Well Dr. MB you
were not kidding at all when you said St. Augustine was tough. Honestly, you
don’t want to know the difficulty I had staying awake while reading this. And
while Sparknotes helped with a summary as you said, The City of God really feels like a book that’s difficult to
summarize. So, nice try Sparknotes. However, despite my inability to stay
conscious while reading Augustine’s work, I was able to make it through a
sizeable amount of the required reading and found some interesting points.
“Our Final Good is
that for which other things are to be desired, while it is itself to be desired
for its own sake” (Book XIX, Chapter 1). This is an example of one of St.
Augustine’s lines that sounds important. That, as well as the definition of
“Final Evil” that follows it, seems like a point worth deciphering, as
Augustine’s diction is so dense and twisted that each sentence feels like a
riddle. So what is Augustine talking about with all of these goods and evils?
He refers to the philosophers that “engaged in a great deal of complicated
debate” (Book XIX, Chapter 1) about this topic, and how it relates to
happiness, and seems to believe that he has the correct answer in the form of
these “supreme” goods and evils.
By chapter four,
Augustine has come up with Ultimate Goods/Evils, Supreme Goods/Evils, and Final
Goods/Evils and I feel like I’m in the Marvel Universe with all these
adjectives. Is there any difference between these adjectives? I have yet to
figure out if they’re all the same. Regardless, how does this equate to the
idea of utopia? Surely the person who can “achieve true happiness” – if such a
thing is even possible – would be able to fit well into a utopian society,
right? That’s probably up for debate.
Lastly, I think
it’s strange that St. Augustine just kind of starts attacking the Stoics in
chapter four, calling them arrogant and insolent. I took a class last semester
on the Stoics and their philosophies deal heavily with the idea of one’s sphere
of influence and how we should understand what is up to us and what isn’t.
Namely, we have no control over anything except the way we react to things. If
I’m reading this correctly (and there is a large chance that I am not),
Augustine seems to believe that all the Stoics really do is kill themselves. I
mean he’s not wrong… but he’s kind of an asshole about it. Frankly, I think
using the Stoic philosophy would be the most logical way to go about creating a
utopian society. They focus more on controlling one’s emotions and recognizing
what things are worth being upset about, if any. I think if a society of people
could maintain the type of discipline required to live the Stoic lifestyle,
things like greed and jealousy would be non-issues. However, they may have a
motivation issue when the answer to everything is basically always, “It doesn’t
matter, we’re gonna die anyway.” Oh well!
Zach, believe it or not, I think all of his crazy adjectives actually start to make sense to me. Here’s what I think St. Augustine is trying to say: If you believe in God and live on Earth as if there is a God and will be a Heaven, then you will experience the utopian afterlife. If you do not have faith while on Earth, then you are basically settling and will likely not reach the utopian afterlife simply because you don’t believe in one; however, there is always the possibility to go from a non-believer to a believer by having faith, thus each person has the equal opportunity to reach this Utopia in the afterlife simply by allowing themselves to believe in it. Why he didn't simply just say that is quite frustrating, but I suppose it would also be quite boring to read.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the Stoics and Augustine could learn a lot from one another if they just sat down and put aside their differences. I don't believe the Stoics have the ideal philosophy (I tend to be an emotional person and think it's pretty healthy for everyone to be a little emotional) but Augustine seems to be advocating for feeling every emotion without restraint (if I'm reading this correctly.) I feel that if they came to a happy medium they would be a great place.
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