Augustine's teaching became the determining spiritual factor in medieval thinking and influenced the entire Christian Western Europe. None of the authors of the patristic period achieved the depth of thought that characterized Augustine. He and his followers in religious philosophy considered the knowledge of God and divine love to be the only goal, the only meaningful value of the human spirit. He devoted very little space to art, culture and natural sciences.
Augustine attached great importance to the Christian basis of his philosophy. He accomplished what was only indicated by his predecessors: he made God the center of philosophical thinking, his worldview was theocentric. From the principle that God is primary, follows his position on the superiority of the soul over the body, the will and feelings over the mind. This primacy has both a metaphysical, epistemological and ethical character. .
God is the highest essence, only his existence follows from his own nature, everything else necessarily does not exist. He is the only one whose existence is independent; everything else exists only thanks to the divine will. God is the cause of the existence of all things, all of their changes; he not only created the world, but also constantly preserves it, continues to create it. Augustine rejects the idea that the world, once created, develops further on its own.
God is also the most important subject knowledge, but knowledge of transient, relative things is meaningless for absolute knowledge. God is at the same time the cause of knowledge; he brings light into the human spirit, into human thought, and helps people find the truth. God is the highest good and the cause of all good. Since everything exists thanks to God, so every good comes from God.
Direction towards God is natural for a person, and the only way a person can achieve happiness is through union with him. Augustine's philosophy thus opens up space for theology.
Augustine understands the soul purely spiritualistically, reasoning in the spirit of Plato’s ideas. The soul, as an original substance, cannot be either a bodily property or a type of body. It does not contain anything material, it only has the function of thinking, will, memory, but has nothing to do with biological functions. The soul differs from the body in perfection. This understanding also existed in Greek philosophy, but Augustine was the first to say that this perfection comes from God, that the soul is close to God and immortal. .
We know the soul better than the body; knowledge about the soul is definite, but vice versa about the body. Moreover, it is the soul, and not the body, that knows God, but the body prevents knowledge. The superiority of the soul over the body requires that a person take care of the soul and suppress sensual pleasures.
The basis of spiritual life is the will, but not the mind. This statement is based on the fact that the essence of each thing is manifested in its activity, but not in passivity. From this follows the conclusion that human essence is characterized not by reason, which is passive, but by actions, active will. Augustine's doctrine of the primacy of the will differs from ancient Greek rationalism. The irrationalistic understanding of the human spirit comes to the conclusion that the essence of the spirit is free will. Augustine embodied this position not only in psychology, but also in theology: the primacy of the will also applies to the divine essence. His philosophy thus moves from intellectualism and rationalism to voluntarism. An idealistic direction in philosophy that attributes the main role to the divine or human will in the development of nature and society. In a general sense, voluntarism is nothing more than an idealization of the role of the individual in history and its influence on the world. .
Augustine's entire philosophy focused on God as a single, perfect, absolute being, while the world matters as God's creation and reflection. Without God, nothing can be accomplished or known. In all of nature, nothing can happen without the participation of supernatural forces. Augustine's worldview was very clearly opposed to naturalism, a philosophical movement that views nature as a universal principle for explaining all things. u. God as a single being and truth is the content of metaphysics, God as the source of knowledge is the subject of the theory of knowledge; God as the only good and beautiful is the subject of ethics, God as an omnipotent person and full of mercy is the main issue of religion.
God is not only an infinite being, but also a person filled with love. Neoplatonists also theorized in the same direction, but they did not understand God as a person. In Neoplatonism, the world is an emanation of the divine unity, required product a natural process, while for Augustine the world is an act of divine will. Augustine shows a tendency towards dualism in contrast to Neoplatonic monism, based on the idea that God and the world have the same character.
According to Augustine, the world, as a free act of God, is a rational creation; God created it on the basis of his own idea. Christian Platonism was an Augustinian version of Plato's doctrine of ideas, which was understood in a theological and personalistic spirit. The ideal example of the real world is hidden in God. Both Plato and Augustine have two worlds: the ideal - in God and the real - in the world and space, which arose due to the embodiment of ideas into matter.
Augustine, in agreement with Hellenistic philosophy, believed that the goal and meaning of human life is happiness, which should be determined by philosophy. Happiness can be achieved in one thing - in God. Achieving human happiness presupposes, first of all, the knowledge of God and the testing of the soul. Unlike the skeptics, Augustine shared the idea that knowledge is possible. He was looking for a way of cognition that is not subject to error, trying to establish a certain reliable point as the starting path of cognition. The only way to overcome skepticism, in his opinion, is to reject the premise that sensory knowledge can lead us to the truth. To stand on the position of sensory knowledge means to strengthen skepticism.
Augustine finds another point confirming the possibility of knowledge. In the skeptics' approach to the world, in doubt itself, he sees certainty, the certainty of consciousness, for one can doubt everything, but not what we doubt. This consciousness of doubt in knowledge is an unshakable truth.
