Augustine City of God Bk 19

hello welcome to the history of medieval philosophy I'm mark doors bein in this video we're gonna be taking a look at the City of God by Agustin san agustin in particular where I can just be looking at book 19 looking roughly between sections 3 through 28 so that's kind of what we're gonna be taking a look at today we're gonna see that really agustín's looking here at the question of morality and virtue and what the ultimate end towards living our lives should be so and you can see here I have a picture of a modern city because one of the things I want you to do is I want you to think about the way in which the things that agustín's writing might relate to our own world today obviously gustin's writing many many many years ago I mean the ancient past right after the collapse of the Roman Empire at the end of the Roman Empire pretty I guess technically hadn't collapsed but Rome have been sacked and in fact that plays an important role within agustín's look here because the Roman world is collapsing and civilization seems to be on the decline and so agustín's right in here that there is not just the city on of man here on earth there's another city the City of God that's we're gonna be taking a look at today I'm you also see her in my mid my kitchen today so I don't have my regular computer I'm hoping that the audio will be a little bit better today in today's video for those of you through watching some of the audio in the last couple of videos was poor because well frankly my computer is getting old so anyway let's quickly first off here here's a general quick outline of the overall structure of the text on the City of God is probably Constance most famous work is probably the confessions which is a biographical work and theology and then we'll see that that the City of God is probably his next most prominent text it's 22 books in length and you can see it starts off with the recognition of the things that are occurring in Agustin's day by talking about the calamities of Rome Rome was sacked and he talked about the calamities of the soul and he works his way into this basic notion that there's the city of man that we live in on earth but they're Christians because he's a Christian are actually citizens of the City of God and so he begins to really lay out some of the essential doctrines within the Christian Church within Chris general Christian theology and they're first really articulated in this and there's a pretty interesting and phenomenal text as you can see the sort of general subject of the book we're looking it's called the end of cities but there I want you to think of the end in terms of the philosophical and what's the final goal if you will in Greek the terms Telos know this text of course is written in Latin but Augusta is well trained on the classic notions in fact we're gonna see that Gus and begins by looking what other philosophers in particular cynics Philosopher's had to say about the text just chose a reminder for those of you who are following along this is the text book we're using philosophy in the Middle Ages so if you get this book you can follow along the series precisely but I also wanted to point your attention to this great website it's called new Advent org and in fact they have a whole bunch of work that the entire City of God here located so you can quickly easily jump around the text and here's the official source of where this comes from so this is a great website for looking at all of the customs work online so I was point you in that direction now so I'm not going to go through all of the different elements that agustin takes on in the City of God we really just want to sort of jump in to the basic problems that get addressed in chapter and book 19 but one thing I do want to say before we get there is I want to talk a little bit about the problem of evil because it plays such a central role within in customs philosophy as well as his biography we know that for instance the problem of evil is what's bond or I should say spurred a custom become a manichaean ultimately they lack us other solutions that well let him believe that but the problem of evil focuses on an overall major problem in the philosophy of religion it's right at the center of the City of God in terms of how we need to and the world we're living in now is a world that's corrupted and a world where evil can take place as opposed to this otherworldly place heaven for a Gustin in which we can seek eternal peace now one of the things I want to mention here is that I have pictures here of a tornado and then a picture of the atomic weapon being fired off in the 1940s and both of these represent on the one hand it stings between natural evil and moral evil so natural evil here is you can imagine that whoever's house this was when this tornado came through and annihilated this town under this property you're going to imagine someone coming back and saying how could God have let this happen so naturally evil is the notion that terrible things seem to occur and sufferance seems to result just naturally or as a consequence of nature whereas moral evil by contrast and I'm representing it here with this atomic weapon moral evil represents evil that comes as a result of human agency humans hurt each other and caused suffering now what we could say and to be clear this argument isn't laid out like this any custom City of God but it may be a helpful fulcrum to help you begin to build a framework to understand what some of the some of what's at stake in the City of God so the basic argument is that if God is all good and all-powerful then God can only do what's good now God can only do it's good thank God cannot create an evil world and this world includes evil with finish therefore there is not a God that is all good or all powerful no this is not the argument that a custom supports obviously because my custom believes there is a God and he ultimately believes that God is all good and all-powerful but this creates a problem how can a Gustin avoid this sort of argument the syllogism here now there's a variety of ways you could attack this premise and say that really the world doesn't actually have evil within it you could also for instance qualify what counts as good or what counts is powerful and different philosophers have taken different tracks ultimately for Gustin and we don't see it really worked out systematically and the readings were looking at today but ultimately Agustin's view is that that the world includes evil within it and he wants to really attack that premise and ultimately his view and we'll talk about this in its other videos is that evil is actually a private of being it's the lack of something that should be the case so as a consequence since evil is a lack of being Augustine's ultimate ideas that means that God doesn't have to create evil but it still raises the question how does evil originate and there you also remember last week when we looked at the teacher and I went over the biography or some of the key works of a constant you know that Agustin focuses on the will and the good will he also will come up with in his overall work with an argument about sin and how sin is transmitted and it's a seminal transmission of sin sort of such that day through child through the emergence of children children are always infected with sin so really you get this notion that sin is something of a sickness of the will but probably something that we'll talk about again and again but I wanted to sort of throw this argument out there for you so that way you can give it something of a sense of why accustomed is addressing some of the problems he is we're gonna see that the question today the primary question is on the question of what is good what's good for the city of men and what's good for the City of God now one thing I do want to say is again and again in the text and I sort of struggle with this myself Augustine uses the language of the city of man and he uses men the language of men to talk about humankind today this is somewhat problematic because many feminist philosophers have demonstrated that the the use of only masculine pronouns is somewhat problematic and so I want to sort of do an aside here to try as much as I could not to use gendered language but I also recognize that I need to stick as closely as possible with the language of Augustan so if you're a feminist thinker or you find that problematic I want you to know that I also recognize that problem but you know Alton I think there's a fidelity to the text here that we have to maintain so anyway just throw that in there so let's sort of jump right in and you're gonna see that what I've done here is I'm giving you a sort of tour an outline tour of this chapter this book and its chapters but I'm not going to be covering everything systematic than the way agustin does so what we're doing here today is by no means a substitute for the richness of the text that Agustin actually gives us but I think that this will help provide you some sort of framework to understand the flow of his argument now this text in section 3 you know sort of we're starting with section 3 because it's actually wanted to or sort of more preparatory and so you really sort of begins to get into the into the subject matter in section 3 so we just sort of jumping ahead it begins with a philosopher named evarro and you know one of the texts you may be interested in getting that can help you as a secondary sources this text it's called a history a historical dictionary of ancient Greek philosophy no I know we're doing medieval philosophy but one of the things are gonna see with the