Augustine of Hippo's knowledge of Aristotle, his work, and his thought, was limited.Footnote 1 Regarding Aristotle, whom he mentions on few occasions, Augustine knew he was Plato's disciple and that he founded the Peripatetic school.Footnote 2 There is no evidence that he knew any more about the circumstances of his life. Augustine himself says to us in his Confessions that in his youth he read the Categories in a Latin translation entitled Categoriae decem Footnote 3 (The Ten Categories), a book he mentions in other instances throughout his writings. He used it, for example, in the treatise De trinitate Footnote 4 to demonstrate God's simple, absolute, and immutable nature, as well as the consubstantiality of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. Aristotelian categories were valued as a useful instrument in logical argumentation and dialectical debate. Augustine nevertheless continued to resist what he considered their improper use, especially where it led to (for him) heretical conclusions; he reproached Julian of Eclanum on this count several times.Footnote 5 It is possible, however, that Augustine also knew the work On Interpretation, translated into Latin by Marius Victorinus, but this is not certain.Footnote 6
There is no evidence that Augustine had read any of Aristotle's other works.Footnote 7 However, we can find traces of Aristotelian ideas and topics of diverse origin and indirect transmission in his writings, the source of which in most cases is Cicero. Of these topics, we are especially interested in those that could have been treated in the Protrepticus, a work of exhortation to philosophy that Cicero used to write the Hortensius. Footnote 8
These topics are already known. However, as far as I know, hitherto there has not been a study of them taking into consideration all of the three following aspects:
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1) An analysis of these topics in order to discuss in a critical and updated way their nature and relevance.
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2) An examination of the role that Cicero played in their transmission by studying the use he made of them in the Hortensius.Footnote 9 However, my purpose is not to settle the issue of the dependence of the Hortensius on the Protrepticus or to what extent the Hortensius is inspired by the Protrepticus (an issue, as stated by a recent author,Footnote 10 still disputed).
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3) An investigation of how Augustine adapted them to the context in which he quotes them.
That is the three-pronged task I set for myself in the present article.
Before I begin, I would like to clarify some points. Firstly, regarding Aristotle's Protrepticus, we cannot draw conclusions beyond any shadow of a doubt, given the scarcity of reliable testimonies and fragments that have reached us. I will nevertheless use Ingemar Düring's reconstruction of the Protrepticus, which in my opinion is the most reliable version we have to date, as a working instrument.Footnote 11
Secondly, we can state something similar about Cicero's Hortensius, which has also come to us in a fragmentary state. However, in this case we are fortunate that the reminiscences of the Protrepticus in Augustine's works belong to quotations explicitly ascribed to the Hortensius, or that can be easily attributable to this work, so that it is possible to regard these as reliable quotations from the Hortensius.Footnote 12 It is another question whether Augustine was aware that the passages of the Hortensius he mentioned could have been inspired by Aristotle's Protrepticus. It is not likely that he was aware of it, and it is even highly probable that he did not know of the existence of this Aristotelian work. Regardless, it has no influence on the fact that he used topics from it via the Hortensius, adapting them, no doubt, to his own philosophical and theological interests. It is necessary to take into account that, for Augustine, the value of the non-Christian, Greco-Roman philosophical tradition always had to be subordinated to the truths of the faith as stated in Holy Scripture. His use of Aristotle, Cicero, and other philosophers always depended on that premise.Footnote 13
Further, it is also significant that most of the references to the Hortensius I discuss are direct quotations; this is not only of obvious importance for the reconstruction of the Ciceronian text but also helps establish the relationship between this and the Protrepticus, which seems to be the point of reference throughout. Augustine then, without being aware of it, provides evidence crucial to establishing the degree to which one work depends on the other,Footnote 14 and that must also be taken into account (although it is not my intention in this article to draw the pertinent conclusions about this dependence, but rather to clarify the nature and the path followed by some Aristotelian philosophical ideas reflected by Augustine, as well as to examine the use he makes of them).
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The first relevant passage of the Hortensius is an extract cited in the De trinitate (14.9.12):
If we were allowed, when we departed from this life, to live an immortal life in the Isles of the Blessed, as legends tell, what need would we have of eloquence — if there would be no trials — or even of virtues themselves? For indeed, we would not need fortitude, for we would not be exposed to any toil or danger; nor justice, for there would be nothing of anybody else's to be desired; nor temperance to govern desires that would not exist. We would not even need prudence, for we would not be exposed to the choice between good and evil. We should be blessed, therefore, solely with the knowledge of nature and science by which alone also the life of the gods is to be praised. Hence we may deduce that everything else is subject to necessity, but only this one to will.Footnote 15
Cicero refers here to the topos of life in the Isles of the BlessedFootnote 16 as a mythical example in order to point out, firstly, that happiness consists in the knowledge of nature and in the science by which the life of the gods is praised and, secondly, that that happy life (i.e., the life in the Isles of the Blessed), is accepted willingly, in contrast to what happens in the present life, in which the virtues of prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice are needed (to which Cicero, revealing his love of oratory, adds the virtue of eloquenceFootnote 17 ). Thereby the following concatenation of ideas can be detected: virtues are subordinated to the knowledge of nature, nature being conceived in the widest sense; this knowledge is regarded as a source of happiness,Footnote 18 which is an end in and of itself, and therefore subject to choice, but not to necessity, unlike virtues, which are necessary for an ulterior end; finally, it is suggested that this cognitive happiness makes human life similar to that of the gods.Footnote 19 The whole passage, as the De trinitate context suggests, seems to have a protreptical purpose: encouraging philosophizing, since philosophy is the activity of the happy life. In this way, Cicero gathers the inheritance of previous philosophers who thought that the happy life consisted of knowledge and science.Footnote 20
These two terms, knowledge (“cognition”) and science (“scientia”), are also quoted together in a parallel passage from De finibus (5.18.48–19.53), wherein Cicero illustrates man's innate love of learning and knowing (“cognitionis amor et scientiae”) with examples taken from daily life, from literature, and from previous philosophers, such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Democritus. Finally, he refers to the topos of the Isles of the Blessed:
And so, the ancient philosophers picture what the life of the wise will be in the Isles of the Blessed, who, released from all anxiety, needing none of the necessary equipment or accessories of life, think about doing nothing else but spend their whole time upon inquiry and learning about the knowledge of nature.Footnote 21
This text helps us to understand some points in the passage from the Hortensius. First, when Cicero talks about the knowledge and science of nature, he seems to refer to a continuous, diligent, and disinterested search for the truth, not to its definitive possession, which effectively reflects his Academic skepticism.Footnote 22 Second, the love of the intellective activity is something innate and undertaken for its own sake, without any subsequent purpose.Footnote 23 And third, what characterizes wise men is not their desire to learn, but the object of this desire, that is, the truth about nature, which is genuinely what makes them happy.
