Against the Academicians Book 2 [20 November 386]

We're closing in on the end. After this discussion, Augustine will race ahead to a conclusion in his long Book 3. But for now...

This dialogue takes place under a tree. I am always fascinated with this concept. In various medieval Breton Lais being under a tree is a recipe for disaster. In Sir Orfeo, for example, Heurodotus loses her mind when the Fairy King appears as she is relaxing with her ladies under a tree. Is another world revealed to us under trees? Can trees drive us mad? Do they contain too much truth? If yes, then what a perfect place to be faced with a transcendent truth.

The discussion returns to the problem of "what can incite us to act without assent" is called "truthlike" or "plausible." What this means is do we do somethings even though they may not be true or even think that we really know it even though we are not sure. For example, if someone asks "will the sun rise tomorrow?" even though we do not know it for sure, based on past practice of the sun, we may still say yes.  So this is truthlike, because it is based on uncertainty--we claim a level of knowledge even though we may not know for sure.

Now, Licentius troubles this definition on the grounds of correlation. He knows, for example, that the trees next to them are not going to change to silver in the next moment (which may be true, but if Licentius would take in larger and larger amounts of time, this could happen--he needs to read his Quentin_Meillassoux or some quantum mechanics). Anyway, this kind of thinking is something we might still call "truthlike." So, for Licentius truthlike contains a certain amount of certainty.

The rest of this debate is between Alypius and Augustine who discuss whether the whole issue of a search for plausibility is even important enough to argue over! Something to note about Alypius is that when he is backed into a corner, he wants to argue that Augustine is just resorting to semantics. He does this repeatedly. It is also of note that Alypius was Augustine oldest and longest friend. I like the strain of friendship that runs through this dialogue: these matters are important, but it is also important to maintain friendship. These disagreements are not so important to sacrifice friendship over. This reminds me of the pleasant afternoons I would spend with my undergraduate friends, a full pot of coffee at the ready, discussing all matter of things. Maybe even cutting class. It is amazing how graduate school then turns people against each other. I see too often how friendships are destroyed because of disagreements over things we, with Alypius, might call semantics....even as we rise higher and higher in the ranks. Alypius and Augustine serves as a more ideal model.

But, actually what they are worried about is arguing with those who may not understand. In other words, how does one argue with an interlocutor without including them in the terms of the debate. Alypius has a created a situation where Licentius and Trygetius are in the background as he and Augustine are the primary debaters. And, this even changes further when Augustine starts to monologue. This is a great pedagogical sidebar. How do we inform students enough to even have the debate? They often appear in the middle of these ages old discussions, and if we are good and caring teachers, we include them in these debates, educate them about "semantics," but all too often so many of us are guilty (me included) of wanting to forge ahead. Haven't we done this already? But, it is important to slow down, to be patient. I feel this has become a theme of my semester: slow down, slow down, slow down. There is a certain level of marination, if you will, so that you can let ideas seep into your pores.

Structurally, this final debate of Book 2 leads us into Book 3 with a sense of better parameters. If we side with the Academicians we can search for truth, but it will always be provisional, truth-like. A final truth can never be found. Augustine is arguing then, that truth can be found and assent can be given. The question remains: how?

Against the Academicians Book 2 [19 November 386]

Augustine reports that the group has taken a week off to read the Aeneid (2nd, 3rd, and 4th books). Licentius is distracted by poetry and Augustine has to talk him down (if only my students...). Alypius returns asking for an overview of the Academicians.

Augustine writes (or monologues again) that the Academicians believed that everything was uncertain. To assent to something uncertain is to be in error. The truth comes to the mind by way of signs that can only come from the thing itself and no other. The Academicians use this definition to support the idea that truth can't be found at all. The problem that the Academicians pose for living is if nothing is certain, and you assent to nothing, you will do nothing. To escape this problem the Academicians introduce the term "truthlike" to use as a guide. A great human, then, is one who can withhold assent. Augustine leans heavily on Cicero in the definition. Although, Augustine is being critical, he is telegraphing a little...we know that truth, for Augustine, is not something sensually found. This parallels the Academician position. The senses or the information the senses receive are tricky--this anticipates modern phenomenological skepticism in terms of our limited senses of the light spectrum or even the theological problem of false believers--something Piers Plowman explores in the first Passus) and can't be trusted. The problem is the Academicians use this kind of thinking to withhold decision making (though they do search for the truth--it is just too hidden). Augustine will presumably deviate from their outcomes.

