On Augustine's "Confessions"

Christianity is a kind of fusion of Jewish and Greek thought, and the person most responsible for that fusion is a gust of hippo. He lived from 354 to 430 AD, and what's remarkable is how much we know about him. For someone who died almost 1600 years ago, we know a lot about his life story, his anxieties, his struggles, and his personal life. The reason we know so much about him is because when he was in his early 40s, he wrote one of the world's earliest autobiographies, confessions. The Augustine that we know from history is an extremely influential figure in the history of the Catholic Church, and in the history of Christianity generally. He was a bishop of hippo in North Africa, where he was originally from. He's also a copious writer of all kinds of texts, theological texts of course, philosophical dialogues in the mode of Plato and Cicero, and an enormous quantity of letters and sermons from which we actually can piece together a lot of the individual events in his tumultuous life. He was also as a leader in the church in North Africa, a political figure, a very prominent person, and he wrote the confessions in his 40s when he would just come into this position of power. I'm Donald D. Jagannathan, I teach philosophy in classical studies at Columbia University, and my specialty is ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. Augustine's confessions chronicle his life from infancy through his rebellious youth and culminating in his conversion to Christianity. Augustine's life story is one of searching. He was constantly seeking answers to the big hard questions of existence. What he's after is self-knowledge in a way, and one of the ways of doing that is looking over the events of your life and thinking about them, and another way of doing that is thinking, how do I relate to the world? What's the truth of what God is, and he's trying to answer these questions, and he realizes that he's not going to find them by going outside himself. He's going to find them by reflecting in himself, so we get these, you know, the narrative part, the sort of abstract philosophical part, and then the kind of scriptural reflection. They all are connected by the steam of self-knowledge, and in a way, there's something wonderful about the intimacy that this creates, all these different modes of investigation, and we get the same voice all the way through. It's really Augustine's voice, and you think if you read this book carefully and slowly, you feel like you really get to know this person, there's a kind of wonderful intimacy to it. That's one of the reasons I love it so much. Welcome to Ritlarge, a podcast about how books change the world. I'm Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world's leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode, I sat down with Professor Daniaje Jaganathan to discuss Augustine's confessions. Augustine was born in the year 354 AD in a small town in present-day Tunisia. At the time, this region of North Africa was part of the Roman Empire. So he's born in Fagasti in this little middle of nowhere town, but not too far from the metropole of Carthage, which is the leading city in this province, and he's growing up in this very tumultuous, but also very exciting environment. It's what we think of as the end of the Roman, of the Western Roman Empire, anyway, and the famous sack of Rome in 410 as one of the formative moments in Augustine's life. It hasn't yet happened when he writes the confessions, but these are the dwindling days of the Roman Empire as it's trying to maintain its position against other competing political forces. Augustine was born roughly 400 years after the birth of the Roman Empire. In his day, the Empire encompassed the entire Mediterranean region, stretching as far as England to the west and Palestine to the east. Augustine was born a Roman citizen to a pagan father and a Christian mother, Monica. Monica taught Augustine how to pray and the basic beliefs of Christianity. We could think of him as roughly middle class, he gets a good education, but his parents have to save up for it. He grew up with this great facility in Latin, and that linguistic facility, of course, affords and access to this further education. Augustine's formal studies began when he was 11 years old, and despite his Christian upbringing at school, Augustine was more drawn to secular writings than scripture. What was Christianity like in the fourth century? I mean, I think what's so distinctive, at least for me, is the way that there were these competing religious ideas that, you know, it's hard to picture Christianity as just one cult among others. Specifically, what Augustine calls the Catholic faith, Fides Coppolaica, that's one of a number of different ways of being a follower of Christ in this time, alongside various competing movements, including, you know, what we've now looked back on and think of as heresy, as like donatism and Aryanism, and these things that, you know, both contentions within the church and also between the church and other branches of the broader Christian movement, and then at the widest extent, other kinds of religious traditions that also incorporate a special role for Jesus Christ. And so there were all these different options, you know, you could be a follower of the traditional Roman gods still. When he was 17, Augustine traveled to Carthage to study rhetoric, or the art of persuasion. This was one of the three ancient arts of discourse, along with grammar and logic. While in Carthage, one afternoon, he and a couple friends decided to steal some pairs from the local market. He later wrote about the event in confessions. He said that they didn't steal a pair because they were hungry. They did it for the thrill. Quote, it was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own error. Not that for which I aired, but the error itself. This incident and how it made him feel changed something inside Augustine. He realized he was inclined to sin, but it wasn't just him. He came to believe that all humans were imperfect and had a natural tendency to sin. He began to look for