"Love and St. Augustine"

Love and St. Augustine / Hannah Arendt / Edited by JV Scott, JC Stark / Translated by Wang Yinli and Chi Weitian

(This article is just a simple summary of reading, and there are many important concepts that have not been mentioned. At present, we just sort out the main theme, so as to have a sense of direction when reading.)

one,

This book was originally a doctoral dissertation completed by Elan at the University of Marburg in Germany in 1929. In the late 1950s, a publishing house hoped that Elan could translate the dissertation into English for publication. However, this work was delayed for many years and was unsuccessful until 1996. Finally, two scholars, JV Scott and JC Stark, sorted out Erlan's manuscript, edited it, and "officially" rediscovered it.

"Love and St. Augustine" is by no means the study of Augustine under the traditional theology, but the existentialism of the wave of thought in the 1920s. Olan read the flavor of existentialism from the Confessions, and used Augustine's words "I become a problem to myself ( quaestio mihi factus sum )" as the problem consciousness (in fact, the problem consciousness of existentialism), To ask how the medieval theologian answered this difficult question, the key to the question is the concept of "love of neighbor".

The chapter arrangement of the dissertation is not easy to understand at first glance, because he designed the article as a group drama, the cast includes Augustine, Plotinus, Stoicism, Neoplatonism and always. Heidegger, who did not appear, but revealed his presence between the lines. Erlan was late to the final chapter. After all the characters were portrayed in place, he quickly pushed the plot to the climax and reached the end. Therefore, after having a comprehensive vision and looking backwards, you can understand why Erlan wrote this way. .

The core inquiry of Oran is "how to understand the love of the neighbor who loves his neighbor as himself"? To answer this question, we have to first explain what "love" is, and then follow the combing and analysis of "love", and then introduce the discussion of neighbor's love step by step. The next step is to explain the relationship between "neighbor/neighbor relevance" and love, and finally to spell out the complete outline of "neighbor love". These three steps are the main theme of each chapter. The first two chapters are divided into three subsections. The first two subsections each represent pre-Christian theological thought and how Augustine transformed it into Christian theological terms. Therefore, Erlan will repeatedly throw out a certain profile of "love", analyze it in depth, and then point out contradictions or ask questions, follow this cycle, and move forward through negation, and finally stop at Augustine's neighbor's love, and Answer your own question accordingly.

two,

At the heart of "I am a problem with myself" is "I", the "I" as an independent individual who is confused about my own existence, because I am born mortal, and it is this "mortal" )" feature is frustrating. If people are mortal, what is the meaning of the things I love and pursue in my life? "I" was thrown into the world so naked, and then died out of the world. There is only a lonely "me" from beginning to end. Then the so-called "love of your neighbor" in the Bible and the "love of your neighbor" emphasized by Augustine can't help but be confusing (and this confusion will get deeper and deeper as the article goes on), after all, my own existence is meaningless, so how can I deal with it? Neighbors interested? And all that I love will be meaningless with death, so what is love?

Augustine's only definition of "love" is: desire ( appetitus ). He sees love as "a movement, all movements towards something". We desire something because it is some kind of " bonum, good", meaning that we love it for its own sake, which is an end in itself and not a means by which we acquire other things. "Desire" means that man desires to be connected with something, and man defines himself by the nature of the beloved (Commentary on 1 John: "What a man loves, he is."), because man is alone One body is born into the world, and as God's creation itself is destined to be a non-self-sufficient existence, so happiness can only occur when "the distance between the lover and the beloved disappears". But the tragedy is that the lover can't be called happy after getting what he wants, because the moment of getting it is the beginning of the fear of losing, we can't really have what we love, and death always takes everything. In order to overcome the threat of death, man can only pursue eternity and escape from time, and the only eternal, self-sufficient existence is God. So people should love God and have a relationship with him, so that even if the human body dies, he still exists (because man is what he loves and is defined by the beloved).

Here comes the book's most crucial contradiction: since human beings naturally want to be connected to something, this sense of loneliness can only be satisfied by loving something "outside me", after all what is within me is what I am. what I have, and what I have I will not desire. However, the Bible requires people to "love your neighbor as yourself." How is it possible to "love yourself" and what does it mean? Furthermore, Augustine believed that God is "working in us," and loving oneself is the same as loving God. But how can God be in man and be loved (how can God be both external and internal)?

Love is desire, and the lover desires happiness, but how does he know what happiness is before he has ever experienced it (or find out that it is happiness in the moment he experiences it)? Augustine considered this prior knowledge to come from "memory", saying:

 "If we can call memory the ability to remember things from the past, we can also call memory, without absurdity, what the mind presents to itself in the present, what the mind understands by virtue of its own thoughts." Since book page 94)

It's a transcendental human ability, knowledge stored in the "repository of consciousness" in the form of memory, in some "absolute past", that allows me to find happiness within myself rather than outside. In other words, I have long known what happiness is, but it has not yet reappeared in the present. Once I look back and look to the past, I can find it in the dim light, and then "transform the past into a possibility of the future." So memory opens a gateway to the absolute past, and I know what happiness is by tracing the source, so I can plan for the future (seeking happiness). Memory is, of course, something within me, but the object that the absolute past contains is by no means me alone. How does happiness, the embodiment of the highest good, ensure that all people have the same understanding? If it is of an own nature, then others are not guaranteed to have it, nor are they guaranteed to be the same. Precisely because the "absolute past" as the source of human beings is an external thing, when people see it, they will have the same perception. In Augustine, this source is God.

three,

What about neighbor love? It is enough that we love ourselves and God, but why should we love our neighbor (not to mention that the Bible's neighbor also includes your enemy)? First of all, it must be clear that to love oneself is actually to love "the God who is in oneself," not the physical, earthly self. Following this logic, loving neighbor is naturally the God who loves neighbor. All external attributes of neighbor are irrespective of whether he is good or evil, enemy or friend. Since he is a creature, his inner There is God at work in it, so Augustine can clearly distinguish between the evil deeds of man and the essence of man. To love "oneself/neighbor/God" is to find one's "from" through memory. The root of man is the answer to the essence of man.

Loving one's neighbor has another, more positive meaning. Love has the connotation of connecting with others, and loving one's neighbor also means forming an interconnected community with one's neighbor. The foundation of this community does not depend on belief itself, and belief in the same God alone is not enough to form a community of believers, let alone other non-Christians in the world. The cornerstone that can form a community is a historical fact: all people are descendants of Adam. What connects all human beings is kinship by blood, and human beings, as sons of Adam, also jointly inherit Adam's sin. After Adam ate the fruit of wisdom, God's punishment for him was death, and this historical fact deduces that all people are mortal. The presence of a neighbor is a living testimony of original sin, a constant warning. The only difference between Christians and non-Christians is that they experience this sin and repent of it. Only by confessing and repenting can one receive the grace to become " The new man” (the people of the old world belong to the world, and the people of the new world belong to God).

In this respect sin and love are equivalent. Whether it is the law of God or the second historical fact (that is, all people are descendants of Adam), after the revelation of sin, the relationship between man and God is no longer a simple relationship, but turns to God for help, which is the so-called grace:

 "When God made us, that is, made us again, we were truly free. But this time, he did not make us human - he had already done that - but good people. This is exactly what What his grace has accomplished, let us be new in Christ." (The Handbook of Faith, Hope and Love, quoted in p. 149 note 65 of this book)

The whole process can be roughly simplified as follows: Only by recognizing sin can we love rightly and be born again.

Four,

Summarizing the above, Augustine responded to the meaning of his own existence with "neighbor relatedness", which, in Elan's words, is the "dual origin" of human existence. The first meaning is that when people look back to God for salvation and love, they will find that others have become our neighbors (otherwise they are just meaningless others). The second meaning is that the neighbors share the original sin as my blood.