When Cicero mentions the ancient philosophers who imagine life on the Isles of the Blessed, he refers to the same ones who tell the legends (“fabulae”) gathered by him in the Hortensius, namely, those who identified happiness with knowledge and science.Footnote 24 These philosophers were most likely Plato and Aristotle, who taught that the happy life consisted of exercising the best virtues and of contemplative life and, furthermore, mentioned the Isles of the Blessed as the final residence of men eminent for their virtues.Footnote 25
However, the immediate source of the ideas reflected in the passages from the Hortensius is Aristotle's Protrepticus, as has been recognized, in general, in modern times.Footnote 26 In this work, Aristotle did indeed also refer to the topos of the Isles of the Blessed, which was introduced as a mythical example to support an argument in favor of the goodness of wisdom and knowledge. Both were inherently desirable, not for the sake of something else like the necessary things. In these Isles there is indeed no need of anything, nor can one get any benefit from anything other than the exercise of thought and contemplation, which is what wisdom entails:
To think wisely (ϕρονεῖν) and to have knowledge (γιγνώσκειν) is in itself desirable (αἱρετὸν καθ᾿ αὑτὸ) for men, for it is not possible to live a human life without both these things. . . . To seek from all knowledge a result other than itself, and to require that it must be useful, is the demand of someone completely ignorant of the distance that from the start separates things good from things necessary, for indeed they differ greatly. The things that we love for the sake of something else and without which life is impossible ought to be called “necessary” . . . , while those that we love for themselves, even if nothing else follows from them, ought to be called “good” in the strict sense. . . .
Best of all one would see the truth of what we are saying if someone carried us in thought to the Isles of the Blessed, for in that place there would be no need of anything, nor profit from any other thing; only thought and contemplation (τὸ διανοεῖσθαι καὶ θεωρεῖν) would remain, which even now we describe as the free life. If this is true, would not any one of us be rightly ashamed if when granted the possibility to live in the Isles of the Blessed, he were by his own fault unable to do so? Therefore the reward given to men who pursue knowledge is not to be despised, nor slight the good that comes from it, for as, according to the wise among the poets, we receive the rewards of justice in Hades, so, it would seem, we reap those of wisdom in the Isles of the Blessed.Footnote 27
Possibly, Aristotle added that this philosophical way of life, characteristic of wise men, was the most similar to the gods’ way of life.Footnote 28 That argument was situated within a wider context, wherein the reasoning offered for philosophizing was the fact that it is useful and desirable in itself, and therefore it is not just good, but the greatest of all goods.Footnote 29
We see, therefore, that the same topics we find in the Hortensius passage are present: reference to the Isles of the Blessed as a mythical example to illustrate the superiority of theoretical knowledge over all other human activity, including the exercise of virtues; underlining this superiority with the argument that said knowledge is desirable in itself (αἱρετὸν καθ᾿ αὑτὸ), namely, it is sought only voluntarily (“unum hoc voluntatis”), without any ulterior end; the presentation of the happy life as an activity (not as a state) and its identification with the exercise of thinking applied to knowledge alone, which is denominated with a very similar hendiadys (τὸ διανοεῖσθαι καὶ θεωρεῖν, which corresponds closely to “cognitio et scientia”).Footnote 30 There are also differences, of course, pointed out by Grilli,Footnote 31 but they are variations of detail that do not contradict the fundamental parallelism that makes the Aristotelian passage the textual referent of the Ciceronian text.
In the passage from Cicero, the traditional image of the Isles of the Blessed is also exploited for its exemplary effect. It shows the same eagerness to distinguish what is necessary from what is good by subordinating the former to the latter, the same will to urge knowledge as the object of the happy life, and the same protreptical intention for the exhortation to philosophy. However, Cicero prefers to put special emphasis on the role that ethical virtues play in the present life and their insignificance for the ideal of a contemplative life, similar in its happiness to that of the gods, whereas Aristotle does not compare knowledge and wisdom, characteristic of a happy life, with the ethical virtues. On the contrary, he presents them as the only activity worthy of being deemed blissful.