A person’s consciousness, his soul is a stable point in an ever-changing, turbulent world. When a person plunges into the knowledge of his soul, he will find content there that does not depend on the surrounding world. It is only an appearance that people draw their knowledge from the world around them; in reality, they find it in the depths of their own spirit. The essence of Augustine's theory of knowledge is apriority; God is the creator of all ideas and concepts. Human knowledge of eternal and unchanging ideas convinces a person that their source can only be the absolute - the eternal and transtemporal, incorporeal god. Man cannot be a creator, he only perceives divine ideas.
The truth about God cannot be known by reason, but by faith. Faith, on the other hand, relates more to the will than to the mind. By emphasizing the role of the senses or the heart, Augustine asserted the unity of faith and knowledge. At the same time, he did not strive to elevate the mind, but only to complement it. Faith and reason complement each other: “Understand so that you can believe, believe so that you can understand.” Augustine's philosophy rejects the concept of an autonomous position of science, where reason is the only means and measure of truth. This understanding corresponds to the spirit of Christianity, and on this basis the subsequent phase, scholasticism, could be built. Characteristic feature Augustine's understanding of the process of knowledge is Christian mysticism. The main subject of philosophical research was God and the human soul, one of the central concepts of European philosophy, in connection with the development of which the entire hierarchy of being, life and thought is gradually mastered both in its lowest and highest layers and in relation to which the position as of a higher-existent origin, and of matter beyond the reach of existence. .
The predominance in the sphere of knowledge of irrational-volitional factors over rational-logical ones simultaneously expresses Augustine’s primacy of faith over reason. It is not the independence of the human mind, but the revelations of religious dogmas that constitute authority. Belief in God is the source of human knowledge.
The thesis about the primacy of faith over reason was not new in Christian philosophy. Unlike the previous “church fathers,” who saw the source of faith only in the Bible, Augustine proclaimed the church as the highest authoritative source of faith as the only infallible, final authority of all truth. This view was consistent with the situation at that time. Church in the western part.
The Roman Empire was becoming an ideologically and organizationally strong centralized institution. Augustine's contribution was also that he tried to substantiate the primacy of faith over reason. All human knowledge has two sources, he argued.
The first is experience, sensory contact with things in the surrounding world. Its boundary is the framework of the phenomenon, which cannot be transgressed. Another source, richer and more significant, lies in the acquisition of knowledge from other people. This indirect knowledge is faith.
Augustine confuses faith in general and religious faith sanctified by the authority of the church. However, faith, which is based on experience, is in general completely different, it has a different essence and character than religious faith, based on “truths” Holy Scripture.
The assessment of good and evil in the world and their distinction were the most problematic in Augustine's philosophy. On the one hand, the world as a creation of God cannot be unkind. On the other hand, the existence of evil is undeniable. When defining the concept of theodicy, or defense of the perfection of creation. Augustine proceeded from the fact that evil does not belong to nature, but is a product of free creativity. God created good nature, but evil will poisoned it. Another thesis is connected with this: evil is not something that is absolute, the absolute opposite of good, it is only a lack of good, its relative stage. There is no absolute evil, only absolute good. Evil arises where nothing is done well, evil is aversion from higher goals, it is either pride or lust. Pride stems from the desire to do without God, lust - from passions aimed at transitory things. The next argument of Augustine's theodicy is that evil does not violate the harmony of the world, but is necessary for it. The punishment of sinners is no more contrary to this harmony than the reward of saints. Augustine, therefore, does not deny the presence of evil in the world, but understands it purely negatively, as the absence of good.
Augustine's ethics is characterized by the fact that he attributed a different origin to evil than to good. Evil comes from man and has an earthly character, while good comes from God, a product of God's mercy. Man is responsible for evil, but not for good.
Regarding the concept of love, Augustine sharply polemicized with the British monk Pelagius. This was a dispute between representatives of the irrationalist and rationalist points of view on issues of Christian ethics. Pelagius proceeded from ancient rationalism and taught that original sin does not exist. A person is born free from sins; he himself, without the help of the church, must take care of his bliss. Pelagian rejection of the understanding of man as a blind instrument of God represented a direct attack on ideological principles christian church.
Augustine, speaking against Pelagius’s concept of man’s unburdenedness by original sin, develops the doctrine of predestination. According to this teaching, Adam, as the first man, was born free and sinless. He had the opportunity to follow God's will and achieve immortality. However, people in the person of Adam, tempted by the devil, committed sin. Therefore, all generations of people are not free, they are burdened with sin and death, which, according to the Apostle Paul, is retribution for sins.
The dualistic understanding of God and the world appears, first of all, as the opposition between the eternal and unchanging spiritual existence of God and the constant variability and death of individual things and phenomena. The study of this opposition led Augustine to the problem of time. Within the framework of the general theological solution to this question, individual answers are also interesting from a philosophical point of view.
Augustine rejects the views of those ancient philosophers who made time dependent on the movement of celestial bodies: after all, they were created by God. According to his understanding, time is a measure of movement and change inherent in all “created” concrete things. Before the creation of the world, time did not exist, but it appears as a consequence of divine creation and simultaneously with the latter. God gave the measure of changes to things.
