St.

Augustine

St Augustine was an influential Christian theologian from Numidia (modern-day Algeria).

Augustine converted to Christianity in 386 and wrote extensively on Christianity. In particular,
he emphasizes the doctrine of original sin, the importance of grace and the Holy Trinity.

Augustine was born in Souk Ahras in the Roman province of Numidia. His family were ethnic
North Africans (the Berbers), but the area was heavily Romanized, and they spoke Latin at
home. His father was a pagan, but his mother was a devout Christian.

His mother had a strong influence on the young Augustine, but to her disappointment, Augustine
left his Christian background and joined the Manichean sect, founded by the prophet Mani in
240. He also fell in with friends who followed a hedonist approach to life. He also remembers an
incident when a youth – stealing fruit from an orchard because he liked the idea of rebelling.
This period stuck in his mind and helped formulate his idea of the inherently sinful nature of
man. Despite his wayward lifestyle, he developed an interest in philosophy and was impressed
by the writings of Cicero. Augustine became an expert in Latin and rhetoric.

In his late teens, he developed an affair with a young woman from Carthage. She gave birth to
his illegitimate son Adeodatus in 372.

Augustine taught grammar and rhetoric at Thagaste, Carthage and later Rome.

In 384, he was given a more prestigious position as a rhetoric professor at the Imperial Court of
Milan. In Milan, he began to become more skeptical of his Manichean faith. He also became
friendly with Ambrose the bishop of Milan. Augustine listened to the more sophisticated lectures
of Bishop Ambrose, and he gained a new insight into Christianity. This friendship and the
genuine spirituality of Ambrose, was influential in re-awakening Augustine’s interest in
Christianity – the religion of his childhood. His mother had also followed Augustine to Milan
and persuaded him to give up his lover and marry a young 11-year old girl who was in the same
social class as Augustine. Although Augustine agreed, he felt a great emotional torment in
cutting off ties with his former lover. Eventually, he annulled his marriage as he made plans to
become a celibate priest.

In 386, at the age of 31, he made a formal conversion to Christianity. Augustine was inspired by
reading about the life of Saint Anthony of the Desert. He also reported hearing an inner voice
which told him to take up the Bible and read. He was drawn to a passage by St Paul which was
aimed at non-believers becoming transformed. The passage Augustine refers to was Romans
chapter 13, verses 13 and 14,

“Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying,
but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.”

He wrote an account of his conversion in his text Confessions, this is an influential Christian
apologist and important example of biographical text.

Augustine was baptized with his son by Bishop Ambrose in April 388. His mother died shortly
after his event. Afterwards, they returned home to Africa, where his son Adeodatus died shortly
after. Augustine gave away his wealth to the poor and converted his house into a monastic
foundation for himself and a group of like-minded Christians.

In 391, he became the Bishop of Hippo and for the next 39 years became an influential preacher,
often speaking against his former religion of Manichaeism.

In the last half of his life, Augustine was noted for his piety – shunning his former hedonistic
lifestyle and living a life of simplicity and devotion. He also continued to write. Important works
included ‘City of God’ which was written in response to the sack of Rome and argued the real
religion was in spirit and not in temporal cities and the religion of the world. To Augustine, the
fall of Rome was of little consequence. Augustine was an apologist for the Catholic Church but
argued that the Church was not always in a state of grace, but could attract bad and wicked
people. The other reality is the invisible Church of spirit which is ruled by love, grace and
goodness. Ultimately, this religion of spirit would triumph over worldly empires which were
influenced by human pride. However, his writings on the limitations of earthly power were used
by future popes to imply that the Pope was pre-eminent other kings and other countries. This
proved an influential philosophy for the next centuries conflict between the Catholic Church and
State.

St Augustine was aware of the challenges of sexual desire. As a youth, he uttered the prayer
‘make me chaste and continent, but not just yet.’ He later taught that the original sin of man
could only be redeemed by faith in Christ. On becoming a Christian, he wrote: “Nothing is so
much to be shunned as sex relations”. His attitudes toward sex and its inherent sinfulness were
influential in shaping medieval attitudes to sex relation

Augustine taught a modified form of predestination. He argued man had the freedom to choose,
but ultimately all things are ordered by God. To Augustine some of us are predestined to be
saved; this was influential to later theologians such as St Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin.
Augustine developed the concept of a ‘just war’. He emphasizes that the pursuit of peace might
include the option of fighting – if it is the only alternative to protect a just peace.

Augustine was also influential in the development of educational practices. He advocated a more
liberal approach to education. Combining discipline with teachers who can share an interest in
the subject and encourage students to develop a critical awareness and think for themselves.

