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.