medieval 's and scholastic philosophers is that they're frequently referring back to other philosophers much the same way that contemporary philosophers do but the people they're referring to tend to be the Greeks so this becomes a helpful thing so for instance I personally am NOT extremely familiar with Varro so I want to tell you a little bit about him the philosopher that Agustin's referring to here is Marcus Terentius Varro who lived from 116 227 BCE he was actually a prolific writer and a leading military he's active in the military in political life on the state he actually studied with Poseidon Dinah's of apamea and especially int antia Antiochus of Escalon and he actually eventually would join a Roman Pythagorean group along with another philosopher named a fig ulis some of his surviving works include agricultural topics and on language interesting enough agricultural topics Varro actually hypothesized that when people went to swampy lands that there were miniscule creatures that they couldn't proceed but that would cause disease interestingly enough this theory actually proves to be correct we know there are many parasites and viruses that you can get in these sorts of areas in different sorts of environments and so these philosophers are doing your highly rich and they're doing with science and all these sorts of things now we're gonna see is that when Varro's really arguing in the text that agustin is focusing on is the question of what is the supreme good of man so how should we live and so first and foremost the idea is that philosophies seeks the Supreme Court of men or not of men above the man of humankind so the question is what does it mean to be a human and on the one hand Varro recognized that it looks like we have a body and a soul and that the soul is treated as being more excellent now in general Agustin agrees with this view it fits the dualistic vision that's really laid out by Agustin and also in accordance with Christian doctrine so it's so there's some similarities here but what we're gonna see is that he's want something going to disagree with Varro now borrow is something of a sinning philosopher and since you can look up Senate philosophers though the first major of Senate philosopher was a Greek guy by the name of Diogenes and Diogenes he was really famous for really living a very weird life but really attacking all social convention so we're gonna see so to give you a sort of framework for who Varro is and what philosophy your cousins looking at here you'd want to take a look at the cynics now custon says okay what this means then is that there's really three options either what it doesn't mean to be essentially human does it mean that the soul is what's essentially us is it the body that's a sentence or is it both together now Varro takes this third view most philosophers and many philosophers do and argues that we're not just a soul we're not just two by we're both so if we want to know what the supreme good of man is then that means we have to understand what the what would be good for both the soul and the body okay so cuz on the one hand what it looks like is when it comes to the body what's good are the natural desires that we seek for we we seek naturally so for instance I desire to breathe right when I'm swimming and I'm underwater I desire to breathe that's natural and something we desire intrinsically inherently we want it for itself this would be different and intrinsic good would be something that's desired for its own sake as opposed to what we might cause an instrumental good which would be something desired for the sake of something else the other thing would be food was sown your hunger you naturally have a desire for food this is also an intrinsic desire so for Baro of the good of human beings concerns both to soul the body but that includes importantly these natural desires for the things of nature and on when we talk about the soul what's the good of the soul will borrows answer is it's a virtue and that this is and that we privilege the notion of virtue as being more important really than these natural desires that we have so you have this basic sort of system here where what's good is on the one hand the fulfillment of the natural desires of the body and what's good on the other hand is the development of virtue for the soul and this seems very very philosophically sound and many many philosophers argue the same thing well ultimately we're gonna see that a custon is skeptical of this view and he actually thinks it doesn't fully make sense once we add into it once we do a full analysis of the will and we do it for analysis of virtue know the happy life does seem to require virtue this is something that borrows certainly argues and we have to be clear as the custom is not against virtue but he doesn't think that virtues the ultimate good for human beings it's an instrumental good perhaps but not an intrinsic now one of the things that Varro says is that virtue is more than just living right so just living your life is not the same thing as how to invert you so what is virtue virtue is a wisely conducted life so I'm a picture here of Martin Luther King because he's a modern example of a figure who in general we would say lived wisely conducted life it doesn't mean that he was perfect for instance he had enough he had affairs and Martin Luther King was not a perfect person if he was here he would admit that to us but that is itself a an example of wisdom so so why is he conducted live is one that's what virtue is ultimately that's how I borrow distinguishes it so that means the custom in source says okay well the virtue is partially the result of instruction right because you can't become virtuous unless you have education and knowledge and some training of some type and sometimes that's not enough but a necessary ingredient is instruction so for instance we all know children for instance who lack instruction and as a consequence they seem to lack virtue as they develop now that means that instruction is an essential ingredient to virtue and what is where does one get instruction well it requires the capability of having memory and reason and learning right now by contrast we can also talk about the goods of the body and if because remember for Varro the body's natural needs are also intrinsic goods so that means that when we look at a person who has these Goods of the body things one of the examples that a Gustin gives is the swiftness of rain so if you've ever ran in someone ran past you could run faster right you automatically recognize that they are you know are more skilled more excellent in that area than you are perhaps but notice here that the goods of the body for this the ability to run fast does not necessarily require virtue now I'm not convinced of that that's a that's a thesis or a claim a proposition that it gots and makes but I think we'd have to ask that and ask is that really true it seems like some people are born naturally was certain physical abilities and in that sense I suppose virtue isn't required so you can see here is that there's a way in which virtue in the body if they're all tied up together and who we are there's a way in which they're not consistently interwove and together now the happy life then the next sort of point that Agustin takes up from Baro is the notion that the happy life seems to require the social that is it requires other beings to live with and here for instance we see of Gustav reminding us of what the cynic philosophers thought they thought there are really three types of life that are possible you can have an active life you can have an inactive life and you can have a life that includes both activity and inactivity the cynic philosophers opted and recommended the third type of life as being the best type of life and for instance there's an interesting discussion of a gust by Agustin on Cicero who seems to be in accordance with the cynic philosophers on this point it's quite interesting because for us Cicero's this ancient Roman politician rhetorician and thinker but for Gustin it really wasn't that long ago that Cicero they've compared comparatively I mean he was still still hunted a couple hundred years but though you can tell by the way agustín's writing about Cicero his Cicero is not them sort of mythic figure of Roman history but he is for most of us is much more an active politician we see Agustin criticizing Cicero because ultimately he's gonna criticize this entire philosophical framework and here you I just wanted to sort of recall a custom doesn't mention this but also keep in mind here the aerosol this insect goes all the way back to Arizona where aerosol are you the man is by nature a social animal and this in general does seem to be correct wherever we see human beings we see sociality and one of the things that Gus is going to ultimately say is that in terms of the question of social existence the Christian is much more likely to agree with that statement because of the importance of others within the faith as it were so let's keep going here so let's move here to the next section which is where I mean by the way what I've done here at the top is these are the official titles from the text for each of these chapters it's not always the case that the chapter tiles really fully represent what a custon does one of the things that's kind of interesting about this text is a lot of times a Gustin we'll start off with the subject in the association of ideas he develops are slightly different than the ones we would have and so a lot of times I guess we'll start with the topic and we would generally expect him to go in one direction