From skepticism to faith

With the seminal work of Augustine Western Christianity finally finds a spokesman with equal philosophical credibility as those of the Eastern side had. Indeed, his literary career begins with a very classic problem: does one have to know the truth, if they want to live a good life, guided by reason, or is a mere search for truth enough for this?

The context of Augustine’s discussion is the sceptical phase of Plato’s Academy, as described in the works of Cicero, who insisted that it is humanly impossible to know truth with absolute certainty and that therefore we have to content ourselves with not affirming anything definite, in order to avoid error, although we still continue to study and learn about the world around us. Cicero would add that this life in searching for truth makes humans flourish, since it makes the mind tranquil and calm and that all we need to live wisely is to recognise what is probable and seems like truth.

Augustine’s stance toward Ciceronian scepticism is mostly critical. Firstly, he insists that we do know the truth about various things. With some questions, we can be certain that one of give alternatives is the correct answer, even if we cannot say exactly which one. For instance, Augustine suggests, we can affirm with conviction that there is either only one world or several worlds, even if we do not know which of the two options is the true one. Furthermore, all truths of mathematics are certain: three times three is nine, no matter whether we are asleep or not.

Augustine insists that we have even further knowledge beyond logic and mathematics. Even if we could not know for certain whether snow is white or whether tasty food is good for us, we can be certain that these things seem so to us. Furthermore, Augustine continues, we can also know that a sum of all these things that appear for us - the world, he defines - exists, even if we do not know what it would truly be like.

Augustine is also not happy with Cicero’s suggestion that we could live wisely, even if only knew what is probable: certainly, he says, a wise person must know the truth of how to live well, or otherwise they couldn’t live well. A mere probability is not enough to prevent bad decisions, because e.g. a lecherous person is bound to consider having sex a probably good decision, even if it weren’t. Sometimes even a person with a mere unshakably strong conviction on something fares better than a sceptic choosing nothing, if doing something is a choice better than inaction.

Although he likens sceptics to epileptics, Augustine still has something positive to say about Cicero - maybe he just wanted to say that living wisely is simply impossible for human beings, at least during our earthly life. Still, the life of a sceptic is one of searching for something they can never reach. Thus, Augustine concludes, sceptics can never be truly happy since they are always missing something - want makes humans miserable.

If want is always linked to unhappiness, is unhappiness always caused by want? Augustine considers a case of a rich person who is extremely anxious of losing their whole fortune - certainly they are not happy. This example shows, Augustine says, that merely gathering all kinds of things will not by itself make us happy. Still, he notes, we might say that the rich person is still in want of something, namely, a proper sense of what is really of worth in human life, which would shield them from all anxiety.

Hence, instead of all earthly possessions, Augustine thinks that happiness requires reason that is in some sense a mean between two extremes - it avoids both a lack and an excess of things. Augustine gives this Platonic idea a familiar Christian twist by equating this ultimate wisdom with the Wisdom of God. This means, he explains, that true happiness can only be reached through a connection to divinity.

What then connects us to the divine? Augustine suggests that God has instigated an order that bounds all things, good and evil, into a complex of great beauty, fully appreciable perhaps only from divine perspective, and gives us an opportunity to reach God, if we just grasp onto it. This order gives stability to all things, to humans particularly through understanding of the world and the divine plan behind it.

To fully grasp the divine order, Augustine says, a person needs to cultivate their reason, which is the primary means for ordering what one has learned. Cultivation begins, Augustine instructs, by disciplining one’s behaviour by curbing all excesses, like overblown taste for food or love of money. This stage of person’s upbringing might need the help of an authority figure, although the final goal should always be reason finding its own justifications for everything.

Augustine thinks that the next steps in cultivating reason should follow the order in which various disciplines were found. Thus, one should begin with very elementary topics, like numbering and naming things, and then proceed to classification of the names and the roles they have in speaking. At the same time, the learner should read classic literature and find out things that earlier generations thought were worth putting into a written form.

After these elementary studies, Augustine continues, cultivation of reason should go on to study the very tools it uses for seeking truth. Furthermore, it should also consider what are the best methods for teaching truths found for others and for persuading even those unacquainted with proper use of reason of them being truths.

Augustine suggests that the reason should follow a rather Platonic route. It should be delighted by beauty and thus learn about what makes things like poetry and music so pleasant. Augustine’s very Platonic answer is that it all pertains to numbers and measures, thus necessitating a study of arithmetics, geometry and astronomy.

The crowning achievement of all this learning is to get acquainted with one’s own nature and the divine source of everything. In fact, Augustine says, the relationship should be even stronger: one should love everyone who has reason and especially God. The love awakens in us a desire to get acquainted with them - not with mere senses, which do not guarantee certainty. Instead, Augustine is looking for at least similar certainty as with objects of geometry.

