Throughout the second half of Confessions, I noticed that the focus is on truth rather than explicit morality. In book 6, Augustine says "Let us concentrate ourselves exclusively on the investigation of truth" (6.19), and spends much of the later books contemplating various forms of truth: the form (or lack thereof) of God, the nature of memory, and the connection between joy, love, and truth. For instance, Augustine describes "Eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity" (7.16), conflating the three ideas. At first, I found it difficult to associate love and truth: love, in the modern sense of the word, is irrational and subjective, whereas truth is the ultimate logic. However, it seems that Augustine uses both "truth" and "love" to describe his (or an ideal) relationship with God, redeploying these words as ideals that can be aspired towards rather than properties of our pedestrian lives. To me, this perspective is extremely Platonic. Right after Monica's death, Augustine describes a vision much like a the progression described in Symposium of moving from loving beautiful bodies, to souls, to Beauty itself: "Step by step we climbed beyond all corporeal objects and the heaven itself . . . We ascended even further by internal reflection and dialogue and wonder at your works" (9.24). Both Plato and Augustine describe this ascension from the physical to the spiritual via understanding, but whereas Plato casts the final destination as the ideal form of Beauty, Augustine views this highest stage as wisdom and proximity to God. It seems that this deviation reflects Augustine's distinction between philosophy and religion: Augustine never explicitly praises philosophy (though he carries out Neoplatonic analyses), because he views philosophy as a means to an end- a relationship with god.
Another interesting pattern I noticed was the way Augustine treats women in Confessions. The most prevalent woman, of course, is Monica. I was particularly intrigued when, right after describing the ascension, Augustine says "my life and hers had become a single thing" (9.30). Though I know that many females are key in the Bible (Sarah, Mary, Rebecca, etc), the focus is nonetheless on males. However, in describing Monica in this way, Augustine almost characterizes her as an equal: something we really haven't seen in Lit Hum so far. And though Augustine describes her wine habit (9.18), he generally praises her ability to peacekeep and her good conduct. In fact, he depicts her as more inherently "moral" (though he doesn't use this term) than he is himself before his baptism. Though we've seen "good" females before (for instance, Penelope), the extent to which Augustine depicts Monica as a role model and an equal is unusual. However, Monica is in a way a vehicle for Augustine's own path towards God. The role of women in facilitating this conversion is echoed in Lady Continence, who appears during Augustine's epiphany and seems to epitomize what he attains through his transformation. This is in stark contrast to the frequent Greek depiction of women as seductresses, or even Augustine's minimal description of the women who were the subject of his "carnal pleasures" he condemns. I'm not sure what the prevailing Christian view of women was in Augustine's time, but I was surprised by their importance and generally positive role in Confessions.
As much as I was surprised by these female roles, I was surprised by how little Augustine mentions Jesus. The first mention is not until book 7, and is only in the context of discussing the form of God. The lack of mention earlier on means that Augustine's early praise of God could almost be read as praise of the Jewish God. Given that Jesus is the distinguishing factor between Judaism and Christianity, it is somewhat strange that Augustine doesn't devote more time to praising Jesus as well as praising God. However, in Book 10, after lamenting the barriers to his proper relationship with God, Augustine labels Jesus as the true mediator between God and man (10.68), a critically important job. This clarified for me the lack of focus on Jesus earlier: Jesus is important as a means to reach God, but not inherently important in himself.
Out of all of Confessions, I found Book 10 by far the most interesting. I know that one of the big questions for Lit Hum is "what does it mean to be human?" and I think that Augustine begins to address that here in his contemplations of memory. He explains how though beasts can perceive and remember physical images/smells/sounds etc, human memory is deeper. I thought this was best encapsulated when Augustine describes how memories, "were already in the memory, but so remote and pushed into the background . . . that unless they were dug out by someone drawing attention to them, perhaps I could not have thought of them" (10.17), in that we intrinsically possess these memories, thoughts, and ideas, and remembering is merely retrieving them. Other beasts lack this infinitely large intrinsic pool of memories. This reminded me of earlier on in Augustine's discussion of how evil doesn't actually exist, but is simply deviation from the God-created highest form of "being" that all individuals possess. Both of these ideas allude to a basic, universal essence of humanity- something that many of the works we've read this year sought to define.
In a similar vein to this universal human essence, I noticed the extent to which Augustine's treatment of humanity's relationship with God devalues the individual and personality. Augustine says to God, "you are my true life" (10.26). If God is his true life, then God is everybody's true life, meaning that no individual's life is unique, and individuality plays no role in relationship with God. Similarly, Augustine describes how everyone seeks a happy life, and says, "That is the authentic happy life, to set one's joy on you, grounded in you, and caused by you" (10.32), and dismisses joy stemming from anywhere but God as artificial. So, not only is God "true life" but he is the only acceptable source of real joy. He goes on to say that happiness is joy in truth, which is unambiguous and does not depend on individual differences. Between these universal definitions of life, joy, and truth, Augustine greatly reduces the importance of individuality, and seems to imply that all humans have the same ultimate trajectory of life and ultimate goal of their relationship with God. I understand that God is supposed to be "fair" in that he views all humans equally, but I don't understand why Augustine's conception of life and happiness necessitates that individual joys, hobbies, interests, personalities, are essentially irrelevant. Not only is this a hopelessly boring depiction of humanity, but it seems that it would preclude true individual-level, intimate relationships with God.
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