Augustine on Loving Too Much

Mateusz Stróżyński

doi:10.1163/1568525x-12342603

Abstract

Abstract The article analyzes the friendship narratives contained in Books Two, Three and Four of Augustine’s Confessions, treating them not as biographical accounts, but as illustrations of Augustine’s philosophical ideas, namely, the fall of the soul and the role played in it by love. All those narratives seem to describe a homoerotic dimension of friendship. It is argued that making such homoerotic friendship, and not heterosexual love between man and woman, an allegory of the fall of the soul enables Augustine to show better the mechanism of the fall, namely, its excessive intensity and the fact that it perverts a naturally good relationship of the soul with the whole of creation.

Highlights

Since the fifties scholars have debated the notion of ‘autobiography’ and its relevance to the Confessions
My approach is based on the assumption that it is not useful to treat those narratives as if they were accounts of the nature of Augustine’s relationships in his early years; a more fruitful method is to see these narratives as a way to present his philosophical ideas about the fall of the soul and its return to God
The bishop of Hippo seemed to be convinced that the passionate, but not overtly homosexual, relationship between him and his friend described in Book Four was a good way to depict the exclusion of the Creator by the excessive love of a creature, which is an important aspect of the fall of the soul, captured by Augustine in his fundamental distinction between uti and frui

Summary

Introduction

Since the fifties scholars have debated the notion of ‘autobiography’ and its relevance to the Confessions. Instead of providing the reader with a set of vague, sexual images, Augustine strongly focuses on the irrational intensity of love itself, expressed through otherwise traditional images like the metaphor of dimidium animae (4.6.11; taken, from Horace’s Ode 1.3.8).29 The bishop of Hippo uses the experience of loss and mourning to show the excessive intensity of his feelings.

Results

Conclusion