The Art of Manliness - #570： St. Augustine's Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts

00:00:00.000 the art of manliness podcast do you feel restless you sometimes wonder who you are what life's all

00:00:13.720 about and where you're headed do you go after goals and relationships thinking that once you

00:00:16.900 obtain them you'll finally be happy only to feel let down again and again well over 1500 years ago

00:00:21.740 catholic bishop philosopher and theologian augustine of hippo had those same feelings of

00:00:25.940 angst and wrote down his thoughts on how to deal with them in his famous book the confessions

00:00:29.300 subsequent seekers and philosophers have been influenced by his words right up until the

00:00:33.020 present day my guest today has written a book about augustine's ancient insights on the nature

00:00:36.960 of restlessness and how these insights had a profound impact on western philosophy particularly

00:00:41.480 among the existentialists of the 20th century same as james k smith he's a professor of philosophy and

00:00:46.520 theology and his book is on the road with saint augustine a real world spirituality for restless

00:00:50.940 hearts we begin our show discussing augustine's biography and his oft overlooked influence on

00:00:55.180 existential philosophers like heidegger sartre and camus we then unpack how augustine was something

00:00:59.800 of an existentialist himself and yet crucially deviated from modern existentialists and his ideas

00:01:04.260 and compare and contrast his view and their viewpoints on the way in which life is a journey

00:01:08.120 how someone can find their true self what it means to be free and how to deal with restless ambition

00:01:12.880 lots of interesting insights about life's big questions in this episode after it's over check out

00:01:17.320 our show notes at aom.is augustine james k.a smith welcome back to the show oh it's great to be back

00:01:32.260 with you so we had you on a few years ago to talk about your book about charles taylor's book a secular

00:01:37.500 age and you know his idea of why there's so much existential angst in modernity you got a new book out

00:01:44.720 called on the road with saint augustine a real world spirituality for restless hearts and i feel

00:01:51.060 like this is sort of like a sequel to that it's like the antidote to restlessness um but before we

00:01:56.380 get to um saint augustine's insights about how to deal with existential angst in the 21st century

00:02:03.480 um let's know a little bit let's find out a little bit about our travel companion here who was saint

00:02:08.280 augustine for those who aren't familiar with him why are we still talking about him today in the 21st century

00:02:13.000 yeah the the thumbnail sketch is so augustine was an ancient thinker and theologian and bishop who

00:02:23.740 lived in the late 300s and early 400s so latter stages of the roman empire and and very much

00:02:32.480 embroiled in in some of those dynamics however he was from north africa he was from what would be

00:02:40.020 today contemporary algeria his father was roman and pagan his mother was african and christian so you

00:02:48.640 could say he was sort of he he was familiar with a bicultural even kind of biracial experience and

00:02:55.600 because he was at the at this time north africa was sort of like the outer edge of the roman empire so he

00:03:02.100 he knows something about the experience of being on the margins but also aspiring to be in the center and

00:03:08.900 so he's probably most famous for his work the confessions which is still assigned in universities

00:03:16.140 around the world and is often described as one of the first memoirs of the west and yeah he continues

00:03:23.740 to fascinate i was in a conversation in dc about the book a couple months ago with elizabeth brunick

00:03:28.680 from the washington post and she said you know who who else from the fourth century still has haters

00:03:34.200 like augustine does so he's he's not an uncontroversial figure but he continues to capture

00:03:39.060 imagination and and went on to become what we call one of the doctors of the church probably after

00:03:44.920 jesus and the apostle paul probably one of the most significant influencers of western christianity

00:03:53.120 and yet was also read by philosophers throughout the centuries including the 20th century in particular

00:03:59.560 well let's talk about that so i mean obviously confessions had a profound influence on believing

00:04:03.980 christians because it's about augustine's conversion but as you note and you talk about throughout this

00:04:09.420 book on the road with saint augustine augustine had a big influence on these continental existential

00:04:14.920 often atheistic philosophers of the 20th century we're talking sartre camu heidegger who i mean for

00:04:21.400 those who are familiar with these guys who were these guys in big strokes and then how did augustine influence

00:04:26.860 them yeah so that's that's a great question because in some ways these figures will not be familiar

00:04:34.080 to folks sort of every day today now in the early 21st century and yet my contention is that we have

00:04:42.680 actually all drank from their wells even if we didn't realize it because what what happens in the middle

00:04:49.860 of the 20th 20th century sort of germinating from germany and france just before world war ii and

00:04:57.600 after world war ii is this movement that that came to be described as existentialism and these philosophers

00:05:04.600 like martin heidegger and jean paul sartre were were influential and writers like albert camu and so on