In this sense, Cicero also seems to draw inspiration from a passage of the Nicomachean Ethics,Footnote 32 wherein Aristotle, in order to illustrate the conclusion that perfect happiness lies in contemplative activity, demonstrates that this is the only activity to be attributable to the gods by means of the reduction to the absurd of the alternative thesis, which is to make happiness lie in the exercise of the ethical virtues.Footnote 33 Cicero, as we have already seen, repeats the same topos in the work De finibus with an end similar to that of the Aristotelian Protrepticus passage: to show that the contemplative life has to be the one characteristic of the happy life, since this is the only life possible in a place prototypical for the ideal life, that is, the Isles of the Blessed. All this would indicate, as Düring suggests,Footnote 34 that Aristotle himself could have used the same topos in different works with a similar intentionFootnote 35 — although he stressed different aspects of the issue — and that Cicero could have known both passages and could have drawn his inspiration from them, in a free manner adapted to his own interests. We do not have enough information to assert, as JaegerFootnote 36 does, that the Iamblichus text, from which the Aristotelian Protrepticus passage is taken, had summarized the original content, omitting the exclusion of the ethical virtues in the supreme state of happiness characteristic of the contemplative life, whereas the Hortensius, which does refer to them, would reflect with more exactitude the tenor of the Protrepticus text. The passage quoted from the Ethics cannot be offered as proof, contrary to Jaeger's pretensions, for there is no reason to suppose that Aristotle drew his inspiration from the Protrepticus when he wrote it, instead of using a parallel argument to support a similar thesis — that is, the superiority of intellective knowledge as the object of a happy life.
As for the use Augustine makes of Cicero's words, the former adapts them from the protreptical context wherein they were written to another one of a theological character, where the aim is to elucidate whether the four cardinal virtues — prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice — will disappear in the future life. Augustine accepts from Cicero both that those four virtues are necessary in the present life and that happiness lies in the knowledge and contemplation of nature, although in the Christian mind of the saint “nature” refers to a supreme divine nature that creates all the other natures.Footnote 37 Augustine denies, however, that those four virtues were unnecessary in an ideal happy life. Quite the opposite, he admits that they can survive in the happiness of the eternal life as long as they are not understood according to the actions characteristic of them in this life, but only as vestiges present in memory that will be known and loved, forming in the soul a sort of image of the Holy Trinity, comprising memory, knowledge, and will.Footnote 38
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The second passage that Augustine quoted from the Hortensius, and wherein we can see Aristotelian traces, is in his work Contra Iulianum (4.15.78):
Those offenses and miseries of human life sometimes cause that those ancient seers or interpreters of the divine mind who transmit the sacred rites and initiations, who said that we are born to atone with punishment for the crimes committed in a previous life, appear to have seen something, and that it is true what we read in Aristotle, that we suffer a punishment similar to that of those who, in times past, when they fell into the hands of Etruscan pirates, were murdered with ingenious cruelty: their bodies, the living with the dead, were tied face-to-face as close as possible; thus our souls, bonded to their bodies, are like the living bonded to the dead.Footnote 39
This passage belongs to the final part of the Ciceronian dialogue, wherein the vanity and misery of human life — attached to the passions of the body and origin of the evils of man — are mentioned in distinct contrast with a philosophical life consecrated to the knowledge of nature and the exercise of virtues. That contrast, based on the opposition between the immortal and divine soul, rational principle and source of wisdom, and the mortal body, cause of limitations, errors, and vices, is illustrated here by a mythical explanation and a historical simile. Both the mythical explanation, according to which the present life is a divine punishment for the offenses committed in a previous life, and the historical simile (the existence of the soul in the body is like the torture the Etruscans inflicted upon their prisoners, consisting of tying the living face-to-face with the dead) achieve the same purpose: the undervaluing of the present life with all its superficiality, futility, and transitoriness, as a way of extolling, by contrast, an alternative way of life based on knowledge and wisdom so that it can be presented as a superior, divine way of life and, therefore, worthy of being lived.
Cicero's text, with both its mythical explanation and its historical example, is based on a passage of Aristotle's Protrepticus that must also have been, like the Ciceronian passage, part of the conclusion of the work, wherein the reference was introduced to the rites that taught that life is the result of a punishment for great offenses committed in the long distant past, and also the simile that illustrates the ordeal of the Etruscan pirates (although Cicero names only Aristotle in relation to the latter).Footnote 40 The motivation for these references was the same: to extol the philosophical life by contrast, inasmuch as it corresponds to the only things immortal and divine in man, namely, reason (νοῦς) and wisdom (ϕρόνησις).Footnote 41 Aristotle's text is as follows:
Which of us, looking to these facts, would think himself happy and blessed if all of us are from the very beginning (as those who chant initiations say) shaped by nature as though for punishment? For the ancients say that this is divine, to assert that the soul suffers punishment and that we live for the atonement of great offenses. For, indeed, the marriage of the soul with the body looks very much like this. For as the Etruscans are said often to torture captives by chaining dead bodies face-to-face with the living, fitting part to part, so the soul seems to be extended throughout and affixed to all the sensitive members of the body.Footnote 42
We can see indeed the same description of life as a punishment, although Aristotle specifies that it is not man as such but his soul that lives, punished, incarnated in a body. We can also see the attribution of that doctrine to “those who chant initiations,” who would take it from “more ancient” authors, in a clear reference to the officiating priests of the Orphic ritesFootnote 43 and the writers from whom they took their doctrines. These writers were authors of theogonies and cosmogonies attributed to the mythical Orpheus,Footnote 44 wherein it was taught that the human soul lived yoked to the body as if the latter were a grave as punishment for ancient offenses.Footnote 45 These offenses, according to some testimonies,Footnote 46 were identified with the crime committed by the Titans — ancestors of men in the Orphic myth — against the god Dionysus. Cicero paraphrases Aristotle, adding names such as “ancient seers” and “interpreters of the divine mind” for those Orphic authors, which seems to be a reminiscence of a fragment by Philolaus quoted by Clement of Alexandria that says:
The ancient theologians and seers also give testimony of it: in order to comply with certain punishment, the soul is yoked to the body and is buried in it as though in a sepulcher.Footnote 47
The expression “ancient theologians and seers” is a clear reference to Orpheus and the literature attributed to him.Footnote 48 It is possible that Aristotle quoted Philolaus, or at least used a similar terminology in the Protrepticus (we know that Iamblichus, through whom we know this work, had a tendency to summarize and adapt the text that he quoted) and that Cicero reflected that terminology if it conformed to his own vocabulary and style.Footnote 49 Cicero seems to be less faithful when asserting that the punishment man is to face is to atone for offenses committed in a previous life (“suscepta in vita superiore”), not for “great offenses” as Aristotle declares. In this case it seems that Cicero paraphrases, trusting in certain knowledge of the Orphic doctrines, according to which the original sin of the Titans was transmitted to the human souls, who had to go through a cycle of successive reincarnations to atone for that innate stain.
