A close reading.
How do we make good choices? How do we make a decision? These questions are constantly in my mind, as I try to build and educate my own interest for medical ethics.
How can Saint Augustine, the great thinker, the teacher, help us in this reflection on ethics? What did he say about it? Did he directly address these questions? Or did he only address the reciprocal question: how do we avoid bad choices?
Augustine confesses he has done bad choices as a young man, in his passionate quest for the truth: sensual experiences, Manichaeism, Skepticism. He has the experience of a man who has lost his way during years, and then was able to reach the haven of tranquility. Christianity has given him more satisfaction than any other way of life, but he wouldn’t have embraced it without complete exploration. Having reached this happy life, he is willing to share its path and teach its conditions.
We will follow him as a master in knowing the traps and how to avoid them. In his early writing de Beata Vita, he relates the main philosophical stages on the long way of his intellectual, moral, and spiritual journey from Manicheism to Catholicism via skepticism.
“The desire for happiness is essential to man. It is the motivator of all our acts. The most venerable clearly understood, enlightened, and reliable constant in the world is not only that we want to be happy, but that we want only to be so. Our very nature requires it of us.”
Saint Augustine, de Beata Vita [1]
Converted but not yet baptized, at 32 years of age Augustine went on retreat for several months at a friend’s country estate in Cassiciacum with a band of his friends, relatives, and students. From there he wrote his first Christian works, beginning with Contra Academicos, a refutation of philosophical skepticism. But in the middle of writing Contra Academicos, he broke off and wrote De Beata Vita (written in 386/387), a short Platonic dialogue about the meaning of life. De Beata Vita is thus the first work completed by Augustine the Christian.
Purpose
In this paper I offer a close reading of de Beata Vita to see if Augustine’s vision and interpretation of his own way of seeking truth could help us in determining how we make good choices, or, in other words, how we handle our ethical questions. I also use the Confessions as an interpretive reference rather than a closely read text. My framework follows the chronology of the text, beginning with a prologue, then a dialogue taking place over the course of three consecutive days. Along the text, we will keep in mind the question with which we read Augustine: how do we make good choices, how do we avoid bad ones?
This paper is divided into five parts. The first part is a close-reading of the prologue. This prologue is the most useful section for one wondering if we can do ethics with Augustine? The second part takes us to the dialogue itself, on the first of its three days. The third and fourth parts are close-readings of the following two days of the dialogue. The fifth and last part is a discussion. It shows the usefulness of de Beata Vita in medical ethics.
1 - Prologue
Augustine’s reasons for writing de Beata Vita are rooted in his quest for a happy life, by way of philosophy. The text leans on a linkage between the pursuit of wisdom and the pursuit of happiness. In the first lines of this text, Augustine acknowledges that this quest cannot rely on reason only. He lets us hope, though, that there is another way:
Considering that the voyage to the port of philosophy, from which one proceeds to the land and domain of the happy life, if it must be charted only by rational choice, […] a much smaller number of men would have arrived there than actually have. [2]
Augustine borrows the metaphor of seafaring for himself, enlightening it for us: steering one’s ship is indeed comparable to the investigation of the right path to one’s life’s haven. Augustine compares human restless wandering to a tempestuous voyage on a ship. He likens the man searching for truth to a seafarer trying to find his way while his vessel is being tossed about by waves and gales: “I seem to see three classes of sea-farers, so to speak, whom philosophy is able to embrace.” [3]
Augustine opens his text as the helmsman, leading his readers – if they agree to follow him - out of their wandering ways down a signposted path. His vocabulary uses the words haven, land, domain (quoted above). The haven evokes steadiness and restfulness. Augustine tells us that the aim of his voyage was to “steer my leaky and weary vessel to the tranquility that I desired.”[4] It implies a time of shakiness and insecurity; the path to philosophy and happy life can be a worrisome journey. By contrast, land and domain evoke a large and hospitable estate where one can find abundance, generosity, stableness, comfort.
A philosophical journey
Making good choices could accordingly be compared to making good moves while steering one’s ship. The aim being to reach the haven of philosophy. He tells us he has the experience of that journey:
At he age of nineteen, after I had encountered in the school of rhetoric that book of Cicero which is entitled Hortentius, I was fired with such an enthusiasm for philosophy that I immediately considered devoting myself to it. [5]
Augustine makes it known that his philosophical journey has not been a straight one. He has erred in misguided paths.
