#570： St. Augustine's Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts
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Summary
Do you feel restless?Do you sometimes wonder who you are, what life's all about, and where you're headed? Do you go after goals and relationships thinking that once you obtain them you'll finally be happy, only to feel let down again and again? Well, over 1500 years ago, catholic bishop philosopher and theologian Saint Augustine of Hippo had the same feelings of angst and wrote down his thoughts on how to deal with them in his famous book The Confessions. Since then, seekers and philosophers have been influenced by his words right up until the present day. My guest today has written a book about augustine s ancient insights on the nature of restlessness and how these insights had a profound impact on western philosophy, particularly among the existentialists of the 20th century.
Transcript
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the art of manliness podcast do you feel restless you sometimes wonder who you are what life's all
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about and where you're headed do you go after goals and relationships thinking that once you
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obtain them you'll finally be happy only to feel let down again and again well over 1500 years ago
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catholic bishop philosopher and theologian augustine of hippo had those same feelings of
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angst and wrote down his thoughts on how to deal with them in his famous book the confessions
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subsequent seekers and philosophers have been influenced by his words right up until the
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present day my guest today has written a book about augustine's ancient insights on the nature
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of restlessness and how these insights had a profound impact on western philosophy particularly
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among the existentialists of the 20th century same as james k smith he's a professor of philosophy and
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theology and his book is on the road with saint augustine a real world spirituality for restless
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hearts we begin our show discussing augustine's biography and his oft overlooked influence on
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existential philosophers like heidegger sartre and camus we then unpack how augustine was something
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of an existentialist himself and yet crucially deviated from modern existentialists and his ideas
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and compare and contrast his view and their viewpoints on the way in which life is a journey
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how someone can find their true self what it means to be free and how to deal with restless ambition
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lots of interesting insights about life's big questions in this episode after it's over check out
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our show notes at aom.is augustine james k.a smith welcome back to the show oh it's great to be back
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with you so we had you on a few years ago to talk about your book about charles taylor's book a secular
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age and you know his idea of why there's so much existential angst in modernity you got a new book out
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called on the road with saint augustine a real world spirituality for restless hearts and i feel
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like this is sort of like a sequel to that it's like the antidote to restlessness um but before we
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get to um saint augustine's insights about how to deal with existential angst in the 21st century
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um let's know a little bit let's find out a little bit about our travel companion here who was saint
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augustine for those who aren't familiar with him why are we still talking about him today in the 21st century
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yeah the the thumbnail sketch is so augustine was an ancient thinker and theologian and bishop who
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lived in the late 300s and early 400s so latter stages of the roman empire and and very much
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embroiled in in some of those dynamics however he was from north africa he was from what would be
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today contemporary algeria his father was roman and pagan his mother was african and christian so you
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could say he was sort of he he was familiar with a bicultural even kind of biracial experience and
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because he was at the at this time north africa was sort of like the outer edge of the roman empire so he
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he knows something about the experience of being on the margins but also aspiring to be in the center and
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so he's probably most famous for his work the confessions which is still assigned in universities
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around the world and is often described as one of the first memoirs of the west and yeah he continues
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to fascinate i was in a conversation in dc about the book a couple months ago with elizabeth brunick
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from the washington post and she said you know who who else from the fourth century still has haters
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like augustine does so he's he's not an uncontroversial figure but he continues to capture
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imagination and and went on to become what we call one of the doctors of the church probably after
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jesus and the apostle paul probably one of the most significant influencers of western christianity
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and yet was also read by philosophers throughout the centuries including the 20th century in particular
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well let's talk about that so i mean obviously confessions had a profound influence on believing
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christians because it's about augustine's conversion but as you note and you talk about throughout this
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book on the road with saint augustine augustine had a big influence on these continental existential
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often atheistic philosophers of the 20th century we're talking sartre camu heidegger who i mean for
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those who are familiar with these guys who were these guys in big strokes and then how did augustine influence
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them yeah so that's that's a great question because in some ways these figures will not be familiar
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to folks sort of every day today now in the early 21st century and yet my contention is that we have
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actually all drank from their wells even if we didn't realize it because what what happens in the middle
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of the 20th 20th century sort of germinating from germany and france just before world war ii and
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after world war ii is this movement that that came to be described as existentialism and these philosophers
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like martin heidegger and jean paul sartre were were influential and writers like albert camu and so on
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and what they were grappling with was what we now talk about in terms of authenticity so there was this
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this sort of new sense of the burden of selfhood there was this sense that if we were going to make
