William Mann

“Inner-Life Ethics” presents the elements of Augustine’s moral theory, elements that can be found scattered in works written by the year 401. The theory is shaped by Augustine’s understanding of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and Augustine’s soul-body dualism. Augustine’s dualism is distinctive in claiming that because the soul is superior to the body, the body cannot affect the soul, and that the moral appraisal of an agent’s bodily behavior must take account of the state of the agent’s soul. Augustine interprets the Sermon on the Mount as emphasizing the moral importance of an agent’s intentions: if one intends to do something morally impermissible, one is already morally culpable, even if the intention is never acted upon. The theory is then applied to Augustine’s concern over his theft of the pears, his worry about his erotic dreams, and his remarks about lying.

This chapter presents a reconstruction of Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence in English, identifying two principles on which the argument depends. The first is the claim that whatever is understood is in the understanding; the second is that for whatever exists solely in the understanding, something greater than it can be conceived. Most of the chapter focuses on the first principle. Anselm claims that there is an intimate connection between something’s being in the understanding and its being conceived. Moreover, he relies on a distinction between conceiving of something and conceiving that thing to exist. There are two ways of analyzing the distinction. Neither way provides Anselm with a sound argument for God’s existence.

This chapter begins to address Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence. The chapter argues that it does a disservice to Anselm to transcribe his crucial descriptive phrase, “the being than which none greater can be conceived,” into a formal language incorporating Bertrand Russell’s theory of descriptions. Russell’s theory analyzes definite descriptions in terms of existentially quantified sentences. Applied to Anselm’s argument Russell’s theory has the consequence of begging the question of God’s existence before the argument begins. The chapter presents on Anselm’s behalf some alternative theories of definite descriptions embedded in free logics, formal languages whose singular terms do not have existential import. The use of such languages frees one then to consider the substantive principles on which the argument may depend.

“The Perfect Island” explores the second principle mentioned in chapter 11, that is, the principle that for whatever exists solely in the understanding, something greater than it can be conceived. There are at least five versions of that principle, of varying strength. Anselm’s argument relies on the weakest of the five. Gaunilo invoked his “lost island” counterexample in an attempt to demonstrate that an argument structurally identical to Anselm’s would “prove” the existence of the greatest conceivable island, thus exposing the absurdity of Anselm’s argument. But Anselm’s argument relies only on the weakest version of the second principle, whereas Gaunilo’s argument requires one of the stronger versions. This chapter presents a model in which the weakest version is true while the other four versions are false. Gaunilo’s argument is thus not a successful counterexample.

This chapter explores similarities between one’s mental activities while in the theatre and while dreaming. In Confessions 3 Augustine identifies the “paradox of tragedy”: why do we respond emotionally to representations of the fates of persons who we know never existed? The chapter discusses Kendall Walton’s suggestion that our psychological states in response to drama are “quasi-attitudes” that are not identical to the mental states we have when dealing with ordinary life. Walton’s suggestion does not fully resolve Augustine’s plight. Augustine’s description of the soul’s power of imagination sheds light on his attitude toward dramas and dreams. His account does not dispel his worries about the persistency of his erotic dreams, disclosed in Confessions 10. He would like to disavow responsibility for them, but he never succeeds. If playwrights can be held accountable for the content of their plays, then “dreamwrights” seem responsible for the content of their dreams.

“Locating the Lost Island” replies to Lynne Rudder Baker and Gareth B. Matthews’s “Anselm’s Argument Reconsidered,” in which the authors claim to have produced a sound version of Anselm’s ontological argument. Using Gaunilo’s “lost island” counterexample, this chapter explores the question whether Anselm’s argument can prove the existence of the greatest conceivable being without also “proving” the existence of the greatest conceivable island. Baker and Matthews argue that for any conceivable island, a greater island is conceivable, but that there cannot be a conceivable being greater than the greatest conceivable being. Their strategy is vulnerable on two counts. It does not address the possibility that there is no upper limit to greatness in conceivable beings. Nor does it assure us that the greatest conceivable being is even logically possible. Thus their version of Anselm’s argument is inconclusive.