The fragment of Aristotle also shows that Cicero adopted the reference to the topos of the Etruscan pirates’ torture and its moral and anthropological interpretation in quite a faithful manner and within the same context.Footnote 50
Augustine, for his part, quotes the fragment of Cicero with other ends and within a different context. Augustine brings up this passage from the Hortensius because of its similarity to the Christian doctrine of original sin as a source of evil in man and in particular to the idea that human life, full of deception and misery, owes its condition to a divine judgment that decreed a punishment for men for their first sin.Footnote 51 The reason for the use of a pagan author as an example that, from among ancient philosophers, doctrines close to the Christian faith can be extracted is to be found within the context of the polemic that Augustine holds against the thesis of the Pelagian Julian of Eclanum in favor of considering corporeal pleasure and concupiscence of the flesh as good. In order to support this thesis, Julian had quoted several pagan Greek philosophers in relation to his opinions on natural causes, which he even preferred to those of his Christian adversaries, such as Augustine.Footnote 52 However, he had avoided quoting philosophers who dealt with ethical issues because the majority of them were against considering the pleasures of the body as good. Augustine reproaches him for this peculiarity and replies to Julian himself by quoting one of the philosophers opposed to pleasures — Cicero — with the intention of proving that even a pagan author is closer to the orthodox Christian doctrine (which considers corporeal pleasure and concupiscence of the flesh as an evil derived from the original sin) than Julian himself in his defense of the goodness of pleasures.Footnote 53 Therefore Augustine uses Aristotelian ideas of Orphic origin that are expounded in Cicero to support a thesis of ethical and anthropological character which is of diverse origin and an object of theological polemic.Footnote 54
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The next passage where Cicero could be acting as intermediary between Aristotle and St. Augustine is more questionable. Augustine, in a context where he comments upon John's sentence “We will be like him, for we will see him just as he is,”Footnote 55 considering it as the announcement of the beatific vision that we will have after the resurrection of the flesh, quotes a passage from the Hortensius wherein he sees a reflection of a similar thought applied to contemplative wisdom, which Augustine himself identifies with the wisdom of the divine:
Upon recommending this contemplative wisdom, which I believe is properly called wisdom in the Sacred Scriptures, as distinct at least from the science of man, which not only does not belong to him, but comes from him by whose participation the rational and intellectual mind can become wise, Cicero says at the end of the Hortensius: “For us, who day and night consider these things and sharpen our understanding, which is the eye of the mind, taking care that it not ever be dulled, that is, who live dedicated to philosophy, there is great hope: if that which we feel and know is mortal and transitory, death will be pleasant for us once our human offices are fulfilled, and the end will not seem painful, but a rest from life; or else if, as the ancient philosophers, and the greatest and most distinguished among them, agreed,Footnote 56 we have souls eternal and divine, we ought to consider then that the more constant they shall have been in their proper course, that is, in reasoning and in the desire of knowledge, and the less they shall have mixed and entangled themselves in the vices and errors of men, the easier would their ascent and return to heaven be.” He then says, adding the following conclusion to finish the discussion with a recapitulation: “Therefore, and to end my discourse, if we wish for a tranquil extinction after consuming our life in these studies, or else to migrate without delay from this dwelling to another one better in no small way, we are to make every effort and take every care upon such endeavors.”Footnote 57
Cicero's intention in this final passage of the Hortensius seems clear: he firmly establishes the idea that a life dedicated to philosophy is worthy of living and therefore highly recommended to every man. For this he presents as a last argument the good that that kind of life supposes at the time of death, whether one believes in an afterlife or thinks that everything ends with the current life. In the first instance, the good will entail the soul returning to heaven, that is to say, to the divine abode that is its rightful, natural place, in order to have a happy life there;Footnote 58 in the second instance, however, the good will entail having a quiet, pleasant death perceived as a rest from the hardship of existence.
The protreptical intention of the passage then is clear, and it coincides in spirit and message with the one Aristotle's Protrepticus seems to have had in its last paragraphs. However, other than that coincidence in points of view, it is hard to find clear textual echoes that could demonstrate that Cicero's text was inspired by Aristotle's in something other than its spirit. Ruch,Footnote 59 for instance, thought he saw those echoes in the consideration of philosophy in the Ciceronian passage as ars virtutis, which, according to him, is clear when one reads the phrase cum in his artibus Footnote 60 vixerimus in light of a paragraph of the work De officiis (2.6), wherein philosophy is defined as the ars whose objects are the most important questions and, therefore, as the one by which perseverance (“constantia”) and virtue (“virtus”) are acquired: in short, an ars or disciplina virtutis. Such a conception of philosophy coincides, according to Ruch, with the one Aristotle offers in the Protrepticus when he talks of it as “a discipline (ἐπιμέλεια) and an art (τέχνη) of the soul and its virtues.”Footnote 61 However, if it is true that in this case the Protrepticus could have been useful to Cicero as a precedent, it is also true that, in the works of Aristotle, at least in the ones that have survived, we do not find any allusion to death as a rest from life nor as a passage to a better life in the other world, ideas central to the passage in Cicero, but we do find them in Plato, for example. In the Phaedo (63e–64a), it is said that it is logical that a man who has devoted his life to philosophy would expect to obtain the greatest good in the life that awaits him after death. There, too, appears the image of the emigration of the soul to the Hereafter.Footnote 62 In the Theaetetus (176a–b), it is asserted that, since all evils are necessarily linked to mortal nature, it is necessary to escape from this life to the other one by means of becoming as similar to divinity as possible, that is to say, by becoming a just and pious being through wisdom (μετὰ ϕρονήσεως). And one must not forget the declaration of the Apology of Socrates (40c–e) regarding the good of death conceived as emigration from this dwelling to that of the dead. These passages have led us to believe that the first part of the passage of the Hortensius would be a kind of paraphrase of the Platonic opinions quoted, whose common ground would be the conviction that only a life devoted to philosophy deserves to be lived.Footnote 63 Perhaps that is going too far, since the mere precedence of motives and ideas, even if their influence could be accepted, does not imply that Cicero limited himself to a mere adaptation of them, nor that they were the only ones he took into consideration.
