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Department of "Philosophy"

Augustine the Blessed. Human problem

Abstract on the discipline "Philosophy"

Head: Developed by:

Professor student gr.U-213

Bystrova A.N ________ Logacheva I.B

(signature) (signature)

_________ ____ __________

(date of inspection) (date of submission for inspection)

Novosibirsk 2012

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………3

1 The Life of Augustine the Blessed…………………………………………4

2 The problem of man through the eyes of Augustine the Blessed……………6

3 Augustine on the origins of sin………………………………………….10

Conclusion……………………………………………………………….11 References……………………………………………………. .12

Introduction

The work of Augustine the Blessed aroused my particular interest. Having studied some facts from his biography, I realized that Augustine's works are devoted to the problem of man.

The whole life of St. Augustine took place against the backdrop of catastrophic events, terror, we are talking about the Late Empire the first of the totalitarian states of the modern type. His childhood coincided with the last surge of Roman power. In his mature years, the fall of the fortress walls of Rome fell - on August 24, 410 - before the king of the Visigoths, Alaric.

Age of St. Augustine became a period of demographic, social, spiritual and intellectual flowering of Christianity, the golden age of the Church Fathers - great thinkers who gave Christian literature their classic creations.

Blessed Augustine can be considered true father Western Christianity. While there were many great theologians in the East, Augustine was unparalleled in the West, and his teaching dominated Latin theological thought until the rise of medieval scholasticism.
The personality of Augustine is extremely attractive for its sincerity, depth and liveliness of mind, and the concreteness and immediacy of his interests make Blessed Augustine not only interesting, but also a person very close to us.

1 Life of St. Augustine

Augustine was born on November 13, 354 in the city of Tagaste, in North Africa. His father was a pagan, his mother, Saint Monica, was a deeply religious Christian. In 370, Augustine went to study rhetoric in the African capital Carthage. Education was conducted in Latin and Greek, but for all the time Augustine never learned the Greek language, but his professional training in the field of rhetoric increased. He was always aware of language as an instrument of creativity, for him language as a means of communication was an art.

At the age of nineteen, Augustine was introduced to the Manichaean teachings. In Carthage, a cosmopolitan city where the most diverse sects and beliefs flourished, Manichaeism enjoyed considerable popularity. The Manichaean influence forever left a mark on the thought of Blessed Augustine.

After receiving his education, St. Augustine began teaching rhetoric. During this time, he lived with a woman who had been his girlfriend for many years. They had a son, Adeodatus, his only child, and Augustine in his writings always speaks of him with particular tenderness.

In 383 he moved to Rome and lived there for some time teaching rhetoric. Soon he moved from there to Milan, where the great Ambrose was bishop, who made an indelible impression on Augustine and gave a definitely Christian direction to his spiritual development.

The final conversion of Augustine to Christianity is extraordinarily touching and convincingly described in book VIII of the famous Confessions. This event turned Augustine's life upside down. In April 389 he was baptized, in 391 he was ordained a presbyter and spent the rest of his life in the African city of Hippo, of which he became bishop in 395. He remained Bishop of Hippo for 35 years, until his death. During this period, he wrote many compositions, and also took an active part in church life. He became an indispensable participant in all African councils. As a theologian and rhetorician, Augustine actually led the church life in Africa. His enormous popularity and influence enabled him to make a great contribution to the legislative work of the African Church.

Blessed Augustine died on August 28, 430, during the siege of Hippo by a Goth army.

2 The problem of man through the eyes of St. Augustine

In the autobiographical work "Confession" Augustine describes his life in terms of mystical and spiritual experience, he speaks of that period of his life when, having already freed himself from Manichaeism, he had not yet converted to Christianity: , and often making an effort, I plunged again and again." This book is

evidence of the indomitable strength of his faith, inner honesty, ardor, fantasy and freedom of mind.

The main problem is the problem of a concrete self, a person as an irreproducible individual, as a personality in its individuality and particularity. “I myself,” says Augustine, “has become for me the most tangible problem, the big question, I am not aware of all that I am." With these words, Augustine lets us know that he has become an observer of his life from the outside, but he also addresses himself to inner world our soul, where only one should seek the truth. He constantly speaks about himself in his "Confession", without hiding anything, tells not only about his parents, homeland, people dear to him, but exposes his soul in all its subtlest curves, decrees and intimate experiences.

For example, “What have I learned, unfortunate, from what, remembering what, I now blush, especially from that theft, in which theft itself and nothing else was sweet to me? ... And yet, as far as I remember my then state of mind, I alone would not have done it. Therefore, I also loved the community of those with whom I stole…”
Analyzing his life, St. Augustine discovers emptiness in the depths of his being, the absence of God in those who live in sin. This is how he says about it: “... I laughed at these holy servants and Your prophets. What was the reason for this laughter? Only to the fact that You mocked me: gradually and quietly I was led to an absurd belief, for example, that a fig, when it is plucked, and the tree from which it is plucked, weep tears like milk.

The author repeatedly talks about his sins, he really confesses to God. I realized that this is the true value Confessions it must be studied, reread, thus searching for a pattern of inner life, mastering the art of reflection, the ability to transform the most modest events into a victim of praise.

