Posted 23 Dec 2010 · Report post In Dr. Peikoff's lecture course, "The Founders of Western Philosophy," there is a section on St. Augustine. He includes a quote from Augustine that really illustrates his tragic sense of life, and in fact it's one of the most vivid quotes describing a tragic sense of life that I've ever seen. But I don't have this lecture anymore, and I can't find the quote. Does anybody have it, or happen to know the quote I'm thinking of? I'd like to find it again. Thanks! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 23 Dec 2010 · Report post Unfortunately I do not know the quote nor do I own the lectures mentioned. But, I think that ewv owns the lectures as I have read his post when he quotes information from the lectures, so you might want to PM him. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 24 Dec 2010 · Report post Unfortunately I do not know the quote nor do I own the lectures mentioned. But, I think that ewv owns the lectures as I have read his post when he quotes information from the lectures, so you might want to PM him.I don't own a copy of the recording but I do have excellent notes, supplemented with quotes looked up in his sources when I could find them. I'll look for the Augustine material. I think I know what you are referring to and it came straight from the "bespotted" and "foul" Augustine himself. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 24 Dec 2010 · Report post In Lecture 7 on the Middle Ages, in the section on characteristic Christian ethics, he began with their view of man and life on earth as expounded by Augustine: life on earth is hell and human nature is depraved.From Augustine's City of God:That the whole human race has been condemned in its first origin, this life itself, if life it is to be called, bears witness by the host of cruel ills with which it is filled. Is not this proved by the profound and dreadful ignorance which produces all the errors that enfold the children of Adam, and from which no man can be delivered without toil, pain, and fear? Is it not proved by [man's] love of so many vain and hurtful things, which produces gnawing cares, disquiet, griefs, fears, wild joys, quarrels, lawsuits, wars, treasons, angers, hatreds, deceit, flattery, fraud, theft, robbery, perfidy, pride, ambition, envy, murders, parricides, cruelty, ferocity, wickedness, luxury, insolence, impudence, shamelessness, fornications, adulteries, incests, and the numberless uncleannesses and unnatural acts of both sexes, which it is shameful so much as to mention; sacrileges, heresies, blasphemies, perjuries, oppression of the innocent, calumnies, plots, falsehoods, false witnessings, unrighteous judgments, violent deeds, plunderings, and whatever similar wickedness has found its way into the lives of men, though it cannot find its way into the conception of pure minds? ... Who can describe, who can conceive the number and severity of the punishments which afflict the human race, -- pains which are not only the accompaniment of the wickedness of godless men, but are a part of the human condition and the common misery, -- what fear and what grief are caused by bereavement and mourning, by losses and condemnations, by fraud and falsehood, by false suspicions, and all the crimes and wicked deeds of other men? For at their hands we suffer robbery, captivity, chains, imprisonment, exile, torture, mutilation, loss of sight, the violation of chastity to satisfy the lust of the oppressor, and many other dreadful evils. What numberless casualties threaten our bodies from without, -- extremes of heat and cold, storms, floods, inundations, lightning, thunder, hail, earthquakes, houses falling; or from the stumbling, or shying, or vice of horses; from countless poisons in fruits, water, air, animals; from the painful or even deadly bites of wild animals; from the madness which a mad dog communicates, so that even the animal which of all others is most gentle and friendly to its own master, becomes an object of intenser fear than a lion or dragon, and the man whom it has by chance infected with this pestilential contagion becomes so rabid, that his parents, wife, children, dread him more than any wild beast! What disasters are suffered by those who travel by land or sea! What man can go out of his own house without being exposed on all hands to unforeseen accidents? Returning home sound in limb, he slips on his own doorstep, breaks his leg, and never recovers... Is innocence a sufficient protection against the various assaults of demons? That no man might think so, even baptized infants, who are certainly unsurpassed in innocence, are sometimes so tormented, that God, who permits it, teaches us hereby to bewail the calamities of this life, and to desire the felicity of the life to come. As to bodily diseases, they are so numerous that they cannot all be contained even in medical books. And in very many, or almost all of them, the cures and remedies are themselves tortures, so that men are delivered from a pain that destroys by a cure that pains... From this hell upon earth there is no escape, save through the grace of the Saviour Christ, our God and Lord. [saint Augustine (354-430) City of God, Translated by Marcus Dods, Book XXII, Chapter 22, http://www.logoslibrary.org/augustine/city/2222.html; quoted in Jones, History of Western Philosophy, Vol 2, The Medieval Mind, Harcourt Brace & World, 2nd ed, 1969, p.111-112.]A brief summary by Augustine:Let every one, then, who thinks with pain on all these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknowledge that this is misery. And if any one either endures or thinks of them without mental pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for he thinks himself happy because he has lost human feeling. [saint Augustine (354-430) City of God, Translated by Marcus Dods, Book XIX, Chapter 7, http://www.logoslibrary.org/augustine/city/1907.html]Addressing God in his Confessions he refers to himself in his earlier secular life but intends it to be universal about man:]Thou didst set me face to face with myself, that I might behold how foul I was, and how crooked and sordid, bespotted and ulcerous. [saint Augustine (354-430) Confessions, Translated by J. G. Pilkington, Book VIII, Chapter 7, http://www.logoslibrary.org/augustine/confessions/0807.html; quoted in Jones, History of Western Philosophy, Vol 2, The Medieval Mind, Harcourt Brace & World, 2nd ed, 1969, p.81.] Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 24 Dec 2010 · Report post He obviously possessed an amazing ability to introspect, probably well before the concept was formed. I can only say to him: "speak for yourself." Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 24 Dec 2010 · Report post It is too bad people aren't more historically literate. Can you imagine a sitcom based on this guy? Or a series of skits with him as the lead? He gets time-travelled here, and has many misadventures like landing the coaching gig for the New England Patriots, or inherits a life coaching business, or takes a job as a motivational speaker. Or ends up in Van Nuys California, or as a glee club officer. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 25 Dec 2010 · Report post It is too bad people aren't more historically literate. Can you imagine a sitcom based on this guy? Or a series of skits with him as the lead? He gets time-travelled here, and has many misadventures like landing the coaching gig for the New England Patriots, or inherits a life coaching business, or takes a job as a motivational speaker. Or ends up in Van Nuys California, or as a glee club officer.More likely a drug addict, homeless in LA. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 26 Dec 2010 · Report post Thanks so much, ewv! That's exactly the quote I was looking for. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites