Now that the semester is over, I can start shooting the Core Concept videos I've been wanting to get to -- in this one, I discuss Augustine's own reflections on the motivations of one of his early bad actions

You're the man Prof Sadler!

The act seems to have given Augustine status with his friends, or a sense of community/belonging with them. Like he said, he wouldn’t have done it on his own, because there was no one to impress. That’s my interpretation, but it is awesome to point out people will do bad things for reasons other than ignorance of knowledge, which Plotinus and Plato seemed to think.

@GregoryBSadler

3 жыл бұрын

Augustine considers those, and rules them out in the book

Great way at explaining all of this! If there was one thing I would change, it would be writing on a chalkboard. I hate the sound. it gives me chills that I hate. But I love your teaching!

@GregoryBSadler

7 жыл бұрын

Glad you enjoy the teaching. The chalkboard will remain a constant, though

@kristinlewis7129

7 жыл бұрын

I guess its where I grew up with white boards.

When I was younger, I did similar things; one instance was when some friends and I left huge logs in the middle of roads at night to disrupt people's commute. When I watched this video, I thought "why would I do such an act?". But maybe it had to do with changing the order of things. I gained nothing from doing that act, and a person driving could have gotten hurt. Maybe the same with stealing the pear for the sake of stealing; both actions could have been from a subconscious need to change the order of things and hardly anything else. (Well doing the act with other people was probably because of the fact that it lifts the full burden off of the individual.)

@GregoryBSadler

10 жыл бұрын

Yes, I did some really boneheaded things myself along similar lines -- and have done some thinking from time to time about just what I was aiming at. . . .

@bryson1754

10 жыл бұрын

In that given scenario, would you a agree that that could have been that case (simply attempting to disrupt order)? Or could there be more to it?

@GregoryBSadler

10 жыл бұрын

well, you'd want to ask what the person is getting out of it...

@bryson1754

10 жыл бұрын

I guess joy. Maybe the brain needs something new in order to feed its curiosity (especially for kids). If you live your life day by day under a system of rules, it could be joyful to challenge those rules when no one's looking. As you clarified earlier, it's not the same as rule breaking for the sake of rationally gaining something in return.

@GregoryBSadler

10 жыл бұрын

Or, as some people describe it, the "feeling of being alive." Or the sensation of power. Or. . . . (there could be all sorts of reasons)

It's a great question! yeah~ transgression as an act opens a space of heightened or quickenend experience; certainly it's crossing a threshold. Pear tree is such a pur example. almost like practicing magic. it's a barrier that we don't rationally know about. so it is the allure of the unknown. testing the unknown. it could lead to absolutely nothing, feeling hollow and deflated. or- it can be a catalyst to transcendence.

@GregoryBSadler

7 жыл бұрын

Well, in this case, there's no transcendence, that's for certain. You might have in mind someone like Bataille, rather than Augustine

@mandys1505

7 жыл бұрын

that's interesting- Bataille.... thank you for suggesting him, i wasn't aware of him. I'm getting into Augustine, i just began The Confessions! and i also got a book about him by Jean-Luc Marion. Thanks for this talk- i see you have got quite a few!! (On Augustine)

@mandys1505

7 жыл бұрын

I had read Augustine's Confessions years ago-- but in a very funny translation into English!! :) so now, i'm reading the Oxford translation, which is quite a different experience. Too bad i can't enjoy the original.

@GregoryBSadler

7 жыл бұрын

Mandy S Yes, the translators can sometimes get in the way.

Presented by research studies (even by eminent scientist) on the adverse effect of evil/bad activity (for instance smoking, torture, oppression in some countries), people who are advocating smoking, and so on will acknowledge or deny such research through confirmation bias, and personal emotion to convince oneself that that evil act is nothing more than being determined by one's circumstances/ habit/ interest/ cultural relativism/paternalism/feel good effects (the experience) to try to rationalize one's way out of the evil action. Ultimately, they achieved nothing as they are denying the fact that it's evil to do those things; it only ampliate the evilness of the activity they engaged in.

