Death And Immortal:Love Of Neighbor In Augustine

Love is a core concept in the Augustine's philosophy and is attached much more importance in not only his autobiography Confessions but also in his important philosophical works such as The City of God,On the Trinity and On Christian Doctrine(or On Christian Teaching).Previously philosophers have also noticed the importance of love.However,they usually interpreted love from the perspective of the Order of Love and religious ethics,which resorted to the religious role of Augustine.But here,even if we look at it from a secular perspective,the experience and reflections of love affected profoundly.Therefore,this paper tries to interpret love,especially the love of neighbor in Augustine in the context of time and eternity.With the introduction of time and eternity,the problem of love we experience in the world can be better explored.Compared with the context of religion or the Oder of Love in the traditional interpretations,the context of time is obviously closely related to the basic condition that human being exists.Human,a mortal creature,lives in time.So the experiences of love and the loved ones are also in time.In the mortal world,such questions as what attitude should we hold toward love,how we combat death and achieve immortality,can find answers from this horizon.This essay consists of three parts.The first part,“love and the love of neighbor”,mainly demonstrates how the conception of love is closely related to time and eternity.It first introduces the contract perspectives of tension of time and eternity,then it introduces love in Augustine's philosophy and human anticipation for it.After that it distinguishes the types of love according to different objects.Finally,it discusses the relationship between the love of neighbor and the human condition.The second part,“the analysis of love and death”,is an empirical analysis of the death of Augustine's friend in Confessions.The first section focuses on the Augustine's love experience.During this relationship,he felt both happy and sorrow.Why his love for friend was bound to be sad and sorrow? Based on his own experience,Augustine gave the answer that the loved ones will eventually “in Adam all die”.Thus,the second section immediately explains why “in Adam all die”.In Augustine's philosophy,Adam's original sin is the root of death,so that every descendant of Adam,that is,every earthly human,is destined to die.The third part,“the way to immortal”,is the reconstruction and solution of the problem between love and death from the perspective of tension of time and eternity.The first section mainly discusses why there is contradiction between love and death in The City of God and Confessions and concludes that,in the context of time and death in Augustine,a mortal cannot grasp the present that doesn't really exists,and that he is always experiencing death from the point of view of the loss of life and the change of time.Also,it argues that the future direction of love makes love related not to a future that can be anticipated as a certain period of time,but to an abstract,absolute future with certainty.Thus,love cannot find certainty in a changeable and mortal person who is certain to die,which makes love beset by death,and the imminent death in the future can destroy the uncertain moment of present and unstable happiness,so the contradiction between love and death can actually be reconstructed as the concern of a mortal man for immortality.The second section introduces two mainstream solutions,the love of God and the Order of Love,and the critique about then: the solution of the love of God is logically self-denial,which started from the love of a mortal,but arriving at a conclusion to completely avoid the love of a mortal;and from the perspective of the Order of Love,the love of the neighbor is depreciated,love is only about following a certain order,but it does not care about the specific loved ones.The third section firstly discusses the importance of neighborly love in Augustine,and stresses that the love of neighbors should not be depreciated;secondly,it gives the answer from a time-eternity perspective to respond to the above criticism.And points out that if the above critique holds,it is largely due to the philosophers confused the absolute future with eternity.But let switch to the perspective of eternity,the premise of time in which man is born and what makes time preserved.From this perspective,the love of neighbors doesn't only mean that people can finally enjoy eternal things through the love of temporary things,but also to emphasize that love for neighbors in the mortal world is bases on eternal immortal God;Finally,this section discusses Augustine's "love of this kind of love ".According to Augustine,love is the medium that keeps one connected with the world,with the loved ones,and the eternal God is love,which makes every individual act of love come from the eternal God.Therefore,everyone establishes the connection logically first with eternity,and then reconstructs self-connection with the world and his neighbor through the connection with eternity.Because this connection is established on the immortal,and thus is endowed with true certainty.