In the spring of 430, the Vandals – who had previously sacked Rome, invaded Roman Africa.
Augustine fell ill and died on 28 August 430. The Vandals returned to Hippo and burnt much of
the city – though Augustine’s library survived.

As one of the last great Christian theologians before the dark ages of the Medieval Period,
Augustine was very influential on the development of Christianity.

He was canonized in 1298 by Pope Boniface VIII.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “St Augustine of Hippo Biography”, Oxford,

UK. www.biographyonline.net 17th April 2018.

Perspective to self:

Before Augustine, the acquirement of personhood was equal to the fulfillment of moral ideals
according to reason. Such a view emphasizes rightful conduct, i.e., how one appears to others.
Augustine, influenced by Plotinus, represents the "inward turn" in questions of self. On this
view, we have a private world, different than the intelligible world. The soul, however, has a
non-spatial mode of being. It means that God can enter the soul and guide the individual from
above. Grace is a gift that is inwardly given. As the Divine Counselor reaches into our innermost
being, people need no longer rely so much on extraneous guidance. Nor is it required that perfect
"religious order" becomes manifest on earth.

In ancient antiquity, subjective feeling, and the subjective experience of the self, was all but
disregarded. The personality of individuals played no essential role. That’s why we know so little
about the personal habits of historical personalities, such as Julius Caesar. We only know about
their accomplishments. This contrasts strongly with the modern sentiment, as we are very
interested in the person. Augustine gave the personal self a much higher status, and this change
of view impacts us to this day. Besides Plotinus, Augustine was influenced by St Paul, who says
in Romans 12:2:

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect
will.”

The Western tradition of inwardness is an extremely important factor behind the success of our
civilization. To acquire an inner locus of control (cf. Wiki) means that we may control our
destiny. Thus, we no longer see ourselves as subject to extraneous forces, whether in the form of
gods, demons or other people. It means that we may become truly responsible persons. It opens
up the possibility of self-understanding and self-critique.

Further reading:

Cary, P. (2000). Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self - The Legacy of a Christian Platonist.
Oxford University Press.

Remes, P. & Sihvola, J. (eds.) (2008). Ancient Philosophy of the Self. Springer.

Winther, M. (2015). 'The Self in Historical Light: Iamblichus versus Porphyry'. (here)

‘Locus of control’. Wikipedia article.

https://www.quora.com/How-did-St-Augustine-define-self
 Thomas Aquinas

Biography

Perhaps the most well-known and highly regarded theologian and philosopher of the Catholic
Church, Thomas Aquinas was born the youngest son to a Sicilian noble family in 1225.
Although Aquinas was intended from a young age to become an abbot, Italian political and papal
infighting redirected him to a university in Naples, where his studies, including his earliest
encounters with Aristotle, were directed by members of the newly founded Dominican Order, an
order of which Aquinas eventually became a member despite prolonged, powerful objections
from his family.

Traveling to France in 1245, Aquinas continued his studies under the renowned Aristotelian
commentator and fellow Dominican, Albert Magnus, before joining the University of Paris’
faculty as regent master in theology, during which time he began work on his Summa contra
Gentiles. Upon completion of his regency in Paris, Aquinas returned to Italy in 1259, where he
was eventually called to Rome, in 1265, by Pope Clement IV to serve as a papal theologian.
While in Rome, Aquinas continued to teach, now at a newly established Dominican school at
Santa Sabina, and began to write his most famous work, the Summa Theologiae, sometimes
called the Summa Theologica.

In 1268, Aquinas was called once again to serve as regent master in Paris, where “Averroism”—
or heterodox Aristotelianism—had risen to prominence within the university. Upon the
completion of his second regency in Paris, Aquinas returned to Naples, where he founded a new
Dominican university and once again assumed the position of regent master and continued work
on his Summa Theologiae. In 1274, Pope Gregory X called the Second Council of Lyons in an
attempt to repair the great schism that had taken place within the Church in 1054. Summoned to
the council, Aquinas suffered an accident while traveling, fell ill, and died several days later on
March 7, 1274. Fifty years following his death, Aquinas ascended to sainthood and, then, in
1567, was named a Doctor of the Church.

Citation:

Ralph McInerny. Aquinas. Cambridge: 2004. https://thegreatthinkers.org/aquinas/biography/

Perspective to self:

“Who am I?” If Google’s auto complete is any indication, it’s not one of the questions we
commonly ask online (unlike other existential questions like “What is the meaning of life?” or
“What is a human?”). But philosophers have long held that “Who am I?” is in some way the
central question of human life. “Know yourself” was the inscription that the ancient Greeks
inscribed over the threshold to the Delphic temple of Apollo, the god of wisdom. In fact, self-
knowledge is the gateway to wisdom, as Socrates quipped: “The wise person is the one who
knows what he doesn’t know.”