At the same time, the only phrase of the Protrepticus that could have been useful as a model to Cicero, especially to the final part of his fragment — “either we ought to philosophize, or to say farewell to life and depart hence”Footnote 64 — must be placed in relation to the pessimistic declaration quoted by Aristotle himself in the Eudemian Ethics. According to this text, if a human life were to be judged by its hardship, it would have been preferable from the beginning not to have been bornFootnote 65 (1215b 18–22). What Aristotle means to say, in both passages, is that only the philosophical life is deserving of being lived, and, therefore, if faced with the alternative of a life without philosophy — that is to say, a miserable and terrible life — death is preferable. And this does not necessarily imply the existence of a life in the other world, except perhaps for the intellect (νοῦς), which is immortal and divine. In fact, Aristotle, throughout his works, has always been known for seeing the possibility of happiness in the present life, if only in theoretical activity (which is an activity of the intellect, the most divine thing), without giving rise to transcendent hopes.Footnote 66
Nevertheless, we can find in Aristotle a precedent for the Ciceronian reference to the passage to a better life, although not in the Protrepticus but rather in the Eudemus, a work of his youth in dialogue form, of which only some fragments remain. This precedent can be found in a passage quoted by Cicero himself in his work De divinatione,Footnote 67 wherein he describes a dream of Eudemus of Cyprus, a friend of Aristotle in memory of whom his homonymous work was written. In that dream a young man appeared before Eudemus and foretold him, among other things, that he would return home in five years’ time. However, in the fifth year, Eudemus fell fighting in Syracuse, leading Aristotle to interpret the dream as meaning that Eudemus's spirit returned home when it abandoned his body. Even though this interpretation is a simple, ad hoc explanation to adapt the content of the dream to what happened and save in this way the prophetic character of the dream, the fact that the departure of the soul from the body is interpreted as “returning home” (“domum revertisse”) can only mean the return of the soul to its natural dwelling, that is, to its divine origin, where it can lead a better life than it did when it was incarnate. It is this “return home” of the soul that, in my opinion, Cicero is referring to in the Hortensius when he speaks of “migrating without delay from this dwelling to another better in no small way” (“ex hac in aliam haud paulo meliorem domum sine mora demigrare”).Footnote 68 Aristotle adopts the Orphic belief that death is a birth to the true life, insofar as it is the returning of the soul to its natural home, in the Eudemus, where he defends a Platonic position regarding pre-existence, immortality, and reincarnation of the soul.Footnote 69 Surely, this position had already been abandoned in the Protrepticus, in which only the doctrinal grounds on which this set of ideas was based would be of interest, that is, the negative consideration of human life as a kind of divine punishment for ancient transgressions, which Aristotle applied to a life away from philosophy.Footnote 70 This protreptical application of Orphic ideas, filtered through the Platonic spirit, would be what inspired Cicero in the Hortensius and is what is reflected both in the previous passage, also quoted by Augustine,Footnote 71 and in this one.
All these ideas hardly find a reflection, however, in the context where Augustine quotes the passage from Cicero. The reason why Augustine brings up this passage is his urging to philosophy, a discipline that takes one to the contemplation of truth. That is a kind of wisdom that Augustine interprets as being far from human science and close to the true wisdom found in the divinely inspired Scriptures, which announce the contemplation of God that man will attain after the resurrection. Augustine praises Cicero on his promise of a happy death to men who have devoted their lives to philosophy. He ascribes this happiness to the disappearance of what is mortal and transitory, that is, the body and what belongs to it. But he praises him above all for his defense of the immortality of the soul and his exhortation to the desire for knowledge, which is the path — if it is accompanied by faith — that leads the soul in its return to God.Footnote 72 Therefore, Augustine again adapts pagan religious and philosophical concepts to Christianity, bestowing on the Aristotelian-Ciceronian conception of the philosophical and contemplative life a transcendent meaning in which its final end — that is, truth, happiness, and the promised return of the soul to its divine dwelling — is assimilated to God and the contemplation of God in the beatitude of eternal life.
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There are two other texts by Augustine in which one may see the mark of the Protrepticus. They are both found in the first book of the dialogue Contra Academicos, a work of his youth composed immediately after his conversion in which he discusses and criticizes skeptical arguments against the possibility of men finding truth.