Just like for seeing something one needs, firstly, healthy eyes, secondly, that the eyes look something, and thirdly, that they finally see what they look, similarly, in order to know, Augustine notes, one needs three things: a healthy mind, a decision to want to know, and finally, the actual reaching of what we want to know. To make one’s mind healthy, he continues, one has to purify it from earthly desires, but before it has been purified, one has to believe that purification is a condition for knowledge. Furthermore, one has to have hope that one can purify one’s mind, in order to not stop in despair. Combining these with the already mentioned demand that one has to love and desire this knowledge, we find ourselves with three traditional Christian virtues.

Two of these virtues, Augustine clarifies, we need when we are just purifying ourselves and looking for a knowledge of God. Indeed, they are required during our whole earthly life, where our mind is constantly bombarded with physical ailments. When we finally touch divinity, in a life beyond, we need only to love what we have.

Why does one has to purify one’s mind in order to know God? Augustine explains this by comparing God with the sun. Just like the sun is seen by its light, by which it also reveals other things, so is divinity known by an energy, through which it also makes other things known, and just like sun’s light seems painful to eyes used only to darkness, so is divine energy similarly painful to a mind that is still enamoured by earthly pleasures, riches and honours. Thus, Augustine says, such things are to be desired only insofar as they help us to gain knowledge of the divine.

To know oneself and God, one has to also come to know the truth, Augustine insists. This truth, he explains, is not just some true thing, like when we say that a tree is a true tree. Such true things can come and go, but the truth or what makes all the true things true remains always in existence, because always something is true - if the truth would vanish, it would be true that the truth has vanished.

What then makes things false? Augustine notes that it cannot be mere difference from what is true, since no one would say that an elephant would be false just because it differs from a true lion. Instead, what is false must have a seeming resemblance or imitation of truth, just like pyrite resembles true gold without being it. Of course, it is also not just this resemblance or sameness that makes falsity, because completely identical eggs are not on that account false eggs. Instead, it is the incompleteness of imitation that makes things false. Thus, fables imitate reality, but still fail to be true accounts of reality.

Things can then be ordered according to their truthfulness, Augustine says. In a rather Platonic fashion, Augustine notes that material bodies cannot be very high on this ordering, because they fail to resemble the perfect figures of geometry. Then again, geometry and indeed all fields of learning are fairly high on this ordering. This makes Augustine suggest that the highest point of this order - that which makes everything else true - should be the field of learning about what makes things true: logic or study of argumentation, which again appears to be identified with or at least closely connected to the divine Wisdom.

Augustine notes that logic or the truth resides not anywhere in the material world, but in our thoughts - or at least it must be always connected to our thought. Then again, as he has already pointed out, the truth must be eternal. This makes him conclude that the place where truth resides, in other words, human thinking, must also be immortal. This does not mean that we should be constantly thinking of, say, truths of arithmetic, but only that even when we seemingly forget some truths, they remain at least implicitly hidden in the depths of our mind.

The active thinking and the implicit truths reside then in something, which is separate from our constantly changing bodies and not a mere organisation of matter, Augustine says, because we think best when we are most free of bodily influences. Instead of getting its life from the body, he notes, this seat of thinking or soul should also move and vivify the body.

Augustine continues by noting that this soul can never really completely lose its essence and perish or change into something else, like a material object. Indeed, he argues, even material objects must remain material objects through all their changes, so why wouldn't the same be true of a more perfect entity or soul? It can become imperfect by losing its connection with the divine truth, but then it just falls into deception and nothing non-existent can be deceived.

Soul appears to sense material things, such as sounds that have their own numerical rhythm, Augustines says, and this act of sensing or hearing numerical things, which is in the soul, differs from the rhythm of the physical sounds. Yet, he explains, soul is not truly passive in these sensations, but it just is aware of how these sounds affect the body, and in case this effect hinders the control the soul has over body, the soul feels disturbed, while in case the effect makes it easier to control the body, the soul feels pleasure.

Then again, Augustine continues, in addition to the physical sounds and the hearing of external sounds, the soul also, thirdly, produces rhythmic sounds itself, through the power it has over its body and even without actively perceiving these sounds, for instance, by controlling the beat of its heart. The soul also, fourthly, has memories of rhythmical sounds, and fifthly, it has a capacity of judging which combinations of sounds feels delightful.

Of these five instances of rhythm, Augustine argues, the lowest in rank are the mere physical rhythms. Higher in hierarchy is the memory of rhythms, because memories at least involve mental activities, not mere physical events. Still, memory is not very high, because it is still dependent on previous mental acts. Next comes the sensing of the rhythms and above that the rhythms inherent in the activity of the soul over the body: while both are activities, Augustine explains, in the former the soul is concerned only with how the body is affected by other bodies, while in the latter it is actively moving the body.