ways to live a virtuous life, even as an imperfect human. During this time, Augustine read Hortensius, a philosophical dialogue by the Roman statesmen and philosophers Cicero. This sparked his interest in philosophy. And from here, he began his lifelong journey to find the truth. This quest led him to become interested and involved with Manakiasm, which was a Persian religion based on the ongoing struggle of good and evil. Around this time, he began a relationship with a woman and had a son out of wedlock. He moved back to his hometown of the gast and then back to Carthage, where he lived and taught for nearly a decade. But his life changed again when he was selected to be a professor of rhetoric in Milan, a very prominent position. From the outside, Augustine seemed to be doing really well. But inside, he was struggling. He wasn't happy with his life. The fact that success in the secular sense of, you know, being powerful, having money, having his career go well, having people regard him, none of these things brings him happiness. And eventually, he sees that something has got to give, that, you know, his pursuit of the truth in these intellectual ways doesn't get him all the way to the answers that he wants. And at the same time, his personal life is kind of falling apart. It was during this crisis that Augustine met St. Ambrose, who was the Bishop of Milan. In Confessions, Augustine says Ambrose gave him a more spiritual perspective on God and catalyzed his eventual conversion to Christianity. And then we get we get the sort of culmination of this narrative of anxiety in his conversion in a garden in Milan. He hears this child's voice saying pick up and read. And, you know, what is he to read? But scripture. And so he decides that he's going to convert. And eventually he's baptized in the following year by Ambrose at Easter. When Augustine heard the child's voice say pick up and read, all he had around him was a book of St. Paul's writings. He opened the book at random and read. Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantoness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof. This was the truth Augustine had been seeking. If humans were innately flawed, naturally inclined to sin, then the only way to live a virtuous life was to do so with the guidance and grace of Christ. He decides he's going to form this, you know, deep intellectual community with with some of his friends were also alongside him for the journey. Of also opted for Christianity over these kinds of secular careers. At this point, Augustine and his friends gave up their careers and devoted their lives fully to Christ. Although his journey is so personal and individual, you know, his mother is there as part of this community and and he relates the kinds of conversations that he has those friends and his mother and and then the narrative kind of ends with this incredible vision that he and his mother share when they're in Austria. That's one of these other kind of signature moments in the text. Soon after they shared this vision, Augustine's mother died. And then the narrative ends and he begins again asking, you know, what am I? Who am I now in this sort of reflective philosophical mode? He's no longer telling this story of particular events, but he's still answering the same question in a way that he was asking all the way at the beginning. The opening of the text is this plea, you know, this plea for help and I think in a way to God to help him grapple with the fact that he is he has like all human beings a restless heart that is longing to come to rest and he understands now that that rest is only possible if he comes to rest in God in some way and that really structures the whole text. I think that's a really central moment. Augustine's struggle is that he wants to be virtuous, but he's dealing with the reality of sinful human nature. He turns to the Bible and the story of Adam and Eve. They were kicked out of paradise for sinning. This was the original sin and according to Augustine, if we're descendants of Adam and Eve, then sin is in our nature and we need Christ to help us lead a virtuous life. And one of the early shocking moments in the text is when he describes how sinful babies are and this is one place that readers of the book just want to get off the boat. They're like, okay, this is I can't handle this. But if you if you persist a little bit you I think you see eventually what he's getting at. You know, he's still taught he's saying the restlessness of the heart is present even in the unsatisfied desires of children which they make known to us and that we are more like them than we care to admit because we wrap ourselves in the competencies of the world. You know, what is adulthood but learning to deal with the fact that your desires are sometimes frustrated. In fact, often almost always frustrated. And yet, and yet that frustration, you know, we can't just live with it. It still bugs us. We feel anxiety as a result. So this opposition of anxiety and rest or peace is really central to the whole text. And we see it in every in every phase. Augustine felt this opposition of anxiety and peace at various times throughout his own life. The incident of stealing the pairs is the one that most people remember where he and his band is sort of gang of friends. Steal some pairs for no particular reason. And Augustine is mystified of this idea. You know, they weren't hungry. They didn't really want them, but they did it because it felt like the thing to do. How do we understand that? And again, we get this really intense philosophical reflection. You know, what would the human being have to be like for things like this to happen? So once he's narrating particular events from his life that he's perhaps very deeply ashamed of and asking for forgiveness from God. At the same time, he's inviting his readers to come with him on this journey of both personal and anthropological investigation, right? We're thinking about what is it like to be this anxious creature, the human being? You mentioned, you know, he's writing this in his forties. I'm a little bit curious. What do you think was