TANGAZA UNIVERSTY COLLEGE.

CATHOLIC UNIVERSTY OF EAST AFRICA.

SOT-DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY.

PHS121C SEMINAR ON MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

(St Augustine De vera religione)

TASK; Presentation on St Augustine Search for Truth and Happiness.

Lecture; Fr. John Maina.

Student; 20/00417
Obiri Vincent Ombati.

“A presentation paper on themes submitted to Tangaza University as

requirement in partial fulfilment of the awarding a bachelor’s degree in
philosophy.”
January 2020.
 Introduction.
St. Augustine never lived a life in a superficial way. A thirst, an ongoing and
uneasy search for truth, was a basic characteristic of his life — not one of the
“pseudo-truths” that are incapable of imparting a lasting peace to the heart, but
rather a search for that Truth that gives meaning to existence and that is a “resting
place” where the heart finds peace and joy. St. Augustine came to understand in his
restless search that it was not he who found Truth, but Truth itself, who is God,
pursued him and found him.1 Here I will try to articulate what St Augustine
understands and what he teaches about truth and happiness and his journey in quest
for this two (truth and happiness).
St Augustine search for truth.
At the age of 17, he was sent to Carthage for his education where he studied
philosophy and religion there St. Augustine read Cicero’s Hortensius (a work no
longer extant), which set him on his quest for higher truth, that he accepted the
teaching of the Manichaeans (that is Manichaeanism, founded by Manes or Mani
in the third century, originated from Persia and was a mixture of Persian and
Christian elements) which seemed to offer him a rational presentation of truth, in
distinction from the barbaric ideas and illogical doctrines of Christianity.
With the aim strengthening the deep desire and the hope to find the truth, we see
St. Augustine writing against the Academics, based on the Ciceronian formulation
of the academic doctrine according to him academics altered the concept of
classical philosophy. The wise academic is an irrational and contradictory creature.
As we are all aware, his journey through life was not easy, like for most people life
is just about “crisis” management. Look back upon your life and ask yourself if the
whole journey till now has been just about “problem solving”, in most cases the
answer would be “Yes”. People bring the same attitude towards “awakening”, their
primary objective is – “how can awakening solve my problems”. To want a
problem free life is very natural, but if you really want liberation you need to look
for the truth for the sake of truth, and not for the sake of solving your problems. Do
you really want to know the truth, as it is, even if it meant that “you” got nothing
out of it? Or Do want the truth only such that it can solve your problems?
For Augustine, at first, he thought he could find truth in prestige, in his career, in
the things he possessed and in those voices that promised him instant gratification.
1
L’Osservatore Romano, Sept. 4, 2009, p. 8
He made mistakes, he experienced sorrow, he encountered failure, but he never
gave up. He was never satisfied with something that would only give him a
glimmer of light. Looking into the depths of his soul, Finally, when he was 33 the
conversion of his will occurred. He made the decision to give up his bad habits and
try to live a moral life. He realized, ‘that the Truth he was looking for — the God
he sought through all his efforts — was always by his side and had never
abandoned him but was waiting to be able to enter his life in a definitive way.’
From his work of CRITIQUE OF SCEPTICISM: MAN KNOWS TRUTH, He shows
that a man can know truth with firmness, such as his principle of non-contradiction
and of course his own existence. No one can doubt his own existence, because the
doubt itself is the proof of existence. Meaning how a person will doubt something
that doesn’t exist, everything that is doubted it is existing. When one doubted
something meaning he doubts an existing object.
Augustine in the Augustinian Theory phrases truth as the meaning of reality where
reality is the origin of experience. Experience is given through observation,
reflective thinking, and analysis, and takes form as problems. Also, the System of
the Mother God teaches through enlightenment that is given in the form of problem
solutions. The understanding of truth is given by the Light of Reason as the
solution to the problem of the accuracy and precision of understandings of reality.
Truth takes form as Understanding. True understanding is knowledge. The
understanding of truth itself, if true, is knowledge. The understanding of truth
provides the criteria for deciding what is, and is not, knowledge.
Augustinian belief and practice is an aspect of Truth, and specifically, is both a
philosophy and a part of religious truth. Augustinian philosophy as explanation
takes the form of theory, and as theory it is open to progressive enhancement as
human philosophies and purposes require. It defines the nature and methodology of
knowledge and truth, where knowledge is true explanation.
Augustine sought truth with his whole soul and this for him was seeking for God.
‘O truth O truth, the very intimate parts of my soul long for thee.’ ‘Thou hast made
us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests thee’.2 The outstanding trait of
his philosophy is an impassioned love and quest of truth, wisdom. His faith sought
ever deeper understanding. His quest for truth helped him to transform platonic and
Neo-Platonic thought in a powerful new intellectual interpretation of God, man and
the universe. He did not distinguish philosophy and theology in his writings, but

