Augustine’s Philosophy of Knowledge and Love
Concepts
Academic Skepticism and Certainty of Existence
Since Augustine’s conversion to Christianity, his work began to develop a polemic against Academic Skepticism and the Academy of Arcesilaus and Carneades. In fact, one of his first works was against the Academics, which shows his interest in asserting truth and combating all forms of doubt or denial thereof. If skeptics deny that we have certain knowledge, Augustine responds: “If I am mistaken, I am.” This precedes Descartes’ famous cogito.
In questioning, in the process of hesitation, Augustine’s own thought is revealed as certain. Anyone conscious of their hesitation is aware of something true and sure in that doubt. If there is doubt, it is because truth exists; if it did not exist, it could not mislead or deceive. So, there is another certainty: we know, but we can be cheated or make mistakes about what we know.
Along with these two truths, there is a third: that we love. Augustine explains that love is no less important than being and consciousness. Love is what we know and why we know; love is the center and weight of the human soul. Love is associated with happiness. And if happiness lies in loving God, in union with God, it is more important to love God than to know God, since we cannot fully know God because God is ineffable.
In conclusion, within man, in the depths of his soul, or reason illuminated by God, we find three self-certain truths: we are, we know, and we love. This being and this knowing are the mark of God, the image of the Trinity in man, or the theory of divine copies.
Love of Truth and Love of Knowledge
Augustine’s text is filled with words and expressions that have precise and important meanings in his thought: love or will, human nature, the theory of copies, God as disembodied light illuminating the mind, memory, metaphysics, understanding and will; levels of knowledge (sensitive, intellectual, and absolute/wisdom); seminal reasons in matter from God (a Stoic idea); and the superior ratio (memory, understanding, and will, which know essences or intelligible objects in the divine mind). He also refers to the problem of moral evil or sin. In conclusion, the text cites the fundamental truth of the Trinity in man: we exist, we know, and we love.
This fragment emphasizes the love of knowledge. Augustine states that no man likes to be deceived, so we appreciate wisdom and fear madness. He highlights human intelligence and consciousness. Augustine states that although animals may have more acute senses, they cannot perceive the incorporeal divine light that lets us know the truth, and therefore, cannot see God. This is a clear reference to the theory of divine light, which illuminates our minds so that we can learn truth. For Augustine, love is the weight of the soul, making us turn to our natural place, which is God.
Augustine discusses the hierarchy of beings, including plants and inanimate objects. Following Aristotle’s identification of three types of souls (vegetative, sensitive, and human), Augustine says inanimate objects do not feel or perceive but are perceived by us and beautify the world. Corporeal beings have their underlying causes in nature, alluding to the Stoic idea of seminal reasons—germs imposed on matter by God to direct the development of creation. The seminal reasons refer to the eternal essences of things in the mind of God.
Augustine cites three degrees of human knowledge: sensible knowledge (common to animals), intellectual knowledge (judging sensible objects with reason and comparing them to Platonic Ideas in the mind of God), and absolute knowledge or wisdom (requiring God’s illumination). When the text says that we know justice, Augustine means its essence. This is the degree of absolute knowledge, which requires the illumination of God.
When the text mentions the unjust as a deprivation of beauty, Augustine follows Plotinus: moral evil or sin is the lack of a good, a lack of being. Evil is not an efficient cause and has no substance, as the Manicheans and Gnostics believed.
The passage concludes by recalling the three truths from the beginning and asserting that it is thanks to the mind enlightened by God that we know.
Synthesis
The central theme is knowledge and truth, but the importance of love is also highlighted. The axis of Augustinian philosophy is the relationship between God and the soul, referring to evil and creation.
Augustine blurs the lines between philosophy and religion, reason and faith. The driving force of his thought is the pursuit of truth, but for Augustine, God is truth. Since his conversion, his philosophy has been of faith, God, and the human soul that wants to know God, because God is the life of the soul, and their union is the happiness humans yearn for. The soul is the image of God, and God is found by transcending and internalizing human reason.
His main argument is the awareness of truth: the soul is mutable and finite, but it finds within itself something greater: immutable and eternal truth. This truth is within us, in the reason of the knowing subject. Truth is superior to reason; therefore, truth is God. Eternal truths are the immutable content of our reason, but this content cannot be explained from the standpoint of reason, compelling us to transcend reason and assert the existence of subsistent, eternal, and unchanging truth, which is God.
God is linked with knowledge and truth: the Father with Being, the Son with knowledge (where the Platonic Ideas reside), and the Holy Spirit with the love between the Father and the Son. The three powers of the superior ratio (memory, understanding, and will) are a reflection of the Trinity.
Augustine identifies three levels of knowledge: sensible, rational/intellectual, and wisdom. Sensation is the most elementary but not negligible; it is the soul seeing through bodily organs.
The rational level analyzes, distinguishes, classifies, and judges what sensible knowledge has grasped. This is the level of science, or universal knowledge of sensible things, oriented toward action, technology, and transforming the world.
The superior intellect or mind is the supreme power. It is infinite, non-dialectical, and immediate, designed to grasp eternal and immutable truths. The intellect is oriented toward contemplation and provides wisdom.
The theory of divine light is characteristic of Augustine’s Neo-Platonic and Christianized heritage. God enlightens the mind so it can rise to the knowledge of truth. The soul, an image of God, bears the imprint of his creative activity.
Context
This fragment belongs to City of God, dedicated to Augustine’s friend Flavio Marcellino. He wrote it to defend Christianity against pagans who blamed the sack of Rome in 410 on the Christian God and to encourage disheartened Christians.
Augustine (354-430) was Bishop of Hippo. He belongs to the heyday of the Latin Fathers, whose first apologetic works defended Christianity, paving the way for its consolidation and unity by establishing the Trinitarian and Christological doctrines. He also addressed heretical sects like Gnosticism and Manichaeism.
The main concerns of the Patristic and Scholastic periods were the relationship between reason and faith (with faith superior to reason and will superior to understanding) and the problem of universals.