Turn Inward: Augustine on the Natural Sciences

In the past two decades or so, debates about science vs. religion have become all the rage.

Frankly – I have found such discussions to be absolutely useless, if only because the participants who engage in such matters usually end up creating caricatures of ideas and viewpoints.

As time has passed though, the whole “Creationism/Evolution” controversy has essentially hit a dead-end.   Lots of people I know who were jumping up and down like mad jack-rabbits for one side or another went on to other things to argue about – limits of free speech versus Political Correctness, the migrant crisis in Europe and the UK, Islamism – Islamophobia?   etc. etc.

In the midst of my Augustinian studies for this blog, I did run across a rather intriguing paragraph from Augustine of Hippo’s De Genesi ad Litteram, one that I wish I had known about a very very long time ago.

As Augustine is remarkably modern in his tone and sentiments, I’ll just quote without commentary.

There is knowledge to be had, after all, about the earth, about the sky, about the other elements of this world, about the movements and revolutions or even the magnitude and distances of the constellations, about the predictable eclipses of moon and sun, about the cycles of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, fruits, stones, and everything else of this kind. And it frequently happens that even non-Christians will have knowledge of this sort in a way that they can substantiate with scientific arguments or experiments. Now it is quite disgraceful and disastrous, something to be on one’s guard against at all costs, that they should ever hear Christians spouting what they claim our Christian literature has to say on these topics, and talking such nonsense that they can scarcely contain their laughter when they see them to be toto caelo, as the saying goes, wide of the mark. And what is so vexing is not that misguided people should be laughed at, as that our authors should be assumed by outsiders to have held such views and, to the great detriment of those about whose salvation we are so concerned, should be written off and consigned to the waste paper basket as so many ignoramuses.

Whenever, you see, they catch some members of the Christian community making mistakes on a subject which they know inside out, and defending their hollow opinions on the authority of our books, on what grounds are they going to trust those books on the resurrection of the dead and the hope of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, when they suppose they include any number of mistakes and fallacies on matters which they themselves have been able to master either by experiment or by the surest of calculations? It is impossible to say what trouble and grief such rash, self-assured know-alls cause the more cautious and experienced brothers and sisters. Whenever they find themselves challenged and taken to task for some shaky and false theory of theirs by people who do not recognize the authority of our books, they try to defend what they have aired with the most frivolous temerity and patent falsehood by bringing forward these same sacred books to justify it. Or they even quote from memory many things said in them which they imagine will provide them with valid evidence, not understanding either what they are saying, or the matters on which they are asserting themselves (1 Tm 1:7).

 

Ethikos: Aristotle on Virtue

The last couple of blog posts from the Turn Inward series highlighted an important concept for Augustine of Hippo’s journey toward religious faith and psychological knowledge – namely that of friendship.

We know from his Confessions that much of his ideas regarding friendship and what constituted the good life was derived from his readings of the Roman philosopher, orator, and politician – Marcus Tullius Cicero.    However, Cicero himself was elucidating and refining this concept of friendship transmitted to him through his own studies in Greek philosophy.I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on this Mediterranean tradition of the Graeco-Roman world and explore the foundations of ethics and morality.If we recall from previous discussions – friendships can be defined by three characteristics

1. Pleasure
2. Utility
3. Virtue

Pleasure and Utility seems quite comprehensible to our modern sensibilities.   But Virtue?   Well, as has been made apparent by all the questions I end up getting – Just What Do You Mean By Virtue?

Even the word seems somewhat…..off-kilter to the average person.   It seems to conjure images of priests at pulpits, nuns with rulers, school teachers haranguing students, and members of the older generation wagging their fingers at their grandchildren.

One insightful young fellow told me that speaking of Virtue set off the “bullshit alarm” in his head…..that or the “speaker must be judging me somehow.”

I find it rather interesting that a word like that could carry so many associations and uncover many anxieties – especially since no one seems to bother to ask what the word meant in its original form.  In other words:  What did being virtuous mean to the Graeco-Roman thinker?

Aristotle Contemplates a Bust of Homer, by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

There is one Greek philosopher whose examination of virtue and ἠθικός (trans: ethikos or ethics) stands above the rest – Aristotle.     This isn’t because Aristotle somehow “invented” a moral or ethical code.    Rather, he stands in a tradition stretching back to Socrates who investigated the common sense notions of the Greek people about what is Good and Virtuous.

Aristotle’s brilliance comes from the overall account he gives about what it means to be virtuous in the context of one’s individual needs, one’s duties to society, and one’s place in the cosmos.

So let’s get started – What is Virtue?

Latin: Virtus =  Greek: ἀρετή (Arete) = English: Excellence

So Virtue is a type of Excellence.

Well, what the hell does that mean?

An example:   Take a piano player.  A piano player refines his or her piano-playing skill through habit and practice.   His or her skill would be referred to by the Greeks as a  τέχνἠ or Techne – an art or craft.  Once the piano player achieves a certain level of ability, others will come to acknowledge that person as having developed an ἀρετή or excellence.

You can probably take any type of social role – Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer, Accountant, Police Officer, Baker, etc. and apply that same type of logic.

So what Aristotle does is ask a question:  Is there a type of Excellence that all Human beings  can achieve in order to live a full, happy, and successful life?

For Aristotle and the Ancient Greek World – the possession of the cardinal virtues is a type of moral excellence that allows an individual to express his or her full potential as a human being.

Virtue then is a disposition, an inclination, a… habit toward seeking to do what is worthy, honorable, and good.

And a friendship built on Virtue is a type of relationship where individuals seeks what is Best and Good for one another.

