Augustine Confessions

Khadija Haque November 3, 2014

Mr. Charles Gelman, Mon & Wed, 11:00 Paper II- Plato & Augustine St. Augustine was a prominent philosopher and theologian. In his early years, Augustine followed Manicheism but converted to Christianity when the Manichee teachings seemed illogical to him. He devoted his life to finding salvation and atoning for the growing number of sins which he had claimed to commit. Confessions is Augustine’s autobiography which begins from his infancy, describing his sinful behaviors and his search for salvation. As a consequence of Neo-Platonic tradition, Augustine was indirectly influenced by Plato

Love desires what an individual needs at the present and want to continue to possess in the future. Socrates then claimed that people only love the beautiful and do not want ugly things. Therefore, love desires for beautiful things since it does not already possess it. Furthermore, Socrates added that good is beautiful, hence, love needs good as well. Socrates then began to talk about an old conversation he had with Diotima. “‘Come, Socrates, the lover of the good things loves: what does he love?’ ‘That they be his,’ [Socrates] said. ‘And what will he who gets the good things have?’ ‘This,’ [Socrates] said, ‘I can answer more adequately: he will be happy.’ ‘That,’ [Diotima] said, ‘is because the happy are happy by the acquisition of good things; and there is no further need to ask, “For what consequence does he who what to be happy want to be so?” But the answer is thought to be a complete one.’” (204e-205a). -A lover is happy when he has what he desires. They concluded that desire is having the good and beautiful and people only desire what is

Socrates concluded that desire is wanting the good and beautiful whereas Augustine sees desire as a drive for sinning. Augustine describes how from infancy, people begin to commit sins. If a baby has a toy and it is taken away, the child will throw a tantrum until the toy is returned. Being an infant, he or she is restricted from doing anything physical towards the adult who takes away the toy. However, if the child is able to hurt the adult for taking away the toy, he or she would. This desire the child has for the toy drives him or her to doing anything in order to getting that toy back. Augustine recounted a similar scenario that he witnessed. “I have personally watched and studied a jealous baby. He could not yet speak and, pale with jealously and bitterness, glared at his brother sharing his mother’s milk…it can hardly be innocence, when the source of milk is flowing richly and abundantly, not to endure a share going to one’s blood-brother, who is in profound need, dependent for life exclusively on that one food” (I. vii). Desire is built into humans from the very beginning and causes jealously and hatred among people. Moreover, when Augustine was a teenager, he found pleasure in stealing pears when he did not gain anything from it other than to fill his desires. “I wanted to carry out an act of theft and did so, driven by no kind of need other than my inner lack of any sense of, or