I’ve absorbed the title of author (and President-elect) Barack Obama into this post, in order to present what I believe Saint Augustine considers the audacity of hope in the culmination of his life’s work, the City of God.
Philosophers, Augustine contends, seek “Supreme Happiness” in the ends of their logical inquiries, and while some may receive glimpses of the truth, it is an approach that is doomed to fail in the seeking. For happiness is not attainable on this earthly plane of existence (“city of this world”), neither in our soul nor our body, and the closest we can come is in hope, the hope for salvation, a hope that carries on beyond our mortal flesh into the City of God. In Augustine’s eloquent words (he was a rhetorician by trade):
We are saved in hope, it is in hope that we have been made happy; and as we do not yet possess a present salvation, but await salvation in the future, so we do not enjoy a present happiness, but look forward to happiness in the future, and we look forward “with steadfast endurance.”
[...]
Yet these philosophers refuse to believe in this blessedness because they do not see it; and so they attempt to fabricate for themselves an utterly delusive happiness by means of a virtue whose falsity is in proportion to its arrogance. (Book XIX, Chapter 4)
These words struck me with the same cold slap that Krishna gives to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, where Arjuna’s depression and objections fall away in the face of hope. Krishna inculcates this hope in Arjuna through an elegantly systematic theology — hope in an imperishable Self (2.20), hope in the promise of liberation in a future life (8.20), a hope that drives away the emptiness and despair of a grim duty.
And it is precisely this acceptance, this willful inclusion, this audacity of hope that Augustine defends as the cornerstone of man’s liberation on this earth. For it certainly requires true audacity to attend to one’s station in life, with the slim hope that, as Krishna says (8.20), at the moment of death, one will attain the heavenly abode, Krishna’s City of God.
But though this hope may appear slim to philosophers, Augustine says, it is everything — the only thing — that is required for Supreme Happiness here and now.
Related posts:
One Comment
It seems to me that Augustine’s theory makes sense only when applied to the average human being. His argument that humans find happiness only in looking to a future filled with hope. In terms of Hinduism, people find happiness when looking towards the future of salvation.
Yet in Hinduism, the truly enlightened, the ones who attain moksha, are the ones who are at peace with themselves in the present. For them, past, present, and future are not distinct. The ones who can attain moksha have surpassed finding happiness in the way that the general population finds happiness.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is speaking to the general population when he speaks of deriving happiness from hope.
Perhaps the hope that Augustine theorizes about is not so audacious since it seems to be commonplace. And according to Hinduism, we should strive to break past that commonplace hope and find happiness in the present.
Post a Comment