Zo AUGUSTINE Modern Studies in Philosophy is a series of anthologies present- ing contemporary interpretations and evaluations of the works of major philosophers. The editors have selected articles designed to show the systematic structure of the thought of these philoso- phers, and to reveal the relevance of their views to the problems of current interest. These volumes are intended to be contribu- tions to contemporary debates as well as to the history of phi- losophy; they not only trace the origins of many problems important to modern philosophy, but also introduce major phi- losophers as interlocutors in current discussions. Modern Studies in Philosophy is prepared under the general edi- torship of Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, Livingston College, Rutgers University. Dr. Robert A. Markus is currently teaching at The University of Liverpool, England. MODERN STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY AMELIE OKSENBERG RORTY GENERAL EDITOR /LucfusUne A Collection of Critical Essays EDITED BY MARKUS R. A. Anchor Books DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC. GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK 1972 This anthology has been especially prepared for Anchor Books and has never before appeared in book form. Anchor Books edition: 1972 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-168285 Copyright © 1972 by R. A. Markus All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition Contents INTRODUCTION VU CHRISTIAN PLATONISM 1 1. St. Augustine and Christian Platonism 3 A. H. Armstrong 2. Action and Contemplation 38 Fr. Robert J. O'Connell Language and meaning 59 3. St. Augustine on Signs 61 jR. A. Markus 4. The Theory of Signs in St. Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana 92 B. Darrell Jackson NE AND KNOWLEDGE 149 » 5. Si Fallor, Sum 151 Gareth B. Matthews 6. Augustine on Speaking from Memory 168 Gareth B. Matthews 7. The Inner Man 176 Gareth B. Matthews 8. On Augustine's Concept of a Person 191 A. C. Lloyd VI CONTENTS GOD AND FREE WILL 207 9. Augustine on Foreknowledge and Free Will 209 William L. Rowe 10. Augustine on Free Will and Predestination 218 John M. Rist TIME 253 11. Time and Contingency in St. Augustine 255 Robert Jordan 12. Empiricism and Augustine's Problems about Time 280 Hugh M. Lacey SOCIETY 309 13. Political Society 311 P. R. L. Brown *" 14. The Development of Augustine's Ideas on Society before the Donatist Controversy 336 F. E. Cranz ^15. De Civitate Dei, XV, 2, and Augustine's Idea of the Christian Society 404 F. E. Cranz CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 422 NOTE ON FURTHER READING 422 Introduction Few thinkers have left as deep a mark on Western intellec- tual history as Augustine of Hippo, and yet he is not much studied by philosophers. Although his age was not one in which philosophy flourished, it was still held in high respect. Philosophy was the quest of wisdom; it held the key to the meaning of life and it provided men with a rule to live by. The traditional figure of the philosopher furnished late an- tiquity with one of its cherished models, since for both pagans and Christians the philosopher represented an ideal of intel- lectual culture. The philosophic life was as near as one could get on earth to the good life, and it pointed the way to its full realization in another world. The idealized figure of the philosopher was one of the most popular of the images util- ized in late Roman funerary art: men liked to think of them- selves as dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom; but the actual activity of the philosopher was very much less popular. It was confined to a very small number of centers and carried on by a small number of people—after Plotinus, the great Neoplatonist of the third century a.d.—in the main by think- ers within the Neoplatonic tradition (though profoundly modified by Aristotelian logic), and very largely in the form of commentaries on the philosophical plassics. Among them were thinkers of importance and, sometimes, originality;1 but the philosophic thought of late antiquity is generally markedly derivative in character. If the philosophy of the philosophers bore the stamp of the past, the philosophy of the dilettante—and this must in- clude most of the "philosophy" of late antiquity—was even more thoroughly derivative. At its most superficial, it might amount to no more than a smattering of neatly codified and summarized doctrines taught by the thinkers of classical antiquity and the views associated with the various philo- Vlil INTRODUCTION sophic schools. Compendious and easily accessible, such sum- maries were a normal component of every cultivated man's education. Plato and Parmenides took their place in his in- tellectual equipment alongside snippets from Virgil and Livy. The spectrum between this antiquarian and literary interest in philosophy at one extreme and the professional interest of Alexandrian or Athenian Neoplatonists at the other was wide. Somewhere along it we must place Augustine's. Both Christian and pagan underwent the same education in late antiquity. We should expect their knowledge of phi- losophy and their approach to it to differ little. For the most part, our expectations are borne outby fact. Among Christian writers we find much the same range of interest in philosophy as among pagans. The one chief difference is that the spec- trum here is shortened, the fully professional end being cut off. The reason for this is simple. It is that "philosophy" as generally understood was held to be a body of teaching con- cerned with the ultimates of human life. Christianity offered such a body of doctrine and was often referred to as a "phi- losophy." How could a Christian, whose understanding of God, the world, and man was necessarily drawn from the Gospel, who had his own "Christian philosophy," share the