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meaning and find meaningful lives we had to like answer this call and be resolute and sort of you
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know go we had to find ourselves would have been the language the way it trickled down into movies and
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cinema and magazines and things like that so in many ways i think in the early 21st century we are
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still heirs to this existential project of finding ourselves this quest for authenticity and yet what's
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really intriguing for me as a philosopher is when you dig down below the surface when you when you
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scratch below the surface of what heidegger and camu and these folks were saying it turns out that the
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common influence was this fourth century african theologian named augustine so that they all had
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very very direct encounters with augustine's thought and in some ways that was also precipitated by
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folks like blaze pascal and soren kierkegaard who also are kind of progenitors of this existentialist
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tradition that also grappled with this augustinian inheritance so what what turns out to be the case is
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augustine is kind of the first existentialist and and that's why it's not a mistake that he writes a
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book like the confessions where he's kind of peering inside himself trying to figure out who he is and
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what he's about and what he's called to and what he loves and yeah he's trying to find himself and it
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turns out that's a very ancient quest and yet i think it's one that's maybe even more ubiquitous in
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our late modern era yeah so i mean as you said we've drunk from this we're permeated in this
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existential philosophy if you've ever seen an instagram meme about making your own meaning finding
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your true values finding your true north those are those are the existentialists right there yeah yeah
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that's the that's the kind of everyday translation of this existentialist impulse to find oneself to
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become who you were called to be so augustine i've always called him augustine but i guess it's
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augustine yeah no it goes it goes either way i don't i won't judge okay no it's okay you can judge
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here no so augustine i'm gonna call him augustine in in his confessions he refers to life as a journey
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on a road and that's another modern thing we do life's a journey on you got to hit the road
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um there's road movies we can talk about that but as augustine points out in the book and you point
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out being on the road all the time can beat you down it makes you feel restless and you say being
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on the road and the thinking life as a journey on a road makes us feel restless in two ways what are
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those ways yeah so i i think you're right that this is another way in which we've inherited this kind
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of existentialist thread is everybody's on a journey right so that's a very very common language for
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what we think spirituality could mean in a secular age is well i'm on the road i'm looking i'm searching
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i'm journeying we might even call it a pilgrimage or something like that and augustine says yeah that's
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that's true like that's true to the human condition he would say he does think the nature of the human
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condition is that you are sort of on the way you you can't not be chasing something you can't not be
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looking to arrive somewhere but there's the two kinds of restlessness are there's one kind of
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restlessness that stems from not knowing where home is right so you're that's the kind of that's the
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restlessness of gatsby that's the restlessness of kerouac's on the road because what happens there is
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all right we got to be moving we got to be looking we got to be searching we got to hit the road
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and and the restlessness stems from the fact of maybe not knowing where you're supposed to get to
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or getting to what you thought was the destination and say oh we made it we've arrived this is going
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to be happiness this is going to be meaning only to realize that that evaporates that's why i always
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think of gatsby in this return right where you get to what you think is everything you've hoped for
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and you've got this fantastic mansion and the great estate but there's still that green blinking beacon
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on the other side of the bay and all of a sudden now you want something else and you think oh happiness
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must be over there that that's the kind of restlessness that's just utterly exhausting and
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devours us and and is despairing in a sense there is still another kind of restlessness that augustine is
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honest about and i guess this is what i appreciate i i share augustine's faith as a christian and
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but i don't think that that insulates me from restlessness it's it's uh now it's the kind of
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restlessness that stems from i i know where home is every day i pray thy kingdom come but it's not here
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and i i'm saying how long oh lord and it's that dynamic of a kind of sanctified impatience and the
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the difficulty the veil of tears that we are still journeying on even if we have a compass even if we
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know where home is even if we know who true north is that doesn't mean that there aren't still burdens
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of the journey that come with their own restlessness if that makes sense no that makes sense and i think
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everyone's experienced those first two type of restlessness like the first type where you don't
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know where home is so when you're laying in bed at night and you're like what am i doing with my life
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yeah where am i what am i supposed to be doing and then the second kind of restlessness is like
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once you achieve that big goal and you're like well that was underwhelming yes that was incredibly
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underwhelming yes and for augustine i got what augustine would just point out is because we are
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we're talking about what really are fundamentally kind of spiritual realities right and what augustine
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would say is so he's a bishop he's a preacher he's a christian and he'll say even if i sort of know