The first of these texts (1.3.7) is a passage that also comes from Cicero, very likely from the Hortensius,Footnote 73 although in this case it is in the form of a paraphrase rather than a literal quotation:
Cicero held that he is happy who searches for the truth, even if he is unable to find it. . . . Who does not know that Cicero vehemently declared that man cannot perceive anything, and that nothing is left for the wise man to do but the conscientious search for truth, for if the wise man were to assent to uncertain matters, even if perchance they were true, he could not be free from error? This is the wise man's greatest fault. Hence, if we are to believe that the wise man is necessarily happy, and that the mere search for truth is the perfect function of wisdom, why do we hesitate to consider that the happy life can also be achieved by the very search for truth?Footnote 74
Among declarations characteristic of Academic skepticism, Cicero echoes an idea also found in the Protrepticus: that happiness entails the investigation of truth and that this investigation is the most perfect function (munus) of man.Footnote 75 This declaration, as Grilli suggests,Footnote 76 can be put in relation to the one in the fragment of the Hortensius quoted above,Footnote 77 which places the hope of a happy life in the practice of philosophy or, likewise, in the continual exercise of mind and intellect in the quest for knowledge. Cicero, in the tradition of Academic skepticism, would insist on the idea that happiness is not something one acquires once and for all but is rather a continual conquest, a constant investigation of truth, the work of a lifetime dedicated to study and research.Footnote 78 Such Ciceronian conviction is similar to the one we find in the Protrepticus: from the difference that Aristotle establishes between possession and use, and the preference for the latter over the former,Footnote 79 happiness is shown to consist in the use of the soul itself, which is man's most excellent part, and particularly in its best possible use, which is that of its intellective part. This use is identified with its proper function (ἔργον),Footnote 80 the exercise of thought and reason, which is equivalent to the contemplation of truth,Footnote 81 which, in turn, is what wisdom consists in.Footnote 82 This agreement of ideas between Cicero and Aristotle is well reflected in another paragraph of the Protrepticus that could be used as the culmination of what has been said:
But unless one thinks one ought to endure living on any terms whatever, it is ridiculous not to suffer every toil and bestow every care to gain that kind of wisdom which will know the truth.Footnote 83
We cannot say with any degree of certainty that such an agreement of ideas is the product of Cicero borrowing from Aristotle, but it is possible that Cicero took into account, when echoing those ideas, the Aristotelian position, as he did in other parallel passages of the Hortensius. Footnote 84
In Augustine, Cicero's thesis — which was an attempt to defend the skeptical Academic doctrine according to which the mere investigation of truth is enough for the wise man who wants to be happy — is invoked as an argument from authority in favor of the same doctrine, held by Licentius, one of the interlocutors in the dialogue Contra Academicos, in opposition to Trygetius's contrary view that only the wise man who is perfect can be happy and that he who seeks and investigates truth without ever finding it cannot be perfect. Augustine then quotes Cicero as the representative of Licentius's Academic view. Augustine criticizes this view throughout the work, since he believes in the possibility of attaining the truth, although for him the use of understanding and the dedication to philosophy are not alone sufficient for this, since faith in Christ is also necessary. Nevertheless, he does share with the Academics, that is, Cicero and, by extension, as we have just seen, Aristotle,Footnote 85 the conviction that the path to truth goes through investigation and the practice of philosophy.
The second Augustinian passage of the dialogue Contra Academicos, in which there seem to be echoes of the Protrepticus,Footnote 86 is a previous text (1.2.5), on which Licentius makes the happy life consist of “living in accordance with the best in man” (“secundum id quod in homine optimum est vivere”), where what is best is “that part of the soul to which, because it is dominant, it is convenient that the other parts in man submit” (“eam partem animi, cui dominanti obtemperare convenit caetera quaeque in homine sunt”). This is called mind or reason (“mens aut ratio”).Footnote 87 We can see in these words the trail of certain ideas present in the Protrepticus. For example, there is a distinction in the soul between a superior part that governs, called “reason” (λόγος), and an inferior one that is governed. The superior part, that is, the one that possesses reason and thought (λόγος καὶ διάνοια), is identified as the best and most desirable thing found in man, its characteristic function being the contemplation of truth, which is what wisdom (ϕρόνησις) consists in. That is why happiness is the exercise of that function, that is, contemplating truth.Footnote 88 The similarity of the ideas, as in the previous passage, is obvious. The problem is that, in this case, the connection between the text of Augustine and the corresponding one of Aristotle is not so clear, since there is no explicit proof that in this case Augustine was repeating the doctrine of the Hortensius. Nevertheless, if we take into account that Augustine tells us earlier that the Hortensius had won the participants of the dialogue over to philosophyFootnote 89 and that, in the following chapter, in the passage quoted above, he quotes Cicero on the same issue, I think that it is perfectly reasonable to assume that Cicero could also be behind the definition of happiness given here and that it was through him that Augustine echoed that doctrine already present in the Protrepticus.Footnote 90 As a matter of fact, the passages of Contra Academicos complement each other, and the foundation of that complement is the same concatenation of ideas that we see in the Protrepticus regarding the soul, thought, truth, and happiness.
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Other Augustinian passages where the trail of the Protrepticus seems to appear have been adduced. However that trail, if it exists, is almost always excessively hypothetical and vague.
For example, Walzer included in his compilation of fragments of the Protrepticus two more texts by Augustine that also consisted of quotations from the Hortensius. The first one comes from the treatise De trinitate (13.4.7), in which Augustine quotes the following words from the Hortensius: “Certainly, we all want to be happy.”Footnote 91 Walzer puts these words in relation to others of Iamblichus's Protrepticus that are an exact transposition to Greek: Πάντες ἄνθρωποι βουλόμεθα εὖ πράττειν.Footnote 92 The problem in this text is that, while Augustine himself declares that it appeared in the exordium of the Hortensius, there is nothing to guarantee that it was also part of the Protrepticus. It is a declaration already present in Plato's Euthydemus,Footnote 93 precisely the one that opens the protreptical argumentation of this dialogue, which is important because it was used as a model for later protreptical works, including Aristotle's.
