Stephen Menn’s Descartes and Augustine, published in 1998 by Cambridge University Press, explores the relationship between these two giants of western philosophy, seeking to demonstrate the debt the former owes to the latter and the important contributions each thinker has made to Western thought. Menn, who teaches ancient and medieval philosophy at McGill University in Montreal, takes a holistic approach to his subject, taking care to unfold the work of each man, distinguishing Augustine and Descartes from the Augustinians and Cartesians of the intervening centuries. Menn goes further, constructing for the reader the intellectual climate in which the two philosophers developed their methods and the body of thought for which they have come to be known.
The structure of Menn’s work suits his purposes. His central concern is Descartes and he makes that clear by first addressing Descartes’ place in the history of philosophy, the scope of his work, as well as Menn’s own program for establishing the link between Descartes and his predecessor of 1200 years. Menn will have considered his project successful if, in the end, he has “answered the challenges presented by Gueroult, Gilson, and Gouhier.”
Gueroult is the 20th century French philosopher, Martial Gueroult, who points to Descartes’ own proclamations of intellectual independence and his insistence on building a completely new philosophy without appeal to authority as proof that Descartes could have no more than a superficial link to Augustine. Gueroult argued that Descartes moved from first principles employing pure logic without appeal to anything outside of his system. Menn addresses Gueroult’s challenge like a criminal prosecutor, showing that Descartes had means, motive, and opportunity to make considerable use of Augustine’s thought and work. The atmosphere in which Descartes moved, Menn argues, was so saturated with Augustinianism that Descartes may have taken for granted the degree to which he borrowed from Augustine. Menn supports this claim by providing a clear historical account of the prevailing intellectual climate of Europe at that time as well as correspondences between Descartes and his explicitly Augustinian acquaintances. Menn makes it clear that Descartes both read and discussed Augustine with his friends. Further, Descartes’ strong desire to wrest philosophy away from the Aristotelians led him down the same path as Augustine of acquiring wisdom, and the mandate Descartes received from several influential friends to create a new philosophy based on sound metaphysics was all the opportunity he needed.
Menn’s other two challengers, the French philosophers Etienne Gilson and Henri Gouhier, agree with Menn that Descartes was significantly influenced by Augustine in his method, but they say that the spirit of the former’s work is opposed to the latter’s in such a way that Descartes could never rightly be called an Augustinian. Menn cites Gouhier’s declaration that,
it matters little that the matter is the same in the two systems; it matters little that the cogito is found in one and in the other; it matters little that the two apologetics have recourse to the same procedures; it matters little that the two dialectics work themselves out beyond the bounds of the sensible world (8).
Even as Gouhier concedes Menn’s very point against Gueroult, he argues that these similarities could never make Descartes an Augustinian because “there is a soul that these resemblances do not touch.” What could separate thinkers who share such a resemblance? For Gouhier and Gilson it all turns on the faith-reason dichotomy. Menn tells us that, “Gilson agrees with Gouhier that the relations between faith and reason are decisive on the question of Descartes’ Augustinianism: in developing a philosophy unconnected with faith, Descartes is ‘pursuing radically anti-Augustinian ends.’” Augustine’s work, they argue, is a fusion of faith and reason; Descartes leaves no room for faith in his philosophy (8).
Menn, in trying to demonstrate that the faith-reason dichotomy does not separate the two men, might have shown how both men use the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent God as a guarantor of truths about the external world, but he chooses a different approach. Rather than attempting to show that there may be an element of faith in Descartes’ philosophy which connects him to Augustine, he endeavors to “set Augustine’s doctrine of faith and reason in its proper perspective, showing that it does not have the priority in Augustine’s thought that Gilson supposes, and that it does not dictate a fusion between faith and reason.” Menn wants to show that his two challengers fundamentally misunderstand Augustine (16).
Augustine, Menn argues, was essentially a man of reason. It was reason that led him away from the doctrines of the Manicheans; it was reason that, like Descartes, led him away from Aristotelian philosophy; it was reason which assured him that the path to wisdom could only be found in turning one’s focus inward and upward, toward the self and God. Like Descartes, Augustine saw that arguing from external things to inward things was arguing from that which is less certain toward that which is more certain. Wisdom, both men maintained, could only be found in starting with that which is most certain, the self and God, and then forming, by logical steps, an understanding of the external world. Thus, Menn says,
Augustine wanted to pass from ignorance of God to knowledge of God, and knowledge is acquired only by reason; but those who promised to lead him to God by reason were unable to deliver him from his ignorance. In these circumstances, he began to think that he could pass from ignorance to knowledge only by passing through an intermediate stage of belief (188).
This intermediate stage of belief meant that some truths could not be reached as conclusions but must be taken on authority, and this was necessary because of ignorance and impurity. The wise man knows the truth because he reasons rightly. He reasons rightly because of the purity of his soul which is turned away from inferior things and towards God. The ignorant man, then, has two problems: he lacks the truth and he lacks the ability to find it in his impure state. How, then, can he come to the knowledge of the truth? Answer: he must accept the authority of others. Augustine, Menn says, at first thought it unreasonable to accept the judgment of another when we do not know whether they are right, but concluded that life is full of countless cases of people doing this very thing for their own good:
In all these cases, we must believe things that we do not know, if we are to be able to act rightly in securing temporal goods or in fulfilling our moral obligations…We believe on authority in everyday matters because we do not know them for ourselves, and because our chance to acquire some good depends on our adopting some belief to guide our action. But in matters of religion, where we are concerned with God and the soul…the good we stand to acquire is much greater; thus Augustine concludes that the willingness to believe on authority instead of waiting for certain knowledge is all the more reasonable in these matters (189).
Belief, then, for Augustine, is a bridge for the ignorant man across the chasm of his ignorance to a place where reason may take over. But is this not what Gilson called a fusion of faith and reason? It depends on how one interprets the word ‘fusion.’ For Augustine, Menn claims, belief must assist reason only in those areas where unaided reason may not guide us to certain knowledge; the two are not used in tandem nor are they ever at odds with one another. This is far superior to opinion, in which people consider themselves knowledgeable when they are still, in fact, ignorant. One problem with this approach is that it does seem to gloss over an important difference between Augustine and Descartes: Augustine held that the very nature of God and the soul was such that, aside from faith, one could not be fully certain of; Descartes, however, after establishing that the proposition that he exists is epistemically indubitable, works out his entire metaphysics in logical steps without appeal to authority or faith. Descartes certainly had faith, but he did not appear to build his philosophy on it. Descartes thought he had proven by reason what Augustine held as a matter of faith. Though both men were devout Catholics, and neither was willing to contradict the central Christian doctrines, Augustine seemed to reason from his beliefs, while Descartes seemed to hold his philosophy and his faith apart from one another.
So, how well does Menn meet his goals? Well, he establishes a clear link between Descartes and Augustine, and any reasonable juror would convict Descartes of Augustinianism in some limited sense. Each man had a similar contemplative method, each sought to establish the existence of God and the soul before extending their thoughts to the external world, and each had a strong faith in the Catholic Church. But, as for whether or not there is a fundamental distinction in the “animating spirit” of each man’s thought and work, the jury may still be out.
