Augustine vs. Sartre on the Difference God Makes

foreign [Music] four is on Saint Augustine versus Jean-Paul Sartre on the difference God makes to everything Augustine's the city of God is the world's first and greatest philosophy of history and Society like the Bible it begins at the beginning the creation and goes on to the very end the last judgment it was Augustine's response to the greatest crisis in the history of Western Civilization the Decay and fall of Rome and of civilization itself when Augustine died in 430 A.D he could see and smell the fires of The Barbarians burning his North African home City his other Masterpiece the confessions narrates an even greater drama the greatest drama in human life the drama of a soul poised between two opposite eternities both books show the interaction between Divine Providence and human free choice both of which Augustine strongly defended third Masterpiece on the Trinity is even more ambitious it explores the Supreme mystery of the nature of Ultimate Reality the inner life of God all three books defined the fundamental direction of Christian civilization for Millennia to come every person in our culture would be very different or would not be at all if Augustine had not lived we believe that Socrates Plato Aristotle Augustine and Aquinas are the five greatest and wisest philosophers of all time so it's natural that we begin with these five and all had a philosophical enemy or opponent or opposite during his lifetime or later this office versus Socrates concerning objective truth and objective values Machiavelli versus Plato on Justice versus Aristotle on both knowledge and goodness both epistemology and ethics and Sartre versus Augustine on the difference God makes to everything and as we shall see in the next lecture Avery's and seizure of burban versus Aquinas on the relation between faith and reason among philosophers Augustine was not only the most famous convert but also the most totally converted one while Sartre is probably the most completely and consistently unconverted God's reality changes everything for Augustine and God's unreality changes everything for Sartre both are totally and uncompromisingly clearly and comprehensively committed to their completely opposite philosophies gustin's conversion was the archetypal example of the conversion of Western Civilization to Christ and Sartorius conversion away from that faith is equally the archetype of our civilization's ongoing and increasing anti-conversion it was Nietzsche rather than Sartre who actually called himself the Antichrist and wrote a whole book by that title but Sartre has at least an equal right to that name and his concepts are much clearer and more consistent than Nietzsche's sparkling but chaotic fireworks Augustine gives us both fire and light both passion and reason both heart and head but it's clearer to compare his light to sartre's light than his fire to Nietzsche's fire however Augustine is unrivaled in these two Powers hardened head love and understanding passion and wisdom and medieval statues of him always show him holding an open book in one hand and a Burning Heart in the other no mere man who ever lived ever exceeded him in both Powers at the same time if you doubt that tell me one book that can rival his confessions in both comparing Augustine and Sartorius comparing two prophets and Prophecies of the two new directions the two radical turnings that our culture has taken the first one sixteen hundred years ago when it was converted to Christianity and the second one being the opposite New Direction it is increasingly taking today these two men exemplify these two options everywhere both in their individual lives and personalities and also in their social and political philosophies Archer had been asked to pick the two great books that he thought were most disastrously wrong he might well have picked Augustine's confessions and the City of God the two books that were after the Bible the two most popular and influential books in Christendom for well over a thousand years after Augustine throughout the Middle Ages and which defined the culture that used to be called Christendom and which is now called simply Western Civilization for both Augustine and Sartre no idea makes more of a difference than the idea of God both to the mind and to the heart Augustine and Sartor take up their opposite positions regarding God both with their heads and with their hearts with the reason and the will so let's look at their reasons first Augustine's signature argument for God's existence is the argument from the premise that we can know Eternal truths like two plus three equals five with certainty he uses this to prove the conclusion that there must be some Eternal and infallible Divine mind in which we see these truths for we see these truths not just in changing human minds and in changing material things when the teacher teaches the student that two plus three equals five the student does not see this truth in the changing world or in the changing and fallible mind of the teacher or in his own changing infallible mind but in the mind of God if there is eternal truth there is an eternal mind and this is especially true of truth about values Sartre replies with exactly the opposite argument he argues from the premise that there is no Eternal and infallible