Social Interaction: Root of Augustine’s Confessions

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Social Interaction: Root of Augustine’s Confessions Manya Garg

The earliest account of conscious human interaction on a child’s part is when he learns something. As children, humans imitate others to grasp the meaning of material things and the hierarchy of authority generally understood in a social and traditional context. As we grow, learning and understanding become two distinct things, neither of which can be achieved by or through oneself. Human life is an assemblage of human interactions that shape our character and understanding of the world. Projection of individual and personal views adds a complexity to these interactions and impacts the way all interacting parties perceive the world and come to realise themselves and their connection with other human beings. Humans derive individual interpretations to many longstanding existential questions through these interactions, one of those questions being related to faith and religion. Confessions plays on the important themes of prestige, gender, social standing, interpersonal skills, search for meaning of life, faith, and authority to evaluate human social life. Augustine’s life is marred with numerous social interactions that not only shape his character but also provide him the direction that he longs to pursue. Almost all of Augustine's encounters with christianity occur in a social context and it is through his social interactions with people of distinct beliefs that he is able to explore his own beliefs before arriving at a conclusion. His mother is a devout christian and it is through her words and actions that he first comes to see this faith. Despite being born into it, he doesn’t devotedly follow the path of christianity or heed his mother’s warnings to “save his soul”. This reluctance

to simply comply and follow his mother’s faith may be attributed to childhood rebellion and lack of understanding of the world, or the desire to gain that understanding through his own experiences. Augustine’s account of his infancy and boyhood provide examples that from the beginning, one’s life is characterised by what is given to us by other beings in terms of knowledge and a framework through which we perceive things as children. Children are born with the ability to feel all human emotion but it is only through human interaction that those emotions are realised and actually felt. Feelings like despair, envy, greed, fear and sorrow are something that are an innate part of us, but fail to be manifested without the presence of other social beings. Yet, even in his boyhood, he is reluctant to be devoted to something that he doesn’t understand, which would be the easier path. Though he does pray to God, it is for selfish reasons. This explains the perception of God that he held in his early life. Further, human social life influences the psychological state of a person based on their perception of events, primarily ones of which they are a spectator rather than an active participant. This is evident from the way Augustine’s childhood is such a strong driving force for his personality and the “sins” that he commits in his early life. Similarly, the changes that he goes through to find peace and happiness (God) occur in the presence of strong relationships and the guidance of other people, which provide him something that he had been unable to get from people already present in his life. This explains why he didn’t stop the exploration of his faith and didn’t choose to accept christianity as the norm of his life, despite the strong presence of

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his mother and her faith in his life. It is certainly something that drives him towards God but ultimately, it is Bishop Ambrose and his preachings that really have a lasting impact on him. He makes him question Manichaeism and lets him explore the teachings of christianity and choose his direction. This is something Augustine apparently needs: Augustine requires a deeper understanding of things to follow them, his internal conflict requires settling which can only be achieved by him finding “the truth” which he makes clear when he says “when someone’s suffered at the hands of a bad doctor, he’s afraid to trust his care even to a good one”(6.7/126). He doesn’t simply want to entrust his faith until his soul has settled the matter of “the truth”. This is something Bishop Ambrose is able to offer him, but not his mother. Thus, even though there is a looming presence of christianity in his life, which he might have found frustrating or humorous once, it is not something he falls into. Augustine’s character is not static; he is unable to withstand direct social change without some fragment of his personality shifting, unable to engage with people–directly or indirectly–without it affecting his views. This is not to say that the slightest engagement with a secondary entity changes his perception of the world, rather it makes him verify the reality and truth of his beliefs. Again, it is Bishop Ambrose and his teachings that make him question his beliefs the most. He is surprised by the piety of the man and though the way that his mother and Ambrose deal with the world is fundamentally quite similar, he never equates them. The relationship between Ambrose and his mother is an important one to understand the role of authority and societal hierarchy is central to change in behaviour. Because his mother holds the bishop in a very high regard, she changes her habit according to his instruction, “perhaps my mother wouldn’t have yielded so easily in pruning away