Turn Inward: Augustine on Peer Pressure and Transgression

Alone I would not have committed that theft, where what pleased me was not what I was stealing but the  fact that I was stealing.  Doing this alone would not have pleased me so well, nor would I have done it.   O friendship so clearly unfriendly, untraceable seducer of the mind!  It was a craving to do harm as a sport and a joke, an appetite to wrong another person, apart from any desire for revenge or for my own gain.  It was just that someone said “Come on, let’s do it” – and one is ashamed not to be shameless.”

-Augustine of Hippo, Confessions book II

A person’s teenage years tends to be regarded as a time of great confusion and soul-searching.   We all deal with it in some form or fashion, embracing some archetypal social role in order to fit the greater whole of our environment.

Myself?  I was a Nerd.  A Geek.  A Boffin.  A Swot.   My days were mostly consumed with unanswerable philosophical questions, learning foreign languages, biology lab, awkward music lessons, and fencing with sabers.   Or what I like to call “Guaranteed Boredom for 95% of the Planet unless Wes Anderson decides to direct the movie.”

In this respect, our dear Augustine of Hippo had an adolescence much closer to the modern norm.   He was in the throes of lust for the fair maidens of his hometown, looking for things to brag about to his friends, and not above committing a bit of unnecessary petty larceny – the theft of some pears.

And that’s where the focus of today’s blo gpost will be on – as the communal theft of a neighbor’s pears resulted in Augustine meditating on the nature of friendship, crime, and sin.

Many historians often seem baffled by the amount of space Augustine devotes to examining this particular incident regarding the theft of pears.   After all, Augustine and his accomplices were never caught nor punished.  However, Augustine seems interested in dissecting this whole incident to illustrate the psychological nature of his crime and the social context of his sin.

For those who have been following this Turn Inward blog post series, one may recall that a general theme of the last few posts has been the nature of friendship.   Augustine the Bishop reflected on his adolescent attempts to “fit in” with his social group in the following manner:

..that among my peer group I was ashamed not to be equally guilty of shameful behaviour when I heard them boasting of their sexual exploits.  Their pride was the more aggressive, the more debauched their acts were; they derived pleasure not merely from the lust of the act but also from the admiration it evoked.  What is more worthy of censure than vice?  Yet I went deeper into vice to avoid being despised, and when there was no act by admitting to which I could rival my depraved companions, I used to pretend I had done things I had not done at all, so that my innocence should not lead my companions to scorn my lack of courage, and lest my chastity be taken as a mark of inferiority.

-Augustine, The Confessions, Book II 

I think that every adolescent has experienced these feelings at one point or another.   Augustine was attempting to “be one of the boys” so to speak.    And this attempt would eventually lead into the theft of the pears, as indicated by the quote at the top of this blog post.   It is interesting to note that Augustine the Bishop regarded these early relationships as parodies of true friendship.     Why parody?    Referring back to our examination of Cicero’s On Friendship, true friendship was comprised of the following criteria:

1. True Friendships occur between good people, as sound and enduring friendships are built on virtue.
2. Friends do not ask each other to do anything “dishonorable.”
3. Friendship is about the movement of Plurality to Unity.

And in all three criteria, Augustine the Youth’s so-called “friends” are found lacking.  What we have instead is simply a peer pressure group.

The theft was a nothing, and for this reason I was the more miserable.  Yet had I been alone I would not have done it – i remember my state of mind to be thus at the time – alone I would have never done it.   Therefore, my love in the act was to be associated with the gang in whose company I did it.

However, while Augustine the Bishop acknowledges that this peer pressure group is part of the context for his transgression of morals and laws, it isn’t the driving force.

I stole something which I had in plenty and of much better quality.  My desire was to enjoy not what I sought by stealing but merely the excitement of thieving and doing what was wrong.  There was a pear tree near our vineyard laden with fruit, though it was attractive neither in color nor taste.  To shake the fruit off the tree and carry off the pears, I and a gang of naughty adolescents set off late at night after we had continued our game in the streets.  We carried off a huge load of pears.  But they were not four feasts but merely to throw to the pigs.  Even if we ate a few, nevertheless our pleasure lay in doing what was not allowed.

-Augustine of Hippo, Confessions book II

Our Older Bishop Augustine takes a moment to reflect on this point.   More often than not, crimes and transgressions are committed toward some sort of purpose.   A thief could steal food to feed himself.   A murderer may slay a rival in a desire for wealth, property, or love.  In many ways, these transgressions are distortions of proper activity to achieve these ends.

But this theft of the pears – it had not greater purpose.  It wasn’t even a distortion of an activity for a purpose.   In his own words “I was not seeking to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.”

But the question is – Why?  Why did it feel so good at the end of the day?

Augustine answer may sound surprising to us – for he says “Pride imitates what is lofty, but you alone are God most high above all things.”  He then proceeds to enumerate characteristics and things that humans seek and how…ultimately… we are trying to emulate God.  Some examples might suffice:

1. Curiosity appears to be zeal for knowledge – but God already knows all.
2. Luxury seeks abundance/satiety – but God is the giver of incorruptible pleasure.
3. Prodigality is the shadow of generosity – but God is the bestower of good things.

Etc. etc etc.

For those of a non-religious bent, I might offer up a reasonably close interpretation:  This is about Feeling Free.

Specifically, feeling free from Rules.   As in, human beings tend to like it when Rules exist – except when those Rules apply to them.

In this respect, Augustine hits the nail on the head.  Transgression of Law (Moral, Civil, or otherwise) speaks to a kind of illusion of Freedom.   In a certain sense, one is essentially parodying the power of divinity, which to the ancient mindset is the only Thing/Being/Whatever that is Truly Free.