motivating him? Like, who is he writing this for? Right. So, you know, the question and motivation is particularly interesting because this text is unique. Formally speaking, if you just look at the formal structure of the text, the confessions as a prayer. It's one of the meanings of of confessions. It's a prayer to God. The first nine books is dominated by a narrative about his own life. And the last four books have these introspective theological and philosophical and scriptural reflections. And we might think that he's got a range of different motivations. One of them is to just figure out what he thinks, but also all the way through. He's figuring out what he's thinking about his own life. And he is also clearly out to defend himself because the facts about his life were a bit scandalous. Before he converted to Christianity and even manicism, Augustine led more of a secular life. From a Christian perspective, he did some things that the church disapproved of. He had a son at a young age out of wedlock, and he was, in his own eyes, a bit of a party-loving frat boy while studying in Carthage. He's also writing this book in the aftermath of the death of his mother, which he relates in book nine. And his mother was a central influence on his life. And there's a strong commemorative aspect to the text. He devotes a part of the book to a biography of her, not just of himself. He's thinking about how to organize monastic sorts of communities in his own context. And Christian monasticism, as we know it, is kind of getting going in various places in different ways. And Augustine is actually one of the people who is responsible for certain forms of it. Christian monks live simple, regimented lives devoted to worshiping Christ. The Guson helped outline the rules for monastic life. So a lot of reflections from book six on where he's talking about his friends. I think a lot of friends who joined him in these communities, we should think about that as him reflecting on what those communities are like and how we can balance the kind of intense desire for intellectual conversation that we also see in his philosophical dialogues. How do you balance that kind of intellectual life with a life that's devoted to the worship of God? And indeed, a life devoted to things like manual labor that are going to keep the monastic community going. So all of this is in the air and there's this incredible complexity. But we don't actually get is the next 10 years of his life or so. So he's writing more than 10 years after the end of the narrative portion. Even that narrative is is very complicated and takes lots of twists and turns. So I think we should see the complexity of that that form of literary storytelling is side by side with just the complexity of his own motivations. So he's bishop when he's writing this and does he remain bishop until his death? Yes. So he and this is this is a very tricky position to be in because he's responsible for the pastoral care of this community and for giving sermons all the time. He's trying to maintain the political position of his particular sect of Christianity against these other options in North Africa. He's dealing with these big theological controversies. His life is dominated by his intellectual engagement with a handful of competing positions, especially Aryanism and Plagianism. And he's just writing constantly in addition to talking constantly and it's really remarkable to think about the energy that he exerted in his ministry and he was a bishop for decades. And Augustin played a central role in organizing the doctrines of the Catholic Church. And so again it was not fate to complete in his own lifetime that things would unfold in the way that they did. So he's ended up with this kind of central status but had the world turned out a little differently. We might look back on him as as the leader of this ambitious minor religious sect that didn't that didn't go anywhere within the larger Christian movement. What other what other books did he write and you know what kind of influenced did those texts have? Perhaps the other text of his that's best known as the city of God, which is this enormous work of what we might call political theology, political philosophy, and also a reflection on what it means that that Rome fell even if briefly in in 410. So he writes the right city of God in the aftermath of that. In the city of God Augustin contrasts his own views with the views held by the rapidly declining Roman Empire. The Romans believe that humans had the ability to perfect themselves and live a just life. They saw outward success as a result of inner virtue, the more money, fame or power you had, the more virtuous you were. Augustin believed the opposite. He saw humans as inherently imperfect because of original sin. Unlike the Romans, he didn't think humans were capable of creating a just society on their own. Because of their imperfections, humans required the help of God to create a perfect society. So we have these magisterial works of theology and we can add to that list on the opportunity and he also famously writes about free will and grace. And those are two concepts that are very closely associated with him. And those sort of form one one class of really influential writings that you know really are starting point for theological reflection and Christianity. In addition to theological writings, Augustin also wrote philosophical dialogues. He was modeling himself on Cesaro, especially who also wrote a number of philosophical dialogues. And one of those stands out in particular his his dialogue on the teacher, which is a report of a conversation between him and his son and his son died at a young age. And so I think this is something very touching about about memorializing his son in this way. But that text is an attempt to put Christian epistemology on a footing on a par with the great ancient Greek philosophies. Ancient Greek philosophy dominated the ancient world. Augustin wanted to elevate Christian epistemology to a similar status. And what's remarkable about this text about about on the teacher is that you know the answer to the