内在与超越:奥古斯丁的宇宙目的论

奥古斯丁在对《创世记》的解释中,逐步发展出一套基督教的宇宙目的论.受柏拉图《蒂迈欧篇》以及新柏拉图主义的影响,奥古斯丁主张宇宙的秩序根源于上帝对质料的赋形."赋形说"并不意味着奥古斯丁的宇宙论仅仅是"外在主义"的:一方面,奥古斯丁理解的质料并不是完全被动的,而是有着朝向形式的主动潜能;另一方面,奥古斯丁对"种子理式"的...     

试论奥古斯丁著作中的意愿(voluntas)概念--以《论自由选择》和《忏悔录》为例

文章力图从对《论自由选择》和《忏悔录》的分析出发，重构奥古斯丁思想中的意愿概念，以及他在这一观念基础上对人的行为和道德责任的理论解析。奥古斯丁对恶的起源问题的神学关注赋予了他重思自由意愿这一古老问题的契机，他强调意愿作为灵魂能力的独立性，由此从道德心理学的角度对人的道德行为做出了不同于希腊罗马理智论传统的原创性分析。同时，意愿的独立性也确保了人选择不同行为模式的自由和实现自身本性的自由。正是这一自由确保我们成为自己行为的主人而为之承担颂扬或是责难，亦即道德责任的基础。奥古斯丁这一意愿理论也足以回应当代英美哲学尤其是Gilbert Ryle对意愿概念效用的责难。     

"上帝之城"与"地上之城":奥古斯丁思想中的两分倾向

文章旨在探讨奥古斯丁的“两座城”学说。首先,简要地讨论了《上帝之城》的写作背景与主要结构;其次,在宗教信仰与现世生活这两个层面上分析了《上帝之城》关于“两座城”的主要观点;再次,分三个角度探讨了“两座城”学说的历史与思想背景。虽然“两座城”的学说体现了一种以两分的形式来思考问题的倾向,但它既不同于存在论的二元论和灵与肉的二元论,又避免了对复杂的现实社会作过于绝对的两分。     

奥古斯丁之“灵魂能力等级”观念探析

本文探讨了奥古斯丁早期哲学作品《论灵魂的广大》(De quantitate animae)所提出的"灵魂能力等级"的观念,认为这一观念是奥古斯丁对于普罗提诺所发展的灵魂上升观念的继承。不过,基于基督教传统,奥古斯丁在其中后期思想中逐渐提出了与古典看法不同的阻碍灵魂上升的原因,并指出基督救赎的必要性。奥古斯丁的新阐释中体现的基督教意识,也导致他将古典哲学中非时间性的灵魂上升论转换导向了基督教末世性的历史救赎论。     

奥古斯丁论“前性情”

奥古斯丁如何处理斯多葛哲学中的"前性情"问题,是理解古典哲学到中世纪哲学的过渡的重要关节点,近年来也引起了学者们的注意。本文主要梳理了奥古斯丁在《论登山圣训》、《上帝之城》、《论三位一体》、《旧约前七卷的问题》等著作中对相关问题的讨论,指出,奥古斯丁非常认真地研究甚至接受了斯多葛学派的相关看法。不过,他从基督教的原罪观出发,认为前性情虽然是不可避免的,但并不是绝对无辜的,而恰恰是原罪的一个后果,表明了人性的根本处境。这一说法对于西方哲学史上对性情的理解有巨大的影响,但既不能简单说成对斯多葛派的误解,也不仅仅是一个巨大的进步。     

希波的奥古斯丁[下]

原罪与自由意志这是奥古斯丁最著名，也是最具影响的理论。所谓影响，并不仅指接受或继承，更多地指，在建构不同理论时，某一先行理论提供了前所未有、此后成为不可或阙的思维视野。在《论自由意志》中奥古斯丁对本问题进行了集中系统的讨论。此外，在以下诸书中亦有较完备的阐释：《论基督的恩典与原罪》（ＤｅＧｒａｔｉａＣｈｒｉｓｔｉｅｔｐｅｃｃａｔｏ　ｏｒｉｇｉｎａｌｉ）、《论恩典与自由意志致瓦伦提努》（ＤｅＧｒａｔｉａｅｔｌｉｂｅｒｏａｒｂｉｔｒｉｏａｄＶａｌｅｎｔｉｎｕｍ）、《论堕落与恩典》（Ｄｅｃｏｒｒｅｐｔ…     