Augustine tried to explain such basic categories of time as present, past, future. Neither the past nor the future has a real orientation, it is inherent only in the present, through which something can be thought of as past or future. The past is connected with human memory, the future lies in hope.
Bringing both the future and the past to the present proves the divine, perfect absoluteness. In God, the present is united once and for all with the past and future. Augustine's understanding of the opposition between the absolute eternity of God and the real variability of the material and human world became one of the foundations of the Christian worldview.
Augustine's socio-political doctrine is based on the idea of inequality, which he defends as an eternal and unchanging principle public life. Inequality is an aspect of the hierarchical structure of the social organism created by God. The earthly hierarchy is a reflection of the heavenly hierarchy, the “monarch” of which is God. Trying to prevent the masses from turning to heretical teachings, Augustine also refers to the Christian idea of the equality of all people before God - all people descend from one forefather.
Augustine also turns to the socio-historical process. Some historians even spoke of him as one of the first "philosophers of history." The stimulus for his interest in this issue was the sack of the “eternal city” in 410 by Gothic troops led by King Alaric. This event was interpreted by many contemporaries in different ways. Some explained it as the revenge of the old Roman gods on the Romans for converting to Christianity. Others argued that the fall of Rome heralded the end human history, which occurs as a result of the sinful transition from original democratic Christianity to state Christianity. Augustine refutes both of these interpretations.
In the philosophy of history, he opposes both pagan religious ideas and non-religious ethical and philosophical concepts. He rejects the pagan gods as powerless demons generated by poetic fantasy. He contrasts them with a single and omnipotent God.
One can speak only conditionally about the philosophy of history in Augustine. He deals with the “destiny of all” humanity, guided, however, by Christian mythological ideas based on biblical materials. Humanity comes from one pair of progenitors and is guided by God. Augustine's concept of history is providentialist (providence - providence).
Augustine puts forward the idea of the unity of human divine history, which flows in opposite, but mutually inseparable spheres, the content of which is the battle of two kingdoms (city) - divine and earthly. The dualism of God and nature is thus transferred to social development. The city of God represents the minority of humanity - these are those who, through their moral and religious behavior, have earned salvation and mercy from God; in the earthly city, on the contrary, there remain proud, greedy, selfish people who forget about God. The city of God gradually strengthens in socio-historical development, in particular after the coming of Jesus. The main prerequisite for belonging to the city of God is humility and submission both before God and before the church.
In his presentation of the plan of God's predestination, Augustine gives a periodization of the history of earthly city-societies. It is based on an analogy with the six days of creation, the six developing areas of human life and the six eras that are given in the Old Testament. This is an inherently eschatological concept; the idea of progress that it contains is religious-theological.
The Church occupies a special position in history: it is the society of Christ, unites, according to the will of God, the elect, and outside of it salvation cannot be found. The Church is the visible representative of the kingdom of God on earth. The secular city and its state are also established by God, but they do not have a privileged position like the church, which occupies the highest position, and the state must serve it. Only under such conditions is it possible for a harmonious social organism to emerge. Augustine's understanding of society is a theocratic society in which religion dominates common sense. .
Augustine laid the foundations of a new Christian philosophy. He rejected the classical approach of the Greeks, based on objectivism and intellectualism, his approach was introspective, he attributed primacy to the will over the mind. The Greeks tended towards finalism and naturalism, Augustine presented God as infinity, and the world as a product of supernatural power and a creation of grace. The introspective position turns into personalism, God is first of all a person, whose essence is will; By this, Augustine's philosophy turns away from the universalism of the ancients. It is based on trust in the powers of will, faith, love and mercy, but in no case in the powers of reason and evidence.
There are many contradictions and tensions in Augustine's work. So, on the one hand, he believed that truth is accessible only to individuals, and on the other, he considered it the privilege of the church. On the one hand, truth has a direct character, and on the other, it is a supernatural gift. Augustine was indifferent to rationalism, but nevertheless final goal, aspiration was understood by him as divine contemplation associated with the mind. He argued that the body is not evil, because it comes from God, but he saw the source of evil in bodily desires. Augustine rejected the Manichaean dualism of good and evil, and it was precisely this dualism that the last word his historiosophy. The various aspirations of hierarchical Christianity, biblical and ecclesiastical thoughts, religious and ecclesiastical spirit, rationalism and mysticism, loyalty to order and love - everything was intertwined in his work. Augustine had many followers.
Rome ceased to be a center already in the 4th century; in the 5th century it was subjected to constant devastating raids by the Vandals. Under these conditions, development was impossible; at best, one could talk about preserving tradition. Only several centuries later did the scholastics begin to develop new foundations of Christian philosophy, based on the teachings of Augustine. Augustine belongs to the thinkers who had a great influence on medieval spiritual life. He was much better known as a philosopher than as a "father of the church." His work was a mediating link between the philosophy of Plato and the thinkers of the Middle Ages. The Augustinian tradition has long been considered the only type of orthodox philosophy. Only in the 13th century did Thomas Aquinas create a new model of orthodoxy. Orthodoxy - (from the Greek orthos - straight, correct and doxa - opinion), the “correct” system of views, fixed by the authoritative authorities of a religious community and mandatory for all members of this community. , however, Augustine's influence continued further.
