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Home , Eudaimonia, Summum bonum

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The Compatibility of Augustine’s Formal Account of

with his Neoplatonic of Goodness.

Abstract:

Augustine’s moral follows the general pattern of ancient moral theory by distinguishing between the formal and substantive conceptions of ethical eudaimonism. In this paper, I develop Augustine’s ethical theory, demonstrating its grounding in both eudaimonism and Christian Neo- : the former provides its formal structure, the latter its substance or content, consisting in its metaphysical grounding and teleological end. In the first section, I consider the formal structure of Augustine’s . Second, I argue ’s role as the is grounded in Augustine’s Neo- Platonic metaphysics of goodness. Finally, I explore a puzzle raised by Augustine’s ethics: is loving God for His own sake compatible with loving God because it makes us happy? In other words, is Augustine’s formal account of eudaimonia compatible with the substance of his ethics informed by Christian ?

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In De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, Augustine makes two significant claims that summarize his moral philosophy. First, everyone desires and this consists in loving man’s highest .

Second, since this highest good is identified with God himself, man’s happiness is only found in God.1

This pair of encapsulate two streams of ethical thought converging together to form

Augustine’s moral philosophy, following the general pattern of ancient moral theory by distinguishing between the formal and substantive conceptions of ethical eudaimonism. In what follows, I develop

Augustine’s moral philosophy, demonstrating its grounding in both eudaimonism and Christian

Neoplatonism: the former provides its formal structure, the latter its substance or content, consisting in its metaphysical grounding and teleological end. In the first section, I consider the formal structure of

Augustine’s ethics. Second, I argue God’s role as the summum bonum is grounded in Augustine’s

Neoplatonist metaphysics of goodness. I conclude by exploring a puzzle raised by Augustine’s ethics: is loving God for His own sake compatible with loving God because it makes us happy? In other words, is

Augustine’s formal account of eudaimonia compatible with the substance of his ethics informed by

Christian Neo-Platonism?

The Formal Structure of Augustine’s Ethics: Eudaimonism

The formal structure of Augustine’s ethical eudaimonism differs not from his classical predecessors, but like the ancients before him, Augustine has a unique way of filling out its content.2

1 Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, 3.4-5. See Thomas Osborne, Love of Self and in Thirteenth Century Ethics(Notre Dame: Notre Dame university Press, 2005), 15.

2 See Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIX.1. He claims all philosophers focus on the of the happy life as the final end or good, but that each philosopher differs as to what this happiness consists in. This point demonstrates the difference between the formal structure of ethics as the search for the happy life in the summum bonum on the one hand, and its substance or content on the other. makes an identical distinction in I.4.1095a18-20. He states, “As far as its name goes [i.e., the highest good men seek], most people virtually agree; for both the many and the cultivated call it happiness…But they disagree about what happiness is.” In the Summa Theologiae I-II.1.7, calls this a distinction between the formal concept of eudaimonia and the substance or content of eudaimonia. Similarly, Augustine agrees that all men seek the happy life, but differ as to what this happy life consists in. For Aristotle, it consists in an activity of the soul in accordance with . For the Epicureans, it consists in a certain type of . For the Stoics, such as Seneca, it consists in the “attainment of perfect ,” concerning what one can control and what must be left to fate. For Augustine, as we shall see, the content of eudaimonia consists in a right ordering of love according to the object’s , and since God has the most value, he ought to be loved as the summum bonum. 3

Unlike modern moral philosophy—concerned primarily with duties and obligations on the one hand or consequences on the other—Augustine’s ethics begins not with a rule, maxim, or pleasure calculus, but with a teleological end—the happy life (beata vita). This ethical foundation is built on claim concerning :

(1) All men desire and seek the happy life.