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who god is and what to hope for that doesn't mean that i don't still experience those kinds of
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disappointments and the disorientation that comes from thinking i could have settled somewhere and
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realizing that doesn't work and and i think that's why i appreciate his kind of realism in facing up to
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that well yeah there's a there's a tendency for some christians when they explain hardship in life
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well it'll all work out in the next life and sort of it's kind of whenever you hear like that's kind of
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a cop out right i mean it still sucks right now but exactly but augustine says yeah it does suck
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but you got to keep yes it'll it'll happen and i'm not immune to basically falling for the trap of
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pretty things as if they could make me happy do you know i mean or falling for the trap that
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accomplishment could make me happy and augustine says well that's always a fraught
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and fragile prospect because you can always lose and so what does it look like to grapple with that
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well let's go back to these existential philosophers because as you said they they got this idea
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from augustine or they were influenced by augustine this idea yeah what was their response to these
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these restlessness that people feel just for being how did they respond to that yeah that's a that is a
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great question so there's there's a few different ways i don't know how patient your listeners are
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but i'll give you an example okay great because so so martin heidegger who's kind of the in a way
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the sort of granddaddy of this movement his his response is to say he kind of inherits from augustine
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the sense that we have to answer a call that we are you know on the road to somewhere that we need to
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find ourselves but he box from specifying that and he says at the end of the day you have to sort of
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decide what you are called to be so you if if i'm called to something it's actually me calling to
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myself and so it's a little bit like a very heavy german philosophical version of you do you
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which means the burden is on me to kind of make myself and i think that comes with its own kind of
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exhaustion and paralysis almost and i i think our culture experiences that if if answering the call of
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who i'm to be is really entirely and only up to me i am not sure i trust myself to do that or
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what if i got to go on so there's there's a kind of i think angst that comes from that burden someone
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like camus camus was was as augustinian as you could get without god in other words he kind of
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recognized everything that augustine was saying about the world but then he said but i don't i can't
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believe it and so what he would say is that's why he faces up to what he calls the absurd how do we
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if if the world is calling me to all these things but they are impossible how do i nonetheless make a
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life in spite of that and and which is why he thinks the greatest philosophical question is suicide
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the the someone like kerouac is i think maybe even more germane than people realize even if they've
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never read his novel on the road because for kerouac what you do is you just embrace this
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philosophy that says the road is life right so you don't you don't actually think you can arrive
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anywhere or you don't know where home is and so you just embrace this philosophy he says oh it's all
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about the journey it's all about the road which i think works for a while until you're kind of a
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puddle of exhaustion and despair in the middle of that road and you're wondering can't i get home
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like can't somebody welcome me home and augustine would say that voice that hunger in you that keeps
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hoping that there's a home and someone to welcome you augustine would say that's an inbuilt hunger
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and what you need to do is open yourself up to entertaining the possibility that it could be true
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and that it's actually god who's making that home to welcome you into no yeah camu also had that idea
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that like the road is home too with his myth of sisyphus right yes you know for those who aren't
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familiar it's this idea like sisyphus pushes the boulder up and then he rolls back down just to keep
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pushing it up for eternity and at a certain point sisyphus like enjoys it like i'm just gonna love
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this this is absurd i'm gonna love it yes that's how you deal with the problem of of this restlessness
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and anxiety of modern life exactly and and you know i i i i absolutely love camu i mean he's just
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one of my favorite writers and i guess i just appreciate his honesty because i don't i don't
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want to make this too loaded but i would think if i was with camu and i couldn't entertain the
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possibility of a grace from a god from beyond that would probably be about the best i could come up
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with and the remarkable thing about camu is he still thought he was called to be a kind of saint in
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the face of that so you mean like he still forged a life of moral concern and so on and so forth but
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he thought at the end of the day it was all kind of absurd and that's that's kind of sad and
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heartbreaking uh to me only because i guess i can imagine the possibility otherwise but i i guess i
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also admire camu for facing up to what he thought was the situation he found himself in all right so
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the existentialists say that life is lived on the road it's a journey but either you yourself choose
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where it is going or the journey is all there is the road that's all there is to life whereas
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augustine says that yes life is a journey but we're all moving towards a definite home but how does he
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deal with the tension between living life as it is now and hoping for rest and happiness in the life to
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come yeah so for for augustine the the road trip that he thinks explains the human condition is the
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the parable of the prodigal son which i think is commonly and known enough that we could assume