00:05:10.340 and what they were grappling with was what we now talk about in terms of authenticity so there was this

00:05:18.120 this sort of new sense of the burden of selfhood there was this sense that if we were going to make

00:05:25.540 meaning and find meaningful lives we had to like answer this call and be resolute and sort of you

00:05:32.620 know go we had to find ourselves would have been the language the way it trickled down into movies and

00:05:37.960 cinema and magazines and things like that so in many ways i think in the early 21st century we are

00:05:45.220 still heirs to this existential project of finding ourselves this quest for authenticity and yet what's

00:05:52.640 really intriguing for me as a philosopher is when you dig down below the surface when you when you

00:05:58.900 scratch below the surface of what heidegger and camu and these folks were saying it turns out that the

00:06:06.340 common influence was this fourth century african theologian named augustine so that they all had

00:06:15.600 very very direct encounters with augustine's thought and in some ways that was also precipitated by

00:06:21.780 folks like blaze pascal and soren kierkegaard who also are kind of progenitors of this existentialist

00:06:29.140 tradition that also grappled with this augustinian inheritance so what what turns out to be the case is

00:06:35.260 augustine is kind of the first existentialist and and that's why it's not a mistake that he writes a

00:06:42.420 book like the confessions where he's kind of peering inside himself trying to figure out who he is and

00:06:48.700 what he's about and what he's called to and what he loves and yeah he's trying to find himself and it

00:06:54.000 turns out that's a very ancient quest and yet i think it's one that's maybe even more ubiquitous in

00:07:00.600 our late modern era yeah so i mean as you said we've drunk from this we're permeated in this

00:07:05.360 existential philosophy if you've ever seen an instagram meme about making your own meaning finding

00:07:11.120 your true values finding your true north those are those are the existentialists right there yeah yeah

00:07:16.860 that's the that's the kind of everyday translation of this existentialist impulse to find oneself to

00:07:24.720 become who you were called to be so augustine i've always called him augustine but i guess it's

00:07:30.440 augustine yeah no it goes it goes either way i don't i won't judge okay no it's okay you can judge

00:07:36.520 here no so augustine i'm gonna call him augustine in in his confessions he refers to life as a journey

00:07:43.440 on a road and that's another modern thing we do life's a journey on you got to hit the road

00:07:48.760 um there's road movies we can talk about that but as augustine points out in the book and you point

00:07:55.980 out being on the road all the time can beat you down it makes you feel restless and you say being

00:08:02.720 on the road and the thinking life as a journey on a road makes us feel restless in two ways what are

00:08:07.700 those ways yeah so i i think you're right that this is another way in which we've inherited this kind

00:08:13.860 of existentialist thread is everybody's on a journey right so that's a very very common language for

00:08:20.920 what we think spirituality could mean in a secular age is well i'm on the road i'm looking i'm searching

00:08:29.720 i'm journeying we might even call it a pilgrimage or something like that and augustine says yeah that's

00:08:36.780 that's true like that's true to the human condition he would say he does think the nature of the human

00:08:41.900 condition is that you are sort of on the way you you can't not be chasing something you can't not be

00:08:48.600 looking to arrive somewhere but there's the two kinds of restlessness are there's one kind of

00:08:55.420 restlessness that stems from not knowing where home is right so you're that's the kind of that's the

00:09:03.060 restlessness of gatsby that's the restlessness of kerouac's on the road because what happens there is

00:09:10.060 all right we got to be moving we got to be looking we got to be searching we got to hit the road

00:09:14.860 and and the restlessness stems from the fact of maybe not knowing where you're supposed to get to

00:09:20.080 or getting to what you thought was the destination and say oh we made it we've arrived this is going

00:09:27.900 to be happiness this is going to be meaning only to realize that that evaporates that's why i always

00:09:33.320 think of gatsby in this return right where you get to what you think is everything you've hoped for

00:09:38.660 and you've got this fantastic mansion and the great estate but there's still that green blinking beacon

00:09:44.660 on the other side of the bay and all of a sudden now you want something else and you think oh happiness

00:09:48.760 must be over there that that's the kind of restlessness that's just utterly exhausting and

00:09:54.900 devours us and and is despairing in a sense there is still another kind of restlessness that augustine is

00:10:03.100 honest about and i guess this is what i appreciate i i share augustine's faith as a christian and

00:10:08.560 but i don't think that that insulates me from restlessness it's it's uh now it's the kind of

00:10:15.300 restlessness that stems from i i know where home is every day i pray thy kingdom come but it's not here

