The Conversion and Therapy of Desire

Augustine's Theology of Desire in the Cassiciacum Dialogues

Mark J. Boone

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781498229395, 9781498229418
• eBook ISBN: 9781498229401
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The first fruits of the literary career of St. Augustine, the great theologian and Christian philosopher par excellence, are the dialogues he wrote at Cassiciacum in Italy following his famous conversion in Milan in 386 AD. These four little books, largely neglected by scholars, investigate knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, the problem of evil, and the intriguing relationship of God and the soul. They also take up the ancient philosophical project of identifying the principles and practices that heal human desires in order to attain happiness, renewing this philosophical endeavor with insights from Christian theology. Augustine's later books, such as the Confessions, would continue this project of healing desire, as would the writings of others including Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas.Mark Boone's The Conversion and Therapy of Desire investigates the roots of this project at Cassiciacum, where Augustine is developing a Christian theology of desire, informed by Neoplatonism but transformed by Christian teaching and practices.

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Augustine at Cassiciacum

Augustine’s commitment to the Christian faith in AD 386 is a pivotal event not only in his own life, but also in the history of Christianity and the history of the world, for the writings and teachings of Augustine set the course of theological and cultural development in western Christendom. But to what exactly was Augustine converted?1 Scholars have long debated several questions pertaining to Augustine’s conversion: whether he really converted to Christianity in 386, whether he was a neo-Platonist, and, if he adhered to both neo-Platonism and Christianity, which of the two was dominant in his thought. These are important questions, and I hope that this book will help to answer them. But these are not the questions that Augustine himself was asking when he abandoned his worldly pursuits of money, fame, and physical pleasures in 386. At this time he retreated with a few friends and relations to Cassiciacum, to the country home of his friend Verecundus. Here he wrote his first post-conversion writings, the Cassiciacum dialogues: Contra Academicos, or Against the Academics; De beata vita, or On the Happy Life; De ordine, or On Order; and Soliloquia, or Soliloqies. Ernest L. Fortin remarks that scholars often approach these earliest writings with their own questions rather than Augustine’s own questions.2 Augustine himself was more interested in questions such as “What is the nature of the soul?”; “What is the nature of happiness?”; and “How does one become happy?” In this volume I investigate three questions important to Augustine during his retreat at Cassiciacum: “What ought we to desire?”; “What has gone wrong with our desires?”; and “How do we come to desire the right things?”

Yet if we are attentive to the questions that motivated Augustine, we are more likely to find the answers to the questions that have motivated so many scholars. In letting the dialogues speak for themselves—in allowing Augustine’s own questions and answers to emerge from the dialogues—it will be easier to discover to what degree Augustine is a Christian, to what degree he is a neo-Platonist, and how the Christian and neo-Platonic elements of his thinking interact. In this book I shall defend the thesis that Augustine’s philosophy of desire in the Cassiciacum dialogues is a distinctively Christian one. In order to show this I shall investigate Augustine’s own questions and answers pertaining to desire; what emerges will prove to be a distinctively Christian philosophy of desire. Indeed, it would not be amiss to call it a theology of desire.

There are two components to my thesis. The first is that Augustine’s theology of desire at Cassiciacum is a distinctively Christian one incorporating some neo-Platonic elements—not a merely neo-Platonic one. The second component is that the Christian elements help to determine the shape of the whole; they help to determine the significance and application of the neo-Platonic elements.

Now this theology of desire is not exactly an anti-Platonic one; it has neo-Platonic elements. Nor will I argue that it is thoroughly Christian—only that it is distinctively so. Non-Christian regions may remain in the thinking of this newly converted Christian, so honest about his theological questions, so committed to seeking truths he has not yet found—and to understanding truths he has found but not yet fully comprehended.

In short, Augustine at Cassiciacum is developing a theology of desire that borrows heavily from neo-Platonism; yet its Christian characteristics determine the shape of its overall structure: trinitarianism, Christology, sin, grace, and the quest to understand God and the soul.

Before explaining the major distinctives of Augustine’s theology of desire, it would be helpful to review the major alternative interpretations of Augustine’s conversion and early writings. To this I now turn, after which I shall explain why a look at the Cassiciacum dialogues’ analysis of desire is so useful for understanding Augustine—and for some other reasons. Following that, I shall review the major philosophical schools with which Augustine interacts at Cassiciacum; finally, I shall summarize what his own views on desire at Cassiciacum actually are.

Ways of Understanding Augustine’s Conversion and Early Writings

The nature of Augustine’s conversion and the character of the early writings have been subjects of significant debate for about one and a quarter centuries. Perspectives on Augustine in 386 and the years following generally fall into one of four categories. After discussing the nature of this dispute, I shall outline these four major perspectives on young Augustine, and endorse one of them.3

Augustine’s worldview at Cassiciacum has been the subject of a great dispute concerning the nature of his commitment to Christianity. Intertwined with this debate are questions concerning the notion of Christian neo-Platonism and the extent to which the two were reconcilable in Augustine’s world. There is also the question concerning, to whatever extent they were not, which one figures more prominently in his thought at Cassiciacum. This debate more or less began in 1888 with two scholarly works on Augustine, which inspired the first of the four perspectives on young Augustine’s thought.

The first of these was Gaston Boissier’s comparably modest article on the alleged change of views between Augustine’s early and later writings. The second was Adolph von Harnack’s work, which explicitly reads the Confessions as a misrepresentation of his mind in 386 and the years after.4 Later Prosper Alfaric championed this interpretation of Augustine.5 One crucial aspect of this rather uncharitable reading is the idea that Augustine was insincere, a convert to neo-Platonism but not to Christianity, which he allegedly saw as an inferior substitute for Platonism, fit only for the less intelligent masses. Only much later, so the story goes, did he finally commit to Christianity. This interpretation approaches Augustine as being at different times two very different thinkers, in the early dialogues a neo-Platonist and in later works such as the Confessions a genuine Christian. A genuine Christian, but deceptive about his past, for such a reading tends to suspect Augustine of dissembling and deception.

Charles Boyer was a formidable adversary of Alfaric.6 Thanks largely to his efforts, this reading is now widely considered discredited. Yet its effects have not ceased to linger in Augustinian scholarship. Two more recent scholars associated with this reading of Augustine are Paula Fredrekson and Leo C. Ferrari.7 Brian Dobell’s reading8 is also similar to Alfaric’s, though Dobell is explicit that the Confessions is not deceptive.9

This interpretation has also influenced a rather common tendency to view Augustine’s intellectual development as a dramatic shift from a philosophical optimism present in his early writings to a ...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Augustine at Cassiciacum
• Chapter 2: Desiring Wisdom
• Chapter 3: Desiring and Having God
• Chapter 4: The Desire to Know Order and to Be Ordered
• Chapter 5: Desiring God and the Soul
• Chapter 6: The Love of God and Human Beings
• Bibliography