I can say that confession is an expression of human feelings, a purification of the soul. The statement that a person consists of a soul and a body is directly related to the idea of ​​two levels of knowledge. At one level, cognition is connected with bodily sensations: we see, hear, etc. and thus learn about changeable objects. Such knowledge is unstable, impermanent. But there is, in addition, the knowledge of the soul. The soul is able to comprehend immutable, permanent objects. The soul is immortal. Augustine deepens and completes the proofs of the immortality of the soul. Thus, it proceeds from the self-consciousness of simplicity and spirituality, from which follows the indestructibility of the soul. Elsewhere, he derives the immortality of the soul from the presence of eternal truth in it: "If the soul were mortal, then Truth would die with it." The soul, in relation to everything bodily, has autonomy and spontaneous activity, since, together with the mind, it evaluates and judges on the basis of those criteria in which there is a certain “plus” regarding bodily objects. The latter, as you know, are fluid, changeable and imperfect, while the evaluation criteria that the soul possesses are unchanged and perfect. This is particularly convincing when we evaluate sensible objects in terms of mathematical, geometrical, aesthetic concepts, or when we judge actions in terms of ethical parameters.

Augustine Aurelius wants to know his soul through confession, which is the main goal of his work. He said that he confesses what he knows about himself and what he does not know about himself. Knowledge and knowledge is possible only thanks to God. It is He who gives a person to comprehend something.

For knowledge there is another way, rational. We collect together all kinds of scraps of information from different parts of memory, as well as abstract knowledge about patterns, ratios, numbers, in general, about what cannot be directly brought to memory by any of the senses.

St. Augustine said: “And my mental states are preserved by memory, only not in the form in which the soul once experienced them, but in a different, completely different one, corresponding to the power of memory.” Indeed, memories of experiences remain, but they either do not evoke the previous emotions, or the emotions do not correspond to the experiences. It turns out that in the memory are all the information received by a person in the study of sciences. “All my knowledge of grammar, of dialectics, of different types questions live in my memory, and it retains not the image of the object that remains in me, but the object itself. It did not resound and did not disappear, like a voice that left its mark in the ears. Augustine believes that thoughts are hidden in the distant caves of memory, and he would not be able to think about them if someone did not encourage him to dig them up. And when he draws them out, he must bring them together, and so the process of gathering takes place in the mind, which Augustine called "thinking."

For example, mental states are stored in memory, but it is no longer possible to save these experiences, since they were once experienced, it can be sadness, which we later experience more calmly. “Memory is like the stomach of the soul, and joy and sorrow are food, sweet and bitter: entrusted to memory, they are, as it were, intertwined in the stomach, where they can lie, but cannot retain the taste.” This is all the power of memory, the power of the mind: we remember what we knew before, remembered at a certain period, at the right time this information pops up again.

So it can be said that God lives in a person’s memory because he remembers him: “You live in it, because I remember You from the day I knew You, and in it I find You, remembering You.”

Knowledge here is like a remembrance, a new acquisition of eternal images that have already been planted by God in the memory of man. Memory contains everything, absolutely everything that can be known.

God for Augustine is a symbol of a happy life, joy. “And the real happy life is to rejoice in You, from You, for Your sake: this is a real happy life, and there is no other.”

After reading the "Confession", I noticed that Augustine most often talks about his sins, this is the problem of each of us. The reason for the appearance of all the troubles of a person is a sin committed earlier, many pagans of the period of late antiquity were convinced of this.

It is believed that upon reaching adulthood, when a person already has free will, he is capable of consciously committing a sin. To this Augustine objected, sin is not only the result of free choice: it is an attribute of the fallen nature of man itself. If a person is not with Christ, then he is against Christ. And how can one be against Christ, if directly sin? Therefore, unbaptized babies are also sinful.

Augustine, following the Apostle Paul, insisted that we often

We do what we do not want, or, on the contrary, we want what is not in

able to do, and, consequently, the will and actions are not related to each other

On the other hand, we sin against our will.

Here is how he describes the conflicts of will: "It was I who wanted, I who did not want: it was I who obsessively desired this, recklessly rejecting the other. Why did I fight with myself, tearing myself apart."

More often such a state occurs in a person when he is faced with a choice. This means that he is free. We make a choice thanks to the will, but in this case it may not be rational, i.e. not having a reasonable justification, erroneous. This choice is sin.

Conclusion.

So, confession is an expression of one's feelings, state of mind, purification of the soul. Confession is carried out by obedience to one's sins, which are the problem of man. Reading the "Confession", you find in it samples of yourself, as well as similar psychological processes that we all experience to a greater or lesser extent, but not everyone is equally sinful before God, for each person this is subjective. So the author of the work I have reviewed describes the problem of a specific “I”, which is a model for us, which will help us understand ourselves and get rid of sins.

Bibliography

1. Aurelius Augustine. Confession M., 1992
2. Bystrova A.N. How to write an essay on philosophy / guidelines. - Novosibirsk, 2007

In the process of development of society and history, 2 categories can be distinguished human existence, 2 categories of people: 1. those who live according to God. 2. those who live according to man are the city of God and the city of the earth.

Continuation from the city of the earth to the city of God. If the earthly city is the everyday life of a person, then the city of God is the true being of the symbolic expression of the universality of history, determines the laws of history.

Historical formation is carried out due to the fact that earthly man becomes historical, divine when he experiences a spiritual and religious transformation. As a result of the transformation, history is born.

History is the movement of each personality to the inner divine man, from which the city of God grows, the phenomenal manifestation of which is the church.

Diagram of history: unity of God and man -------- rupture due to sin ---- Christ, reunion.

It is the fall that leads to the differences between the world of the city of God and the city of the earth. That is when human history begins.