but we find he goes in a different direction so but I've included those original titles just to give you a sense of what accustoms arguing and to be frank I'm not sure if these titles were written by a custom they're added later by editors that's something we could look up and find out it's worth taking note of okay so let's first start about those know by this point of book 19 a custom has already started talking about the City of God and he's made this contrast between the earthly City and the heavenly City the City of God his view here is that the City of God is real it's heaven but that Christians are people who live according to the Christian faith on earth are essentially living in the city of man they're living in the Roman Empire but there are pilgrims there are exiles if you will there may be fugitives is the wrong turn there but they're they're exiles from the City of God so there's a sort of interesting there's a dichotomy but there's a way in which mortal human beings have a relationship to both the city of man and the City of God now the City of God the ultimate good for the City of God and from the perspective of the City of God is not the development of the individuals happiness in terms of getting the natural desires men developing virtue it doesn't mean that our desires and our virtue doesn't matter but the ultimate the final good for the Christian is eternal life and the ultimate evil is eternal death right so ultimately we're gonna see that time is a very important thing for agustin and the notion of what's ultimately good is something that has to do with eternity rather than let's just say call it art poor mortal existence so the ultimate good is about eternal life the ultimate evil is about eternal death and what it is is that while we live on earth God requires that we live rightly any quotes of verse here the just man liveth by faith right and this means though that Christians from agustín's perspective do not seek their own good right they seek ultimately the good of God's kingdom which means and they don't seek their good as humans living now they seek a good that's higher and beyond this mortal existence so this means importantly the highest good the supreme good is not actually man and this is very very important because this means that from a customs perspective we can't we shouldn't begin where the cynics begin which is a humanistic view of what goodness is instead we have to begin by incorporating the edicts of faith right and this is very characteristic of medieval philosophy now there's sort of two quotes I want to mention yours one is a cousin says quote truth laughed at these men through the words of the Prophet the Lord knows the thoughts of men or the Apostle Paul has set forth this message the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise that they are in vain so the so there's this I love that the truth laughs at these people and the gustin's notion here is that the Philosopher's think that the ultimate good is the good of the human and here's where he thinks that this is not true right he said it goes on in the next paragraph for who no matter how many great has I'm sorry for who for who no matter how great is torrent of eloquence can avail to enumerate the miseries of his life Cicero room lamented them as best he could in the consolation on the death of his daughter but how inadequate was his best and then a little later why what pain is there the opposite of pleasure what turbulence is there the opposite of repose that may not have sale the wise man's frame surely the amputation or weakening of a man's and limbs forces his freedom from physical defense to capitulate ugliness his beauty illness his health we as his strict sleepiness or sluggishness his agility now which of these may not invade the flesh of the wise man so a Gustin has this idea that to these philosophers are the good of man is a human good the good of the body could have the soul but the problem is we are so frail and we can't avoid pain and evil so number one here is importance that the good for a Gustin is not the body right the wise man he says again is easily derailed by the frailty of the body and the good those are good is also not of the mind either and so for a Gustin the mind can be broken down between number one hands sensation and intelligence now sensation you're probably thinking wait a second isn't sensation of the body well you need a bite to have sensation but sensation or maybe a better term here would be perception is something that is adjudicated by the mind and right in order to understand when you're experiencing so the mind does both but what Agustin recognized that wait a second both of these constituent features of the mind can be easily corrupted I can lose my senses I can become deaf and blind he says or I can lose my intelligence I can go insane for instance or think about if you've ever known soldiers tragically suffer from Alzheimer's disease then you know the people or in advanced stages of dementia lose their minds so it's very easy to corrupt a month for instance just a head injury can frequently ruin it a person's entire life so if good is in the body and good is in the mind then it looks like there's no real guarantee to actually live a good life and actually if you go further eventually all of us are gonna have bad lives because eventually our bodies go and eventually our minds are also corrupted we lose our memory we lose our intelligence and so on and so forth now one of the things I want to emphasize here that most people probably would is that Agustin takes the suffering of others very seriously yes this is what I consider to be a very beautiful quote he says if we were flagged we can scarce hold back our tears so this the idea that when we think about all of the suffering the people endure both in terms of their physical body in terms of their souls for use of customs term here but there's so much suffering and there's so many ways and so many times in which good people seem to lack a good life they it's it's really despairing right so I think we also need to take the suffering with others seriously so I love that Agustin and also he's a brilliant writer you'll notice when you read the City of God in that it's important remember the new customs biography he was actually trained as a rhetorician so he's trained in the art of rhetoric so he's really really he really makes it look easy to write masterfully persuasive arguments and to do they're logically it's actually very difficult but he makes it look easy so he's one of those giants and that's part of why but let's think about virtue itself now virtue he actually says now why would be we be against virtue why is it virtue something good no it isn't good for a costume it be careful you're but it's not the supreme good here's why well the activity of virtue itself Agustin says is always in a state of perpetual war both internally and externally so for instance if I want to be virtuous and let's take the virtue of courage that means that internally I'm always having to struggle in order to maintain my virtue in order to be courageous and and I'm also always always in a state of conflict in terms of negotiating the my external surroundings so that I could be virtuous so virtue is maybe is something to be desired it's something to that's good but it's always in a state of perpetual war nor we're always in a state of perpetual war when we're acting virtuously so this means that a purpose state of perpetual war and conflicts doesn't seem to be a final end state it doesn't seem to be something that's intrinsically good and under all conditions the example he gives you is that the lust of the flesh drags the mind downward for instance so it's very easy to be intelligent and have the virtue may be the virtue of wisdom but it's so it's so how easily our bodies drag us down and here I just want to recall give you a cross reference here to Plato now he's not addressing Plato directly here but this is very very much aligned with Plato's allegory of the cave for instance where people are chained and they can only look at shadows above and and for Plato this meant that this was the realm of the body the realm of becoming and then ultimately to virtue had to be you had to get past that and go beyond that and so so there's a strong electronic element in the customs work here I'm in many ways it follows the same rhythm notice that he doesn't begin by attacking Plato he begins by attacking Baro instead so virtue itself is can't be this ultimate good now Agustin here we see is committed to a form dualism ontological dualism now ontology is just a fancy word for talking about the relationships of being between beings so for instance you know that the word antic is being in Greek so there's different types of being or different types of existence that are irreducible and one of them is the mortal fleshly existence the body and the others the spiritual realm of existence this is where the soul is linked in and this also is very reminiscent of the distinction between be becoming a being that we see in Plato know in this section Agustin also talks about some of the other particular virtues that people seek which seem to be good and they are good but not good always or they're not the supreme good at its a president's prudence right prudence and this what is prudence about well Gustin says principles is about our ability to discriminate what's good for it's evil and that's a necessary ingredient to be prudent now what that reveals is that we thus must have some evil in us right if we're not always able to be prudent and look at justice as well the