Augustine and the order of love

 

In a previous article I dealt with the theme of the order of things. My assumption was that the order of everything is an important foundation in Augustine's thought. In that article, I limited myself to his dialogue on order, in which the main concern was  to establish an objective order in the universe. What follows is more about the subjective side of that order. Augustine calls it the Ordo Amoris, the Order of Love. The issue here is how, according to Augustine, one should fit into that given order. In other words, how should the traveler in this world arrange his affections? What values does he hold himself to? So these are questions about ethics, the art of a good life.

 The Order of Desire

 In the question of how to present this subjective order, I was struck by a statement by the English writer C.S. Lewis, who in my opinion expressed well what also moved Augustine:

When I find in myself a desire that cannot be fulfilled by any experience in this world, then the most obvious explanation is that I am made for another world.

There is a certain logic in this statement. If nothing in this material world can fulfill our desire, then we are destined for a world that transcends the present and where that fulfillment can be achieved. It is not the logic of physical science, but that of the heart. It is based on introspection, on an inner awareness that the human heart is too big to find complete satisfaction in this world. This means that there must be a broader world order that meets these aspirations.

Once you accept this world order, the perspective for the traveler in this world becomes considerably broader. The desires of each day lose their absolute character and become relative to that realm which will eventually fulfill all desires. Man is then not only destined to dwell in this world, but life is a journey to that homeland, which is at the same time the origin and the completion of that desire.

 If the world is so ordered, then it is natural that man, if he wants to reach his destiny, must fit into this order and act accordingly. The remarkable thing, however, is that he is the only one in that order who has the freedom to deviate from his path. Yet, if he wants to accomplish his way well to the end, he will have to seek the rules of that order and act accordingly. That means living a virtuous and ethical life.

 A Virtuous Life

 In my article Augustine and Life as a Trial, the question arose as to how to give meaning to the trials that can befall man on his way. Augustine states that setbacks are inevitable and that one will have to endure them. Classical philosophy had already formulated a number of virtues that were supposed to help overcome the trials. This shows how important it is to have the attitude with which you face setbacks. Augustine continues.

To find out what that virtuous life means to him, I quote C.S. Lewis again, who must have been a good reader of his.

« Saint Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the order of our affections, in which each object is accorded the degree of love it deserves. Aristotle says that the purpose of education is to teach the young man what he should love and what he should not. When the young person reaches the years of reflection, once he has been trained in this order of his affections or « right feelings » he will easily discover the first principles of Ethics. But to the ill-formed man they will never become apparent at all, and he will never advance in that knowledge.

Plato had said the same thing before him. The small animal doesn't have the right answers at first. It must be trained to cherish pleasure, love, dislike, and hatred toward those things that are worthy of pleasure and love, or to be disapproved, and despicable. »

The innate ability to love in the right way is therefore not a ready-made given, but must be directed and developed through education, among other things. And even if the little animal does not listen to it at first, in the course of its life it will learn, perhaps through trial and error, what is worth loving and what is not. What Augustine is concerned with is that in the course of his existence the heart of the traveler frees itself from all erroneous paths and focuses on what its original destination is.

Of course, the rules of ethics can be found out through reason. We have insight into what is right and just. But that insight still lacks the drive to act on it. Therein lies the distinction. Rational knowledge does not appear to be sufficient to act well. When you do accept that as the only basis, you arrive at a kind of duty morality, which lacks an inner motivation. According to Augustine, that drive must come from love. The love of things is determined by their weight. In the order of love, what has less weight pulls the heart downwards, what has more value lift it upwards. It is man's task to go up on his way up, to lift his heart to what is higher and therefore more worthy to live for. It is in this context that you have to see the statement of Augustine pondus meum amor meus: my love is my weight. (Confessions XIII, ix, r.22)

 Thus, following in Augustine's footsteps, Lewis emphasizes the importance that we have in our actions an order in  what we love. It will come as no surprise that Augustine places the Creator and Origin of  all as the highest goal and the most worthy of love. For he is in fact Love Itself. But precisely because He is Love Itself, He must occupy a place of His own in that order. I want to find out how Augustine sees that place.

The Place of Love Itself

 When you make a representation of an order, it is usually through a ranking from high to low or vice versa. In such a case, you represent God as being at the top of the ladder of values. But in this way you run the risk of assigning Love Itself a place on the outside of that order, even if it is also in the highest place. However, it is clear  from the Dialogue on Order that Augustine has a different picture in mind. He compares the constellation of the universe to that of a circle, of which God is the center. Each point or segment has its relation to that one center. This means that the place of Love Itself is not so much on the outside of this universe, but in the center of everything. Every thing derives its existence from this center. Thus, God is not only a greatness enthroned high above his creation, but rather a force that works from within herself. Augustine's worldview is related to his view of man. There, too, God is not only exalted above the tops of our spirits, but also more inwardly than our innermost being.

