Overview

The ultimate purpose of life, for Augustine, is to ‘see the face of God’. He is then similar to the
classical patristic authors in one important ways:
They both believed that the pursuit of divine wisdom is the way-of-life. To know the divine – or
god – required training of the soul and only through that training could the soul recover the
image of God from the interior depth of the self and experience divine presence. But what kind
of training? It is both moral discipline and ethical virtue.
How did they differ?
First, for Augustine, recovery within the soul is beyond our human capacity without divine
assistance. But why? The soul is not in its original condition; it is now deformed because of the
fall – it is separate from God.
Secondly, how can a deformed soul open up to that necessary divine aid? For Augustine, faith is
not an open-ended quest, it must have an ‘ends’ – that is, Christ and the Church. Faith is valid
only when the soul opens itself up to the possibility of God and through divinely sanctioned
authority, then God will give the should the necessary moral efficacy and epistemic capacities
that it lost during the fall.
What is faith? It is not merely the propositional acceptance of ‘a God’ – it must also include an
adoption of divine revelation as per interpreted by the Church. This, and this alone, allows for a
restoration of the pre-lapse condition.
How did he come to such beliefs?
Manichaeism had presented itself as a empirical and rational alternative to orthodoxy
Christianity. It appealed to Augustine because it provided answers to theological and
philosophical problems via the material and natural world; two opposed forms of energy being
responsible for the physical cosmos.
More so, as a Manichaean ‘auditor’ he was not required to assume a saintly or celibate life. It
allowed him to live a life in which intellectual convictions and desires were separated.
There are several reasons as to why Augustine came to reject those beliefs. First, the abuse of
reason and the failures that result from an abuse of reason. “Truth, truth” was the slogan of the
Manichees, relying solely on reason and free from any external authority”. But to what extent
can the truth be sought without external authority and through a materialist lens? For example,
with no appeal to an external authority or metaphysics, dualistic materialism could not offer a
sufficient explanation to the problem of evil beyond the mere recognition of its brute existence
(conf. 5.10.19)
In short, Augustine came to two important conclusions:
1- Empirical reason alone is inadequate in answering key theological and philosophical
questions such as the existence of evil.
 2- The beliefs he adopted had appealed more to his vanity than his intellect – which he later
held must be in harmony.
Having abandoned Manichaeism, he fell into a state of theological skepticism. If we cannot
discover the existence of a soul through empirical science, does this mean there is no soul? Thus,
evil is not really evil – it’s just a brute fact, there is no higher-purpose, there is no soul, etc. He
concluded that these problems can only be solved by recourse to an idea: post-mortem
judgement. In other words, the soul lives on after our bodily death and that those souls would be
judged. He went onto reveal that the question of “God and soul” were always his real interest
because those two concepts were fundamental in understanding all the philosophical and
theological problems, including that of evil.
Here, once again, we reach a problem for Augustine. How can empirical sciences lead us to a
conviction in God and the soul? He overcomes this problem when he discovers the “books of the
Platonists”. This brings about a radical shift in his thinking:
He shifts from empirical analysis of the cosmos to an interior, a priori reflection –
contemplation. That is, the practice through which the inner self could turn away from the plane
of self-perception and distractions. Inner contemplation allowed the highest element of the soul
to come into immediate association with the Truth.
Contemplation could be gained through:
First, initial training of the mind in mathematics, dialectic and other mental disciplines that
honed i.e. sharpened the soul’s capacity for rational reflecting. He referred to this as a rational
intuition by which one can grasp the first principles of reality. Thus, the actual and intelligible
foundations of sensible reality (their reality and substance) were to be attained not by empirical
observation but through inner reflection.
This is important for Augustine, and it should be even so for the empiricist. The individual
whose sense-perceptions engage with an external world, cannot ignore the fact that the “truths”
of that world are dependent on the “self”. “Men go out and gaze in astonishment and high
mountains, huge waves of the sea, the broad reaches of rivers, the ocean that encircles the world,
or the stars in their courses, but they pay no attention to themselves” – in other words, they look
towards the external world and not their heart – the Confessions is a look into the heart.
That is to say, before we can look outwards to understand the physical world, we must look
inwards to understand the self. Take, for example, how our empirical knowledge can be incorrect
whereas our inner knowledge cannot.
Painter versus Chemist example.
Secondly, through a realization. When the soul begins to reflect inwards, it comes to a stark
realization: my empirical consciousness is only a surface level understanding of what is real, an
ever changing set of sense perceptions lacking stability. A stable soul, required inner reflection in
order to discover the immutable foundations of that which we perceive. In other words, a
foundation that is certain. In his text entitled ‘On the Trinity’ he admits for the sake of the
argument that our senses cannot always be trusted. But you cannot be in error when you say “I
am alive” – a judgement not of the senses but of the mind. What if you are dreaming? Well, if I
am dreaming, I must be alive to dream. If I am insane, I must be alive to be insane.
This type of knowledge refers to a priori knowledge. It is much similar to Descartes “I think,
therefore I am” – therefore, I exist. Augustine takes it a step further. Suppose, someone
responded: what if you are in error (you do not exist) then Augustine would respond; if I am in
error, I exist. What does not exist cannot be in error, therefore if I am in error, I exist.
This inner contemplation brings about a dual-realization: it offers the realization of the Truth but
also it brings us to know the contingency and dependency of man; his distance from the divine.
Thirdly, the process of contemplation required not only mental discipline but also moral and
ethical discipline of the body and soul so that it does not give false attention to the sensible and
transient. In other words, contemplation required a purification of the soul. Thus, it is a process
and not a momentary insight. For Descartes, the “I” that is discovered by rational thought
becomes a basis for a man-centered episteme – for Augustine, it merely points out that; if we
exist, we only exist in a contingent sense, and thus, we are limited and God is the Absolute. This
brings us to why he disagreed with the Platonist.
He differs from the Platonist however, in an important way, Platonic contemplation cannot be
sustained because it does not offer a solution to the fallen nature of the soul. In turn, because of
their excessive pride, they invest too much pride in reason i.e. without divine assistance. This, in
turn, brings man back into his fallen state.
In what way is this different from the modern world?