奥古斯丁论原始质料——以对柏拉图“载体”概念的延续和转变为中心

奥古斯丁在《忏悔录》第十二卷和第十三卷中对原始质料的论述,被认为是基督教对原始质料的经典论述。通过分析、比较柏拉图和奥古斯丁的相关文本,一方面揭示出奥古斯丁的原始质料在形质论的层面上延续了柏拉图的“载体”概念,由此确立形质论在基督教宇宙论中的地位;另一方面表明奥古斯丁在创世论的层面上用无中造有的原始质料取代始终存在着的载体,由此塑造出基督教的创造宇宙论。     

圣经诠释中的启示与理性——《约翰福音》1∶1中的基督论问题及两种解释进路

《约翰福音》1∶1在基督论问题上出现了自相矛盾的两个表述:"道(logos)与神(theos)同在"和"道就是神"。这一矛盾产生的原因可以认为是《约翰福音》自身的希腊和希伯来双重文化传统所导致的。在教父时期可以发现两种典型的解决这一基督论矛盾的模式,一种是以奥利金为代表的亚历山大里亚学派,通过理性,即寓意解经,调和矛盾;另外一种以奥古斯丁为代表,通过保留字面的张力体现信仰的超越性。这两种模式相互关联又相互区分,一方面奥古斯丁对于奥利金的寓意解经有所继承,但是另一方面又用在先的信仰超越了理性调和主义的方法。     

宗教学者周伟驰

周伟驰,1969年生于湖南常德,1983年迁至广东肇庆。1988年考入中山大学哲学系,1992年至北京大学哲学系继续学习,并于1998年获哲学博士学位,现为中国社会科学院世界宗教研究所研究员。学术著作有:《记忆与光照:奥古斯丁神哲学研究》(社会科学文献出版社,2001)、《奥古斯丁的基督教思想》(中国社会科学出版社,2005)、《彼     

真诚的忏悔

导言 自从有圣经以来,在众多宗教书籍中,《奥古斯丁的忏悔录》可算是最多人阅读的一本书(或者只有《效法基督》一书是例外)。说真的,奥古斯丁可说是继圣保罗后,最具影响力的基督教思想家。他不只是在他自己的时代中最伟大的人物,其思想更笼罩了整个基督教神学有7个世纪之久。他的思想也奠定了后来的罗马天主教的神学。他也同样启     

Augustine's Christian–Platonist Account of Goodness: A Reconsideration

Augustine's metaphysics is a subject little studied, but often much criticized. Among the recent studies of Augustine's metaphysics, Scott MacDonald's interpretation of Augustine's notion of goodness claims that Augustine's account is incoherent. This suggests a reading of Augustine that is somewhat problematic. This article argues that much of the difficulty that MacDonald claims rests on a misunderstanding of Augustine's views about the goodness of creation and existence and the corruptibility of created things. Augustine's position takes for granted an understanding of existence (or being) as a good and the participation of all things in the pre–eminent good, that is God.     

CONSUETUDO CARNALIS IN AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS: Confessing Identity/Belonging to Difference

The political theorist William E. Connolly reads Augustine's Confessions as an exhortation to deny the paradox of identity/difference. The paradox for Connolly is this: if one confesses a true identity, one must be false to difference, but if one is true to difference, one must sacrifice the promise of true identity. I revisit Augustine's Confessions here in order to offer a reading of their paradoxical character that contrasts with Connolly's. I will argue that Augustine's confession does not deny the paradox of identity/difference but exemplifies what it means to struggle within it. I turn to James Wetzel's work on Augustine's idea of free will and Catherine Keller's work on the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo to suggest that treating Augustine's confession as confession reveals this struggle.     

Illocutionary Acts and the Uncanny: on Nicholas Wolterstorff's Idea of Divine Discourse

Nicholas Wolterstorff's Divine Discourse attempts to give philosophical warrant to the claim that 'God speaks'. While Wolterstorff's argument depends largely on his appropriation of J.L. Austin's speech act theory, he also uses two narratives that for him demonstrate how 'God speaks'. The first is the story of Augustine's conversion in the Confessions and the second is a story that Wolterstorff recounts about a certain 'Virginia'. This study argues that what Wolterstorff claims to derive from Augustine's narrative for his view of divine discourse is not fully supported by the Confessions , and that Augustine's interpretation of the words 'tolle lege, tolle lege', can be construed as a useful interpretation of an ambiguous sign. This is consistent with Augustine's understanding of the interpretation of texts in both the De doctrina christiana and the Confessions . In short, Augustine is far more open to the ambiguity of signs than Wolterstorffs's account suggests.     

