Teaching Augustine’s On the Teacher

Religions 2015, 6, 404–408; doi:10.3390/rel6020404 OPEN ACCESS religions ISSN 2077-1444 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Article Teaching Augustine’s On the Teacher Robert D. Anderson Saint Anselm College, 100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester, NH 03102, USA; E-Mail: ; Tel.: +1-603-656-6234 Academic Editors: Scott McGinnis and Chris Metress Received: 20 February 2015 / Accepted: 31 March 2015 / Published: 8 April 2015 Abstract: This paper examines the merits of introducing undergraduates to the philosophical thought of Augustine by means of his short dialogue On the Teacher. Keywords: Augustine; divine illumination; teaching; learning; knowledge On the Teacher is an excellent text for undergraduates’ initial contact with the philosophical thought of the Christian thinker Saint Augustine. While other texts better introduce Augustine’s theological thought or his public life as priest and bishop or his personal life, On the Teacher reveals Augustine the philosopher. The text works well in a small Great Books seminar where discussion is the order of the day as well as in a large lecture class in Medieval Philosophy with limited opportunities for Socratic interaction. Moreover, the text works well when supplemented with other philosophical writings by Augustine (such as Against the Academicians, especially book three, and On Free Choice of the Will), as well as when it is the stand-alone sample of his philosophizing. What is the case for teaching Augustine’s On the Teacher? For one, the complete work is short (about fifty pages) and, thus, doable in two classes. Its shortness keeps the work tight and thereby minimizes the Ciceronian meandering that Augustine liked and often imitated but that annoys and confuses modern undergraduates. For another, the work is readily accessible like Plato’s Meno after which it is modeled. The work is a dialogue between a father (Augustine) and his son (Adeodatus), a son who is talented, beloved, and around eighteen and who died shortly after the work was completed. The work also is interesting, especially to Christian students or students at Christian colleges and universities, because it shows Augustine doing what Christian philosophers typically do. They attempt to integrate their Christian beliefs and philosophical reflections. With Augustine the efforts at integration take many forms. Sometimes he attempts to prove articles of faith like God’s existence. Other times he attempts to articulate Christian doctrine with precision Religions 2015, 6 405 and to manifest that, besides being intelligible, Christian doctrine is noncontradictory and even plausible. Still other times he attempts to harmonize his different sets of beliefs: his Christian faith and his philosophical convictions. This harmonization can consist not only in showing that the two sets are consistent but also in synthesizing the two into a unified set. Such a synthesis is the focus of On the Teacher, where Augustine is specifically reflecting on scriptural verses like I Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” and Matthew 23:9–10, “Nor are you to be called teacher, for you have one teacher, the Christ” and attempting to square those verses with how he thinks people come to know. In a second way, On the Teacher is interesting to undergraduates (those with and those without a creed) because its subject is something they have a stake in: education. Most undergraduates already have strong views about teaching and learning. In fact, undergraduates are often passionate (sometimes even articulate) about what has gone wrong and what has gone right in their educations to date. Thus, the subject of the work is well suited to undergraduates. What then does Augustine say about teaching and learning? In the first half of the dialogue, Augustine and Adeodatus establish quickly that all communication is teaching because it attempts to inform a person about what is in somebody’s mind ([1], pp. 94–95). They also quickly agree that all teaching is carried out either with language that communicates or by examples that exhibit what is to be taught ([1], p. 102). The remainder of the first half of the dialogue is a discussion of various puzzles about human language. The puzzles result from imprecise definitions, the blurring of the distinction between the use of a term versus its mention, ambiguity in terms, and self-referential oddities. Students themselves are puzzled at this point in the dialogue. In fact, they are usually frustrated with the apparent disconnect between Augustine’s linguistic problems and his main topic of teaching. They are not alone in their frustration, however. Augustine senses a similar frustration in Adeodatus, and he addresses it thus: With so many detours, it’s difficult to say at this point where you and I are trying to get to! Maybe you think we’re playing around and diverting the mind from serious matters by little puzzles that seem childish, or that we’re pursuing some result that is only small or modest…Well, I’d like you to believe that I haven’t set to work on mere trivialities in this conversation. Though we do perhaps play around, this should itself not be regarded as childish…So then, you’ll pardon me if I play around with you at first –not for the sake of playing around, but to exercise the mind’s strength and sharpness ([1], p. 122). The clear suggestion is that the various linguistic problems (and even less a full-blown philosophy of language) were not the point of the first half of the dialogue. But what was then? Students need help to answer this question. My proposal to students is that readers should take seriously a point that Augustine and Adeodatus agreed on earlier in the dialogue. They agreed that there are two ways of teaching: either by communicating something or by exhibiting something, that is, by telling or by displaying. If Augustine fails to tell us much about what is teaching in the first half of On the Teacher, does he perhaps nonetheless succeed in displaying for us something about teaching? Thus, I ask my students: what does Augustine display or exhibit for us about teaching in the first half his work? Religions 2015, 6 406 Students always rise to the occasion with many good answers. One may have to wait for some answers and to prod for others, but students always produce a wonderful array. Here is a sample of their answers. Answers 1 & 2: As Augustine explicitly says in the previous quotation and also exhibits in the dialogue itself, the pursuit of knowledge must be both serious and playful. It is serious in its ultimate aim but playful along the way with a willingness to try out different ideas and to make mistakes in the course of doing so. Similarly, Augustine explicitly says in the previous quotation and also exhibits that inquiry has to be systematic, beginning with easier problems (like his linguistic problems) first so that the mind gains “strength and sharpness”. (...truncated)