However we do not have proof that such a declaration was so formulated in Aristotle's Protrepticus, since Iamblichus, our main source for the reconstruction of the work, takes it directly from Plato, from whom he also transcribes, by summary, the whole of his protreptical argumentation.Footnote 94 JaegerFootnote 95 tries to explain Iamblichus's omission of that declaration in his quotation from the Protrepticus by the fact that he had already quoted it a few pages earlier, taking it from Plato. But this explanation is mere conjecture, as is denying that Cicero took the quotation directly from the Euthydemus because it did not fit his work method.Footnote 96 It can be argued that the idea that all men want to be happy was widespread in Antiquity and was regarded as the foundation of philosophy and that for this reason it was present in Aristotle.Footnote 97 But that does not necessarily mean that Aristotle quoted that sentence in the Protrepticus. It can be claimed that it is typical of Aristotle to begin an inquiry with a principle whose truth is commonly recognized, like that declaration,Footnote 98 and that in a protrepticus to philosophy this declaration could be used as the point of departure of the discussion.Footnote 99 But that proves nothing, since there is no evidence that Aristotle began his Protrepticus with this sentence. It is true, however, that we also do not have facts to rule out the view that it echoes Aristotle. But since the burden of proof is on the side that asserts, and one cannot assert without doubt that the formula “we all want to be happy” was quoted in Aristotle's Protrepticus, its trace in this case must be put in brackets and be regarded as dubious.Footnote 100
The second text comes from the treaty Contra Iulianum (4.14.72), and it is a Ciceronian speech denouncing the pleasures of the body, which are described as “enticements and baits of evil” (“illecebrae atque escae malorum”) and are accused of being the enemies of philosophy and incompatible with thought because they prevent the normal functioning of the mind. Because of this, according to Cicero, he who is blessed with a good mind would rather be without the pleasures that nature bestows.Footnote 101 WalzerFootnote 102 thinks that this diatribe against pleasure comes from the Protrepticus because it is supposed to be related to another one by Plutarch,Footnote 103 according to which Chrysippus attributes to Aristotle the idea that to consider pleasure as an end entails the elimination of justice and the other virtues, an idea that would come from the Protrepticus. However, several considerations, such as the fact that the attribution of this idea to Aristotle comes from a work by Chrysippus entitled On Justice, wherein the Stoic philosopher argued with the Stagirite about this same issue, or that the relation between justice, pleasure, and the virtues was a subject discussed in Aristotle's dialogue On Justice, lead us to believe that Chrysippus's quotation referred to this dialogue rather than to the Protrepticus.Footnote 104 In the Protrepticus he discussed the pleasure involved in philosophy and the contemplative life, due to this activity being perfect and without obstacles,Footnote 105 but nowhere is the question of pleasure suggested as an end, and he does not discuss the possibility that considering pleasure as an end entails the elimination of the virtues.
Walzer echoed the conclusions of Bignone,Footnote 106 who contended that the Ciceronian text showed the controversy in the Protrepticus against the hedonism of the Cyrenaics who held that the bodily pleasure was the supreme good. As Walzer and Bignone would have it, that controversy would be evidenced in the words “vide quod iste [sc. Cicero] pro vivacitate mentis contra voluptatem corporis dicat,” with which Augustine introduces the quotations already mentioned from the Hortensius.Footnote 107 These words would be related to another passage of Cicero that goes back to the Protrepticus, wherein the Arpinate bases his rejection of the hedonist theory of Aristippus and the Cyrenaics on the Aristotelian thesis that the human being was born to understand and to actFootnote 108 because the human being's end is contemplative and active wisdom, not physical pleasure. Bignone also added textual parallels, as between “voluptas ea qua possit maior esse . . . in summis voluptatibus” and νεανικωτάτας ἡδονάς, the latter appearing in a fragment from the Protrepticus wherein Aristotle argues for the practice of philosophy by saying that “no one would choose to live possessing the greatest possible wealth and power but deprived of thought and mad, not even if one were to be pursuing with delight the most violent pleasures, as some madmen do.”Footnote 109
However, the textual parallels are too general, and the anti-hedonist arguments only agree to deny that pleasure is the end of human life. According to the text at our disposal, in the Protrepticus it is not said that bodily pleasure is an obstacle to knowledge, which is the core of the Ciceronian argument in the fragment quoted from the Hortensius. Rather, this is said in the Nicomachean Ethics (1152b16–19), in a passage where the textual parallels are much clearer. It seems that Cicero did not know this work of Aristotle's directly,Footnote 110 therefore it must be assumed to have another source. That could be the Protrepticus, but it is a mere hypothesis that cannot be proved from the testimonies we have. Furthermore, there are other possibilities.Footnote 111
At the same time, there is no evidence that in the Protrepticus there was an attack against the pleasures of the body similar to the one Cicero started in the passage Augustine quoted. As a matter of fact, Cicero himself quotes Plato as holding the opinion that pleasures are “baits of evil,”Footnote 112 and the anti-hedonist opinion he holds in that passage is closer to the Platonic opinions than to the one that Aristotle may have held in the Protrepticus.Footnote 113 Aristotle agrees with Plato that certain pleasures are an obstacle to thought, and that there are harmful and shameful pleasures.Footnote 114 However, he also defends the existence of good pleasures, such as the one that goes with contemplative activity, which it perfects inasmuch as it is a kind of consummation of it.Footnote 115 It is also his opinion that happiness, consisting of that same activity, which is understanding, is not only pleasurable but involves a higher pleasure.Footnote 116 Therefore, we cannot assert here with certainty that Augustine, quoting Cicero's Hortensius, is reflecting a doctrine in Aristotle's Protrepticus. It is possible that when Cicero wrote this passage he had the Protrepticus in mind, but almost certainly he was thinking to a greater extent of the Platonic doctrine, or even the Stoic one, on the pleasure of the body and its excesses.