But there were clouds to confound my course, and I confess that for quite a while I was led astray, with my eyes fixed on those stars that sink into the ocean. For a certain childish superstition used to frighten me away from investigation itself. When I became more resolute, I then dispelled that darkness, and I persuaded myself to trust those that taught rather than those that ordained obedience —and I fell in with human beings [the Manicheans] to whom the very light that is discerned by our eyes was seen to be among supremely divine things to be revered. I did not agree, but I thought that they were concealing something important in those wrappings which they were someday going to reveal. [6]
In this passage, four bad choices are described that enlighten our search for Augustine’s conception of how to avoid bad choices.
Four errors
The first one was his “childish fear of autonomous thought”. In the movie “Star Wars”, Master Yoda would likely advise young Luke Skywalker not to fear. “Fear is the way to the dark side of the Force. Trust your feelings.”[7] Once Augustine oversteped his fear, he was able to listen to those who appeal to his intelligence (those who teach) rather than simply use authority (those who command). Intelligence was now leading his quest. Augustine may, though, not rely definitely on intelligence to go forward, as we said of him earlier considering the insufficiency of reason. Augustine remained suspicious of autonomous thought because it “didn’t work” for him. Even as reading the Platonists, he reached the limit, hitting the wall of his unanswered questions. Human ability to reach out to truth, in Augustine’s thought, is always distorted by ignorantia and infirmitas. Only through grace, only by the encountering of the Entire Teacher, Christ - through the mediation of the Church - was Augustine able to reach that peace in his intellectual quest and his need for illumination. For Augustine, human beings require grace to overcome the mind’s susceptibility toward twisted reasoning and self-deception.
As a matter of medical ethics, the fear of autonomous thought threatens patients in their decision making. The conclusion will discuss this.
The second error was to expect some concealed truth to be some day revealed. “I thought they were concealing something important.” Augustine had been captivated by his great Manichean teacher Faustus. Captivated is the word. Faustus pretended he could answer any question and solve any problem. Augustine kept waiting for his answers, trusting it was just a question of time. But it never came. Manichaeism was a form of a Gnostic system. Christianity is not. Gnosticism pretends that highest levels of truth can only be revealed to initiated ones and should be concealed to those who are not far enough in the initiation process. Christianity early established that Christ’s mystery of salvation is not hidden, but instead is available to all, the smart and the simple, the poor and the rich, the well and the little educated. In Augustine time, some of the Church's mysteries were hidden from the uninitiated - which is to say the unbaptized. Catechumens were allowed only to the liturgy of the Word, not to the Eucharist. The Church has recovered some of this today. I understand this through the prism of gospel of Mark and its motive of the “secret”. One example: after the Transfiguration, when Jesus comes down the mountain together with Peter, John and Jack, he “ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” (Mark 9:9). Indeed, some realities are unreachable until their sense has been unveiled. It would be counter productive to give to those who cannot decipher it access to the treasure. Augustine explains the disciplina arcana, to a certain catechumen named Firmus: "…while you, although still a catechumen can explain to your wife, a baptized Christian, some things pertaining to religion which you have read about, which she has not read; nevertheless, she knows things which you do not yet know and she cannot tell you about them. For the mysteries of rebirth are rightly and properly made known only to those who accept them. So while you may be more learned in doctrine, she is more secure in the mystery."[8]
In the medical field, the word "diagnosis" comes from the Greek word "to know." A diagnosis reveals something about an individual that a healthcare professional has special expertise in knowing. To whom such knowledge should be hidden of revealed? Certainly not to the patient, though it happens.
With the third error, Augustine raised the dilemma of obeying authority or reason. “I persuaded myself to trust those that taught rather than those that ordained obedience.”[9] I believe later on, Augustine the Catholic will make more room in his life to negotiate his choices, his doctrine, his ministry, with both those who command (the Church’s hierarchy) and those who teach (the theologians and the other bishops). But at this stage of his life, young Augustine had to free his reasoning capacity from unfounded ascendancy. As a matter of medical ethics, patients are sometimes asked to blindly trust those who command, namely their busy-and-all-knowing physician. They are commanded to be no more than an obedient body.
Augustine warned us with the fourth – the Manichean’s – error. They pretended that “the very light that is discerned by our eyes is among supremely divine things to be revered.” Augustine refers to their incapacity to understand beyond the visible, which is the material. The rationalistic promises of Manichaeism prevented him for many years from learning to think of God and the soul as incorporeal.[10] He clarifies this a few lines later, when telling about his dialogues with Ambrose of Milan, and Manlius Theodorus, to whom this text is dedicated:
I noticed frequently in the sermons of our priest, and sometimes in yours, that, when speaking of God, no one should think of Him as something corporeal; nor yet of the soul, for of all things the soul is nearest to God.[11]
Getting off the hands of the Manicheans was not the end of Augustine’s erring. He tells us that the ship of his philosophical quest “fell” again in other’s hands, the “Academics’”, which have been identified with the Skeptics.