Augustine's mother hustles them off to lunch at this point. (I like these domestic break-ins; it somehow humanizes Augustine's text).

Augustine goes on to distinguish between the Old and New Academicians. The Old Academicians (O.A.) are marked by their belief that they could avoid error as long as they were not hasty to assent. The New Academicians (N.A.) believe in things that are "truthlike" though they make no claim to know the truth itself. So, for Augustine the shades of difference lie in the claim of either not being able to find the truth and withholding as much as possible (O.A.) and those merely following the specter of the truth (N.A.).

Augustine then turns on Licentius. Licentius apologizes for connecting the happy life with the search for the truth. Licentius seems to side with the New Academicians--the view of the Academicians is plausible, thus, truthlike (oh, how Augustine baits his interlocutors).

So, Augustine sets forth this question: if a man unacquainted with your father were to see your brother and assert that he is like your father, won't he seem to you to be crazy or simple-minded? The issue in this question is about perception and plausibility. Licentius retorts that if they had heard by hearsay of this similarity, this would not be an outrageous assertion. Augustine then tries a counterexample in which a boy shows up, the interlocutor says he looks like his father, admits he doesn't know the father--everyone would then think this assertion is absurd. These examples are to illustrate that the Academicians should be laughed at because this is like their version of "truthlike," they make no claim to the truth, only a simulacrum. And, apparently, a simulacrum based, at best, on speculation. Like the diviner, there is a great risk in being wrong (for example, the brother might looks like the father, but, then again, he may not).

Finally, Trygetius returns! He thinks Augustine's example is facetious. The Academicians arrive at being truthlike through reasoning, not speculation. Augustine, of course rebuts, how can anything be like something you do not know?

Alypius returns and Trygetius and Licentius ask him to take over the debate. Augustine has indicated that Alypius makes him nervous (maybe because he is a better debated?) but Augustine relaunches the debate and makes it bigger. Augustine is concerned that the way of the Academicians has prevented him from seeking the truth. Augustine resets the debate: the position of the Academicians is that it is plausible the truth cannot be found, while Augustine thinks it is possible that it can be.

Alypius agrees to continue in this fashion if Augustine agrees that this debate is more than a semantic argument over "plausibility" and "truthlike." Augustine agrees to this and as the sun is setting they agree to continue the next day.

Against the Academicians, Book 2 [Dedicatory Introduction]

This second introduction is quite long, though this post will be a bit short. Augustine begins with a lamentation over the method of the Academicians and worries over how few people actually have knowledge. People do not posses knowledge for a number of reasons--laziness, ease of access to knowledge, upheaval of life--these are the same problems students face today, of course. He concludes with the problem of people holding on to false truth, comfortable with not searching further.

It's worth taking a time-out here and reflecting: even though Augustine is leading the reader to the idea of the knowledge of God, any kind of knowledge or search for knowledge is difficult. With Augustine, I too worry about knowledge seeking. I'm comfortable enough in my post-modern position to recognize truth with a capital T is illusory; I'm much more comfortable with truths (plural). But, I do find, even in the academy, this problem of complacency and holding onto familiar (albiet wrong-headed) knowledge. When you have reached a certain point in one's academic career, there is the seduction of a line of thinking: I made it, I know it, the end. This takes many forms.

Sidebar: For example, I was walking to my office this week and a few of my colleagues were talking about the Ray Rice/Janay Rice situation in the hallway. I walked into a "she married him, didn't she?"-type argument, as if this explained away Ray Rice's actions. Normally, I would have ignored this, but there were too many stories out there via the #WhyIStayed movement on Twitter. These stories, of course, are a type of knowledge, a form of knowledge one of my friend's brought to my attention through her own brave post on social media. As kindly as possible, I informed them about the movement and concluded with a "isn't abuse a more complex issue than blaming the abused?" kind of question.

