1. Lecture 2: Epistemology and Belief
Dr. Ann T. Orlando
2 Feb 2018

2. Outline Relation between happiness and truth What is truth
How do we (can we) find it
Relation between truth and belief
Against the Academics
On the Usefulness of Belief
On Lying

3. Augustine and Truth
The happy life is joy based on truth. This is joy grounded in you, O God, who are the truth, my illumination… Conf , Chadwick
Note that one cannot be happy without access to the truth (veritate)
All truth flows from God who is Truth itself
Truth is external to me (objective)
I am able to ascertain the truth, and have it affect me, only through God’s illumination
Truth should define me; I don’t define the Truth

4. Augustine, Knowledge and Wisdom
Knowledge (scientia) is available through our sense
But this is knowledge of the changing material world
Augustinian cogito, one thing I can know is that I am alive; see On Happy Life 2.7
Wisdom (sapientia) is illumination from and about the eternal unchanging Truth
It is sapientia that leads us to happiness
But there is not a fence between sapientia and scientia.
Sapientia should guide us toward useful knowledge in this world
Scientia may help us in our quest for sapientia (such as biblical interpretation)
The interesting question of mathematics: is it scientia or sapientia
Augustine will argue (along with Platonists of all stripes) it is sapientia
Mathematics are part of the Truth found in God

5. Divine Illumination
Strictly speaking, we cannot know (scientia or sapientia) anything without divine illumination
Like Platonists, Augustine believed illumination acted specifically on our memory
Unlike the Platonists, Augustine believed this was a direct gift from God, and not a result of remembering from a past life

6. Prayer
In our fallen state, we are unable without grace to fully conform ourselves to Scripture
In striving for God, we are striving ultimately for what we cannot know
Only the charity which is the Holy Spirit can help us to pray
“There is in us a certain learned ignorance, so to speak, but an ignorance learned from the Spirit of God, who helps our weakness.” Letter to Proba (130)

7. Augustine’s Primary Epistemological Opponents
Skeptics: truth cannot be known
Ancient skepticism is an off-shoot of Platonism
A wise man will withhold all judgment
Augustine, Against the Skeptics
Manichees
Truth is attainable through carefully trained reason (ratio and scientia)
Changing world is in opposition to pure reason
Only by rejecting the material can reason rise to truth
Augustine, Against Faustus, the Manichee

8. Background Against Skeptics aka Against the Academicians
Contra academicos
Written while Augustine was at Cassiciacum, c. 386
Setting is a symposium, much like the On Happy Life
Note that Augustine had for a brief while considered becoming a skeptic (see Conf. V)
Against the Skeptics is the earliest preserved text written by Augustine

9. Outline Against Skeptics
Book I: Introduction
Book 2: Argument that it is plausible that we can know somethings
Book 3: Types of knowledge
Logical claims
Mathematical Truths
Truth based on appearance

10. Later Reception of Against the Skepitcs
Especially prominent in the Renaissance and Modernity
In Renaissance, Nicholas of Cusa seems to have developed the way of knowing by learned ignorance
An open question how much Augustine Descartes really knew
He claims to not have read him

11. On Free Will (De libero arbitrio)
Based on a dialogue with Augustine’s friend, Evodius
Like Augustine, he was born in Thagaste, and travelled to Italy
Like Augustine, he will become a bishop (of Uzalis near Carthage)
Dialogue takes place in Rome as both are on their way back to North Africa, witch forms substance of Book I
Books II and III were written sometime later, likely shortly after Augustine became bishop of Hippo

12. Free Choice of the Will Outline
Book I
Focuses on theodicy question
Discusses relation of temporal law to human law
Disordered human will source of sin
Book II
Then why did God make so that we had free will?
How do we know that God exists?
Book III
How and why does our will change and move away from God?
Would it be better not to exist than to sin and be unhappy?
Why do children suffer?

13. Free Choice of the Will Book II
Why did God give us free choice of will if by this we sin?
Humans are good beings and need a free will to do good. Free will needed to live rightly. God rewards and punishes; both unjust unless we had free will.
But how do we know that God exists? Do all good things come from God? Is free will one of those goods?
We exist, we are alive, we understand. Understanding is only in rational creatures.
Find something more excellent than our reason = God
What is common to all who think? Numbers
Do not know numbers thru bodily senses; see it by an inner light
Wisdom is the truth which is the highest good. No one is happy without the highest good.
Truth of wisdom and number more excellent than our minds which perceive it. Therefore something more excellent than our minds exists (truth), therefore God exists.
But this is also highest good, so God is good; all goods come from Him.
Free will is good since no one can live rightly without it.
Goods pursued by sinners are not evil in themselves; neither is free will. Sinners turned to changeable goods; But what is origin of sin??

14. Definition of Virtue Aquinas, ST Ia IIae Q55
Reconcile two very different definitions of virtue
But both Aristotle and Augustine start their discussion of virtue with how man can be happy
Aristotle: Virtue then is a settled disposition of the mind determining the choice of actions and emotions, consisting essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us, this being determined by principle, that is, as the prudent man would determine it. Nicomachean Ethics
Virtue is a balance, as determined by a prudent man
Virtues divided into intellectual and moral
Virtue can (with difficulty) be acquired through the practice of good habits
Augustine: Virtue is a good quality of the mind, by which we live righteously, of which no one can make bad use, which God brings about in us, without us. On Free Will II.xix.50
Virtue is a gift of God (grace)
All virtues are derived from Christian charity
Aquinas in ST Ia IIae 55.4 begins with Augustine's definition of virtue
But in reply 4 of 55.4, he starts the discussion of infused virtues
Infused and acquired virtue ST Iae IIae Q 63
Importance of prudence ST IIa IIae Q 47 – 56
CCC definition of virtue relies much more on Aquinas (virtue is a habit) than Augustine

15. But remember as we read Augustine…
“…I am among that number that write while developing and develop while writing.” Ep “To Marcellinus”
Marcellinus had written Augustine with questions concerning On Free Will.
Augustine responds with the need for his readers to read (and correct him) if he errs:
“But if you who love me very much maintain…that I am so great a man that in your opinion I would never have erred in my writings, you are laboring in vain.” Ep
Augustine will write City of God as a response to other questions posed by Marcellinus, to whom the work is addressed.

16. Background on Usefulness of Belief AKA On Advantage of Believing
De utilitate credendi
First book written after ordination to priesthood (391)
Written to a friend, Honoratus, who was a Manichee
Manichaeism asserted a purely rational religion, with no need for faith
Claimed to be solely reliant on scientia

17. Outline of On the Usefulness of Belief
Divided into sections
Introduction, 1-3
Properly understanding the Old Testament 4 – 13
Relationship between Religion and Wisdom (sapientia),
Relationship between faith and reason, 21-29
See the Retractions for different meaning of ‘knowing’ (scientia)
Belief in Jesus Christ, 30-35

18. Christian Lying Before Augustine
Many Church Fathers accepted the notion of a charitable lie
Support for this is that both OT and NT at times seems to approve of deception in support of a greater good
Of special note is Gal 2:11-14
Paul accuses Peter of deception
Jerome in his commentary suggests Paul’s rebuke of Peter was a pretense
Jerome follows Origen in this interpretation
Augustine and Jerome trade several letters in which Augustine argues against this view
Letters 28, 40, 75, 81 and 82

19. On Lying (De mendacio)
Written in 395 during the time of the controversy with Jerome.
One book, divided into 21 chapters
See chapter 8 on discussion of Gal 2:11-14
Ch3: Definition of a lie; what we have in the CCC
Ch 14: 8 types of lies, of decreasing severity
Ch 21: Conclusion and back to Gal
Later in his life, Augustine wanted this book destroyed in favor of Against Lying
See Revisions #27.

20. Against Lying (Contra mendacium)
Written in 420 as a response to a letter by Consentius
Repeats of much of On Lying
Definition of a moral act in Ch 7
Cause, end, intention
But lying as intrinsically wrong can never be part of a good moral act
Emphasis that a Catholic should not lie even to fight a heretic (Priscillians)
Opposed to Catholic spies against the Priscillians, Chapter 18

21. Revisions, Retractions, Reconsiderations (Retractationes)
Around 426 Augustine reviewed his earlier works and wrote his thoughts about them
“My task is to reconsider my works from an uncompromisingly critical perspective…” Revisions, Prologue.1
He organized the work chronologically, beginning with Against the Academicians
“For whoever reads my works in the order in which they were written will perhaps discover how I have made progress over the course of my writing.” Revisions, Prologue.3

22. Assignment
Against the Academics, in Augustine: Earlier Writings OPTIONAL
On Free Will, Book II in Augustine: Earlier Writings
On the Usefulness of Belief, in Augustine: Earlier Writings
Revisions to both Against the Academics and Usefulness of Belief Optional
On Lying, in FC 16; especially Ch. 1-3, 14 and 21. On my website.

23. Some Works Consulted
Peter King, “Augustine on Knowledge,” Ch 8 in Cambridge Companion to Augustine
Ryan Topping, Happiness and Wisdom
Myers, Jason. “Law, Lies, and Letter Writing: An Analysis of Jerome and Augustine on the Antioch Incident (Galatians 2:11-14)”. Scottish Journal of Theology Vol 66 Issue 02, May 2013,
Carol Quillen, “A Tradition Invented: Petrarch, Augustine and the Language of Humanism,” Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 53 No. 2 (Apr- Jun 1992), pp