By the middle of the fourth century, with the victory of Christianity, a reorientation of the worldview of the peoples of the Mediterranean began. It is in such years, on the crests of a fierce struggle of opinions, that people appear whose opinions, placed on the scales of history, radically change the precarious balance between one or another worldview.
One of these people was Aurelius Augustine. He was born on November 13, 354 in Tagaste, now Souk-Aras in Algeria /1/. He was one of three children of an official of the local municipality, his mother was a zealous Christian and saw her son primarily as a Christian, although she did not interfere with her husband’s plans to make her son a rhetorician . Augustine owes his spiritual development to her. In his “Confession” (1.2), he often returns to the image of his Christian mother: “I was suddenly sickened by all empty hopes: I desired immortal wisdom in my incredible heartfelt turmoil” (Isp. 3.6 (7)). After graduating from school in the fall of 370, Augustine went to Carthage to receive a rhetorical education. After reading “Hortensius” by Cicero, which was part of the program, a revolution occurred in Augustine’s mind. He begins to look for his “Creed” and, among other books, reads the Bible. A person familiar with Aristotle and Plato, accustomed to the clear, conversational style of ancient authors, was not ready to perceive a not very clearly written and contradictory text.
The future Bishop of Hippo was under the influence of Manichaeism for nine years. With all the fervor of his youth and thirst for knowledge, Augustine tries to comprehend the teachings of the Manichaeans. And he gradually realizes that it cannot give answers to the questions that concern him most. After nine years of searching, he begins to become interested in skepticism. In 383 Augustine went to Rome to teach rhetoric. Later he will write: “...No man knows what is happening in a man, except the human spirit living in him” (Isp. 10.3.(3)). Not far from Rome, in Mediolanum, Augustine meets Bishop Ambrose. At first, he evaluates the priest only as a talented speaker and preacher. And only some time later, after numerous personal conversations with Ambrose, a reassessment of values takes place in Augustine’s soul. This was also facilitated by the fact that his mother, who was with him during these years, frantically persuaded him to join his destiny with Christianity. Having abandoned his old habits, Augustine accepts Christianity. Later, remembering what happened, he vividly describes this moment in “Confession”: “... habit compels one to do something else.” It is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that in this phrase Augustine uses the verb “to compel” twice, thus emphasizing that even a great truth does not prove its correctness and leads logically to itself, but forces it to be fulfilled.
In 388, Augustine takes his second step in Christianity: he sells his parents' estate and distributes the money to the poor. The next step is he becomes a monk. After some time, he moved to Hippo and, having received the bishop's blessing, founded a small monastery. In winter 395-396. Bishop Belothius of Hippo ordains Augustine to the episcopate. Augustine remained in this rank until his death. Already by 397, the name of Augustine became, as it were, a guarantee of correctness in the faith, and he himself became one of the largest authorities in church life. Augustine writes one of his most famous works - "Confessions" - a bright requiem for his pre-Christian life. By that time, Augustine had enough energy and knowledge not only to organize and strengthen the monastery, but also to fight heresy. It was Augustine who would subsequently direct the church to an active and quite brutal struggle against the slightest schism in the Christian religion. He took part in all the Carthaginian councils, which only from 401 to 411. it was seven. After 410, he was completely captured by polemics with the Pelagians.
On August 24, 410, Alaric's Visigoths captured Rome. This shocked everyone, including Augustine. After the fall of Rome, he begins to write his grandiose work “On the City of God,” in which he correlates human affairs and the will of the Lord. It took Augustine almost 20 years of his life to create this work. In the summer of 4530, the Vandals, who had crossed Gibraltar in 429, reached Hippo. In August 430, Aurelius Augustine died in the besieged city.
With the victory of Christianity, the Bible became the highest authority, which every Christian had to consider the only source of truth. The culture of allegorical interpretation of texts developed by the Platonists and Stoics (first applied to the Bible by Philo of Alexandria in the 1st century AD), and the theoretical positions of Platonism and Aristotelianism, united and concentrated in Neoplatonism, were of great benefit. The first made it possible to consider the Bible as a system of signs, “encrypted” truth, and to discover this truth. The latter provided everything necessary for the construction of ontology, cosmology, theology, epistemology, etc. Augustine was no exception. I use this approach; in books 11-22 “On the City of God” he sets out the first philosophy of history on the planet, the main " actors"Which are time, fate and the world. The merging of these dimensions creates the City, and not one, but two.