 

 

 

 

 

Turn Inward: Cicero on Friendship

In my previous post Turn Inward: Augustine On Grief, I had mentioned a bit of Augustine of Hippo’s idea about the nature of friendship and its relationship to the feeling of grief.

It should be noted that Augustine’s idea of friendship is indebted to the tradition of Graeco-Roman thought and specifically to one Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Cicero, who lived 300+ years before Augustine of Hippo, was one of the most celebrated figures of the last days of the ancient Roman Republic.   He was Rome’s greatest Orator as well as being a philosopher, politician, and lawyer.   His contemporaries were the likes of Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar, whom he struggled against in one form or another during the Roman civil war.

The Young Cicero Reading by Vincenzo Foppa, 1464

One method by which Cicero popularized the subject of philosophy in ancient Rome was through his writing of dialogues.   I wanted to take the opportunity to examine one of these dialogues entitled – Laelius de Amicitia, often translated as On Friendship, which Augustine undoubtedly read as part of his preliminary education.

The principal speaker in the dialogue is Gaius Laelius Sapiens, a statesman, general and hero of ancient Rome.  His two son in laws, Gaius Fannius and Quintus Scaevola (one of Cicero’s teachers) are speaking with him about the death of Laelius’ good friend Scipio Africanus, the greatest consul and general of his generation.  Laelius and Scipio’s fantastic friendship was well known to the Roman people, and so his comments on what constitutes friendship carries great weight.

And so through Laelius, Cicero is able to elucidate his conceptions on friendship.

Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.

1.) Friendship can only exist between good men.

This may sound rather counter-intuitive to most people.   After all, robbers, thieves, brigands all have friends.   In fact, the Greek philosopher Aristotle in Books 8 and 9 of the Nichomachean Ethics has 3 categories of friendship –  Ones of Pleasure, Ones of Utility, and Ones of Virtue.

The first two are very fleeting, the last type based on virtue can last till death.

It is that last type that Cicero has identified as real and true friendship, hence that friendship can only exist between “good” men.    What does he mean by good?

We mean then by the “good” those whose actions and lives leave no question as to their honour, purity, equity, and liberality; who are free from greed, lust, and violence; and who have the courage of their convictions.

 

2.) Friendship is defined as “a complete accord on all subjects human and divine, joined with mutual good will and affection.”

Cicero makes it a point to praise this sort of Friendship above all material gain in the world, which he states is merely due to the capriciousness of fortune.   Only Wisdom in his mind ranks about Friendship.   He considers Virtue to be the “parent and preserver” of Friendship, without which friendship cannot possibly exist.

Although this sort of profit can bring about many useful advantages, that is not the soul purpose of friendship.   As he states:

What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy? On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear if there were not some one to feel them even more acutely than yourself. In a word, other objects of ambition serve for particular ends – riches for use, power for securing homage, office for reputation, pleasure for enjoyment, health for freedom from pain and the full use of the functions of the body. But friendship embraces innumerable advantages.  Such friendship enhances prosperity, and relieves adversity of its burden by halving and sharing it.

3.) Friendship’s primary good is the fact that “it gives us bright hopes for the future and forbids weakness and despair.”

In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self. So that where his friend is he is; if his friend be rich, he is not poor; though he be weak, his friend’s strength is his; and in his friend’s life he enjoys a second life after his own is finished. This last is perhaps the most difficult to conceive. But such is the effect of the respect, the loving remembrance, and the regret of friends which follow us to the grave. While they take the sting out of death, they add a glory to the life of the survivors.

 

4.) Friendship transcends the search for material advantages.

For as to material advantages, it often happens that those are obtained even by men who are courted by a mere show of friendship and treated with respect from interested motives. But friendship by its nature admits of no feigning, no pretence: as far as it goes it is both genuine and spontaneous. Therefore I gather that friendship springs from a natural impulse rather than a wish for help: from an inclination of the heart, combined with a certain instinctive feeling of love, rather than from a deliberate calculation of the material advantage it was likely to confer.

 

If we accept this four propositions regarding friendship to be true, than the rest of Cicero’s advice becomes rather obvious for those intent on securing this higher form of friendship.

• Never make disgraceful requests or grant them for your friends.
• In the friendships of virtuous and upright people – unrestricted communication should exist.
• And above all – be careful on how one chooses his or her friends.  At minimum, one should seek out people with qualities of firmness, stability, and constancy. 

It is that last bit, about how we should go about choosing our friends, which we should remember when we take a peek later on in Augustine’s accounts of how he formed his early and rather unwise friendships.

Now what is the quality to look out for as a warrant for the stability and permanence of friendship? It is loyalty. Nothing that lacks this can be stable. We should also in making our selection look out for simplicity, a social disposition, and a sympathetic nature, moved by what moves us. These all contribute to maintain loyalty. You can never trust a character which is intricate and tortuous.

 

 

 

 

Turn Inward: Augustine On Grief

“Grief darkened my heart.”  Everything on which I set my gaze was death.  My home town became a torture to me; my father’s house a strange world of unhappiness; all that I had shared with him was without him transformed into cruel torment.  My eyes looked for him everywhere, and he was not there.  I hated everything because they did not have him, nor could they now tell me ‘look, he is on his way,’ as used to be the case when he was alive and absent from me.    I had become to myself a vast problem, and I questioned my soul, “Why are you sad, and why are you very distressed?”  But my soul did not know what reply to give.

-Augustine of Hippo, Book VI, The Confessions

Thagaste, North Africa: 374-376 AD

For a brief moment in his life, Augustine of Hippo must have thought his star was rising.   He had spent his teens studying rhetoric and the great classical writers such as Cicero and Virgil in the city of Carthage.   Although he long ago swore that the search for ultimate wisdom would be his primary motivation in life, the lure of temporal success was just too hard to resist.