References to this permeate his writings. In the Confessions, he claims, “Surely, the happy life is the object of everyone’s desire, and there is absolutely no-one who does not desire it.”3 Specifically, happiness is the goal of both philosophical speculation and religious affection. It “is the single goal for the sake of which the industry of all philosophers is seen to have stayed up late and toiled.”4 The quest for the happy life also encompasses the religious sphere as well. In Sermon 150, Augustine explains to his congregation that the reason they became Christians was “to achieve the happy life,” and that seeking the happy life is a characteristic of all men, grounded in an “appetite for the happy.”5 Humans, therefore, have a natural inclination to seek happiness,6 and this provides the motivation for action:

If two men were asked whether they want to go with the army, it might happen that one of them would say “yes” and the other “no”: but if they were asked whether they wanted to be happy, each would instantly and without hesitation say “Yes”—and the one would have no reason for wanting to go with the army nor the other for not wanting to go, save to be happy.7

According to Augustine, all men act for the sake of some end they wish to attain, and this end is happiness. We can summarize Augustine’s account of motivation as follows:

(2) All men act for the sake of which they believe make them happy.

3 Augustine, Confessions, X.20. See also De Civitate Dei, XI.26.

4 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, VIII.3. See also Sermons, 150.3 and De Civitate Dei, XVIII.41.

5 Augustine, Sermons, 150.3.

6 In Confessions, X.20 Augustine suggests our conception of happiness is grounded in memory. It is unclear to me whether he is alluding to the Platonic doctrine of recollection, or simply claiming that the conception of happiness is grounded in our nature, and known by retrieving this information via the mind (hence “memory”). The latter view fits with his statement in , ii.25-27, where he states “The idea of happiness has nevertheless been impressed on our minds. It is through this that we know and say confidently and without hesitation that we want to be happy.”

7 Confessions, X.21.

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This “appetite for the happy” provides the motivation for both good and bad actions.8 Thus the foundation for Augustinian ethics is that we all act for the sake of some end, and this end we are seeking is our happiness.

How does one attain the happy life? According to Augustine, it is achieved only by finding the

“highest good.”9 So the first step in obtaining the happy life is directing action toward the right end. He says:

Here the supreme good is sought, the good to which we refer everything that we do, desiring it not for the sake of something else, but for its own sake. Obtaining it, we require nothing further in order to be happy. It is truly called an end, because we want everything else for the sake of this, but this we want only for itself.10

Here we see the typical formal conditions for an ultimate end: finality, completeness, and self-sufficiency.

We can conclude Augustine’s formal account of eudaimonia with a final :

(3) Human happiness consists in attainment of the highest good.11

For Augustine, the “highest good” is that which all others are referred to, and that for the sake of which all other goods are directed towards.12 Actions, therefore, have a teleological structure: we act for the sake of some good or end, and the summum bonum will be that good for which all others goods are done—it will be the end of the teleological chain: the point, purpose, and reason for all action. In order to understand Augustine’s summum bonum, his Neo-Platonic metaphysics of goodness must be examined.

Augustine’s (Neoplatonic) Metaphysics of Goodness

Augustine’s conception of goodness is grounded within his Neoplatonic metaphysics, particularly in the so called “great chain of being.” “Being” for Augustine is an ordered scale. God is identified with

8 See Sermons, 150.3. He claims that men perform both good and bad actions because each believes that performing the action will make them happy.

9 Letters 118.13-20.

10 De Civitate Dei, VIII.8.

11 In De Civitate Dei VIII.3, he says that “the supreme good is that which, when attained, makes men happy.”

12 See Letters, 118, 13-20, and De Civitate Dei, VIII.8 5

“Being” itself and every other existent thing obtains its being from God, and has a lesser degree of being proportional to its participation in God.13

In De Natura Boni, Augustine develops his conception of goodness within the context of this

Neoplatonic hierarchy of being. There he identifies God with the supreme, eternal, immortal, and unchanging Good. All other goods derive their origin, being, and goodness only by participation in him.14

Every natural good is good by nature, as created by God.15 Similar to his gradation view of being, there is a gradation view of goodness: there exists an ordering of goods based on three natural properties given to objects by God. He says, “All things are good; better in proportion as they are better measured, formed, and ordered, less good where there is less of measure, form and order.”16 Where these properties are present to a high degree, the object is a great good, and when there is a small degree of these properties, the entity is a small good. Where there is an absence of these natural properties, there is no natural goodness and consequently, no being.17

Augustine’s conception of natural or metaphysical goodness should not be confused with, nor identified with, moral goodness. He states, “It is possible that one nature even when corrupted may still

13 In De Civitate Dei, XII.2, he claims

“Since God is Supreme Being, that is, since he supremely is and, therefore, is immutable, it follows that he gave ‘being’ to all that he created out of nothing; not, however, absolute being. To some things he gave more of being and to others less and, in this way, arranged an order of natures in a hierarchy of being.”