function of justice because it says it's to assign each their due and so there's a natural order here as ontology again and we're gonna see that really the sort of moral system that agustin endorses what we might call natural law theory well there's a natural order to things that begin with God and emanate to our words but was his ontology being distinguished between there's god there's soul or there's the flesh the God is above the soul the soul is above the flesh and here when we talk about the flesh this is where we have to recognize that Gus and says we have in us this weakness this sickness that we're supposed to it that go beyond now a Gustin also heavily will criticize stoas and in these passages 1:17 turn now stoicism if you're not familiar with stores doesn't take a look at one of my other video lectures on it sort of brief overview of stoicism but generally speaking the purpose of shows is they're not told this off the internet so thank you ever made this but it's generally right is the purpose of life is happiness which is achieved by virtue according to the dictates of reason ethical and philosophical training self reflection careful judgment and most importantly inner calm right the Stoics believed that a couple things number one they believed in the gods and so they believed in divine providence that meant that they thought that all things that occur in the world happen according to the will of the gods now agustin also has a notion of divine providence where all things happen according to God's will so divine providence is there now one of the things that the stoic philosophers argued was because everything happens according to divine providence that meant that when things looked evil that was just an appearance and then ultimately it was our judgments about those things that caused us so much trouble so the good life the good of life is to be sought and happiness and happiness for the stroke is identified as freedom from inner turmoil the Greek term here used is apatheia and you'll notice that in English we also say apathy right a bethey means not caring one way or another it's not quite exactly what apatheia means for these philosophers but we can say is it best translated is something like equanimity right finding balance between the passions of the soul right so ultimately for the stoic and then they once we recognize what's outside of our control we should stop having making judgments wrong or right about those things outside of us but only folks are what's in our control and that's how we respond to situations so if someone is cruel to me for instance the stoic would say you have to recognize that that person doesn't know what they're doing and then their cruelty is you can't control the only thing you can control is your response to that cruelty so that means that the stove's has really advocated the idea that happiness was really an activity of the individual there's a work of the individual so very very humanistic view now one of the positions the stoic held was about suicide and the idea was that if you could not wrote that you could live life a happy life and develop this inner this apatheia but that if you were suddenly find yourself in circumstances in which you were absolutely unable to to fulfill to gain apatheia the best option was just to take yourself out of the equation is to commit suicide and so for instance a good example of this is Cato if you don't know who Cato is you can go online and take a look at it but he's a famous Roman who after Caesar takes over and he's going to world it's easier Cato actually commits suicide so and this is what the Stoics would have advocated now what would what a cousin's gonna say is that this is an error in judgment because the problem is the Stoics recognize that there are evils in life but yet simultaneously they argue that this life is still good well how come is good be both Eve Aaron good at the same time and so the Stoics position on suicide didn't make sense take a look at this quote he says mighty is the power in these evils that compel a man and according to this philosophers compel even a wise man to deprive himself his own existence as a man although they say and say truly that the first and greatest commandment of nature and there's the notion of natural law is that a managed to be brought into harmony with himself and therefore instinctively avoid death and that he'd be his own friend and such a way as to be vigorously determined and eager to keep the breath of life and to live on in this union of body and soul but mighty is the power in these evils that overcome the natural feeling we'd hear of by whose working we use every means and bent all of our strength and all of our endeavors to avoid death and so completely defeat nature not what was avoided is now long for pursued and if it may not arrive from some quarter inflicted on by man himself mighty is the time of these evils that make fortitude of homicide so his view here is no notice and recognize the way in which the stoic there's a sort of perversion right because the goal of stoicism is because if all things happen in nature for the gods you should be in harmony with that including with yourself because you're also a divine part of you your reason for the stoic but yet this somehow perverts in stoicism to a doctrine of suicide which seems contradictory to the central principles now what I want to emphasize here is that for a Gustin stoicism is not just a human philosophy but he's attacking it philosophically because it's a philosophy that ultimately contradicts itself so it's not even a reasonable option right and in at the core of it again is this notion of natural law and Agustin's do here is that the world is created and endowed in such a way that there are certain things that are we should that are naturally good and things that are naturally evil well maybe I should correct that say there are things that aren't actually good and the privation of those goods are evil now for the Christian things are different obviously than the stars right so salvation is an eternal afterlife in which there's no suffering or evil so for the Christian to die and gain eternal life is ultimately the Oulton is the end goal right and the happiness of the Christian is ultimate a type of happiness of hope so while the Christian is alive and living their life they have happiness but their happiness is in a hope toward that which will come next now this may seem crazy but even Plato has a similar idea right his view is that ultimately the soul has to escape the body in order to find peace in order to find truth right so it's time so there's this there's another Neoplatonic sense going on here but we should say here is that a Gustin is a Christian and he says that philosophy ultimately counterfeits happiness particularly that philosophy we see in Varro and also in stoicism is that philosophy tries to generate a concept of happiness that we can attain but ultimately because the world is fallen according to the theological metaphysics of Agustin's view because the world is fallen that can never happiness just can't ever be achieved for it which means that philosophy has to construct it has to build it has to Forge it and make it but that's all it's me a sort of counterfeit form of happiness you can never achieve the after an eternal afterlife of happiness through philosophy it's never going to happen now what about the social line so let's go turn to that for a minute excuse me and what agustin argues or Agustin argues that the happy life it is a social life to some degree and so he agrees that the City of God for instance cannot reach is good without social existence he's not fully he doesn't think the social life is the supreme good of human beings but he says that this seems to be something that's much more in line with the Christian thinker so for instance take love though and here's where it got some critiques it take love and take the relationships that human beings have with each other first as one must love other but also notice the relationships can cause us many great ills relationships can be painful so for instance maybe you've been in a love relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend and you've been disappointed you've been hurt you've been injured or worse maybe you've had a friend who was actually talking about you behind your back or even worse a friend who betrayed you completely maybe you lost your job as a result of this so-called friend now notice here that our relationships our social existence causes us lots of great stuff but it also is the source of a lot of great pain now obviously a custom doesn't talk about Shakespeare but I put Shakespeare pure because Shakespeare I can't think of a better author who explores the way in which relationships cause suffering better than Shakespeare right much evil is actually committed by our friends and what the city of man shows us is that many evils seem to come out of social existence now think here about for instance ancient Rome lead to better think about Washington DC today and think about the way in which their people often blame Washington as the right that in Washington DC people are corrupt and there's an atmosphere of corruption etc etc modes out for themselves notice that they're referring to a way in which there's a social existence which is actually causing harm so social existence that means is not a complete good it can't be the supreme good now there is something interesting here in in and suddenly we discovered that there's a a constant provides us an argument against torture you know put up a famous picture here of torture being