And now he was back in his hometown of Thagaste, a bona fide teacher of rhetoric.   In a world where the art of verbal persuasion was the primary means to gather the favor of both the mighty and the masses, one could see why a highly skilled rhetorician would be in great demand.   In his own words:

Overcome with greed myself, I used to sell the eloquence that would overcome an opponent.

He had also made friends in Carthage, intellectuals whose thoughts must have inflamed and inspired his ever curious mind in ways that the inhabitants of sleepy backwater Thagaste never could.  They had introduced him to the doctrines of the Manichees, a religion that emanated from ancient Persia which stated that the world was the creation of a god of good and a god of evil.   Their philosophizing nature and grand cosmological speculations made his mother’s simple Christian faith seem rather…..dull.    Besides, he had read the Bible in its Latin translation and it couldn’t compare at all with the verse and language of Cicero’s writings.   What possible wisdom could they hold?

Upon his return to Thagaste, Augustine became reacquainted with a friend of his youth.

During those years when first I began to teach in the town where I was born, I had come to have a friend who because of our shared interests was very close.  He was my age, and we shared the flowering of youth.  As a boy he had grown up with me, and we had gone to school together and played with one another.

…..

It was a very sweet experience, welded by the fervour of our identical interests.

Bearing with him all the wisdom and knowledge he had acquired from Carthage, Augustine a fide deflexeram, or wrenched his friend from his faith in Christianity as a kind of service.   However, one day his friend became very ill – so much so that his parents had opted to baptize him in order to receive a remission of his sins if he were to die.   Augustine didn’t take this situation seriously and joked about it upon his friend’s recovery.   Much to his surprise, his friend took his baptism quite seriously and asked Augustine to be respectful of his decision.

But our sharp little rhetorician thought all he had to do was bid his time.  Augustine would set his friend straight and everything would be right in the world….

…..and then his friend died….

The First Mourning by William Adolphe Bouguereau

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The opening quotation at the top of this blog was Augustine’s immediate reaction to the death of his close but unnamed friend.  Suffice it to say – he took the loss quite hard.   However we must remember that the Confessions are written in two voices: that of the young man experiencing these emotions at the time, and the much older adult who has started to reflect on these experiences.

Augustine the Twenty-something Rhetoritician describes his thoughts as:

I was surprised that any other mortals were alive, since he who I had loved as if he would never die was dead.   I was even more surprised that when he was dead, I was still alive, for he was my “other self.”  Someone has well said of his friend, “He was half my soul.”  I had felt that my soul and his were ‘one soul in two bodies.”  So my life was to me a horror.  I did not wish to live with one half of myself, and perhaps the reason why I so feared death was that then the whole of my much loved friend would have died.

It was, as the youth of today would call it, a “bromance.”

Had we been alive at the time, to have seen the whiz-kid genius and his ever present wingman laughing in the marketplaces,  debating in the streets, and chasing after the virtue of young maidens – I have no doubt that many of us would have been moved by young Augustine’s great sorrow.

And yet, Older Augustine has a different perspective:

At that time I wept very bitterly and took my rest in bitterness.  I was so wretched that I felt a greater attachment to my life of misery than to my dead friend.  Although I wanted it to be otherwise, I was more unwilling to lose my misery than him, and I do not know if I would have given up my life for him as the story reports of Orestes and Pylades, who were willing to die for each other together, because it was worse than death to them not to be living together.  But in me emerged a very strange feeling that was the opposite of theirs.   I found myself heavily weighed down by a sense of being tired of living and scared of dying.  I suppose that the more I loved him, the more hatred and fear I felt for the death which had taken him from me, as if it were my most ferocious enemy.   I thought that since death had consumed him, it was suddenly going to engulf all humanity.

And so Augustine the Bishop raises an important question with his revelation.

Was he really grieving for his friend?

Or was he grieving for himself?   Was he actually grieving about the loss that Death had inflicted on his life?

One modern commentator couldn’t help but remark that perhaps Young Augustine was probably entertaining thoughts such as “How dare this guy die and leave -me- in a state like this?”

Our Older Augustine uses this personal episode of sorrow as a starting point to examine the nature of grief and the grieving process.  And behind this dissection of grief is a theory about the nature of friendship.

Augustine follows in the footsteps of ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and Cicero who defined friendship as a form of love.   For Augustine, all forms of Love seeks or attempts to Unite You with Something Else.  The enjoyment of Love is when you have been united with the thing you were seeking.

In terms of friendship, it would be appropriate to say then that this is the state when one person’s inner being (soul, psyche, etc.) is united with another.   Two souls may become one.   Or multiple for that matter.

While undoubtedly there is a penchant to interpret this in a Romantic sense, I’d ask you gentle reader to consider the following example: sports teams.  One of my own friends, who likes to reminiscence about his glory days on a high school American football team, would often describe a kind of feeling when “our team was staring with one gaze at our opponents down field.”   Even an observer can usually tell when a particular group of people might share a certain sort of chemistry in their interactions.

Friendship then is that sense of shared unity.   But what happens when that unity is disrupted?  Or destroyed?

I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost.  Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.

For Augustine, Grief then is that agony when those souls are torn in two.   When that beautiful unity is ripped asunder and you are left broken by it.   This might be the appropriate time to recall the idea of a Romantic relationship, or rather the End of a Romantic relationship.

But notice how Augustine defines misery – “a state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things.”  The soul or psyche just doesn’t realize it is in such a state of misery until the loss of the mortal thing.  As he states later on in Book IV of the Confessions:

The reason why that grief had penetrated me so easily and deeply was that I had poured out my soul on to the sand by loving a person sure to die as if he would never die.

