Augustine of Hippo - Biography

Augustine of Hippo was born in Thagaste, (the modern day city

of Souk Ahras in Algeria), on the 13th of November in 354. He
died on the 28th of August in 430 in Hippo Regius (the modern
day city of Annaba in Algeria), where he had been named Bishop
thirty-five years earlier. As it is difficult to encapsulate any
renowned figure, it is especially difficult to do so with Augustine
of Hippo. As a philosopher and theologian, Augustine of Hippo
vacillated between an optimistic Hellenistic view in his earlier
years and a more pessimistic Christian view in his later years.
Moving between such extremes, he accommodated a wide array
of disciplines and thought in his over-arching desire to make
sense of a world, in both theory and practice, seemingly so full of
conflict, strife, and loss. Thus, it is one of his most revered traits
and innovative aspects of his writings that he was able to
commune diverging aspects from the four schools of Hellenistic
philosophy (Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics, and Platonists) along
with various doctrines of Christian ideology. Among his
voluminous body of work that includes numerous letters,
sermons and exegetical texts, he is most known for his
Confessiones (Confessions) 397401, De civitate dei (On the
City of God) 413427, De trinitate (On the Trinity) 399422/6,
and De libero arbitrio (On Free Will), 386/8.
Except for approximately four years of his life, Augustine of
Hippo spent his life in northern Africa. He was the son of
Patricius, a pagan and Roman (either through ancestry, legal
citizenship or both) who was a member of the council, and
Monnica, a Christian and presumably of Berber origin. After his
initial studies in Greek and Latin in Thagaste, Augustine of
Hippo studied Latin and literature in Madaurus and eventually

came under the influence of Cicero. He would credit Ciceros

Hortensius (the entirety of which no longer remains) as being the
catalyst to his life-long relationship with, not just philosophy, but
psychology, human nature and religionessentially wisdom in
the ancient sense. Shortly thereafter, around the age of seventeen,
Augustine of Hippo would continue his studies in Carthage with
the generous support of a patron, Romanianus. He focused on
studies in rhetoric, which would lead him to his first profession.
While in Carthage, Augustine of Hippo became greatly
influenced by the Manichaean religion and, essentially, a
follower for roughly nine years. He lived large and well in
Carthage where he met a young woman who became his lover
for more than thirteen years and bore him a son, Adeodatus in
372. She would later become known as The One in his
Confessions.
After a short return to Thagaste, Augustine of Hippo returned to
Carthage to teach rhetoric and remained there until 383 when he
left for Rome in search of more engaging and enlightened
students. The Roman schools proved to be a disappoint for him
and a year later he would find himself in Milan having won the
prestigious position as a professor of rhetoric for the imperial
court. Between the influences of Skepticism at the New
Academy in Rome to that of the Bishop of Milan, Ambrose,
Augustine of Hippo was moving fast away from Manichaean
beliefs and on the threshold of his great, and now infamous,
conversion. In particular, a reading on the life of St. Anthony of
the Desert yielded Augustine of Hippos final turn towards
embracing Christianity in total, giving up his pending future of
an arranged marriage (already a grave provision of conflict and
pain for him due to his lost lover), a burgeoning career in rhetoric

and a privileged life. His conversion was incited by a young

childs voice:
Take up and read; Take up and read. I arose; interpreting
it to be no other than a command from God to open the book,
and read the first chapter I should find. For I had heard of
Antony, that coming in during the reading of the Gospel, he
received the admonition, as if what was being read was spoken to
him: Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me: and by
such oracle he was forthwith converted unto Thee. Eagerly then I
returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I
laid the volume of the Apostle when I arose thence. I seized,
opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first
fell: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and
wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, in
concupiscence. No further would I read; nor needed I: for
instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of
serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished
away.
Confessions, Book VIII, 28 & 29
The account, in many ways, accounts for one of the untenable
aspects Augustine of Hippo had with the Manichaean belief,
which was the always presence of darkness over lightness, in
which the latter could only strive to overshadow. While
Augustine of Hippo fully converted and embraced Christianity,
many scholars agree that the Manichaean influence can be read
in his writing if only in deference or as repudiation. He, and
his son, was baptized on the Easter Vigil in 387 by Ambrose in
Milan. Shortly thereafter they, along with Augustine of Hippos