The concept of the "City of God". The history of two “Cities” - Earthly and Heavenly - begins at the moment of the appearance of the first intelligent creature, and they are so intertwined that it is impossible to divide their history into two throughout the entire existence of mankind. Just as it is impossible, according to Augustine, to divide the entire history of mankind into “sacred” and “secular” - such a division is not only impossible, but also blasphemous. The Two Cities are formed by two kinds of love: the Earthly City - by love for oneself, brought to the point of contempt for God, and the Heavenly City - by love of God, brought to the point of contempt for oneself (XIV, 28). But both of these types of love are extremes. In the real world they are very rare and therefore these two Cities have never existed and will not exist on earth. The third city - the devil - will never exist, because for the existence of such a city the full power of the devil is needed. from the time of his apostasy, the devil receives freedom only for 3.5 years. This time will be the last in the history of mankind - the time of the coming of the Antichrist. But even during these years he will not have full power, since true Christians will fight against him. And these 3.5 years will be given by God not as an opportunity for the devil to build his City, but so that the righteous will realize what kind of enemy they have defeated.
After this victory, the last day will come - the day of the Last Judgment, during which everyone who lived on earth will be resurrected in their bodies and those who did not believe in the true God or did not fulfill his commandments will die a second time - their soul will be “separated from God”, and the bodies will suffer in fiery Gehenna, in which both the devil and all the fallen angels will be imprisoned. Therefore, speaking about the Earthly City, Augustine speaks not about the City, but about those who could make it up - about sinners, after the Last Judgment, condemned to eternal torment.
Those who, through their life and faith, have earned the highest reward and forgiveness for their sins (since there are no sinless people; every person first goes through a period of error before coming to the true path), will become citizens of the City of God. This City will exist forever. Those who fall into it will no longer be people - they will become akin to angels. and their bodies will become perfection itself. Their only occupation will be the contemplation of God, although they will not forget either their life or the torment of the condemned. The world they will live in will be completely different, because... after the Last Judgment, the world will perish in a cleansing fire, and in its place a new, more perfect, and, most importantly, not defiled by sin world will be created.
But still, who are they - citizens of the Earthly and Divine City - in this earthly life? People belonging to the former seek glory in themselves, and those belonging to the latter seek glory in God. Therefore, the wise of the Earthly City seek the good of the world or their soul, or both together, and those who could know God exalted themselves under the influence of pride in their wisdom. They created idols that resembled people and animals. honoring them, they became either leaders of nations or their followers.
Future citizens of the City of God do not have human wisdom. Their main feature is piety. They understand the true God, expecting in the future the highest reward - the right to belong to the City of God in the company of saints and angels. therefore, they do not found cities and states - they are strangers on this earth.
But then the question arises - since the history and the end of both Cities are predetermined - does free will exist in man?
The problem of free will runs through the entire history of Christianity. It is not resolved by Augustine either. Moreover, he proved both points of view so brilliantly that his works are recognized both in Catholicism and Protestantism, which hold different points of view on this issue.
Can a person choose his own destiny? Can he only by his own decision join the Earthly or Heavenly City? On the one hand, yes. After all, “God created man himself upright, with free will, as a being, although earthly, but worthy of heaven, if he remains with his Creator; if he departs from Him, he will suffer the misfortune characteristic of this nature of this kind. But God , foreseeing that he would depart from God, did not deprive him of his free will...” (XXII, 1). But on the other hand, the citizens of these two Cities differ even in nature. Citizens of the Earthly city are born from nature corrupted by sin, while the Heavenly city is born from grace. and historical confirmation of this is, according to Augustine, the story of the two sons of Abraham - Isaac and Ishmael.
The history of mankind and its purpose. Augustine divides the entire history into three stages: 1st - before the appearance of the creature; 2nd - from the actual history of mankind from the creation of the first creature to Last Judgment; 3rd - from the Last Judgment to the time of the eternal kingdom of the City of God and the eternal torment of sinners. Thus, history does not develop in cycles, but in a straight line, and the world created by God is the first and only.
The entire “earthly” history of people can be divided into three eras: from the creation of man to the flood; from Noah to the coming of Christ; from Christ to the Last Judgment. And throughout history there have been citizens of both Cities. Among the angels there are two societies: those who fell and those who remained faithful to God. Man originally had a pure nature, but through his sin he spoils it and, as punishment, receives two deaths - physical and spiritual. Therefore, already in the first generation of people, division appeared. Cain, the first son of Adam and Eve, was a citizen of the Earthly City and the ancestor of its first tribe, which, due to its sins, was completely destroyed by the flood.
After the flood, without a doubt, the key moment in history is the division of humanity into nations as a result of the Babylonian pandemonium. Augustine further says that the people are “an assembly of a rational crowd, united by the consenting communication of the things that they love” (XIX, 24). Therefore, in order to judge the people, one must understand what they love. Naturally, there is only one people of God - Israel. from this moment on, Augustine has a new division of history - the history of the people of God, set out in the Bible, and the history of all other peoples. Their history is the history of the Earthly City. And yet, when talking about all the nations that existed, we must remember that “God commands one thing to some, and another to others, in accordance with the conditions of the time...” (Isp. III, 7). Therefore, when considering rules and customs, one cannot judge by the standards of one people (even God’s) the righteousness of a particular custom. And this is not because the truth is different or changes. It’s just that the time she controls passes differently. People during their short lives are not able to compare the actions of life of previous centuries and other peoples in conditions unknown to them with what they know. Therefore, a person can only have a very subjective opinion about other times not described in the Bible, because transferring the conditions of the Bible to other nations is not legal. Therefore, Augustine always speaks of “his opinion” when speaking about all nations.