In other words, the feeling of grief is the natural outcome of expecting some sort of endless happiness from a mortal and finite thing.  For those who might be familiar with the teachings of the Siddartha Gautama, Augustine’s insight mirrors the Buddhist idea of the First Noble Truth – that all conditional phenomena and experiences are not ultimately satisfying and will bring about suffering.

One could say that Augustine’s grief at the loss of his friend was due to the fact that Augustine had loved inappropriately.  Or to utilize some Platonic logic, how can something that is impermanent bring about a form of permanent happiness?  It can only result in a misery at the end.

The lost life of those who die becomes the death of those still living.

Friendship is the most valuable thing to have on this Earth, or so the ancient philosophers said.   Is there some way to honor and acknowledge it without going through a period of excessive loss?

So what is our dear Bishop of Hippo’s solution?  He offers a simultaneous religious and Platonic answer: To love our friends in God.

Happy is the person who loves you [God], and his friend in you, and his enemy because of you.  Thought left alone, he loses none dear to him; for all are dear in the One who cannot be lost.

From a Platonic perspective, there is only One thing that is Truly Permanent.   The Beauty that makes us love things, places, and individuals is merely a small reflection of that One Thing which is the source of all that Beauty.

A Christian believer would phrase this in the way Augustine did:

O God of hosts, turn us and show us your face, and we shall be safe.  For wherever the human soul turns itself other than you, it is fixed in sorrows, even if its fixed upon beautiful things external to you and external to itself, which would neverthless be nothing if they did not have their being from you.

As was stated before, friendship is an act of unity.  So for Augustine, to “love our friends-in-God,” is to essentially share an eternal happiness with our friends, who if departed from us are kept safe by that One Permanent Thing.

 

 

 

 

Turn Inward: The Psychological Insights of Augustine of Hippo

When people contemplate the origins of the academic study of psychology, our attention is usually drawn to the great figures of the 19th and early 20th centuries:  William James, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Wundt, etc.   These were men of the early heady days of experimental psychology, psychoanalysis, and behaviorism.    But they were not the first days when mankind decided to reflect on his or her interior life.   Philosophers, mystics, poets, saints, and writers of previous eras and cultures long gone have often attempted to plumb the depths of the human mind.  Their methods were quite varied – abstract reasoning, ancient physiology, and even meditation.  And some merely wrote what was on their mind.

Turn Inward is my humble attempt to bring to light some of these rare individuals who dared to look beneath the surface of our superficial thoughts in search of the secrets of the mind.

I can think of no better person to start this series than the famous 4th century philosopher and saint of the early Christian Church, Augustine of Hippo.

Now I know what some of you might be thinking – what in the hell does some stodgy ancient headmaster type have to teach a sophisticated urbane person of the 21st century?

A lot actually.  Because before he was the great thinker and saint, Aurelius Augustinus was a wild, promiscuous, and devastatingly intelligent youth who was born in a North African backwater of the Roman Empire.   Cocky and Curious, Augustine wanted to take the ancient world by storm and make a name for himself.

In other words, I would argue that Augustine of Hippo had a lot of what we might call today as “life experience.”  On top of that, he had an expansive understanding of his own psychology.

It is for this reason when readers pick up a copy of his Confessions, many can’t help but remark how….modern…he sounds.   In fact, his Confessions may very well be the first time in Western literature when a writer decided to expose his actual thoughts to his readers.  Let me emphasize that point – not an argument, not an abstraction, not a treatise – but his thoughts and reflections on his life.   Furthermore, he’s able to extrapolate certain experiences to some rather universal emotions and feelings we all undergo at some point in our lives.

So that is my “sales pitch” to those who were unsure of sticking around for this series.

It is my intention in the next couple of blog posts to examine some of the psychological insights buried in Augustine’s Confessions – which serves as a kind of spiritual autobiography of the man.

We may also lightly touch on diverse topics such as Platonic philosophy, early Christian theology, and the state of the late Roman empire to fill out the backdrop of his life.

However, I believe that to us Augustine of Hippo’s major relevance comes from his status as an astute commentator of the human condition.

 

Agrarian Doubts: The Southern Agrarians of the 1920s

This segment of Agrarian Doubts is the culmination of our historical trip through the American South that forged a mix of cultural and political concerns into Southern Conservatism.   While it is my intention to shift our focus back to Great Britain’s agrarian tradition in the future, we may yet again poke our heads into this region of the world.

Many would assume that given the trajectory of this series, the Civil War would have been the next topic to be covered.   However, for our purposes it is what happened after the Civil War that matters more.   Or rather, how the Civil War was remembered and memorialized by those who lost the struggle.

It may come as a surprise to some readers but during the 1920s when America was in the midst of unbridled economic prosperity – Southern Agrarianism found a voice once again.   Or rather it found 12 voices.   These men were not planters or farmers or soldiers.  They were in fact a collection of novelists, writers, and poets based out of Vanderbilt University, who joined together to create a manifesto entitled I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition.

The primary concern of these writers was the growing industrialization of the South during the 1920s-30s.  In their view, modern industrial capitalism was a dehumanizing force.   This line of argument may have some resonance for the followers of Karl Marx, which is ironic given that the Southern Agrarians in a sense condemned both Communism and Capitalism as being Anti-Conservative.   To quote a passage from the Introduction of I’ll Take My Stand:

We look upon the Communist menace as a menace indeed, but not as a Red one; because it is simply according to the blind drift of our industrial development to expect in America at last much the same economic system as that imposed upon Russia in 1917.

In place of the option of choosing either materialistic system, these intellectuals offered up the Antebellum agricultural model as the panacea and future of the South.