The main goal of history is the reunification of the city of God and the city of the earth by atonement for original sin through repentance, repentance, righteous activity. The historical process is predetermined, history inevitably moves towards a specific goal.

The central point of history is Christ, his life, which is the meaning and direction of history. The driving force of history is faith, the religious experience of transformation, when a person experiences an internal religious transformation and begins to act. History is something that must end according to faith.

Aurelius Augustine (Blessed)(354 - 430) - Christian theologian, bishop of the city of Hippo (North Africa, Roman Empire), laid the foundations of Catholicism as the main direction of Christianity at that time. He was one of the founders of early scholasticism. The main work of Augustine the Blessed - "On the City of God" - over the centuries has become a widespread religious and philosophical treatise, on which medieval theologians relied in the study and teaching of scholasticism.

Other famous works Augustine are: "On the Beautiful and Fit", "Against the Academicians", "On Order".

The following main provisions of the philosophy of Augustine the Blessed can be distinguished:

The course of history, the life of society is the struggle of two opposite kingdoms - the Earthly (sinful) and the Divine;

The earthly kingdom is embodied in state institutions, power, army, bureaucracy, laws, emperor;

The divine kingdom is represented by clergy - special people endowed with grace and close to God, who are united in the Christian Church;

The earthly kingdom is mired in sins and paganism and will sooner or later be defeated by the Divine kingdom;

Due to the fact that most people are sinful and far from God, secular (state) power is necessary and will continue to exist, but will be subordinate to spiritual power;

Kings and emperors must express the will of the Christian Church and obey her, as well as directly to the Pope;

The Church is the only force capable of uniting the world;

Poverty, dependence on others (usurers, landowners, etc.), submission are not pleasing to God, but as long as these phenomena exist, one must put up with them and endure, hope for the best;

The highest bliss is the happiness of a person, which was understood as a deepening in oneself, learning, understanding of the truth;

After death, the righteous receive the afterlife as a reward from God.

2. A special place in the philosophy of St. Augustine is occupied by reflections on God:

God exists;

The main proofs of the existence of God are his presence in everything, omnipotence and perfection;

Everything - matter, soul, space and time - are creations of God;

God not only created the world, but also continues to create at the present time, will create in the future;

Knowledge (feelings, thoughts, sensations, experience) are real and self-sufficient (self-reliant), but the highest, true, irrefutable knowledge is achieved only through the knowledge of God.

ontology a. built around the doctrine of God as the principle of being. The existence of God himself, according to A., can be deduced from the self-consciousness of a person, from the self-reliance of his thinking, while the existence of things - only in a more distant way. His ontology A. anticipated a number of ideas of R. Descartes. Unlike the ancient thinkers A. one of the first drew attention to the problem of the formation of the human personality and the development of society, its history. The first problem is considered by him in "Confession" - a lyric-philosophical autobiography, in which, on the basis of deep psychological introspection, A. revealed internal development himself as a person from infancy to the adoption of Christianity, showed the inconsistency of this formation and came to the conclusion that only Divine grace can save a person, save him from sin. The problem of the development of society is set out by A. in his main work "On the city of God." In it, A. developed the Christian philosophy of world history, according to which there are two opposite types of human community: the earthly world as the property of the devil (statehood) and the opposite world of God, which is represented catholic church. Hence the task of the church is to overcome the world of the devil, converting all of humanity to the "true faith". The content of the world history of A. reduces to this struggle, which should turn the "church militant" into a "church triumphant." At the same time, A. believed that any violence, whether it be violence against a child or state violence, is a consequence of the sinful depravity of a person. Although inevitable, it is deserving of contempt. Hence and state power A., although he recognized it, but characterized it negatively, calling it a big band of robbers. Arguing that without the help of God, a person is only capable of sin, A. contradicted his own teaching about the church as the “one-saving” power of Christianity, which he exalted in every way, put it even higher than the Gospels. A. Played an important role in the development of Catholic dogma. He actually developed the Christian doctrine of divine predestination, the sinfulness of the human race, divine grace, mercy, redemption, retribution, sacraments, etc. In essence, in his teaching, the Christian church received a theoretical (theological) substantiation of its doctrine. The authority of A. in matters of philosophy and theology in the Middle Ages was universally recognized and indisputable in all Catholic theology until the 13th century, before Thomas Aquinas.

In his epistemological concept Augustine comes from the phrase spoken by the Savior: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." Therefore, Augustine is sure that the problem of the existence of truth and its cognition is the main, key one for Christian philosophy. If truth does not exist, as skeptics claim, then neither does God. And if the truth is unknowable, then God is unknowable and all paths to salvation are closed to us. Therefore, for Augustine, the refutation of skeptics is extremely important, it is important to prove that truth both exists and is knowable.

Augustine devotes his first treatise Against the Academicians to this problem, in which he sets out his arguments against skepticism. Skepticism is Augustine's worst enemy; he undermines the foundations of morality, proving that everything is true or everything is false, and a person only chooses what he likes. Skepticism undermines the foundations of religion, proving that there is a God or that there is no God, as anyone pleases.

Developing a Christian Understanding of Man

Augustine interprets the problem of man from the point of view of 2 Christian dogmas: on the one hand, man is the image and likeness of God, and on the other, a sinful being, for our ancestors committed original sin. Therefore, when Augustine describes man as the image of God, he often elevates him, but immediately shows that man, as a sinful being, is not perfect, and often falls into seeming pessimism.