00:10:21.440 and i i'm saying how long oh lord and it's that dynamic of a kind of sanctified impatience and the

00:10:29.400 the difficulty the veil of tears that we are still journeying on even if we have a compass even if we

00:10:35.600 know where home is even if we know who true north is that doesn't mean that there aren't still burdens

00:10:40.040 of the journey that come with their own restlessness if that makes sense no that makes sense and i think

00:10:44.840 everyone's experienced those first two type of restlessness like the first type where you don't

00:10:48.400 know where home is so when you're laying in bed at night and you're like what am i doing with my life

00:10:52.920 yeah where am i what am i supposed to be doing and then the second kind of restlessness is like

00:10:57.400 once you achieve that big goal and you're like well that was underwhelming yes that was incredibly

00:11:02.780 underwhelming yes and for augustine i got what augustine would just point out is because we are

00:11:08.800 we're talking about what really are fundamentally kind of spiritual realities right and what augustine

00:11:14.060 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

00:11:20.240 who god is and what to hope for that doesn't mean that i don't still experience those kinds of

00:11:25.840 disappointments and the disorientation that comes from thinking i could have settled somewhere and

00:11:33.260 realizing that doesn't work and and i think that's why i appreciate his kind of realism in facing up to

00:11:40.040 that well yeah there's a there's a tendency for some christians when they explain hardship in life

00:11:45.600 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 0.98

00:11:51.240 a cop out right i mean it still sucks right now but exactly but augustine says yeah it does suck 0.70

00:11:57.080 but you got to keep yes it'll it'll happen and i'm not immune to basically falling for the trap of

00:12:04.700 pretty things as if they could make me happy do you know i mean or falling for the trap that

00:12:09.200 accomplishment could make me happy and augustine says well that's always a fraught

00:12:15.020 and fragile prospect because you can always lose and so what does it look like to grapple with that

00:12:22.780 well let's go back to these existential philosophers because as you said they they got this idea

00:12:28.400 from augustine or they were influenced by augustine this idea yeah what was their response to these

00:12:33.100 these restlessness that people feel just for being how did they respond to that yeah that's a that is a

00:12:39.880 great question so there's there's a few different ways i don't know how patient your listeners are

00:12:44.440 but i'll give you an example okay great because so so martin heidegger who's kind of the in a way

00:12:49.940 the sort of granddaddy of this movement his his response is to say he kind of inherits from augustine

00:12:56.960 the sense that we have to answer a call that we are you know on the road to somewhere that we need to

00:13:03.000 find ourselves but he box from specifying that and he says at the end of the day you have to sort of

00:13:12.580 decide what you are called to be so you if if i'm called to something it's actually me calling to

00:13:19.460 myself and so it's a little bit like a very heavy german philosophical version of you do you

00:13:25.020 which means the burden is on me to kind of make myself and i think that comes with its own kind of

00:13:33.400 exhaustion and paralysis almost and i i think our culture experiences that if if answering the call of

00:13:40.460 who i'm to be is really entirely and only up to me i am not sure i trust myself to do that or

00:13:48.380 what if i got to go on so there's there's a kind of i think angst that comes from that burden someone

00:13:55.020 like camus camus was was as augustinian as you could get without god in other words he kind of

00:14:03.160 recognized everything that augustine was saying about the world but then he said but i don't i can't

00:14:09.100 believe it and so what he would say is that's why he faces up to what he calls the absurd how do we

00:14:15.260 if if the world is calling me to all these things but they are impossible how do i nonetheless make a

00:14:21.260 life in spite of that and and which is why he thinks the greatest philosophical question is suicide

00:14:26.800 the the someone like kerouac is i think maybe even more germane than people realize even if they've

00:14:33.580 never read his novel on the road because for kerouac what you do is you just embrace this

00:14:38.700 philosophy that says the road is life right so you don't you don't actually think you can arrive

00:14:43.840 anywhere or you don't know where home is and so you just embrace this philosophy he says oh it's all

00:14:48.100 about the journey it's all about the road which i think works for a while until you're kind of a

00:14:53.660 puddle of exhaustion and despair in the middle of that road and you're wondering can't i get home

00:15:00.740 like can't somebody welcome me home and augustine would say that voice that hunger in you that keeps

00:15:10.320 hoping that there's a home and someone to welcome you augustine would say that's an inbuilt hunger

00:15:16.800 and what you need to do is open yourself up to entertaining the possibility that it could be true

00:15:22.340 and that it's actually god who's making that home to welcome you into no yeah camu also had that idea

00:15:28.180 that like the road is home too with his myth of sisyphus right yes you know for those who aren't