 The Love of the Creator

 Thus, the traveler who wants to live virtuously will not be able to avoid focusing on the love of the Creator. For God is the source of love from which all things derive their loveworthiness. When Lewis referred to the ordo amoris, he quoted from the fifth book of The City of God, in which Augustine mentions the love of the Creator. The entire excerpt reads as follows:

"The love of the Creator cannot be wrong if He is loved in the right way, that is, if He Himself and not something else is loved in His place. For Love itself must also be loved in an orderly way, so that all that is worth loving is loved in the right way, if we want to live well and virtuously. Therefore, in my opinion, virtue can be succinctly defined as the order of love."(De civitate dei XV, 22)

In this case, love for the Creator is the starting point and a prerequisite for the proper appreciation and love of created things. As we saw earlier, Augustine does not see God so much as an object outside of man, but as a presence that works deep within oneself. Here, too, the image of the circle is important. The motivation to love must come from this central human consciousness of the divine presence. The love of everything then works from this center.

In this connection we can perhaps also understand a statement of Augustine when he states in De Doctrina Christiana:

 Deus propter se ipsum, homo propter Deum diligendus.

 God must be loved for his own sake, man must be loved for the sake of God

 Loving Man in God

In the first instance, this loving of man for God's sake could be understood as God being an external reason to love man. But given the centrality of God as Love Itself, He must be seen more as the intrinsic condition for loving man in the right way. From the rest of the text it appears that the propter Deum  can also  mean from God and in God.

"He lives righteously and holy, who knows how to value things at their true value. In him, love is perfectly ordered. He does not love what is not worth loving, and he loves what is worth loving. The less something is worth loving, the less he loves it. The measure of his love is determined according to whether the object of his love is more or less worthy of love. And his attitude remains the same with regard to what is more or less worth loving. Every sinner, insofar as he is a sinner, is not worthy of love, and every man is worthy of love because of God, but God is worthy of love by himself. If, therefore, God is to be loved more than any man, then everyone must love God more than himself. In the same way, we must love every human being more than our own body, because all this must be loved from God and every human being is called to enjoy God together with us. The body cannot do that because it receives life from the soul that has the ability to enjoy God." (De doctrina Christiana I, 27/28)

If you assume that God is present as Love in the human soul, then he who wants to live righteously and holyly will love everything in and from that divine presence. It goes without saying that God is then seen as the first value and man must be regarded as a derivative of it. In this way, God animates man with life, while man, in turn, animates his body with life, as Augustine puts it in his Confessions X:10. The body is at the lowest place in this hierarchy of values. This does not mean, however, that it plays an inferior role in this order. After all, it is the instrument that makes it possible for the soul to realize God's love in creation. The body indicates that we are mortal, but the spirit animated by God testifies that we are immortal and destined to enjoy God fully.

 Thus, the traveler in this world, if he wants to love things in the right way, will have to assign them the value that objectively suits them. For it is possible that, out of his desire for complete happiness, he directs his affection to something that cannot satisfy that expectation. In that case, it is difficult to expect total satisfaction from all that is limited by its very nature. Things and people can satisfy many needs, but they cannot be the last goal for the traveler. With the latter, we come back to Augustine's distinction between enjoyment and use. When traveling in this world, you can enjoy many things. But due to their limited nature, they cannot fully satisfy the traveler. Only the enjoyment of God, who  is the complete Being, can completely fill the heart of the traveler. In that perspective, you have to call enjoyment in this world using. That doesn't have to detract from the enjoyment of earthly things, on the contrary. By loving everything according to the ordo amoris, the traveller avoids enjoying things in an improper way, i.e. abusing them, thereby denying their nature. Therefore, he loves everything in this world in God. That could be a source of renewed inspiration.

 Postcript

I am confirmed in the opinion that reading Augustine it is about the foundations of ethics. I read that Camus, in his 1936 dissertation Métaphysique chrétienne et néoplatonisme,  comes to the conclusion that Augustine gave the concept  of reason a broader meaning than the usual one. It also confirms my assumption that this is where his greatest merit lies. In a world dominated by rationality, the reasons of the heart must also  have a place. Pascal, a great reader of Augustine, already came to the conclusion that the heart has its reasons that reason does not know. But then Descartes, with his cogito  has impoverished reason by placing all the emphasis on the primacy of rational thought, because before the I think, the I desire (and love) must be seen  as the basis of human existence  as the actual engine. The main thing is to direct it correctly, that is, according to the ordo amoris.