INTRODUCTION
Augustine is one of the most influential
writers in the history of Christian church. He stood at one of the major cross
roads in the history, the transition from the Hellenistic period to the middle
ages.[1]
Augustine was born in 354 Ad in Tagaste, a Roman town in North Africa to a
Christian mother and a pagan father in Algeria. Eventually he was influenced by
his mother and was baptized into Christianity.
St Augustine is a Christian philosopher
and a church father, one of the chief sources of Christian thoughts in the
west. His importance in the medieval and modern European philosophy cannot be
circumscribed. Matters are made difficult because Augustine wrote voluminously
and dialectically as a Christian theologian, treating philosophical topics for
the most part only as they were helpful to theology or as corrected by it.
Augustine wrote biographys with both a seductive selection of biographical
detail and a compelling story of his successive
conversion from adolescent sensuality, to the image laden religion of
the Manicheans, to a version of Neo-Platonism, and then to Christianity. The
story is an unexcelled introduction to the Augustine’s view of philosophy. It
shows for instance that Augustine received very little formal education in
philosophy.[2]
Throughout his long literacy career,
Augustine (354-430) stresses the role of divine illumination in human thought.
One could choose almost any work to illustrate this point. Here I will focus on
the aspect where Augustine wrote and invokes divine illumination constantly and
made bold claims for its global necessity. The personal voice in Augustine’s
writings stands out in a time when most works were commentaries and objective,
detached treaties.[3]
Augustine was along with Aristotle
and Boethius the most important influence on how medieval philosophy developed
in Latin west. Far more than any other Latin Church father, Augustine responded
to ancient philosophy, Neo-Platonism in particular: borrowing, adapting,
rejecting, considering and reconsidering his stances. As a result of such
changes in his views, the variety of forms in which he wrote, and the open
questioning manner of many of his non polemical works, he did not bequeath a
single solid body of doctrine but rather, the basis for many different,
sometimes contradictory positions.[4]
ST AUGUSTINE
With St Augustine, the patristic era
reached its culminating and conclusive moment in the universe on a platonic
foundation. All the medieval until St Thomas and many after him remained
faithful to the Augustinian vision. The merits and demerits of Augustine’s work
are to be sought in the validity of his synthesis between Christianity and
platonic philosophy. This synthesis was not difficult, because Platonism and
Christianity meet in many points of fundamental importance: for instance the
immortality of the soul, creation of the world, ontological dualism (between
the sensible and intelligible worlds), and eternal truths. “We ought rather to
believe that the nature of the intellectual mind was so made that, by being
naturally subject to the intelligible realities, according to the arrangement
of the creator, it sees these truths in a certain incorporeal light of a unique
kind, just as the eye of the body see the things all around it in this
corporeal light”[5].
Augustine allowed himself to be overcome by the temptation to make room for Plato,
even when it would have been better to leave him out. This is seen in the Augustine’s
acceptance of the theory of illumination.[6]
This
term paper is concern with examining St Augustine’s idea in his theory of illumination.
THEORY
OF ILLUMINATION
Divine illumination is the oldest
and most influential alternative to naturalism in the areas of mind and
knowledge. The theory holds that human beings require a special assistance in
their ordinary cognitive activities. Although it is most closely associated
with Augustine and his scholastic followers, the theory has its origin in the
ancient periods and would reappear, transformed in the early modern era.
This theory is generally conceived
as distinctively medieval and distinctively Augustinian. The theory of
illumination is intended as an explanation, not of all belief and knowledge.
The theory holds that there is certain knowledge that is crucial to cognitive
development. This theory has been invoked to explain rational insight, that is,
a prior knowledge. Augustine’s theory of illumination is a tribute to the power
of human reason to wrest something intelligible from our situation. It begins
with the conviction that there is such a thing as truth and that it is
accessible to human reason. Such conviction stood over against a major
component in the philosophical milieu of skepticism.
To start with the epistemology of St
Augustine is perhaps to give the impression that Augustine was concerned with
the elaboration of the theory of knowledge for its own sake or as a
methodological propaedeutic to metaphysics.[7]
Augustine was influenced by the pre medieval period. The influence of Platonism
and Augustine’s spiritual interest and outlook, led him to look on corporeal
objects as not being the proper objects of knowledge, owing to their mutability
and to the fact that our knowledge of them is dependent on bodily organs of
sense which are no more always in the same state than the objects themselves.
If we have not got “true knowledge” of sense objects, that is due, not merely
to any deficiency in the subject but also to a radical deficiency in the object.
Augustine’s attitude to sense knowledge is much more platonic than Cartesian.
St Augustine made his first
philosophical confrontation on the problem of knowledge after his conversion to
Christianity. He viewed it from a two-fold perspective:
a)
Whether the truth is known to us and
b)
How do we know the truth?
St Augustine’s response to the first
problem of “whether the truth is known to us”, is a critique of skepticism,
while his response to the second problem of “how do we know the truth” is what
made up for his doctrine of illumination which surpassed the platonic doctrine
of reminiscence and Aristotelian doctrine of abstraction. The focus of this
paper is not to examine Augustine’s critique of skepticism but, rather to
examine his ideas on his doctrine of illumination.
St Augustine made a clear
distinction of three cognitive operations; the
senses, the inferior reason and the superior reason. The operation as
distinguished by Augustine has its own objects. The senses know the qualities
of the bodies, the inferior reason knows the laws of the physical world and the
superior reason knows the eternal truth. For instance:
THE SENSES: the
sensitive knowledge of colours, odours etc is obtained through the faculty of
the senses. This according to Augustine does not imply that the soul is passive
with regards to this type of knowledge because “sentire non est croporis sed animae per corpus”. Augustine’s conviction is
that the soul is absolutely superior to the body and cannot be dependent on the
body for any of its activities, not even sensible activities. Augustine has a
negative view of the senses.
He
does not think knowledge can come from them because they never provide a stable
knowledge. Everything the senses perceive is ever-changing.
Sensation is an exercised activity
of the soul through the body. The body undergoes the impression of other
bodies, and the soul through these impressions gleaned from the body, and
acquires a corporeal knowledge of the world. Augustine here by is propounding
that bodies are not immediately known, but through meditation. “The soul
gathers the image, not the sense, of all the sensible objects”.[8]
THE INFERIOR REASON:
the inferior reason gives scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge occupies
itself with the corporeal world and seeks to discover universal laws through an
abstract process.[9]
THE SUPERIOR REASON:
knowledge of eternal truths is obtained through divine illumination not
reminiscence, and illumination reaches the greatest height of reason. St
Augustine shares the same conviction with Plato; the eternal truth cannot come
from experience, both because of the contingency of the known object and the
contingency of the knowing subject.
St Augustine does not admit the
pre-existence of souls in the hyperouranious; it isn’t a possibility for him to
use the doctrine of reminiscence to explain the knowledge of eternal truths,
just as Plato did. St Augustine rather used the theory of illumination.
Illumination is “quaedam lux sui generis
incorporea’, which makes eternal truths visible.[10]
Augustine’s concept of the inferior
and superior reason is as two functions in which knowledge takes on two
opposing directions. Though the inferior reason is oriented towards the divine,
the universal, the eternal and immutable the latter is directed at the world,
the contingent, the mutable and the particular. Both functions are necessary.
Augustine comes to the conclusion that
knowing is a matter of an inner episode of awareness called illumination.[11]
Augustine recognizes and accounted for cases of knowing. That do not seem to be
episodes of awareness, such as unconscious learning. Straightening out such
matters is the task of a positive theory of illumination. The
scope of divine activity in illumination is also problematic. Does God have to
directly act in each instance of knowledge, or merely ordain the world in such
a way that humans can be knowers?[12]
There is a real difference between your situation when you do not understand
the proof and your situation after understanding it. We commonly describe this difference
with visual metaphors, speaking of the ash of insight, seeing the truth,
enlightenment, and so on. Augustine calls it illumination. Augustine, like
Plato, explains the metaphor of illumination as involving the direct grasp of
special objects (i.e. Forms) in a public realm accessible only to the mind.
Plato held that this took place prior to the soul’s incarnation; Augustine,
that it happens during this life (De libero arbitrio).
EVALUATION
The doctrine of illumination is a
corrective to two common, though erroneous, impressions about Christian
educational philosophy. First, Augustine does not argue from the perspective of
an academic. On the contrary, he writes as a pastor concerned with the
questions of real people who live, work, suffer, and die. His system of thought
is eudemonistic, that is, oriented toward the attainment of happiness. Wisdom, he
insists, is necessary to reach this end; moreover, while people in diverse
contexts can achieve happiness, the same ethical standard applies to all (DLA
,1:9:1-10:1).Second, Augustine maintains that wisdom is not a commodity
someone can give to another. Truth is not so much created as it is uncovered. There
are three components to Augustine’s theory of illumination. The first involves
the relationship between body and soul, or the functions of the “outer” and “inner”
man. Next is his notion of “objective knowledge.” The third part, Augustine’s concept
of memory, is based on Greek categories adapted for a Christian context. In
Augustine’s neo-Platonic system, animals surpass inanimate objects because they
receive information about the world through their senses. Animals respond to this
data by means of “inner sense” for the purposes of self-preservation, nourishment,
and so forth. Yet animals are not conscious of themselves. Human beings alone
can understand the meaning of their own existence (DLA ,2:3).
Augustine tries to explain why
thought is uniquely a human activity. For him, man possesses two distinct yet
inseparable powers that make him superior to other creatures. He shares with
animals a perceptive, “outer” faculty for gathering information about the
material world, but unlike them, he exercises an “inner” power to form images
in the mind (Conf., 10:6; DT, 15:10). Still, sense perception and
image-making are different from reason or “intellectual sight” (DT, 11).
