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St. Augustine'S Philosophy of MAN Philosophy of Love

1. Augustine's philosophy focuses on finding happiness through love of God alone. He rejects earthly pleasures and virtues as incapable of fulfilling human desire for perfect happiness. 2. For Aquinas, perfect happiness is attainable through full development of human capacities and union with God. The "universal man" can transcend to a higher "transcendental" state through love, which bridges the gap between finite man and the infinite God. 3. Both philosophers see love as the path to fulfillment and transcendence, with ultimate happiness coming from union with the divine.

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Esther Joy Hugo
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1K views34 pages

St. Augustine'S Philosophy of MAN Philosophy of Love

1. Augustine's philosophy focuses on finding happiness through love of God alone. He rejects earthly pleasures and virtues as incapable of fulfilling human desire for perfect happiness. 2. For Aquinas, perfect happiness is attainable through full development of human capacities and union with God. The "universal man" can transcend to a higher "transcendental" state through love, which bridges the gap between finite man and the infinite God. 3. Both philosophers see love as the path to fulfillment and transcendence, with ultimate happiness coming from union with the divine.

Uploaded by

Esther Joy Hugo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ST.

AUGUSTINE’S
PHILOSOPHY OF
MAN
PHILOSOPHY OF
LOVE
2
3
In common with Greek ethics, its being
eudaimonistic in character, as it makes happiness the
end-all and the be-all of human living; but Augustine
tells us with the Bible that this happiness can be found
in GOD alone.

The summum bonum which is Plato’s and


Aristotle’s concept of the absolute and immutable and
is now seen by Augustine with the aid of the light of
divine revelation as the living personal God, the creator
of all things and the supreme ruler of the universe.
So, the idea of the Good of Plato is
revealed, to Augustine as the living reality, God.
WHAT THEN IS GOD?
Augustine answers this question with the words of the scriptures
that God is Love; teaches that mortality consists in love, since it is
love that makes us like unto Love (God).

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with
thy whole soul and with thy whole strength: and for love of
God thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Life to Augustine is a dialectic movement towards Love.
Virtue, which is the art of living rightly and well, has
been defined by Augustine as the order of love.

To love God means necessarily to love one’s fellowmen,


and to love one’s fellowmen means never to do any harm to
another, or, as the golden principle of justice requires, to do
unto others as you would others do unto you.
LOVE & JUSTICE
- the two foundation stones of individual as well as
social ethics
MAN CRAVES FOR PERFECT ENDURING HAPPINESS
Happiness, we all know, comes with the possession of some
good; but where, or, in the possession of what good is perfect
happiness to be found?

Is it in the goods of the body as well as the goods of this world


such as health, beauty, power, honor, fame?

Augustine, speaking directly from experience, that these and


the possession of these can never give to man what he is truly
looking for, as these goods are finite, unstable and ephemeral,
whereas man craves for perfect, immutable and enduring. On this
ground, he rejects Epicureanism which proposes earthly and bodily
pleasure as the ultimate end of man.
How about the goods of the soul, such as
wisdom, virtue and all their forms?

The wise men of all ages are all praise for


virtue, and even Aristotle places the summum
bonum of human existence in virtue in which he
says, man’s perfection is to be found.
According to Augustine, these treasures of soul cannot
fulfill the supreme purpose for which man is made.

For virtue in this life does not necessarily mean


happiness.

The Stoics’ view would do away with the passions and


bodily desires, but man is a rational animal, a creature
endowed both with reason and passion inseparably linked
together in his nature.
The passions are in themselves good; they become bad only
when they go beyond or defeat the purpose for which God has intended
to them.
To Augustine, virtue means the constant
harmonizing and ordering of all the activities of the
human personality towards love under guiding
inspiration of love.
Augustine proposes love, the central point of
philosophy.
LIBERTY
AND
LOVE
“That the will is free, and that it is at the same time
irresistibly drawn towards the good, are indubitable
facts.”
-
Augustine
How can the will be free and bound at the same
time? How to reconcile liberty and necessity, freedom and
law, existing together in a human being?
Augustine showed that , while man is free
physically, he is morally bound to obey the
law. He can disobey the law, but he ought
not to do so.
 
THE EXISTENCE OF MORAL OBLIGATION

Augustine goes on to show the existence of the


moral law within us. All men clearly perceive certain
immutable and necessary truths impressed in and
imposed on the mind- such as the principle of the
non-contradiction, that of causality, and especially the
golden principle of conduct; do good and avoid evil.
Augustine calls the Eternal Law, God, Himself or the
Eternal Reason, that guides and leads all things to their
proper ends.

This law, which is the Law of Conscience, ever


admonishing us to do good and to avoid evil, is the
proximate norm of morality.

By way of his doctrine on liberty and moral


obligation, Augustine approaches and tackles the great
problem that baffles even the greatest minds of all ages:
that of EVIL.
Moral evil in the world is from man’s abuse or misuse
of his freedom.

He teaches that Evil is the very negation and


privation of being and, therefore, cannot be the object
of God’s positive act of creation.
To Augustine, evil is non-being.

Despite his concept of evil as something negative,


Augustine sees the life of every man, the history of
nations, and the whole human race as the story of
constant struggle and conflict between two forces, two
tendencies:

that of good (inspired and motivated by love) and that


of evil (impelled to and driven by hate).
20
*His teachings are mainly embodied in his two
monumental works:
a. The summa Theologica
b. Summa Contra Gentiles

He proclaimed the supremacy of reason and


every man and maintain that man will know the
truth by the application of truth.
*Although, he emphasized that there are some
truths which cannot be explained and known by
simply the human reason alone and which can be
perceived only with the old of the light of divine
revelation which emanate from God, who is truth
itself
CONCEPT OF GOD
by Aristotle

Man can know and validly prove God’s existence by


reasoning
Thus, by said arguments, we can arrive at the knowledge of
God as the “Prime Mover”, the “First cause”, the “Perfect
Good”. The “Final cause and Good of all Things”
Philosophy of Happiness

-He taught that man naturally longs for perfection and happiness and
this personal longing can be realized with the full development of all
man’s endowments – rational, moral, emotional, social, physical and
intellectual.

-He saw the highest perfection and happiness possible to man


beyond his temporal life, because the immortality of the human soul.

* The perfect happiness which all men seek can be found in God,
according to St. Thomas Aquinas.
THE UNIVERSAL MAN OF ARISTOTLE

The end- product of the described all-rounded


and total development of man.
THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF LOVE

The transformation described is also suggested in Plato’s


Theory of Imitation of the Divine Model, The Good.
By perfect imitation of the Good, by constantly being good
and doing good, we become and eventually identify
ourselves with the Good.

John 1:4-8
God as LOVE, then by loving we are likened to God who is
love, and if we love perfectly and constantly, we identify
ourselves with love.
TRANSFORMATION AND TRANSCENDENCE

Man has the unique power to change himself


and the things around him for the better indeed,
in accordance with his urge to be perfect and
happy, he can improve and even perfect himself;
and what is still more marvelous is that he can
even transcend himself.
BEYOND THE UNIVERSAL – THE TRANSCENDENTAL

Aquinas defined Trascendental as a description of the


man who has attained union with God.

Transcending the universal man of Aristotle as to


perfection and destiny.

Transcendent Humanism – mentioned in the encyclical


Progressio Popularum to signify the highest stage of
man’s perfection attainable through man’s union with the
all- Perfect Being, God.
TRANSCENDENTAL
– came from the Latin word transcendere, which
means to transcend, go beyond, soar above,
surpass.

Thus, the universal man of Aristotle who is


perfect in his own right, is still imperfect in
comparison with the transcendental man of
Aquinas.
PERFECTION BY PARTICIPATION

We speak of the transcendental man as absolutely perfect


but only insofar as he participates in the Absolutely
Absolute Perfection of God,

In his monumental work, The Summa Theologica.


Aquinas dealt with the question whether man or a higher
being can raise man to the level of the infinitely perfect.
He answered saying that neither man by his natural
powers alone nor a higher being such an angel can
effectuate said elevation or transformation.

Between the finite creature and the infinite creator lies an


infinite Gap which can be bridged only by an infinite power,
aptly called and indentified with LOVE because it unites
and bespeaks of the nature of God.
BEYOND CONTRADICTION – UNION

Contradiction occurs only in the field of disclosure,


between two absolutely opposed terms or
propositions; it does not occur in the real world of
things. Between two realities such as between Man
and God there can never be a contradiction.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL – GOLDEN MEAN BETWEEN MAN AND GOD
Finite

Transcendental

Infinite

In the order of being and perfection, the transcendental man is above the finite but
below the infinite. Thus the transcendental man strikes the golden middle note in the
harmony of the finite and the infinite.
MAN, LOVE AND DESTINY
Man with his natural powers alone cannot attain a
supernatural destiny. To actually reach his
supernatural destiny he should be elevated and
empowered by supernatural grace by the power of
love.

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