Mirror of Fallen Nature: Commendatio to Action and Its Perversion in Confessiones 1 [Proof of Chapter 5 -- not the published form] (original) (raw)
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En Route to the Confessions: The Roots and Development of Augustine's Philosophical Anthropology, 2013
In chapter four we follow Augustine in his exegesis of Paul and observe his supremely intricate reading of Stoic psychology of action and passion in terms of Paul, and Paul in terms of the Stoic theories. Therein, Augustine finds a human body-soul complex so thoroughly integrated that only a transformed, resurrected body can fully overcome internal division within the soul. In the present, the human being labors under a disintegrated capacity for assent and dissent. Two laws, or sets of normative propositional content, and two simultaneous yet contradictory capacities to assent or dissent stir within the human person. The self has cracked. Augustine’s shocking conclusion while reading Paul is that only an act of God can render one direction of assent and its propositional content stronger than its internal opponent within the person. A new doctrine of election, rather than an applied program for askesis, emerges from this anthropological realization. Only the congruent call of God, in keeping with wholly unmerited election, can turn a person and set him on the path to blessedness.
THE CRACKED SELF AND BEYOND: AUGUSTINE'S ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE CONFESSIONES
Within a year of his elevation to bishop in 396 ce, Augustine offers his Confessiones to those who murmured and those who cheered at news of his consecration. Augustine's labour in thirteen books calls forth his first mature synthesis of the disparate philosophical streams explored in his Christian thought to date. To recap our journey thus far, Augustine's very early writings teemed with inchoate articulations of a Neo-Platonic vision of the human being as essentially an inviolable, incorporeal soul. Contemplation is the singular concern of Platonic soul, even in its newly baptized form. The body is a prison. Action is nothing but distraction and temptation. Of course, revisions are discernable following his reception of the creed and baptism from Ambrose. But the clearest change comes when Augustine is forcefully ordained in 391 ce. The priestly writings breathe a new air. Not only is scriptural exegesis increasingly central, the philosophical resources Augustine calls upon are different. Neo-Platonic accounts of non-corporeal being still emerge when needed and Augustine makes pains to integrate them piecemeal with his emergent anthropology. But the focus has clearly changed. His priestly writings must come to terms with the concern for ethical human action Augustine finds in Jesus and Paul. The Platonists lack an adequate psychology of action and passion, so Augustine begins to incorporate and transform Stoic psychologies of action through his interpretation of Jesus' and Paul's teachings. This ferment of Stoic and scriptural psychologies of action leads to momentous changes in Augustine's anthropology and theology of grace. So in 396 ce, as he bears witness to his peregrine past and God's grace in pursuit, Augustine must show how the disparate streams of his earlier thought flow together into a single torrent of bishop-worthy teaching. The two streams always correlated to distinct areas of his anthropology. The Neo-Platonists provided crucial elements of his ontology and his account of non-corporeal soul in contemplation. About this time
To offer a tribute couched in comprehensive terms to a scholar of the range and stature of Arnaldo, Momigli, ano 'Would be pretentious and, in any case, superficial. For those who have come to enjoy the de light and comfort of his friendship must. be 1 aware of a further, almost measureless dimension of Momigliano's effect upon us -an infec tious creativity. His vivid mind, his unstinting openness and his deep respect for the particularity of others have been the direct source, for so many sc)iolars, in so many fields, of that courage, of that sense of purpose and of that respect for truth from which new historical enter prises have continued to spring, throughout the past decades, at the touch of his presence.· As a hesitant y�ung student at Oxford, shamefully underequipped with the skills _ needed to perform the tasks of an ancient historian, Ar naldo Momigliano's presence, in London; gave me, quite simply, the heart to persevere. It also gave me the goal towards which I continue to persevere. His work at that time thrilled me. With Cassiodorus, with the Anicii, with.the historiography of the barbarian kingdoms in Italy, in the fifth-and sixth centuries A.D., I learned to live among tho se great lords and ladifs, who move( d) with relative security in a world so far from secu re (1). Behind this immediate preoccupation, I soon came to sense and to embrace wholeheartedly-his magnificently untrivial perspective on the significance of the later Roman Empire as a whole. As Mopligliano had written, as early as 1936, in the Enciclopedia italiana, the rise of (') Review of Arthur E.R. Boak, Manpower Shortage and the Fall of the Roman Empire, Ann Arbor 1955 in «Riv. stor. ital.» 69, (1957), p. 282. .:.._50_