By means of this, people can share knowledge, something not possible with sense
perception (DLA, 2:6, 7)[13]. Intellectual
sight is the concept with which Augustine accounts for human knowledge. He
writes: “Animals cannot attain to that spiritual light with which our mind is
somehow irradiated....Our power to judge is proportioned to our acceptance of
this light” ((DCD ,11:27).[14]
This passage echoes the famous allegory of the sun from the Republic, in
which Plato compares physical vision to understanding. The sun is not vision
itself, but rather its cause, inasmuch as it makes things visible and leaves
the eye capable of seeing. Similarly, the Idea of the Good renders objects intelligible
and causes the mind to know.[15] Augustine
adopts this metaphor, but does not embrace certain aspects of Platonic
epistemology; not only are they antithetical to Christian belief, but there is no
concrete evidence for them. For Plato, the soul, which exists before a human being
is born, possesses knowledge from eternity but loses it at birth? What we call learning
is actually a kind of recollection of timeless truth.[16]
Augustine rejects Plato’s idea of the soul’s pre-existence, but he does not
disregard the concept of recollection entirely. For him, memory is the
intellectual operation that recalls the past, considers the present, and
anticipates the future (Conf., 11:20); it is the mind’s virtually
infinite capacities to collect, organize, and store knowledge (Conf.,
10:8). Augustine explains that the mind contains material objects, not by
drawing them physically into itself, but by retaining their images. To recall
is to “shepherd” facts and images from their hiding places in the mind. Abstract
knowledge resides in the memory as well. Whether a thought can be expressed
verbally or visually, it is distinct from the words or images that give rise to
it. Feelings are also stationed in the memory to be recalled later, even when
the individual is in the throes of an “opposite” emotion (Conf., 10:14).
This formulation is neutral on the
disputed question whether for Augustine illumination is that by means of which
we are able to exercise our cognitive powers to grasp the truth (as sunlight is
that by means of which we can exercise our perceptual faculties to see objects)
or the actual comprehension of the truth itself (as seeing itself grasps
objects).[17] First,
Augustine draws a distinction between three types of cognitive activity in his
De utilitate credendi 11.25: there
are likewise three things that border in human minds, things that are worth
distinguishing: understanding, believing, and holding an opinion. There is a
great difference whether something is grasped by a sure reason of the mind,
which we call ‘understanding’, or commending it to be usefully believed by
posterity via report or writing. Hence what we understand we owe to reason;
what we believe; to authority; what we hold opinions about, to error.[18]
CONCLUSION
Augustine’s conception of the
inferior and superior reason has a two dimensional perspectives which are seen
to be opposed to each other: one follows from a divine and universal
orientation, it is necessary, while the other is implied from a contingent, the
mutable and particular world. Though out of the two perspectives of Augustine,
one is necessary and the other is contingent, the functions of both are
necessary to man, hierarchically in relation, they involve the entire
personality.
One can orient all activities
towards the divine, the eternal and one can also make a choice of the exclusive
exercise of science, hence orienting oneself towards the mutable and exploiting
them to one one’s advantage.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.
John M. Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized. Cambridge 1994.
2.
Gerard O’Daly, Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind. Duck-worth: London 1987.
3.
Danilo V. Rogayan
Jr. Comparative Analysis
Paper of Aquinas and Augustine‘s Philosophies.
4.
Battista Mondin: A history of medieval
philosophy. Theological publications in India, Bangalore, 1998.
5.
Frederick Copleston. A history
of philosophy: medieval philosophy, continuum, the tower building, 11 York
road, London. 1950.
6.
A. S. McGrade (ed). The
Cambridge companion to Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge university press, New
York. 2003.
[1]William
F. Lawhead. Voyage of discovery,
second edition. Eve Howard, united state of America. 2002. pg 122
[2]
Robert Audi (ed). Cambridge dictionary of
philosophy, second edition. Cambridge university press, New York. 1995. Pg 60
[3]
William F. Lawhead. Voyage of discovery,
second edition. Eve Howard, united state of America. 2002.
[4]
John Marenbon. Medieval philosophy, an
historical and philosophical introduction. Routledge, 2 park square, Milton
Park, Abingdon, Oxon. 2007.
[5]
Battista Mondin. A history of medieval
philosophy. Theological publications in India, Bangalore. 1998.
[6]Ibid.
Pg 125.
[7]
Frederick Copleston. A history of
philosophy: medieval philosophy, continuum, the tower building, 11 York
road, London. 1950. Pg 51.
[8] Battista Mondin. history of medieval philosophy: De
civitate dei xi, 26. Theological publications in India, +Bangalore. 1998. Pg 90.
[9]
ibid De trinitate xii,2,2 pg. 91.
[10]Battista
Mondin. history of medieval philosophy
Theological publications in India, Bangalore. 1998. Confesions vii,10,
[11]
Peter King, Metaphilosophy 29 (1998), 179–195
[12] ibid
[13]
Bruce Babacz, Augustine ’s Theory of Knowledge (New York: Edwin Mellen
Press,1981),190-91.
[14]
Augustine, City of God ,trans. M. Dods (Grand Rapids:Baker,1976),169-70.
[15]
Plato, Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube, rev. C.D.C. Reeve
(Indianapolis:Hackett,1992),508b-e.
[16] Plato, Phaedo ,“The Collected Dialogues of
Plato,” ed..Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton:Princeton
University Press,1973),76c-d;Meno,81-84,
[17]
Peter King, Metaphilosophy 29 (1998), 179–195
[18] ibid
great stuff
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