Introduction
As I have indicated formally and informally to my colleagues, readers, and students, many of my ideas for research and publication stem from my teaching of undergraduates, and this paper is no exception, as it comes directly from the questions raised in discussions with freshmen at the University of Notre Dame and at Villanova University. It therefore seems especially appropriate to include this essay here, in a collection intended to explore and elaborate the implications for modern education of the thought of Augustine, one of the greatest practitioners and theorists of pedagogy. It is also a perfect example of the benefits of learner based, active education, as I have learned more in my seminars than I could ever hope to in a lecture course.
In class discussions of the pear tree incident in Book 2 of Augustine's Confessions, students have in my experience consistently focused on the role of peer pressure in driving Augustine to commit the theft. And try as I might to steer them towards the real point of the story -- to show the innate evil of humanity and to prove that Plato was wrong, that a person can and does commit evil actions knowing and loving them for their evil -- the students always come back to the peer pressure: "Well, yes, he loved evil for its own sake and that makes him feel worse, but he wouldn't have done it if it weren't for his friends egging him on." I seldom mistake student intractability for insight, but this time they have the text on their side: "Yet alone, by myself, I would not have done it -- such, I remember, was my state of mind at the time -- alone I would never have done it."(1) Why does Augustine distract from his main point by bringing up the seemingly ancillary issue of peer pressure or bad influences from outside? This has led me to a more general consideration of the dynamics between good and evil, individuals and groups in the Confessions. The relation is especially important in the case of education, and I believe it has important implications for modern pedagogy.
Bad Company: The Pear Tree
Let us first look at the pear tree incident in Book 2, to see how the issue of peer pressure is raised. When Augustine first describes the theft, his companions are barely mentioned: "Late night -- to which hour, according to our pestilential custom, we had kept up our street games -- a group of very bad youngsters set out to shake down and rob this tree" (Conf. 2.4.9). The influence of Augustine's companions is clearly negative -- they inculcate "pestilential custom[s]" in one another -- but hardly crucial. Augustine does not say whose idea the theft was, and the companions' influence at first seems confined only to encouraging Augustine to stay out late; they do not seem to encourage him to steal. And when in the next paragraph Augustine turns to analyze the act, the companions disappear completely:
Behold my heart, O Lord, behold my heart upon which you had mercy in the depths of the pit. Behold, now let my heart tell you what it looked for there, that I should be evil without purpose and that there should be no cause for my evil but evil itself. Foul was the evil, and I loved it. I loved to go down to death. I loved my fault, not that for which I did the fault, but I loved my fault itself. Base in soul was I, and I leaped down from your firm clasp even towards complete destruction, and I sought nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself! (Conf. 2.4.9)
From this description, a reader would surely not expect the subsequent statement that the companions were instrumental to Augustine's act of theft. In this description, they seem to be mere bystanders to the real drama, which is a confrontation between Augustine and evil.
That Augustine chose evil for its own sake in this case is clearly the central problem for him, but its exact implications for him are harder to elaborate. I have already characterized the point of the story as anti-Platonic, but this requires some nuance. On the one hand, Augustine later invokes Platonic ideas of the non-existence of evil as a solution to his problems with evil: "...evil is only the privation of a good, even to the point of complete nonentity.... Therefore, whatsoever things exist are good" (Conf. 3.7.12; 7.12.18).(2) But on the other hand, in his description of the pear tree incident, he insists that he knowingly chose evil for its own sake, and this would clearly seem to go against Platonic doctrine that all evil is chosen because some good is sought in it. From a Platonic point of view, evil actions are only misguided: "With regard to all these things, and others of like nature, sins are committed when, out of an immoderate liking for them, since they are the least goods, we desert the best and highest goods" (Conf. 2.5.10). While this may explain almost all sins, Augustine knows that if he can find one exception, then the system falls apart, and he thinks he has just such an exception with the pear tree. By insisting that he chose evil knowing it to be evil, Augustine has described it in a way that goes beyond a Platonic explanation. He insists that evil can be knowingly embraced with a kind of simultaneous attraction and revulsion that cannot be reduced to a mere mistake, but indicates a real and fundamental perversion in human beings.(3)