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right the parable the father the son who says basically says to his father i wish you were dead
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could i please have my inheritance now the father gives it to him he runs off to a dusting distant
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country blows it on wine women and booze and is is destitute is living lower than the animals and
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then kind of comes to himself and makes his way back to the father who gathers him up in in graceful
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welcome home and that's where he finds himself as well so for augustine that's that's the possibility
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that the human condition holds out and and what he would say is grace is this realization that i am not
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my own that a father is waiting to welcome me and in and in some sense has assured me of that welcome
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but i there's also this not yet dynamic of this mortal condition in which we find ourselves the the
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technical word he would talk about is what he calls eschatology that there's this there's this still
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the sense in which we are waiting for the kingdom to arrive in its fullness so in the meantime we are
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pilgrims we are he even sometimes says we are exiles we are we know where we're going we are assured of a
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home that will welcome us but it's we have many miles to go before we sleep and so what does it look
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like to be hopeful on that journey what does it look like though to be realistic about that journey
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and it doesn't mean pretending everything is good you know like it means facing up to the brokenness
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and fallenness and lamentable aspects of this world and and how difficult it is how difficult it is to
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stay between the ditches so to speak and we'll talk about some of these in specifics but um you're going
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back to the existentialist philosophers you know for me and i think you talk you've talked about this too
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there's something about their philosophy of you know it's extreme rugged individualism right you make your
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own meaning yeah it's up to you it's all about courage the courage to face the absurd and it's
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attractive but as you said like once you like try to like okay i'm gonna find my own meaning but it's
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like oh man this is exhausting yeah i i can't i can't do it but a lot of people don't want to like
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feel like they they need to depend on someone even a higher power because it sounds like i don't know
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emasculating or infantilizing i mean what do you think the i mean i don't know there's some issue
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there that people want something but they're afraid to take it oh i i think you're absolutely
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right i i think the most scandalous aspect of augustine's vision is grace because grace at the
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at the very bottom says i can't do it on my own that that this is impossible for me to accomplish so
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and and i get the offense of it and i think it's especially offensive to those of us who live in a
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secular you know sort of late modern world because the most sacrosanct value in our cultural moment
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i think is autonomy is independence and there's there's there's ways in which that's maybe especially
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true for kind of guys like there's a gendered way that that goes but i think in general also there's
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just this sense that autonomy independence self-sufficiency is our religion and augustine
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just thinks you can't be human and not be dependent like you can't ever be fully human
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without owning up to your dependence ultimately on god but also your human dependence and i think one
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way to explain the epidemic of isolation of isolation and loneliness is our culture is actually
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as a mirror and effect of our prizing of autonomy and independence we don't we don't really know how
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to value community and friendship and dependence even though we have ways of being collectively together
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they are not the same as recognizing the fact that i'm dependent on communities that have come before
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me that are around me and so on and so forth so i think you're right i think one of the reasons why
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existentialism took hold is it was it it confirmed this myth of autonomy augustine understands why we want
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to be ourselves it's not it's not a facing individuality it's questioning individualism and and for augustine
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you could actually never find the fullness of yourself alone so yeah there's i get why that's
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sort of scandalous and yet i also think i think our culture is discovering that we are not our best
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masters you know like i i think i'm the last person i want to trust with myself and it's one of the
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reasons actually why i think i don't know if you notice in the book but recovery communities are are
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constantly referred to as an analog of what we're talking about and i think the way into recovery
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the way out of addiction is to recognize the illusion of autonomy and independence all right
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there's a lot to unpack there there's things sorry yeah no yeah there's so let's dig in i'm going to
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parse this out a bit so we can talk you talk about uh there's ideas of freedom in there then you
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talk about identity or authenticity augustine and the existentialist had different takes on this let's
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talk with freedom so this idea of this autonomous individual that makes their meaning makes choices
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of life that's an existentialist thing but as you talk about in the book the existentialist thought of
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freedom mainly is freedom from from constraints but you make the case that this this focus on freedom
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from as freedom can actually ensnare us and make us less free how so yeah so and this i think is one of
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the great gifts augustine could give to us in terms of just like analyzing freedom for us
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and i by the way i think this is really hyped up in specifically american contexts so yeah we we generally
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when we use the word freedom almost the only way we imagine freedom is what isaiah berlin called
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negative freedom it's freedom from it's it's freedom understood as the absence of constraints
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constraints so nobody is pushing on me nobody is having it's hands-off freedom and i get to choose