Unjust Lies,Just Wars? A Christian Pacifist Conversation with Augustine

Pacifism is routinely criticized as sectarian, incoherent, and preoccupied with moral purity at the expense of responsibility. The author contends that the pacifism of John Howard Yoder is vulnerable to none of these charges and defends this claim by establishing parallels between Yoder's analysis of killing and Augustine's analysis of lying. Although, within the terms of his own argument, Augustine's rejection of all lying as unjust is consistent with his condoning of some killing as just, the author shows that given a different conception of the defining characteristic of God (noncoercive love instead of truth), Augustine's theological argument against lying would become an argument against violence. The author therefore suggests that Yoder's rejection of killing is no more sectarian, incoherent, or irresponsible that Augustine's rejection of lying.     

Augustine on the Impossibility of Teaching

The information-transference account of teaching takes it to be a process in which information is transferred from one person's mind to another's. Augustine argues that this is impossible, since in order to understand something the person who understands must come to see why it is so, and that is an internal episode of awareness that isn't caused by an outside source. Augustine's insight here is contrasted with the contemporary view, following Wittgenstein, that learning is a matter of conformity to rules (public norms). The case is made that teaching and learning pose philosophical problems that contemporary theories don't address, and a brief examination of Searle's Chinese Room example suggests that its plausibility derives from Augustine's insight that mere rule-following behavior isn't enough to explain the phenomenon of understanding at the heart of knowledge. A reconstruction of Augustine's epistemological claims, divorced from his discredited views in the philosophy of language, is also provided.     

The Visible Christ and the Invisible Trinity: MT. 5:8 in Augustine's Trinitarian Theology of 400

The essay is an analysis of Augustine's solution to what I identify as the Homoian subordinationist understanding of the Son's visibility. This solution lies in Augustine's (re-)interpretation of Old Testament theophanies, and his doctrine of the vision through Christ of the Trinity at the end-time which Augustine supports by an exegesis of Mt. 5:8. Historically, the issue for Augustine is the connection made between doctrines of the Son's inherent "visibility" before the Incarnation and arguments made both against modalism and in support of subordinationism on the basis of that visibility. For Augustine's own Trinitarian theology, any consideration of a sight or vision of God in, e.g., Old Testament theophanies or the Incarnation necessarily raises questions about "sight" as both sensible and noetic knowledge, the structure of our way(s) of knowing, and the role of faith as the means for purifying the knowing capacity in humanity. The question of the vision of God which Augustine addresses in those early books of de Trinitate which are written around the year four hundred is connected to Augustine's epistemological concerns addressed in a variety of writings written before or contemporary to books I-IV of de Trinitate .     

创造与伸展:奥古斯丁时间观的两个向度

奥古斯丁《忏悔录》中的“时间之间”受到后世哲学家们的广泛关注和高度评价,但往往只重视其中“心灵的伸展”这一向度．而忽视上帝的创造这一向度,忽视了永恒之维。事实上,上帝的创造和心灵的伸展这两个向度不可分割．前者规定后者,阐明时间的起源;后者反映前者,说明时间的存在和本质。后者受前者的制约。也就是说,心灵的伸展有一个界限,是不可超越的。当文德尔班强调奥古斯丁的形而上学是“内在经验的形而上学”时,他确认了奥古斯丁时间观的心灵向度;当吉尔松称之为“皈依的形而上学”时,则是强调“心灵伸展的界限”,即永恒上帝的创造。     

Augustine and Karl Rahner on the Relationship between the Immanent Trinity and the Economic Trinity

Abstract:  Karl Rahner developed his influential axiom concerning the identity of the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity largely as a polemical reaction to their separation in the Western tradition, a tradition heavily shaped by Augustine. An analysis of Augustine's De Trinitate , however, reveals that Augustine was not guilty of most of the charges of which Rahner accuses him. Furthermore, Rahner's outworking of his fundamental axiom leads him into numerous difficulties that he could have avoided had he adhered to Augustine's view of a close but differentiated relationship between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity.     

Perplexity and Mystery

In this paper I comment on Gareth B. Matthews's "The Socratic Augustine" and Peter King's "Augustine on the Impossibility of Teaching." Matthews's paper adduces several instances of Augustine's apparent willingness to accept Socratic perplexity in some philosophical matters. Matthews suggests that these cases are compatible with Augustine's dogmatism because Augustine presupposes that the phenomena in question, although perplexing, are actual. I suggest instead that Augustine can be viewed as taking a neutral stance toward many of his examples, because they arise in areas of philosophical inquiry where it is not important to the tenets of his faith that he hold the right opinion. King defends the Augustinian thesis that teaching, construed as the causal transmission of knowledge from teacher to learner, is, if not impossible, at least mysterious. I suggest that much of the alleged mystery may rest on a confusion between epistemological dependency and metaphysical dependency.