3.1 - Augustine's Human Nature

Question 1

what are the implications of Augustine’s experiences on his view of human nature?

Answer 1

• stealing fruit from a garden as a child, wanting to feel rebellious and satisfying his corrupt nature
• Father at 18 made him aware of lust and desire
• equally his student days full of drinking, lust, etc. made him feel he lacked will power to be a good person
• conversion experience showed him that God is needed for change (Grace of God)

Question 2

Rousseau’s view of human nature

Answer 2

• saw humans as naturally peaceful before civilisation
• essentially generous creatures, only acting otherwise when situation and circumstance cause them to
• ‘man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’
• we have been corrupted by society and private wealth which causes jealousy and greed
• the purpose of our society should be to remove barriers that had resulted in our loss of freedom and try and regain our natural state as helpful, just, social beings

Question 3

Hobbes’ view of human nature

Answer 3

• saw humans as war-like and brutish
• not co-operative but selfish
• ‘the life of a man, solitary, poor, brutish, and short’
• however we recognise that co-operation can become tolerable, but this is backed with authority, rules, and the threat of force (police, army, courts) to ensure we don’t go back to our selfish ways
• could back up Augustine’s view of human nature, but if with God’s help (Grace) we can get to Rousseau’s view of humanity
• Anthropology suggests that Hobbes is right, we were pretty violent. In Australia, the main causes of death were killing and fighting.

Question 4

how could evolutionary science explain war/violence?

Answer 4

Evolutionary science could explain war and violence as part of innate survival instincts. Firstly, aggression could be innate and perhaps expresses itself through war. We have a biological imperative to pass on our genetics and (because our close family members have similar DNA) protect our kin, this involves fighting other groups to protect and fighting for resources.
> for much of history, war was based on raids for resources such as food and mates (women) due to generally scarce resources

Question 5

Will

Answer 5

the part of human nature that makes free choices

Question 6

Sin

Answer 6

disobeying the will and commands of God

Question 7

Grace

Answer 7

in theological terms, God’s free and undeserved love for humanity, epitomised in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross

Question 8

The Fall

Answer 8

the biblical event in which Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command and ate the fruit from the forbidden tree in the garden of Eden, also used to refer to the imperfect state of humanity

Question 9

Neoplatonism

Answer 9

• philosophical thinking arising from the ideas of Plato
• viewed the world as a cosmic struggle between the forces of good and evil
• believed people had two souls, one good and one evil, which pull the individual in different directions and create constant internal struggle

Question 10

Summum Bonum

Answer 10

the highest most supreme good

Question 11

Esoteric

Answer 11

teachings which are only intended to be understood by only a small number of people with specialised knowledge

Question 12

Redeemed in theological terms

Answer 12

‘saved’ from sin by the sacrifice of Christ

Question 13

Concordia

Answer 13

human friendship

Question 14

Cupiditas

Answer 14

‘selfish love’, a love of worldly things and of selfish desires

Question 15

Caritas

Answer 15

‘generous love’, a love of others and of the virtues, the Latin equivalent to the Greek ‘agape’

Question 16

Concupiscence

Answer 16

uncontrollable desire for physical pleasures and material things

Question 17

Ecclesia

Answer 17

heavenly society, in contrast with earthly society

Question 18

Manicheism

Answer 18

A form of esoteric Christianity which believed that suffering and evil in the world are not caused by God but by a lower power (Satan)

Question 19

Where does Augustine stand on the Hobbes-Rousseau scale?

Answer 19

He would agree with Hobbes that humans are largely selfish, war-like, and brutish as he believed us to be corrupt however he would likely have recognised that our reason prevents us from being entirely animalistic

Question 20

‘I do not understand…’

Answer 20

‘I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.’ [Romans 7:15]
- divided will and lack of will power

Question 21

‘For I have the desire…’

Answer 21

‘For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing.’ [Romans 7:18-19]
- we lack will power (not inherently evil but inherently weak)

Question 22

‘Now if I do what I…’

Answer 22

‘Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.’ [Romans 7:20]
- divided will (we want to do what is good but we are driven by internal sin in our nature to do the wrong thing)

Question 23

‘For in my inner…’

Answer 23

‘For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me prisoner of the law of sin at work within me’ [Romans 7:22-23]
- divided will (we want to do what is good but we are driven by sin in our nature to do the wrong thing)

Question 24

‘Who will rescue…’

Answer 24

‘Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ [Romans 7:25]
- we can be saved from our inner sin/changed by God

Question 25

what does Romans 7 tell us about human nature?

