Saint Augustine Friendship Analysis

Chapter 2

Friendship in Saint Augustine ‘s Philosophy

A. Augustine on Friendship:

Being with others or having friends has an influential character in determining one’s individual. As a social being man who knows to identify the needs of others, surrounds himself with the help of friends. Meanwhile human relationship and interface is multifaceted and very wide to define, philosophers even from the very beginning have continually tried to widen their horizon with regards to knowledge of friendship. Augustine in his famous work Confessions, discussed and sightsaw the deeper meaning of friendship.

From his personal experience and observation, he contributed and provided the present day world his profound insight on friendship. During

Monica, his mother always reminds him that he should not fall into fornication, nor commit adultery with someone. In the book three of Confessions,

Augustine explicitly states the devoutness and faithfulness of his mother to God for his conversion. “You stretched out your hand from on high and pulled out my soul out of these murky depths because my mother, who was faithful to you, was weeping for me more bitterly than ever mothers wept for the bodily death of their children. In her faith and in the spiritual discernment she possessed by your gift she regarded me as dead; and you heard her, O Lord, you heard her and did not scorn those tears of hers which gushed forth and watered the ground beneath her eyes wherever she prayed…”45

In line with that, as he looking back, Augustine realizes that the maternal warnings of Monica against sexual transgressions and exploitation were essentially God speaking her. Monica, his mother is used by God as a medium to warn him against sexual impurity. 42Augustine The Confessions V, 15. 43Ibid., IX, 9,

Augustine posited this conformity towards this adolescent prank led him to do wrong. He becomes a thief at that time not because of the beauty, taste, and nourishment that pears may give, but he sees to it out of pure damage and his want for belongingness.

“…If the object of my love had been the pears I stole, and I simply wanted to enjoy them, I could have done it alone; similarly, if the act of committing the sin had sufficed by itself to yield me the pleasure I sought, I would not have further inflamed my itching desire by the stimulation of conspiracy. But since my 46Wayne Cristaudo, and Heung Wash Wong, St. Augusine: His Relevance and Legacy (Australia: ATF Press, 2010), 141.

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pleasure did not lie in the pears, it must have been in the crime as a committed in the company of others who shared in the sin”47

In this point, Augustine’s pleasure was not in the pears per se but rather it was in the crime itself, finished in association with a sinful group of friends. He also confesses, on his own, that he will never have the inclination or the will to steal pears. But then,