All these peoples have their own blessings on earth. But many desire either what is impossible or what is not available to everyone. Therefore, the Earthly City is often divided “against itself,” entering into quarrels and wars. He achieves victories that bring death, for every nation wants to be a winner, while itself being captured by vices. If, having won. he becomes prouder, victory brings spiritual death, and if he thinks about the general fate of human affairs and worries about possible accidents in the future, then his victory itself is mortal.
However, it is not fair to say that the good that this people strives for is not good. He himself is something better in the human race. He strives for earthly peace for his earthly affairs: he wants to achieve this peace by war, because when he wins. there will be no one who would resist and there will be a world in which there would be no enemies arguing under the yoke of need and poverty about those things that they could own together. Therefore, if “those who fought for justice win,” then who will doubt that the desired peace has come? This blessing is a gift from God. But since they neglect the highest blessings pertaining to the City of God, new misfortunes will inevitably follow, and the existing ones will increase.
“The world” comes in several kinds. The world of the body is an orderly arrangement of parts. The peace of the unreasonable soul is the orderly calming of impulses. The world of the rational soul is the ordered life and well-being of an animate being. the world of mortal man and God - ordered in faith under the eternal sign of obedience. The world of the city is an orderly and unanimous consent of citizens. The world of the Heavenly City is the most orderly and unanimous communication in the enjoyment of God and mutually in God. The world of everything is the calm of order, the arrangement of equal and unequal things, giving each its place.
War - no matter with what intentions it is waged - is a disaster. Therefore, citizens of the Heavenly City must obey and not destroy the order of the countries in which they live, if this does not contradict their faith (IX). Although there is an excuse holy war, but in the XX book, speaking about the nature of the Antichrist, Augustine notes that the special virtue of the saints is their firmness, that they do not stoop to fighting the devil using his own methods.
If you look at the whole of human history, you will not find anyone who would not want to have peace. Those who wanted war wanted victory, and thus a glorious peace, or they wanted to arrange the world in their own way. But the higher world is the main feature of the City of God. therefore, everyone, without realizing it, ultimately desired him. Therefore, the ultimate goal of human history, as, in fact, of man, is precisely upper world. But you can only get the opportunity to live in it and understand all its beauty by believing in the One True God. And therefore, the souls, and not just the bodies of sinners who will understand this too late, will suffer in fiery Gehenna.
That is why God created humanity, “for he knew in advance that he would make good out of its evil, gathering with his grace from a mortal, deserved and justly condemned race numerous people to restore and replenish the fallen part of the angels, so that, thus, the beloved and heavenly City would not decrease in the number of its citizens, and even, perhaps, would also rejoice in increasing" (XXII, 1).
Thus, sixteen centuries separate us from the ideas formulated by Aurelius Augustine. Sixteen centuries is more than enough time to evaluate certain works. At the time when Augustine appeared “on the stage,” Christian literature was already very rich in names (for example, Origen, Arius, Tertullian, Jerome, Ambrose of Milan, etc.). Not all of them were recognized as Church Fathers, but Augustine was not just one of the Fathers. ACCORDING to the Christian tradition, he is the greatest theologian of the millennium; only he managed to create a holistic and complete picture of the universe. The picture is so complete that for eight and a half centuries the Latin West was unable to create anything similar. Until sep. XIII century he was one of the authorities on which any notable thinker of the Christian West relied. Thomas Aquinas, the only powerful “competitor” of Augustine, did not escape this influence.
Aurelius Augustine created the first philosophical concept of history, the main features of which can be summarized as follows:
The creator of all things is God.
The world created by Him is the first and only. The plan of its creation, development and end was always known to God.
The world develops linearly, in strict accordance with God's plan, according to laws unknown to people. The only source of knowledge about these laws is the Bible.
The goal of human history is to improve goodness and increase the number of citizens of the City of God.
The history of mankind is the process of improving future citizens of the City of God and identifying those unworthy of it.
The goal of history will be realized at the moment of the death of humanity and its world - at the moment of the appearance of the City of God, on the day of the Last Judgment.
But Augustine's writings are not only theology. His works are a confession of a living, trembling soul, which reminds us of our own experiences, thoughts, quests and, in my opinion, this is the most important thing. They become more valuable because they contain a lot open questions and contradictions that force you to start looking for something you haven’t thought about before. It is because of this that his works, especially the Confessions, will become for many what Cicero's Hortensius became for Augustine.
Literature
Sokolov V.V. Medieval philosophy. M., 1979.
Works of Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. Kyiv, 1901-1915.
Augustine Aurelius. Confession of Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. Vst. Art. A.A. Stolyarov. M., 1991.
Philosophy briefly and clearly: PHILOSOPHY OF AUGUSTINE. All the basic and most important things in philosophy: in a short text: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AUGUSTINE. Answers to basic questions, philosophical concepts, history of philosophy, trends, schools and philosophers.