The judgement of rhythms is the most perfect, being able to evaluate the worth of all the others. Yet, a mere judgement of a delight or repulsion is not the highest possible level, Augustine notes. Even higher is the proper judgement of reason, which explains why certain rhythms are delightful by comparing the numerical ratios involved and notes that certain harmonies are beautiful.

This knowledge of the numeric ratios behind sensuous delights is the most lasting and ultimately dependent on the author of all harmony, that is, God, Augustine says. Understanding music is then one possible way the soul can move from sensuous reality toward the true source of life, although there is the possibility that it gets tied down to the mere sensuous images and tries to fruitlessly find true happiness outside God.

The human soul finds, then, its completion with God, just like the human body finds its completion in the soul that makes it alive. Yet, Augustine adds, the human soul does not by itself have a capacity to reach the divine. Therefore, it needs the help of the authority of scripture to make the final step to God, when reason fails it. This final step means total dedication to God and acknowledgement that one is wholly dependent on the divine, Augustine adds. This dedication or love appears in four different shapes corresponding to traditional virtues: as a temperate disdain of all pleasures not derived from God, as courageous bearing of all pain and death through the hope of reaching God, just serving of God as the true source of our life and wise choice of things leading us toward God.

In addition to serving God, Augustine notes, the scripture also advises us to help fellow human beings. This help, he explains, can concern bodily matters, like when we feed hungry people. Yet, he continues, a much more important way to help is to instruct and guide our fellow human beings in matters of soul. Indeed, Augustine emphasises that the search for God is essentially a communal effort, with communities of the devoted spending their lives in serving the divine. Furthermore, the communal nature is also a guarantee that no one has to be perfect: for instance, not all people need to forsake carnal relations, as long as these do not overstep the limits set in the biblical tradition.

If good for the soul means turning toward the source of everything, evil is then simply turning away from this source, Augustine explains. Evil especially is no independent power outside the soul fighting against goodness, because then we might as well ask, why it shouldn’t be called good, since it sustains itself. Instead, evil means a mere lack of order and being, which is nothing substantial.

The soul that chooses where to turn has no size, like the points it can think, and it definitely does not grow with the body, Augustine argues, since e.g. the most muscular people are not necessarily the brightest. Indeed, he notes, the soul does not need to grow in order to control all parts of the body, just like vision need not be at the horizon to see what’s there. Still, Augustine adds, the soul can be said to grow or become greater in a figurative sense, when it becomes more what it should be. At first, it just makes the body alive and nourishes it, like with plants, then, it uses the body to sense its environment, move around it and procreate new living bodies, like animals, while finally reaching the properly human stage, when it learns about various arts that help it to live in the society. The soul that is not satisfied with learning that could be used by both good and bad alike, Augustine continues, strives to turn away from the world and to purify itself from mere material things. Finding satisfaction in its own perfection, it can finally approach divinity and search its final fulfilment with the contemplation of the source of all truths.

This source of all truths, Augustine notes, is also the source of all existence. God created even the time, so that there simply was no time before creation and therefore no need for a reason why he created everything at that particular time. Together with time, Augustine says, he created the unformed matter, from which everything else then was made. Among the things God created, Augustine continues, were the human soul and its body. At first, the human life was centred on God and nourished by metaphorical rivers of four virtues - Augustine’s allegorical reading of the account of Paradise watered by four rivers. Continuing the allegorical reading, he notes that in this perfect state human reason (represented in Genesis by Adam) ruled the sensual appetites (represented by Eve). Completing the allegory, Augustine notes that the devil allured human reason through its sensuous appetite to place itself above God, making it difficult and an arduous task for humans to regain their former, true relation to God.

Despite creating humans and their desires, Augustine assures us, God should not be taken as the source of evil. Instead, a move toward evil is always our own fault. A mistaken choice leads us away from the only true good or good will and makes us care more about temporal matters. God cannot be blamed even for creating our free will, which allows us to make bad choices, because free will is also a condition for good will - it is the abuser of this gift who is to blame for their choice. Even God’s foreknowledge of people doing evil things does not transfer the guilt from humans to God, Augustine says, since mere knowledge of something does not cause this something to happen, even if it would be of things yet to come. The same is to be said of the birth of a human being in a condition, where the use of will for good is already made difficult by the body tainted by the prideful choice of the first human, Augustine insists, because it is possible to free oneself even from this fallen state.

This first stage of Augustine’s career has been characterised by relatively philosophical topics and methods, showing his interest in contemporary Platonism. After he was ordained priest, his interest slowly turned more toward Christian tradition, such as biblical exegesis. We will follow the development of his thought in the following posts.