On the Happy Life

Contents

Reading pages: 1–18 · 19–36

1. 1Augustine opens his dedication to Theodorus by comparing human life to a stormy sea from which few reach the harbor of philosophy and the happy life except when driven there by adversity.
2. 2Augustine distinguishes three kinds of people who come to philosophy: those who reach it early and easily, those who wander far and are brought back by misfortune, and those who remember their homeland but delay until adversity drives them home.
3. 3Before the harbor of the happy life stands a dazzling mountain, the proud pursuit of empty glory, which lures and swallows those approaching philosophy.
4. 4Augustine tells Theodorus how Cicero's Hortensius first fired him with love of philosophy, how he passed through the Manichees and the Academics, and how in Milan, through Ambrose, Plotinus, and an illness, he came to the harbor of philosophy.
5. 5Augustine, still unsure about the nature of the soul, asks Theodorus for his friendship and dedicates to him this disputation on the happy life.
6. 6On his birthday, the Ides of November, Augustine gathers his mother, brother, cousins, pupils, and son in the baths for the discussion.
7. 7Augustine leads Navigius to admit that he knows he has a body and life, and the group agrees that food nourishes the body.
8. 8Monica argues that the soul is fed by understanding and knowledge, and Augustine adds that the minds of the unlearned are starved or filled with vice, which is a kind of nothingness.
9. 9Augustine proposes a birthday feast for the mind as well as the body, and his companions eagerly accept.
10. 10Monica says that only one who wants and has good things is happy, which Augustine praises as the very heart of philosophy and confirms from Cicero's Hortensius.
11. 11The group agrees that happiness requires possessing something that always remains and cannot be lost, and concludes that whoever has God is happy.
12. 12The companions propose answers to who has God: one who lives well, one who does God's will, one who has no unclean spirit.
13. 13Augustine postpones the main question to the next day and offers as dessert a short argument against the Academics.
14. 14Augustine argues that the Academics, who seek truth but never find it, do not have what they want and so are neither happy nor wise; most agree, while Licentius reserves judgment for Alypius.
15. 15Licentius tries to defend the Academics by appeal to the absent Alypius, but Augustine presses him on each premise and Licentius contradicts himself.
16. 16When Augustine explains the Academics to the others, Monica calls them “epileptics,” people who keep falling down, and the first day ends in laughter.
17. 17On the second day Augustine recalls the three answers given to the question who has God.
18. 18Augustine shows that the three answers come to the same thing, after Adeodatus explains that one without an unclean spirit is one who lives chastely, attending to God alone.
19. 19Augustine shows that one who seeks God lives well but does not yet have God; Monica answers that everyone has God, favorable to the good and hostile to the wicked, so the happy man is one who has God favorable.
20. 20Navigius objects that if God is favorable to those still seeking him, the seeker would be happy without having what he wants, reviving the Academics' position.
21. 21Monica distinguishes having God from not being without God, and Augustine concludes that those who have found God are happy, those who seek him have him favorable but are not yet happy, and sinners have neither.
22. 22Augustine raises the question whether every wretched person is in want, so that wretchedness would be the same as want, and postpones it to the next day.
23. 23On the third day, in the meadow, Augustine restates the question: if all the wretched are in want, then the happy man is the one who lacks nothing.
24. 24Augustine shows by the example of the living and the dead that it does not follow, from every needy person being wretched, that everyone without need is happy.
25. 25Augustine argues that the wise man, whose mind is perfect, is not made wretched by bodily needs, death, or pain, since he avoids what he can and wills only what is in accord with virtue.
26. 26Augustine proposes the case of the wealthy and fortunate Sergius Orata, and Licentius points out that he feared losing his goods.
27. 27Monica answers that the fearful rich man lacked wisdom, which is the worst want; Augustine praises her insight as coming from a mind attentive to God.
28. 28Augustine concludes that want of the mind is folly, which has no middle ground with wisdom, and that therefore all wretchedness is want.
29. 29Augustine explains that want, like darkness or nakedness, is a lack rather than a thing, that folly is true want, and that therefore wretchedness is simply want.
30. 30Augustine asks what is the opposite of want, and Licentius proposes “fullness.”
31. 31Augustine accepts “fullness” as the opposite of want and, following Cicero, identifies it with wisdom and with frugality, moderation, and temperance.
32. 32Augustine derives moderation and temperance from measure and argues that wisdom, the fullness opposed to want, is the measure of the mind.
33. 33To be happy is to lack nothing, that is, to be wise, and wisdom is the measure of the mind that keeps it from both excess and constriction.
34. 34Augustine identifies wisdom with the Son of God, who is Truth, begotten by the supreme Measure, the Father, and concludes that whoever reaches the supreme Measure through the Truth is happy and enjoys God.
35. 35Augustine says that the happy life is to know piously and perfectly the one who leads us into truth, the truth we enjoy, and the supreme measure to which we are joined, one God; Monica responds with a verse of Ambrose's hymn to the Trinity.
36. 36Augustine closes the three-day discussion with thanks to God and to his companions, urging them to keep measure in all things on the way back to God.