Their critics found that the Southern Agrarians understanding of their heritage was a bit too…..sentimental.

Take the issue of farming for instance.   The essayist Andrew Lytle had written that “The farm is not a place to grow wealthy; it is a place to grow corn.”     While these sentiments may be shared by our modern day Green and Organic food movements, economists and historians will be quick to point out that agriculture tends to bend away from subsistence farming toward cash crops.   After all, we cannot forget that cotton was king in the Pre-Civil War South.   The labor intensive nature of Cotton farming necessitated the use of slaves.   The sale of cotton to Great Britain was also an important source of revenue for the aristocratic south.

Another Southern Agrarian and well-noted 20th century modernist writer Allen Tate attempted to live out the principles he advocated for.   It is however, much easier to write about the joys of farming than to actually perform its duties.   From what I gather, Mr. Tate had to hire a family to do the farm work.   And it is no small point of irony, that Mr. Tate could only acquire his farm with the help of his brother…. who happened to be a successful banker.

It could be argued that the Southern Agrarians were constructing their worldviews from within the set of beliefs dubbed by social scientists and historians as the Lost Cause of the South.     I believe this quotation from Wikipedia best summarizes this phenomenon:

The Legend of the Lost Cause began as mostly a literary expression of the despair of a bitter, defeated people over a lost identity. It was a landscape dotted with figures drawn mainly out of the past: the chivalric planter; the magnolia-scented Southern belle; the good, gray Confederate veteran, once a knight of the field and saddle; and obliging old Uncle Remus. All these, while quickly enveloped in a golden haze, became very real to the people of the South, who found the symbols useful in the reconstituting of their shattered civilization. They perpetuated the ideals of the Old South and brought a sense of comfort to the New.

-Yale Professor Roland Osterweis

This mytho-narrative arc perpetuated a few inaccuracies – the race relations between the African Americans and Caucasians in the Old South being a primary issue.

Several historians and writers have explored the idea of the Lost Cause of the South and came upon a fascinating conclusion – that this was all about national reconciliation.

The historian David Blight for instance noted a particularly intriguing trope in postwar fiction.   A young, materialistic, and utterly rich Yankee man marries impoverished but spiritual Southern bride.   He represents the power of industrialization and its brutality when unchained.  She represents the chivalry and honor of a time long gone.   Perhaps her social graces will be a civilizing influence on the young man.

Perceptive readers may notice similar themes brought up in a previous blog post, Agrarian Doubts: Sir Walter Scott and Trans-Atlantic Conservative Romanticism.

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The legacy of the Southern Agrarians is rather mixed.   Their “leader,” the scholar-poet John Crowe Ransom, grew disenchanted with the movement and publicly repudiated it in 1945.

I find an irony at my expense in remarking that the judgment just delivered by the Declaration of Potsdam against the German people is that they shall return to an agrarian economy. Once I should have thought there could have been no greater happiness for a people, but now I have no difficulty in seeing it for what it is meant to be: a heavy punishment. Technically it might be said to be an inhuman punishment, in the case where the people in the natural course of things have left the garden far behind.

The question, then, is this: of what value could the Nashville group’s thesis be to a people who had “left the garden far behind”? Would their argument serve no better purpose than to offer up ironies concerning a road not taken? Once the garden has been left behind, does the idealistic contemplation of it, even in art, become much more than a symptom of a neurotic urge to escape what lies ahead of the garden?

One of his colleagues Robert Penn Warren, the first poet laureate of the United States, eventually joined the civil rights movement and supported a variety of progressive causes -because- of his belief in agrarianism.

And for a certain few, the enthusiasm for the agrarian way of life has never died. Stark Young‘s cousin, Stephen Clay McGehee, actually runs a website called The Southern Agrarian – http://www.southernagrarian.com/.   It is as one may expect – a website that touches on the practicalities of farming, southern culture, honoring the heroes and legacy of the Civil War, and religion.

 

 

Agrarian Doubts: Nullification Crisis and Sovereignty

In previous posts in the Agrarian Doubts series, we’ve noted the key platforms of the Jeffersonian Democrats understanding of the ideal American Republic.   To list a few ideas:

1.  The Yeoman Farmer as an Exemplar of Virtue.
2. A Suspicion of Expertise and Specialization.
3. A dislike of concentrations of wealth and people, ie: Cities.
4. Industrialization and Banking are disruptive societal forces.
5. An Expansionistic Policy toward the West.
6. A favoritism of Direct Democracy for all civic positions, including judges.

The populist flavor of these ideas cannot be overlooked.  And as populist issues they have been featured as critical pieces of modern ideologies found on the Left and the Right in the 20th century.   After all, the Maoist version of Communism would be just as  accepting of many of the propositions stated above.

With the exception of the 6th point, many of these ideas were championed by the old Southern Aristocracy as part of a common agricultural world view.  The internal logic that supports these issues was a respect for local tradition and social hierarchy colored by a romantic outlook on the agrarian way of life.

The political manifestation of these concerns and sentiments became a preoccupation with the notion of States Rights versus the Federalist (and later on the American Whig) Party’s attempts to create a much stronger central government that favored industrial economic interests.

This is a tension that existed right at the founding of the United States of America.   Those in support of individual states retaining their sovereignty challenged policies by the central government at every turn.   We saw this in Jefferson and Madison’s support of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 as a counter to the Federal government’s attempt to limit free speech and the immigration of European radicals via the Alien and Sedition Acts.    What the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions essentially stated was that the individual states had the right to nullify legislation within their own boundaries when the Federal government passes a law that exceeds its stated powers.