This points to the fundamental paradox of evil for Augustine: evil is at one and the same time non-existent, yet extremely powerful.(4) This paradox provided the basis of my Core Humanities course this spring, as it has been a powerful influence in literature dealing with evil: it is a measure of their greatness that authors like Milton, Dostoevsky, and Flannery O'Connor can simultaneously depict evil as utterly empty, yet terrifying in its power. For Augustine, this paradox arises in part from combining Platonic and Manichaean descriptions of evil, in order to create what he hopes is an adequate (if not always wholly satisfying) Christian account of evil. From the Platonic description of evil, Augustine takes the idea that evil is not a thing, a nothing, a lack, only a privation of the good, and has no separate existence on its own; and from the Manichaean description, he takes the idea that evil does exist, that it is actively and powerfully opposed to the good, and although it may not be as material as he once thought,(5) it is very real. But furthering the paradox is the fact that both the Platonic and Manichaean descriptions of evil are finally deficient for Augustine because neither adequately reckons with the power of evil, for both of them depict it as ultimately powerless and inconsequential. This is clearest for the Platonic view,(6) but it is equally so for the Manichaean: "I still thought that it was not ourselves who sin, but that some sort of different nature within us commits the sin. It gave joy to my pride to be above all guilt" (Conf. 5.10.18).(7) Any description of evil that regards it as not essentially part of the human person -- either because it is only a mistake or because it is a substance wholly different and other from the human person -- is inadequate and untrue for Augustine. If the Platonists are right, then all we need is education and guidance so as not to mistake evil for good, or lesser goods for greater ones; if the Manichees are right, then all we need is to divorce ourselves from the evil that has accidentally (and not essentially) become associated with us in our present incarnation. If either is correct, then we do not need the sacrifice of Christ or the grace of God, and "Christ died to no purpose" (Gal 2:21).
I take it then that the pear tree episode is the epitome of this paradox of evil. Augustine knowingly chooses nothingness instead of the infinity of God's goodness and love; he does not do this as a mistake, but with complete knowledge of what he is doing, even if he cannot say why he is doing it. (All of this, it must be understood, is from the point of view of Augustine's later telling of the story.) What can we now say about the part his companions play in this story that illustrates the paradoxical nature of evil? Their role has sometimes been taken as resolving the paradox. This could be done in one of two ways. Either the friendship is the lesser good that Augustine sought in the theft, and therefore the theft is understandable in Platonic terms: "Therefore, I also loved in it my association with the others with whom I did the deed" (Conf. 2.8.16).(8) Augustine did love "something," not "nothing"; even if that "something" is small and petty, it is not "nothing." But since the point of the story is to discredit (or at least move beyond) the Platonic description of evil, this interpretation clearly seems unacceptable. Augustine is equally adamant that he did love "nothing": "What fruit had I... from that theft in which I loved the theft itself and nothing else? For the theft itself was nothing" (Conf. 2.8.16). On the other hand, the companionship could resolve the paradox by being the final example of Augustine loving "nothing": "...my association with the others was itself nothing" (Conf. 2.8.16).(9) Although this seems closer to Augustine's thought, in that it does not reduce the scene to a Platonic explanation, the role of the friends seems again to be exaggerated. Augustine says he would not have committed the theft without his companions; he does not say that he committed it for the sake of their companionship. The companionship is at most a facilitation or enabling of his evil, not its goal or cause.