Orthodoxy is alien to the idea that the descendants of Adam are personally responsible for the sin of their forefathers as for their own sin. Thus, in the decree of the Carthaginian Council of 252, it is said that “baptism should not be forbidden to an infant who, having barely been born, did not sin in anything, but only, having descended from Adam in the flesh, perceived the infection of ancient death through birth itself,” and that when baptism he is forgiven not his own, but other people's sins. The legal understanding of "original sin" as a crime for which all people are responsible as for their personal sins was first introduced into the theology of Blzh. Augustine in his polemic with the Pelagians, who generally denied the corruption of human nature as a result of the fall of Adam. However, Augustine noticed the main thing correctly: the sinful corruption of human nature is hereditary and the inclination to sin manifests itself already at an early age. (According to the lectures of Ahm. Alipiy).

Therefore, the anthropology of Augustine cannot be understood without his Christology, without the fact that the Savior performed an act of atonement for human sins.

Speaking about the creation of man, Augustine says that man was created from nothing - both his body and soul. Man, according to Augustine, is the unity of soul and body. Man is "substance, consisting of body and soul, endowed with reason." Here he objects to the Platonists, who argued that the essence of man is only the soul. Augustine corrects the Platonists by saying that man is a rational soul in control of its own body.

The body is not the tomb of the soul, for, as Augustine writes, answering the Platonists, who asserted that the body is fetters, the tomb of the soul: "Does anyone love his own fetters?" Body and soul are of a good nature, provided that the body is conceived as that part of man's nature which is subordinate to the soul. But because of the fall, the body got out of subordination, and the opposite happened: the soul became the servant of the body. Christ, by His redemptive sacrifice, restored the original order, and people again understood that the body should serve the soul.

1. Trinity of the soul

Although a person is a unity of soul and body, body and soul are still completely different substances. Moreover, the soul is given preference. Although both are changeable, the soul has no spatial structure and only changes over time. And if so, then the soul does not mix with the body, but is always in the body. The soul is the basis of life, the rational principle; it is the soul that imparts life to the body, and allows through the body to cognize the sensible world. But the soul does not mix with the body, remaining connected with it, but not merged.

The depth of the soul manifests itself as the unity of the trinity

1) consciousness (memoria),

2) reason (intelligentia) and

3) will (voluntas)

and, therefore, there is an image of the divine trinity.

St. Augustine stressed that the will is an attribute of nature.

2. The soul is immortal, but not eternal

Our soul is immortal, but not eternal. Augustine distinguishes between these terms, since only the changeless is eternal. Matter, according to Augustine (unlike the Platonists), is not nothing, but is higher than non-existence; Augustine calls matter everything that changes. Consequently, there is matter not only sensible, but also intelligible. If there is intelligible matter, then it also has some intelligible form. In particular, our soul, according to Augustine, is a formed spiritual matter.

Since the soul is changeable, it also participates to some extent in non-existence, therefore it is also created from non-existence. This is what unites our soul with the material world, and what distinguishes it is that its change occurs only in time, and not in time and space, as with material objects.

Augustine uses the concept of "matter" rather in the Plotinian sense than in our ordinary understanding. For Plotinus, the soul is matter for the mind, the mind is matter for the one, i.e. matter is everything that can take on some form, and form, as we remember, also cannot be perceived only as a material spatial category. Form is everything through which the cognizability of objects is realized. Augustine also understands the terms "matter" and "form" in approximately the same way. Therefore, when Augustine says that our soul has matter and form, in no case should it be taken in a sensual way.

St. Augustine says that a man would not have died if he had not sinned.

Definition 1

Aurelius Augustine - ($354 - $430) a key figure in Christian philosophy, theologian, representative of patristics, founder of Augustinism, the Augustinian order.

The views and works of Augustine were prepared by the previous tradition of Christian thought and Latin patristics. St. Augustine's teaching the culmination of all patristics .

Many parts of his life can be traced back to his autobiography Confessions. The most significant and monumental work "On the City of God".

It is known that he went to Christianity through neoplatonism, skepticism, and was converted to faith by Basil the Great.

In the work "Confession" Augustine turns to God, talking about the path that everyone is destined to go: from imperfection to Man. A person confesses before God, who knows everything about him, before whom his conscience is open. But it is not the Creator who needs it, but the person himself, in order to verbalize the life he has lived.

Memory Theme

In the tenth book of the Confessions, Augustine touches theme of memory.

Memory does not consist of sensual objects, but of their images that instantly appear before the mental gaze of the one who remembered them.

At the disposal of a person is everything that he can perceive with his senses, everything except for the forgotten. In this place he meets himself and begins to remember what he did, when, where and what he felt at that time, and how he did it.

There are all his knowledge, which a person received in the process of comprehending the free sciences, and those knowledge that he has not yet forgotten. We do not contain images, but the objects themselves. Everyone is in memory, and it retains not the image of the object, but the object itself.

Remark 1

In order to remember something, a person uses the power of his memory, with the help of which he is able to find and name the desired image. Mental states are stored in memory

Memory is the soul, the mind. Augustine calls memory the "stomach" of the soul, and joy and sorrow - food.

“I name the image of the sun - and it is in my memory; I remember not the image of the image, but the image itself, which appears when I remember it. I say "memory" and I know what I'm talking about. And where can I learn about it, if not in the memory itself? Does she see herself with the help of an image, and not directly?

Speaking of forgetfulness, we also extract the concept of it from our memory.

