Was Saint Augustine the First Philosopher of History?
Does history have a meaning, and can it be discerned? If so, then can we have a philosophy of history? How is one categorized as a philosopher of history? This article will examine whether Saint Augustine could possibly be the first on record to formally philosophize about history. To begin, the topics of defining “philosophy of history” and “philosopher of history” will be explored. This will be followed by a brief biography of Saint Augustine, focusing on a few key details that influenced his inquiries into historical, philosophical, and theological studies. It will conclude with a discussion on whether his monumental City of God, which took him the better part of his later years of life to complete, can be considered the first text on the philosophy of history.
The Philosophy of History
Before we can address the inquiry as to whether Saint Augustine’s City of God was the first philosophy of history, we must clearly define what a philosophy of history is; can there even be such a thing? Some argue that we all naturally have a philosophy of history, while others claim that such a category is a misnomer. Maybe those in the latter group debate this because we cannot ever record all of history, not to mention that time does not stop so “history” keeps collecting. History, therefore, cannot be closed; it is not like a novel with a start and a finish, but it is like a novel in that we must read it in order, to better understand it. There may be shared concerns, questions, and inquiries when we philosophize about history, but this raises the next question: when can we know there is enough shared to be grouped as such? Even more broadly defining “Philosophy” itself is debated – the most probably of any academic discipline. While we may disagree on categories, what does seem to be certain, nevertheless, is that they are inevitably created and used.
The philosophy of history, as an assumed category, is generally divided into two main types: speculative and analytic. The speculative tradition looks at past events and circumstances, as the goal is to essentially try to make sense of history. The analytic tradition critically analyses the thinking of the historian and how the historian works in his or her discipline, so from this perspective, it is not about obtaining meaning but rather it is about empirical investigation and logical analysis. With these definitions in mind, for what we have on record, it is generally argued that we can most concretely date speculative philosophy of history to Voltaire, given he is credited with coining the term “philosophy of history” in his work that encouraged the reader to think more critically about the meaning of history. The origins of any realm of analytic philosophy date to the twentieth century. Saint Augustine, who lived from 354 until 430 C.E., came well before any of this, so for this reason, along with several others, we may question his role as a “philosopher of history.”
The Early Life of Saint Augustine
Saint Augustine was born in 354 in present-day Algeria. He was not raised in a particularly religious household; his mother was Christian, but his father was a pagan. In fact, he was not baptized until he was thirty-three years old, though his mother certainly would have wanted that to have happened much earlier. The path to eventually becoming a Bishop was a long and difficult one, but it helps us understand how he got there, and how he became the father of Christian-infused philosophy in the West. Much of this is documented in his Confessions(probably the most popular of all his writings and considered by many to be the greatest spiritual autobiography), which represented another designated first of its genre. Augustine, in fact, presumably produced many “firsts.” He also created his own art form that he titled ‘Soliloquies,’ which were dialogues with himself and another, as well as several philosophical ideas that can be traced back to him. For example, he has some very existentialist ideas (though this nineteenth and twentieth-century movement can also be traced even further back to some Stoic ideas), and he declared something similar to what we call Descartes’s seventeenth century revolutionary Cogito argument (the notion of “I think, therefore I am”). Undeniably, he was a major influence on Western thought for a millennium.
At the age of sixteen, Augustine left for Carthage, which was a bustling city that provided many temptations for such a young man. During this time, he fell prey to several errant lures, which left a permanent mark on him in the form of a constant warring between the striving for other-worldly spiritual goodness in the face of this-worldly corporeal badness. It was also during this time that he had a mistress, with whom he fathered a son named Adeodatus.
Augustine Converts to Christianity
Augustine became especially religious when he moved to Milan in 384. There he was inspired by Bishop Ambrose, who baptized Augustine in 387. In 391 Augustine, accompanied by his mother, returned to Algeria, where he became a priest. Not long after, he became the Bishop of Hippo, which is in present-day Tunisia. He would stay there until he died in 430. By this time, he had already written quite a lot – but it was during these later years that he composed his masterpiece, City of God.