preoccupations of a pagan philosopher? On whatever level he found something in common with Plotinus or Plato or Aris- totle, it could not be on the level of insight into the ultimate truth. Ex hypothesi, on the generally current conception of philosophy, that of a Christian could not be identical with that of a pagan. In the sense of the all-embracing intellec- tual activity concerned with everything relevant to the real- ization of the ultimate purposes of human life, Christian and pagan "philosophy" had necessarily to be mutually exclusive. Some Christian thinkers, especially in earlier centuries, had thus come simply to contrast "Christian philosophy" with pagan, only to reject the latter out of hand as embodying the teachings of falsehood and idolatry. A more complex and more positive assessment had also, however, come into being long before Augustine, and the type of thinking carried on by pagan Greek philosophers had found a place in the minds of Christian thinkers. It had, naturally, to be a subordinate place. The concepts and procedures of the Greek philosophers INTRODUCTION IX had to be fitted into the preoccupations of minds committed to a "Christian philosophy," into a wisdom structured in terms of the Christian Gospel. Neither Augustine nor any other Christian writer in this period could be a "philosopher" on the same terms and in the same sense as a pagan phi- losopher. Augustine seems to have been conscious of a dilemma. Phi- losophy, he was clear, could be considered as a type of ra- tional activity: on one occasion he pointed out that the cen- tral facts of the Christian message (the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus) were historical facts and therefore not within the sphere of the distinctive procedure of philoso- phy, the abstract, analytical type of argumentation which is its proper method (De Trinitate IV. 16. 21). Augustine seems to be thinking of philosophy here as a type of intellectual activity, defined by its characteristic procedure. On another occasion, however, he described Christianity as "the one true philosophy" {Contra lulianum IV. 14. 72), here tacitly iden- tifying philosophy with the results of an intellectual activity —certain doctrines about the final truths of life—rather than thinking of it in terms of a distinctive type of activity. We might call the first of Augustine's conceptions the "techni- cal," the second the "total," conceptions of philosophy. His dilemma, in these terms, was this: a Christian thinker could have no objection to philosophic thought taken in its "tech- nical" sense, indeed needed to have recourse to it for his own purposes of clarifyingthe logic of some of the statements of his Christian beliefs and of solving some of the puzzles these gave rise to. In this sense, however, "philosophy" was not fully what it was generally understood to be: it was not concerned with the ultimate truths which were thought to beits proper realm. If, however, it did concernitselfwith such truths (i.e., understood in its "total" sense), then only the "Christian philosophy" could claim to be true, even though its essential basis lies not in rational reflection and analysis but in belief about a historical revelation; and no other phi- losophy could form the proper object of study for a Christian interested in the truth, except insofar as it happened to an- ticipate or to confirm the truths taught by Christianity. In practice, Augustine overcame the dilemma by confining his X INTRODUCTION interest in what we would recognize as philosophy to the level he distinguished (in the term I have suggested) as "tech- nical." He subordinated it rigidly to the study of the scrip- tures which contained the truths necessary for a Christian. He thought of philosophy as a useful, even indispensable, aid in a Christian thinker's search for a deeper understanding of the truth about God, about man, and about the world in gen- eral. The fundamentals of this insight could never be fur- nished by philosophy (taken in this narrow, "technical" sense). They would be disclosed to the Christian believer in his faith in the Gospel message and in the teaching of the Church. Philosophy would provide a useful means of analy- sis and clarification; it could not serve as the source of an alternative body of teaching. Its function would be within the framework and in the context of the Christian faith as a datum. Thus Augustine's philosophical thought is always part of what we would regard as a theological enterprise, and has to be isolated from its setting and its avowed purpose ifwe are to study it for itself. That the attempt is worth making is a measure of Augustine's intellectual stature. Other Christian theologians, Thomas Aquinas, most nota- bly, have been acutely conscious of the difference between philosophy and theology. Such a consciousness is largely la- tent and incipient in Augustine. For this reason, among others, his work lends itself less readily to philosophical study than does the work of Aquinas who was, no less than Au- gustine, first and foremost a theologian. Augustine's philoso- phy has been less studied, and still less by scholars trained in the philosophical tradition current since the last war in Britain and in North America. There are, however, a num- ber of themes represented in Augustine's vast literary output which have been the subject of philosophical investigation in this idiom. There are others which have not—at any rate so far—been written about, or not in the idiom characteristic of the dominant philosophical tradition of the English-speaking world, which belong, nevertheless, to an area traditionally within the sphere of philosophical interest. Studies of themes in both groups have been included in this collection. Some of the essays printed here may stimulate professional philoso- phers to extend the range of their attention to fields to which