“But if we keep in memory what we remember, then, if we don’t remember what forgetfulness is, we could not, having heard this word, understand its meaning; forgetfulness, therefore, is remembered by memory: its presence is necessary in order not to forget, and at the same time, in the presence of it, we forget. Does it not follow from this that it is not forgetfulness itself that is present in memory when we remember it, but only its image, for, if it were present, it would make us not remember, but forget?

A person stores himself as a holistic image in memory. “Here I am, remembering myself, I, the soul.

It is not surprising if what is outside of me is far from me, but what is closer to me than myself? And now I cannot understand the power of my memory, and yet without it I could not name myself. In memory there is everything that was only in the soul.

We know about God only because we already share in him. He is in our memory. Thus, in memory we do not deal with the same thing that we once experienced. This is what a person uses to reconstruct himself, his image. Only in this way does the person himself appear. Memory allows him to look at himself from the outside, to meet with himself. Without it, a person is not able to name himself.

Influence of Plato

Augustine's worldview is a sensitive and meaningful compilation of Christian teachings with ancient philosophy, Neoplatonism.

With the help of this teaching, he comprehended the problems of the universe. In philosophy, he saw a means of proving the truth of religion.

Remark 2

The foundation of his theology is the teachings of Plato and the Neoplatonists. Augustine believed that these philosophical concepts are capable of solving the problems posed.

The Augustinian variation of Pato's philosophy of ideas, Christian Platonism, was relied upon in a theological and personalistic sense. Augustine said that in God there is an ideal image of the real world. Augustine, like Plato, has two worlds, one ideal in God, the other real - in the world that arose through the embodiment of an idea into matter.

Blessed Augustine was in solidarity with the tradition of Greek philosophy and did not deny that the meaning of human existence lies in happiness, which is determined by philosophy. Happiness is comprehended only in God. Through the knowledge of God and through the trials of the soul, human happiness can be achieved.

Thinking in the style of Plato, Augustine proposes to posit the soul spiritualistically. The soul is a substance, original, not corporeal. It has nothing material, but only the function of thinking, memory and will, differing from the body in perfection. This is a characteristic understanding of the soul in ancient philosophy. Augustine models it in the light of the Christian religion and adds an important feature - the perfection of the soul comes from God, it is close to him and immortal. There is a certain knowledge about the soul, with the help of the soul we come to know the highest idea of ​​the good, the idea of ​​God.

“On the quantity of the soul” is the work of the outstanding Christian theologian Augustine Blessed Aurelius (lat. Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, 354-430). *** The soul is a substance that does not consist of earth, water, air, fire, or any combination of them. Other famous writings of Augustine the Blessed are "On the Immortality of the Soul", "Confession", "Letters", "On Various Questions", "On Order", "On the Blessed Life" and "Monologues". The works of the genius of theological thought Augustine Blessed Aurelius served as the basis for the emergence of new trends: Christian neoplatonism and symbolism.

Evodius. Since I see that you have a lot of leisure, I ask you to answer me the questions that, it seems to me, occupy me quite well in time and appropriately. Agree that quite often, when I asked you about something important, you stopped me with some Greek saying that warned me to seek out what is above us. But I do not think that we are above ourselves. And if I ask about the soul, then I don’t deserve the answer: “What do we care about what is above us?” For I only want to know what we are.

Augustine. List briefly what you want to hear about the soul.

Evodius. If you please: I have this prepared by long reflections. I ask: where does the soul come from, what is it, how great is it, why is it given to the body, what does it become when it enters the body, and what - when it leaves it?

Augustine. Your question about where the soul comes from, I have to understand in a double sense. After all, we can ask: where does this person come from? both when we want to know where his homeland is, and when we ask what it consists of, what elements and things. Which of these do you want to know when you ask the same about the soul?

Evodius. Both, but what you should know about before - I prefer to leave it to your discretion.

Augustine. The homeland of the soul, I believe, is God himself who created it. But I cannot name the substance of the soul. I do not think that it was one of those ordinary and well-known elements that fall under our bodily senses: the soul consists neither of earth, nor of water, nor of air, nor of fire, nor of any combination of them. If you asked me what a tree is made of, I would tell you these four well-known elements, of which, it must be assumed, everything like that consists, but if you continued to ask: what is the earth itself made of, or water, or air, or fire, - I would not have found what to answer. Similarly, if they ask: what is a person made of, I will answer: from the soul and body, and if they ask about the body, I will refer to the indicated four elements. But when I ask about the soul, which has its own special substance, I am in the same difficulty as if I were asked: what is the earth made of?

Evodius. Why do you say that it has its own substance when you said that it was created by God? I don't understand this.

Augustine. But after all, I do not deny that God created the earth, but at the same time I cannot say what the earth consists of. For the earth is a simple body precisely because it is earth, and hence it is called the element of all those bodies that are composed of four elements. consequently, the idea expressed by us that the soul was created by God and has some nature of its own does not contain a contradiction. After all, God himself created this special, its own nature, just as he created the nature of fire, air, water and earth, from which everything else is composed.

Evodius. But after all, we produce mortal things, and God created the soul, as it seems to me, immortal. Or do you think otherwise?

Augustine. So you would like people to do the same as God did?

Evodius. I didn't say it. But just as he, being immortal, created something immortal in his own likeness, so what we create in our own image, who were created immortal by God, should be immortal.

Augustine. You would be right if you painted a picture in the image of what you consider immortal in yourself, but in this case you are depicting on it the likeness of a body that is completely mortal.