conducted by American soldiers during the second Iraq war part of the I try to use modern examples so that way this stuff resonates better but there's an argument against torture that agustin gives here in but the name of the title is of the era of human judgments when the truth is hidden so maybe with a larger story here is that that how when the truth is not accessible to us immediately we make many errors in our judgment and torture is one of these ways that the thesis gifts can be borne out but on the other hand I think that a constant actually wants to make an argument against the idea that it's okay to torture people so imagine a person is suspected of a crime you want to know whether or not they're guilty now here's the error of torture because if you torture a person you might extract a confession so they'll go they'll eventually say that they are the ones who committed the crime and then maybe you punished them in they get executed but then the problem is the person who did the torture and the person who wanted knows guilty is no longer certain of who's guilty because the person may have just confessed so that they would stop the torture which means that torture undermines its own purpose so put in other ways that alternate torture results in the contradiction of the very reason that gives rise to torture in the first place unless the reason of torch is just to be cruel but if torture is taken in sort of jurisprudence as it was used in a customs day and unfortunately tragically still is right it ultimately is self-defeating which means that for a Gustin what we see here is that those who argue in favor of torture are actually acting and making arguments out of ignorance so it's ignorance that's the problem ok so let's move here and I think that's pretty important you know I wanted to sort of mention that down X Agustin sort of talks about the idea the diversity of languages in the way in which the having multiple languages and when you look at just the natural diversity of things their wars and misunderstandings can come naturally so in the net of the order of things there's the household is one sort of social mode of existence the larger is the city and then the largest is the world so you can say that ontologically Agustin recognizes there's tears of consideration now languages which seem to be the lane there's multiple languages and keep in mind in Agustin's day and age if someone spoke another language is very difficult to learn that language unless you travel a lot or we're able to you know frequently be around people who spoke that language so he languages he argued divided humanity and because the language is divided humanity there's a lot of misunderstandings that originate purely because of an inability to communicate and this is where a lot of wars come into existence and then of course we seek resolution to those Wars but there's an interesting question here is do wise men wage just war so for instance we frequently hear it said that at least here in the United States that World War two is a just war that the Nazis should have been stopped it's interesting here because of custon I don't think agrees with that because he actually says no just men do not wait just Wars instead wise men have no wars the wise do not go to war because the wise do not live by misunderstanding so I thought that was sort of interesting thing worth mentioning here so anyway that's sort of so that's that's actually focused on that now in section 8 we see a Gustin turning his attention to the problem of friendship so I put friends up here I actually did not like that too you show but it's pretty famous so I put it up there and here the question is what about friendship is the can the is the good old cities found in our friends well one of the questions is how exactly are you ever gonna know who your real friends are questions Agustin says that it's difficult to know who our real friends are until unless until they don't know until they stop being our friends until they betray us in some sort of way in fact he says that we would rather learn that our friends have died and have become evil and this is important because ultimately it means that a custom says that we love our friends but that we should desire the good more than friendship and we do naturally because I'm not in for instance if you had a really good friend I mean I actually do do or did have a friend I would say he was my really good friend but he was my friend and he eventually committed a murder and now he's in prison it's quite sad and horrible but you can see your Agustin saying listen we would rather learn that our friends have lost their lives then it become evil and that seems to demonstrate that what's good it stands higher than friendship it's not it doesn't it's not equal with friendship whoops actually here only I read you this quick quote he gets he says we feel thankful to death of good men among our friends and that though their death brings sorrow is the more surely mitigating that they have been spared those evils by which in this life even good men are crushed or contaminated or at least her in danger of either fate so there's a way in which death is something that we don't like especially when it comes to our friends but we would rather our friends have died than to become evil or contaminated or torturer these any of these other sorts of things evils that we can imagine again notice how the problem of evil is central to agustín's analysis and the recognition that evil is a real experience it's a real deal as it were so friendship is not the supreme good either now in this section I don't really want to focus too much on this section we see that a custom then begins to talk about friendship of the holy angels which men cannot be sure of in this life on to the deceit of the demons who holds in bondage the worshipers of a plurality of gods and so you have this this discussion here in this section about demons and deception and since this is a modern philosophy class not really is in night time starts in medieval philosophy class but were living in the modern realm I really didn't want to focus too much in my discussion here on angel ology but one of the things that does come out in this section is what's called the great chain of being here's this classic picture of it the great chain of being is the notion that when God created the world he created an order of existence a hierarchy of forms so for instance at the top of the great chain of Union is she is God and you can see here and then there's the angels and here's the angels and then you have humans and famously tragically really the great chain of being held that I'm sorry these are the angels here and then here are the humans but the great chain the medieval is held that men you know that you with God angels men women and then down the list and so there it's sort of sad but sexism Iowan argue is built into the very ontological framework that Agustin is using or at least that's how we would see it today for those of you who are watching this you may disagree and that's totally valid as well a valid perspective but the great chain of being held that you under the Angels were humans and then beneath them or you can see here they're representing Birds and then below there are fishes and then you have the landed animals and then you have trees and then it's many have just the planets and so on and so forth and then down here at the very bottom is hell and I suppose this is heaven up here so the great chain of being is a very important notion we're going to see throughout this entire course and it's frequently referred to and so it gets discussed in this section section 10 we see that the reward for the saints after life is ultimately the goal right he says quote so when we mortals have such peace as we can enjoy in this mortal state if we live rightly virtue makes the use of its good things but when we have it not virtue makes good use even of the ills from which men suffer but true virtue is this to support innate all the good that it makes use of and all that it doesn't making good use of good and evil things and also itself to that end where our peace shall be so excellent and so great that it cannot be improved or increased now that may it be a little a little bit difficult to track but what he's arguing here is that okay in the mortal life we develop virtue and that's important but notice that virtue can make use of good things and bad things but what's in it the more after that what the Saints are after the the citizens of the City of God is ultimately a piece that that is that can't be made better or decreased and is perfect and complete this is of course the piece of eternal life for a custom now but he says that so this is the goal and this is the reward that the Christian theology is seeking out this is where the supreme good of things are but the he also writing is that the faithful are susceptible to demonic deception or importantly we're still susceptible to being deceived even though we may be aiming towards this eternal life and this sort of goes back to the notion of agustín's that were fallen in the flesh in Section 11 here we see him really taking on this notion of eternal peace in a more systematic way where the peace of eternal life is articulated as the end of our good it's the end of the good we see now the city of man you can save seeks peace but in the City of God one can find peace right peace in a Gustin says that when we talk about peace here peace is the completion of happiness or the completion of the good that the Christian seeks but in the City of God we're talking about peace in