We see this debate occurring again over the Missouri Compromise of 1820.   The Compromise dictated that new additions to the Union must be made in twos – 1 slave state and 1 free labor state in order to maintain the balance of power in Congress.  John Taylor of Caroline wrote one of his infamous passionate pamphlets against this compromise, on the basis that the Federal government was essentially deciding on the particular labor laws of the state – a power that should only be reserved for the state governments alone.

And even when the Jeffersonian Democrats were initiating the purchase of the Louisiana Territories from Napoleonic France, Southern politicians like John Randolph of Roanoke would come to regret the actions of the party as it wasn’t clear if the President of the United States had the authority to make that purchase.  This would lead to opposition against the acquisition of Florida from the Spanish crown a few years later.

The question over the nature of sovereignty and which political body had the right to arbitrate when a law exceeded the powers of a government almost came to a head during the Nullification Crisis of 1832.    Prior to 1832, a number of tariffs were instituted to prevent European and British manufactured goods from driving Northern Industrialists out of business.  The effect of the tariffs on the South, especially the Tariff of Abominations of 1828, would result in Southerners paying higher prices for manufactured goods and having their source of income via the cotton trade with Great Britain reduced.

South Carolina would not stand for this.   The state government would go on to challenge Andrew Jackson’s administration on the matter by invoking the sovereignty of the states argument.   South Carolina would go on to outlaw the tariff and build an army to defend itself.    Jackson would not take this laying down however, and pushed the Force Bill through Congress which allowed the Federal government to retaliate against a nullifying state like South Carolina.  It took all the skill of Kentucky Senator Henry Clay to broker a compromise that did not end in bloodshed.

 

Incidentally, Andrew Jackson’s own Vice-President John C. Calhoun was a secret supporter of the Carolina cause and would go on to be a strong proponent for the nullification theory.

Calhoun elaborated his views on government in a treatise known as The Disquisition on Government.  In this work, Calhoun makes a critical distinction in how voting majorities exist.

A numerical majority is merely the will of the more numerous amount of citizens imposing their views on the minority group.  As such, an absolute majority will always prevail over minority interests.  It is interesting to note that Calhoun’s conception matches the Tyranny of the Majority concept that classical liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill would warn against many years later.

A concurrent majority would require a compromise between the interests of the majority and minority groups.   It would be in effect, a unanimous decision of all major interests within a community.

It should be noted that Calhoun’s idea of a minority does not correlate well with our modern conception of the word.   What he was concerned about were in essence vested interests and privileges held by a propertied minority.

Calhoun also had a negative view on one of the founding principles delineated by the Declaration of Independence.  In his mind, man was not born free and equal.   Liberties enjoyed by the people were not a natural right, but rather granted by participation within a well-governed society.     He was in effect rejecting the contract theory of government (Federal Power) in favor of the compact theory (State Sovereignty).

Agrarian Doubts: Sir Walter Scott and Trans-Atlantic Conservative Romanticism

Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war. It seems a little harsh toward a dead man to say that we never should have had any war but for Sir Walter; and yet something of a plausible argument might, perhaps, be made in support of that wild proposition. The Southerner of the American Revolution owned slaves; so did the Southerner of the Civil War: but the former resembles the latter as an Englishman resembles a Frenchman. The change of character can be traced rather more easily to Sir Walter’s influence than to that of any other thing or person.

-Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

When i first ran across this passage many years ago, I found myself rather perplexed.   How did the venerable literary figure Mark Twain end up indicting a Scottish Tory novelist an ocean away for the Civil War?

It was only upon reviewing the career of Sir Walter Scott did I realize my error.   Much of Scott’s literary backdrops are undoubtedly romantic, featuring young heroes saving damsels in distress and fighting for country/clan, honor, and duty.

One striking example was Scott’s first novel, Waverley, about the fortunes of the young aristocratic soldier, Edward Waverley as he leaves his ancestral home for a commission in the Hanoverian army in Dundee, Scotland.  It is the time period right before the Jacobite Uprising of 1745, when the Scottish Clans of the Highlands honor their ancient oaths to Bonnie Prince Charles Stuart and attempt to unseat the Hanoverian dynasty.

Through a series of mishaps, Waverley is accused of desertion and treason.  He is rescued by the Clan Mac-Ivor due to his friendship with the Jacobite Baron Bradwardine.   It is here that Waverley falls for the sister of Clan Mac-Ivor’s leader, the seductive and passionate Flora Mac-Ivor who urges him to throw in his lot with the Jacobite Uprising.

Without going further into the details of the plot, one can see the romantic tensions building.   Will Waverley be loyal to the Hanoverian Crown or will he attempt to restore the Stuart monarchy?   Will he follow Flora Mac-Ivor into rebellion or chose the love of the much calmer and sensible Rose Bradwardine?   And will we ever get to see a good old Highland Charge against a modernized army?

Although critics in later years tended to be harsh about romantic writers like Walter Scott, we would do well to realize that during his time period – his works were consumed with abandon.  Even great authors who have withstood the test of time found themselves as fans – such as in the case of Ms. Jane Austen

“Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. – It is not fair. He has Fame and Profit enough as a Poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people’s mouths.– I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it – but fear I must”

Scott’s historical romantic fiction did not just draw only from his Scottish heritage which inspired other works like Redgauntlet and Rob Roy.   He also made use of Britain’s shared medieval past as in the case of Ivanhoe.  Here Scott mixes the legends of Robin Hood together with a tale of dispossessed Saxon noble Wilfred of Ivanhoe, whose allegiance to the Norman king Richard the Lionheart is a source of tension.    Cue – Knights, Jousts, Robin Hood’s Merry Men, an eligible Saxon aristocratic beauty, an exotic Jewess healer, and of course these things aren’t complete without a Black Knight and a trial by combat.

Now I know what many of you are thinking – What does this have to do with Mark Twain’s quote written above?