Evodius. How then am I like God, if I cannot create anything immortal, as he does?

Augustine. Just as the image of your body cannot have the power that it has your body so one should not be surprised if the soul does not have as much power as the one in whose image it was created.

Augustine (354 - 430)

Hayagriva dasa: Augustine believed that the soul is spiritual and incorporeal, but he also believed that the soul of the individual does not exist before birth. The soul acquires immortality only with the death of the body and then continues to live in eternity.
Srila Prabhupada: If the soul is created, how can it be immortal? How can the soul be sometimes not eternal?
Hayagriva dasa: Augustine used to say that the soul becomes immortal after its creation, but at some point it comes into being.
Srila Prabhupada: Then what does he consider death?
Hayagriva dasa: Augustine recognizes two types of death: physical death, when the soul leaves the body, and soul death that the soul experiences when God abandons it. When a person is cursed, he is faced not only with physical death, but also with the spiritual death of the soul.
Srila Prabhupada: Figuratively speaking, when a person forgets his place, he experiences something like death, but the soul is eternal. What Augustine calls spiritual death is forgetfulness. When a person loses consciousness, he forgets who he is, but when he dies, his consciousness will not return to him. Of course, as long as a person does not gain freedom from material existence, he is spiritually dead, even existing in a material form. Forgetting your true self is a kind of death. But when we live in the consciousness of God, we are truly alive. In any case, the soul is eternal and survives the destruction of the body.
Hayagriva dasa: Augustine believed that in some cases the state of oblivion becomes eternal.
Srila Prabhupada: This is wrong. Our consciousness can always be revived - this is the belief of the Krsna consciousness movement. We say that a person is unconscious during sleep, but if you call him again and again, the sound of his name enters his ear and he wakes up. Similarly, the process awakens us to spiritual consciousness. Then we can live a spiritual life.
Hayagriva dasa: Augustine used to say that God forever rejects the damned soul, dooming it to eternal torment.
Srila Prabhupada: It can be "forever rejected" in the sense that it can be forgotten for millions of years. It may seem like an eternity, but our spiritual consciousness can be revived at any moment through good association, through the method of hearing and chanting.
Therefore devotional service begins with sravanam, hearing. Listening is extremely important, especially in the beginning. If we hear the truth from a self-realized soul, we can awaken to spiritual life and remain spiritually alive in devotional service.
Hayagriva dasa: In The City of God, Augustine mentions two cities, or two societies: the demonic and the divine. In one city the unifying factor is the love of God and the spirit, while in the other the love of the world and the flesh predominates. Augustine writes: “These are two loves, one of which is holy and the other impious; one is universal and the other is individualistic; one is obedient to God, and the other asserts itself in rivalry with God.”
Srila Prabhupada: A similar allegory is given in the Srimad-Bhagavatam. The body is compared to the city, and the soul is compared to the king of this city. There are nine gates in the body, and the king can leave the city through these gates. A detailed description is contained in the Srimad-Bhagavatam.

Hayagriva dasa: Augustine seems to recognize the transcendence of God, but denies that the Lord is omnipresent as the Paramatma that accompanies every individual soul. He writes: "God is not the soul of all things, but the creator of all souls."
Srila Prabhupada: Then how to understand that God is all-pervading? Paramatma is accepted as the Supersoul in both the Brahma-samhita and the Bhagavad-gita.
upadrashtanumanta ca bharta bhokta mahesvarah
paramatmeti chapy ukto dehe 'smin purusah parah
“There is another in this body, transcendent, enjoyer. This is the Lord, the supreme controller, who watches over the living entity and authorizes all his actions, and who is called the Supersoul” (Bg. 13.23). God is present in every atom.
vistabhyaham idam krtsnam
ekamshena sthito jagat
“With one part of Myself I pervade and support the entire universe” (Bg. 10.42).
vadanti tat tattva-vidas tattvam yaj jnanam advayam
brahmeti paramatmeti bhagavan iti sabdyate
“Informed transcendentalists who have realized the Absolute Truth call this non-dual substance Brahman, Paramatma or Bhagavan” (Bhag. 1.2.11). Certainly, God has the potency of omnipresence. It's impossible to deny.
Hayagriva dasa: Augustine objects to Origen's assertion that the body is like a prison. He writes: “If the opinion of Origen and his followers that matter was created so that souls could be imprisoned in the body, as in a penal colony for sins, were true, then those whose sins are lighter would have lighter and lofty bodies, and those whose crimes are great, lower and heavier.”

