Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Augustine of Hippo, Eclectic Learning and the Question of Religious Genius : A Very, Very Brief Reflection

i would like to write a longish serious response to bjoern who was kind enough to share his reflections seriously with us. i have  to say at the outset that i disagree with him, partly along the lines of my initial statement of skepticism that he, personally, wound up w such influence. i turned off when you (let me address you directly, if i may) mention the crusades etc., i feel we are not in the world of serious history.

you change the wording to augustianism, which implies something larger than his personal contribution, and i can accept that church theology did bear his influence, but nothing ever directly carried over long periods of time, not even jesus's teachings. all changes with time and place, and fairly rapidly.

but the larger issue of the sins of the west shifts the debate, for me, into something, dear bjoern, that becomes far too exaggerated for my taste. i suspect others on the list will agree with you, but for me it is exaggerated enormously. colonialism, the slave trade, these were vast economic and political and military periods with enormous consequences and destruction. they were performed in conflict in the west, with resistance and collaboration in africa and elsewhere, and were eventually overcome.

the question you pose is one of the superstructure, and it is nowhere near as all encompassing and overwhelming as you suggest. nor as monolithic. with colonialism came anticolonialism, and its partners in the west and in africa, and in the caribbean. negritude and resistance were real; the ideals of augustine to hegel were shaped like all superstructural elements, not formative of world anythings, and they changed rapidly over time. the problem i have with your formulation is the word "west" as if it were non-conflictual and monolithic.

as for the role of africa in being the victim and the resistant, i'd suggest consulting gikandi on the question, or fanon if you will. they evoke a more nuanced and complicated relation to the superstructure of ideas that you evoke.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 2, 2021 6:46 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Augustine of Hippo, Eclectic Learning and the Question of Religious Genius : A Very, Very Brief Reflection

 

I love this, Bjoern.

This discussion actually brings me closer to Augustine.

It has made me look into how I see him and make a coherent summation on that, my longest along those lines, I think.

I continue to wonder how a person living in North Africa was able to wield such deep influence on Western Christendom, even in its centring in what is now Europe.

thanks

toyin

On Sat, 2 Jan 2021 at 11:16, <bfreterb@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear All, dear Kenneth and dear Oluwatoyin,

 

Thank you for your comments and please excuse the lateness of my reply.

 

Dear Kenneth, you wrote:

 

"the gist of the argument is that augustine, despite his accomplishments in philosophy or theology, supported positions that historically had terrible consequences. but my question is, how much was augustine out of line with the church and thinkers of his time? how much was his argument responsible for the acts of repression that occurred many centuries later, and to what extent does it make sense to find in his arguments something with a real causative effect? i really find that implication a stretch, while am willing to accept that he accepted and advocated bad positions, positions that no doubt were aligned with the church itself. for example, original sin. to call it a dark chapter ignores millenia of thinkers who taught it, all the way to calvin and no doubt down to today. stupid ideas have a life of their own, in a way, and can't be simply reduced to a single thinker's advocacy of it."

 

I would firstly argue that, even though it is certainly a "stretch", as you say, to make Augustine responsible for certain ideas, we have to admit that the influence of Augustine, even during his lifetime, was so massive that him advocating certain positions allowed later clerical authorities to refer to him as authority to justify terrible practices, e.g., as mentioned, coercion, crusades, the inquisition – all, at least partially founded on Augustinian theology.

 

But, and this is, in my opinion the actually important point, it seems important to me to critically reevaluate the historical figures and avoid their glorification (as a philosophical figure at least, to discuss the Saint Augustine from the standpoint of catholic is something different). This is for me of immense importance. In Western philosophy we find a tremendous amount of philosophers and theologians who are until today continued to be praised for the humanitarian impact, for their (allegedly) important addition to the Western canon of human values – Augustine (as him being an African philosopher is usually ignored) is certainly a part of this 'historical amnesia' (e.g. I noticed him being praised for his philosophy of love). This seems to be a problem. The Western world continues to understand itself as the moral authority of the world – and one of the many flawed arguments for this self-(mis)-understanding as moral authority stems from the (mis)understanding of the intellectual 'founding fathers', an understanding that avoids and simply wipes away so many inhumanities – from Augustine's dark theology of grace to Thomas's misogyny to Kant's Racism to Heideggers Anti-semitism. If we look around in the Western world we find racism, sexism, antisemitism, violent Othering of all types, or, as I like to call it, Superiorism everywhere. I think that there must be a reason that we find within all these superiorist phenomena in a culture that prides itself of having 'invented' all the relevant ideas to overcome superiorism. And I would guess that one of these reasons is a constant exculpation of its own despicable past. The western world has invented many ways to be the (alleged) moral authority of the world while AT THE SAME TIME continue being the great murderer of the world. Just think of the replacement of colonialism with (capitalist) neo-colonialism, the exploitation has been rebranded, but not stopped; the enterprise of the early colonialism has been stopped, but it was NOT until today understood that the violent crime of colonialism is not undone by the recovery of African people, but by the recovery of the African people AND by a moral revolution of the Western world, by, as I like to say, desuperiorizing its ways. So, to finally come to an end, I think, it is extremely dangerous to continue to uncritically praise the authorities of Western ways  - and Augustine has been made into a Western authority. Of course, one can argue, that my criticism is anachronistic and too extreme, but, as the scholar I am (white and trained in the West) I felt I would have to oppose an uncritical appraisal of the extremely dangerous thought of Augustine (which, of course, does NOT mean, he should not be studied or valued for the genius he was).

 

I absolutely agree with you, dear Oluwatoyin, that Augustine was a deeply conflicted man. This is a very important point. The problem, however, is that theological and philosophical traditions tried to intellectually heal THIS personal conflict of ONE man (just think of the difference of tone in his sermons and his academic works, esp. later in his life). It was indeed this conflict that made Paul so important to Augustine – and it was indeed Augustine's reading of Paul's Letter to the Romans that lead Luther to the invention of the double justification (which attempted to finally overcome the human perplexity in front of the incomprehensible doctrine of undeserved grace).

 

I hope I was able to bring some light to my point. I would be pleased to continue the discussion.

 

Thank you, dear colleagues.

 

I wish you all the best for this new year!

Bjoern Freter

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