Augustin d'Hippone
Believe to understand: God in the innermost self.
Augustin d'Hippone (354 – 430, Roman Africa (today's Algeria) · Rome · Milan) : augustinianism and neoplatonism. Truth is found by going back into oneself. Even the most radical doubt proves something: "if I am deceived, I am". On AskPhilosophy: 7 reconstructed arguments, 8 quotes checked word for word against the original texts, and 4 common beliefs examined; every text carries an authenticity badge (written by the author, posthumous, student notes, reported, apocryphal).
Why he matters
He bridges Greek philosophy (Plato, Plotinus) and Christianity. For a thousand years, almost all Western thought starts from him; Aquinas, Luther, Pascal and Descartes read him closely. His Confessions are often called the West's first inner autobiography, and his pages on time are still quoted by philosophers today.
His times
Born in Roman Africa to a Christian mother, Monica, and a pagan father. A brilliant teacher of rhetoric in Carthage, Rome and then Milan, he spent about nine years with the Manichaeans, who explained the world as a struggle between two principles, Good and Evil. He converted to Christianity in Milan in 386, became bishop of Hippo around 395 and died in 430, while the Vandals were besieging the city. The sack of Rome in 410 prompted the City of God.
His positions
click a row to see the evidenceGod is the creator of all that exists, and all he made is good. Augustine believes first, but he also tries to show by reason that God exists: above our mind there is an unchanging truth, and God is that truth or what lies above it.
The surest truths do not come from the senses: I know that I am without going through any bodily sense. But he does not reject the senses: he trusts them for what they show clearly.
Against the sceptics of the Academy, who said everything is uncertain, he holds that there are certain truths, starting with "I am". Doubting everything seems to him madness.
The soul knows itself without going through the body, and it is superior to it. Yet Augustine stresses the unity of the human being, soul and body. His main texts on the soul (On the Trinity, Book X) are not yet in our corpus.
On Free Choice defends a real free will, the cause of our faults. Later, against Pelagius, he stresses grace: the will is enough to sin, not to persevere in the good without God's help. Scholars still debate how much room he finally leaves to freedom.
There is an eternal law, imprinted in us, which does not change: the law by which it is just that all things be in order. Human laws are just only if they derive from it.
Believe first, in order to understand afterwards: faith opens the way, but it seeks understanding, and Augustine reasons a great deal. Reason serves faith more than it judges it.
Human beings are made for God: their heart remains restless until it rests in him. Life thus has a given meaning, which goes beyond it.
Every created nature is good, but since the first sin the human will is wounded: it can love evil for its own sake, like the boy Augustine stealing pears "for nothing". Without grace, humans cannot remain in the good.
Peace is "the tranquillity of order". The earthly city is useful for keeping this peace, but without justice kingdoms are only great robber bands. The true common good lies in the city of God, not in the State.
An ethics of rightly ordered love: virtue is "the order of love". Love God first, then each thing in its proper place.