# Augustine of Hippo/Augustine's Theory of Knowledge2

Copleston and Gilson maintain that “the ‘light’ which comes from God to the human mind enables the mind to see the characteristics of changelessness and necessity in the eternal truths.” (Cop. p. 61)
Nash uses the same texts to propose “that in some way man can have a direct knowledge of the divine ideas, that man ‘sees’ the ideas that subsist in the mind of God.” (p.102) He qualifies this ontologism as pertaining only to the immutable and eternal truths as opposed to that of Malebranche where even knowledge of the sensible world is given by intuition of the divine. (p.103f)
How could Augustine hold that the ideas are ontologically higher than the human intellect and yet accessible to it, somehow subjoined to it? If the ideas were on a par with human intellect which is mutable, they could not be immutable. If they were lower than mind, the mind could not use them as standards of judgment, but must instead judge them! So the ideas are above the mind, but how, then, can there be any congress between them? The answer is that God illumines man’s intellect.
“The function of the divine illumination is to render visible to the mind the element of necessity in the eternal truths.” (Cop. p. 64)
1. Shared assumptions (Cop. p. 58) a) The only valid object of knowledge is the unchangeable b) Leads to a depreciation of sense objects c) Practical knowledge is necessary for life, but not really valued d) Theoretic contemplation is valued highly e) Purification of the soul, liberation from the senses is a prerequisite to epist. ascent 2. Different goals a) Plato’s is to attain to the Good. b) Augustine’s is to attain to a personal God. 3. Plato’s levels of knowledge and being a) In Book V of the Republic, Plato has his character, Socrates, draw out the distinction between knowledge which corresponds to what is and opinion which corresponds to the manifold between what is and what is not. His assumption is that ignorance corresponds to non-being. b) Using the simile of the line in Book VI, Plato develops further this correspondence between ontology and epistemology. (1) A line is divided into two parts, one representing the visible world, the other the intelligible. The former is the realm in which opinion obtains while the latter constitutes the domain of knowledge. (2) Each part of the line is again divided. (a) The visible into shadows or reflections and sense objects. (b) The intelligible into reasoning from hypotheses to conclusions and reasoning from hypotheses up to first principles. (3) There is an increasing level of knowledge at each higher level of being. c) In the parable of the cave, Plato describes again the increase in knowledge as one moves toward that which is more real. In this story he also alludes to his doctrine that there is no such thing as “learning” from a teacher and to the requisite conversion and purification for the soul to attain knowledge of the highest reality. 4. Illumination vs. reminiscence a) The sun (Rep., 514-518) is for Plato the visible image of this highest reality, the Good. According to Plato, sunlight both illuminates objects in the world and enters the eye to provide sight of those objects. In the same way, the form of the Good both gives ideas their truth and empowers the intellect to discern that truth. “It is the ontological basis of truth and the epistemological basis of the knowledge of truth.” (Allen, p. 47) b) It is Plato’s doctrine of reminisence, however, that explains how human reason connects with the forms in the first place. (1) In Phaedo (Reader, p. 5a-6a) Plato defends this doctrine of recollection. (a) Questions put to a person can evoke true answers which the person did not know he knew. (b) The judgment of some quality in terms of the perfection of that quality, a perfection not found in the sensible world, infers knowledge of perfection from the supersensible world. (c) Here also he says learning is a process of recovering knowledge. c) In Plato’s Meno there is an example of the first justification (from questions). A boy questioned about geometry “replied in such a way as if he were proficient in this branch of learning.” (DT XII, 15, 24) d) The difference between something glimpsed in the past (previous existence) and something uncovered in the present [Nash talks about this on p. 83f.]
References above are to the following works:
Allen, Diogenes, and Eric O. Springsted, eds. Primary Readings in Philosophy for Understanding Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.
Allen, Diogenes. Philosophy for Understanding Theology. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985.
Augustine, Aurelius. Against the Academicians. Translated with an introduction by Mary Patricia Garvey. Milwaukee, WS: Marquette University Press, 1942. [referred to above as CA, for Contra Academicos.]
________. Basic Writings of Saint Augustine. Edited by Whitney J. Oates. Volumes I & II. New York: Random House, 1948. [referred to above as BWOA]
________. The Confessions of St. Augustine. Translated by Rex Warner. New York: New American Library, 1963.
________. The Trinity. Translated by Stephen McKenna in The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 45. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963. [referred to above as DT, for De Trinitate]
Copleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy. Volumes I & II. New York: Doubleday, 1962. [sometimes referred to above as Cop.]
Gilson, Etienne. The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine. Translated by L.E.M. Lynch. New York: Random House, 1960.
Nash, Ronald H. The Light of the Mind: St. Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1969.
Plato. The Republic: Book V. Public Domain Translation and Introduction by Benjamin Jowett. Published in Boston University Coursepacket #0014, Fall 1995.
________. Phaedo. Public Domain Translation by Benjamin Jowett. Published in Boston University Coursepacket #0014, Fall 1995.