Original language: Latin.
Born in Thagaste, Numidia Cirtensis, the Roman Empire (present-day Algeria). Lived in Carthage, Rome, and Milan. Was the bishop of Hippo Regius, also in Numidia.
I read Confessions and parts of City of God.
Confessions was written about 400 AD.
My edition of Confessions was translated with introduction and notes by Henry Chadwick, first published 1992.
Plotinus and Augustine kept saying that the pleasures of the flesh lead to misery, confusion, errors. They do not, it’s a lie. They lead to pleasure, sometimes ecstasy. Yes, not everything is happiness, but neither are the pious in constant bliss. I am more of an Epicureanist than a Platonist.
“I ran wild in the shadowy jungle of erotic adventures,” Augustine says. “I could not have been wholly content to confine sexual union to acts intended to procreate children, as your law prescribes, Lord.“ Is he kidding? Augustine says “I gave myself totally” to erotic pleasure at 16, and he regrets it. Your reviewer is glad he did.
“There are no caresses tenderer than your (God’s) charity” – I retch at the sycophantic over-sweetness.
Augustine had a conversion experience, and he has the fervor of the convert in this book. His confessions truly are confessions. He examines every part of himself, his mind, and his behavior for what he considers sins.
Augustine echoes Plotinus in many of the things he says, such as the soul’s superiority to the body, and intellection’s superiority over the five senses. It’s interesting how much Augustine leaned on Plotinus in his writing. There are tons of footnotes that refer to Plotinus. Plotinus was a pagan, and Augustine was a Christian saint, yet Plotinus’s ideas were very adaptable to the Christian God.
Augustine and Plotinus deny and erase what makes us human, some of the joys of being human. I think people should have a balance between the spiritual and the physical, but Augustine and Plotinus deny the physical part of us.
Augustine thought all pleasure is a sin. Even the pleasure of eating when you are hungry, or the pleasure of listening to sacred music – let alone the pleasures of sex.
And alas! Augustine says homosexuality is “always to be detested and punished.” On this topic, the ancient pagans were more civilized than the Christians.
He takes time to condemn theater as well.
To be sure, Augustine has some good passages involving meditation – though he does not use that name for it. “If to anyone the tumult of the flesh has fallen silent, if the images of earth, water, and air are quiescent, if … the very soul itself is .. no longer thinking about itself… then he (God) alone would speak .. through himself.”
Credit where it’s due – Augustine’s discussion of memory and human psychology (though he doesn’t use that word) in Book X is brilliant. That’s his admission card to being a philosopher.
In the midst of all the praise of God are some philosophical arguments against those Augustine disagrees with.
Hundreds of pages of kissing God’s ass. What a waste of time.
The City of God
Some pretty ugly anti-Semitism in there.
Last thoughts on St. Augustine.
His slavish fawning on God and Christ is nauseating. Also his retconning of the Old Testament as a prophecy of Jesus Christ. I did like some of his more philosophical writings, such as his discussions of time and memory.
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