00:15:34.120 familiar it's this idea like sisyphus pushes the boulder up and then he rolls back down just to keep

00:15:39.740 pushing it up for eternity and at a certain point sisyphus like enjoys it like i'm just gonna love

00:15:45.020 this this is absurd i'm gonna love it yes that's how you deal with the problem of of this restlessness

00:15:50.400 and anxiety of modern life exactly and and you know i i i i absolutely love camu i mean he's just

00:15:57.800 one of my favorite writers and i guess i just appreciate his honesty because i don't i don't

00:16:04.560 want to make this too loaded but i would think if i was with camu and i couldn't entertain the

00:16:11.000 possibility of a grace from a god from beyond that would probably be about the best i could come up

00:16:18.100 with and the remarkable thing about camu is he still thought he was called to be a kind of saint in

00:16:23.600 the face of that so you mean like he still forged a life of moral concern and so on and so forth but

00:16:29.680 he thought at the end of the day it was all kind of absurd and that's that's kind of sad and

00:16:35.820 heartbreaking uh to me only because i guess i can imagine the possibility otherwise but i i guess i

00:16:43.260 also admire camu for facing up to what he thought was the situation he found himself in all right so

00:16:50.600 the existentialists say that life is lived on the road it's a journey but either you yourself choose

00:16:55.460 where it is going or the journey is all there is the road that's all there is to life whereas

00:17:00.780 augustine says that yes life is a journey but we're all moving towards a definite home but how does he

00:17:06.780 deal with the tension between living life as it is now and hoping for rest and happiness in the life to

00:17:12.540 come yeah so for for augustine the the road trip that he thinks explains the human condition is the

00:17:21.320 the parable of the prodigal son which i think is commonly and known enough that we could assume

00:17:27.060 right the parable the father the son who says basically says to his father i wish you were dead

00:17:31.680 could i please have my inheritance now the father gives it to him he runs off to a dusting distant

00:17:36.820 country blows it on wine women and booze and is is destitute is living lower than the animals and

00:17:45.780 then kind of comes to himself and makes his way back to the father who gathers him up in in graceful

00:17:52.480 welcome home and that's where he finds himself as well so for augustine that's that's the possibility

00:17:58.500 that the human condition holds out and and what he would say is grace is this realization that i am not

00:18:08.920 my own that a father is waiting to welcome me and in and in some sense has assured me of that welcome

00:18:16.180 but i there's also this not yet dynamic of this mortal condition in which we find ourselves the the

00:18:25.160 technical word he would talk about is what he calls eschatology that there's this there's this still

00:18:29.460 the sense in which we are waiting for the kingdom to arrive in its fullness so in the meantime we are

00:18:35.460 pilgrims we are he even sometimes says we are exiles we are we know where we're going we are assured of a

00:18:42.720 home that will welcome us but it's we have many miles to go before we sleep and so what does it look

00:18:48.780 like to be hopeful on that journey what does it look like though to be realistic about that journey

00:18:54.940 and it doesn't mean pretending everything is good you know like it means facing up to the brokenness

00:19:01.880 and fallenness and lamentable aspects of this world and and how difficult it is how difficult it is to

00:19:08.640 stay between the ditches so to speak and we'll talk about some of these in specifics but um you're going

00:19:13.820 back to the existentialist philosophers you know for me and i think you talk you've talked about this too

00:19:17.580 there's something about their philosophy of you know it's extreme rugged individualism right you make your

00:19:23.640 own meaning yeah it's up to you it's all about courage the courage to face the absurd and it's

00:19:29.300 attractive but as you said like once you like try to like okay i'm gonna find my own meaning but it's

00:19:34.460 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

00:19:40.380 feel like they they need to depend on someone even a higher power because it sounds like i don't know

00:19:45.220 emasculating or infantilizing i mean what do you think the i mean i don't know there's some issue

00:19:50.500 there that people want something but they're afraid to take it oh i i think you're absolutely

00:19:55.820 right i i think the most scandalous aspect of augustine's vision is grace because grace at the

00:20:04.100 at the very bottom says i can't do it on my own that that this is impossible for me to accomplish so

00:20:12.320 and and i get the offense of it and i think it's especially offensive to those of us who live in a

00:20:18.080 secular you know sort of late modern world because the most sacrosanct value in our cultural moment 1.00

00:20:27.020 i think is autonomy is independence and there's there's there's ways in which that's maybe especially

00:20:33.880 true for kind of guys like there's a gendered way that that goes but i think in general also there's

00:20:38.780 just this sense that autonomy independence self-sufficiency is our religion and augustine