PHILOSOPHY OF AUGUSTINE
Augustine the Blessed (Aurelius Augustine) (354-430) is considered the largest philosopher and theologian of the patristic period, who had a significant impact on the entire medieval culture and on the subsequent development of philosophy. In addition to its theoretical significance, his work also had a practical meaning: in particular, he substantiated the need for a church organization as a mediator between God and believers.
Augustine’s main works are “On the City of God”, “On True Religion”, “Confession”, “On the Trinity”, etc.
Augustine did a great job of systematizing religious knowledge and sought to present it as a single, holistic concept. In his writings, he followed the position that “true philosophy and true religion are one and the same.” Among philosophers, he highly valued Plato and relied on many of his philosophical ideas.
Augustine accepted Plato's position on the existence of incorporeal ideas (“essences”). But Augustine was not impressed by the complex of ideas as constituting, according to Plato, a special world, as eternal as matter, and, like matter, subordinate to the World Soul. Augustine removed the line separating the world of ideas from the World Soul, and included all Platonic ideas in the religious Absolute. He stated that Plato's ideas are "the thoughts of the creator before the act of creation."
God is characterized by incorporeality, infinity in space, eternity, interpreted as immutability. God is will, the highest good. Through his will, aimed at good, God creates all objects of nature, all the souls of people and such incorporeal beings as angels. Thus, Augustine substantiates creationism - the position about the creation of nature and matter by God.
Much was new in Augustine's theocentrism. The main thing is that he concretized the religious concept of God, filled this concept with philosophical content, moving the “personal” to the “transcendent”, to the philosophical Absolute.
Speaking about the predetermination of the fate of people by God, Augustine posed the problem of free will. The will can be directed by the mind, but there can also be a mismatch between the will and the mind; the choice of the will, i.e., human actions, may be irrational, inconsistent with reasonable understanding. A person is free when the will directs his actions towards good, towards the fulfillment of the Divine commandments accepted by the “heart” and mind; effort of the will is needed to establish oneself in grace. There is no freedom when the will or mind strives to rise above people, above God, when they are not consistent with the will of God.
In the history of mankind, Augustine notes changes for the better: more and more people desire moral self-improvement. Such changes occur as a result of the struggle between two cities - the city of God and the city of Earth. The two cities “were created by two kinds of love: Earthly - love for oneself, brought to contempt for God, and Heavenly - love for God, brought to contempt for oneself. The former places his glory in himself, the latter in the Lord. The Church is the representative of God's city on Earth, its power is higher than secular, and therefore monarchs must be subordinate to the Church.
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Aurelius Augustine, one of the most prominent fathers of the Western Church, was born on November 12, 353 in Tagaste, in Numidia, and died on August 28, 430 in Hippo.
As a 17-year-old boy, studying rhetoric in Carthage, Augustine indulged in a wild life. From 383 he was a teacher of eloquence in Rome, from 384 - in Milan, where influence Saint Ambrose prompted him to convert to Christianity (387). The following year, Augustine, through Rome, returned to his hometown and became the head of an ascetic community here, spending his life in complete solitude. In 395, Bishop Valerius of Hippo ordained Augustine a bishop (as a vicar in his own place). From that time on, the African church was guided by the power of his mind and words. Aurelius Augustine with great persistence refuted all former or emerging heresies: Donatists, Manichaeans, Arians, pelagian and the Semi-Pelagians, whose victory brought the African Church to a position of prominence for some time. The name of Augustine became famous throughout the Western Church. He died during the Siege of Hippo by the Vandals. The remains of Augustine in October 1842, with the permission of the pope, were transferred to Algeria and buried here at the monument erected to him on the ruins of the former Hippo. The Catholic Church canonized him as a saint.
Aurelius Augustine the Blessed. 6th century fresco in the Sancta Sanctorum Chapel, Lateran (Rome)
Aurelius Augustine, among other fathers, had the most strong influence in the Western Church, both as a result of the persistence with which he defended its teachings and interests both in theology and in church practice, and as a result of his outstanding mind, which uniquely combined contemplative and mystical elements. Therefore, it is not enough to see in him only the founder of medieval scholasticism; Luther, to a certain extent, was brought up on it. In the fight against the extremes of Manichaeism, Pelagianism and Donatism, Augustine sought to substantiate midpoint view, developing two main ideas, the idea of the omnipotence of divine grace and the idea of the church as the kingdom of God connecting heaven and earth. Augustine's view of the state as a sinful force and the requirement to subordinate secular power to ecclesiastical power formed the basis of the papacy's teaching on the relationship between both powers.
Aurelius Augustine gave a strict and impartial description of his own life in his “Confession” (“Confessionum”) of 12 books, to which are adjacent “Retractationum”, containing criticism of his own writings. He himself counts 93 of his works in 232 books. The most important of them can be considered: “On the true religion”, “On the Trinity” and “On the city of God”. It is also impossible not to mention that Augustine’s writings contain very valuable indications of the nature of music in the ancient Christian church, especially regarding the so-called Ambrosian church singing, which he introduced in his African diocese. Augustine also left a special work on music (“On Music”), dedicated to metrics.
