Philosophy

Plato's World View and Christianity - Essay

?Plato?s World View ? St Augustine and Jesus? ? By Thomas Williams

I would like to recommend this short, amusing, contemporary and easily understood essay by Thomas Williams. Firstly he gives a short and contemporary metaphor to explain the basic Platonic World View ? and then explains the main areas of agreement and disagreement the Christian scholar St. Augustine had with this view. Williams? own conclusion in his final paragraph while not to everyone?s taste is certainly a very interesting one. I hope Platonists will comment below what they feel about this conclusion. Below is a short taste of the essay and the link to the full document is below:

A lecture given to the Freshman Program of Christ College, the Honours College of Valparaiso University, 23 October 2003 by Thomas Williams, University of Iowa.

I?m not really sure what they were after when they asked me to talk to you about Augustine and the Platonists. Maybe they wanted me to talk about some specific Platonists, and the elements of Augustine?s views that he adopts or adapts. And no doubt I should at least mention a couple of names. There?s Plato himself, of course (428-348 BC). The thing is, it?s pretty clear that Augustine had never read Plato directly, whether in Greek (which Augustine couldn?t actually handle very well) or in Latin translation. The best he could do was to read what other people said about what Scotus said.

Then there were two followers of Plato whose work Augustine did read in Latin translation: Plotinus (204-270) and his student Porphyry (233-305). He probably read them in the translation of Marius Victorinus, who is discussed in Book 8 of the Confessions. There?s a lot of debate, though, about exactly what he read and exactly how it influenced him.

I have a somewhat non-standard view about this. I call it the ?Who cares what Augustine read?? view. My view is that even though Augustine read Plotinus and Porphyry rather than Plato, his version of Platonism is actually much closer to Plato himself than it is to Plotinus and Porphyry. So knowing the details of Plotinus and Porphyry doesn?t really matter much for understanding Augustine, because Augustine?s kind of Platonism doesn?t really depend on those details. In spirit, it?s much closer to the real Plato, because it adopts the overall outlook of Plato without a lot of the additions and complications of later Platonists.

And that?s why I?m going to start with a story. I?m going to use this story to get across what I think is the essence of this Platonic outlook. Then I?ll show you how various Platonists put the insights that this story encapsulates to work in three different aspects of philosophy. After I?ve laid all that out, I?ll talk about how Augustine transforms this Platonic picture in the light of his Christian faith. And then to conclude, I?ll take one episode from the Confessions that illustrates all my main points about the Platonic outlook and

Augustine?s Christian transformation of it.

So to begin with, here?s my story. Imagine that you?re a high-school senior. You?re dating someone who, for purposes of gender-inclusiveness, I?ll call Pat. Now Pat is perfect for you. Pat is everything you could possibly want. Pat has the sense of humour, the smile, the personality, absolutely everything. No one could be better for you than Pat, and you know it. But you graduate and go to Valpo Coi, and Pat stays back in your hometown.

[The rest of this short, amusing, contemporary and easily understood essay is at: http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~thomasw/aug&plat.pdf ]

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