Concerning Christian philosophers, which one, in your view, is better to study and offers more thought provoking material: Thomas Aquinas or Augustine?

@GregoryBSadler

9 жыл бұрын

Why not study both? and more?

Okay. Just finished viewing your 3-part Nietzsche. Wouldn't you say, in reflection, that the taking of the pear is the naked manifestation of the will-to-power? The underbelly then being resentment?

@GregoryBSadler

10 жыл бұрын

Would Nietzsche say it was an expression of the will to power? Sure. Ressentiment? Not necessarily - certainly not if it's a "naked manifestation"

what about the "art of theft"? Like in terms of Aesthetics?

@GregoryBSadler

8 жыл бұрын

+soju69jinro What about it?

I have to add that Augustine's role in the church teachings on Free Will [and other doctrines he helped to promote], needs more research from some of us who thought Augustine was a great saint! After a bit of study, one might ask, how can this man be a saint or a doctor of the Church??? What kind of religion holds up a person with his true tract record? He apparently thought that we were really bad at heart and couldn't possibly have "free will" to choose good! This is directly opposed to the the original Christian leaders who were disciples of apostles, who had been disciples of Jesus. [ And completely opposed to Genesis Chapter One] Thinking we are bad by nature, sets the stage for our demoralization and even despair of our ever overcoming our "badness". So people not knowing the Truth that could free them from this oppressive ideology... trusted Roman Catholic clergy to show the way to a "good" life and Heaven. Augustine apparently changed his mind at least once about this horrible nature that he said we had, and our having no free will. He also apparently said, because of that, the Roman Catholic Church had the right to FORCE "sinners" to CONVERT TO the Church!!! Our so called bad nature, appears to be the root of many church doctrines that seem now very oppressive. If we are sort of like animals or such evil sinners, why wouldn't we need to be tortured and penalized for going outside of the Church.??? Supposedly Augustine was previously a Gnostic and those awful ideas about our nature, were part of that Pagan cult. Incredibly the Protestant Reformation, and particularly the "reformer", Calvin, heavily promoted the Augustinian idea about our "depraved" sinful nature. Genesis Chapter One, which says we are "very good", and made in "God's own image and likeness" with dominion [or the power to heal material challenges] has been dismissed for centuries as no longer true, robbing people of their right to the Truths that Jesus lived and healed by, and instructed his followers to do also... "heal the sick, cleanse the lepers... " and "these things and greater will my followers do!". Love true Faithful Catholics, but , hate the ideas of leaders thru the centuries that show no concern for Jesus life or teachings whatsoever.

@GregoryBSadler

5 жыл бұрын

kzread.info/dash/bejne/eXxpssqygLfOoNI.html

@douglasmcnay644

2 жыл бұрын

Firstly, Augustine is a fallible man so it is no surprise that he has changed his mind on certain issues over his lifetime. No one is perfectly consistent. However, Augustine rightly saw in the Scriptures that while man was "very good" when God had created everything in Eden originally, this does not continue after the Fall. God said that Adam and Eve would surely die if they at of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This death did not happen in the physical sense immediately, but what is clear from the rest of the text is that a serious change in the relationship between God and man as His creature had occurred, causing God to kick them out of the garden and then guarding the entrance to it with a flaming sword so as to never let them back in. The first sin never destroyed the fact that all men were created in God's image, but the Fall twisted and distorted it into what we see today. The very fact that a single act of disobedience, eating a piece of fruit they weren't supposed to, has lead to every death (by genocide, murder, war), rape, mistreatment, act of rebellion, and everything else we see in this world should show exactly how radical that single action corrupted us. We are truly depraved, constantly seeking after our own messed up desires and not caring who gets hurt along the way. If you have a problem with Augustine or Calvin's view on how wicked men are, take it up with Paul and Jesus. That's what they taught. We are slaves, either to righteousness or to sin. And either way, slaves aren't free.