Teachings of St. Augustine
The doctrine of being. The religious orientation of the philosophical systems of the Middle Ages was dictated by the basic tenets of Christianity, among which highest value had such as the dogma of the personal form of one God. The development of this dogma is primarily associated with the name of Augustine.
Augustine (354–430) is an outstanding thinker who, with his numerous works, laid a powerful foundation for the religious and philosophical thought of the Middle Ages. He was the inspirer of numerous and varied ideas and movements in the field of not only theology and general philosophy, but also scientific methodology, ethical, aesthetic and historiosophical views.
According to Augustine, everything that exists, insofar as it exists and precisely because it exists, is good. Evil is not a substance, but a defect, a corruption of a substance, a vice and damage to a form, a non-existence. On the contrary, good is substance, “form,” with all its elements: type, measure, number, order. God is the source of existence, pure form, the highest beauty, the source of good. Maintaining the existence of the world is God's constant creation of it again. If God's creative power were to cease, the world would immediately return to oblivion. The world is one. The recognition of many successive worlds is an empty exercise of the imagination. In the world order, every thing has its place. Matter also has its place in the structure of the whole.
Augustine considered such objects as God and the soul worthy of knowledge: the existence of God can be deduced from human self-consciousness, that is, through intelligibility, and the existence of things - from a generalization of experience. He analyzed the idea of God in relation to man, and man in relation to God. He carried out the finest analysis life path human - developed philosophical anthropology. The soul, according to Augustine, is not a material substance distinct from the body, but a complex property of the body. She is immortal. In his doctrine of the origin of human souls, Augustine vacillated between the idea of the transmission of souls by parents along with the body and the idea of creationism - the creation of the souls of newborns by God.
About freedom and divine predestination. Augustine's doctrine of divine grace in its relation to the human will and of divine predestination had a great influence on subsequent Christian philosophy. The essence of this teaching is as follows. Before the Fall, the first people had free will: they could not sin. But Adam and Eve misused this freedom and lost it after the Fall. Now they could no longer help but sin. After the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, those chosen by God can no longer sin. From time immemorial, the Divine has predestined some people to good, salvation and bliss, and others to evil, destruction and torment. Without divine predestined grace, man cannot have good will.
Augustine said that without knowledge of truth, “probable” knowledge is impossible, since probable is something plausible, that is, similar to the truth. And to know what resembles the truth, you need to know the truth itself. According to Augustine, the most reliable knowledge is a person’s knowledge of his own being and consciousness: “Whoever is aware that he doubts, recognizes it as some truth...” “Whoever doubts that he lives, remembers, understands, desires , thinks, knows, judges? And even if he doubts, then still... he remembers why he doubts, realizes that he doubts, wants certainty, thinks, knows that he does not know, thinks that he should not rashly agree.” Knowledge, according to Augustine, is based on inner feeling, sensation and reason. A person, says Augustine, has knowledge of objects accessible to understanding and reason, although small, but completely reliable, and the one who thinks that feelings should not be trusted is pitifully deceived. The norm of knowledge is truth. Unchangeable, eternal truth, according to Augustine, is the source of all truths, there is God. What was new in the theory of knowledge was Augustine’s statement about the participation of the will in all acts of knowledge. Describing the role of the volitional principle in feelings, Augustine uttered an aphorism: “A person experiences suffering exactly as much as he succumbs to it.”
God, world and man. Augustine's worldview is deeply theocentric: at the center of spiritual aspirations is God as the starting and final point of reflection. Augustine views God as the extramaterial Absolute, correlated with the world and man as his creation. The world, nature and man are the result of God's creation, and they depend on their Creator. Augustine emphasized the difference between God and Fate. According to Augustine, the Christian God has completely mastered fate, subordinating it to his omnipotent will: it becomes his providence, his predestination. Augustine affirms the principle of the infinity of the divine principle. If God, says Augustine, “takes away from things his, so to speak, productive power, then they will no longer exist, just as they did not exist before they were created.” Augustine wrote: “It was not my mother, nor my nurses who fed me with their breasts, but through them You gave me, an infant, child’s food, according to the law of nature, which You ordained for it, and according to the richness of Your bounties, with which You have blessed all creatures according to their needs."
The doctrine of the soul, will and knowledge. Reason and faith. Augustine said that “truth... can be found.” Reason, according to Augustine, is the gaze of the soul, with which it, by itself, without the mediation of the body, contemplates the true. The truth is contained in our soul, and our soul is immortal, and a person has no right to forget about the extraterrestrial purpose of his life. A person must subordinate his knowledge to wisdom, for the salvation of the soul is his highest purpose: “Everything that we contemplate, we grasp with thought or feeling and understanding. The soul cannot fade away unless it is separated from the mind. There’s no way she can separate.” Augustine considers reason as a very important function of the soul: “I believe that the soul feeds on nothing other than the understanding of things and knowledge, speculation and reflection, if it can know anything through them. There are two paths that lead us to the study of science: authority and reason. Faith in authority greatly shortens the matter and does not require any work... For those who are dull-witted or more busy with everyday affairs... it is most useful to believe in the most excellent authority and lead their lives according to it.”
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