mother who had accompanied him, embarked on their return to

Africa. Unfortunately, his mother never made the final journey,
dying in Ostia and his son died soon after their return.
After he returned home Augustine of Hippo would soon adopt a
monastic way of life, like that he had been told of by his friend
Pontitianus in Milan just prior to his conversion. He gave away
his luxuries and eventually sold his inheritance to pursue a
monastic foundation in Hippo Regius, where he was ordained as
a priest in 391 and made Bishop four years later. He was at first
quite reluctant to become priest and tried to avoid it, but obliged
out of the communitys appeals. Augustine of Hippos preaching,
orations and sermons became infamous and hundreds of his
sermons have remained persevered.
The conversion of Augustine of Hippo was most clearly the most
significant event in his life and it marks his evolution as a
thinker. The Manichaean beliefs were influential in his youth and
in his conversion as he was unable to attend to their over-arching
and inexplicable cosmology. And while Ciceros text pointed him
in the direction of a more holistic way of study, in which he
became quite influenced by the New Academy in Rome as well
as Christian theology in Milan, it was perhaps the Platonists (or
as referred to today, Neo-Platonists) that he came to regard that
had even more of a considerable effect on his thinking and
practice as it is them he credits with enabling Christianity a
viable option for him.
Scholars argue as to which particular Platonic texts he was
exposed to, but most agree they were those of Plotinus and
Porphyry. The Platonic readings vivified his idealist manner,
which reified his will. More specifically, it aided him in his
disregard from the purely moral dualistic nature of good and evil

encouraged by his Manicheanist foundation. Such can be traced

in the Confessions, which is essentially a form of autobiography
(many call it the first), yet more importantly a rhetorical
exposition that employs his life in yielding a lesson of loss and
ascension. Thus, like Augustine of Hippo, one may find oneself
lost in the materiality of life and its illusions and desire though
one can find a way through scholarship (NeoPlatonism) and
triumph, through an awareness of unity, over ones sense of
isolation and come to a place with/in God.
An exemplary form of rhetoric, Augustine of Hippo begins the
Confessions with a discussion on language itself, which can aid
one in connection with or to the world, and has the propensity to
transcend the world ascending to a higher realm that while less
intelligible is more unifyingthe material and the immaterial.
Essentially, this first dialogue prologues the journey of the
Confessions. Particularly noteworthy sections of the most widely
read text of medieval philosophy, are Book VIII, IX, and XI. In
the first, Augustine of Hippo deals with the issue of will and
how he attends to that in relation to his faith. An amazing
account of ascension is made in Book IX, often referred to as the
vision at Ostia, in which he and his mother ascend together
beyond the worldly senses. This particular account of ascension
is poignant in its acknowledged divergence from the Platonic
ascent of the individual soul, (again accounting for and
accommodating both).
In Book XI of the Confessions, Augustine of Hippo delves into
an innovative discussion of time through a dialogue on creation
via Genesis. Breaking with Platonism (and the overall Greek
tradition) he accepts the notion that the world was created from
nothing, that God created substance, and that the world was
created when the world was created, neither before nor after

anything, as time was created when the world was created and
since God is eternal there is no before or after. His account of
time he realizes is not sufficient, but it is an illuminating account
that positions time as both relative and subjective. As God is only
present (presence), so too is time. There is no true past or future
timethere is a present of things past, a present of things
present, and a present of things future. Furthermore he
psychologizes his account such that one understands that the
present of things past is memory; the present of things present is
sight; and the present of things future is expectation. In a very
extreme point he posits time not only as relative, but also as
subjective such that time is in concert with being, and that prior
to Creation time has no meaning.
For Augustine of Hippo, God is the eternal point of origin and
the unifying factor for all else. This is a perfect example of
merging sensibilities such that in the Platonic tradition there is a
divide, for instance, body and soul, but it is in God that thus is
unified. Of course, it is not that simple, but for the sake of this
summary, Augustine of Hippo begins with an absolute unity in
God that as the hierarchy descends eventually becomes
fragmented at the most base material level. This is further
expounded upon in his text The City of God, in which Augustine
of Hippo accounts for original sin and the issue of evil, an issue
that he grappled with since his Manichean period. To begin with,
sin is of the soul and not of the flesh, as both the Manicheans and
Platonists had ascribed. He follows that the soul of Adam was the
only, and hence original, soul God created. Ones individual
soul is thus the soul of Adam, first and foremost, until it is
individualized in ones being. As such, original sin is thus
universally accounted for and justified such that a child who dies
and was not baptized can be automatically relegated to Hell

because it is essentially original sin. Gods grace will save some

from eternal death, which Adams sins originally ensured, but
not all.
In regards to evil, there is a similar type of hierarchical structure
that Augustine of Hippo puts forth to account for its presence.
Against the Manichean notion that evil (and darkness) are
intrinsic and, to a certain extant, over-riding, Augustine of Hippo
employs Platonic form and Christian ideology that posits evil as
a product of the lower realm, but not as a thing itself. Evil is
the result of being misguided; it is the result of a deficiency in
ones will, taking up the mores of the inferior, adhering to a
lower realm of ascension as if it were of the higher realm.
True ascension is resting with the goodness of God and it is
mans responsibility to apply him/herself towards this goodness.
In this way, evil is a byproduct of a deficiency of the human will
and it is the responsibility of ones will to ascend from ones
lowly self obsession and to not fall again.
And, it is after the Fall that the world was divided into two cities
the city of God and the city of man. Clearly the latter is less
than, yet it is most populated, and is Gods way to emphatically
underscore the need for ascension. Only a few are selected by his
grace to occupy the city of Godand it is not based on merit
as this constant reminder of adjudication. This masterful text,
The City of God, was primarily written in refute to the growing
desire for a polytheistic resurgence in Rome. Another ingenious
work of moral rhetoric, it is the story of human history as told
through a tale of two cities in which it is utterly clear which
city one should strive to become a citizen. Through a
philosophical framework Augustine of Hippo psychologizes
history, providing God as the light at the end of the tunnel. The
text is innovative as well in its positioning of a separation

between church and state, with the latter needing to be

submissive to the former in order to attain a sense of unity.
The work reveals his greater shift towards the morality of his
religion over the rationality of his philosophy, and is a much
bleaker view of mans destiny. His final views of mans fate,
though he will note his own misgivings on the soul in his late
writings, are much more severe than his early days and come up
against, and perhaps are strengthened by, his fighting against the
Pelagians. The latter gave much more freedom and ability to
the will of the individual over the predominance of original
sin, which Pelagius questioned. In brief, Pelagius asserted that
man essentially had a second chance in light of the lesson
learned from Adams sin. In this way, everyday man could will
his way to goodness, so-to-speak. If one lived a good and
virtuous life then one would be rewarded in passage to heaven.
This of course flattens the preordained hierarchies set forth by
God according to Augustine of Hippo and he was, of course,
vehemently opposed. It was only by Gods grace that a few, the
elect, would be saved from eternal damnation and this salvation
revealed Gods mercy, as eternal damnation reveals his justice,
and together his overall goodness as a just creator. Other than
maintaining a paramount belief in this fated authority and
hierarchy (which formally comes from a Platonic influence), the
only other motivation was in the possibility of ascension, albeit
temporary, as onethe majoritywill still be damned.
While he continued to maintain, commensurate with both his
philosophy and theology, that the everyday of mans life is but a
small percentage of reality, the reality of the everyday man
became quite bleak. The gravity of his thinking and late morality
had a long lasting effect on much of medieval philosophy and
western Church doctrine. In particular he was an influential

figure for Boethius, Anselm of Cantebury, and Thomas Aquinas.

Martin Luther and John Calvin employed much of his late
Christian doctrine in defense of the Reformation. His earlier
discussions of the will were an influence on more modern figures
such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche and Hannah
Arendt. The latter wrote her dissertation on Augustines concept
of love, Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin: Versuch einer
philosophischen Interpretation (1929). His notion of time was
recognized by Edmund Husserl and proved to be inspiring for
Martin Heideggers Sein und Zeit (1927). Augustine of Hippo
was a relentless and devout practitioner whose output, diversity,
range and form remains a hallmark today.