SAINT AUGUSTINE: The Human Person as Relational and Volitional

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SAINT AUGUSTINEThe Human Personas Relational
and Volitional

• Prepared by
• FR. RONNIE B. RODRIGUEZ, MS
• University of La Salette-Roxas Campus
• Roxas, Isabela
• 1st Semester
• S.Y. 2009-2010

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Life and Works

• Born at Tagaste, in Numidia, Northern Africa, in
  A.D. 354
• His mother, Saint Monica, was a Christian but his
  father, Patricius, was a pagan
• Augustines baptism was delayed until he was in
  his thirties, though he was reared as a Christian

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• At 17, he went to Carthage for higher education
• Though he was a good student, he continued to
  practice evil habits he had already begun
• He took a mistress, and soon had a son, Adeodatus

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• He lost what Christian faith he had, and when he
  finished his education he became a Manichee a
  disciple of Mani, who taught a mixture of
  Christian and pagan thought
• He followed his faith for nine years while he was
  teaching in Tagaste and Carthage
• His Manicheeism was then replaced by his personal
  mixture of several Greek and Roman philosophies

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• In 383, he went to Rome to teach
• 384, he moved to Milan, then the capital of the
  Empire
• He fell under the influence of the bishop of
  Milan (Saint Ambrose), the teachings of the
  Platonists, and the letters of Saint Paul
• He lost his skepticism and was convinced that he
  should become a Christian

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• But his will was unable to take the step he
  could not give up his mistress
• It was only because God gave him the strength
  (miraculously, it seems) that he was able to make
  the decision to leave his past life behind and
  start afresh
• He and his son and some of his friends were then
  baptized

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• Augustine decided to return to Africa in 387, but
  his mother, who had accompanied him to Italy,
  died at Ostia, the port of Rome, on the return
  journey
• He then remained in Rome for another year before
  returning to Africa his son died soon after his
  arrival there

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• He entered the monastery
• Later he became a priest in the town of Hippo and
  in 395, he was made its bishop
• As the bishop of Hippo, he spent the next
  thirty-five years preaching, leading a religious
  community and writing

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• His literary output is enormous, but his famous
  works are
• The Confessions (397-401)
• On The Trinity (399-422)
• The City of God (413-427
• He died at Hippo in 430

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Main Ideas

• Being a person means having multiple
  relationships with other persons
• Having multiple relationships is what
  distinguishes a person from an individual
• Our will is responsible for developing these
  relationships
• We are therefore responsible for who we are

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• The moral life is a struggle
• Humans are truly free only if their freedom is
  limited
• The will, not what it wills, causes evil
• What is most truly ourselves is our will

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On God

• Saint Augustine is the first great Christian
  philosopher
• This intellectual giant exposes his philosophical
  genius in maintaining his dogma of God
• God is Absolute Spirit, Absolute Will, Absolute
  Intelligence, Absolute Freedom, Absolute Good,
  Absolute Power, Absolute Holiness, cannot will
  evil, no beginning and no end (Eternal) and
  Transcendent

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• Augustine asserts that God is Creator
• God created the world out of nothing
• But creation is not indispensable on the part of
  God, because for Augustine, God created the world
  out of love
• And man is part of this creation

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On the Human Person

• Saint Augustine is the real founder of the study
  of the person
• the first thinker who brought into prominence
  and undertook an analysis of the philosophical
  and psychological concepts of person and
  personality
• Augustine worked to understand God by using the
  human mind as an example, but he ended up
  understanding the human person by using God as an
  example

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• Augustine believed that the human person, through
  his or her mind, is an image of God
• Augustine saw that in the Trinity there are
  relations, for example, relations of fatherhood
  and sonship between the Father and the Son
• The very notion of a divine person is a
  relational notion

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• A person is not just a substance that simply
  possesses intellect and will, in its deepest
  reality, related to other persons
• He saw human person as essentially a relational
  being
• A human being is constituted a person only
  insofar as he is related to other persons

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• Augustine teaches that the person, while being
  an absolute, is also and essentially a being
  related to others, open to others, and defined as
  person by this very relativity

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• To be a person is to be for others.
• And, of course, others are likewise for us

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Important Consequences

• Human beings are not meant to live in an
  impersonal world but in relation to other persons
• We are, it is true, little absolutes, and yet at
  the same time always related, correlated, and
  interrelated with other persons and
  personalities. We are not meant to live in a
  depersonalized world

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• Since other human persons are relational also, we
  must recognize that we are for them as much as
  they are for us
• Human beings are made for each other, for I-Thou
  rather than I-It relationships

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Human Individual and/or Human Person

• The individual is human, it has intellect and
  will, but it is considered as a world in itself
• It if develops relationships with other human
  beings it does so on its own terms
• But the person is already, simple as a person,
  related to others
• The relationships its nature calls for are not
  optional
• It not only can count on others to help in the
  living of its life, but it owes the same to others

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On the Will

• Augustine recognizes both the existence of the
  will as distinct from the intellect and the power
  of this will
• He knows that it can lead him to perform actions
  for which he can find no rational justification
  actions of which his intellect disapproves
• The will can build up habits of acting that
  overcome the intellects better judgment

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• Augustine further found that not only desirable
  objects outside himself attracted him and
  overcame his self-control, but he was attracted
  also by evil itself
• His will was capable of making him a rebel
  against morality even when he did not know why he
  acted as he did
• But then, he realized that he himself is
  responsible for his actions

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• Augustine became aware of the existence of the
  will, of its freedom and of its power
• He faced up courageously to the recognition and
  admission that he was responsible for his actions
  and even for the existence and power of the
  habits he had cultivated but later deplored

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• To be a person is to be a relational being, and
  the task of our will is to complete our person by
  building our personality, that is, by developing
  relations
• Since person is a relational notion, personality
  has to do with relationships we develop with God,
  with other human beings, and with material things

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• These relationships are the core of our
  personality, and they should be the fulfillment
  of our nature
• Our nature is that of relational creatures, made
  to choose goods in accordance with their real
  value, to serve God, the infinite good, and to
  use all other goods while keeping in mind that
  our use of them must be in accord with our nature
  as creatures made for the infinite good

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• When our will acts in accord with our nature, it
  is free
• But if it seeks creatures without regard to the
  Creator, it becomes a slave to them, and finds
  itself in bondage
• Our choice then, is to be a servant of God, and
  in this to find our freedom, or to be a slave of
  habits that bind us against our will

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• Free will, then, Augustine discovered to be a
  paradox
• Our will is free when it serves its proper master
• When it wants to be absolutely its own master,
  when it rebels, as Augustine did when he stole
  the pears, it becomes a slave

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• True freedom, freedom in accord with truth, that
  is, in accord with our nature, is submission
• What looks like freedom, a denial of submission,
  is an illusory freedom, in reality slavery
• We must choose then, between submission to God or
  submission to what is below us
• The former is freedom, the latter is slavery
• Everything depends on what we choose, and what we
  choose is what we love

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CONCLUSION

• The Greeks no doubt found it difficult to
  understand the will because its function is
  paradoxical. In order to be free the will must be
  submissive, submissive to truth, to its nature,
  to God. It is so tempting to reject submission,
  to think that freedom comes from autonomy.

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• But the type of autonomy envisaged here is
  contrary to truth, to human nature, and to being
  a creature. The reward of submission is freedom,
  the reward of rebellion us slavery. And this
  paradox, like all philosophical problems, is
  perennial. Each person has to solve it for
  himself or herself.