Happiness for Plotinus and St. Augustine

Abstract

For Augustine, from the very beginning to end, the opening question of philosophy was always: what is man's highest good, the good whose attainment would make him happy? Similarly, the primary fact of human consciousness for Augustine was man's ineradicable desire for happiness. On the Happy Life, is one of his first works which set forth his view that happiness is not to he found in perishable things which are perpetually subject to the fear of loss, but it is to be found only in wisdom, which is available only in God. This short study will aim at understanding what the term happiness conveys for him. Reference will be made to his works, De Beata Vita and the Confessions. Tue study will likewise refer to the Aristotelian concept of happiness and to Plotinus and his Fourth Tractate on True Happiness from whence originated Augustine's line of thought when he was formulating his distinctive program of inward thought. Plotinus can be said to be the only great philosopher whose works Augustine ever studied in any depth, and even so, he did not have a copy of the Enneads, the systematically standard collected edition of Plotinus' works published by Plotinus' student Porphyry. Augustine' s engagement with Neoplatonist thought was long and deep, involving a highly personal but still critical appropriation of many of Plotinus' most difficult and interesting ideas. It should be emphasized however that when writing the De Beata Vita, Augustine refers to having read 'only a few books of Plato' at that time. There have been widely and accepted arguments that the works referred to were libri Plotini and not libri Platonis; so they were Plotinus' and not Plato's books which set his heart on fire. There is no doubt that Augustine kept on reading and learning and assimilating Plotinus as well as the Bible and Christian doctrine, all of which contributed to his ongoing process of spiritual growth that made Augustine the most influential Christian Platonist of all time.