AUGUSTINE

By: ADG
AUGUSTINE
❏
Born in 354
❏
Most Eminent Western
Doctor
❏
First major Christian
ethical philosopher
❏
Augustine’s moral
philosophy is also
eudemonistic
HAPPINESS, WISDOM AND REASON

❏ Augustine regards moral philosophy as an enquiry into the

Summon Bonum: The supreme good, which affords the happiness
all people seek.

❏ Augustine also holds that happiness involves living in accordance

with reason, that is, living in a way that reason rules and orders
oneself.
GOD AND THE ORDER OF THINGS

❏ Augustine believes in a hierarchical structure of reality.

❏ True happiness thus consists in finding, possessing,

knowing, and loving the Supreme Being, God.
LOVE OF GOD AND MORAL LIVING

❏ For Augustine, love is the active center of our moral life, as love
moves us where it desires.

❏ We must be careful in what we love. As love can motivate us toward

what is good, it can also pull us toward the evil we think good.

❏ The love that brings highest fulfillment is that which desires what
ought to be loved above everything, God.
VIRTUE, DOUBLE LOVE AND CHARITY

❏ Augustine defines virtue as ‘the perfect love of God’

❏ Augustine depicts the prime virtue of love by the ‘double love’

command taught in the Bible.
SIN AND MORAL EVIL

❏ Peccatum, typically translated as sin.

❏ Akrasia- Weakness of will
❏ Augustine was a categorical Intentionalist in his view of sin. For
him, there are three necessary and sufficient conditions for
committing a sin: Receiving an evil suggestion, Taking pleasure in
the thought of performing the suggested action, and consenting to
perform the act.
❏ Morally evil acts are evil not because they are directed at
intrinsically bad object
ON LYING, JUST WAR, AND KILLING

❏ Augustine suggests that a person lies in uttering a statement if and only if

1.) The statement is false 2.) He believes that the statement is false 3.) he
says the statement with the intention of deceiving someone.

❏ Following Cicero and Ambrose, Augustine propose the theory of just

warfare which suggests that good men may undertake wars in obedience
to God/ some lawful authority. He believes that peacefulness in the face of
a serious wickedness / injustice that could only be brought to an end by
violence would be a sin.
THE FALL AND GOD’S GRACE

❏ Augustine contends that the first evils in creation are evil acts of free will
or the so-called sins. Moral evil is viewed as the privation of right order in
one’s will, in the same way darkness is the absence of light in place.
When the will abuses its freedom and willingly defects from supreme
goodness, it is deprives of right order, measure, and form it ought to
possess.

❏ Augustine believed that basic moral norms such as “Subordinate the

inferior to the superior,” and “Give everyone his due,’ are more or less
common to all people.
THANK YOU :))