When I freed myself from those men [the Manicheans] and escaped, especially after I had crossed this sea, for a long time the Academics held the tiller of my ship as it battled all winds in the midst of the waves.[12]
Will Augustine’s ramble ever cease? Yes, eventually, obstacles were removed, partly through studying Platonism and partly through listening to the sermons of Ambrose.[13] But this, Augustine described, was not achieved without intellectual distress and renouncement.
After I had read only a few books of Plato, of whom, as I learned, you are particularly fond, I compared them as well as I could with the authority of those who have given us the tradition of the divine mysteries, and I was so inflamed that I would have broken away from all anchors, had not the counsel of certain men stayed me. What else was left, then, except to find aid in my dilemma from an apparently adverse tempest. Thus, I was seized by such a pain of the chest that, not being able to keep up my onerous profession, through which I might have sailed to the Sirens, I threw off all ballast and brought my ship, shattered and leaking though it was, to the desired haven of tranquility.[14]
What kind of philosophical seeker are you?
This last words of section 4 are the very words of Psalm 107. The comparison shows such similarities, that one supposes that Augustine found in this psalm the accurate frame to shape the narrative of his spiritual journey. The quest for happiness is comparable to a tempestuous journey on the sea. Augustine wrote a commentary of this psalm. Could it help us understand his use of the seafaring comparison? [15]
23 Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the mighty waters;
25 For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea.
26 They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their calamity;
28 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress;
29 he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.
30 Then they were glad because they had quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven.
31 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind.
This comparison allows us to go back to Augustine’s categorization of men among three typologies of sea-farers. The text draws each lector to wonder which kind of philosophical seeker he is.
The first class consists of those who […], with a slight effort and an indolent stroke of the oars, move off a short distance and establish themselves in a state of tranquility.[18]
Who would identify with these lazy fellows, deprived of ambition? Obviously not Augustine. He doesn’t take more that three lines to depict them.
The second class […] is made up of those who, deceived by the beguiling appearance of the sea, have chosen to proceed out into the middle of the deep, and venture to travel far away from their native land, which they often forget.[19]
The vocabulary of this passage uses the words beguile, elate, bewitching, satisfaction, pleasures, honors, ensnare. The false seductions are at work in this second class of men. The passage ends with the expression “futile undertakings”, which tells it all about the vanity of these sea-farers.
Let us note here his expression “away from their native land”. This expression will reappear throughout the text. It likely refers to Augustine’s personal history in which he wandered away from the steadfast advices and catholic faith of his mother, which he eventually adopted. In the Confessions, Augustine often refers to his childhood: "In my mother's heart, you had already begun your temple."[20] The Catholic Monica often admonished young Augustine, who later recognized that God was speaking through her. At the time, however, her warnings seemed "womanish advice which I would have blushed to take the least notice of."[21]
As we are still reading the first pages of de Beata Vita, Augustine has already told us the tenants of his intention. We already know much about the cul-de-sac of philosophical quest, and what bad choices we should avoid. The third class of seafarers, sure enough, resembles Augustine. Here we find men who are passionate in their inquiry but misled.
There is a third class who, either on the very threshold of youth or else after being tossed long and far upon the sea, look back to certain beacons and, even amid the waves, the great sweetness of home.[22]
Many dangers and traps are described, clouds, sinking stars, enticements, adversities, misfortune, tempests. Several words and expressions, like clouds and sinking stars, are used by Augustine in section 4 to describe his own philosophical wandering.
These seafarers are the most sympathetic ones. They are lost, but ardent. They will finally reach homeland, the haven. But other deceiving seductions await them. Before the port itself stands a huge mountain that causes the passage to be extremely narrow.[23] What are the bad choices Augustine is trying to warn us against? This mountain is described as resplendent, clothed with deceiving light (honors), presenting itself as a dwelling place (wealth), attracting not only those who are arriving, but also men from the harbor itself, holding them in its sheer loftiness (pride).
Augustine ends his comparison by reminding us very clearly what he was writing about. “Does reason teach those who are approaching and entering upon philosophy that they must fear any mountain more that the proud pursuit of vain glory?” Avoiding the pursuit of vain glory by way of humility is a theme that comes later on in the following dialogue, when the assembly agrees about the importance of moderation.