Divine mind that there can be no Eternal truth and no Eternal values stayevsky like Augustine famously argued that if God does not exist everything is permissible and not everything is permissible therefore God must exist Sartre replies explicitly to dostoevsky's argument which is essentially the same as Augustine's argument that the premise is true that if God does not exist everything is permissible but Sartre then takes the opposite path from that principle that God does not exist and therefore everything is indeed permissible Sartre also has a signature argument for God's non-existence and this is a very difficult and Abstract metaphysical argument but it is so Central to his philosophy that we cannot ignore it I shall try to make it as clear as I can begins with the premise that there are only two kinds of reality two kinds of being which he calls being for itself and being in itself being for itself is his term for persons subjects eyes they think and choose therefore they act and change in time he also calls this existence meaning personal existence human existence and since his philosophy centers on this he calls it existentialism it is the philosophy of subjectivity of the priority of subjects over objects of existence over essence being in itself on the other hand is his term for objects objects of thought or Choice whether those objects are physical or mental the essence of an idea or of a physical thing does not change or act in time trees grow and dogs bark with the essence of a tree and the essence of a dog do not change so being in itself is static and Timeless and complete and perfect while being for itself is dynamic and changing and incomplete it's on the way to its identity rather than secure in it that's why dogs can't be on doggy but humans can be inhuman we experience identity crises we can struggle with ourselves we can construct different personalities for ourselves as nothing else can Sasha then argues that nothing can be both being in itself and being for itself both perfect and personal both static and dynamic both unchanging and changing both object and subject but the concept of God is the concept of a perfect Eternal person a mind and a will that acts but not in time thus sarcha argues the concept of God is self-contradictory for Sartre the gods of pagan religions were projections of ourselves as personal subjects and Plato's Eternal truths or forms or Essences or projections of our own subjective ideas and the god of the Bible is a projection of the double Perfection that we most desire but cannot possibly be the synthesis of both eternity and time inaction and action changelessness and change Essence and existence objectivity and subjectivity being in itself and being for itself we can't ignore those two arguments but I think we can find a deeper source of sartre's atheism and of Augustine's theism than either of those rational arguments it is the total difference God makes to both of them for Augustine if God does not exist there is ultimately nothing no meaning no purpose no value no good no hope nothing lovable in human life in the words of a great title of cardinal Sarah's book it's God or nothing for Star Trek God does not exist and he goes in his right ultimately there is nothing nothing greater than us nothing to judge us as good or evil true or false and that's great for Sartre that's what Freedom means for Sartre freedom from everything even from God so after his God is his own freedom if there is a God above us we are not totally free and we are totally free therefore there is no God above us that's the foundation of sartor's atheism Dr sees Freedom as essentially negative freedom from being reduced to an object an object of God Augustine sees Freedom as essentially positive freedom to attain our happiness our Perfection our destiny our true identity in God the difference is so total that these two brilliant philosophers are perhaps the most totally and radically theistic and the most totally and radically atheistic thinkers who ever lived mankind has come up with millions of ideas throughout its long Multicultural life and one of them is the idea of God the idea of something like God some superhuman absolute that is common to the religions of all the world now if if we weigh this single idea over against all other ideas if we put the idea of God on one side of our mental scales and if we put on the other side of the scale all the millions of ideas that all the millions of human beings throughout all of history have ever come up with every other idea that any human mind has ever conceived what will happen the god idea will be so heavy that it will lift all the other millions of ideas Into Thin Air like clouds that's why religion has always been the single most passionately important dimension of human life to every culture that came before our own Brave New World if this idea is true it is the greatest of truths if it is false it is the greatest of falsehoods religion is either Mankind's greatest wisdom or Mankind's greatest illusion and Augustine and Sartre both agree with that either or maybe this to see the enormity of the Practical difference God makes to human life remember what we just said about what Sartre does with dostoevsky's argument for the existence of God in his Masterpiece the brothers karamazov let's put the