I think that the evil companionship is essentially another element of the paradox of evil, not a resolution to it, as indicated with Augustine's oxymoronic cry, "O friendship too unfriendly!" (Conf. 2.8.17). It is perhaps best seen as parallel to the pear tree story, not part of it. Loving the emptiness and uselessness of the theft is analogous to loving the emptiness and uselessness of his relationship with these friends, and neither admits of an explanation or reduction, except that both are powerful manifestations of evil. Empty, useless relationships are just as symptomatic of evil as empty, useless acts, and both are equally destructive. Both are strands of the confusing "knot" of sin that ends Book 2: "Who can untie this most twisted and intricate mass of knots? It is a filthy thing: I do not wish to think about it; I do not wish to look upon it" (Conf. 2.10.18).(10)
Although the "knot" imagery is prevalent at the end of Book 2, it is the imagery of "itching" that seems most relevant to Augustine's experience with his companions in theft. Augustine begins both Books 2 and 3 by indicating that his attachments to other people were the source of his problems: "What was there to bring me delight except to love and be loved?... I came to Carthage, where a caldron of shameful loves seethed and sounded me about on every side. I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love" (Conf. 2.2.2; 3.1.1). Augustine seems never to have been guilty of a deficiency of love, but rather always a surfeit. And these loves make Augustine "burn" and "itch": "Hence came my love for such sorrows... I was scratched lightly, as it were. As a result, as though from scratches made by fingernails, there followed a burning tumor and horrid pus and wasting away" (Conf. 3.2.4). The companionship of his fellow thieves is also described as "itching":
If I had then merely liked the pears that I stole, and merely wished to eat them, I could have done so by myself, were doing that wrong deed enough to lead me to my pleasure. Nor would I have needed to arouse the itch of my desires by a rubbing together of guilty minds. But my pleasure lay not in the pears: it lay in the evil deed itself, which a group of us joined in sin to do. (Conf. 2.8.16)
Again, this quotation makes clear that Augustine did not find in the companionship the object of his love or pleasure. The choice of the "itching" imagery seems to fit Augustine's purposes particularly well here. An itch is not a cause of disease, but rather a symptom, just as the friends are not the cause of sin, but just another symptom. Likewise, scratching only makes something itch worse, just as the sinful friendship, the "rubbing together of guilty minds," only leads to more sinful behavior. Augustine's image brings out both the diseased nature of sin itself, as well as the compounding of it by the addictiveness of its symptoms.
Augustine did not commit the theft for the sake of this sinful friendship, but it is clear that this friendship exacerbated the pride, vanity, selfishness, and love of "deformed liberty" (Conf. 2.6.14), that are part of sin. While the group may not cause sin, it clearly leads to more sinfulness on Augustine's part. This seems to be part of an overall pattern in the Confessions of depicting group activities or human society in general as leading to greater evil and sin,(11) without removing the blame from the individual and placing it on the group. Indeed, the acquisition of language, of the ability to communicate and interact with other human beings, sounds hardly like a thing to be desired, but only marks the entrance "into the stormy society of human life" (Conf. 1.8.13), and is constantly misused by Augustine and those around him: "But if they would describe some of their lustful deeds in detail and good order with correct and well-placed words, did they not glory in the praise they got?... Thus youths who did not meditate on your law, or on your peace, but on foolish lies and court quarrels, would no longer pry from my mouth weapons for their madness" (Conf. 1.18.28; 9.2.2). Even childish play with others reinforces sin, by teaching pride and dishonesty: "I loved to win proud victories in our contests, and to have my ears tickled by false stories, so that they would itch all the more intensely for them" (Conf. 1.10.16; cf. 1.19.30). And for Augustine adults are, of course, only larger, more dangerous children, with more destructive and addictive pastimes, such as the baths (Conf. 2.3.6), theater (Conf. 3.2.2-4) and gladiatorial shows (Conf. 6.8.13). Practically every sin necessarily includes other people, at least as victims, but Augustine's examples seem to implicate them as co-conspirators and enablers: one might lie to oneself, or feel malice by oneself, but the temptation is greatly increased when surrounded by other sinners engaged in the same activity.