AUGUSTINE Confessions Texts for Class Jan 17 2018.ppt
Confessiones II Et quid erat, quod me delectabat, nisi amare et amari? Love of love and loves. The Philosophical Point made Rhetorically This point is a foundation, necessary to the Platonic-Aristotelian position cohering with the Genesis account of being, that we are moved only by the good. 8. 16. ... ipsum esset nihil et eo ipso ego miserior? Et tamen solus id non fecissem (sic recordor animum tunc meum) solus omnino id non fecissem. Confessiones III Love of Love and more reciprocal love. The Source of Augustine’s sinful descent into evil. i (1) I came to Carthage and all around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves. As yet I had never been in love and I longed to love; and from a subconscious poverty of mind I hated the thought of being less inwardly destitute. I sought an object for my love; I was in love with love. Plato’s Cave and its Prisoners as projection of Love and Illusion: the Theatre i (1) … My hunger was internal, deprived of inward food, that is of you yourself, my God. But that was not the kind of hunger I felt. I was without any desire for incorruptible nourishment, not because I was replete with it, but the emptier I was, the more unappetizing such food became. So my soul was in rotten health. In an ulcerous condition it thrust itself to outward things, miserably avid to be scratched by contact with the world of the senses. Yet physical things had no soul. Love lay outside their range. …. I rushed headlong into love, by which I was longing to be captured. ‘My God, my mercy’ (Ps. 58: 18) in your goodness you mixed in much vinegar with that sweetness. My love was returned and in secret I attained the joy that enchains. I was glad to be in bondage, tied with troublesome chains, with the result that I was flogged with the red-hot iron rods. … ii (2) I was captivated by theatrical shows. They were full of images of my own miseries and fuelled my fire. Confessiones III Seeking one thing in the realm of illusion, he finds the opposite. iv (7) … I was to study the textbooks on eloquence. I wanted to distinguish myself as an orator for a damnable and conceited purpose, namely delight in human vanity. …I had come across a book by a certain Cicero, whose language (but not his heart) almost everyone admires. That book of his contains an exhortation to study philosophy and is entitled Hortensius. The book changed my feelings. It altered my prayers, Lord, to be towards you yourself. It gave me different desires and priorities. Suddenly every vain hope became empty to me, and I longed for the immortality of wisdom. immortalitatem sapientiae concupiscebam The fundamental conversion to immortal immaterial truth but loved corporeally: the basic contradiction to be overcome. The knower is at a lower level on the Platonic Line than is the known.
in: Marília P. Futre Pinheiro - Judith Perkins - Richard Pervo (eds.), The Ancient Novel and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative: Fictional Intersections, Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing & Groningen University Library 2012 (Ancient Narrative Supplementum, 16), pp. 189-201. ISBN 9789491431210
The paper examines the reception of the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis in early Christian literature and refers to the subsequent manipulations of this text. The Passio Perpetuae, though highly venerated in the early Church, contained a number of innovative and -- in the context of Antique and early Christian society -- potentially subversive features. These novel features were felt to undermine the existing social order and hierarchy, and it was necessary to “explain them away” in order to make the text more compliant with traditional and generally accepted social values. This very point of view was often taken into account, when later authors refer to the text. The paper tries to illuminate, how the Passio Perpetuae is presented in the later literary tradition (Tertullian, martyr acts, and Augustine), and how this narrative is re-shaped in order to fit later authors’ intentions.