Augustine

Anselm inherited a Platonizing approach to philosophy from Augustine and Boethius. But he characteristically reworked what he found in their texts by questioning and disputing it into something more rigorous. In this paper, I compare and contrast Anselm’s treatment of the trope ‘evil is nothing, not a being’ withBoethius’s use of it in The Consolation of Philosophy. In the first section, I expose a fallacious argument form common to them both: paradigm Fness is identical with paradigm Gness; X participates in (...) paradigm Fness and so is F; therefore, X participates in paradigm Gness and so is G. In the second section, I contrast Philosophy’s “strong medicine”—‘evil is nothing,’ ‘evil-doings are nothing,’ ‘evil humans do not exist’—with Anselm’s development of the point that injustice is a privation and so parasitic on the beings that are deprived. By contrast with Boethius, Anselm emphasizes that the willinstrument, will-power, the will’s action and turnings are something and so from God. Likewise, Anselm insists—pace Boethius—that Adam’s fallen race is still the human race. In the final section, I turnto Anselm’s distinction between injustice (iniustitia) and disadvantage (incommoda), his concession that some disadvantages are something, and his explanation of happiness in terms of advantage or bona sibi. For Anselm, happiness and justice break apart, so that it is possible in this world for the just to lack advantage. Moreover, in the world to come, the damned will suffer radical deprivation—not only of the justice, which they deserted, but of advantages. I contrastthis with Boethius’s insistence (based on the argument in section I) that virtue suffices for happiness and vice for unhappiness, and that there is no such thing as bad fortune. I conclude by pondering why Anselm treated disadvantage as a something rather than as a misfit between somethings. (shrink)

Over the past thirty years, analytical philosophers of religion have confronted the problem of evil in the guise of the atheistic argument from evil against the existence of God. Many have met it from the posture of defense, constructing logically possible morally sufficient reasons for divine permission of evils from the materials of religion-neutral value-theory. At best, such defenses vindicate divine goodness along the dimension “producer of global goods,” while neglecting the religiously more relevant dimension of His goodness to individual (...) suffering creatures. My methodological recommendation is that we Christian philosophers shift away from defense and concentrate on formulating what we really believe about the goodness of God and how He is solving the problem of evil. If successful, our accounts would not only exhibit how divine permission of evils is logically consistent with His goodness to creatures, but also advertise Him as a character worthy of worship. Failures would pinpoint more precisely where and how evil is a problem for us. I illustrate this method by examining Duns Scotus’ many-faceted conception of divine goodness and measure its power to explain the compossibility of God and evil. (shrink)

The paper discusses how the oldest manuscripts (L, C, V) of De civitate Dei are related to the more recent ones. The problems that emerge concern theexistence of an archetype; the relationship between L and C; the question whether the earlier manuscripts may be right (they sometimes are). In quite a few passages the readings preferred by editors are questionable, and others are proposed. It is shown that interpolation and revision of the text play an important role, and that the (...) context must take priority in attempting to establish the text. We should not put excessive trust in the older manuscripts, yet, at the same time, we should be aware of the uncertainty of our choices. (shrink)

The main objective of this text is to analyze some of the ambiguities that characterize Augustine of Hippo’s position regarding the so-called pagan culture in general and Greek philosophy in particular. As a matter of fact, the author of Confessions is situated in a mid-term, which I identify by the expression “the paradox of between”, for he does not totally embrace the position of Justin Martyr, who identifies Christian wisdom with Greek philosophy, neither does he claim the other extreme position (...) of Tertullian, who sees an antagonism or an insuperable gap between “Christian wisdom” and “pagan wisdom”, or between faith and reason. In the perspective of this paradox, three major questions will be examined: (a) the relation between philosophy and Christian religion, (b) the problem of the “platonic philosophers”, (c) the concepts of recollection and memory. (shrink)