00:20:48.360 just thinks you can't be human and not be dependent like you can't ever be fully human

00:20:55.960 without owning up to your dependence ultimately on god but also your human dependence and i think one

00:21:03.780 way to explain the epidemic of isolation of isolation and loneliness is our culture is actually

00:21:10.840 as a mirror and effect of our prizing of autonomy and independence we don't we don't really know how

00:21:17.780 to value community and friendship and dependence even though we have ways of being collectively together

00:21:25.040 they are not the same as recognizing the fact that i'm dependent on communities that have come before

00:21:30.920 me that are around me and so on and so forth so i think you're right i think one of the reasons why

00:21:34.880 existentialism took hold is it was it it confirmed this myth of autonomy augustine understands why we want

00:21:44.520 to be ourselves it's not it's not a facing individuality it's questioning individualism and and for augustine

00:21:55.160 you could actually never find the fullness of yourself alone so yeah there's i get why that's

00:22:01.160 sort of scandalous and yet i also think i think our culture is discovering that we are not our best

00:22:07.800 masters you know like i i think i'm the last person i want to trust with myself and it's one of the

00:22:14.520 reasons actually why i think i don't know if you notice in the book but recovery communities are are

00:22:19.560 constantly referred to as an analog of what we're talking about and i think the way into recovery

00:22:25.200 the way out of addiction is to recognize the illusion of autonomy and independence all right

00:22:32.380 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

00:22:35.740 parse this out a bit so we can talk you talk about uh there's ideas of freedom in there then you

00:22:40.780 talk about identity or authenticity augustine and the existentialist had different takes on this let's

00:22:46.340 talk with freedom so this idea of this autonomous individual that makes their meaning makes choices

00:22:52.420 of life that's an existentialist thing but as you talk about in the book the existentialist thought of

00:22:57.820 freedom mainly is freedom from from constraints but you make the case that this this focus on freedom

00:23:04.680 from as freedom can actually ensnare us and make us less free how so yeah so and this i think is one of

00:23:14.660 the great gifts augustine could give to us in terms of just like analyzing freedom for us

00:23:19.680 and i by the way i think this is really hyped up in specifically american contexts so yeah we we generally

00:23:29.160 when we use the word freedom almost the only way we imagine freedom is what isaiah berlin called

00:23:35.700 negative freedom it's freedom from it's it's freedom understood as the absence of constraints

00:23:42.660 constraints so nobody is pushing on me nobody is having it's hands-off freedom and i get to choose

00:23:48.300 what i want augustine thinks that's what he calls free free choice and he actually thinks free choice

00:23:56.940 is prone to its own sort of slavery and addiction we might say today because if freedom is just

00:24:05.580 the power and agency to choose to choose to do whatever i want my freedom is actually never directed

00:24:13.080 or aimed or led or guided to my good to some substantive vision of the good instead i imagine i'm more

00:24:24.220 free just to the extent that i multiply my options but if i just multiply my options what can also happen

00:24:31.380 is sort of a paralysis i mean you know the the trivial example of this is you know i go to the

00:24:36.740 grocery store to buy toothpaste and there's 17 000 kinds of toothpaste where do i even start it's like

00:24:43.100 fine i'm going home i don't even know where to begin there's a there's a deep existential version

00:24:48.020 of this which is how would i even know what to choose but then secondly if there's no real

00:24:55.440 specification of what i ought to choose and i just start sort of trying things out what can happen is

00:25:04.020 there what looks like free choice can also become the beginning of my own addiction and enslavement to

00:25:12.980 the thing so augustine has this analysis in book eight of the confessions where he says

00:25:16.800 oh well i start by thinking i'm going to choose to do this and i think that this will make me happy

00:25:22.940 and then after a little while i have to do this to have any sort of feeling of happiness and before long

00:25:32.380 doing this actually no longer makes me happy and yet i can't not do it because now i'm just trying

00:25:38.760 to sort of maintain some base level of high so to speak that i was experiencing it's exactly the

00:25:44.060 dynamics of addiction so for augustine that's negative freedom and and it doesn't go well the

00:25:49.900 story does not turn out well positive freedom freedom for is what now when my agency my power to choose

00:25:58.960 is enlivened and empowered precisely because it is directed towards some good some vision of what the

00:26:08.020 good life is and so now it's empowering me to pursue and chase something that is for my good

00:26:13.800 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 0.85

00:43:25.560 problem but of course it wouldn't because you would still want it so instead augustine that's why he 0.97

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

00:57:43.020 where you delve deeper into this topic

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The Art of Manliness - December 18, 2019

#570： St. Augustine's Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts

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