Srila Prabhupada: The soul, in essence, is an integral part of God, but it is imprisoned in various kinds of bodies. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says:
sarva-yonisu kaunteya murtayah sambhavanti yah
tasam brahma mahad yonir aham bija pradah pita
“Know, O son of Kunti, that all kinds of life are generated by material nature, and I am the seed-giving father” (Bg. 14.4). Different species come out of the mother, material nature. They are found in earth, water, air and even fire. However, individual souls are integral parts of the Supreme, who fertilizes this material world with them. The living entity then comes to the material world through the womb of some mother. The soul seems to emerge from matter, but it is not composed of matter. Souls, eternally part and parcel of God, take on different types of bodies according to righteous and unrighteous deeds or desires. The desires of the soul determine the higher or lower body. In any case, the soul remains the same. Therefore it is said that those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness see the same souls in every single body, be it the body of a brahmin or a dog.
vidya-vinaya-sampanne brahmane gavi hastini
suni chaiva sva-pake ca panditah sama-darsinah
“The humble sages who have true knowledge look alike on a learned and well-mannered brahmin, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [untouchable]” (B.-g., 5.18).
Hayagriva dasa: Augustine saw in Adam the root of humanity. He writes: “God knew how
it would be beneficial for this society when it is often reminded that the human race is rooted in one person precisely in order to show how pleasing it would be to God if people - although there are many of them - were one.
Srila Prabhupada: Our Vedic concept is similar. We say that humanity is descended from Manu. From Manu we have received the Sanskrit word manusyah, which means "descended from Manu" or "human being." Manu himself comes from Brahma, the first living being. Thus, living beings come from other living beings, not from matter. Brahma, in turn, comes from the Supreme Lord as a rajo-guna avatar. Brahma is an incarnation of the rajo-guna, the mode of passion. Ultimately, all living beings are descended from the Supreme Being.
Hayagriva dasa: Like Origen, Augustine believed that the soul is created at a certain moment, but unlike Origen, he denied reincarnation: “It is enough for all these adherents of Plato to frighten us with reincarnation as a punishment for our souls. The transformation is ridiculous. It cannot be that souls return to this world for punishment. If we are created - even mortal - thanks to God, then how can returning to the body - a gift of God - be a punishment?
Srila Prabhupada: Does he really think that if we get the body of a pig or similar low creature, then this is not a punishment? Why does someone get the body of King Indra or Lord Brahma, and someone gets the body of a pig or an insect? What will he say about the pig's body? If the body is a gift from God, then it can also be God's punishment. If a person deserves a reward, he gets the body of Brahma or King Indra, and if he deserves punishment, the body of a pig.
Hayagriva dasa: What can you say about the human body? Is it a gift or a punishment?
Srila Prabhupada: There are many people who are prosperous and suffering. Pain and pleasure come to us according to the body. As explained in the Bhagavad Gita:
matra-sparshas tu kaunteya shitoshna-sukha-duhkha-dah
agamapayino 'nityas tams titikshasva bharata
“O son of Kunti, happiness and sorrow come and go, replacing each other like winter and summer. They arise from the contact of the senses with the objects of perception, O descendant of Bharata, therefore one must learn to endure them patiently, remaining unperturbed” (Bg. 2.14). An old person may be very sensitive to cold, while a child may not feel it. Perception is relative and depends on the body. An animal can run without clothes and not feel the cold, but a person cannot. Thus, the source of pleasure and pain is the body. We can see this as either a punishment or a reward.
Hayagriva dasa: According to Augustine, the soul of each individual person is not necessarily sentenced to suffering on earth for their own desires or sins, but for the original sin of Adam, the first man. He writes: “When the first couple (Adam and Eve) were punished by God's judgment, the whole human race... was present in the first man. And what was generated is already human nature, not originally created, but what it became after the first sin of their forefathers and judgment on them - at least this refers to the sinful and mortal principle in people. In this sense, the individual takes on the karma of the whole family.
Srila Prabhupada: If so, why does he call the body a gift. Why does he say that this is not a punishment? The first person was punished, the person after him was punished, and so on. Sometimes the disease of the father is inherited by the son. Isn't this a form of punishment?
Hayagriva dasa: Then the human form is already a punishment in itself?
Srila Prabhupada: Yes. And at the same time, one can consider human life as a gift, because it is given by God. We should think that if the Lord gave us this body as a punishment, then it is His mercy, because by being punished, we can be cleansed and move towards God. Devotees think in this way. Although this body is a form of punishment, we consider it a reward, because by suffering punishment we advance towards God-realisation. Even if the body is given by God so that we can improve, it can thus be considered a gift.
Hayagriva dasa: According to Augustine, the physical body precedes the spiritual: “What is sown in the natural body, it grows the spiritual body. If there is a natural body, then there is also a spiritual body. But the first is not the spiritual, but the physical. The first man was from the earth; the second - from heaven... But the body, which belongs to the life-giving spirit, will become spiritual and immortal, and under no circumstances will be able to die. It will be immortal just as the created soul is immortal.”
Srila Prabhupada: Why does he speak of immortality only in connection with man? Every living being has an immortal body. As we said, getting into a mortal body is a form of punishment. The individual undergoes an evolutionary process from lower species to higher ones. Every soul is an integral part of God, but due to some sinful activities, a living being comes to the material world. The Bible says that Adam and Eve lost Paradise due to disobedience to God and ended up in the material world. The soul belongs to the heavenly paradise, the planets of Krishna, but somehow or other it fell into this material world and took on a body. According to our activities, we are elevated or degraded, becoming either a demigod, or a human being, or an animal, or a tree, or a plant. But in any case, the soul always remains away from the material body. This is confirmed in the Vedic literature. Our real spiritual life begins when we get rid of material pollution or transmigration.
