Ethics

Augustine was an extreme intentionalist in ethics. In his Commentary on the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount he identifies three conditions necessary and sufficient for a complete sin: (i) suggestion, (ii) pleasure, and (iii) consent. The immediate inspiration for this account is the saying of Jesus, ‘‘Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart’’ (Matthew 5:28). On Augustine’s view, consent to perform a sinful action already constitutes a complete sin; no ‘‘outward’’ action needs to have been carried out.

His intentionalism leads him to worry about whether he is responsible for the acts of his dream self (Confessions, 10.30.42). Although it seems to him unfair to count dreamt adultery as a sin, it is unclear how his various ethical and metaphysical commitments can allow him to escape moral responsibility for acts he commits in his dreams.

Drawing on a contrast between those things that are desirable in themselves with those things that are desirable for the sake of something else, Augustine says that things of the first sort are to be enjoyed (frui), whereas things of the second sort are to be used (uti). Vice, he say, is wanting to use what is meant to be enjoyed or wanting to enjoy what is meant to be used (On Diverse Questions, 83.30). In the end, it is only God who is to be enjoyed.

Augustine followed Ambrose in adding the Pauline virtues of faith, hope, and charity to the classical virtues of temperance, courage, wisdom, and justice. He offers an interpretation of each of virtues that makes each one an expression of the love of God. Thus, for example, temperance is love ‘‘keeping itself whole and incorrupt for God’’ and courage is love ‘‘bearing everything readily for the same of God’’ (On the Morals of the Catholic Church, 15.25). In this way Augustine provides a Christian analogue to the idea of the unity of the virtues that one finds in Plato and Aristotle.