One may have been surprised, along Augustine’s narrative of his philosophical journey, how much he was influenced by other philosophers. The philosophy of the Academicians, along with that of Cicero and that of Plotinus, appears to have made a lasting impression on Augustine. The remark that “for a long time the Academics held the tiller of my ship” is especially noteworthy. Augustine develops in the Confessions how the social pressure operates within a group. What he explains in the Confessions, he probably learned in the different groups he belonged to, including the Academicians, and the Manicheans.
Peer pressure
As a teenager, Augustine and his friends stole an armload of pears from their neighbor's pear tree. In this passage we find a sample of Augustine’s emphasis on the role of social framework. Augustine tells the story of how he and some of his teenage cronies went and stole from a neighbor's pear tree. They got so many pears that they couldn't hold any more. They had their arms filled with pears. He said they each took just a few bites and threw them away to the pigs. Why? Because it wasn't the pears they were after. They just wanted to enjoy breaking the law.[24]
One tries to please his peer. Augustine writes that he would never have committed the theft alone. "The single desire that dominated my search was simply to love and be loved." In this case, the problem was that his love had "no restraint imposed [on it] by the exchange of mind with mind." Augustine is always concerned with the life of human beings within society. He knows that he would never have committed the theft if he had not been with a group of his friends. In contemporary terms, he is aware of the influence of peer pressure, subtle and unspoken, on his own behavior. Augustine tries to explain exactly how this social pressure operates. What is it about human beings in groups that makes them so susceptible to irrational impulses, impulses they would never act upon if they were alone? For Augustine, who so deeply values friendship, this remains an unsolvable problem. People in groups can both support each other in good—as his little community of friends later does at Cassiciacum (near Milan in northern Italy)—and lead each other in vain paths.
In his later anti-Pelagian writings, Augustine elaborated on the question of the human quest for happiness. He deemed there is a perversion and distortion in the human ability to pursue happiness in light of the devastating effects of original sin. In a real sense Augustine's early optimism in De beata Vita is later tempered by a sense that human beings substitute lesser goods for higher goods resulting in poor choices with potentially disastrous consequences.
2 - The dialogue
The dialogue is by far the main part of the text. It stretches from sections six to thirty-six. With the sixth section, we enter in the narration of a dialogue of three days between Augustine and his guests. The dialogue itself begins (section 7) with an introduction to the theme of the happy life by means of a discussion on the components of human nature. Happy life is then discussed and found to be reached only through the possession of an immutable and imperishable good, that is, God. Augustine criticizes the irrational and mistaken position of the skeptics (the Academicians) who, filled with stubbornness, keep seeking restlessly and therefore cannot be happy.
Set-up and guests.
The dialogue takes place over the course of three days beginning with Augustine’s 33rd birthday (November 13 386). It is a kind of symposium, a convivial discussion on a set topic among (mostly) Augustine’s relatives. Monica, his mother, is there. She gives to the discussion the benefit of her long years of Christian faith. Her demeanor reveals deep respect for and pride in her son’s intellectual and spiritual achievement. Yet she displays her typical firmness and determination in requiring Augustine to explain himself fully. Young and spontaneous Licentius is among the guests. He is the son of Augustine’s benefactor. He stays with Augustine as a pupil, as he wishes to undertake philosophy. Other guests are Trygetius, also Augustine’s pupil, Navigius, Augustine’s brother, Adeodatus, Augustine’s only son, Lartidianus and Rusticus, Augustine’s cousins, and finaly Lartidianus.[25]
The path to the happy life.
This quest is not merely an academic exercise, but it is Augustine’s intimate quest. He acknowledges still being hesitant on the nature of the soul.
You see, therefore, the philosophy in which, as in a haven, I am now sailing. However, this haven is wide open, and, though its largeness offers less danger, it still does not exclude all error. For I simply do not know to what part of the land -that part which alone is really happy- I should move and how I should chance to reach it. What firmness do I possess? For, up to now, in my mind even the question of the soul is uncertain and changeable.[26]
As we read de Beata Vita with our question in mind: “How do we make good choices, or how do we avoid bad choices”, it is intriguing that, at the opening of this dialogue, Augustine knows his path “still does not exclude all error.” This may be a rhetorical figure intended to hook the reader, since the conclusions of the dialogue show much firmer ideas.
As the discussion progresses, Platonic influences quickly become evident. The soul is depicted as in need of food (knowledge), and its "appetite”, which is the source of all faults and worthlessness, is attributed to soul’s famine. In the following (shortened) dialogue, we discover how Augustine drives his guests to the points he has in mind.
Since we all agree that man cannot exist without body and without soul, I ask all of you: For which of the two do we try to obtain food?' 'For the body,' said Licentius.[27]
Is there no food proper to the soul? Or do you think that knowledge is its nutrition?' 'Obviously' said mother. 'I believe that the soul is not nourished except by the understanding and knowledge of things.' [28]
Then we state correctly that the souls of people not scientifically trained and unfamiliar with the liberal arts are, as it were, hungry and famished.' 'I believe' said Trygetius, 'that their souls also are full, but full of faults and worthlessness.' [29]
This Neo-Platonic thesis that evil is privative and therefore springs ultimately from emptiness plays an important role in Augustine's ulterior discussions of the problem of evil. He displays it and introduces the spiritual virtues and weaknesses with which we are at discernment, namely worthlessness and frugality.
According to the ancients the very word nequitia [worthlessness] -the mother of all vices- springs from nequicquam, that is, from that which is a nothing. The virtue which is opposite to this vice is called frugalitas [frugality], for, as this latter is called after the word frux [fruit], i.e., after fructus [enjoyment], because of a certain fecundity of the souls, so is nequitia named after this sterility, i.e., after nihil [the nothing]; nihil is all that flows, that is dissolved, that melts and steadily perishes.[30]
Coming back to what food is appropriate for the soul, Augustine asks his guests what should be the object of our desire. Following the skeptic’s postulate (but never naming them!) that the happy life requires desiring only something that could not possibly be taken away, Augustine concludes that the possession of God is a desire fitted to render happy.
Anyone setting out to be happy must obtain for himself that which always endures and cannot be snatched away through any severe misfortune. […] Is God, in your opinion, eternal and ever remaining?' I asked. 'This is so certain,' replied Licentius, 'that the question is unnecessary.' […] 'Therefore,' I concluded, 'whoever possesses God is happy.' [31]
Augustine wants to bring about the way to this achievement. Who possesses God? He proceeds.
Licentius: 'He who lives an upright life possesses God.' Trygetius continued: 'He who does what God wills to be done possesses God.' […] My son, the youngest of all, said: 'Whoever has a spirit free from uncleanness has God.’ [32]
This categorization in three groups will provide the ground for subsequent dialogue on the theme of virtues. At this point, Augustine announces that he will end that conversation by taking the occasion to show that the Skeptics’ philosophy goes nowhere but to unhappiness. Along with the Manicheans misjudgment, their philosophy is one of the worse choices one could possibly make. In what may be his most concise and precise refutation of the Academicians, Augustine says:
It is clear that he who does not have what he wants is not. But no one searches for what he does not want to find. And they [the Academicians] are always searching for the truth. Therefore they do want to find it. Accordingly, they also want to have the discovery of the truth. Yet they do not find it. It follows that they do not have what they want. And from this it also follows that they are not happy. Yet no one is wise unless he is happy. Accordingly, the Academician is not wise.’ [33]
The Academicians are caught in a vicious circle, in that they are not happy because they are not wise and not wise because not happy. If they do not change their method, then they cannot change their results. Perhaps Monica was right about the Academicians after all, as Augustine says:
I smiled at my mother. She said: ‘Now talk to us, and tell us who these Academicians are and what they want for themselves.’ After I had explained these things to her briefly and clearly […], she said: ‘These human beings are stumblers.’ (This is the name commonly used for those who suffer from epilepsy.) [34]
The Academic skeptics are “stumblers” on the path of life; they are neither on the right track nor on the wrong track; they are on no track at all. Since they do not know how to search, they also do not know how to find. They have devised a disordered way ever to be searching and never to be finding. In the end, who has better prospects of pursuing wisdom and attaining the happy life, is evident to human beings of faith and reason.
3- Second day
The second day begins with an abstract of the conclusions agreed the day before. Augustine recalls the three ways to possess God. He then shows that these three ways sum up in one single predicament: be virtuous, keep God in mind, and devote oneself to God. Sec. 18 p89.