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what i want augustine thinks that's what he calls free free choice and he actually thinks free choice
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is prone to its own sort of slavery and addiction we might say today because if freedom is just
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the power and agency to choose to choose to do whatever i want my freedom is actually never directed
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or aimed or led or guided to my good to some substantive vision of the good instead i imagine i'm more
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free just to the extent that i multiply my options but if i just multiply my options what can also happen
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is sort of a paralysis i mean you know the the trivial example of this is you know i go to the
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grocery store to buy toothpaste and there's 17 000 kinds of toothpaste where do i even start it's like
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fine i'm going home i don't even know where to begin there's a there's a deep existential version
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of this which is how would i even know what to choose but then secondly if there's no real
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specification of what i ought to choose and i just start sort of trying things out what can happen is
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there what looks like free choice can also become the beginning of my own addiction and enslavement to
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the thing so augustine has this analysis in book eight of the confessions where he says
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oh well i start by thinking i'm going to choose to do this and i think that this will make me happy
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and then after a little while i have to do this to have any sort of feeling of happiness and before long
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doing this actually no longer makes me happy and yet i can't not do it because now i'm just trying
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to sort of maintain some base level of high so to speak that i was experiencing it's exactly the
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dynamics of addiction so for augustine that's negative freedom and and it doesn't go well the
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story does not turn out well positive freedom freedom for is what now when my agency my power to choose
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is enlivened and empowered precisely because it is directed towards some good some vision of what the
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good life is and so now it's empowering me to pursue and chase something that is for my good
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and what that means is augustine can imagine guardrails and scaffolding being gifts to me now
00:26:23.580
they're not constraints they're not restraints they're not shutting down my options they're guardrails
00:26:28.540
that are channeling me towards my own good and that doesn't mean i'm not free it actually for augustine
00:26:35.160
that's what it's most free and what's the relationship for augustine between these guardrails
00:26:39.760
and grace the grace the guardrails would be a manifestation of grace i i would also say
00:26:46.360
for for augustine grace is also this infusion of a revivified capacity in my will do you know what i
00:26:55.660
mean like basically i need a resurrected will and power of choice to choose well but then within that
00:27:02.280
if god gives me good guardrails those are also a means of grace because they are channeling me in
00:27:08.620
the right direction i'm trying to think of like another analog let's let's just think out loud for
00:27:12.880
a sec imagine somebody has been imprisoned for 20 years and you come and you throw open the door
00:27:20.680
and say you're free there's two very different ways to do that you throw open the door say you're
00:27:27.320
free go ahead you can do whatever you want or you can say you're free let me give you let me give you
00:27:37.800
some direction let me give you an aspiration let me give you the power of living into a specified way
00:27:43.780
of life which person is most likely to actually experience agency and empowerment it's going to
00:27:51.260
be the second because they've they've lived a life that is directed towards something and has been
00:27:56.300
made possible precisely because somebody has actually narrowed the options but given them the power
00:28:04.240
and direction to chase what is for their own benefit the other person has no constraints but also has no
00:28:11.340
direction no it's good so that's interesting so you use the word agency not autonomy so augustine's more
00:28:17.020
focused on agency not so much autonomy yes this this could be really important actually so if if augustine
00:28:24.120
is critical of autonomy what what we mean is he's critical of this notion that i am a law unto myself
00:28:32.160
right that i am self-sufficient the opposite of that or the alternative to that however is not
00:28:39.500
being an automaton right or a robot or something it's actually being given truly re-vivified re-energized
00:28:48.840
agency so that i am becoming myself i'm not just becoming a cookie cutter of what god stamps out
00:28:54.300
i actually am being kind of resurrected as it were to become myself and when when i choose these good
00:29:03.880
things it's me that's choosing but i'm able to choose because of the infusion of grace
00:29:08.780
we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show well let's
00:29:14.620
hit on let's kind of dig into this idea of grace because i think particularly in america when people
00:29:19.000
it's such a loaded word um graces because i think from evangelical because i think when most people
00:29:24.220
hear grace they think of like evangelical protestant perspective you know you you hear you hear the
00:29:28.300
altar call you say the sinner's prayer then once saved always saved but it doesn't seem like that's
00:29:34.240
how augustine thought of it or did he i think he he's just working with a fundamentally different
00:29:41.560
metaphor as it were so for what what what augustine means when he's talking about grace is the the the
00:29:48.580
root term of grace is gift for augustine all of creation is gift all the way down do you know i mean like
00:29:57.200
all of creation doesn't have to be so it's given everything i have in a way is has been given to
00:30:04.320
me it's been gifted so i'm i'm graced but then what he also thinks is if you left me to my own devices
00:30:13.860
as a prodigal i left to my own devices i'm going to always and only look for love in all the wrong
00:30:22.420
places that's that's that's the being without grace for augustine means being left to my own
00:30:28.400
devices and left to my own devices i'm going to try to satisfy what is an infinite hunger with all
00:30:34.080
kinds of finite things i can't dig myself out of that hole i can't undo that bent of my heart what i
00:30:42.720
need is the gift of god's renewal and reorientation of my hungers so that i am looking for satisfaction
00:30:54.300
in the right places if if that makes sense grace is really about a gifted sense of agency so that now
00:31:01.120
i choose well for augustine the the really really important thing is the opposite of grace is autonomy
00:31:08.480
and independence and self-sufficiency which is imagining that you can sort of earn your way out
00:31:15.380
and augustine thinks that's also just going to be always doomed to disappointment and frustration
00:31:23.140
and and again i think that's the part that really by the way there's all kinds of religious people there's
00:31:29.000
all kinds of people call themselves christians who actually at the end of the day are very offended by
00:31:33.220
grace because they still think it's about about performance and and augustine when augustine got in
00:31:40.680
some really heated controversies in his time one group that he he got quite polemical with were the
00:31:46.120
pelagians and the reason was is because the pelagians kept saying oh well there's a goodness in us so that
00:31:52.240
we can do this on our own and augustine just reacted so viscerally to that and and i think that's true i mean
00:31:58.700
it's exactly one of the reasons why i think if you want a picture of what it looks like for augustine