Answer 25

1. we have divided will - we want to do what is good but we are driven by sin to do the wrong thing
2. we lack will power - we’re not inherently evil but inherently weak
3. we can be saved/changed by God

Question 26

Augustine’s view of post-fall humans

Answer 26

• lost our friendship with God
• became mortal
• our personal friendships also became complex and full of anguish
• our will became driven by self-love
• will became dominated by the body and the material
• will is divided as it is rational but wants to fulfil desires, ultimately ending up in a state of rebellion due its lack of control over sin
• the soul’s appetite and sexual intercourse are now tainted with concupiscence (lust/sexual desire)

Question 27

Augustine’s view of post-fall humans

Answer 27

• lost our friendship with God
• became mortal
• our personal friendships also became complex and full of anguish
• our will became driven by self-love
• will became dominated by the body and the material
• will is divided as it is rational but wants to fulfil desires, ultimately ending up in a state of rebellion due its lack of control over sin
• the soul’s appetite and sexual intercourse are now tainted with concupiscence (lust/sexual desire)

Question 28

support for Augustine’s view of human nature

Answer 28

+ can help us to understand how personal challenges and failures are part of the human condition, whether we like the idea that we are inherently sinful does not make it untrue and we need God’s help
+ Hobbes agreed that human nature is fundamentally corrupt and argued that people are by nature selfish and that they work together only because they know it is in their own interests
+ Introspection tells us that we are weak as we are frequently impulsive and make choices that we regret. It provides some validity to the claims.
Hobbes believes that if we look within ourselves, and are truthful, we observe self-interest.

Question 29

limitation of Augustine’s view of human nature

Answer 29

• recent studies show that the minimum population size for humanity is 10 000 to explain the genetic variation of people today, without Adam and Eve, there is no Fall and no Original Sin
• evolution also challenges the idea that there is something distinctive about human beings, we evolve from primates and at no single point
• Rousseau and Locke tended towards the view that people are born with a ‘blank slate’ known in Latin as ‘tabula rasa’. In this view, babies are neither good nor evil, but born with a fresh start ready to make free choices and learn and become whatever they become
• the view that God condemns all of humanity for the actions of Adam and Eve could be argued to be incoherent and inconsistent with God’s loving and merciful nature
• false generalisation of the harms of lust from very specific experiences that he has - damaging, feeds shame ang guilt (still to this day, religion doesn’t view human sexuality well) > Richard Dawkins equates Augustine’s view makes us unhealthy, restricting our natural behaves

Question 30

pelagianism

Answer 30

a heterodox Christian theological position which holds that original sin did not taint human nature and that humans have the free will to achieve human perfection without divine grace.

Question 31

Augustine vs Pelagius

Answer 31

• Augustine (Bishop of Hippo) and Pelagius (a British Monk) were writing at the same time.
• At a time when Christianity was growing, and confirming their beliefs both Pelagius and Augustine offered differing ideas of human nature and the effects of the Fall on man.
• Pelagius argued that Adam set a bad example, but it does not affect human nature, and humans are capable of living sinlessly and will be judged by their choices.
• Augustine disagreed and argued people cannot be reconciled with sin by their own effort, only through the grace of God. People will continue to sin even after receiving God’s grace. God will elect some people for eternal life in heaven.

Question 32

Augustine vs Pelagius on human nature

Answer 32

Augustine: Human nature is damaged by the Fall and is sinful.
Pelagius: Human nature cannot be flawed as then God would be commanding the impossible when he asks humans to be holy

Question 33

Augustine vs Pelagius on sin

Answer 33

Augustine: Humans are incapable of avoiding sin. The will has a tendency away from goodness.
Pelagius: Humans do not have to sin. People can be good. It has to be possible for humans to live a good life without the intervention of God. (don’t have to be religious)

Question 34

Augustine vs Pelagius on original sin

Answer 34

Augustine: Adams sin affects everyone, we are all born sinful and guilty.
Pelagius: We are all made perfect, like Adam was. We only take responsibility for our own sins and become sinners once we have sinned ourselves.

Question 35

Augustine vs Pelagius on death

Answer 35

Augustine: Death is the consequence and punishment for human sin, as God says in Genesis.
Pelagius: Death is a biological necessity, not a punishment.

Question 36

Augustine vs Pelagius on grace on human action

Answer 36

Augustine: Humans cannot do any good deeds except by God’s grace
Pelagius: God’s grace assists in showing people the right thing to do, but humans carry out the actions

Question 37

Augustine vs Pelagius on defining grace

Answer 37

Augustine: Grace is an undeserved gift of God’s love and mercy. It cannot be earnt.
Pelagius: Grace is the natural human faculties which are given by God, eg. reason is a result of God’s grace

Question 38

Augustine vs Pelagius on salvation

Answer 38

Augustine: Salvation is the unmerited gift of God. God rewards how He pleases, rather than based on action.
Pelagius: Humans use their free will (a gift from God’s grace) to choose God and make good actions which lead to reward in salvation

Question 39

Augustine vs Pelagius on punishment (suffering)

Answer 39

Augustine: All suffering is deserved, including infant deaths, as everyone has Original Sin
Pelagius: Only an arbitrary God would punish innocent babies. It it those who choose evil that are punished.

Question 40

Augustine vs Pelagius on God

Answer 40

Augustine: God’s benevolence is shown through his grace. Evil is the absence of good, so God cannot be blamed for evil.
Pelagius: God is just, so he will not condemn innocent humans or set humans impossible tasks.

Question 41

Augustine vs Pelagius on Jesus

Answer 41

Augustine: Jesus is the only moral, good human being to ever live as he was an expression of God’s grace and was not conceived through sex.
Pelagius: Jesus brought salvation into the world, but before this, many good people lived, eg. the prophets of the Old Testament

Question 42

weaknesses of Pelagius’ view of human nature

Answer 42

• ‘As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive’ - 1 Corinthians
• do we need Jesus if we can earn salvation without faith? - why did God kill his own son, then?
  > defence is that Jesus acted as a role model of how to be good, helped us
  > still seems like a strange and brutal mechanism from God

Question 43

Augustine’s view of grace

Answer 43

• the love and mercy of God
• gives moral guidance to the lives of Christians
• transforming their will so that it is capable of obedience to God
• humans could not deserve Grace on their own merit
• able to reach the heart and will of a person and encourage the soul to recognise when it has offended God and to praise Him
• the only thing able to save people from eternal punishment for their sinful nature
• able to overcome human pride and calm the soul with forgiveness and hope
• can be seen in the sacrifice of Christ and in the gift of the Holy Spirit working in the Church

Question 44

‘For it is by grace you…’

Answer 44

‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is a gift from God.’ - Ephesians 2:8

Question 45

freedom (grace and augustine)

Answer 45

• Most Christians today tend to adopt the ‘open theism’
• which makes a case for a personal God who is open to influence through prayer and the actions of people
• the future is not fixed: God can anticipate the future yet it remains fluid to respond and react to prayer or decisions made by humans in accordance with his plan.
• Freedom is supported by many teachings advocating free will: Adam and Eve have moral autonomy. God punishes Adam and Eve for their choice to disobey.

-Augustine originally believed in and argued for free will. His theodicy was based on the idea that God wanted humans to be free to choose. ‘We could not act rightly except by this free choice of will.’

Question 46

‘We could not act…’

Answer 46

‘We could not act rightly except by this free choice of will.’

Question 47

the two Augustines

Answer 47

Augustinian scholar Bonner notes that there were really two Augustines: ‘the earlier teacher, who proclaimed the freedom of the will; and the later Doctor of Grace and defender of predestination’

Question 48

what was Augustine’s later views on grace/freedom

Answer 48

Augustine moved towards a notion of salvation not chosen by humans. ‘He decides who are not to be offered mercy by a standard of equity which is most secret and far removed from human powers of understanding’ (epistemic distance)
- emphasises the power of God, everything is under his influence
- allows Augustine to explain his early behaviours
- makes the sacrifice of Christ completely necessary as there is something that it fixes (original sin)
- explains why some people can resist temptations that others cannot

Question 49

‘He decides who are not to be offered…’

Answer 49

‘He decides who are not to be offered mercy by a standard of equity which is most secret and far removed from human powers of understanding’ - Augustine

Question 50

how did Augustine deal with the problem of some people being able to resist temptations that tohers couldn’t?

Answer 50

• nothing draws us to evil&raquo_space; evil as a privation of good
• therefore it is the will itself that moves away from goodness towards evil. While ‘nothing’ causes an evil choice, a good choice comes from something - God.
  ‘Can [sinners] be restored through the merit of their own works? God forbid. For what good work can a lost man perform’
• those who are able to resist temptation have been chosen by God

based on this, the only good people or people who can do good are Christians which seems counterintuitive since we see good buddhists, etc.

Question 51

‘If both are tempted equally, and…’

Answer 51

‘If both are tempted equally, and one yields and consents to the temptation, while the other remains unmoved by it […] we can discern nothing which caused the will of one to be evil.’ - Augustine

Question 52

‘Can [sinners] be restored through….’

Answer 52

‘Can [sinners] be restored through the merit of their own works? God forbid. For what good work can a lost man perform’ - Augustine

Question 53

Sartre vs Augustine (summary)

Answer 53

Sartre:
- rejects God and puts faith in mankind and freedom
- believes that we are born free of any set human nature
- believes that turning to religion for help expresses bad faith and will limit human life, happiness, and meaning
Augustine:
- man created by God, freedom is dangerous and mankind is corrupt
- because of the Fall, we are born with a Will that leads us to evil
- humans must accept God’s Grace, a path to being saved and helps us overcome sin and evil in us - leads to meaning and a better life

Question 54

Sartre’s view on the implications of God’s “death”

Answer 54

God’s death makes our existence completely absurd (inexplicable) and tried to work out how it might be possible for us to live in a superfluous world in which there is no good, bad, right, wrong, and no ultimate meaning or reasoning for anything. His analysis begins with the assertion that ‘existence precedes essence’.

Question 55

‘existence precedes essence’ meaning

Answer 55

(Sartre)
- for something that is manufactured (like a paper-cutter), it is made from the concept of what that item is and how it can be produced
- so essence (production routines, properties, purpose) precede existence
- without God, there must be at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, and that being must be man
- therefore only after existing will man be something and it is he himself who will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature

‘Man is nothing else but what he makes himself’

Question 56

‘Man is nothing…’

Answer 56

‘Man is nothing else but what he makes himself’ - Sartre

Question 57

‘Man is condemned to be…’
(and explanation)

Answer 57

‘Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless […] responsible for everything he does.’ - Sartre
According to Sartre, life is a meaningless series of disconnected events in which human beings are FREE to be what they want to be. However, this freedom is a nauseating experience since there are no divine signposts to guide and tell us what is either a good or bad decision and there is no ultimate reason why we should choose one thing over another.

Question 58

why does Sartre say we are forced to make choices?

Answer 58

• because we are ‘beings-for-themselves’ so are fully conscious of our existence
• consciousness makes us aware of how things are not as well as how they are
• this gives us a choice of how things could be and, so, with a situation we can change
• We ‘fill our lives by freely choosing not only what to do but also what to feel and think, what to believe and how to describe things’. [M. Warnock, Existentialist Ethics]

Question 59

We ‘fill our lives by freely…’

Answer 59

We ‘fill our lives by freely choosing not only what to do but also what to feel and think, what to believe and how to describe things’. [M. Warnock, Existentialist Ethics]

Question 60

‘beings-for-themselves’ vs ‘beings-in-themselves’

Answer 60

‘Beings-in-themselves’ refers to things that have no awareness whatsoever that they exist eg. trees, flowers, gherkins. ‘Beings-for-themselves’ are, on the other hand, fully conscious of their existence and it is the possession of this consciousness which makes it impossible for us to escape from the awful responsibility of making choices.

Question 61

does Sartre think there is a morally good life?

Answer 61

• authentic vs inauthentic living
• Sartre argued that the moral person is an authentic and sincere person

Question 62

authentic living

Answer 62

• living in full recognition that:
  
  • as conscious beings, we are inescapably free and must take full responsibility for all the choices we make in life
  • these choices are valuable because of the way we make them (acknowledging that they are free choices that we are responsible for) rather than because of some external moral authority like God.
• The moral person is, therefore, the sincere person.