And in the Confessions, VII.11.17, he says,

“Then I thought upon those things that are less than You, and I saw that they neither absolutely are nor yet totally are not: they are, in as much as they are from You: they are not, in as much as they are not what You are. For that truly is, which abides unchangingly.”

14 De Natura Boni, i. He states, “All good things throughout the ranks of being, whether great or small, can derive their being only from God. Every natural being, as far as it is such, is good…All are not supremely good, but they approximate to the supreme good, and even the very lowest goods which are far distant from the supreme good, can only derive their existence from the supreme good.”

15 Ibid., ii-iii.

16 Ibid., iii.

17 Ibid.

6 be better than another nature which remains uncorrupted, because the one has a superior, the other an inferior measure, form, and order.” For example, Augustine states that a corrupted rational spirit has more natural goodness than an uncorrupted irrational spirit because, proportionally, it has more measure, form, and order.18 By adding this proviso, Augustine distinguishes natural goodness from moral goodness. The two types of goodness are not identical because an object can have more natural goodness but less moral goodness than some other object by having more measure, form, and order, but a corrupted will.

As far as natural or metaphysical goodness is concerned, this goodness supervenes on the natural properties possessed by an object and the relations among those properties; specifically, measure, form, and order. Since natural goodness supervenes on the natural properties of an object, it cannot be reduced to any one of them—any difference in these properties results in a difference in the object’s natural goodness. Consequently, something is naturally good proportional to the degree to which it has these properties, which are grounded in the entity’s nature, given to it by God.19

What then is the relationship between natural goodness and moral goodness? Augustine claims that an object’s value is proportional to its being. As a result, the greater measure, order, and form an object has, the more being it has, and consequently, the more value it has. Moral goodness, Augustine claims, is a right ordering of love according to an object’s value.20

Consequently, we ought to love things in accordance with their value which is determined by their natural goodness, grounded in the object’s non-moral properties. Moral goodness consists in loving things proportionally to their natural goodness, which follows their degree of being. He says,

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid., x. See also De Civitate Dei, XI.16.

20 Letters, 137, 17. He states, “Here is the whole of ethics, because a good and honorable life is not formed in any other way than loving the things which ought to be loved in the way they should be loved.” 7

For even love itself should be loved in right order, by which we might love well that which should be loved, so that there might be in us the virtue by which one lives well. Whence it seems to me, that the short and true definition of virtue is the order of love (ordo amoris).21

To summarize, recall that Augustine claimed that man’s happiness consists in attainment of the highest good. But,

(4) The highest good can only be that which has the most value and being.

This assertion, we have seen, is entrenched in his Neoplatonic metaphysics. His next move is obvious:

(5) Only God himself has complete value and being.

So, on the scale of natural goods, which follows being itself, God has the most goodness. Two things follow from this.

First, since the highest good is that good which all other goods are directed towards, and since our love for any object ought to be proportional to the object’s natural goodness, God should be loved most as the highest good. Because God is identical with Being itself, and consequently, Goodness itself, all human action should be directed toward this end.22 Naturally then, Augustine’s formal account of eudaimonia is infused with content that reflects his Christian Neoplatonism. So Augustine claims that the search for God is synonymous with the search for happiness,23 happiness is joy found in loving God for his own sake,24 that in seeking happiness, we are seeking none other than God,25 that we serve and worship God so that we may be happy in him,26 that we become happy by participating in God,27 and that

21 De Civitate Dei, XV.22. In Osborne, Love of Self and Love of God. Augustine says in Letters, 157,9 “The mind is carried wherever it is carried by its love as if by a weight.” In De Civitate Dei, he says, “For an object is carried in whatever direction it is carried by its weight, just as the soul is carried by its love.” When added to his comments in De Trinitate VIII.5.8, that all love is love of the good or the blessed, Augustine believes that all action is motivated (i.e., “carried”) by love of something we think is good.

22Letters, 137, 17.