By way of contrast, it is worth considering the turning points in the Confessions, the points when Augustine or someone else is turned towards God, and noting that they are practically all solitary, or shared with just one other person, not a group.(12) The solitary reading of Cicero causes Augustine's first "conversion": "This book changed my affections. It turned my prayers to you, Lord, and caused me to have different purposes and desires. All my vain hopes forthwith became worthless to me, and with incredible ardor of heart I desired undying wisdom. I began to rise up, so that I might return to you" (Conf. 3.4.7). Augustine is later turned from astrology by his consultation with Firminus, followed by his solitary ruminating on the subject (Conf. 7.6.8-10). The vision(s) Augustine has at the end of Book 7 (Conf. 7.17.23-7.21.27) is the result of his solitary meditation on Scripture: "In a wondrous way all these things penetrated my very vitals, when I read the words of that least of your apostles, and meditated upon your works, and trembled at them" (Conf. 7.21.27). Victorinus is held back from converting because he is afraid of public opinion, "He was afraid of offending his friends" (Conf. 8.2.4), and he is also finally moved to convert through solitary reading, "Afterwards, through reading and longing, he drank in strength" (Conf. 8.2.4). Ponticianus' two friends are converted to the monastic life through the chance reading of the life of Antony while alone together: "He read on and was changed within himself, where your eyes could see" (Conf. 8.6.15). Augustine's own conversion is completely solitary, "That I might pour it all forth with its own proper sounds, I arose from Alypius' side -- to be alone seemed more proper to this ordeal of weeping -- and went farther apart, so that not even his presence would be a hindrance to me" (Conf. 8.12.28), and Alypius' follows with only Augustine present (Conf. 8.12.30). The reprimand that turns Monica from drinking is done when she is alone with a servant: "A maidservant, with whom she used to go down to the cellar, quarreled with her little mistress, the two being all alone, as it so happened... Wounded through and through by this taunt, she beheld her own foul state, and immediately condemned it and cast it off" (Conf. 9.8.18).(13) Finally, the climactic vision at Ostia is shared between Augustine and Monica alone: "We were alone... We transcended [our own minds], so that we attained to the region of abundance that never fails, in which you feed Israel forever upon the food of truth, and where life is that Wisdom by which all these things are made" (Conf. 9.10.23-24).(14) Augustine is strikingly consistent in portraying moments of conversion as solitary and intimate, not as communal.(15)
Let us summarize the dynamic between good and evil, individuals and groups in the Confessions. Throughout the book, the focus is clearly on the individual, Augustine, with implications for the reader, also an individual. Evil manifests itself in the individual through proud, selfish acts that are ironically and tragically self-destructive. These sinful individuals create or are born into groups and communities that foster and reinforce their sinfulness. On the other hand, God also intervenes in individuals' lives when they are alone through moments of revelation or conversion. Evil is so pervasive in human society, and so effectively uses human society to strengthen itself, that God acts decisively in people's lives most frequently when they are alone, not when they are in groups.
Bad Habits: Augustine's Experience of Education
Such a view of society and the pervasiveness of evil in groups is clearly evident in Augustine's description of education. In Augustine's experience, education is debasing in its goals, its practice, and its content. Its goals are only to advance one in an earthly career, to bring success, not wisdom, and it fosters as well as stems from human pride.(16) Augustine sees even his parents, as well meaning as they might have been, as contributing to this: "Their only care was that I should learn to make the finest orations and become a persuasive speaker" (Conf. 2.2.4). Augustine sees this in his own education, and later in his own profession as a teacher: "For the same period of nine years, from the nineteenth year of my age to the twenty-eighth, we were seduced and we seduced others, deceived and deceiving by various desires, both openly by the so-called liberal arts and secretly in the name of a false religion, proud in the one, superstitious in the other, and everywhere vain" (Conf. 4.1.1). He is indeed glad to stop teaching, so as not to corrupt anyone else further: "You set free my tongue, as you had already freed my heart from that profession" (Conf. 9.4.7). In its practice, education is just an ugly indulging in and exacerbating of vanity. Again, Augustine first sees this in his own teachers:
For I played ball as a child; by such play I was kept from learning arts by which, as an adult, I would disport myself in a still more unseemly fashion. Did the very man who beat me act different from me? If he was outdone by a fellow teacher in some trifling discussion, he was more tormented by anger and envy than I was when beaten by my playmate in a ball game. (Conf. 1.9.15)(17)
He later finds himself behaving in the same way: "On the one hand, we pursued an empty fame and popularity even down to the applause of the playhouse, poetical competitions, and contests for garlands of grass, foolish plays on the stage, and unbridled lusts" (Conf. 4.1.1). And in its content, Augustine sees his education as empty and useless: "Nevertheless, O hellish flood, the sons of men are thrown into you with fees paid, so that they may learn these fables... I do not condemn the words, which are as it were choice and precious vessels, but that wine of error which through them was proffered to us by drunken teachers" (Conf. 1.16.26). Augustine was taught the wrong things, for the wrong reasons, in the wrong ways, and he learned his lessons so well that he carried on this debasing enterprise far into his adult life.(18)
There is one incident, however, in Augustine's classroom that he interprets positively, and that is the turning of Alypius away from his fascination with the circus:
For on a certain day, as I sat in my usual place and my students were present with me, he came in, greeted me, sat down, and applied his mind to the subjects under discussion. By chance, there was a passage to be read lying in my hands. As I was explaining it, I thought that a comparison with the circus would be apropos... You know, O my God, that at that time I had no thought of curing Alypius of his disease. But he applied it to himself, and believed that I had said it only because of him. (Conf. 6.7.11)
Alypius never returns to the circus (Conf. 6.7.12). It is not only a rare instance of something positive coming from Augustine's teaching profession in the Confessions, but also the only "conversion" that takes place in a group (though it happens to an individual and not to the group itself). Alypius has indeed learned something, but it was not what Augustine intended, it was what God intended. Like the tolle lege scene, Augustine sees God at work in his classroom, using "chance" to move the hearer towards the truth contained in what is before him, even when that truth was overlooked and unintended by the teacher: "I had not rebuked him, but you who make use of all men, both the knowing and the unknowing... out of my mouth and tongue made coals of fire by which you cauterized a mind of such high promise and healed it."(19) The intention or even the presence of the teacher is irrelevant: only the students' submission to a higher power determines whether or not they will learn.
