Braniff Graduate School

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Browsing Braniff Graduate School by Subject "Augustine"

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    Augustine's De Beata Vita: On Christianity and Philosophy
    (2021-07-01T00:00:00-07:00) Heil, Kimberly; Dr. Matthew Walz; Dr. Daniel Burns; Fr. John Bayer, S.T.D., O.Cist.
    In Augustineâ s De beata vita: On Christianity and Philosophy, I articulate how Augustine understood the relationship between Christianity and philosophy at the time of his conversion, in light of the dialogue De beata vita. In the dialogue, Augustine and his interlocutors take up a philosophical genre, a philosophical mode of inquiry, and a philosophical question: this is a work on the happy life, in dialogue form, in which the interlocutors are asking what it takes for a person to be happy. Augustine is writing as one in a tradition of philosophers seeking to understand and pursue happiness, and makes ready reference to the arguments and conclusions those philosophers have made. The completion of the human inquiry in the dialogue is theological in nature: while happiness is seen by philosophers to be the possession or having of God, the fulfillment of this comes from Christianity in the form of the indwelling of the Holy Trinityâ a revealed truth. While philosophy is, in some modes, theological, revealed theology outstrips the capacities of philosophy. The two are consonant, however. To see this consonance, I engage in a close reading of the dialogue. Then, I look at the various authors whose influence on this particular dialogue are clear. The most notable of those are Ambrose, Cicero, and Plotinus. Finally, I make my argument that Augustine sees Christianity and philosophy as consonant: that is, Christianity encompasses true philosophy, and a Christian engaged in the activity of philosophizing is a philosopher par excellence. However, Christianity is not only philosophy, nor is philosophy a requirement for being a Christian, and Augustineâ s mother Monica demonstrates that. She plays an important role both as her particular status as a fully initiated Christian, and as a representative of the Church. Without formal philosophical training, she has attained to the summit of philosophy, and under her maternal care she shares her wisdom with all persons who are chastely seeking it.
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    Plotinus's Problem with Beauty
    (University of Dallas Braniff Graduate School, Classics Department, 2022-05-12) Broussard, Carroll Alexander
    In Book XIII of the Confessions, Augustine admits to a sin when he is moved by the beauty of songs in church. Yes, the Christian recognizes that the truths found in the Psalms are more valuable than the beauty of singing, but this reaction seems strange for the Platonic Augustine. After all, Plato, particularly in the Phaedrus, praises Beauty and its role in the philosophical life. It is easier to see why Augustine reacts the way he does not by looking to Plato, but to Plotinus, who is reluctant to refer to his first hypostasis as “the Beautiful.” For Plotinus, beauty was subordinate to good, not equal to it. A cursory reading of the Symposium and its various encomia of Eros (and eventually of the Beautiful) would leave one with the impression that Plato valued beauty just as much as good, but careful reading of Diotima’s lesson to Socrates reveals that Plotinus’s (and Augustine’s) caution of beauty is not so much a departure from Plato’s philosophy, but natural progression of it. This paper explores how Plato’s idea of the forms results from his departure from Heraclitean thought and how Plotinus sought to solve a problem in the Platonic ontological system.