Being and Becoming: The Influence of Plotinus on Augustine’s Early Theology of Actuality and Potentiality (original) (raw)
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PLOTINUS AND THE YOUNG AUGUSTINE ON THE FALL OF THE SOUL: BEYOND O'CONNELL'S THESIS
This article proposes an alternative to O'Connell's thesis regarding the young Augustine's theory of man through a detailed parallel analysis of the Latin text of the De Genesi contra Manichaeos and of the Greek text of the Enne-ads and illustrates Augustine's dependence on and at the same time distance from Plotinus' thought. Through a strictly philological analysis of all the texts under exam the article demonstrates that O'Connell's conclusions, which for years have stirred a heated debate among scholars, cannot be held. Augustine never thought of man in Paradise as disembodied, as O'Connell suggests, but rather as provided with a body that was different from the one man has on earth. In the last forty years of scholarship on the relation between Plotinus and Augustine one of the most controversial questions has surely been that of the understanding of the human soul by Augustine. Did he see human souls, and hence human beings tout court, as fallen from a previous state of bliss in a celestial pre-existence? The scholar who first posed this question, R.J. O'Connell, gave it a positive answer: in his works he sustains that, in his view on human nature and on the origin and ultimate essence of the soul, Augustine did not just sympathize with a theory at odds with the orthodox doctrine of the Church, but openly sustained it. As a base for his speculation Augus-tine used the writings of Plotinus, through which he would have de facto 'platonized' Christianity, introducing an understanding of the faith that results in a falsification of its true message. It is easy to see the deep relevance of such a hypothesis concerning Augustine's speculation: for, if correct, it would completely reshape our understanding of one of the figures that most influenced the development of Western thought, while at the same time it would prompt a re-evaluation of the
Augustiniana 2010 , 3-4; 235-262
One of the most commented passages in the Confessiones of Augustine is book VII, ix 13. In this part of his grand oeuvre, Augustine narrates that after having read a few Platonist treatises, he discovered there almost the same doctrine as in the prologue of the Gospel of John (1:1-5). 1 To explain 1. VII. ix. 13: …, procurasti mihi per quendam hominem inmanissimo tyfo turgidum quosdam Platonicorum libros ex graeca lingua in latinam uersos, et ibi legi non quidem his uerbis, sed hoc idem omnino multis et multiplicibus suaderi rationibus, quod in principio erat uerbum et uerbum erat apud deum et deus erat uerbum: hoc erat in principio apud deum; omnia per ipsum facta sunt, et sine ipso factum est nihil; quod factum est in eo uita est, et uita erat lux hominum; et lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt; et quia hominis anima, quamuis testimonium perhibeat de lumine, non est tamen ipsa lumen, sed uerbum deus, ipse est lumen uerum, quod inluminat omnem hominem uenientem in hunc mundum; et quia in hoc mundo erat, et mundus per eum factus est, et mundus eum non cognouit. quia uero in sua propria uenit et sui eum non receperunt, quotquot autem receperunt eum, dedit eis potestatem filios dei fieri credentibus in nomine eius, non ibi legi. Les Confessions Livres I-VII, Bibliothèque Augustinienne. Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 13; Texte de l'Édition de M. Skutella, Introduction et Notes par A. Solignac, Traduction de E. Tréhorel et G. Bouissou, (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer et Cie., 1962). (See also CSEL 33, CCL 27). / Through a man puffed up with monstrous pride, you brought under my eye some books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin. There I read, not of course in these words, but with entirely the same sense and supported by numerous and varied reasons, 'In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him nothing was made. What was made is life in him; and the life was the light of men. And the light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.' Moreover, the soul of man, although it bears witness of the light, is‚'not that light', but God the Word is himself 'the true light which illuminates every man coming into the world'. Further, 'he was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world did not know him.' But that, 'he came to his own and his own did not receive him; but as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become sons of God by believing in his name', that I did not read there (John I: 1-12). (Saint Augustine Confessiones, translated with an introduction and notes by H. Chadwick, (Oxford: University Press, 2008).
Neoplatonism and Christian Thinking Leading the Self to the Good in Plotinus' Philosophy
2022
This article brings to the fore the problem of becoming a human being and consequently seeks an explanation for the mind-body ontological duality. The analysis considers the prism of the Plotinian vision. The author interprets the work Enneade extracting the argumentative scheme of Plotinus through which the dual nature of the human being seeks to reconcile the two ontologies. In Enneade, Plotinus expounds on the ways in which the human being tends to become the being, to his rational purpose, without denying the beauty of the sensitive world. The conclusion of the study identifies in Plotinus' work the mystical ecstasy as the common element of the components of the human being, this being also the path to becoming.
In this paper, published in the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Vol. 7. No. 2. 2015. P. 81–107, I argue that St. Augustine of Hippo was the first in the history of Christian spirituality who expressed a key tendency of Christian mysticism, which implies a gradual intellectual ascent of the human soul to God, consisting of the three main stages: external, internal, and supernal. In this ascent a Christian mystic proceeds from the knowledge of external beings to self-knowledge (from outward to inward), and from his inner self to direct mystical contemplation of God (from inward to higher). Similar doctrines may be found in the writings of the Greek Fathers (Great Cappadocians, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, etc.). Although there are many similarities in the overall doctrine and in particular details between them, it does not imply the direct impact of Augustine's theological thought on the Greek Fathers but rather the influence of the Neoplatonic philosophy on both Western and Eastern Christianity, in particular, of Plotinus' theory of intellectual cognition.
Augustine's Incarnational Appropriation of Plotinus: A Journey for the Feet
Augustine appropriates the image of the journey to God as a voyage to the homeland from Plotinus’s “On Beauty,” but he modifies it in several striking ways. I examine Augustine’s explicit and implicit description of his relationship to “the Platonists” through his appropriation of the journey imagery. According to Augustine, the Platonists attain a glimpse of the homeland but do not know the way to get there, for they do not know the Word-made-flesh. In “On Beauty,” the voyage to the Fatherland is a path of interior flight, guided by an inner vision of Being; it is a movement beyond the material world to a blissful vision of the One. For Augustine, the voyage is a communal pilgrimage undertaken by embodied believers following the incarnate Christ. Whereas for Plotinus the voyage to the homeland is “not a journey for the feet,” I will argue that for Augustine it is precisely this. Augustine’s modifications to the Plotinian image in Confessiones form a literary and polemical articulation of the Christological core of his theology and of the crucial juncture at which Augustine departs from the Neo-Platonic philosophical tradition in favor of the Christian moral life. The Word-made-flesh enables all who believe (and not merely those few clear-eyed intellectuals) to walk home together along the road paved by his human-divine feet. In this paper I will undertake a reading of Augustine’s appropriation of the Plotinian image in the context of his own account in Confessiones of his engagement with the Platonists.