theme within ancient (as well as modern) literature.7 Being bodily, we share in the likeness of beasts and the rest of the material world; being rational, we are like the angels: in rendering praise to the creator, men and women lift themselves up first, then along with them everything else, back to God. As others have shown, philosophy in the ancient world was a way of life, a set of disciplines as much as a method of debate, a form of community practiced alongside and sometimes in competition with religion (Hadot, 1995; Dillon, 2004). In these opening lines of the Confessions, however, Augustine articulates how he thinks Christianity supersedes ancient philosophy in two respects: by offering a more complete description of the cause of human misery and by providing a more certain method of its remedy. First, the problem: homo circumferens testimonium peccati sui. ‘Man is carrying the testimony of his own sin’ (conf. 1.1.1). ...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Part 1 Intellectual Biography
• Part 2 Critical Exposition
• Part 3 Philosophical Reception and Relevance
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright