EARLY CHRISTIAN
PHILOSOPHY
Augustine
The best known of his writings is his autobiography, the Confessions, which he wrote shortly after becoming a bishop. Addressed to God in the second person, it produces an effect of candour and psychological intensity never previously achieved, and hardly surpassed since. Interspersed
between narrative and prayer, there are many acute philosophical observations. (Anthony Kenny An Illustrated Brief History of Western Phılosophy, Blackwell Publishing 2006 p.114.)
Thirteen years after the writing of the Confessions, the city of Rome was
sacked by invading Goths under Alaric. Pagans blamed this disaster on the
Christians’ abolition of the worship of the city’s gods, who had therefore
deserted it in its hour of need. (Anthony Kenny An Illustrated Brief History
of Western Phılosophy, Blackwell Publishing 2006 p.117.)
In response, Augustine spent thirteen years writing a treatise The City of God, which set out a Christian analysis of the history of the Roman
Empire and of much else in the ancient world. Augustine contrasts the City of God, symbolized by Jerusalem, with the city of the world,
symbolized by Babylon. (Anthony Kenny An Illustrated Brief History of Western Phılosophy, Blackwell Publishing 2006 pp.117-118.)
The City of God is not the same as the Christian Church on earth, though Augustine’s book was often, in later centuries, taken to be a guide to
relations between Church and State. Like Plato’s Utopian Republic – with which Augustine sets himself in explicit conflict – the City of God is not fully realized anywhere this side of heaven. (Anthony Kenny An
Illustrated Brief History of Western Phılosophy, Blackwell Publishing 2006
p.118.)
Boethius and Philoponus
Boethius’ logical works have been the subject of recent studies by scholars, and his theological treatises on the Trinity contain passages of philosophical interest;
but throughout history he has been best known for a single work, The Consolation of Philosophy. The Consolation is in five books; in each, passages of verse and
prose alternate, and Boethius converses with the Lady Philosophy who appears to him in his prison. (Anthony Kenny An Illustrated Brief History of Western
Phılosophy, Blackwell Publishing 2006 p.121.)
It was as a radical critic of Aristotle that Philoponus made his name, and
Simplicius was his most distinguished contemporary adversary. First, Philoponus attacked Aristotle’s doctrine that the world had always existed. Some pagan philosophers were willing to accept that God was the creator of the world, in the sense that the world’s existence had, from all eternity, been causally dependent on God. Secondly, Philoponus attacked Aristotle’s dynamics. Aristotle’s theory ofnatural and violent motion encountered a difficulty in explaining the movement of projectiles. (Anthony Kenny An Illustrated Brief History of Western Phılosophy, Blackwell Publishing 2006 p.123.)