This chapter presents Anselm’s attempts to show that the doctrine that God is one yet threefold in nature is free from contradiction. In carrying out this project, Anselm is aware that he must avoid the heresies of Arianism, tritheism, and modalism. Following Augustine, Anselm models his account of the relations among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as relations among memory, understanding, and will. In On the Incarnation of the Word Anselm reworks an analogy used in Augustine’s On Faith and the Creed. The Nile is spring, river, and lake, yet there are not three Niles. Anselm realizes that taken literally, the analogy leads to tritheism or the denial of God’s simplicity, and tries to improve on the analogy. However, Anselm is aware that improvement on the analogy can only yield dim, imperfect vestiges of the Trinity, which is a mystery beyond human understanding.

This chapter examines Augustine’s speculation in Book 1 of the Confessions that infants may not be as innocent as we think. The central question here is whether infant behavior can be motivated by selfish, jealous desires. Recently arguments have been offered to the effect that infants cannot have any desires or beliefs; the development of those capacities is alleged to occur only in tandem with the development of language. This chapter examines one such argument put forward by Donald Davidson. The chapter suggests that Davidson’s argument is less than dispositive. Thus Augustine may have been justified in his speculation. The chapter concludes by listing a series of related quandaries, for example, whether animals without a language can have beliefs and desires.

Augustine’s Confessions 2 is revisited, this time in response to Scott MacDonald’s “Petit Larceny, the Beginning of All Sin: Augustine’s Theft of the Pears.” Central to MacDonald’s interpretation are the theses that all sins are cases of preferring lesser goods over greater goods and that all sins are motivated ultimately by pride. The argument of this chapter is that Augustine does not maintain that preferring a lesser good over a greater good is a sufficient condition for sinfulness: the condition must be supplemented with a proviso that the preference is contrary to God’s commands. MacDonald takes the ultimacy of pride thesis to entail that sinners desire to be “transvaluators,” pretending to be God. This is implausible—most sinners are scofflaws, not moral revolutionaries—and there is no evidence for the thesis in Augustine.

This chapter probes Augustine’s occasional attitude of indifference to paradox and his capacity to resolve mystery by responding to Gareth B. Matthews’s “The Socratic Augustine” and Peter King’s “Augustine on the Impossibility of Teaching.” Matthews suggests that, despite his dogmatic tendencies, Augustine is content to accept some cases of Socratic perplexity as genuine because the phenomena they describe are real. This chapter argues for the alternative view that Augustine is content not to pronounce on some seemingly paradoxical phenomena because they are not relevant to religious dogma. King defends the Augustinian thesis that teaching, construed as causal transmission of knowledge, is extremely mysterious if not impossible. The chapter suggests that much of the air of mystery evaporates once we distinguish between metaphysical dependency and epistemological dependency.

This chapter examines Augustine’s two treatises on lying, De Mendacio and Contra Mendacium ad Consentium. Augustine’s differentiation between statements that are lies from those that are not illustrates the importance of a presence of an intention to deceive. His views on lying are compared with views expressed by Bernard Williams. One of the surprising consequences of Augustine’s views is that a person can lie when telling the truth. In spite of some examples that Augustine regards as poignant, he defends the position that all lying is sinful, even when the consequences of lying would be better than the consequences of telling the truth.

This chapter argues that Abelard understood, incorporated, and in some cases developed more fully an ethical outlook to be found in Augustine’s writings. In characterizing sin as contempt of God, Abelard rejects views that maintain that sin is a vice, or a bad deed, or even the will to perform a bad deed. Sin is precisely the intention to do evil. Abelard thus distinguishes sharply between acting willingly and acting intentionally. The justification for the distinction can be found in the difference between Augustine’s De Libero Arbitrio and his De Sermone Domini in Monte. This chapter explores several ramifications of Abelard’s intentionalism, including the analysis of intention as a kind of consent, differences between intentions and desires, the role of natural law, ignorance, and mistaken belief.

This chapter presents Augustine’s psychologically acute meditation in Confessions 2 on his youthful theft of his neighbor’s pears. After rejecting a series of possible explanations for why he did what he did, he concludes that he must have stolen the pears simply for the sake of knowingly doing something wrong. This conclusion troubles him. The desire to steal must have a cause, but since he believes that everything that exists is good—a belief that is at the core of his rejection of Manichaean dualism—he cannot find any good that he regards as sufficient to have prompted him to act. The theft is not merely a case of knowing the good but failing to do it: its point is to rejoice in what one knows to be wrong. But that “point” seems pointless to him.