This is quite close to how Augustine described learning several years before in The Teacher, where the irrelevance of the teacher is also emphasized:
For who is so foolishly curious that he would send his son to school in order to learn what the teacher thinks? But all those disciplines that teachers claim to teach, even those of virtue and wisdom, they explain with words. Then those who are called students consider within themselves whether what was said is true, each consulting that inner truth according to his own ability. Thus they learn.(20)
Students must acknowledge and submit themselves to the truth in order for learning to occur.(21) A teacher is there only as an occasion, not a condition.(22) For Augustine, learning, like conversion, is ultimately an inner, solitary act, an encounter between the learner and the truth. The occasion provided by the teacher may be a crucial one indeed, as it was for Alypius and Augustine, but the teacher must ultimately acknowledge his or her limited role, as well as acknowledging the primacy of the learner.
Augustine and Modern Pedagogy
Augustine saw education as he experienced and practiced it for much of his life as a powerful instrument of evil, yet another in a long list of group activities that only make people behave worse than they would have on their own. On the other hand, after his conversion, Augustine saw the positive role of learning, but saw the teacher as a very limited part of that activity. If for Augustine teachers are either evil or irrelevant, this would be a very daunting conclusion as we consider the implications of Augustine's ideas on evil and education for modern pedagogy. I believe that the implications are indeed humbling, but nonetheless ennobling and fundamental as we consider our vocation as teachers. Teachers must constantly remind themselves that their role is to assist their students in realizing their own truth. Let us focus first on the beginning of the italicized phrase. Neither we nor Augustine need to subscribe completely to a Platonic idea of recollection to see the implications of putting it this way, of emphasizing that the students' act of learning is their own. This thrusts to the forefront the idea just laid out, that the teacher is not the important person in the classroom. This is of course profoundly insulting to one's pride, but that is just the point. If we are to avoid the sinful pride that Augustine saw permeating the educational system of his time, we must constantly remind ourselves that we are not the stars of the educational show, only the students are. Students are not the "objects" of education, as though they were patients to be fixed by a doctor; nor are they "consumers" of education, a debasing mercantile metaphor that is finding its way into contemporary discussions of education, as though they were buying a commodity. Students are the substance, and learning is the goal of education. A simple way that I try to show this humble attitude in my classroom is by continuing the habit I learned at St. John's College, Annapolis, of calling students by their last names. It is a small gesture, but if I am calling them "Bobby" and "Jenny" while they are calling me "Dr. Paffenroth," isn't it not so subtly sending a message that I am the important person in the room, and that they are there "in order to learn what the teacher thinks" (De magistro 14.45)?
Further, emphasizing the students' role in learning shows that I cannot give real and transformative knowledge to my students. At best, such handing on of knowledge is training, not education; at worst, it is coercion or indoctrination. As Augustine saw, a real occurrence of learning happens when students see the truth of what is before them and make it their own. They own that truth, or more accurately, they now share it with the teacher, and the sum total of owned truth in the room has risen. Dante's description of how love increases the more it is shared expresses a similar situation:
"How can each one of many who divide
a single good have more of it, so shared,
than if a few had kept it?" He replied:
"Because within the habit of mankind
you set your whole intent on earthly things,
the true light falls as darkness on your mind.
The infinite and inexpressible Grace
which is in Heaven, gives itself to Love
as a sunbeam gives itself to a bright surface.