Saint Augustine’s City of God
This arguably first speculative philosophy of history was the longest and most arduously researched of his writings, as it took him thirteen years to compose the twenty books that totaled over one-thousand pages. It is contended that this is the first formal philosophy of history because, for the first time, history is to be treated as something that provides meaning, rather than being a subject comprised of just a catalog of sorts. In other words, for the first time on record, history would tell us a meaningful story rather than just describe geography, events, and people. Before Augustine, history was often seen as something cyclical and repetitive, without any kind of explicit purpose (though it may supply us with patterns). But with the birth of Christianity came a clear purpose for humanity; thus, history would have a purpose as well—and that comes from God. With Augustine, history would be seen as something linear.
A main source of Augustine’s inspiration for this work was to reconcile the fall of the Roman Empire with the growth of Christianity. The topic of the philosophy of history would not be of much interest again until the eighteenth century, when it would be revived by French Enlightenment thinkers who would, conversely, use historical narratives to support their efforts toward increased secularization. When Rome fell in 410, the Romans blamed Christianity, saying that too many had turned away from the Roman Gods who had supported the city to become so glorious. Augustine, on the other hand, argued that Rome fell because more did not convert sooner. History, for Saint Augustine, like every other part of his philosophy, is connected to God. No longer was history seen as a series of relatively unmeaningful, fleeting events, as now it was seen as a kind of drama unfolding, all according to God’s divine plan.
This, he argued, plays out in a conflict between two cities: the City of God and the City of the World. Essentially, the former is the site of that meaning, that purpose we are striving for, and the latter is the one humanity has found itself struggling with ever since the original fall from grace. The one truly peaceful city is that of God, and the City of the World is where humans struggle against corruption. Rome, for example, was way too desiring of glory and fell to this sinful greedy human nature. In the City of the World, one strives for glory being driven by self-love, and in the City of God, one is given glory being driven by a love for God. Augustine’s bleak view of humanity in the City of the World was influenced by his biography, being a man who confessed how he constantly fought against acting sinfully. Thus, again, we must strive to get as close as possible to the City of God, so the state is just a necessary evil—the Church is superior to the State, and this indeed would remain a dominant view in the west for the next thousand years. Only God has complete providential control, so while there is a plan to history, we cannot see nor comprehend it; we can only be faithful that it is proceeding as it should.
Saint Augustine: Philosopher, Rhetorician, and/or Theologian?
The problem is that, to designate a start date for an official, formal text on the philosophy of history, we need to have that category clearly defined. Further, Saint Augustine’s view is a teleological one because it proposes an end purpose to history—the problem is that it is hidden from us, so does that make it a useless endeavor of study? Moreover, his view is so thoroughly imbued with Christian notions that some argue his views are more theological rather than philosophical, and thus maybe he is more of a theologian rather than a philosopher. His skill with writing leads some to categorize him as a rhetorician—can he hold all of these titles? This is a tough quandary to address because most of the philosophy of the Medieval period in the West, in which Saint Augustine is right at the starting point, is permeated with the Judeo-Christian view. But Augustine probably would not have cared much about this charge, as he was strictly focused on his faith.
A teleological position poses another important problem: if everything has already been planned out, and there is no way for us to know all the details of that plan, do we have any agency? In other words, are we just blindly playing God-given roles and thus it is useless to try to bring about change, even if we think that may bring peace and justice? Several other problems are raised within his philosophy, but here I am noting those that pertain more directly to his philosophy on history. Either way, perhaps our final judgment here can be that he is a philosopher who philosophized on history because of not only these views he contributed to the topic of history, but also for the sheer forcing of us to raise these inquiries into the study and meaning of history. In much of the history of philosophy, as in the history of the philosophy of history, what is often most important and impactful are the quandaries raised rather than the answers proposed.