Artykuł omawia zjawisko dylematów moralnych z perspektywy teistycznej. Teiści przyjmują często, że (1) opatrznościowy Bóg nigdy nie postawiłby stworzonej przez siebie istoty przed taką sytuacją wyboru, w której owa istota nie jest w stanie uniknąć czynu niesłusznego, bądź że (2) jeśli istota staje przed taką sytuacją wyboru, to jest to wynikiem pewnego niesłusznego działania, którego dokonała już wcześniej. Wielu komentatorów przypisuje tę drugą opcję Tomaszowi z Akwinu. Autor argumentuje, że taka interpretacja jest błędna, przytaczając między innymi przeprowadzoną przez Akwinatę analizę ślubowania Jeftego opisanego w Księdze Sędziów. Natomiast w odniesieniu do pierwszej opcji artykuł zamykają uwagi dotyczące sposobu opracowania normatywnej teorii etycznej o charakterze teistycznym, która uznaje istnienie dylematów moralnych. Teiści zainteresowani taką teorią powinni poważnie rozważyć odrzucenie założenia, że powinność implikuje możliwość.

This chapter addresses Augustine’s solution to the perplexity that plagued him in his earlier years—how can evil exist in a world created by an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God? In Confessions 7 he gives his reasons for rejecting Manichaean dualism. Book 13 emphasizes the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, with its entailment that everything that exists is good. But not all creatures are equally good. Augustine regards sin as the willful abandonment of greater goods for lesser ones, when the abandonment is contrary to God’s commands. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of Augustine’s handling of two spectacular cases of sin, the devil’s defection from God and Adam and Eve’s fall.

This volume presents fourteen of William E. Mann's essays on three prominent figures in late Patristic and early medieval philosophy: Augustine, Anselm, and Peter Abelard. The essays explore some of the quandaries, arguments, and theories presented in their writings. The essays in this volume complement those to be found in Mann's God, Modality, and Morality. While the essays in God, Modality, and Morality are primarily essays in philosophical theology, those found in the present volume are more varied. Some still deal with issues in philosophical theology. Other essays are aporetic in nature, discussing cases of philosophical perplexity, sometimes but not always leaving the cases unresolved.All the essays display, directly or indirectly, the philosophical influence that Augustine has had. His Confessions is a rich source for philosophical puzzlement. Individual essays examine his reflections on the alleged innocence of infants, which raises questions about cognitive, emotional, and linguistic development; his juvenile theft of pears and its relation to moral motivation; and his struggle with and resolution of the problem of evil. One essay presents the rudiments of an Augustinian moral theory, rooted in his understanding of the Sermon on the Mount. Another essay illustrates the theory by discussing his writings on lying. Mann argues that Abelard amplified Augustine's moral theory by emphasizing the crucial role that intention plays in wrongdoing.Augustine bequeathed to Anselm the notion of

Suppose that God exists: what difference would that make to the world? The answer depends on the nature of God and the nature of the world. In this book, William E. Mann argues in one new and sixteen previously published essays for a modern interpretation of a traditional conception of God as a simple, necessarily existing, personal being. Divine simplicity entails that God has no physical composition or temporal stages; that there is in God no distinction between essence and existence; that there is no partitioning of God's mental life into beliefs, desires, and intentions. God is thus a spiritual, eternal being, dependent on nothing else, whose essence is to exist and whose mode of existence is identical with omniscience, omnipotence, and perfectly goodness. In metaphysical contrast, the world is a spatial matrix populated most conspicuously by finite physical objects whose careers proceed sequentially from past to present to future. Mann defends a view according to which the world was created out of nothing and is sustained in existence from moment to moment by God. The differences in metaphysical status between creator and creatures raise questions for which Mann suggests answers. How can God know contingent facts and necessary truths without depending on them? Why is it so easy to overlook God's presence? Why would self-sufficient God create anything? Wouldn't a perfect God create the best world possible? Can God be free? Can we be free if God's power is continuously necessary to sustain us in existence? If God does sustain us, is God an accomplice whenever we sin? Mann responds to the Euthyphro dilemma by arguing for a kind of divine command metaethical theory, whose normative content lays emphasis on love. Given the metaphysical differences between us, how can there be loving relationships between God and creatures? Mann responds by examining the notions of piety and hope.