question of where knowledge comes from is Christ. Christ is the teacher of the title. And and what's wonderful is that we have this father-son conversation and and we think here is here's Augustin teaching his son, right, teaching his son about philosophy. And it turns out that they conclude that Augustin couldn't possibly teach his son anything because he can't transfer knowledge that way, knowledge is something you discover from within. And in for Plato, you know, you discover it perhaps by form of introspection where you you discover the forms and for Augustin this process of introspection and discovery for oneself essentially involves Christ. The other text is really influential is against the academics, which is his rebuttal of skepticism of academic skepticism specifically, which he was at one point very inclined to. And so you know in the confessions we see his journey through these different intellectual systems, you know, he is he going to be a platenist for a little while, you know, platenism, curism of manicism, but it's not sufficient to solve his personal problems. Maybe academic skepticism is the answer, you know, and all of these things kind of works for him and then Christianity is what works for him. And so we get this very narrative story about a personal seat quest for truth. But then in these philosophical writings we really see him grappling with the details of these of these views and showing himself to be I think one of the great ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, you know, part of that tradition as well. Perhaps the most important legacy of Augustin was this synthesis of classical philosophy and Christian theology. Augustin tells us himself he's seeking a single truth. And sometimes he thinks he finds pieces of the answer in the philosophical writers, especially the platenists who rid him of this kind of materialism that has confused how he understands the world. And especially how he understands how there could be evil in the world, which is one of the kind of central intellectual ideas that concerns him. And he really feels like he finds the answer to that in in the books of the platenists as he puts it in the confessions. And that same path of seeking the truth is what leads him to Christianity. It's not that those are two separate things. And, you know, that he had his studies on the one hand and his personal religious beliefs on the other. And I think just seeing him narrate that journey in the confessions is really jarring to to some of our sort of instinctive sensibilities on that topic. Although Augustin was confident he had found the truth he was looking for when he converted to Christianity. It didn't mean his search was over. For him, the search for the truth never ends. He really feels like he's made progress by moving from his mannequin phase through platenism to Catholic Christianity. And I think you can't have this tidy story of how he overcame his pagan secular world and then became a Christian. And I think part of that is really grappling with the last four books of confessions where he has all these questions still. Christianity hasn't solved the problem of time and memory or the problem of how to read scripture correctly or what the creation of the world has to do with our everyday lives. All these things that he goes into in the last four books are questions that are not doctrinally settled for him or even settled as matters of faith. And so he's still a seeker after truth, even post-conversion, and part of his seeking the truth let you know involve these these sort of pagan philosophical views. So I'd like to move now to the influence of this text and the influence of Augustin II. What's the legacy of Augustin the Man and Confessions the text? In Confessions we get something that has ten rules of influence that reach in all kinds of places. So yeah, I'm most familiar with his influence in the history of philosophy which is dramatic both for you know, resolute Christian authors like Aquinas who are also doing theology. But you know, for someone like Descartes who's trying to inaugurate a new method of doing philosophy. Well, where does he get it? He gets it from Augustin in important ways. And so you know, there's these narratives of modern philosophy that you know, they begin with Descartes. But so you know, there's this incredible influence. You know, Vic and Stein begins of philosophical investigations with a quotation from Augustin that he that he met. I think purposely misreads interestingly. So there's this huge huge influence in in philosophy and especially in this tradition of looking for the truth within. I think we can see that as the central insight of confessions. Then we can see that in philosophy with the introspective method, you know, in its different forms and guises, whether it's mystics or you know, people, antisceptics like Descartes who want to find you know, a kind of secure space for truth within our minds. Or people who are reflecting about the nature of mind and language like Vic and Stein. But then we can also think about the deep sort of significance of someone who's willing to marry sort of personal reflections with with theology. So yeah, you know, not just asking abstract questions, what does it mean to be a human being, but describing his own anxieties. And I think this idea of the human being as an anxious creature, you know, this is you in the modern world, we think about Freud and and other 20th century figures who are really concerned with this idea as well. I think we can find some of the roots of those ideas in Augustine. And then even if we just can find ourselves to the church, you know, there's always been a place for Augustinians in theology and in different, if you think about the reformers or in different phases, people have gone back to Augustine to kind of recover a certain, you know, not just this idea of the human being as an anxious creature in need of God's grace, but you know, very essentially these ideas about what freedom is for us has these the kinds of peculiar mortal creatures that we are. I think the whole idea that we are free and that we have a free