2
Confessions I, 1, 1.
his philosophy is nevertheless easy to separate from his strictly theological
thought.
St Augustine Search for Happiness.
The Greek philosophers had a conception of happiness as the end of conduct, and
one cannot say that they had no idea of obligation, for instance Aristotle
commented on happiness by saying that happiness is not pleasure, if pleasure was
our highest goal then we would be of no difference from animals, but we have a
rational capability. For Aristotle happiness is a kind of activity, it is lived well, it is
a life well lived. Then happiness is something final and complete, as being the aim
and end of all practical activities whatever; happiness simply is the active exercise
of the mind in conformity with perfect goodness or virtue.3 Also Aristotle
commenting on his Metaphysics wrote, ‘All men by nature desire to know.’ This
existential passion or desire is quite innate and intrinsic in man. Due to that
irresistible urge in a man to know, he involves himself in a curious and inquisitive
search into the for his existence. Perhaps Socrates realized this fact and so
maintained, ‘An unexamined life is not worth living’. In other words, we can say
the life of a man on earth must have a purpose and in order to grasp this end of
human life on earth, an intensive study is necessarily indispensable. Now owing to
his clearer notion of God and divine creation Augustine was able to give to moral
obligation a firmer metaphysical basis than the Greeks had been able to give it.
St. Augustine uses Neoplatonism to understand and explain happiness in a
Christianity context. Out of his passionate interest in man’s search for happiness
which can be found only in God as he suggests, we might perhaps expect him to
follow Plotinus in his emphasis. As the Greek philosophers also St Augustine’s
ethic has this in common with what one might call the typical Greek ethic, that it is
eudaemonistic in character, that it proposes and end for human conduct, namely
happiness; but this happiness to him is only to be found only in God, where he
comments, ‘A joy there is that is not granted to the godless, but to those only who
worship you without looking for reward, because you yourself are their joy. This is
the happy life and this alone: to rejoice in you, about you and because of you. This
is the life of happiness, and it is not to be found anywhere else. Whoever thinks
there can be some other is chasing a joy that is not the true one; yet such a person’s
will has not turned away from all notion of joy.’

3
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics H. Rackham, Ed. Bk 1 ch 7
Augustine wrote: "all persons want to be happy; and no persons are happy who do
not have what they want."4 From this statement, we realize that the main theme of
Augustine’s thought on happiness concerns our vulnerability to the material things
of this world: "It is beyond doubt that the one cause of fear is either that we will
lose what we love after attaining it or that, despite all our hopes, we will never
attain it at all."5 Augustine proceeds with questioning what a person should obtain
to achieve happiness since happiness is a matter of having what one wants in order
to be happy. The answer proposed by Augustine is that happiness constitutes
something that can be had when it is wanted.6 With the availability these days of
instant credit most people are in the position of having materially what they want
when it is wanted. Does this then provide us with the answer of happiness? The
answer is inevitably no for material wealth, no matter how achieved, is perpetually
subject to the fear of loss. Augustine argues that it is in our love of God that we
find permanent and enduring happiness without the fear of loss that erodes our
happiness.7
Conclusion.
Augustine shows the connection between truth, happiness and God. He
straightforwardly explains, happiness is itself a joy in the truth, and that is a joy in
you, God, who are the truth. Everyone wants to know the truth, and everyone
wants to be happy, just as no one wants to be lied to and no one wants to be
unhappy. Augustine takes this a step further saying, ‘Happiness is itself a joy in
the truth,’ meaning that the truth is good to know by itself and the truth makes you
happy to know it. He continues to explain the importance with which we all
naturally treat the truth but points out the shortcomings of people who deceive that,
they love supporting truth and not rebuking truth. Because they hate to be lied to,
but like to lie, they love to find things with the help of truth but hate to be found
out by it. In other words, because a person who lies still wants to be happy and still
wants to know the truth despite his lies, hates the experience of being corrected for
his lies and runs from his discovery and the consequences of it. So, Augustine
concludes that the liar cannot be happy saying, “To this, even this, is the human
mind reduced, to this blind, weak state, that it wants to hide from others, but wants
nothing hidden from it. But truth turns this upside down—so that the mind does not
hide the truth, but the truth is hidden from it.” Augustine says that the mind of the
4
De beata vita 2.10
5
De div. quaest. 33
6
De beata vita 2.11
7
De beata vita 2.11
person who lies or lives a lie has the truth hidden from his mind because he refuses
to discontinue his love for what is not truth and what is not God, and therefore he
remains devastatingly unhappy. Instead, Augustine affirms what took him so long
to discover, “You are the happiness that everyone desires, the only happiness.” The
saint, who spent a good part of his life running from God, famously said, “Late
have I loved you Lord,” was grateful to discover God later in life, rather than not at
all.
REFERENCES.
De beata vita De beata vita – On the Happy Life
De div. quaest. De diversis quaestionibus – On 83 Different Questions
De lib. arb. De libero arbitrio – On Free Will (translated by J.H.S. Burleigh)
De mor. eccl. eath De moribus ecclesiae catholicae – The Morals of the Catholic
Church
De doct. chr. De Doctrina christiana – On Christian Doctrine