23 Confessions, VI. 6.

24 Ibid., X.22.

25 Ibid., X.20. “Quomodo ergo te quaero, domine? Cum enim te, deum meum, quaero, vitam beatam quaero.”

26 Ibid., XIII.1.

27 De Civitate Dei, VIII.5 8

God is the fountain of our happiness (fons nostrae beatitudinis) and is the end of all our longing (ipse omnis appetitionis est finis).28 In On the Morals of the Catholic Church, he states, “if goodness leads us to the happy life, then I would define [moral] goodness solely in terms of the perfect love of God.”29

Second, if love for any object ought to be proportional to the object’s natural goodness, then moral wrongness consists in a wrong ordering of loves, where objects are not loved proportional to their natural goodness. From this, Augustine believes humans can go astray in two ways: (1) in seeking happiness in the wrong things or (2) in seeking happiness the wrong way; the former misses the end, the latter attains the end for the wrong .

The first type of moral wrongness centers on a disproportionate loving of lesser goods instead of the highest good.30 We often seek goods (like friendship), which are lower goods in place of the highest good, God. Thus Augustine thinks sin is immoderate inclination toward lower goods.31 Instead of proportioning our love for an object according to its natural goodness, we love these lesser goods more than they should be loved, and we love the highest good (i.e., God) less than we ought to. In doing this, we act against the natural order of things.32

Second, moral wrongness consists in seeking happiness in the right end, but in the wrong way. Here

Augustine distinguishes uti (use) from frui (enjoyment), paralleling the distinction between means and ends. Augustine says that “to enjoy a thing is to rest with satisfaction in it for its own sake. To ‘use,’ on the other hand, is to employ whatever means are at one’s disposal to obtain what one desires, if it is a

28 Ibid., X. 3.

29 The Practices of the Catholic Church, 25.

30 In De Civitate De VIII.5 Augustine says, “The rational soul still ought not worship as god those things which are placed beneath it by the order of nature, nor ought it place above itself as those things over which it has been placed by the true God.” And in Free Will he claims that sin is the turning of the mind away from finding enjoyment in God and toward what has been created by God. Free Will, iii.1-3. See also Confessions, I.20.

31 Confessions, II. 5.

32 Hence Augustine says that is a not a substance, but a swerving of the will away from the Supreme Substance, towards lower goods. Ibid., VII.16. See also Confessions, II.5-6. 9 proper object of desire.”33 An ultimate end, a thing which is sought and loved for its own sake, must never be used, only enjoyed.34 This ultimate end, we have seen, is God. Therefore, only God himself is to be enjoyed. Conversely, we must never enjoy lower goods that are means to God, but only use them appropriately.

Thus we can go astray by either the enjoyment of lower goods, which ought to be used, or by using the ultimate good, God, rather than enjoying him. The latter consists in using God as a means to enjoying something else—getting the teleological chain backwards. This, once again, is grounded in Augustine’s hierarchy of goods: a certain direction exists among goods such that lesser goods are always to be used as means to the highest good and our final end—God—who is to be enjoyed and never used. But is this compatible with his formal account of eudaimonia?

God, Happiness, and the Love of Self

If eudaimonism is “understood in a broad sense to refer to theories in which the virtuous agent’s good is maximized,”35 then Augustine’s theory is unmistakably eudaimonistic, for man’s highest end is found in the search for happiness. This eudaimonism consists in a right ordering of love according to the object’s value, and since God has the most value, he ought to be loved most as the summum bonum.

Accordingly, we ought to love God for his own sake, because he is the highest good. At this point

Augustine’s ethics raises a puzzle, for as we have seen, he also says we ought to love God because it makes us happy.36 There seems an apparent inconsistency between the formal structure of his ethics and its content; namely, a conflict between his eudaimonism and his Christian Neoplatonism.37

33 De Doctrina Christiana, I.4.

34 See De Civitate Dei, XI, 25. He says “We are said to enjoy what, in itself and without regard to other ends, delights us, and to use what we seek for the sake of something else beyond it.”

35 Osborne, Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth Century Ethics, 21.

36 See especially Sermons, 150.3; Confessions X.20.

37 This puzzle in Augustine’s ethics created much debate over the compatibility of love of self and love for God in later medieval ethics. See especially Osborne, Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth Century Ethics; and Oliver O’Donovan, The Problem of Self-Love in Saint Augustine (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006). 10

As I see it, there are four possible ways to understand the relationship between seeking our own happiness (loving ourselves) and seeking (loving) God: (1) our happiness is the motive for seeking God;

(2) our happiness is the byproduct of seeking God; (3) our happiness is identical to God himself; or (4) our happiness is the result of finding God—all, I believe, have some support in Augustine.

