Term Paper on "Saint Augustine Confessions"

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Augustine's Confessions

Augustine's Confessed Friendships

Augustine, who eventually became the bishop of Hippo, was far from being a solitary individual. Throughout his life he had numerous and unusually intense friendships, and it has been said that Augustine almost never spent even a moment alone. (Sellner) So it would be inaccurate to suggest that Augustine thought poorly of the institution of friendship, or that he tended to replace earthly affections with heavenly one. All accounts suggest that Augustine was both a very sociable individual and a deeply committed friend. Yet despite valuing friendship very highly, Augustine seems to see friendship as a potential source of evil and as (in some circumstances) an expression of evil. At points Augustine seems to suggest that the very power that makes friendship such a potent and burning expression of good in the world can also make it a force for evil. In one example he shows how having impure friends can drag one almost-unwillingly into the doing of impure or evil things. In fact, earlier he has suggested that friendship itself is evil when those involved in it are not pure of heart or easily turn their affection towards sin. For example, Augustine describes how his adolescent gang membership and his close friendship with mischief-causers was in itself a sin and that evil deeds wrought in the name of such a friendship were not examples of the phenomena of evil-done-for-good, but proved that the friendship was unrooted evil. That Augustine would ever say that friendship itself could be evil or could turn someone towards evil is surprising, but a close reading of the Confessions does show that he has reasonable beliefs on the subject from his own experience.

Augustine's opinions on friendship date back to his own adolescent experiences. The issue and the story from which it springs arise in the course of a meditation of the cause of evil. Plato has said, and many have since believed, that evil is something that no person pursues for its own merits -- rather, people do evil things in the pursuit of other, baser good things. For example, the evil of adultery might be committed in pursuit of the good of love and pleasure, or the evil of theft might be committed in pursuit of the good of food or the good of having physical comfort. However, Augustine suggests that people may also act in an evil fashion without hope to gain some other good. As evidence, he holds up the story of his own misadventure stealing pears from a garden which were "attractive in neither colour nor taste." (29) Because the pears were not tasty or worth anything, the boys fed most of them to some pigs. (Precisely why stealing tasteless, worthless pears was such a crime is not entirely explicated, and one supposes that the concern might be more that he was trying to commit a crime than that he actually did something worthy of significant censure) "I wanted to carry out an act of theft and did so, driven by no kind of need other than my inner lack of any sense of...justice. Wickedness filled me." (29) Augustine carries on about how wicked he was and how overwhelmed with evil, and how this desire to do evil proves the innate corruption of the human will. Yet right as he may have convinced the reader that the human will is corrupted and does evil without cause, he admits the reason for his sin: "Had I been alone I would not have done it -- I remember my state of mind to be thus at the time -- alone I would never have done it. Therefore my love in that act was to be associated with the gang in whose company I did it." Most readers would think that this disproves his argument with the Platonic conception of good and evil, because it shows that he did love something other than the theft. Even though that loved thing was not the direct object of his theft (the yucky pears), it still qualifies as being for the sake of another good -- that good of having status among one's friends, and of laughing with them. Augustine, however, discounts this explanation by saying that "Does it follow that I loved something other than the theft? No, nothing else in reality because association with the gang is also a nothing." (33) a friendship which takes pleasure in and spawns evil which the individuals alone would not undertake is, according to this theory, not itself a good thing but a nothing. One might say that Augustine takes the position that friendship is capable not only of spawning evil but also of being evil mainly to defend his attack on Platonic ideas. Nonetheless, he makes the statement here that friendship with rogues is essentially meaningless and empty, and does not retract that idea. Rather, as he continues with his confessions, he increasingly indicates that empty, sin-infested relationships are as destructive and as evil as are empty and sinful acts.

This theme continues in the section of Alypius and the circus. As a look at history will remind the reader that at the time circuses were not, as they are now, amusing affairs with acrobats and jugglers. (Though animal rights activists might still consider them to be abusive and unfair) Rather, they were bloodthirsty and cruel affairs in which gladiators butchered one another and often killed other, innocent (or criminal) victims as well. Though in Augustine's time it does not appear that many Christians were being condemned to die in the circuses, throughout history they had often been so sentenced and a rightful horror of the barbarities of the circus remained fresh in their minds. So Augustine and other Christians like him avoided the circus at all costs and considered attendance a sin. The severity of circus attendance is relevant because it explains the story of Alypius, whose example Augustine uses to further prove that relationships with sinners may contribute to making an individual choose to sin. The story begins thus: "[Alypius] held such spectacles in aversion and detestation; but some of his friends and fellow-pupils on their way back from a dinner happened to meet him in the street and, despite his energetic refusal and resistance, used friendly violence to take him into the amphitheater during the day of the cruel and murderous games..." (100) of course, mere physical attendance might not be considered a sin -- the sin is participating in the spirit of bloodshed and cruelty, or attending voluntarily. So Alypius set his mind that he would "be as one not there," (100) close his eyes, and ignore the proceedings. Predictably, he ended up peeking, and subsequently got sucked into the circus. Not only did he watch that day, he returned repeatedly and even took friends to see. Augustine reports that this failure was partly because of the influence of his friends, but also because he was "supposing himself strong" (100) and therefore did not take precautions to assure that he was not unduly influenced by his friends. Augustine goes on to explain that Alypius was in possession of "a mind still more bold than strong, and the weaker for the reason that he presumed on himself when he ought to have relied on you [God]." (100) So in the story of Alypius, if one is weak and does not entirely rely first on God, one is particularly prone to being sucked into doing evil if one is friends with those who do evil. Here, as opposed to his earlier account, Augustine does not entirely seem to be saying that the friendship itself is a sin, but rather that the friendship leads to sin.

So in Augustine's work one sees a number of competing and/or complementary themes about friendships.… READ MORE

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