Question 63

inauthentic living

Answer 63

• pretending that we are not free and cannot help what we are doing (like a gherkin)
  
  • and therefore that we do not have to take responsibility for our actions
• The temptation to live like this is huge because our freedom is unbearable; it removes from us the excuses we make to distance ourselves from our choices eg. ‘It wasn’t me speaking, it was the alcohol.’
• two of the most common “escape plans” are a) The Way of the Serious Minded and b) Bad Faith

Question 64

the way of the serious minded

Answer 64

• one of Sartre’s “escape plans” (a way of living inauthentically)
• pretend that values exist externally to us and that life is about making choices that conform to these values
• Sartre believed that all major religions encourage this by maintaining that there is a moral standard that has authority over all human beings
• we cannot get rid of responsibility in this way since we are still responsible for choosing to accept what we hear/read (eg. religious experiences, the Bible, the Torah) as the word of God
• uses Abraham and Isaac to demonstrate this

Question 65

bad faith

Answer 65

• one of Sartre’s “escape plans” (a way of living inauthentically)
• pretend that life is just like a play in which we adopt a role, so the choices we make are determined by a script
• eg. waiter, teacher, student
• a form of self-deception because the person is action like they cannot help what they are doing
• however, they know that they are deceiving themselves since to pretend to be what you are not, you have to know what you are
• so the waiter/student/teacher knows that they are free and has deliberately chosen to act as if their actions are controlled by the role, at any time they can choose to act differently

Question 66

Beauvoir

Answer 66

a feminist existentialist - developed Sartre’s ideas to comment on how religion disproportionately limits and harms women.

Question 67

issues with Sartre’s existentialism

Answer 67

• freedom leads to chaos and harm, we should not reward people’s evil desires
• seems counterintuitive to suggest that we create our own values

Question 68

is it better to live authentically (eval. of Sartre)?

Answer 68

• Sartre claims that it is so - in some sense, a person who makes choices authentically is better than a person who pretends their choices are forced upon them
• this seems to require an odd judgement in which two people who beat you up authentically are better than two people who beat you up inauthentically (perhaps hiding the truth from themselves due to shame)
• others eg. utilitarians argue that what is important is the outcome of their actions

Question 69

Do human beings create their own values?

Answer 69

• Sartre asserts that there are no objective values to guide our choices so the only ones that exist are ones we create for ourselves
• inconsistent with the way we experience moral life
• many people - eg. - say that they experience values as claims that exist independently of our choices and command our assent
• eg. we do not choose to make children dying due to famine morally unacceptable, the scene of children dying instead makes a claim on our will, demanding our assent
• ‘Persons’ are experienced as possessing a special objective value and intrinsic worth irrelevant of a moral value I may confer upon them by a free choice

Question 70

strengths of Augustine

Answer 70

+ Freud agreed that the sexual drive and drive towards pleasure was an essential quality of human behaviour and shaped us deeply
> also argued that God is a psychological construction based on an infantile need for a father figure and a sign of repressed sexual guilt
+ Neibuhr argued that humans need to understand their imperfect, flawed nature and establish a relationship with god so that we can understand our true limits
+ Hobbes agreed that humanity is selfish and brutish, believing that the only thing separating us from animals is reason, which made us realise life is more tolerable if we cooperate.
> steal for pleasure not the need
> Stanford prison experiment

Question 71

limitations of Augustine

Answer 71

• Sartre’s existentialism (inauthentic to pretend we’re not free and reject responsibility - choose to believe that the Bible for example is the word of God)
• Pelagius (humans have sufficient freewill to overcome personal sin, Adam’s sin only harmed him)
• it restricts who can be good, the British Humanist Association argues that it is possible to live a good life without religious or superstitious belief
• Dawkins argued that the idea of original sin is contradictory to evolutionary biology and that it is an absurd and dangerous idea. He also though that Christianity has an unhealthy obsession with sin, guilt, violence, and repressed sexuality.
  > guilt and harm of presenting desire as not natural
• religious conflicts and killing (Pinker criticises Christianity for being responsible for much suffering, violence, and debasement of humanity)
• Rousseau saw human nature as naturally generous but acts otherwise because of situation/circumstance