Esther T. Rajamani
1/21/2016
AUGUSTINE (354-430)
Religious Idealism
Background Information and Context
 Aurelius Augustinus, known as St. Augustine was born in 354 in the small North African
town of Thagaste.
 His mother Monica was a Christian; and his father Patricius was a pagan who received
baptism on his death-bed.
 Augustine started to teach first in Thagaste and then in Carthage.
 He was influenced by the philosophical writing of Cicero.
 Augustine was captivated by Manicheanism for a while.
 He moved to Rome and then to Milan and became a professor of Rhetoric.
 The reading of the books by ‘Platonists’ helped him to get closer to Christianity.
 Augustine was also influenced by Neoplatonist philosophy and he connected it with
Christian beliefs (Ozmon, 11).
 He was baptized at Milan.
 After the death of his mother and his son he returned to Africa and was ordained as a
priest.
 In 395, according to the custom of those days he was made a bishop by force (Palmer,
25).
Historical and Philosophical Context
 Augustine was influenced by the Idealism of Plato. “In The city of God, he described the
city of God and the city of Man as divisions of the universe parallel to Plato’s schemata
of the World of Ideas and the World of Matter” (Ozmon, 11).
 Augustine believed that meditation and faith can help a person to release from the World
of Man to the World of God (Ozmon, 11).
 “Augustine believed that the senses were unreliable and that belief in God rests
ultimately on faith. ‘We must first believe,’ he wrote, ‘in order that we may know’”
(Ozmon, 11).
 “Augustine was greatly concerned with concept of evil and believed that because man
inherited the sin of Adam, he was engaged in a continuous struggle to regain the kind of
purity he had before the Fall” (Ozmon, 11).
 “Augustine, like Plato, believed that people do not create knowledge: God already has
created it, and people can discover it through trying to find God. Because the soul is the
closest thing people have to divinity, Augustine believed that we should look within our
own souls for the true knowledge that exists there” (Ozmon, 11).
 Augustine used the dialectical method of learning to discover true ideas about God and
humanity (Ozmon, 11).
 In addition to dialogue, Augustine emphasized on an intuitive approach to knowledge.
Avoiding materialistic concern and making oneself available to God was emphasized by
Augustine (Ozmon, 25). He believed that monastic life is superior.
Esther T. Rajamani
1/21/2016




Augustine’s educational philosophy is, “Worldly knowledge gained through the senses
was full of error but that reason could lead toward understanding, and he held that,
ultimately, it was necessary to transcend reason through faith” (Ozmon, 12)
“Augustine, a Neoplatonist, agreed with Plato that the highest aim is a search for the
truth, but believed even more strongly than Plato that truth has overwhelming spiritual
implications. According to Augustine, the search for truth is a search for God and a true
education leads one to God” (Ozmon, 20).
“Augustine thought of God as the highest and the movement toward wisdom(or God) as
the highest moral principle” (Ozmon, 23).
“Augustine preached reconstructionist reforms to bring about an ideal Christian state”
(Ozmon, 153). Augustine’s ideas and questions made the twentieth-century
Reconstructionists to propose a better state with Christian thinking (Ozmon, 153).
Implications for Teaching and Learning
 Augustine found it difficult to learn Greek. Learning by rote discouraged and gave
distaste for Greek. The punishment administered at school did not push him to learn but
made him dislike the language and eventually missed to understand the content (Palmer,
26).l
 His native language was Latin and learning happened with ease because there was no
threat of punishment. Augustine believed that curiosity with fun and play can stimulate
learning rather than forced learning (Palmer, 26).
 Augustine asked, “Can one man teach another? He believed that one cannot teach another
in the traditional sense, but can direct the learner with words or other symbols or “signs.”
“Learning must come from within, and all true knowledge ultimately comes from God”
(Ozmon, 12).
 Augustine believed that the church should take up the responsibility of teaching. “The
child, an offspring of Adam, is prone to sin, and his or her evil nature must be kept under
control in order to develop the good that is deep inside” (Ozmon, 12).
REFERENCE LIST
Ozmon, Howard A. 2011. Philosophical foundations of education. 9th edition. Boston, MA:
Pearson.
Palmer, Joy, Liora Bresler, and David E Cooper. 2003. Fifty major thinkers on education: From
Confucius to Dewey. London; NY: Routledge.