As much light as it finds there, it bestows;
thus, as the blaze of Love is spread more widely,
the greater the Eternal Glory grows.
As mirror reflects mirror, so, above,
the more there are who join their souls, the more
Love learns perfection, and the more they love."(23)
Knowledge or love are spiritual gifts that increase with being shared, and it is such sharing and increasing that I try to facilitate and which gives me such joy in my classroom. I am most gratified as a teacher not when my students know something they did not know before, but when they use knowledge in a way that they did not before. A really good paper on Dostoevsky or Shakespeare -- not a factually accurate one, but one that interacts with the text in order to get at the truth, one that shows that the text matters to the student and has made a difference in his or her life -- still gives me a chill, and is my measure of whether I have accomplished something. (And lest one think such teaching is confined to the humanities, I would say I have gotten the same feeling when a student I was tutoring in geometry did a proof without my help.) The most cherished moments in my career thus far have been when I stood beside my students, David Champagne, Erica DePalo, and Kathryn Kramers when they were honored with Core Humanities Writing Awards. It is significant that Ms. DePalo's name is now permanently engraved on a plaque at Villanova, with no indication of her teacher's identity: her accomplishment is honored there, not mine, although I cherish hers more than any of my own accomplishments as an academic. As Augustine acknowledges in the case of one's own biological children, teaching may be one of the few times when vicariousness is not such a bad thing: it is at least an inevitable and happy part of the relationship, as one can say of one's student or one's child, "You are the only man of all men whom I would wish to surpass me in all things."(24)
Teachers should also remind themselves of the implications of the final word of the above description of teaching: we are there to help students get to the truth. Not only does this obviously exclude such grossly predatory acts as making sexual overtures to students, as well as such overtly selfish acts as neglecting one's teaching or using it as a platform for one's own opinions, but it should also make us pause over many other seemingly good or inoffensive motivations. I am in the classroom to serve and to further truth, not myself or my career, and also not my students' careers or earning power: again, these are the goals of training, not education. Nor am I there to make them feel good (or bad), nor to make them act in a certain way: these are the goals of persuasion, therapy, and advocacy, not education. All of these should be and often are the happy side effects of teaching, but if they enter into the teaching environment, if they become stated goals of teaching rather than collateral effects, then they ultimately undermine and debase education.
Education is most often a group activity, and as such it is subject to the temptations and challenges that infect and influence any group activity, as Augustine describes in the Confessions. Being in a group can exacerbate the drives of selfishness, vanity, and pride that are fundamental to sin. Such dynamics are clearly visible in the classroom when students and teachers "show off" for one another, but also more insidiously present when they pursue truth not for its own sake, but for the practical benefits it can bring to them, whether these are financial, emotional, or ethical. But I think Augustine would agree that if both students and teachers together pursue truth for its own sake, surrendering themselves in order to be receptive to the transcendent, objective truth, then education is one of the most selfless acts in one's life; but as one possesses and is transformed by this transcendent truth, education also becomes one of the greatest acts of self-realization and fulfillment.
Notes
1. Conf. 2.8.16 (trans. John K. Ryan; New York, et al: Doubleday, 1960). All subsequent references to the Confessions are from this translation.
2. On the Platonic elements to the pear tree story, see P. Rigby, Original Sin in Augustine's Confessions (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1987) 101-08.
3. Cf. Rigby, Original Sin, 103, "Augustine never abandoned the main tenets of the Platonic doctrine, but he does move beyond it."
4. Cf. G. R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge, UK, et al: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 3: "If Augustine got pleasure from nothing but the theft itself in the pear-tree episode, then he got pleasure from nothing at all, for that was nothing. This remained the fundamental paradox of evil for him. Deprivatio is one thing -- a mere absence; but depravatio is something altogether more fearsome in its positive potential for doing damage."
5. Cf. Conf. 5.10.20, "I postulated two masses opposed to one another, each of them infinite, but the evil one on a narrower scale, the good one larger." Cf. K. Paffenroth, "Paulsen on Augustine: An Incorporeal or Nonanthropomorphic God?" Harvard Theological Review 86 (1993) 233-35.