abstract argument in the context of the plot of that great novel Ivan karamazov perhaps the most Winsome and convincing atheist in the history of human literature is attracted to atheism for the same reason Dostoevsky is repelled by it the reason is that if God does not exist then everything is permissible for without a god without an absolute standard of good and a judge who knows all things and will judge all things infallibly and inevitably without this God we can say why not do anything even the murder of Ivan's despicable father that he is tempted to and the only possible answer to that why not is that other men not God will know it and judge us and punish us but most crimes go unsolved and unpunished in this world so if you are clever enough it is very likely that you will never get caught so Ivan has a kind of Pascal's wager for atheism it's profitable if there is no God Sartre surprisingly agrees with dostoevsky's principle but instead of arguing that since not everything is permissible God must exist and seeing Ivan is wrong he sees Ivan as right when he argues that since God does not exist everything is permissible and these totally different roads are the only two roads that lead from dostoevsky's premise it makes a total and absolute difference whether there is a God or not and it is atheists especially totally consistent atheists like Sartre and Nietzsche who show us this difference more clearly than most they used to do we can be grateful to them for this service and they do this both by their heads and by their hearts like Augustine they work both from the heart and the head both from the will and the reason whichever Road one takes to arrive at the point of belief or unbelief whether by the step-by-step Road of recent argument or by a single simple leap of faith and free choice that point God or no God is a sharp point of an all-encompassing cone that contains the whole universe and all of life Sartre and Augustine show that this is equally true for the atheist and the theist I said that the road of the heart is deeper and more powerful than the road of the head we can see that if we look again at sartre's philosophical argument for atheism and see how it's his heart not his head what he loves rather than what he thinks that most inspires that argument sartor's argument remember is that the god idea is the most totally self-contradictory idea possible it is the confusion and impossible synthesis of being in itself with being for itself the synthesis of an eternally perfect platonic idea an objective truth known or goodness chosen with an acting choosing knowing and therefore imperfect ongoing personal subject a knower and chooser the argument is logical its premise does entail its conclusion but satra does not have to begin with this premise and thus he can avoid the conclusion of atheism if he wants to but wanting is an act of the heart not of the head what does Sartre want freedom how much does he want it what does he choose to give up in order to get it or have it the answer is almost everything the cost of his atheism is the loss of Truth and goodness and love and meaning and purpose and Faith and Hope and charity and in fact being itself is a nihilist the title of his major work is being and nothingness there is no being for Sartre there is only being in itself and being for itself so a man in nature subject and object stand over against each other as strangers and enemies not as brothers and sisters from a common father so we are aliens and strangers in the world and the objective world is alien and indifferent to our personal subjective desires especially the desire for meaning and purpose and value so this is a kind of cosmic alienation Marxism is based on the concept of alienation too but that is Trivial compared with sartrus because that is only the political alienation between economic classes well sarger's alienation is the metaphysical alienation between being in itself and being for itself existence and Essence subject and object man and nature including Human Nature human nature is not part of nature for Sartre in fact according to Sartre there is no such thing as human nature because there is no God to conceive it and invent it we are not objects to God because there is no God we are only subjects not objects we have what's Archer calls existence but not Essence not any objective Human Nature he calls his philosophy existentialism because its fundamental principle is that existence precedes essence what does that mean it means that we not God design our own Essence including our own nature our own meaning our own truth and our own values values do not judge us we judge values our free choices are not judged as good or evil by any higher objective truth or objective values it's exactly the opposite our values are good only because we freely choose them to back up and move from the will back to the reason now how would Augustine respond philosophically to sartor's metaphysical argument against God as the self-contradictory concept of the eternally perfect person acting in time by his philosophy of Time and Eternity time does not bind God or Define God or limit God or even characterize his existence until his son becomes incarnate in Christ God's being has no past no future and no change he is infinite being an infinite perfection in his Timeless and eternal present he does not grow or diminish he does not change for if he changed he would grow either better or worse and if he grew better than in the past he was not wholly perfect and if he grew worse that in the future he would not be holy perfect Augustine argues that past time and future time exist only for a Consciousness like ours that is in time and that the present is the only totally real dimension of time because only in the present do we exist as active as acting to remember the past and anticipate the future God is Not Like Us he does not have any part of his reality and life and being in the dead past or in the still unborn future thus God exists as a person in sartrian terms he is being for itself but timelessly although he is timeless he is not an object or an essence or a platonic idea but a person existing in alive and active his name is I am the subject of his actions is eternal even when the objects of his actions in our lives are temporal is a very tricky thing Augustine famously said when reflecting on the mystery of time when you don't ask me what time is I know what it is just as everyone else does but when you ask me exactly what time is I find out that I don't really know and neither is anyone else Augustine would argue that Sartre has no good reason for limiting timelessness to impersonal objects and not persons for Sartre all being for itself all persons all subjects all entities that have mind and will whether human or superhuman must be in time and change that's why satra calls there being being for itself being on the way to itself being that has to achieve its identity and perfection in the future the only things that are Timeless for Sartre are objects the truths of geometry do not change Essences do not change their identity but humans have to choose their identity and create their identity by their choices this is true there is a profound truth here in Charter's distinction who we are is not the same as what we are persons are not merely objects or things or entities we are he's and she's not its mere things have no free will no free choice only persons do but the Eternal God is a person in fact three persons for satra if God is a person or persons then God must be in time and change but there is no compelling reason for that assumption it is arbitrary it is Archer's own invention and choice there is no necessary reason for that choice but there is clearly a motive it's Archer's metaphysics of being in itself versus being for itself is designed from the beginning to exclude God sarger erects his categories like gates in his City precisely in order to keep God out he does not prove that there cannot be a third category a perfect changeless Eternal person and thus a god rather he begins by demanding that there be no God and then he wrecks the categories that exclude him he locks the gates of his mind from the beginning it's a Prejudice a pre-judgment not a rational judgment it is not open-minded and honest it is not based on received data it is based on invented categories contrast this a priori metaphysical argument of starchers for atheism with the most popular argument for atheism the famous problem of evil that is at least an honest and open-minded argument based on real data inexperience namely evil both physical and moral both death and sin and there is a real test of faith if a perfectly good and perfectly powerful God existed how could there be evil if God had both the power over evil and the will against evil he would not allow any evil at all so why does evil still exist if God exists he must be either weak or Wicked either unable or unwilling to destroy all evil the answer to that very good objection which comes from Augustine is that God is also supremely wise as we are not and he deliberately allows evil for the sake of a greater good in the end that we cannot fully understand yet because we are not God what a shock because we are not God and therefore do not see the end yet the answer appeals to our faith and trust rather than proof but it shows that that faith and trust is reasonable the point here is that sarcher's real reason for atheism is that it is not the conclusion of a rational argument not a humble discovery of the mind like the atheism that comes from the problem of evil but rather is a demand of his will and so Archer admits that he says that his whole philosophy is a deduction from atheism as his first principle so why does he begin with that first principle by his own admission it is based on the will not the reason on his demand that God not exist on his desire that God not exist if santra went to heaven and found that God did indeed exist he would not be satisfied he would not be happy he would be profoundly miserable he would be in hell would find Heaven a hell and if he went to Hell by his own free choice by his own demand then that hell would be his Heaven his satisfaction it's exactly the devil's choice in Milton's Paradise Lost better to reign in Hell than serve in heaven so Sartre is in Hell either way whether any individual human being is in Hell Or Not of course no one knows except God my point is not to claim to know sartre's present Eternal address but to claim that for Sartre atheism is his non-negotiable absolute it is not based on objective data like the problem of evil but on a subjective desire it is a leap of faith or rather of Desire so our trip passionately desires that no Divine eye knows him no Creator designed him but why his reason is similar to Nietzsche's Nishi wrote I will now prove the non-existence of all gods if God's existed how could I bear not to be a god consequently there are no gods Nietzsche says that he could not live in a universe where there was a God because God would know him through and through including his Dark Side his failures and miseries and God would either condemn him or even worse pity him and forgive him and that would be hell to him Sartre says something very similar he says that God's knowing him would objectify him that would make him an object to God and thus that would make his freedom only finite and limited and surrounded by truth and goodness that could qualify it and judge it and limit it freedom for Sartre must be absolute if men were dependent on God his freedom would not be absolute and his goodness and meaning and his very being would be Graces that he received from God rather than achievements of his own freedom and that is utterly unendurable to Sartre so freedom is sarcher's God total freedom and God are incompatible and so after demands total freedom therefore no God that demand is non-negotiable it neither needs proof nor admits of proof it is the first and absolute starting point and now comes the uncomfortable question how many of us do a similar thing absolutizing Freedom refusing to limit Freedom by truth not judging Freedom by truth but Truth by freedom when we do that truth can become our enemy and that means that God can be our enemy for God is truth truth was never Augustine's enemy not even when he was unbeliever it was always his goal his love his desire exactly what he was passionately looking for all his life as narrated in the confessions there are at least three conversions or three stages in the conversion of Augustine of his heart of his mind and of his will the conversion of his heart came before he became a Christian when he read Cicero's socrates-inspired invitation to philosophy the hortentious and fell in love with wisdom as his first absolute his first Divine attribute like all falling in love it was a surrender a surrender to the love of wisdom the conversion of his mind came gradually when all his deep questions were given equally deep answers with the help of the saintly Bishop Ambrose and Augustine surrendered Point by point to Divine truth to wisdom itself finally the conversion of his will came in that famous scene in the garden when he heard and obeyed the voice of God and surrendered to Divine love now Sartre would call all three of those conversions conversions to slavery yet Augustine is surprisingly like Sartre in one way like Sartre he speaks from something more primordial than reason though not less than reason he speaks from his heart his famous Restless Heart that found no honest rest anywhere but in God and from his free will to surrender to God sarger's absolute is freedom but Augustine's absolute is truth truth and love the work of the mind and the work of the heart remember those two hands in medieval statues of Augustine a book and a fire a head and a heart truth and goodness are equally absolute and beauty is their love child therefore it is also an absolute Augusta often addresses God as Beauty the heart of the matter for Augustine is the heart and it's love the central theme of the confessions is its most famous and beloved sentence thou Hast made us for thyself literally toward thyself the preposition is odd not pro it is the word for dynamic movement not the word for possession thou Hast made us for thyself and therefore our hearts are restless until they rest in thee that rest is what Augustine calls in the city of God peace peace is positive not negative it is not merely the absence of War it is the attainment of our objectively true end and meaning and perfection which can be done only by surrendering to Divine Grace Augustine is often called the doctor of Grace he knows the priority of Grace not by theological reasoning but by his own experience Augustine's and sartre's philosophies are opposites because their hearts are opposites Augustine's heart beats passionately for the very thing sartra hates and fears above all to be known and loved by God and sartor's deepest heart beats passionately for the thing Augustine hates and fears above all to be free from God to be free from grace free from all dependence on his love and on objective truth and meaning and values and ends and purposes and directions Augustine Longs for his true home and his Divine family so after apprises his homelessness and his autonomy Sartre is the philosopher of the eye while Augustine is the philosopher of the we of the city of God of the community of love in the three places that his three greatest books are about in his life in the church and in the trinity Sartre explicitly says that the word we does not designate anything real any real possibility that little word we that is a merely ordinary word for ordinary people but is magical and Heavenly for lovers that is a hell or an illusion for Sartre shocking point of his famous play No Exit is that hell is other people that is the difference between Heaven and Hell hell is not other people as Archer says it's precisely the refusal of other people I think hell probably does not contain physical fire because that would at least bring the Damned out of themselves and focus their attention on something else than their own total emptiness and loneliness and hopelessness if Christ speaks the truth when he says that all find what they truly seek then Augustine must be in we forever and tartar must be in I forever Sasha would hate heaven it's full of we of Love of togetherness a family and of children it interferes with his freedom and his autonomy God would interfere with it most of all so God will be sarcher's most terrible enemy why is sarker so threatened by the god that Augustine Longs for Arthur is not threatened by all gods equally God is an ideal God is a human construct is not so threatening to him although of course Versace it can be only a myth but that myth is not what he fears he fears the Living God The Hound of Heaven not the god whom we make as our construct but the God who made us as his construct by creating us as his objects as his creatures as relative to him for satra if God exists we are his inventions which means not as children but his machines his objects we couldn't be free if we were created by God Hamlet is not free from Shakespeare let's look at the things that start your sacrifices for the sake of absolutizing his personal freedom and his autonomy he sacrifices all objectively true and real meaning and purpose and therefore hope life literally has no meaning for Sartre except the meanings we invent and all of them are arbitrary and unjustifiable because there is no standard for judging any one meaning to be any better than any other one each of us if we are to be truly free according to sartora must create his own values and meanings and even his own reality all values are equally good simply because we say so in inventing them not God but the individual is infallible there can be no such thing as virtue or vice sanctity or sin right or wrong because there is no standard by which these things can be judged we are not under any values so we cannot be judged by them as good or evil we are overvalued as their inventors literally there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so an extreme example of this in Charter's literature is rokuntan the anti-hero and protagonist in his novel nausea he has clearly sarger himself he contemplates suicide but dismisses it because if everything is really meaningless so is suicide his motive for not committing suicide is even more hopeless than a motive of most people who do commit suicide the mystery is why sacrifice all this all truth and goodness and beauty and love and meaning and Hope why is Archer such a pessimist and a nihilist what's his motive what does he love what is this God well the answer is freedom for Sartre human freedom is the fundamental reason for his atheism his simplest argument for atheism is freedom therefore no God for August and God is the fundamental reason for human freedom God therefore freedom Free Will is part of God's image in our soul and Liberty freedom from all evil is our goal in heaven in Union with God but these two thinkers have the most radically different Notions of Freedom as well as the most radically different Notions of God for sarcha freedom is purely negative freedom from all limits the freedom from being determined and caused and even influenced by others for Augustine freedom is essentially positive freedom for our end freedom to attain life eternal and Perfection and happiness Augustine distinguishes two freedoms the lower freedom and the higher Freedom the lower freedom is only a means to the end of the higher freedom the lower freedom is free will he calls it liberum arbitrium free choice the higher freedom is libertas or Liberty freedom from everything that blocks our Union with God freedom from the very thing Sartre Longs for and chooses faithlessness hopelessness lovelessness Augustine wants to let God be God and sarcher doesn't because he thinks that God wouldn't let man be free free to play God by creating his own truths and meanings and values the satrian concept of Freedom was defined perfectly by Justice Anthony Kennedy when he wrote in the 1992 Casey versus Planned Parenthood Supreme Court decision defending Roe v Wade and our right to murder our own unborn children at the heart of Liberty is the right to Define one's own concept of existence of meaning of the universe and of the mystery of human life that is exactly the philosophy of the devil that I not God and the author of the meaning of my existence I am the creator of truth of meaning of value I do not discover truth I created this is not only incredibly stupid it is disastrous but Augustine sees that it begins even further back than with the mind it begins with the will and the heart and what is loved Augustine tells us our love is our destiny our spiritual gravity and Augustine's love like that of Christ and all the saints is centrifugal not centripetal it is other directed altruistic while Sartre contends that all love is egotistic and that is the difference not just between good and evil but also Between Heaven and Hell hell is not other people as Archer says it's precisely the refusal of other people the refusal of love and therefore of the joy that only love can bring just as love is its own reward lovelessness is its own punishment so the heart of the difference between Augustine and Sartre as individuals is the same as the difference between the two cities in Augustine's classic the city of God Augustine like the city of God worships God instead of himself and santra like the city of this world worships himself instead of God it's as simple as that Sandra argues that it's impossible to love or worship another that altruistic love is impossible why does he say that because Augustine's two absolutes truth and love always contradict each other in practice according to Sartre why because it's impossible to love anyone you truly know why because to know anyone is to know their unlovable faults and the unlovable is not lovable why can't these people be pitied and forgiven well for soccer that would be even worse that would make them objects and take away their freedom he tries to show this in no exit which is about hell the hell we make in this life for each other in this play each of the three people in Hell functions as the torturing demon to the other two so that no two can form any kind of love Union because they are objectified and known by the third they are under the Gaze of the third as Sartre feared being under the Gaze of God under the Gaze of Truth being pinned like an insect to the page in a book captured by a light that did not emerge from himself it's truth that is Archer's Ultimate Enemy like Nietzsche he questions the will to truth any truth that he did not create himself but must humbly discover and surrender to for Sartorius surrender is the antithesis to Freedom but for any lover and especially for Augustine the great philosopher of Love surrender is the secret of true freedom and the secret of true happiness Sasha was one of the unhappiest and loneliest philosophers who ever lived his self-centered life on Earth was a foretaste of the self-centered life that is the heart of hell it was so self-centered that he habitually refused to listen to other people in fact he had the habit of just talking continually even when the others left the room during World War II in Paris even after the German occupation Sartre never lifted a finger or a pen to help the Jews he just kept writing under the approving eyes of the Nazi sensors and then after the war he spoke of the Brave French Resistance Fighters as we he quarreled with nearly every man he ever met and tried to seduce nearly every woman he ever met he refused the Nobel Prize because he hated his own civilization that gave it to him he joined the Communist party after the war and knowingly lied about the great freedom and happiness in the Soviet Union he praised Mao Zedong the greatest mass murderer in history and tried to export his Revolution to Europe his philosophy inspired a group of Cambodian intellectuals in Paris and their leader Pol Pot who murdered one-third of all the citizens of Cambodia for ideological reasons if his kymer Rouge discovered that you wore glasses you were killed because that meant you could read and were an intellectual and therefore a possible threat to Pol Pot ideas have consequences I think satra is a very useful philosopher for the unbeliever or agnostic to read because he can be a more effective Hellfire indignation preacher than Jonathan Edwards Sartorius pessimism and nihilism and despair makes him a missionary despite himself because this philosophy will send any sane agnostic running away in Terror into the arms of the nearest priest unfortunately our society is not quite sane and therefore sarjo was enormously popular in his lifetime as especially among the Young 50 000 young women flocked to his funeral one even throwing herself on his coffin please pray that our whole civilization does not follow them there because that is a coffin indeed the philosophy of the culture of death which is what Saint John Paul II the greatest man of the worst Century in history called it to exorcise a demon you must expose its true name the holy water that the demon fears the most is not made of hydrogen and oxygen it is made of Truth Augustine on the other hand is loved by every saint and every sane person who reads the confessions our culture could still choose to take his road back to the source of all love and light and life or it could choose sartre's Road into the darkness and because the lower freedom of free choice is real and the higher freedom of Liberty is always choosable therefore every single individual has a momentous role to play in that choice every single person has a vote in that election when you vote for Augustine you vote for Christ as the king of your life when you vote for Sartre you vote for the Antichrist [Music] [Applause] [Music]

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Keywords: peter kreeft, dr. peter kreeft, dr. kreeft, philosophy, dr. kreeft on philosphy, dr. kreeft and philosophy, word on fire, word on fire catholic ministries, word on fire institute, Augustine, augustine of hippo, sarte, john paul sartre, st augustine, st augustine philosophy, sartre philosophy, does God exist, catholicism, philosophy lecture, st augustine lecture, kreeft lecture, kreeft philosophy, christianity, augustine philosophy, sartre lecture, augustine lecture, christian

Id: xwhkc4ZW4pQ

Length: 44min 49sec (2689 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 23 2023