What Augustine Did Not Find in the Books of the Platonists

What Augustine Did Not Find in the Books of the Platonists Randall Smith (bio) A man with a Ciceronian desire for the truth in a profession teaching people how to manipulate the truth and avoid it; a man of passion and love for his mistress and son in a cult that devalued the body, marriage, and children; a man who desired freedom and yet felt enslaved by his own sins in a cult that embraced a fatalistic astrology: in these and other ways, the paradoxes of Augustine's life were coming to a head when he arrived in Milan in 384. His encounter with the books of the Platonists clarified some important points but brought on other problems as well. Disillusionment with the Manichees While he was in Milan, Augustine became increasingly disillusioned with the teaching of the Manichees. The Manichees, for all their talk about "spirit," were materialists and determinists.1 They spoke of the good force of the universe as "Light," but this light was also a substance. This will seem odd and inconsistent until we note that many modern-day "New Age" movements that also talk a lot about "spirit" similarly conceive of the "higher" realms of human attainment in largely material terms: possessing a good "energy" or being united with the "life force" that suffuses all things. They too, like the End Page 70 Manichees, often enjoy trafficking in astrology so that people can discover what their future holds. Both groups seem strangely oblivious to the frequent warnings found in ancient literature against trying to "manipulate" the gods and the fates in this way.2 If you believe in ancient oracles or modern astrology, and they tell you, "Your business will go bankrupt," then it is foolish to think you can avoid this fate by exerting your free will. If they see the future, then what they see is what will happen, and free will is largely or completely an illusion.3 Augustine eventually rejected his early dalliance with astrology, reasoning that one cannot both have free will and not have it at the same time in the same respect.4 If you value your freedom, then you choose freely and accept the consequences. If you are convinced there is no freedom, then you should learn to accept your fate calmly, like a Stoic. But it would be absurdly inconsistent to be convinced that one's life is determined by fate and then set out to make free choices. Augustine preferred to believe in the freedom of his choices and reject the notion of fate preached by the Manichees.5 Reading "Certain Books of the Platonists" Under advice from friends, Augustine began to read "certain books of the Platonists"6—not the works of Plato per se, but those of the third-century a.d. Roman philosophers Plotinus and Porphyry.7 These provided him a clearer philosophical framework to help resolve some of the confusions he had acquired during his time with the Manichees, but they also encouraged several other problems. The Platonists helped Augustine to be able to conceive of God in immaterial terms.8 Augustine had always thought of things as necessarily material.9 A crucial step weaning him away from this view was acceptance of the Platonic notion that forms, like the form of "triangle," exist independently of matter; indeed, according to Plato, the immaterial form of "triangle" exists more truly and more perfectly than material ones. For which triangle is it true that the interior angles of the triangle add up to 180 degrees? Answer: Only for the End Page 71 perfect triangle intelligible by the mind. All material triangles are imperfect; they only approximate the triangles described by Euclid's geometry.10 So too, in an analogous way, whatever in this world we call just or good or beautiful or true derives its "justice," "goodness," "beauty," or "truth" from the eternal Forms.11 The existence of the things we see is merely a participated existence, thought Plato. This was a helpful first step for Augustine to be able to conceive of how something could exist and be immaterial. Guided by the books of the Platonists and in the spirit of...