everlasting life we're also talking about everlasting life in peace so there's a way in which everlasting life and peace are synonymous notions or they're there by conditional you can say that for in the City of God you have peace infant normally if you have everlasting life you have everlasting life it's fun only if you have peace and so a custom begins to articulate this theological framework of peace which is very very important notice here that where people die what do we say we say rest in peace right this is a direct correlation back to this theological discussion of the customs now one thing is when we talk about peace if peace is what we're always after then why is it that we have so much mortal evil moral evil why is it that so many bad things happen for instance what about in war so the picture here of some soldiers I believe this from I'd see the rule work one of the spanish-american war I'm not sure which we have soldiers right so if peace is what people really rapture then why are we always at war right for instance it's frequently noted that when you look at human history it looks like human history is really a constant state of war with momentary suspensions that's what peace is this isn't a customs view right he says that even in war peace is the goal peace is the end victory must always include peace for instance because if you don't have peace then you can't have a victory this is something the United States learned in the second Iraq war that I showed the picture of earlier is the United States invaded Iraq and quickly was able to subdue the military structure of the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein but then quickly it was obvious that there was no peace in the nation that Iraq was still in violence and tragically it still is in violence which means that there is no victory right so that means that peace is actually the desired end of war now the thing that's important to recognize here is that the Warriors don't actually want war the Warriors desire not war but a piece of their own choosing so people who desire peace but they are different that they conflict in terms of what they think peace is for the city of man and as a consequence you end up with wars within the city of men and here the history of the Roman Empire is probably the most gallant example of this problem now one of the things that he takes up here is what he calls the myth of the unsocial man and he gives this example of the coming going back to pagan mythology here of a person who is completely unsocial lives in a cave and basically lives a savage two horrible life and so one of the questions is does this person also seek peace even in their savagery and the answer Gustin tells us is yes right in hittin the savagery of the unsocial man still wants peace he says even the beasts need peace to rear their young tigers lions foxes etc right you can't raise children or cubs unless you you're at peace or safe right so humans seek peace by nature it's a part of natural law that we seek peace it's it's it's a part of our the structure of our wants to are I guess our ontological Constitution you might say right but the hearings that the Peace of the unjust so if all people are actually seeking peace then the question is why is it that we look at some people and say oh you're not living a peaceful life even though it doesn't look like you're seeking peace even though agustin says you are but it'll look like right it doesn't look like the savage man is seeking peace and yet agustin saying they are and what a customer wants to argue is that the peace of the unjust compared to the peace of the just doesn't actually deserve to be called called peace at all so what we see here is everyone's seeking peace but there's a disparity of the way which we're able to attain it so what is injustice and these in this passage we see that injustice and this goes back to natural law theory is a perversion of nature it's a perversion of our natural Constitution a gust Mirage how much more is a man by the laws of his nature so to speak to enter upon a fellowship with all his fellow men and to maintain peace with them so far as he can since even we can men wage war to protect the Peace of their own fellows and would make men their own if they could so that all men and all things serve one master and how could that could that be unless they accepted his peace either through love or through fear so pride is a perverse imitation of God furtive horrors the Society of peers under God but seeks to impose its own own rule instead of his on society so in other words it abhors the just peace of God and loves its own unjust peace the peace of some kind or other it cannot help loving for no creatures vices so completely at odds with nature that it destroys the very last traces in nature so the unsocial man the savage man if you won't think of a serial killer how does it that a serial killer is seeking peace well ultimately Agustin's answer is that there's a perversion in terms of understanding what is peace for that savage man there was another quote there but it was a long quote it was basically the quote where I late when I was reeking to read the myth of the unsocial minute but I'll let you go ahead take a look and read that on your own so because I don't know how much me reading to you is helpful let's keep going here so in 3rd section 13 is title of the universal peace which the law of nature preserves through all disturbances and by which every one reaches his desert in a way regulated by the just judge ok so on the one hand remember we have this distance between body and soul so the piece of the body is to talk about the order the ordering of the body that is proportionate to its components right so for instance you can think here is that if you only focus on your body but you don't take care of your body and you slowly become increasingly unhealthy and sick then your body is not well ordered right it's not balanced as you as you see as you might say but so the notion of balance is actually really sort of important element for thinking about what agustin means when he talks about peace as being a type of ordered miss orderliness I mean ordered according to nature but I think God's created of course Soapy's for the soul though is to talk about the ordering of the appetites you have well ordered appetites that means this you can you that the appetites operate accordingly when it makes sense so for instance the soul doesn't seek doesn't seek sexual pleasure for a custom because that's not an ordered appetite lust isn't instead the soul should see love love of God sort and so forth now when we talk about the soul agustin is committed to the notion that we have a rational soul which means that when we talk about the rational soul which peace has been an order to greement between our knowledge and our action so a rational soul is a soul that has an agreement of things which are known and the way in which those things are deployed or the way which we deploy ourselves towards those things so for instance what we can say is when we talk about peace in terms of the body and the soul is that peace between God and man is ultimately an ordered obedience of faith peace is a sort of tranquility of order where order is understood as the classifications of things that are equal and unequal that align each to their proper place so we see a got some really laying out a notion of the quarter of the universe here to make sense of things now in Section 14 we see Agustin sort of then talking about the difference between the city of man and the City of God now first and foremost both cities seek a type of enjoyment right whereas the City of God seeks enjoyment in temporal things things that exist in time here's my cellphone for instance when I got my cellphone my iPhone which was very expensive I was really excited right because you know everyone's excited when they get a new device like this but notice that this thing exists in time and if you look closely here you'll see that I broke my iphone and the cameras broken why is it broken well it's broken because it's a temporal object it's an object that exists in time and it is because instead of becoming if you will where as the city of God is not in a state of becoming it's rather in a state of being notice the Platonic resonance there the city of God seeks an everlasting peace a peace which is complete now enjoyment for the human is ultimately requires the rational soul and so we can say is that the type of enjoyment that the human has to see equal tonight is that an ordering of the mind in contemplation a grand agreement between knowledge and action so but ultimately that's not just enough we can't just because man's mud human beings minds are organized by the ordering of temporal concerns so for instance I'm here doing this video but notice that as I've been making this video I keep everyone smile taking a drink of water notice that my mind on the one hand is thinking about philosophy and all these sorts of things but yet my mind is also organized towards these sorts of concerns these temporal concerns but go back to the overall thing if the city of man is concerned with temporal things and as a human with the body I'm always thinking about these things then that means that the everlasting peace in the City of God is not something that I have or can enjoy at this moment so that means that what we need is divine instruction because we lack the instruction in order to make our minds ordered in the appropriate and product proper way and this is the importance of faith and also divine revelation you might say though a custom doesn't say