00:32:05.580
look at the experience of addicts and recovery and you know a key part of the recovery journey
00:32:12.640
is recognizing one's dependence on a higher power and all the debts one owes to others
00:32:19.260
and so it it what it does is that whole process and journey disabuses us of our self-sufficiency
00:32:28.140
so yeah the so there's like here's the with freedom there's an existential take on freedom
00:32:33.440
which is freedom from autonomy you make your choices it's all on you augustine say no it's
00:32:39.500
freedom to we have to depend on someone if we really want to be free yes okay and and then you
00:32:45.380
really are free i mean you really you're you're not just like a robot now you can become you okay so
00:32:53.860
becoming who you are right this is uh this is an existential thing very much and you say that
00:32:59.460
augustine has his idea of you become who you are by submitting the existentialist would say no you
00:33:06.080
become you have to create yourself yeah and that's that's the authentic so let's look this idea of
00:33:11.340
authenticity what is like what did the existentialist think it meant to be authentic yeah so for the for
00:33:19.220
the existentialists really the fundamental criterion of authenticity well maybe there's a couple aspects
00:33:26.440
of it but let's say this to be authentic for the existentialist is to resist conformity to the masses
00:33:34.120
to intentionally choose who you will be and to forge that identity for yourself right does that make sense so
00:33:46.340
there's there's a sense in which to be authentic is to not go with the flow not default to what
00:33:52.840
everybody else is doing not mimic and imitate the they as as heidecker called it to then be resolute
00:34:01.500
in your intentionality in choosing to be somebody unique and individual and that means kind of forging your
00:34:08.860
your own identity and so it meant you know disregarding or rejecting like people oh yeah so
00:34:17.420
there's right there's a there's a so there's a deep individualism about this to the extent that
00:34:23.700
yeah other people heidecker and sart in particular and camu to a large degree do not have much of a
00:34:34.100
constructive account of how people contribute to my authenticity instead what you get is an overwhelming
00:34:41.760
sense of how others make me inauthentic that they they rob me of my authenticity in authenticity so
00:34:48.000
sart of course famously in in this play hell is other people for for heidecker the portrayal of the
00:34:55.240
influence of others on my life is always and almost exclusively negative as leading me to conformity
00:35:05.520
and therefore losing myself when i when i just mimic and imitate the mass the masses i am losing my
00:35:13.900
authentic individuality so you can also understand why i think this philosophy found a pretty unique home
00:35:21.500
in american popular culture i mean it's it's almost like the philosophy of the western even though it
00:35:26.560
was it was hatched in french cafes so augustine which would say his response to the idea of
00:35:33.200
authenticity or becoming who you are is you need people and he would say he would concede yes people
00:35:38.300
can have a bad influence on you he even talks about in his confessions uh you know the whole thing
00:35:42.760
that started kick-started his conversion was he like stole a pair yeah and he said well it's because i was
00:35:48.140
with this gang yes and they were telling me i should do it to be cool and he did it yes but he also
00:35:53.980
says no but people can also help me become who i'm supposed to be yeah so i i think augustine this is
00:36:01.480
why i still think there's a deep resonance i i still want to locate augustine in an existentialist
00:36:06.440
tradition because he he agrees with this notion of looking for authenticity i also think he agrees that
00:36:15.340
authenticity requires intentionality on our part that is if i do just sort of you know go through
00:36:23.420
life on autopilot and and just conform to what everybody else is doing that is not going to be
00:36:30.420
authenticity the difference between augustine and say heidegger and sart and camu is that for for
00:36:36.480
augustine well two things there is a normative vision of how to be human do you know what i mean like
00:36:44.880
so for for augustine there is a call on us but that call on us is coming from the one who made us
00:36:51.960
and so there's a there's a normative substantive vision of what it looks like to live into the
00:36:58.280
fullness of being human it's not just something i make up that's aristotelian right it's like it's
00:37:03.360
also very aristotelian deeply aristotelian exactly but then the other part of it that that
00:37:09.960
distinguishes augustine from the 20th century existentialist is he does have an account of how
00:37:16.340
others contribute to my finding myself and answering that call and i think the beauty of right if you
00:37:25.520
think of augustine's confessions his quote-unquote fall is chapter two where he steals the fruit from
00:37:32.100
the tree ding ding ding genesis chapter three that the the parallel to that is in book eight where he's
00:37:38.960
back in a garden and this is his conversion but in fact that entire scene is embedded in a web of
00:37:47.420
friendships and community and people who meet him and actually to be honest love him enough to to hold
00:37:56.340
up to him visions of how to be human that they think he's called to live towards and so you see
00:38:02.580
him redeem friendship and and to realize in the same way that in book two when he's you know falls into
00:38:10.120
his sin so to speak when he falls he says alone i would not have done it but by the time you get to book
00:38:16.740
eight and for the rest of his life he will also say i could not be happy without friends and and when
00:38:23.420
augustine says happy he doesn't just mean oh like cheery or having a good day what he means is
00:38:27.720
having meaning in my life i could not have meaning in my i could not be who i am called to be without
00:38:33.620
friends and i think that sense of the authentic self as actually one who is located as a node in a web
00:38:42.680
of relationships is so crucial to thinking about what healthy humanity looks like and i mean another
00:38:49.960
sort of analogy you can make that it's like life's a play right shakespeare and once you find that role
00:38:55.340
that you're supposed to be a part of it fits you it feels good but like there's other people there as
00:39:00.680
well with you like you you don't you can't know who you are what your role is without other people
00:39:04.760
telling you about it right exactly what one another way i play on it in the book on the road with saint
00:39:09.820
augustine is you know even if the existentialist held up you know the freedom of the open road as the way
00:39:16.280
to go find yourself of course as soon as you're driving on a road you're already following somebody
00:39:22.580
right there's you're you're not blazing a trail you're following a path so the the question isn't
00:39:28.740
probably whether you are with people it's who you are with and where they are headed and that's the
00:39:35.320
question to ask ourselves well also you know in the book all these road movies they're buddy movies
00:39:39.640
it's like hey i gotta go find myself come along with me yes yeah it's i think it's a very intriguing
00:39:45.880
paradox in a way all right so authenticity his response to that was you have to be embed yourself
00:39:51.820
with other people and accept grace but then he also deals these other issues of anxiety that cause
00:39:57.180
anxiety and one of them that he hits hard because he had to struggle with this for his early adult
00:40:02.200
life was the restlessness that in anxiety that ambition can cause tell us about augustine's struggle
00:40:10.900
with ambition yeah so just a step back to frame it a little bit so a lot of what augustine analyzes are
00:40:20.820
the human propensity as i said before look to look for love in all the wrong places that is
00:40:28.180
the human propensity to try to satisfy what is an inbuilt infinite craving by merely settling for
00:40:37.660
finite things and he thinks there's all kinds of examples of that that it can be power it can be sex
00:40:43.360
it could be education it could be you know there's all kinds of things that we think will be the thing
00:40:48.520
that helps us achieve what will ultimately make us happy and he thinks if you frame any of these things
00:40:54.320
in that way you're probably going to be you are doomed for disappointment when so when he's thinking
00:41:00.900