A second Platonic postulate appears when the group agrees that virtuous people possess beatitude despite misfortune and affliction, while vicious people are really unhappy because of the condition of their souls, no matter how much wealth, sensual pleasure, or fame they may enjoy. The key difference between these two types of people is that the former have directed their desires toward an abiding reality which does not depend upon fate or the vicissitudes of temporal existence, while the latter, directing their desires toward temporal goods, can never be freed from anxiety because they know they can always lose the object of their desire. The problem arises, however, as to whether the happy life is to be equated merely with seeking this abiding reality (God) or with actually possessing it. This question is closely related to the next dialogue because the Academic skeptics identified wisdom with the quest for truth instead of with the attainment of it. [35] Augustine keeps on associating virtue and possession of God, in order to draw the discussion up to proving that only seeking God provides happiness, even though the one who seeks God does not possess the object of his desire.
My mother […] said: 'Nobody can attain God without first seeking Him.' 'Very well,' I replied. 'But one who is still seeking has not yet attained God, although he lives an upright life. Therefore, not everyone who lives a good life possesses God.' Sec. 19 p91. “My mother said: 'It is one thing to possess God; it is another, not to be without God. […] He who lives righteously possesses God, that is, has Him propitious to him; he who lives a bad life also possesses God, but as hostile to him. But, whoever is still seeking God, and has not yet found Him, has Him neither as propitious nor as hostile, yet is not without God.' 'Yes,' I replied. […] 'Consequently, everyone is happy who has already found God and has God propitious to him; on the other hand, everyone who is seeking God has God propitious to him, but is not yet happy. Of course, everybody who, through vices and sins, goes astray from God is not only unhappy, but is not even living with God's favor.' [36]
The consequence of the discussion is that nobody is really left alone afflicted to her/his quest for the knowledge of God, even though the full knowledge of God remains unreachable. The primary obstacles to such knowledge are regarded as moral ones and can be removed by directing desire away from inordinate attachment to temporal goods.
4 – Third day
On the third day, the conversation reaches the ground of wisdom. Wisdom is an intrinsic requirement to achieving the happy life, whereby the soul maintains its equilibrium; but wisdom is also a divine virtue, for, according to Christian teaching, the Son of God, who is truly God, is called the Wisdom of God. Therefore the happy life consists in having God within the soul, that is, in beholding the source of truth.
The conversation opens by recalling one of Monica’s sayings: unhappiness is nothing but want. Follows a discussion on the ability that have wise people, who are able not to suffer from not having what they want, even wellbeing, because of the quality of their want, which is deprived of attachment.
Every wise man is strong, and the strong man entertains no fear. The wise man, therefore, is not afraid either of bodily death or of those pains for whose banishment, prevention, or delay he would need all those things of which he is capable of being in want. Nevertheless, he will always make wise use of them, when they are not wanting. […] For this aphorism is true: “Since not all you wish for is possible, wish only for what is possible.[37]
Finally Augustine – who previously warned his guests that on that day he did not expect them to say much[38] - shows that the worse deficiency is the lack of wisdom. He cites the example of a wealthy man who is unhappy, not because he lacks anything, but because he is afraid of loosing what he has, concluding: “not everybody who is unhappy is in lack.” Sec. 27 p101. From there Augustine can go to what he prepared, but his mother says it before him!
Although [this man] had great riches and abundance and […] desired nothing more, he still was in lack of wisdom, since he entertained the fear of losing these things. Are we going to consider him in lack, if he be without silver and money, and not if he should lack wisdom? […] Licentius joyfully exclaimed: 'Verily, no truer or more divine words could have been spoken. For, there is no greater unhappiness than the lack of wisdom. Whoever does not lack wisdom cannot lack anything.' [39]
This allows Augustine to go back to virtues. He develops genuine lesson of Christian spirituality of virtues, going from egestas (want, lack), stultitia (folly), nequitia (worthlessness) unto frugalitas (worth) and plenitudino (fullness) by means of modestia (moderation) and temperantia (restraint). Here are the Augustinian tools for the happy life, the means to avoid bad choices, the path to good decisions.
Which haven?
For Augustine, the objective is to return to the haven, which, for him, is the Catholicism of his mother Monica. This is specific to him, as he went away from his original catholic faith during several years. This, though, may not be applicable to all truth-seekers. Setting a distance with family’s belief is for some people healthy and salutary. Haven, then, is not to return to one’s culture or family values. But for Augustine it is. This helps to put back into Augustine’s perspective his frequent usage of a vocabulary of return. Thus the second class of seafarers who “venture to travel far away from their native land”. Thus the third class who “look back to certain beacons and the great sweetness of home”.