6. Cf. W. S. Babcock, "Sin and Punishment: The Early Augustine on Evil," in Collectanea Augustiniana -- Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum (eds. J. T. Lienhard, et al; New York, et al: Peter Lang, 1993) 235-48: 241, "The Platonic notion served the purpose of reducing evil to a parasite upon the good which, as a parasite, requires the good if it is to exist at all. But it does not account for the origin of evil; and, above all, it does not capture the active force of evil exerting itself in opposition to -- even if wholly constrained by -- the divine design."
7. On the Manichaean position and Augustine's reaction to it, see P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) 46-48, 148-50; Evans, Augustine on Evil, 11-16.
8. This is the interpretation of J. J. O'Donnell, Augustine: Confessions (3 vols; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) vol. 2, 141: "His principle, after all, is that nothing is nothing save evil, and that there is no thing-ness to evil that could attract even the wickedest of souls. To be sure, he settles for the slightest of attractions, the camaraderie of thieves -- and amateur thieves at that. The principle is saved, at the price of his dignity."
9. Cf. Rigby, Original Sin, 107: "Book II ends with companionship as the motive for choosing to steal. But since the companionship is nothing, he is choosing nothing."
10. On the "knot" imagery, see Brown, Augustine, 275; Evans, Augustine on Evil, 4-5; Rigby, Original Sin, 107-08.
11. On this theme, cf. de civ. Dei 15.17; Brown, Augustine, 319-21; W. T. Smith, Augustine: His Life and Thought (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1980) 142-44.
12. All of these events are listed as "conversions" by F. van Fleteren, "St. Augustine's Theory of Conversion," in Collectanea Augustiniana -- Augustine: "Second Founder of the Faith" (eds. J. C. Schnaubelt and F. van Fleteren; New York et al: Peter Lang, 1990) 65-80. He lists "The presence of friends" as part of Augustine's "conversion" scenes (p. 69): I would concur, with the emphasis on the presence of one friend and not a crowd. The scenes are solitary or intimate, not communal.
13. On this scene, see K. Paffenroth, "Tears of Grief and Joy. Confessions Book 9: Chronological Sequence and Structure," Augustinian Studies 28 (1997) 141-54.
14. On the vision, see P. Henry, La vision d'Ostie. Sa Place dans la vie et l'oeuvre de saint Augustin (Paris: J. Vrin, 1938); Brown, Augustine, 128-31.
15. Though, of course, the conversion causes the person to rejoin the community, and causes the community to rejoice, as at Augustine's baptism (Conf. 9.6.14).
16. Cf. E. Kevane, Augustine the Educator: A Study in the Fundamentals of Christian Formation (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1964) 37: "Augustine holds the educational system partially responsible for the moral helplessness into which he fell and for his concomitant and resulting gradual alienation from God. Worst of all was the fateful fall into the common attitude of spiritual and intellectual pride with which the system was imbued."
17. For an examination of the negative effects that his own education later had on Augustine, see L. C. Ferrari, "The Boyhood Beatings of Augustine," in The Hunger of the Heart: Reflections on the Confessions of Augustine (eds. D. Capps and J. E. Dittes; West Lafayette, IN: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1990) 55-67.
18. Cf. Kevane, Augustine the Educator, 39: "It is the very essence of the Confessions that Augustine embraced the system with his whole heart and soul, learned all its lessons, and made its pride his own."
19. On the "unintentional" as the "decisive value" of an action, see Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, (trans. W. Kaufmann; New York: Random House, 1966) section 32 (p. 44). Although according to Nietzsche, Augustine "lacks in a truly offensive manner all nobility of gestures and desires" (Beyond Good and Evil, section 50), he could probably acknowledge that he did have a keen appreciation for the unintentional.
20. De magistro 14.45, my translation.
21. Cf. Kevane, Augustine the Educator, 291: "Underlying these positions is the bedrock of St. Augustine's metaphysical realism, which gives his teaching its objectivity in pedagogical matters. His concept of truth is objective, not subjective, coming down upon the teaching profession as a light which reveals an objective order of being, truth, and value. Both the human teacher and the human learner exist and function within this objective order and see their role in subordination to it."
22. On this discussion of teacher as occasion, see Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, (eds. and trans. H. V. and E. H. Hong; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985) section I.B.b (pp. 14-18).
23. Dante, Purgatorio (trans. John Ciardi; New York: Mentor Books, 1957) canto 15, lines 61-75.
24. Augustine quoting Cicero in Opus imperfectum contra Julianum 6.22; it is quoted by Brown, Augustine, 135.