that in this section at least not you with those words now he does say that when we talk about divine instruction there are two chief divine precepts so there's two most important rules and this comes all the way from the Gospels in which Jesus lays out what's known as the golden rule and he's asked what are the two greatest Commandments and Jesus response was love that God with all your heart all your mind all your soul and love your neighbor as yourself right those are the two Commandments and Agustin pulls on those scriptures and says okay that means there's two divine instructions from the everlasting city and that's what is to love God and the second is to love your neighbor and this means that these private precepts have to organize the the pattern within our souls our internal pattern a pattern of a pattern right and this is sort of formulating to sort of two important moral precepts for a custom one is we should do no harm to others we should not create evil in the world or commit evil against others and second we should help everyone we can't we should help people now this means he also says a good example of the way was these precepts can function is by thinking about what are well ordered household would look like okay no one thing here and this is in section 15 we see Agustin nets are talking about freedom and what type of freedom human beings enjoy and have in the world but it's not a question about the metaphysics of freedom as such but really it's it's the idea that agustín's laying out the notion that human beings have the freedom over other beings and notice the great chain of being is in the background here he says that man has dominion over the Beast now I wrote a question here or a statement with the question Edward what the question anthropocentrism no I do a lot of environmental ethics that's sort of what I've been trained to to work out in philosophy and one of the big problems we've seen that philosophers current philosophers articulate is the notion that nature is usually treated as something for human beings to enjoy and to use for their own purposes this is known as a anthropocentric position regarding human beings and I just wanted to point out here that Augustus you wouldn't use the same attorney at the PO centrism you would probably use the term something like Fela centrosome but what's making his view is that human beings have dominion over the piece we have free rein and freedom over nature so Agustin argues though importantly there's a discussion of slavery that gets animated here is that even we may have dominion over the beast but that does not mean for a custom that we have dominion over other human beings so Agustin argues that slavery is actually not natural but he does say that it's better to be a slave than to be a sinner so that's why you'll notice that in the Bible there's there's there's there's discussion of slaves where for instance I think it is there's a spot and think you know it's not mentioned by a custom but there's a spot in the Bible where it's said that it's better than if your master requires you to go one mile you should go - right so there's a notion that you should be a good slave a customs view here is not that slavery is a good thing but rather that it's better to be a good person enslaved than to be an evil person who's free so again he's carrying for this discussion of what's wrong versus what's right now in section 16 he continues the discussion of slavery by talking about what's equitable rule and here he does mention that for instance slaves don't are not equal in terms of the temporal Goods they can enjoy so if you're enslaved your master obviously lives a better material life than YouTube but he says importantly that the the slave is equal in terms of the everlasting life and so there's a sort of there's a way in which here that agustin isn't I don't think radically challenging slavery here but he's trying to articulate conditions upon that would govern how we treat each other in the city of man because obviously there's no slaves in the City of God it's only in the city of man and man's fallen state where slavery occurs but that doesn't mean that the slaves don't matter they do they're equal or ultimately now who is blameless because sort of the interesting thing here you can say is what does it mean to be free of blame and it gets discussed in here and maybe I'm not laying it out systematically as I could but I think it's important or worthwhile to think about blamelessness for a custom is the combination of obligation recognizing your obligation but we're straining your your activities a court in accordance with that obligation so in other words it's duty plus the free action towards that Duty so it starts to sound like kind of caught a little bit take a look at the quote a cousin says hence blamelessness involves the obligation not only to do evil to no man but also to restrain a man from sinning under punishment punish him if he has sinned so that either the man himself who's chastise may be reformed by his experience or the others might be deterred by his example so you know this notion here of jurisprudence that starts to get developed in the City of God here on this section in Section 17 Agustin returns back to the notion of peace but in a slightly different way right the house holds on the earthly city seat the temporal Goods and they treat these temporal Goods as a type of peace so for instance you get a job and you're unable to afford your house and it's been able to afford your lifestyle and you have a sort of peace that you're able to attain right and here what we see in terms of sociality of things and in terms of the nature of the city is that the human will gets Murs towards that which is useful so our desires get organized by the things they're useful towards attaining this piece of temporal goods but this is the framework for thinking about the city of man in terms of the City of God here you want something of what about those households who live in faith we live in faith of the heaven in this city and here's where we get this notion they says then here again he's talking about not the peace in heaven but what about the people who who have a hope that there's an everlasting life and Christians but who are living in this world what kind of peace can they have he caused them to rooms in captivity on the one hand there are pilgrims there sojourners that they're working towards God but they're also in captivity because they're living in this mortal life in this fallen state and what a custom says here is that while they're living in this fallen state ultimately the Christians must live by the laws of their earthly City they actually have it so it's important here because the Gustin is saying that we live in we live in the earthly City but the pasilla of man has fallen and we can't actually achieve finalized happiness here that we actually need the City of God but that occurs in in heaven so how do we square those days that for instance is it okay for the Christian to disobey the laws of human human laws in order to fulfill godly laws and and that's what thing who would laws govern the Christian really is what you might say part of me there Agustin says quote and because the heavenly City on the other hand knew one God to be worshipped and believed with faithful piety that he used to be served with masters which is in greek is called the Turia and should be rendered only to God as the nourishment sacrifice you should come to pass that that heavenly City could not have common laws of religion with their ethnicity and on this point must dissent and become the tiresome burden to those who thought differently the must undergo their anger and hatred and persecutions except that at length it took the hostile intent of its adversaries with fear so there's this notion here that the Christian lives according to the earthly city's laws those laws are different in different nations and different seas and so there's a way in which the Christian and the person who's seeking in Hope this other City heaven is everlasting this hosta is has to suffer to some degree because they they have to live according to the suit the laws and the cities in which they live notice you there's a there's a verse in the Bible where Jesus says means asked is it alright to do to pay taxes to Caesar in Jesus says doing given to Caesar what is Caesar's so there's this notion that the Christian should submit to the political laws that exist here not just these percussively laws so there is a connection between the two now in section 18 and I'm gonna go a little bit quicker through some of these sections until the end we're getting close here the discussion is how different the uncertainty of the new Academy is from the certainty of the Christian faith so in other words the type of philosophy we see in vara is prescription of the good life from the perspective of the City of God seems like a life of madness it's it's a life in which you can never actually attain happiness because you're easily corrupted because the laws themselves are not actually wise loss and center etc right so the type of prescription for living the good life from philosophy particularly Varro here is not a very certain life it's total uncertainty you don't know if you're actually going to live a good life because you don't know if you can avoid you know the disintegration of the body or the disintegration of the mind and so forth whereas the Christian faith he argues has an absolute certainty and rationality now I'm not going go quickly over this in Section nineteen accustomed that sort of says we're not the dress and the