If you can if you can make a delinquent understand that the *reason* that they find such acts desirable is almost almost solely that they exercise the freedom to act against reason, would they suddenly find the acts less desirable?

@GregoryBSadler

10 жыл бұрын

Possibly. They might also see acting against reason as what they want (though usually that reflects an inadequate conception of reason, and some other thing, e.g. having a sense of power, as driving the person)

@timetuner

10 жыл бұрын

Gregory B. Sadler They'd have to deal with some pretty blatant cognitive dissonance to be aware that their reason for doing the thing is that they don't have a reason to do the thing and to still be motivated to act. I know that the mind is pretty good at working around this kind of thing, but on paper it invalidates itself from the first person.

@GregoryBSadler

10 жыл бұрын

Sure -- but on paper is not in actuality

I wish you had explained why it was a sort of imitation of God. You said it was a form of "omnipotence, .... ". As if we get "power" from doing wrong..... material power that is. I also wish you had elaborated on the influence of peer pressure, or "acceptance"/"caring",/ "respect" by his young friends for the juvenile Augustine. Is it possible that all crime is the result of a desire to get the love we feel we need, (or never got) from family, friends, the world, etc. Some people get rewarded for doing good, and some get rewarded only for doing WHATEVER they have to do..... to get money and control over money..... Sad to say, some of the richest people in the world were probably raised to think they are nothing/ worthless without money and powerful friends. Even the phrase, "what's he worth?" gives credence to the idea, don't you think????

@GregoryBSadler

5 жыл бұрын

You sure have a lot of wishes

I'm 2 books into Confessions and I'm not feeling it. He stole the pears because "nothing"? Seems like he could have attributed the act to peer pressure but even that is acknowledged and then lumped into the "nothing". Regardless Greg's video is very good and does its best to walk you thru Augustine's metaphysical argument. I also think the text itself was well written and Augustine explains himself well as it pertains to the pear theft, I just didn't find the conclusion of the argument very satisfying.

@GregoryBSadler

2 жыл бұрын

I think you might have missed the point of the analysis

@JoshV74656

2 жыл бұрын

​@@GregoryBSadler I think that is a safe bet. Do you mean that analyzing the motivation to do wrong (Desire and Fear) is the important part of the argument, not so much the metaphysical conclusion?

@GregoryBSadler

2 жыл бұрын

Both are important, and more. Keep reading

@JoshV74656

2 жыл бұрын

@@GregoryBSadler Will do, thanks for the instruction.

The desire to act out evil out of the creaturely will has been a focal issue in Christianity. By freely choosing evil, one has obtain power and strength to act against God. However, after choosing evil, it becomes futile for it is no longer attractive hence desiring evil leads to nothingness, nor achieve any progress as one feels like one has chose to forfeit the goodness of God in one's life which He has freely given us. Thus, there is always a rift in one's conscious and thoughts in the autonomic primitive desire of the human (Id in Freudian term), and the pre-frontal cortex of human cognitive high ground (super-ego) which is mediated by the ego. However, at times, the id or super-ego has to give way to the other, and when the Id prevail, nothingness/nullity is produced as a result.

@GregoryBSadler

10 жыл бұрын

Evil doesn't always cease to be attractive, once it has been chosen. In fact, one can become less and less capable of actually seeing the good, and more and more attracted by evil -- Augustine and Anselm, among many other Christian thinkers, point this out

@strongyang

10 жыл бұрын

Gregory B. Sadler I totally agree with you that evil doesn't always cease to be attractive; it instead becomes perpetual in one's life that renders the feeling of achieving nothingness/nullity as a result of being engulfed by evil/sin.

@GregoryBSadler

10 жыл бұрын

Yes, that's the worst part of it -- to get oneself wrapped up in, even addicted to what's ultimately just nothing

@strongyang

10 жыл бұрын

Gregory B. Sadler Absolutely, because one of the reason is that I experience this. And I know it leads me to achieve nothing.

So "nothingness" in this case is something that is lacking in Godliness?

@GregoryBSadler

2 жыл бұрын

I wouldn’t try to pin it down like that