First, Augustine might conceive the relationship as follows: we seek God because it makes us happy. On this account our happiness is the motive or reason for seeking God.38 However, if we seek

God only because it makes us happy, then it blatantly contradicts Augustine’s second analysis of moral wrongness. Recall that Augustine made the distinction between uti and frui –between use and enjoyment.

Therefore this cannot be correct, for it seems we are using God as a means to happiness, and not enjoying him.

Second, one might be inclined to explain our happiness as a byproduct of loving God. This too has some support in Augustine.39 However, if happiness is merely a byproduct of loving God, then happiness itself is not what we seek. But Augustine claims we actually seek happiness itself. This view does not do to Augustine’s strong language that happiness itself is sought.40

Third, since we truly seek happiness, and this happiness is neither a motive nor a byproduct of loving God, then perhaps we should identify happiness with God himself. Augustine does claim that the search for God is synonymous with the search for happiness,41 and that seeking God is identical to seeking the happy life.42 So Augustine might be saying something like the following, grounded in the transitive nature of identity: happiness is identical to man’s highest good, and man’s highest good is

38 In Sermon, 150.3, he says to his congregation that they became Christians in order to be happy. See also Confessions XIII.1.

39 In De Civitate Dei, V.11, Augustine says that God bestows on men true happiness by participating in him. Happiness, it seems, is the byproduct of divine participation.

40 See especially De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, 3.4-5; Confessions, X.20, VI.6.; De Civitate Dei, XI.26.

41 Confessions, VI.11.

42 Ibid., X.20.

11 identical to God. Therefore, happiness is identical to God. This interpretation does make sense of one particular passage in Confessions where he says to God, “For You alone are, because You alone simply are: for to You, to live and to live happily are one and the same thing, because You are your own beatitude (quia tua beatitudo es).”43

If happiness is identical with God, however, two problems arise. First, it is not clear to me that

Augustine is claiming that happiness is identical with man’s highest end. It is equally plausible that he means we find happiness only when we seek it in our highest end. In other words, happiness and man’s chief good are not identical, but one is found only through the other. Second, happiness seems to be a state a person is in, or condition of life, not a person itself. Eudaimonia and its Latin counterparts (beatus and felix) connote the well-being or of the person—not the person itself.44

The fourth and final option seems preferable: happiness is the result of finding God. Augustine says that happiness is the right enjoyment of the right object. In On the Principle of Order, Augustine claims that philosophy has a dual purpose: first, it raises questions about the soul, and second, it raises questions about God. The first makes us fit for the happy life, and the latter actually makes us happy.45

For Augustine, God makes us happy. In the Confessions, he says that happiness is the joy found in loving

God for his own sake.46 And in De Civitate Dei, he claims that “there is no other good which can make any rational or intellectual creature happy except God.”47 Happiness is the result of a right ordering of love according to the scale of goodness. We love God for his own sake and this makes us happy. Our natural inclination for happiness is left unfulfilled until it rests in God. For as Augustine says to God,

“You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is

43 Confessions XIII.3.

44 However, given Augustine’s metaphysical simplicity, I can’t completely rule this out (see below).

45 The Principle of Order, ii. 47.

46 Confessions, X.22

47 De Civitate Dei, XII.1

12 restless until it rests in you.”48 Thus the enjoyment (frui) of the divine as man’s proper end is our happiness. Consequently, we truly love ourselves only when we love God most.

However, given two Platonic doctrines prevalent in Augustine—divine simplicity and divine participation—it is equally plausible that Augustine thinks the answer is found in combining (3) and (4).

Thus God is identical with happiness—given divine simplicity—and we are made happy by God only to the degree which we participate in his own beatitude.49 But in either case, the outcome is the same—we really love ourselves only when we love God most.

48 Confessions, I.1.

49 In De Civitate Dei, V.11, Augustine says that God bestows on men true happiness by participating in him. Happiness therefore, is somehow related to divine participation.