Question

What is the self, according to Augustine in Confessions?

Accepted Answer

According to Augustine in Confessions, the self can only be conceived and understood in relation to God. God has made humans for Himself, and the heart of man will remain restless until it finds its rest in the Almighty. Self-realization, then, depends on the proper relationship between man and God.

Answer

Augustine believed that the self existed in two parts: the body and the soul. The body existed physically in the world and was subject to physical needs and desires. The soul, on the other hand, was the seat of consciousness and connected to God. The soul could be purified by turning towards God, and, in so doing, it could assert its rightful role as master of the body.
More specifically, Augustine saw the human mind as a kind of crude copy of the Trinity. Augustine thought that the three-part nature of God shaped human cognition. For instance, one part of this triad would be objects external to the self; a second part would be the mental process of recognizing the object; the third would be the volition or intentionality that causes this recognition.
Man's self awareness of his own cognitive abilities is vital to Augustine's theory of the self. It is because the self has a "memory of itself"—or, in other words, is aware of its own existence apart from the body and other subjects—that it qualifies, in Augustine's view, as an "image of God." The mind must "remember" itself, or shake off its connection to the physical world, to reestablish its vital connection to God.

Answer

In Augustine’s view, the self relates to the fact that we are created by God—and created in his image. While we have fallen into a world of sin, we need God’s grace to find our way back to him. To Augustine, in other words, the notion of self cannot be separated from the idea of spiritual development. According to Augustine, since we are made for God, our hearts cannot help being restless until we find our rest in him. The true self can only be discovered through knowledge and acceptance of God’s love.
Prior to Augustine’s conversion to Christianity, he indulged in the various pleasures that the world has to offer rather than focusing on the spiritual side of life. In his view, people following this way of life cannot be true to themselves.
This is in stark contrast to the twenty-first-century idea of the self, in which every person is expected to be able to be completely independent. Augustine likely would have been horrified that the modern idea of the self is completely removed from God and religion. While the self has come to signify arrogance, Augustine’s notion of self was intrinsically linked to mankind’s need for God.

Answer

Whereas modern-day secular conceptions of the self omit all mention of man's relationship to God, for religious thinkers such as Augustine, it was impossible to conceive of the self in any meaningful sense without taking the Almighty into consideration.
Simply put, Augustine believes that the self as we understand it cannot exist without the right relationship having been established between God and man. In practical terms, this means responding to God's grace, which, as always, is freely given.
In his natural state, man allows his ego to get the better of him. He leads a life of dissipation and self-indulgence in which the things of this world take priority over the worship of God and the cultivation of deep inner spirituality. Augustine knows whereof he speaks, for this is exactly the kind of lifestyle that he himself led prior to his conversion to Christianity.
So long as we remain in this natural state, our hearts will continue to be restless. However, if we respond to God's grace and turn our hearts towards him and away from the things of this world, then we will, at long last, find rest. In doing so, we will have achieved true self-fulfillment by establishing the right relationship with God.

Answer

St. Augustine has some very interesting ideas on the sense of self, the mind, and the idea of intelligence, primarily as a result of his time period and theological background. Given that Augustine lived in the fifth century CE, he was not privy to the understanding of the psyche and mind that came many centuries afterwards. He relied wholly on logic and his belief in God to form a philosophy of self and the mind.
He made an argument in response to the problem of other minds, which asks how can we know that others have minds (since we can only see their behavior), questioning the idea of “others” as intellectual beings. He posited the argument of other minds from analogy, which reasons that we can interpret others' mentality through analogy and thus have to assume that they are intelligent.
In terms of human perception and the mind of each person, Augustine believed that God played an intimate and constant role in how we perceive the world, much in contrast to later ideas by the likes of Descartes, who believed that God gave reason and let the mind follow the patterns set before it to make decisions and interpret the world. Augustine believed that God had a hand in everything we experience as well as in how we interpret it—a very strict view of predestination and God’s control over the world.

Confessions

What is the self, according to Augustine in Confessions?

Expert Answers

Unlock This Answer Now

Related Questions

From Confessions, what is the "self" according to Augustine?

What is the value of reading Saint Augustine's Confessions?

Analyze the differences between Augustine's Confessions to Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in relation to moral and societal obligation.

Analyze the differences between Augustine's Confessions and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in relation to spirituality and religion.

How would St. Augustine describe the self?