will owes more to Augustin than maybe any other person. I don't think he's the inventor of modern subjectivity, but he might be the inventor of modern freedom in some important ways. Because it's a way of recognizing that we are both free and bound at the same time. And that I think that idea that yes, there are these other forces that impinge upon us, but there is a kind of freedom that we retain nevertheless. Augustin's notion of freedom extends beyond just a Christian interpretation of how our imperfections are a result of original sin. You know, freedom was thought of as a political concept, right? It was this binary of free and slave that you were free when you had a certain social and political status. And the transposition of that into psychology, moral philosophy, theology of thinking of our freedom of choice is kind of where our status comes from or something like that. You know, it just informs so much of, I think, ways of thinking about human beings. Again, even absent all of the theology. So that might be the, that might be the single most influential legacy of Augustin's thought in general. And I think what's wonderful about the confessions is that we see that he didn't just speculate that view into existence, that he came to that view sort of through this process of trying to seek the truth in his own life and overcome his own personal struggles. And, you know, so if, for instance, we want to criticize that view of freedom, we can, we can, we can wrestle with Augustin as a person and not just as an originator of these abstract ideas. And I think that that, again, is a powerful reason to go and read the confessions. So from what you suggested, it sounds like at the time or previous, you know, sort of the previous ideas where you either were sort of a full free citizen and, you know, can act in certain ways in a political community. Or you were in bondage in some way, whether kind of a full slave or, you know, gradations, I'm sure. But that freedom essentially was something granted to you externally, something provided by the political body that you were part of. But that another different way to think about freedom is that human beings are always free because within any given circumstance, there is a choice that can be made. I think what's really fascinating about a lot of Augustin's own view is that it makes space for the idea that there are, that there's also something essentially unfree about us that, you know, the combination of that freedom and that unfree is the anxiety, the restlessness of the human heart. And that's because, you know, here's a, here's a modern training of that idea, right? You know, the feeling that people have that they're overwhelmed when they walk into a supermarket. And you think, what's bad about this? You have all the choices that you want, right? All these options are available to you. You have the most freedom. Why aren't you happy about that? And what people find is that they don't like that. You know, they might, they might like to have fewer choices so they could make better choices. Or just spend less time worrying about it. And I think that that's a kind of insight that we really find in Augustin that, you know, we find ourselves with our capacities inhibited or damaged in some way. And for him, you know, there's got this really deep theological explanation that we get from scripture, from the idea of the fall and in Genesis. But I don't think we need that whole idea to kind of grapple with what he's talking about. You know, we can just think about the ways in which we might think of it in terms of social forces that, you know, we're not free because we're we're not isolated rational actors and we're vulnerable to the people around us, to the social structures that define how much power we have to ideology, to ways of thinking that we absorb without having the full ability to reflect on. And for that reason, even as we are able to make choices and go through life, you know, at least even to some extent, deciding what to do at what time. And of course, as we know, some people have lots more of that kind of freedom than others do. But maybe we suppose all of us have even just a little bit of it. What's interesting about it is even when you feel like no one is pushing you around or restricting you in any way, you can't always make use of that freedom rightly. And that itself is a kind of unfreedom. And I don't think we always endorse that idea. But I think it's one that's available to us to reflect on. Throughout his life, Augustine intensely grappled with what it means to be human being. He faced the difficult, eternal questions that plague all of us. He experienced firsthand the limitations of outward success on internal happiness and virtue. Augustine empowered his followers in the world by lifting the burden of striving towards human perfection. He boldly embraced our human imperfections and offered a way to live and work with them. Why is it that we are so anxious? And you know, Augustine has got a really interesting set of answers to that question. And you know, confessions is a sort of personal account of his own grappling with that. And in a way, what the function of an autobiography is, of course, not just to find out a set of facts about a person's life in like a history. There's always some ideological purpose lurking there. And I think Augustine is really interesting that he's revealing these things about himself because he wants to give us the tools to think about our own life. And to see, oh yes, I too, I too, you know, have that anxiety. Maybe I should go on the same journey of truth, of pursuit of the truth that Augustine is recommending. Ritlarge is produced by Jack Pombriant, Liza French, and Mie Zachary Davis. Script editing is by Gaelin Beebe. We get help from Farron Du. Our theme song is by Ian Koss and our branding is by Dan Petchy. We are a member of LitHub Radio. Ritlarge is a Lyceum original production. You can find us on our website, writlarge.fm. There you'll find transcripts, links to the books we discussed, and more information about today's guest. Thanks for listening. See you next time.