Maturity and human achievement have their ways, different for each person. Augustine’s journey is not paradigmatic, and therefore shouldn’t be taken for the standard trajectory, but it is highly instructive because each step is exposed with its motives. Hence, Augustine explains the nature of what misguided him, listing 1- the fear of autonomous thought, 2- the incapacity of conceiving any reality beyond the visible and material, 3- the Gnostic error consisting in believing that truth could be kept secret and concealed, and 4- the error of failing to trust those who teach rather than those who ordain obedience. He also lists typical traps in the philosophical journey, corresponding to the three kinds of seafarers – indolence, seductions, and the most powerful and dangerous of all, pride, that can even attract those who are arrived in the desired haven.
The dialogue is a joint quest, firmly directed by Augustine who knows to where he wants to drive the conclusions. It explores who possesses God. And comes to the following conclusions: the one who seeks God gains God’s favor, but is not happy yet. The one who has found God and to whom God is favorable is happy. The one who let himself separated from God through sin and vice not only is unhappy but also has lost God’s favor.
Finally the discussion brings out a new orientation according to which happiness is the absence of want. Want and foolishness are associated and declared opposed to happiness. Happiness instead is reached only by wisdom, which is fullness and moderation of soul. Fullness of wisdom is in the Son of God. The one who comes to wisdom is drawn to the Father through the Son.
This is the happy life. Though, since Augustine and his friends are still seeking, they cannot yet regard themselves as wise and happy; but this dialogue has served to define the goal and to indicate steps which may be undertaken with faith and hope.[40]
5 - Discussion
Can we do ethics with Saint Augustine?
How do we make good choices? How do we make a decision? These questions are constantly in my mind, especially due to my work in the field of diagnosis which has been my professional activity during the past 10 years. When confronted to medical decisions, either as a medical team, a patient or her/his family, can we have a diagnosis result sheet and one hand, and Augustine’s writing in the other hand, as a help, a decision making guide? I found helpful Augustine’s four-steps warning, in the prologue. I think it is a useful framework for decision making. Augustine explains the nature of his misguiding, listing
1- The fear of autonomous thought.
Augustine’s first warning about the fear of autonomous thought is, again, useful in medical decision-making. For Augustine, human ability to make good decisions is distorted if based only on reason. His encounter of Christ, through Ambrose, through his mother, and through the mediation of the Church has been crucial in his life. Likely, medical counseling should empower patients in their ability to stand as the ultimate decision maker. First by accurate and translational information, then by reassuring and self-confidence guidance to the patient. No patient should be left with the feeling s/he has not been given the possibility to handle her/his own medical decision.
2- The incapacity of conceiving any reality beyond the visible and material.
Augustine’s second warning about incapacity of conceiving any reality beyond the visible and material is also useful in medicine. Some people are unable to conceive any human reality beyond the somatic reality of a person. I should claim (and many health providers do so) that treating a person cannot be confined to treating a body. There is an immaterial dimension to humans, the soul. Augustine in de Beata Vita says: “Of all things the soul is nearest to God.” [41] The soul, this highly and eminently respectful reality of our human nature should not be pushed apart in the medical field. There can be no healing in treating the soma only.
3- The error consisting in believing that truth could be kept secret and concealed.
This later mistake points to the secrecy of knowledge. In the medical field, knowledge is about diagnosis. Rendering a diagnosis can be a complex process. It may profoundly affect that individual's life as it has clinical, personal and social significance and it can become central to how a person experiences him- or herself. A diagnosis is also a label to which others respond and thus has profound social implications.
Rendering a diagnosis often brings about ethical questions posed by treatment decisions rather than by diagnoses. It should therefore be achieved in a context that offers counseling.
Two types of medical counseling can be distinguished: directive, by giving advice about which decision is the best, and non-directive, by refraining from making recommendations. In my judgment, ethical counseling should never substitute for a patient’s decision. Rather, it should empower the patient reach his/her own autonomous decision wisely. Therefore the warning raised by Augustine about any kind of knowledge that may be concealed is useful in medical decisions. No knowledge should be concealed from a patient. And all knowledge about her/him belongs to her/him, as the medical decision does. Medical teams and family are there to help her/him, not to alienate from him the final decision.
4- The error of failing to trust those who teach rather than those who ordain obedience.
“I persuaded myself to trust those that taught rather than those that ordained obedience.”[42] Some medical teams are under such a pressure with work-load, that they try to avoid patients’ questions and their asking endlessly for explanations. Some physicians actually ordain obedience, “This is my decision, based on my huge medical competence and experience; you take it or leave it. You are lucky enough to have been able to have an appointment. If you don’t want to trust me, there are many other patients waiting at the door.” Some medical teems instead put together medical counseling and teach patients and families, through translational information. When confronted to medical decisions, one should trust those who teach rather than those who ordain obedience.