Hayagriva dasa: Speaking of peace, Augustine writes: “Peace between mortal man and His creator consists in consistent obedience, governed by faith, according to the eternal law of God; peace between man and man consists in a regulated fellowship... Peace in the heavenly city consists in a perfectly ordered and harmonious community of those who find their joy in God and in each other in God. Peace in its ultimate meaning is the tranquility that comes from order.”
Srila Prabhupada: Peace means to come into contact with the Supreme Personality of Godhead. A person in ignorance thinks that he is enjoying this world, but when he comes into contact with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the supreme controller, he understands that the enjoyer is God. We are servants whose purpose is to please God. A servant provides for the needs of his master. In fact, the master does not need anything, but he enjoys the company of his servants, who, in turn, enjoy His company.
A person who serves the people is very happy when he gets a good post in the government, and the owner is happy to get a very faithful servant. This is the relationship between the individual soul and God, and when that relationship is broken, the individual soul is said to exist in maya. When this relationship is restored, the individual is in his spiritual consciousness, which we call Krishna consciousness, by which he understands that the Supreme God is the real enjoyer and proprietor as well as the Supreme Being. When we understand the transcendental qualities of God, we become happy and have peace.
Hayagriva dasa: Augustine believed that neither activity nor meditation by itself was sufficient. It is necessary that one complement the other: “A man should not be so attached to the meditation on God that during meditation he does not think about the needs of his neighbor, just as he should not be so absorbed in activity that he does not think about God.”
Srila Prabhupada: If you don't think about God, how can you be active in His service? Actual meditation is meditation on the Supreme Personality of Godhead, or Paramatma, residing in the core of the heart. However, activity and meditation should go hand in hand. It is commendable if we sit and think of God, but even better if we work for God as God wills. If you love me and just sit and think of me, that's commendable. This can be considered meditation. However, if you love me, it is better that you obey my commands. This is more important.
Hayagriva dasa: Augustine imagined the spiritual world as a world in which the movements of spiritual bodies “will be so inexpressibly beautiful that I dare not say anything about them, except that they will be just as balanced, so graceful and so beautiful, as a place becomes in which there is no nothing inappropriate. Wherever the spirit wishes to be, the body will be there in the twinkling of an eye... God will be the source of all satisfaction. He will be the consummation of all our desires, the object of our endless contemplation, inexhaustible love, our tireless praise... Souls in bliss will still have free will, but sin will not have the power to tempt them.”
Srila Prabhupada: Yes, sin cannot touch one who remains in touch with God. According to our desire, we associate with the modes of material nature and get various types of bodies. Nature, as Krishna's agent, gives us the opportunity by providing us with a material body, which is like a machine. When the son insists, “Dad, give me a bike,” the loving father relents. As explained in the Bhagavad Gita:
isvarah sarva-bhutanam hrd-dese 'rjuna tisthati
bhramayan sarva-bhutani yantrarudhani mayaya
“The Supreme Lord, O Arjuna, resides in everyone's heart and directs the wanderings of all living beings, who are as if in a machine created by the material energy” (Bg. 18.61). The Supreme Father, Krishna, is located in the core of everyone's heart. According to the desire of the living entity, the Father provides him with a body made of material energy. This body is bound to suffer, but the spiritual bodies in Vaikuntha are not subject to birth, old age, disease, and death, and the threefold suffering. They are eternal and full of knowledge and bliss.
Hayagriva dasa: According to Augustine, mind, reason and soul are one and the same.
Srila Prabhupada: No, they are different entities. The mind acts according to the intellect, and the intellect of different living beings is different. Their minds are also different. The intelligence of a dog is not equal to that of a human being, but it cannot be said that a dog has no soul. The soul is placed in different bodies, which have different types intellect, different ways of thinking, acting, feeling and desires. The mind and intellect differ according to the body, but the soul remains the same everywhere.
Hayagriva dasa: By identifying the soul with the body and mind, Augustine could justify the killing of animals. He writes: “Indeed, some people try to stretch the interpretation of the prohibition (“Thou shalt not kill”) in order to protect animals and livestock and outlaw the killing of such animals. But why then not include plants and everything else that has roots and is nourished by the soil. Abandoning all this nonsense, we do not attribute "Thou shalt not kill" either to plants, because they have no feelings, or to unintelligent animals that fly, swim, run or crawl, because they are not connected with us either by intimacy or common ties. . According to the wise law of the creator, they are intended for use by us, dead or alive. It remains for us to attribute the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” only to a person, to himself or to others.
Srila Prabhupada: The Bible says "Thou shalt not kill" without any qualifications. Vedic philosophy allows one living being to serve as food for another living being. It `s naturally. As stated in the Srimad-Bhagavatam, animals with hands eat animals without hands. Four-legged animals eat those who cannot move, as well as plants and vegetables. Thus, the weak serves as food for the strong. Such is the law of nature. However, our philosophy of Krishna consciousness is not based on the fact that plant life is less sensitive than animal life and animal life is less sensitive than animal life. human life. We look at all human beings, animals, plants and trees as living beings, spirit souls. We can eat animals or plants - in any case, we must inevitably eat some living beings. Hence, it becomes a matter of choice. Apart from vegetarian or non-vegetarian diet, we are mainly interested in Krishna prasadam. We accept only the remnants of what Krishna eats. In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna says: patram pushpam phalam toyam yo me bhaktya prayacchati tad aham bhakty-upahritam asnami prayatatmanah “If a person with love and devotion offers Me a leaf, flower, fruit or some water, I will certainly accept his offering” (B.- g., 9.26). This is our philosophy. We take care to eat the remnants of Krishna's food, which we call prasadam, mercy. We should not touch meat or anything that cannot be offered to Krishna.
yajna-sistasinah santo muchante sarva-kilbishaih
bhunjate te tv agham papa ye pachanty atma-karanat
“The devoted servants of the Lord are freed from all kinds of sin by eating food that has been sacrificed to the Lord. Those who prepare food for the sake of enjoying it themselves, verily, taste only sin” (Bg. 3.13).

From the book "Dialectical Spiritualism"