My point (as well as Augutine's) here is blindspots, of course, but also this kind of thinking, of not taking into account, searching deeper, relying on familiar frameworks (as in, she married him, so we can explain away this particular case of domestic abuse, we now no longer have to worry about it) is so comfortable even to a group of people--academics--where you would expect a little more understanding, a little more complexity. Even in this space, the holding onto false truth is evident. In the pedagogical space, it is perhaps easier to work with these issues--disabusing holds on false knowledge and uprooting complacency is the foundation of the work we do in the classroom. How much harder it is to do this with one's peers.

Sidebar concluded.

Let's wrap up this dedication. Augustine moves on to discuss his concern over Romanius again (remember, Romanius is who this dialogue is for) and Romanius' inability to come to knowledge because his mind is wrapped up in domestic matters (this is a similar concern in Thomas More's Utopia where he complains in his opening letter to Peter Giles that he can never get enough work done because of all the things he needs to take care of at home--if only one had time to think more, right?). In philosophy, Augustine says, Romanius will be moved out of anxiety (not quite to existentialism yet, eh, Augustine?). Knowledge, the search for knowledge, allows one to be happy. This is an interesting move on Augustine's part considering the connection between happiness and wisdom will be critiqued in the next dialogue.

The dedication concludes with a commendatory section on how much Romanius helped Augustine in Augustine's youth: advancing his mind, taking care of him. Romanius, though, has fallen away with this particular care of philosophy--a philosophical via--to be more easily seduced by false beauty in the form of his villa, orchards, banquets, and "performing troupes." The play is always the thing, isn't it? For Augustine, then, only the pursuit of knowledge is worth happiness. The search for truth in philosophy is beautiful, but beauty is not to be found in objects. So, maybe, Augustine is pushing a kind of transcendental aesthetics? We'll see.

Against the Academicians, Third Dialogue [12, Nov. 386]

Augustine tries to mediate (maybe, soothe some ego?) by offering up Cicero's definition of wisdom: "the knowledge of human and divine matters" (from the Tusculan Disputationes). Licentius immediately seizes on this definition by asking why we don't call him wise the disreputable man who frequents prostitutes even though he gives good advice? (One may ask, really, Licentius, that's the best example you have?)

What follows is a series of exempla in which Albicerius (our prostitute-goer) gives so-called wise answers. The question threaded throughout: did he have knowledge in these situations and what is knowledge, anyway? Augustine interjects by defining knowledge as a process (!). Take that Licentius. Knowledge, says Augustine, is not merely in the matter apprehended; it is also in the way they are apprehended "in such a way that nobody should be in error about it or vacillate when pressed by opponents"--so for Augustine it is both the matter and the how one got there. Augustine dismisses Albicerius, not only because of his prostitute-going, but because sometimes he was wrong. He is wrong because he is seer. Now, this seems to come out of nowhere--first, he is attacking Albicerius since his answers feel like luck, and, then, it's because of the profession. Augustine has no time for this type of cheap conjurer of tricks. (but maybe Augustine is mistaken?) As well, the definitional discussion continues on what exactly "human matters" of knowledge even are.  In this play-by-play then, Augustine has moved from defining knowledge, hearing out an example of someone who is perceived as having knowledge, and then, undercutting those examples by suggesting that what Albicerius is producing is not knowledge, he's just lucky, and on top of that he is a seer and frequenter of brothels. The notes report that we do not know who Albicerius was, but we can gather that since this dialogue (verging on monologue, really) has spent so much time on Albicerius that he must have been a bit of a celebrity and someone Augustine really wants to take down.

For Augustine, then, knowledge is not facts (how many farms, who wrote a poem)--he would be ultra-dismissive of the people claiming smarts at any trivia-night across the country. Knowledge is what knows value: the light of prudence, the splendor of moderation, the strength of courage, the sanctity of justice. These are the examples he provides. So wisdom is a kind of discernment of the value of values, the ephemeral qualities of a virtue.