Conclusion
I started from the premise that the evidence in Augustine's writings of some subjects that refer back to Aristotle's Protrepticus is indirect and limited to a few passages, manifesting itself, moreover, in differing degrees of clarity. We have seen that the source halfway between Aristotle and Augustine is always the same one: Cicero's Hortensius, a dialogue very well known and used by Augustine throughout his work, particularly in the Cassiciacum dialogues (386–87) and in the treatises De trinitate (416) and Contra Iulianum (421), in the last years of his life.Footnote 117 It is very probable that Cicero read the Protrepticus directly, the Hortensius being its debtor in many respects, so it is not necessary to include other sources between them. Cicero does not quote the Protrepticus in a mechanical manner, but rather takes the ideas that interest him and adapts them to his own ideas and the context in which he uses them, although most of the time keeping the spirit of exhortation to philosophy that inspires them. Augustine, for his part, quotes Cicero very accurately, abounding in literal quotations, which is favorable to the subjects present in the Protrepticus leading to Augustine without much change. These subjects are as follows:
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1) Happiness consists of theoretical knowledge, hence the need for philosophizing as a path to reach such knowledge. The idea is justified by saying that this knowledge is the typical and only activity on the Isles of the Blessed and therefore the most similar to the gods’ own activity. This is because it is the only activity desirable for itself, that is, subject to will, not to necessity, in contrast to the virtues.
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2) The present life is undervalued through a mythical explanation (the present life is a divine punishment for ancient offenses committed) and a historical example (the present life, with the soul incarnated in a body, is like the torment the Etruscans put their prisoners through by chaining the living face-to-face with the dead). By contrast, the philosophical life based on knowledge and wisdom is extolled.
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3) A life dedicated to philosophy is a life worth living and, therefore, highly recommended for every man because with this life there is hope for a good death, which leads to rest from life or to return to heaven in order to have a much better life. In this idea the belief — which likely comes from the Eudemus — that death is birth to the true life would be implicit because it means the return of the soul to its natural home.
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4) Happiness consists of the investigation of truth, which is the purpose of what is best in man: the intellective part of his soul, that is, understanding, which is the part that governs. This subject is complementary to (1).
However, other topics, such as the principle that all men want to be happy, or denial that physical pleasure is the end of human life because it incites one to evil and is the enemy of philosophy, cannot be certainly ascribed to the Protrepticus, although they may be present in it.
All of these subjects have an ethical character and are centered on a common denominator: the idea that the practice of philosophy, understood as the exercise of intellective thought in the search for truth, is a necessary condition to be happy.
Augustine does not echo these opinions directly. He sees them through the Ciceronian filter, changing their original context and adapting them to Christian doctrine in such a way as to support philosophically the truths of faith. However, in his early period, Augustine does adopt that common denominator of them all, speech in defense of philosophy, as a means to find truth and happiness. This would bring a crucial change to his whole life path. Indeed Augustine himself relates on several occasions how the reading of the Hortensius in his youth was of great importance in his life, turning him towards the search for truth through the desire to philosophize.Footnote 118 In fact, the Hortensius, in addition to being a work in the defense of philosophy as a necessary cultural element for the good speaker, was an exhortation to philosophy where the ideal life was dedicated to the exercise of understanding and reason, whose end was the study and investigation of truth. In that protreptical sense the Hortensius was indebted to the Protrepticus, no matter what value one is to give to testimonies such as Trebellius Pollio's when he says that Cicero wrote the Hortensius “ad exemplum Protreptici”Footnote 119 or to Lactantius's when he tells us that the speaker Hortensius, a character who gives the name to the Ciceronian dialogue, found himself caught up in an ingenious argument: namely, that one philosophizes even when one speaks against the need to philosophize.Footnote 120 This argument was defended in the Protrepticus with the purpose of demonstrating the need for philosophizing.Footnote 121 We can therefore assert that this impulse towards philosophy that the Hortensius formed in Augustine's spirit had as a first precedent (although it may not have been the only one) that ϕιλοσοϕητέον that was the leitmotif of Aristotle's Protrepticus.Footnote 122
Nevertheless, the influence of the Protrepticus through the Hortensius became, over time, a simple pagan reference brought up to defend Christian theses alien to the spirit of exhortation to philosophy that inspired it. We can see this both in the two passages of De trinitate and in the passage of Contra Iulianum, whose origin is certainly the Protrepticus, and in the two fragments whose connection with the Protrepticus is doubtful. Indeed, in De trinitate 14.9.12, Cicero takes from Aristotle the reference to the Isles of Blessed in order to justify that felicity consists in theoretical knowledge, while Augustine does it to confirm the necessity of virtues to lead a happy life and to ensure that a happy life is the knowledge of God, not the knowledge of nature. In De trinitate 14.9.26, Cicero defended the preeminence of the philosophical life because this kind of life led to a more desirable death and even to a better life in the hereafter, while Augustine quotes Cicero because he recommends a sort of wisdom that he identifies with the science of God and because he defends the immortality of the soul. In De trinitate 13.4.7, Augustine ignores the protreptic intention that the sentence “we all want to be happy” had in the Hortensius and treats the claim as a true principle from which to deduce the two conditions of happiness: to have all we desire and to want nothing wrong. In Contra Iulianum 4.15.78, Cicero followed Aristotle in undervaluing the present life in order to extol, by contrast, a philosophical life, while Augustine quotes the passage to show Cicero's closeness to the Christian doctrine of original sin as the origin of evil in man. Finally, in Contra Iuianem 4.14.72, the Ciceronian argument against bodily pleasures because they are incompatible with thought and are the enemies of philosophy is quoted for the purpose of supporting the thesis that the concupiscence of the flesh is evil in the context of a theological controversy.
The previous paragraph does not mean to imply that Augustine changed his mind over time about the goodness of philosophy as a means to achieving a happy life but only that the subjects from the Protrepticus detected in his works, most of which are a product of a rereading of the Hortensius, are quoted for a purpose other than that for which they were written in the Protrepticus and taken up in the Hortensius.
