Thursday, November 1, 2012
Augustine Climbs the Ladder
In book 7, as Augustine relates the revelations which lead him to an understanding of the true nature good and evil he refers to an ascent of understanding very similar to that of Symposium.
Augustine explains that after he realized "all things are fit and proper ... to the places"(150) and to the "times in which the exist"(150) and therefore "evil does not exist"(148) because things can never be truly evil only "at variance with other things". He is still left with the a question as to "How it was that I was able to judge them in this way"(151). Augustine concludes that he was able to see the reality of evil because he overcame his "own mind, which was liable to change"(151). He accomplished this by realizing the "eternity of truth"(151) that was "above my own mind"(151). He did this by "step by step"(151) moving his thought along a spectrum of consideration from "considerations of material things to the soul... and then to the souls inner power"(151). This ascension covers Augustine's entire journey from his descend into the "hissing cauldron of lust"(55) on to his misguided search for truth in the Manichean teachings, finally ending in his discovery of truth in the teachings of the Platonists.
The ascending levels of consideration in Diotima's speech is very similar. One goes from the love of beautiful bodies, up to the love of one beautiful body, and finally terminates in the love and appreciation of the internal beauty of a person and the beautiful ideas they are pregnant with and are birthed by a relationship with them.
In the cases of both Plato and Augustine these "ladders" of knowledge serve to set the ideas of the writers in contrast to other modes of thinking. The reason this contrast in necessary is to show that the thinkers ideas are clearly superior. For if Augustine's or Plato's ideas were presented in a vacuum how could one determine if their modes of thought were in fact superior to any others? The reasons why Plato and Augustine in particular spend so much time explaining other modes of thinking is that they need to show how their ideas are superior. If Plato had not diss proven the arguments of the previous speeches or if Augustine had not shown the hollow falsehood of the philosophies he had previously tried then their final conclusions would have no wrong against which to contrast their right. In essence the bottom stairs of the staircase of ideas legitimize the existence of the top stair. In short the upward trajectory of the thoughts in both Symposium and Confessions are rhetorical devices meant to emphasize the arguments correctness through contrast with lesser thoughts
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I find it interesting that Jon establishes a comparison between the writings of Plato and Augustine. While their is a parallel between the way that each writer creates a ladder of their thought processes, I also found a parallel in the way that both Plato and Augustine describe the discovery of truth. In both cases, finding truth is described as an ascent and a movement away from focus on the purely physical.
ReplyDeleteJon makes great points in comparing Augustine's process of searching for knowledge to Plato's ladder of ascension. The key difference in their philosophies is that at the top of the ladder, Plato argues is good, where Augustine says there is God. Either way, as Jon says, both show their counterarguments on the lower steps of the ladder until they finally reach the top.
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