Rote memorization is not knowledge, then. (This makes me think of The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard tells the Scarecrow: "Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma." Ha!) Augustine stops for a moment to consider bee-knowledge: watching a bee flit from flower to flower exhibits a "sagacity" beyond human comprehension. There are other types of knowledge out there, he admits. Humans can't or do not think with bee-thoughts (we might ask, with Augustine and contemporary animal theorists, how might we enact bee-knowledge or can we? Considering problems of bee-colony collapse, it might be worth a think).

Augustine then passes on to defining divine matters. Divine matters are not reached through the senses (something he posited in the early dedication). He dismisses Albicerius as a diviner who looks at stars and thinks they tell him of divine things. But, of course, this is apprehending with sensual knowledge, not intellectual knowledge (a distinction Augustine is making, one I'm not sure I agree with). And this is truly why Albicerius is not a good example of someone who is wise. The intellectual search is the only way to reach divine matters.

More debate occurs on whether Albicerius is wise--short answer: no. And we have further refinement of our definition of wisdom, as well. Licentius puts forth: wisodm is not only knowlegde, but the search for knowledge that is relevant to a happy life. That which embraces knowledge belongs to God, the search belongs to humans. God is happy in the former (as a spiritual embodiment of knowledge?) while humans are in the latter. This seems to come out of left field (we haven't seen happiness in awhile, for one)--because this seems to be the most explicit reference to God, yet. As well, by extension, if we embrace knowledge, have we become God (like God, god-like, gods??)

What follows in the dialogue, then, is a summary put forth by Augustine of the moves we've been discussing here. Licentius has landed where Augustine wanted, it would seem, and the dialogue on truth, knowledge, and wisdom is, purportedly, going to be left behind. Where has Trygetius gone to? (maybe off to get the beer).

The key discussion in these three debates is the emphasis on the search. Like a dialogue itself, the art of conversation is revelatory. Although, in the end Licentius has named God as the destination, knowledge is something found through wisdom--and this finding-through-wisdom is happy life. The threads are connecting here. Part of this happiness is tranquility. The path of wisdom causes a tranquil mind; tranquility leads to happiness (or maybe even equated with it). 

Second Dialogue [11 November 386]

In the previous dialogue, Licentius was stymied as to how to define "error." Today's debate returns to the concept with Licentius pointing out that error is the "approval of a falsehood as truth" [1.4.11]. In this way he can still defend the process of truth since it is only error when you have arrived, in this case erroneously--the process of finding is still a good since one is still not wrong unless one has identified something that is, in truth, error. The emphasis for him is still the search.

The dialogue then shifts into a semantic argument about the word "always." In this case, as "always" is connected with how much time one must invest in the search for truth. The example provided here is if you set out on a journey and you never arrive but you still maintain the journey you would not necessarily ever fall out of journeying (or no one would ever accuse you of such a thing). But, of course, you will eventually die. Always is irrelevant, in a certain way, because of the very finite nature of any search for truth. Thus, it is good enough to know that the journey is happening or the search for truth is happening even if every second of your day is not taken up with searching for the truth.

It took me awhile to make the connection between this argument over "always" and the next shift that occurs--the problem of a "way of life" as it pertains to wisdom. For Trygetius, "wisdom is the right way that leads to the truth" [1.5.14]. So, wisdom and truth are two different things. Wisdom is a path, while truth is the destination (for Trygetius, at least). In this way Trygetius has played into Licentius' definitional trap--by calling the search (wisdom) and connecting wisdom to truth and further connecting wisdom to happiness then the search itself is all that is required to be happy. So they reach a bit of an impasse here at the second dialogue. Wisdom is a kind of life, one in which you seek out truth, but on the way, knowing that you are seeking out truth, you are happy. In this way, always is merely an accidental quality of the path you are on. It is the one who is not searching, is not taking a path of wisdom, is not even knowing there is such a path, that is unhappy, lost, etc. Always is lost on them.

Augustine ends here. Trygetius is upset about falling into the trap. But, because it is too dark to transcribe, Augustine leaves us for another day.