Saint Augustine’s “Confessions” is a monumental work of religion and philosophy by merging the Greek philosophical tradition and the Judeo-Christian tradition, one of the most decisive moments of western religious development. Intellectualism and many other characteristics of Greek philosophical tradition are displayed in his critical examination of his personal life in “Confessions”. He also credits Platonists with making it possible for him to conceive of a spiritual reality, which set him on the correct path in his search for God, as he began to see God as more eternal and infinite—“Eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity: you are my God” [Confessions, VII.V (16)]. Nevertheless, even though both St.Augustine and Plato praise the cause of pulling oneself out of worldly desires to seek for immortality, they apply their equally powerful reasoning skills from different angles in rationalizing the ways which they believe to achieve sense of fulfillment in the long run.
In both “Symposium” and “Confessions”, happiness is identified as the instinctual motivation behind human behavior. Although St.Augustine’s disappointment over his professional excellence, which eventually led him to seeking peace in Christianity, seems to contradict with Diotima’s teaching that “the happy are happy by the acquisition of good things” [Symposium, 205A]. “Good things” may not be conventionally acknowledged at all times, only the desire is perpetual in all people. In addition, the longing to an interior world ever free of anxiety was shown when Augustine was consumed by frustration before his enlightenment--“while I was saying ’Tomorrow I shall find it; see, it will become perfectly clear, and I shall have no more doubts. Faustus will come and explain everything’” [VI. XI (19)]. This, echoing with Diotima’s saying that “eros is of the good’s being one’s own always” [206A-B], suggests that Augustine’s conversion to Christianity is to a certain extent like falling in love, though with immaterial beauty--God’s grace.
On the other hand, St. Augustine compelled by the need to establish a coherent Christian doctrine, intends to impart a more specific religious morality through “Confessions”. Reason as the center of Greek philosophy is used only in theoretical representation in “Symposium”, such as in “Ladders of Eros”. Augustine may find the approach ambivalent. He uses reason for practical significance when he presents to readers his spiritual journey to God and attempts to rationalize his decisions along the way by introducing free will. Platonist love does not work like rational judgment and people yearn for ultimate Good and Beauty because loving has become the center of their will. As a result, it seems to be a natural progression as one’s pursuit of beauty ascents from body to soul, one to many, the material to the immaterial towards the things that are always as opposed to those that come into being and pass away. In contrary, Augustine calls for a proper freedom of will, which is the ability to enjoy what is good and beautiful, to lead us to God’s grace. Unlike Plato who advocates the autonomy of human free will as long as one seeks after the truth, Augustine thinks freedom of will must be necessarily guided by divine law, which results in inevitable lack of autonomy. Consequently, God’s grace may change the will as we witness how Augustine managed to resist the worldly temptations and adopted a life of abstinence as his pursuit shifts away from worldly ambitions because his inward teaching already fulfills him—“It is simple to see how far I have succeeded in restraining my mind from carnal pleasures and from curious quests for superfluous knowledge; for I do not indulge in these things” [X. XXXVII (60)].
St. Augustine may find many truths about God in Platonist philosophy but his conversion to Christianity showed him that only in Christ, Platonism is completed and perfected for the mass. As an elite in the society, his objective in writing “Confessions”, besides calling for believers who had sinned to recognize the omnipresence and omnipotence of God, was to initiate a moral system based on reason, with divinity at the top—the locus of “truth” in Plato’s Ladders of Eros. He uplifted the Hebrew religious customs to a higher level by laying down the foundation of Christian theology, which enabled the survival of the religion under unified teaching of Roman Catholic Church in subsequent conflicts. Hence, St. Augustine would only be attracted to platonic notions that could help him in better shaping the authoritative religious mentality in his time.
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