Thomas Aquinas

The reality is, we all lack self-knowledge to some degree, and the pursuit of self-knowledge is a
lifelong quest—often a painful one. For instance, a common phenomenon studied in psychology
is the “loss of a sense of self” that occurs when a familiar way of thinking about oneself (for
example, as “a healthy person,” “someone who earns a good wage,” “a parent”) is suddenly
stripped away by a major life change or tragedy. Forced to face oneself for the first time without
these protective labels, one can feel as though the ground has been suddenly cut out from under
one’s feet: Who am I, really?

But the reality of self-ignorance is something of a philosophical puzzle. Why do we need to

work at gaining knowledge about ourselves? In other cases, ignorance results from a lack of
experience. No surprise that I confuse kangaroos with wallabies: I’ve never seen either in real
life. Of course I don’t know what number you’re thinking about: I can’t see inside your mind.
But what excuse do I have for being ignorant of anything having to do with myself? I already
am myself! I, and I alone, can experience my own mind from the inside. This insider
knowledge makes me—as communications specialists are constantly reminding us—the
unchallenged authority on “what I feel” or “what I think.” So why is it a lifelong project
for me to gain insight into my own thoughts, habits, impulses, reasons for acting, or the nature of
the mind itself?
This is called the “problem of self-opacity,” and we’re not the only ones to puzzle over it: It was
also of great interest to the medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), whose theory of self-
knowledge is documented in my new book Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge. It’s a common
scholarly myth that early modern philosophers (starting with Descartes) invented the idea of the
human being as a “self” or “subject.” My book tries to dispel that myth, showing that like
philosophers and neuroscientists today, medieval thinkers were just as curious about why the
mind is so intimately familiar, and yet so inaccessible, to itself. (In fact, long before Freud,
medieval Latin and Islamic thinkers were speculating about a subconscious, inaccessible realm
in the mind.) The more we study the medieval period, the clearer it becomes that inquiry into the
self does not start with Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” Rather, Descartes was taking sides
in a debate about self-knowledge that had already begun in the thirteenth century and earlier.

For Aquinas, we don’t encounter ourselves as isolated minds or selves, but rather always as
agents interacting with our environment.

Aquinas begins his theory of self-knowledge from the claim that all our self-knowledge is
dependent on our experience of the world around us. He rejects a view that was popular at the
time, i.e., that the mind is “always on,” never sleeping, subconsciously self-aware in the
background. Instead, Aquinas argues, our awareness of ourselves is triggered and shaped by our
experiences of objects in our environment. He pictures the mind as as a sort of undetermined
mental “putty” that takes shape when it is activated in knowing something. By itself, the mind is
dark and formless; but in the moment of acting, it is “lit up” to itself from the inside and sees
itself engaged in that act. In other words, when I long for a cup of mid-afternoon coffee, I’m not
just aware of the coffee, but of myself as the one wanting it. So for Aquinas, we don’t encounter
ourselves as isolated minds or selves, but rather always as agents interacting with our
environment. That’s why the labels we apply to ourselves—“a gardener,” “a patient person,” or
“a coffee-lover”—are always taken from what we do or feel or think toward other things.

But if we “see” ourselves from the inside at the moment of acting, what about the “problem of
self-opacity” mentioned above? Instead of lacking self-knowledge, shouldn’t we be able to
“see” everything about ourselves clearly? Aquinas’s answer is that just because we experience
something doesn’t mean we instantly understand everything about it—or to use his terminology:
experiencing that something exists doesn’t tell us what it is. (By comparison: If someday I
encounter a wallaby, that won’t make me an expert about wallabies.) Learning about a thing’s
nature requires a long process of gathering evidence and drawing conclusions, and even then we
may never fully understand it. The same applies to the mind. I am absolutely certain, with an
insider’s perspective that no one else can have, of the reality of my experience of wanting
another cup of coffee. But the significance of those experiences—what they are, what they tell
me about myself and the nature of the mind—requires further experience and reasoning. Am I
hooked on caffeine? What is a “desire” and why do we have desires? These questions can only
be answered by reasoning about the evidence taken from many experiences.

Aquinas, then, would surely approve that we’re not drawn to search online for answers to the
question, “Who am I?” That question can only be answered “from the inside” by me, the one
asking the question. At the same time, answering this question isn’t a matter of withdrawing
from the world and turning in on us. It’s a matter of becoming more aware of ourselves at the
moment of engaging with reality, and drawing conclusions about what our activities towards
other things “say” about us. There’s Aquinas’s “prescription” for a deeper sense of self.

Citation:

http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2014/01/thomas-aquinas-toward-a-deeper-sense-of-self/

author: Therese Scarpelli Cory is the author of Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge