Augustine argues that humans can reach true happiness by loving God, that evil is the lack of good, and that justice can be realized through divine authority, even in war and politics.
Augustine’s way of happiness
Augustine defines ethics as the inquiry into the highest good. The highest good is the good that sets the standard by which we should act, the good that is an end in itself, not a means to another end. According to Augustine, reaching this highest good leads to happiness.
So what does Augustine mean by happiness? Augustine defines happiness as what one loves, which is love, including all forms of need or desire. What we love is what we want, and we try to get it. Augustine also argues that in order to be truly happy, we must love what is good, and he presents God as the highest and most superior good. He goes beyond the views of previous pagan philosophers and says that true happiness can only be achieved by meeting God in the afterlife. According to Augustine, we must love God, a being superior to us, and only the Christian faith can guarantee eternal happiness for every human being, both soul and body.
Augustine characterized this happiness in terms of the biblical concept of “beatitude,” which is the state of bliss felt by a virtuous person. It refers to the state of bliss experienced by the virtuous person, in which the individual’s needs and desires are completely fulfilled by being united with God. This happiness of the virtuous person is derived from mental virtue, as the Stoics claimed. However, whereas the Stoics argued that virtue alone is enough for humans to approach happiness on their own, Augustine argued that it is not enough for humans to reach happiness on their own, but only through faith and acceptance of God.
For Augustine, virtue cannot be the highest good in itself. Virtue comes from the soul’s love of something beyond itself, and the highest good must not be subject to human will; therefore, it is only God, and only God is good. “Virtue is nothing other than the perfect love of God,” he says.
We can approach God by loving a God who is better and superior to us, and we will eventually reach happiness. Augustine’s “God” is the perfect good that exists completely and eternally, unlike the material world that comes and goes. For Augustine, the way to happiness is to know and love the perfectly good that we can love.
Love for God, he says, takes four forms. First, “temperance is the love that keeps itself wholesome and incorruptible for the sake of God.” Second, “courage is the love that is willing to risk everything for the sake of God.” Third, “The virtue of justice is the love of serving God alone and, in so doing, governing all others well.” Finally, “prudence is the love of discerning what helps and hinders one’s progress toward God.”
In addition, Augustine believed that humans cannot love God unless they love themselves, for those who are on the path toward the highest and truest good will have an appropriate love of themselves along the way. Similarly, loving one’s neighbor as oneself is a caring effort that allows one to pursue the highest good together. Love of God serves as a moral principle.
Augustine’s vices
Augustine’s experience of evil stems from the sexual desires he felt growing up. This desire continued to disturb him throughout his life as a young man and as a Christian. He saw that beyond these bodily desires, he was satisfied when he had self, truth, and tranquility. Later, Augustine was introduced to Manichaeism, which taught that the universe is in conflict between darkness and light. This conflict is manifested in humans as well, with light seeking salvation and purification and darkness swallowing up light with bodily desires. Sexual desire was considered the most insidious of these, as it prevents light from emanating from the body and spreading to the heavens. Good and evil desires, therefore, arise from opposing souls and wills within humans. Manichaeism defined evil as an inexorable force of an evil deity that originally existed in the material world, and argued that humans need not be held accountable for their evil deeds. Manichaeism’s dualism is based on the idea that evil is a force beyond man’s control that compels him to do evil anyway. This dualism did not provide a sufficient answer to Augustine’s problem of evil. The Manichaean doctrine of light as a force for good, but also as passive and powerless, further troubled Augustine. To explain the problem of why evil exists even though an omnipotent God rules the world, he saw good and evil as different material entities struggling against each other. God, as creator, should have the will and power to uproot and nip evil in the bud, to transform it into good. The very existence of evil challenges the idea of God’s omnipotent power and presence.
Later, when Augustine read Plotinus, he came to accept Plotinus’ view that evil is not an entity, but a deficiency of good. He understood evil as a loss or deficiency of the perfection or nature that natural things ought to possess.
If evil exists as an entity, the problem arises that it can be blamed on God, the creator. In response, Augustine denied that evil is an entity that exists independently of God, saying that God, the creator, originally created the world in goodness, but the natural tendency of creatures to return to nothingness created a deficiency that led to the phenomenon of evil, so there is no reason to attribute responsibility for evil to God.
Augustine’s sexual ethics
Augustine follows the Christian tradition that physical sex between a man and a woman should only take place after marriage, and that its purpose should be procreation. However, while some Christians view marriage as a corruption, Augustine has a different perspective. He sees marriage as part of God’s plan and a true good.
Augustine separates sexuality into a pre-fall and post-fall state. He believed that offspring are born out of companionship, not out of sexual pleasure. He believed that sexual unions are not motivated by sexual desire, but rather by the will. While these sexual acts are not completely free from greed, they are not driven by it. He argues that human beings after the Fall are unable to restrain their desires, whereas pre-Fall human beings are quite capable of doing so, based on their ability to control the involuntary actions of the body through self-control. Augustine did not see shame in sexual relations per se, but rather in the absence of personhood when men and women engage in sexual relations. This involuntary, lust-driven sex, he said, is the source of shame.
Sexuality after the Fall is related to the shame that Adam and Eve felt. It was not simply nakedness that Adam and Eve were trying to cover up, but genitals did not cause shame. What caused shame was that sexuality was disobedient, that sexuality, which is supposed to follow the rational will, ignored it and violated the order. This is not to say that the entity itself is evil, but rather that the human soul is disordered by its lack of capacity.
Augustine, on the other hand, argues that a socially respectable marriage, a Christian marriage, removes the shame that accompanies sexual intercourse. He sees marriage as honorable, and that it leads to good without falling into evil. Augustine said of the good of marriage, “There are three things in it: first, the procreation of children; second, the confirmation of love; and third, the unity of the union.” According to Augustine, the first is fertility, or the procreation of children; the second is faith, faithfulness, fidelity, love, or the affirmation of love. The last is vowed or sacramental union. In the second case in particular, Augustine describes marriage as a restraint or remedy for sin. This means that God created the institution of marriage to protect and control humanity in its fallen state. Augustine’s view that marriage is a remedy for sin is secondary to the Christian understanding that human life is predestined to be saved.
Augustine’s ethics of war
Augustine has a basically righteous theory of war. He believes that war is evil, but that it is just when it is fought to prevent a greater evil. War exists to pursue peace. Augustine says that a state should engage in war if it is necessary to defend the state and to punish grave injustice.
Augustine also gives war a religious authority. When the question of war arises, it becomes a righteous war because it is ordered by God. He says of Moses, through divine authority, “What he showed in the wars waged by divine command was not cruelty, but submission.” Here, divine command seems to justify war.
Augustine focused on punishment for the evils of war. “In general, when force is required for punishment, good men may wage war, either out of obedience to God or by some lawful authority,” he says, suggesting that the violence that inevitably occurs in war is not a means of self-defense, but is done with lawful authority and in an effort to punish.
Augustine, on the other hand, was influenced by the Old Testament, which saw war as a form of religious instruction and saw it in both terms of divine power and the enforcement of judgment. He said that war rebukes and humbles human pride and is righteous if it is conducted in submission to God. It is a process that tests man’s patience and strengthens the soul, and is therefore blessed. This perspective does not view war simply as an evil act, but rather as a correction of human attitudes from a spiritual perspective.
Augustine also makes it clear that “those who wage war on divine authority are not to be blamed, and those who know that God never asks for anything wrong are not to be blamed.” Divine authority guarantees that when we act righteously, our actions are justified.
He says that war is a sign of divine mercy because it destroys an evil that must be eradicated, is carried out with good motives, and ensures that righteous rule is established. For Augustine, the important point about righteous warfare is not whether an act is violent or not, but whether the inclinations and desires have a righteous internal order, a moral order that is maintained. If there is such a moral order, it is the basis for justifying violence. This perception is close to the epistemological and ethical character of the New Testament.
Augustine’s political ethics
Augustine develops his political philosophy through a dualistic analytical framework: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of men. His kingdom of God is the kingdom that follows Christian teachings. The earthly kingdom of man, on the other hand, is one that is tainted by human greed. In this light, Augustine says that political authority is inevitable. This is because humans are born with an evil nature and need politics to control it. Augustine describes politics as a relationship of domination and submission, and argues that even good people who believe in God need proper control. This represents a realist view of politics.
Augustine’s treatment of love is social. He saw that in a world governed by eternal law, there could be authorities-husbands, parents, masters, rulers, etc.-but they should not simply wield power, he said, but should also lovingly care for those they command, even children or slaves. When the order of nature is disturbed, they said, either moderation or punishment will follow. Augustine’s eternal law is divine reason, or the divine will, which maintains the natural order and punishes those who disrupt it. He believed that a person with an evil will could not keep the eternal law of love of God and love of neighbor. Augustine also approved of slavery, explaining and justifying it in the context of his time. While he did not explicitly condemn the sacrifices that slavery caused, he justified its initiation and continuation by the rules of war. Augustine was able to justify slavery because he saw it as subject to a moral imperative or eternal law.
Augustine explains that the people are bound by custom or law, and the general consent of the society is submission to the ruler. He saw these republics as uniting the people around a ruler, and he was aware that political leaders used religion to manipulate and own their subjects, but he saw it as a kind of social contract in which politicians attempted to balance each other by rewarding the people with appropriate behavior.
Citing Cicero’s rules of the republic, Augustine argued that “if the republic is the common good of the people, if the people have a knowledge of righteousness and it is derived from a sense of justice, then without justice being established, there is no people, no community, and the republic itself cannot be established.” In this respect, he criticizes Rome for already being unable to be a republic. No matter how great an empire Rome was, a country without justice cannot be a republic. Justice here is interpreted Platonistically as justice itself, or the idea of justice, and that all temporal things must be judged to be just.
Augustine’s political ethics can be seen as a range of approaches between Christian norms and political insights, an understanding of human sin and the relevance of Christianity to real life.