about ambition he's kind of asking you know what do i want when i want to lead what do i want when i want
00:41:08.880
to win and what's interesting is augustine in his early life so before he's a christian in his early
00:41:18.580
life he's a very ambitious young man he's trying to climb the ladders of both sort of education and
00:41:25.260
the university but also of political power he eventually climbs from the the margins in the
00:41:30.720
provinces of the empire in africa to a post in rome and then eventually makes it to be a part of the
00:41:37.780
imperial palace he's almost like you know the white house uh speech writer kind of thing and what's
00:41:44.400
intriguing is augustine kept imagining that he would be satisfied if he finally achieved everything
00:41:52.000
he aspired for and really the opening and beginning of what would ultimately turn out to be his
00:41:58.580
conversion wasn't failure it was success it was actually achieving everything he was hoping for
00:42:05.140
getting to the very top of the mountain and then sitting down and looking around and thinking
00:42:09.420
really that this is it i was kind of hoping for more you know and i think a lot of us know that
00:42:16.440
sort of postpartum depression that sets in after you've already achieved everything that you've hoped
00:42:22.540
for and for augustine that was sort of a gateway into asking man what am i hoping for what i'm looking
00:42:28.320
for but but then what really intrigues me i guess is that even after his conversion when augustine goes
00:42:35.660
on to become a priest and then ultimately a bishop and a very influential bishop he's still very
00:42:41.560
honest that he struggles with ambition and what he means is he's kind of a sucker for praise like he
00:42:48.780
who who doesn't love to be told augustine you are awesome i can't believe you know like he's he's still
00:42:56.400
so susceptible to trying to find ultimate happiness in what other people think of them and the the reason
00:43:04.860
why i love his honesty about that is augustine says well look i think i i just need to realize
00:43:10.500
this is probably always going to be a demon that plagues me one way of course to avoid you know
00:43:17.980
praise and adulation is to suck at what you do and uh and augustine well i guess that would solve my
00:43:25.560
problem but of course it wouldn't because you would still want it so instead augustine that's why he
00:43:30.540
confesses he says you know am i doing this for god or am i doing this for me to which his answer
00:43:35.260
is yes right he knows he's always he's always going to be sort of divided in that regard and he
00:43:42.840
knows that being honest before god that he still struggles with this is part of that grace that that
00:43:48.880
he's living into and so um it's it's like somebody who writes a book and is hoping and wants to hear
00:43:55.680
good reviews but it's a book about humility right so you're it's you you so does that mean you never
00:44:02.760
want to write a successful book on humility i don't think so but it's it's what are you looking
00:44:08.380
for in that and how much how much expectation and hope are you putting in that well i thought it was
00:44:14.320
interesting too you know instead of as you say augustine's answer isn't like don't be less ambitious
00:44:20.880
like don't don't play it small with your life exactly you'd say okay god's given you gifts
00:44:25.520
through grace you have to use those or else you're a lazy and slothful servant right yes talents parable
00:44:31.460
says but he says yeah you have to be careful with are you making sure you're using that ambition for
00:44:36.560
the right reasons yes and and to then also be so you keep having these you know reality checks with
00:44:43.140
yourself you keep taking sort of internal audits of your aspiration ambition you see you keep venturing out
00:44:49.100
and then also just realize god gives us the practice of confession to say you know what
00:44:53.660
i also kind of really liked it when so and so said that you know like that really sort of fueled
00:44:59.320
something in me and i think honesty about those things is so much better than false humility i think
00:45:06.160
false humility is a terrible idol in christian communities in particular because actually false
00:45:14.120
humility is the mask of pride and i i think we do well to kind of break those idols also no humble
00:45:22.580
bragging no humble bragging don't do the humble bragging yes so let's talk about this pursuit of
00:45:30.240
knowledge information that also caused restlessness that he uh dealt with augustine did how does our
00:45:36.820
modern life encourage us to restlessly pursue knowledge and information how does that manifest itself
00:45:41.680
in our world yeah i mean i think i i do think it's a feature of late modern culture that being in the know
00:45:52.360
is sort of one of the ways that we feel we are valued and so now in some ways this is there's a long
00:46:01.220
legacy of this of enlightenment saying we're going to think our way towards utopia on a more mundane
00:46:08.400
level it's just living in an information age where you know to be up on things to be enlightened to know
00:46:16.020
what's going on and to not feel ignorant is one of the badges that we wear to be valued by other people
00:46:23.200
so i think it's it's it's no mistake that we are still a people who are susceptible to imagining that
00:46:30.540
being smart is being important or being in the know is how i will get noticed
00:46:36.640
yeah you taught you you made a reference to uh like a portlandia sketch like it's over but there's
00:46:42.240
another one too where they did like it's like did you read it where they're just like they're just
00:46:46.500
like competing over each other did they read all these obscure hip things yes yes and interestingly
00:46:52.680
we don't um we also don't like people to tell us things that we already know or we don't like to be
00:46:59.120
told things that we don't know right so because then it means we're not up to speed and therefore we must
00:47:04.460
not be important so how did augustine did he have this problem and if so what was his response
00:47:11.460
i think that augustine struggled with this in a way that parallels i think some contemporary struggles
00:47:17.080
let me put this way it's interesting how ancient is the idea that education is the way to
00:47:25.300
significance right so that that and i think this is especially remember augustine sort of living in the
00:47:31.320
provinces on the margins of the empire and the way you are going to climb into centers of power
00:47:37.040
is by enlightenment and education and so he's what happens there is now you are kind of idolizing and
00:47:44.060
using education to achieve something other than actually understanding yourself in the world is
00:47:50.460
because it's a weapon and that you want to wield so that you can get access you know it's really about
00:47:56.680
climbing into an insider space and i still think that's you know somebody teaches at university i
00:48:02.460
that's definitely the way a lot of people still think of education they're not really super interested
00:48:07.480
in wisdom they're interested in the credentialing that gets them access to centers of power and
00:48:13.080
influence and augustine was was very susceptible to that yeah he became a manichean he did yeah so the
00:48:19.760
interesting the manichees were this crazy religious sect at the time that it's very very hard for us to
00:48:26.660
imagine ourselves into they were kind of gnostic they put a lot of weight on astrology and reading
00:48:33.460
the stars but because of that star gazing dynamic they actually thought they were the scientists of
00:48:41.420
the day they thought they were the rationalists of the day and when augustine was kind of lured into
00:48:47.860
or drawn to the manichees it was precisely like those people who imagined by allying themselves with
00:48:55.080
quote-unquote science they are showing their independence and enlightenment and therefore
00:49:01.060
scoff at anyone who would be so benighted and deluded as to believe something and what augustine
00:49:10.380
realized this he spent about 10 years actually with the manichees and what he realized is you know
00:49:16.600
it turns out in every community people are believing something at the end of the day you know like
00:49:22.460
there's there was still once he got to peer behind the curtain he sort of saw through this myth of
00:49:28.160
enlightenment and rationality and realized that it was pegged on its own kind of confessional belief and not
00:49:35.140