this habit if the prohibition had come from someone she had less affection for than Ambrose”(6.2/122). The account of Augustine's mother, Monica, can be understood differently from the characters of Ambrose or Augustine, in spite of their shared qualities. Her life, as described by Augustine, is entirely lived for others, perhaps because her character has been essentialised by Augustine into that of a “good” christian woman and a lamenting mother. The archaic societal roles adopted for women during her time lay heavy on her development and she grows into this figure that is simply a mother–”She cared for [them] all as if she’d given birth to [them] all”(9.22/212)– and a “slave”. Augustine reveres his mother but simply for her devotion to God and her role in his life as a mother and a guide. He commends her for fulfilling her duties as a wife and a daughter-in-law, as a daughter and a christian but talks nothing of her character aside from how it influences the people around her. She is not confrontational, accepts her husband's adultery, suffers his anger in the way that christian women at the time were supposed to do and cries for her son. She managed to avoid conflicts in her social life which can be accredited to her being kind-hearted, gentle, subservient and a peacemaker. Before her death, “she even w[ins] for [God] her husband”(9.22/211) and sees her children, particularly Saint Augustine, pursue the faith too. Ambrose is another person whose life is lived for other people to a great extent, though he still manages to devote some of his time for himself. Saint Monica’s representation, however, lacks even that basic notion of taking time for herself, providing a basis for understanding social life in the early 5th century from the perspective of a woman.

Similar to Monica and Ambrose, Alypius and Augustine’s relationship too is one of reverence and admiration. The two characters play a central role in changing each other’s stance on their beliefs. Through Augustine’s lectures, Alypius “got caught up in the Manichaeans’ superstition” but it was also through Augustine’s “unconscious intervention” that he is able to overcome his addiction of the games (6.12/131). This example again plays nicely with the idea that human interaction and their success is largely based on individual perception and furthers it by explaining that although humans generally view themselves as mere recipients of education (this is also Augustine’s view as a child when he is forced to learn Greek), it is through their minds’ active engagement that it derives a meaning and turns into knowledge, since education without understanding is merely words. Alypius and Augustine's relationship is one of mutual progress towards christianity. Though Alypius is caught in the web of Manichaeism for longer than Augustine because of his youth and lack of knowledge and experience, he is able to discern “the universal truth” in the company of his friend and teacher. It is Alypius' disinterest and aversion for material things–which Augustine himself desires and finds difficult to give up–that Augustine finds surprising and yet admirable, that keeps him from pursuing his desires. It is evident that Alypius was a confidant of Augustine’s since he’s seen him angry and heard him shout, which he says “weren’t in fact normal noises coming out of [him]”(8.19/184), and he’d witnessed his sorrow and suffering and his desire to maintain his sexual realtionships. It is with Alypius that he leaves Manichaeism behind, and in his company–though not through him–becomes learned in the teachings of christianity. They both get baptised together and Augustine,

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again, goes through a highly significant point in his life in meaningful company, contrasting it with the incident of theft. A lot of “sins” committed by Augustine are a result of his social relationships or the need to further them to derive some meaning out of them. It is a human condition to crave meaningful relationships and to not be left behind. The theft that he commits is not because he wished for the fruit, not entirely because of the joy of theft, but because of the company of his friends. This company internally coerces him into committing something that “If [he]’d been alone, [he] wouldn’t have done … alone, there’s no way [he] would have done it”(2.16/58). The same can be said for his romantic and sexual relationships when he was still a boy, where it is not entirely the love for the person that drives him to pursue them but a desire for connection and a semblance of approval among his peers for his frivolities. If the social life of Augustine were to be understood in a context of Before God and After God, it would be clear that his focus on people changes after his baptism. In Book 6, Augustine claims that even if he endures a marriageless and celibate life, he will not be able to live happily without his friends. The value that Augustine places on human connections and company Before God and the loss of this value After God is intriguing. After God, he tends to shrink from enduring human engagements following his belief that if mortals are to be praised and loved, it should be through God, and is devoted to God. He declares that all those relationships had been brought into his life by God to guide him, removing the primary emphasis from the relationship and placing it on God.

Language, literature and philosophy are something that held importance in Augustine’s life. Following their careful evaluation, he believes a lot of the writings to be untruthful since they lacked God. His love for God and philosophy are manifested through his Confessions which while being written to God are written for the people. Augustine’s Confessions was not only a way for him to produce a piece of literature that caters to people of faith in helping them find a direction but also answers questions that had dominantly been answered based on human understanding of the material world and not on a spiritual scale intertwined with religion. Since the work has philosophical elements, it provides an understanding of things in a context that was previously largely absent from philosophical texts. Although the text dallies with questions that can only be understood abstractly, it does provide answers to who “God” is and what “he” does/includes. The way that these questions are answered help people gain awareness of how their individual journeys can guide their understanding of God. His confessions provide people of faith with a semblance of their own reality since the “sins” that he commits are not different, in magnitude or fruition, to the sins that ordinary people commit, out of personal emotions or motives. It gives them hope of “being forgiven”, while not barring even the people with grievous crimes from finding God if they realise their faults are willing to “suffer”.