habits of the Christian people and here he basically says that there are many philosophers who became Christians but never change their address than their habits which were all organized around their own self-indulgence and so we get this notion here is that the Christian the people of the City of God should avoid self-indulgence both in their habits and in terms of the way they present themselves in their dress he says quote the charm of leisure must not be indolent vacancy of mind but the investigation or discovery of truth so I love this notion this notion of leisure is very important in philosophy we see in the ancient Greek philosophy the notion that philosophy begins and lead easier but what do we mean by leisure we don't mean just sitting around drinking Coronas or margaritas what we mean is that the real leader of life is investigating the discovery of truth and in living a leisurely life that means organizing our life in terms of our habits along those lines in Section 20 Agustin takes a look at the Saints and he argues that this life is blessed in the hope in section 21 we see a Gustin address then he goes back to Cicero and it takes a look at the Roman Empire I'm skipping this because principally it's not in the anthology that we're reading these are just sections and if you're interested you can take a little more of them they're also not that they're more had to do a sort of more of side issues it's 22 Agustin addresses whether or not God whom the Christian serves the true God and the only God who should be given sacrifices the answer is yes of course he also looks at the account of responses they were given by the Oracles of the gods concerning Christ so he looks at sort of pagan religious history and so back we only get to 24 we give back to some more substantial philosophical discussion that's interesting and this he begins to ask well the definition must be given of a people in a republic nor to vindicate this section the assumption of these titles by the Romans so first up what does it mean to be part of the Roman Empire who are the rubber people well to answer that first we have to ask who are the people people in his view are rational beings they're United in fellowship by common objects of love so that's where the people now who are the Roman people in particular the Roman people he talks about where people is particularly by the time he's living in a state of moral decline Rome had become the city of the Empire where the Roman is basically a given way to to all the desires of the flesh and the body now it's interesting here to think about I want to point out this too it was really important he says and because they have in this city on the other hand knew only one God to be worshipped and believed with faithful Pilate that is to be served oh well no this is the wrong quote oh my apologies I looks like I uploaded the same quote I read earlier well let me tell you there's a quote in chapter 20 chapter 2 yeah chapter 24 year where he talks about the fall of the Roman Empire in the decline of the Roman Empire and he specifically says that when any nation in history whether it's your time up the Egyptian Finian's or the Romans any time that nation becomes empirical in its design and it tries to spread its will increasingly over others through war that city goes into a decline that city will suffer moral decline and so a little picture here of what you might call is the American Empire now America the United States is not an empire in the same way that the Roman Empire was so we can say that but there is a way in which the United States exerts a significant influence upon the affairs of others and it's been called the American Empire and so and then today of course many people believe both Christian Muslim Jew atheist many people pretty much of all people I know think the United States is in a state of moral decline that the Western world is in a state of moral decline here because Agustin is he's he is witnessed the decline of the greatest empire in human history or one of them and he's saying it's part of this Empire model that is where the decline occurred and it looks like in many ways we're mirroring the same problem though we haven't seen the collapse of the United States or anything like this hopefully we won't we Augusta was saying we eventually will because the United States is like all cities a city of men which is destined to fall because you need the City of God actually peace cannot be found so in 25-year Agustin then sort of looks at he says that where there's no true religion they're campaigning true virtue so that means that true / Chu requires that we ultimately have true religion we have true faith he writes accordingly the very virtues that it thinks it possesses and by means of which it rules the body and the vices in order to obtain or keep any object whatsoever if it does not subordinate them to God are themselves vices rather than virtues so a Gustin has this notion that even when we develop virtue those virtues are not subordinated to God than they actually are vices they're not virtues and this is why he has this critique against philosophy now intersection 26 a custom then sort of looks at the piece which is enjoyed by the people that are alienated from God and when he talks about people were alienated from God he's talking about Christians because Christians he sees them as citizens of the City of God but they're exiled on earth at least for them in now so this means that and there's a way in which the the Christian can never fully escape the vices of the flesh they can never fully escape sin because the everlasting life in the supreme good of human beings occurs and at the level of heaven doesn't occur here on this plane so that means that even the Christians who are alienated from God they need prayer the just person needs prayer that is the just person must mewn with God in order to somehow bridge that state of alienation and this means importantly for us is the from a cousin's perspective and from the perspective of really all of these medieval philosophers the fidelity of mine in reason alone is insufficient to live a good life right and there's this notion here that if we want to have complete peace we need complete virtue but complete virtue is not something that the mind can fully bring into existence it requires ultimately an aspect of the divine an aspect of God so this means that the Peace of those who serve God in this moral life cannot be fully operated in its perfection he writes but peace in this life whether that common to all men or our own special possession is such as must be called rather a solace of our wretchedness and a positive enjoyment of blessedness and a little bit later on that same paging writes for even though the reason exercises command over the vices surely it's not without struggle on their part and even if we fight the good fight or rule as master after foes had that sort of been defeated and subdued still in this realm of weakness something creeps in so that sin is found so there's this notion that as long as we're living a mortal life there will be no complete peace over the vices that we experience so there's so so that's also very important so the city of men is destined to fall and so long as we are mortal and living in the city of men we're always going to be struggling against these vices it's complete peace only occurs after life it were rather in the everlasting life and ultimately that's what the aim is now what's the end of the wicked and this is sort of the end of the section the answer is help he writes but on the other hand they who do not belong to the City of God shall inherit eternal misery which is also called the second death because the show soul shall then be separated from God it's life and therefore cannot be said to live and the body should be said ejected to eternal pains and consequently this second death shall be more severe because it's no death so it terminated so essentially the notion here is that you have eternal life Agustin thinks that there's the theory of damn you are the doctrine of damnation hell is it wants me there's also everlasting death as well now personally I have a little bit of trouble understanding this because if someone is dead and they're dead everlasting in what sense could they be said to experience pain in suffering and so it's not fully clear to me what a Gustin means by life because if because on the one hand you have to say that these people are dead but if they're dead they still having sort of experience but their soul is just separated from God and their bodies torment so anyway he has this notion that this is the end of the wicked is that they go to hell ultimately to me it's less philosophical less of a philosophical stated and more of a statement based upon his own faith based upon Revelation I suppose because ultimately I'm not sure that fully is consistent with the concept of life but that's my own view that's my own my own concern so but that in general gives you the general gist of what a custom is doing in the City of God and that leads us to conclude for today the City of God by a custom vote 19 so thank you very much for watching the history of medieval philosophy stay tuned for our next video coming up which is going to be on boethius thank you once again I look forward to seeing you guys online

Channel: Mark Thorsby

Views: 1,767

Rating: 4.8857141 out of 5

Keywords: Augustine, City of God, Varro, Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy, Viture, Good, Everlasting Life

Id: bXUOoav2sVs

Length: 82min 40sec (4960 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 09 2018