Reading this Augustine’s discussion in de Beata Vita rather than polemical treatise has been a relief for me. I have hard time with the peremptory tone of Augustine’s dogmatic works. Only in the Confessions and in this early writing, do I find myself at ease. When he writes de Beata Vita, Augustine is not yet a priest nor a bishop. No one has asked him to refute such or such doctrinal wandering. No ministry has been put on his shoulders; Augustine is not yet a teacher; he therefore is not doctrinal; he is a seeker; so am I.
[1] Aurelius Augustinus, De beata vita – The happy life [Ruth Allison Brown, The Catholic University of America. Washington DC
[2] Sec. 1 p61. I have also been using the translation by Ludwig Schopp that can be found in the Fathers of the Church series (NY: CIMA, 1939).
[3] Sec. 2 p61.
[4] Sec. 4 p67.
[5] Sec. 4 p65.
[6] Sec. 4 p65.
[7] I find it important to think theologically with references to contemporary culture. Otherwise we lose the ability to talk in a language that our modern fellows can understand.
[9] Sec. 4 p65.
[10] When Augustine came to Carthage
[11] Sec. 4 p65.
[12] Sec. 4 p65.
[13] Platonists believed, unlike the Stoics, that there were intellectual principles which existed independently from matter. In the hierarchy of being these “ideas” were superior to their material instances, and above them all was the One, or God, who was necessarily incorporeal and, as their source, beyond intellect and matter. Carl W. Griffin and David L. Paulsen, Op. Cit.
[14] Sec. 4 p67.
[15] St. Augustin's Expositions on the Book of Psalms: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Volume 8, Edited by Philip Schaff (1819-1893), Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (1984)
[16] “For what is deeper than human hearts? hence often break forth winds; storms of sedition, and dissensions, disturb the ship. And what is done in them? God, willing that both they who steer, and they who are conveyed, should cry unto Him.” Here is Augustine’s intension: draw us slowly to cry unto God.
[17] The commentary continues: “Sometimes all human counsels fail; whichever way one turns himself, the waves roar, the storm rageth, the arms are powerless: where the prow may strike, to what wave the side may be exposed, whither the stricken ship may be allowed to drift, from what rocks she must be kept back lest she be lost, is impossible for her pilots to see.” Augustine warns us about the uselessness of human counsels. This likely refers to the ability of humans to originate a true wisdom.
[18] Sec. 1 p61.
[19] Sec. 1 p61.
[20] Aurelius Augustinus, Bp. of Hippo, The Confessions Book II,6
[21] Aurelius Augustinus, Bp. of Hippo, The Confessions Book II, 7
[22] Sec. 2 p63.
[23] Augustine draws us now into a biblical theme, as we read in Luke 13:24 "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.” Pride could be the name of this mountain, for intellectual pride is the chief obstacle to reaching wisdom. It is one of the most wide-open traps in which one can loose the way to haven. (In latin, haven and heaven are not homophones; the use of haven has no paradisiacal connotation).
[24] Aurelius Augustinus, Bp. of Hippo, The Confessions Book II, 11
[25] Ruth Allison Brown, PhD dissertation, [Aurelius Augustinus, The happy life, The Catholic University of America. Washington DC
[26] Sec. 5 p67.
[27] Sec. 7 p71.
[28] Sec. 8 p71.
[29] Sec. 8 p73.
[30] Sec. 8 p73.
[31] Sec. 11 p79.
[34] Sec. 16 p87.
[35] The Stoics, wanted to find something that could not possibly be taken away. Yet they did not want to live 'like dogs'. The solution is this: The good is to live in accordance with reason, and the power to do this cannot be taken away. Our external circumstances may be the result of accident or the malice of others, but whether we act rationally given the circumstances is up to us. As for physical things, it is in accordance with reason to use them when they are available and useful, but not to become attached to them so that their loss causes distress. Possessions do not make you vulnerable unless you become attached to them. To live in accordance with reason is the Stoic conception of the good for man. http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/y67s10.html
[36] Sec. 21 p93.
[37] Sec. 25 p97-99.
[38] “There will be no need for you today to give me any answer or, at least, not many answers.” Sec. 23 p97.
[39] Sec. 27 p103.
[40] David E. Roberts, Augustine's Earliest Writings, [The Journal of Religion, The University of Chicago Press, 1953, Vol. 33, No. 3] p.161
[41] Sec. 4 p65.
[42] Sec. 4 p65.
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