Lyceum & Book Club - Week 11 - Lecture Notes - Overview to Augustine

From utm.edu:

For around 1,000 years, the story of philosophy in Europe had been that of the Greek thinkers, beginning with the Presocratics on through those in Hellenistic and Roman times. However, as Christianity swept through the Roman Empire, by around 400 CE the face of philosophy dramatically changed, along with every other cultural institution of the time. This new phase of philosophy also lasted for about 1,000 years, and is called medieval philosophy, named after the medieval period of European history.

From Classical to Medieval

The transition from Greek to medieval philosophy was a rough one, and it exhibits a love-hate relationship that Christian culture had with Greek civilization right from the start.

At the heart of the difference was the Bible and its central themes of a monotheistic God, life after death, and, perhaps most importantly, the idea of furthering the kingdom of God.

As later Christian emperors took the throne, they took decisive measures to curb the influence of cultural institutions that conflicted with the Christian message. Orders were given to destroy all pagan temples and shut down schools of philosophy that had been in operation since the days of Plato and Aristotle.

However, a new breed of Christian philosophers were heavily influenced by Greek thought, especially the views of Aristotle and Plotinus, and defended its relevance to Christian theology. While Plato remained a towering figure in medieval times, it was largely in name only since for many centuries copies of his writings virtually vanished. In the absence of actual books by Plato, medieval philosophers looked to Plotinus for a summary of Plato’s views, unaware of how original Plotinus’s views were. Thus, many of the most important views that they attributed to Plato were those of Plotinus. What we find within medieval philosophy, then, is an interesting blend of Greek and Christian views to the degree that thinkers of this period were able to make them compatible.

Historians mark off medieval civilization as starting with the downfall of the Roman Empire and ending with the founding of the Renaissance, roughly from the years 400-1500.

This range of time itself falls into three distinct periods, each of which impacted developments within medieval philosophy. The first period is the early middle ages, from around 400-1000. Often called the “Dark Ages”, it is characterized by difficult times in the aftermath of the Western Roman Empire’s collapse, including localized rule, decreased trade, mass migration, and feudalism.

While this timeframe witnessed the Christianization of Europe, Islam was also rapidly enveloping the surrounding regions, and, as with Christianity, Muslims developed their own philosophical tradition that mixed Greek philosophy with their own faith.

The next period is the high middle ages, from 1,000 to 1300, which experienced much better times. Population increased, countries and regions regained political cohesion, and intellectual thought was revitalized. Most important for philosophy, though, was the emergence of medieval universities which became centers of learning and gave birth to a distinct philosophical method called scholasticism, which systematically blended Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology.

The final period is the late middle ages, lasting from 1300–1500. Times were again challenging with economic stagnation, wars, and the Black Death that killed around half of Europe’s population. The unity of the Catholic Church also came under fire, which helped bring the middle ages as a whole to a close.

AUGUSTINE

The first major medieval philosopher was Augustine (354–430), who emphasized attaining knowledge through divine illumination and achieving moral goodness by loving God. The details of his life are openly laid out in his autobiography, titled Confessions, which even today is considered a classic of world literature. He was born in the North African region of Tagaste to a devout Christian mother and pagan father. Many scholars believe that Augustine and his family were Romanized indigenous Africans, and thus may have had dark skin. As with Plotinus, skin color back then wasn't a social issue like it is now, so it would not have been noteworthy if Augustine was a person of color. For much of his youth, his middle-class parents' greatest concern was affording a university education for him. Once having attained this difficult goal, learning rhetoric at Carthage, Augustine's zeal for studying theology became his driving force. But first came a period of trying out life's alternatives. To his mother’s great displeasure, he became entrenched in a new Persian religion called Manichaeism and then joined a group of Neoplatonists. In both cases he sought to understand how evil could exist in a world that was created by a good God. The Manichaean explanation was that the material world is inherently evil, but through special knowledge from God we can rise above it. Neoplatonists argued that evil results from the physical world being so far removed from God, and thus absent from his goodness.

For fifteen years he lived with a woman and fathered a son; but when his mother eventually convinced him to marry properly, he left his mistress. While awaiting his bride-to-be's coming of age, he took up with yet another woman and prayed his famous prayer, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet." But his marriage to either woman never transpired.

While teaching rhetoric in the city of Milan, he attended sermons of the Bishop of that region, which gradually led to his Christian conversion. Returning to North Africa, he was drafted into the priesthood by the locals for his popular preaching, and later became their bishop, devoting the rest of his life to writing and preaching in that region. Augustine died at 75, as invading barbarian armies were tearing down the city walls of Hippo. Augustine’s literary output was enormous, and he may be the most prolific writer of the ancient world. His most famous writings are his Confessions and The City of God. While only a couple of his shorter works are devoted exclusively to philosophy, most notably Against the Academics and On Free Choice, many of his compositions are interspersed with philosophical content, and from these a complex system emerges.

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Augustine in 90 minutes