Well, it comes down to a perennial theme running through many of Sir Walter Scott’s literary works: Heroic Ideals vs. Modern (Mechanized?) Society.   The Weaker Side of this conflict, whether we are speaking of Scotts or Saxons, are poor and disenfranchised.  But they possess many virtues such as Patriotism, deeply personal loyalties to their king and kin, veneration of hierarchy and social institutions, courage and chivalry.

The Weaker side’s cause is generally a Lost Cause, but that doesn’t prevent them from making some sort of positive gain which creates a kind of rapprochement with the Stronger and More Modern opposition.  Perhaps they learn to be a little less Materialistic…

To the English Aristocracy of the 19th century, Scott’s romanticism is a celebration and remembrance of that old “economy of personal loyalty” which was being swept away not by radical French philosophes intent on shaking the world order – but by capitalism and industrialization.

Scott’s works were also quite popular in the Antebellum Old South.  Just step back for a second and think on this point – young men were trained at birth to think of themselves akin to the Royalists Cavaliers who fought for the King during the English Civil War.  They were laying claim to the same heritage as the English aristocracy to construct a kind of “world that never was.”     Or as Mark Twain further remarked:

But for the Sir Walter disease, the character of the Southerner–or Southron, according to Sir Walter’s starchier way of phrasing it– would be wholly modern, in place of modern and medieval mixed, and the South would be fully a generation further advanced than it is. It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major or a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them. Enough is laid on slavery, without fathering upon it these creations and contributions of Sir Walter.

 

 

Agrarian Doubts: States Rights and the Old South

In my last post, I had mentioned the career of the chief systematizer of Jeffersonian Democracy, John Taylor of Caroline.   I had briefly summarized his commitment to the idea of the United States as an agrarian farmer’s republic and how this blended well with his positive stance on states rights.

Southern support of States Rights and a strict interpretation of the Constitution is rooted in a conviction that to protect the Southern way of life, limitations must be placed on the Federal government.   In their eyes an “artificial capitalist sect,” following Alexander Hamilton’s financial modernization plan, had set their sights on disturbing the delicate balance between state and federal governments in order to favor their own economic interests.

Joining John Taylor in his struggle was the celebrated Virginian congressman and orator, John Randolph of Roanoke.

To call John Randolph eccentric would be a massive understatement.   John strongly identified himself as an “old school” Southern plantation aristocrat.  He often rode around the Virginian countryside in a venerable English stagecoach drawn by six horses.   And like every Southern gentleman, John Randolph was quick to defend his honor in duels when he felt his dignity had been violated.  He actually undertook a duel against the venerable Kentucky statesman Henry Clay – thankfully both survived the ordeal.   John also assaulted another congressman, Willis Alston, in what is described by historians as a pitched battle of thrown tableware and bloody canes.

John Randolph’s aristocratic behavior also extended into his politics which can be summarized as – “I am an Aristocrat.   I love Liberty.  I hate Equality.”  By the word Equality, Randolph is showing a disdain for democracy.   One of his speeches further elaborated as to the reason why:

That all men are born free and equal, I can never assent to, for the best of all reasons, for it is not true.   If there is an animal on earth to which equality does not apply-that is not born free-it is man; he is born in a state of the most abject want and a state of perfect helplessness and ignorance.

Or to put it plainly – the conditions of each man is unequal and government should be left in the hands of better men.   In his view, the traditional patriarchal society of Virginia led by its elites was conducive to holding society together and creating stability.  The major threat to this stability was, in his view, the Federal Government and those who sought to expand its powers.

It is for this reason that John Randolph became a supporter of another long standing American opinion invoked by figures such as Calvin Coolidge – the Government that does nothing is the best kind of government that can exist.  However, like John Taylor, he acknowledged that there were forces that promoted an activist government for both financial and ideological gain.

This led John Randolph to form a faction within Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party, known as the Old Republicans, who sought to stick to the “Principles of ’98.”   These principles refer to the Kentucky and Virginian Resolutions of 1798, written by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in protests against the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Without going into too much detail about the specifics of the situation, this “stand-off” articulated two viewpoints:

1. Alexander Hamilton/The Federalists = Judicial Review by the Supreme Court determines whether the actions of Congress can be deemed Unconstitutional.
2. Jefferson + Madison/The Democratic-Republicans = Individual States can determines the constitutionality of the actions of the central government and can refuse to enforce laws (ie: nullification).

When asked to summarize the principles of Old Republicans faction, Randolph had this to say:

“love of peace, hatred of offensive war, jealousy of the state governments toward the general government; a dread of standing armies; a loathing of public debts, taxes, and excises; tenderness for the liberty of the citizen; jealousy, Argus-eyed jealousy of the patronage of the President.”

Randolph’s support of aristocratic culture and old-style republicanism led him into rather interesting political decisions:

1.  Although against Slavery, Randolph deemed it a necessity for the survival of Virginia.    The ironic thing about this, was that John Randolph was a founder of the American Colonization Society, which transported freed slaves back to Africa to form the nation we now know as Liberia.   He even freed his own slaves at the time of his death.
2. Although incredibly popular with the common voter due to his oratorical skills, he opposed the abolition of primogeniture and entail in support of the Virginian aristocracy.    Or to put it in his own words: “The old families of Virginia will form connections with low people, and sink into the mass of overseers’ sons and daughters”
3. Finally, even though he was an ardent supporter of President Jefferson’s deal to buy the Louisiana Territories from the French, he came to the conclusion that he had violated his own principles.   It was unclear if President Jefferson had the power under the Constitution to make that purchase.     Randolph also feared that an expanding nation would be unable to sustain a common loyalty and interest.