one that he thought stood up to scrutiny and i i think it's interesting augustine says you can't not believe
00:49:42.540
there there is no human standpoint that isn't predicated on some kind of fundamental trust in a story
00:49:49.460
in a community in a myth about the world myth not in the sense of a fable but in the sense of an orienting
00:49:57.480
story about the world and augustine just thought at the end of the day christianity had the most
00:50:04.920
comprehensive story to make sense of his experience well sort of an analog a modern analog of this idea
00:50:12.000
you have some sort of secret information or secret knowledge and you scoff at other people the outsiders
00:50:16.320
you see this all the time on internet culture right like the vegans or the crossfitters or the
00:50:21.180
keto people or the even like evolutionary psychology i know everything about human nature and this is i can
00:50:28.360
explain everything augustine would be like i've seen that before yes and augustine thinks we it's just
00:50:34.420
another manifestation of our hubris now that's not of course that's not to give comfort to ignorance or
00:50:41.420
it's not to you know praise irrationality it's just to recognize that reason itself operates on the
00:50:48.540
basis of trust and there's there's no standpoint in which people aren't dependent it's actually it's
00:50:54.940
it's kind of the epistemological equivalent of what we were talking about earlier in terms of a
00:50:59.340
dependence that we all have this is that we all believe in something this reminds me i'm reading this
00:51:05.340
book about uh kierkegaard and plato it's by jacob howland and sort of his connection like kierkegaard's
00:51:11.320
you know connection to socrates but he makes this interesting point about uh philosophy begins with
00:51:17.460
doubt but he says in order for there to be doubt you have to believe in something first yeah yeah no
00:51:22.700
there's another line in kierkegaard where i think it's in his journals where he says it's faith that brought
00:51:28.480
doubt into the world they they are kind of sisters they're companions they and and augustine some
00:51:35.140
people have this picture of augustine as like this utter dogmatist but i actually think i try to show
00:51:39.980
from his sermons for example that he actually he gives room for people to be honest about their doubts
00:51:45.360
he just always counsels them don't treat your doubts as certainties doubt your doubts yeah doubt your
00:51:52.260
doubts and i think especially that's a that's wise counsel maybe for people who have emerged from
00:51:58.400
fundamentalist communities of whatever stripe and where they weren't allowed to doubt anything
00:52:04.540
and then sort of swing to the other side and are equally indubitable about their new rational
00:52:13.000
enlightenment and whereas augustine thinks i think probably the truth is somewhere between those two
00:52:18.260
poles so i guess the the answer to this this restlessness that this desire for knowledge is like
00:52:24.980
have some intellectual humility and and not even not think that intellectual knowledges will give
00:52:31.260
you meaning like i think in the in your book you are what you love you talk about the difference
00:52:36.580
between like head knowledge and like creature knowledge like augustine would say like recognize
00:52:41.480
the creatureliness in you that you need love you need social relationships like that's what gives life
00:52:47.180
meaning yes and i mean without denigrating intellectual pursuits i mean like augustine is literally one of
00:52:56.660
the intellectual giants of the west but what i love then is somebody who is so brilliant and so
00:53:02.560
intellectually astute also recognizes the limits of what he's able to know i i think we could i think
00:53:09.720
our world could use more people who are willing to live into and recognize the limits of what they know
00:53:16.880
and also to recognize that mystery is its own profundity you know there's some mystery isn't
00:53:22.940
just a puzzle to be solved it's actually a sense that there is there is an overwhelming kind of truth
00:53:29.700
that i'll never comprehend let's talk about another thing that causes this restlessness and that's death
00:53:35.740
now death was something the existentialist took very seriously because like once you die like you cease to
00:53:41.560
exist so it's true and heidegger thought you know the most sort of fundamental posture of the self
00:53:48.620
design as he called it was being towards death like that was that was the real sort of wake-up call
00:53:54.060
so how did they handle i mean the existentialist how did they handle the anxiety that death could call
00:53:59.180
was it just like accept it and just like live life to the fullest today yeah i mean there's there's
00:54:04.080
varying versions of that for for heidegger death was like facing up to the utter singularity of
00:54:11.120
one's death was supposed to be this yeah this this this resolving catalyst so that i had to face up
00:54:19.820
who am i and what am i going to do for it's a little bit i think it's you could say it's something
00:54:25.260
similar in camu in in the sense that there's no expectation of immortality for camu which is why
00:54:33.920
then we have to labor for justice here and now that was a very very important theme for camu like
00:54:40.380
if there's going to be justice it's going to be because humans in their finite lifetimes are
00:54:45.780
laboring for it and again i sort of admire that about camu because you could also imagine another
00:54:53.480
take which is saying there's nothing after so let's eat drink and be merry because tomorrow we die
00:54:59.340
whereas whereas camu thought it sort of heightened our moral responsibility to one another and then
00:55:05.880
what was augustine's response so augustine's response is he he just wants to take seriously
00:55:13.300
that the fear of death tells us something about a human aspiration right so the the flip side of every
00:55:22.600
fear is a hunger or a hope and and the fact that it seems difficult to efface and erase the fear of
00:55:35.180
death augustine says let's listen to that and say isn't that a sign that we are hoping and longing
00:55:42.060
for something more for for a kind of immortality and of course that's why he thinks at the heart of
00:55:47.840
christianity was this most astounding event which was the resurrection of the dead and so um interesting
00:55:56.780
you you mentioned plato earlier the young augustine probably thought oh the best we could hope for is
00:56:02.640
the immortality of the soul it's only actually when he matures into christianity that he sees
00:56:07.460
oh no actually christianity doesn't just hold out the immortality of the soul it's talking about the
00:56:14.040
resurrection of the body which means the hope we have here is actually for a new heaven and a new
00:56:22.140
earth right like it's um it's a it's the hope our cosmic hope isn't just a hope for a kind of
00:56:28.000
disembodied existence it's it's for god reconciling all things and gathering up all of the goods of
00:56:35.420
creation as well so it's a very i i think it's an ultimately a humanistic vision in the sense that it
00:56:42.200
honors all the aspects of being human well jamie this has been a great conversation i i mean this
00:56:47.700
book i hope this sort of whetted people's appetite to go read the confessions it's i think it's a really
00:56:53.320
i think it's a really readable book even though it was written in the fourth century yeah especially
00:56:57.520
if you read it in a decent contemporary translation any ones you recommend i i recommend sarah rudin's new
00:57:04.380
translation in the modern library is very good and uh henry chadwick's which is a nice cheap oxford
00:57:10.420
paperback both of those are excellent chadwick's has some great footnotes for people who are
00:57:14.720
unfamiliar with the ancient context and jamie where can people go to learn more about your book on the
00:57:19.960
road with saint augustine jameskasmith.com is probably the best place to start all right jamie
00:57:24.920
smith thanks so much time it's been a pleasure great to talk to you again thanks so much my guest
00:57:29.020
is james ka smith he is the author of the book on the road to saint augustine it's available on amazon.com
00:57:33.940
and bookstores everywhere you can find out more information about his work at his website jameskasmith.com
00:57:38.820
also check out our show notes at aom.is slash augustine where you can find links to resources
00:57:44.400
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at artofmanliness.com
00:57:55.920
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