Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Augustine
- 2 Faith and reason
- 3 Augustine on evil and original sin
- 4 Predestination, Pelagianism, and foreknowledge
- 5 Biblical interpretation
- 6 The divine nature
- 7 De Trinitate
- 8 Time and creation in Augustine
- 9 Augustine’s theory of soul
- 10 Augustine on free will
- 11 Augustine’s philosophy of memory
- 12 The response to skepticism and the mechanisms of cognition
- 13 Knowledge and illumination
- 14 Augustine’s philosophy of language
- 15 Augustine’s ethics
- 16 Augustine’s political philosophy
- 17 Augustine and medieval philosophy
- 18 Post-medieval Augustinianism
- Bibliography
- Index
15 - Augustine’s ethics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Augustine
- 2 Faith and reason
- 3 Augustine on evil and original sin
- 4 Predestination, Pelagianism, and foreknowledge
- 5 Biblical interpretation
- 6 The divine nature
- 7 De Trinitate
- 8 Time and creation in Augustine
- 9 Augustine’s theory of soul
- 10 Augustine on free will
- 11 Augustine’s philosophy of memory
- 12 The response to skepticism and the mechanisms of cognition
- 13 Knowledge and illumination
- 14 Augustine’s philosophy of language
- 15 Augustine’s ethics
- 16 Augustine’s political philosophy
- 17 Augustine and medieval philosophy
- 18 Post-medieval Augustinianism
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Augustine regards ethics as an enquiry into the Summum Bonum: the supreme good, which provides the happiness all human beings seek. In this respect his moral thought comes closer to the eudaimonistic virtue ethics of the classical Western tradition than to the ethics of duty and law associated with Christianity in the modern period. But even though Augustine addresses many of the same problems that pagan philosophers do, he often defends very different answers. For him, happiness consists in the enjoyment of God, a reward granted in the afterlife for virtue in this life. Virtue itself is a gift of God, and founded on love, not on the wisdom prized by philosophers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Augustine , pp. 205 - 233Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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