PhilosophersAugustin d'Hippone

Augustin d'Hippone

Believe to understand: God in the innermost self.

Augustinianism · Neoplatonism354 – 430 AlgeriaPhilosopher and theologianChristian PlatonistBishop of HippoThinker of the inner self
Confessions I, 1 · IV, 9 · On Free Choice, II, 14

The restless heart

What it claims

True happiness is found only in God: "our heart is restless until it rests in you".

Why

Every good of this life can be lost against our will; only an eternal good cannot, and our desire for happiness is not in vain.

Valid with an implicit premise

Everyone wants to be happy: that is the starting point. Augustine tried everything (success, pleasures, friendship, philosophy) and saw each happiness threatened or lost, as at the death of his best friend. From this he draws an argument about happiness itself: where can it be found, if it is to be secure?

P1Every human being wants to be happy; no one wants the opposite.
P2One cannot be secure, and so fully happy, in possessing goods one can lose against one's will.
P3Yet all the goods of this life (health, pleasures, friends, success, even our own wisdom, which an illness can take away) can be lost against one's will.
P4There are two kinds of goods: those of time, and the eternal good, God, the truth. That one, no one loses against their will: one loses it only by leaving it.
P5 · implicit premiseThis desire for happiness, shared by all, is not in vain: there is a good able to fulfil it.
Therefore true happiness is found only in God: "our heart is restless until it rests in you".

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a world where everyone wants to be happy and no good of this life is enough, but perfect happiness is simply not possible: the heart would stay restless forever.
Valid with P5. Without it, the argument only shows that no good of this life fulfils the desire, which many non-believers grant. To conclude to God, one must assume this desire has a real object. That is the most debated point: does a desire prove that its object exists?
Analogy. You build your house on sand: it may be beautiful, but you sleep badly, because the next tide could carry it off. Augustine says: look for ground the tide cannot reach. The sceptic replies: what if there were only sand?

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

S
Stoics, Epicureans, Peripatetics attacks premise 3

The wise can be happy in this life, by their own strength: through virtue, which nothing external can take away (Stoics), or through peace of mind and simple pleasures (Epicureans).

Augustin replies
Augustin
Wanting to be happy here below and by oneself is a strange vanity. Virtue itself, in this life, is an endless war against our vices; illness can take from the wise even their reason; and the Stoics allow the wise to kill themselves when their ills become too heavy, an admission that this life was not happy.
Nietzsche 1883 · attacks the conclusion

Seeking happiness in a beyond means despising the only life we have. One must remain true to the earth, and give meaning to this life rather than judge it insufficient.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1883, after the author's death (430).
Freud 1927 · attacks premise 5

Wanting something does not prove it exists. A belief born of a deep wish (to be comforted, protected, fulfilled) is what Freud calls an illusion: it may be true, but the wish is no proof of it (The Future of an Illusion).

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1927, after the author's death (430).