Often you meet the opinion that the philosophy of Augustine has lost his actuality, because it assumes a neo-Platonic vision, which has become outdated. In what follows, I examine in what extent this opinion is justified. As a major objection to his philosophy and his ethics is the opinion that it has worked alienating towards our being and acting in the world. When by Augustine, the human desire has a transcendent purpose, when the heart takes no rest until it finds rest in God, then what weight we give to all our worldly goals, and the bonds we have in this life?
A ' Christian ' philosophy
Augustine undertakes an attempt to answer that question in De Doctrina Christiana. It is a writing that he had begun in 396, several years before he wrote his Confessions, but that he would finish much later. In this book, that you could call a Christian philosophy, he gives rules how we should read. He wants first to show how the Bible should be interpreted. But this is at te same time his vision of how the world and the reality around him has to be read and interpreted.
The sign character of reality
To illustrate this Augustine introduces a reflection on the sign character of things. Our reality consists of things, but for a significant part also of signs. Things in the strict sense are realities that exist on their own, but that does not exclude that they are in certain contexts also signs. There are also things that in themselves are scarcely things, but particularly signs. Those are for instance our words. That is the big area where it is important to read and interpret. But that is not the only area. The words function in the totality of our reality, where everything can be a sign.
Reading signs
Reading in this broader sense means here to be able to see and understand the referring nature of the reality in which we live. In this respect the Bible is such a collection of words that are signs that refer to our spiritual reality. It is a special one, but not the only source. This broader way of reading our whole world has immediate consequences for ethics: how should we act and how should we handle with this world?
To use the world or to enjoy it
To this end, Augustine introduces two concepts that define our attitude toward the world. These are two distinct attitudes toward reality, that of using or enjoying. These two concepts, named uti and frui in Latin, are not new. He borrows it from the classic philosophical ideas of his time. They get however in his view a very special meaning. I would like to quote what he understands by this two concepts:
To enjoy something means that you find satisfaction in something purely for its own sake.
To use something means that you are engaged with something to achieve something else.
This presupposes that the purpose of this desire is worth loving, because unlawful use has to be called abuse
To illustrate this he gives the following comparison:
Suppose we are travelers in a foreign country and do not live happily without our homeland. And that we, miserable from that journey, will make an end to our misery and decide to return home.
In that case it is necessary that we use a means of transport either by land or by water, to reach the country where we are able to enjoy.
But imagine the journey is as pleasant and we like the means of transport so much that we don’t like to continue our way. And we, caught in a perverse sort of enjoyment, would alienate from the country, whose enjoyment makes us happy
Such is the condition of our mortal existence: We are traveling far from God. And if we want to return to the homeland where we can be happy, we have to use this world, not enjoy it. And in that way that we are able to see and understand the invisible divine reality by the means of what is created. That means, that we must be able to comprehend the timeless and spiritual reality from the physical and temporal world.
In this vision according of Augustine, you have in human life only one goal: to enjoy God, that means returning to the homeland from which we are originated: De Te ad Te: that means: out of You to You.
The Augustinian using does not exclude enjoying
In the Augustinian view, the object of love can only be God as the ultimate fulfillment of human desire. Within this perspective every earthly object is relative and subordinate to this ultimate goal. Hence that the relationship to all the goals in our lives cannot be seen otherwise than as a form of using. They are means in perspective of the ultimate goal
But each image is relative. You could draw from this interpretation the wrong conclusion that we may not enjoy in this life and that we have to pass everything on penalty that we are missing our goal. But you need to read and interpret this image not in a literal way. When your spirituality is only oriented towards this distant country that waits beyond this life, it would indeed work alienating and paralyzing to your activities here and now. But that is not Augustine’s vision.
It turns out that on the question how you have to understand this using the world Augustine does not exclude enjoyment. He says that it shows little understanding, if you believe that using and enjoying exclude each other completely.
Pure use leads to abuse
This makes clear that in this context our current notions of using and enjoying do not cover what Augustine has in mind. Almost the opposite. In this vision our actual notion of enjoying and using this world gets the character of abusing her, when we only consider the essence of this world as absolute, when we take this world on her own and ignore her referring character to a spiritual dimension.
That loss of an essential dimension can become disastrous, if you see how actually this world is used, not to say misused. You only have to think of the environmental pollution, the waste of natural resources, the abuse of animals in the meat industry, the abuse of people in only capital-based companies, in fact all the symptoms of our culture of consumption. These symptoms show in fact the alienation of our world from the true nature of this creation.
In this context is Augustine's division of reality into things and signs important. In our days we see the world primarily as an object, as a material reality on itself and we forgot the sign character of everything that surrounds us. According to Augustine you have read this world primarily as a sign of a deeper spiritual reality. When you use everything in this world in that light you are able to use and enjoy everything in the right way, because it can be experienced in relation with this divine reality which is the origin and the end of all that is.
Is this form of experience outdated?
We have to prove that this type of world perception does not alienate us necessarily from the reality around us. Reference does not mean here that the attention is drawn to a different world, but on the contrary it points to the real nature of reality itself, which here and now a has a spiritual dimension.
When Augustine talks about the sign character of things, he is referring to the fact that the world can be seen and experienced as creation. This indicates the last sentence from his comparison of human life as a journey.
Our attitude to the world has to be: In that way that we are able to see and understand the invisible divine reality by the means of what is created. That means, that we must be able to comprehend the timeless and spiritual reality from the physical and temporal world. (Rom. 1.20)
Creation as an actual process
To experience the world as creation has nothing to do with a theory of how the world is originated. This fact is a spiritual reality, not a physical one. Nor does it mean that our temporary reality and the divine reality are divided as two separate worlds. That suggestion is forced upon us by the Enlightenment. That philosophy wanted to see God as a watchmaker, who once he had created the world, let her go on ticking free from her maker.
Enjoying the world means to accept and experience God's creative power here and now in everything. The experience that all things each moment are created and maintained by a living and inspiring force. That requires a certain switch of perspective. Nothing is self-evident, old, predictable. The laws of nature, the cosmos too are part of this divine creative force, the divine Logos, who reveals and realizes itself any moment in this world.
In such a perspective you have a different approach to yourself and the world. There is more room for wondering and respect for that Force that animates you and the whole world. The world does not need any more to be regarded as a kind of mechanical constellation that is subject to lifeless and predictable laws. She reveals herself more as a creative process, in which you participate and are invited to share.
Augustine and the philosophy of Enlightenment
The question is what has worked more alienating for our existence. The unfortunately often misinterpreted Neo-Platonist vision of Augustine and others on using and enjoying and the current vision of Enlightenment, thinking that this world is only ruled by soulless mechanical laws, which are fixed in advance. Perhaps they both suffer from the same mistake to disconnect the material area from the spiritual. Without detracting our modern achievements, I want to argue for a revaluation of Augustine's ethics. I believe time is there to interpret Augustine’s ethics about using and enjoying the world again less dualistic. It makes us consider our world with more respect. That means we enjoy more and use or rather abuse less.
Conclusion
I come to the conclusion that Augustine's reflection about using and enjoying still can be useful for our contemporary ethics. It means that the sacred and the secular cannot be separated. There is not a part of our reality sacred and a part not. Everything is sacred or is it not at all. Our society has chosen the latter. This has led to abuse, that is to say a less respectful view of the nature of our world.
When you follow Augustine's view, everything is sacred, because it is a reference to a deeper spiritual reality. This requires a switching and is not easy to live in a world where everything speaks of man as the creator. I experience this more in my cottage in the countryside than in town.