(The scene is a large white waiting room. There is a row of chairs along one wall along with a large green houseplant and some magazines on an end table. A white-robed figure sits behind a glass screen set in the far wall. PLATO sits in one chair reading a magazine. AUGUSTINE enters through an unmarked white door.)
PLATO: (putting down the magazine) So good of you to join me. It’s horribly boring here, you know.
AUGUSTINE: Who might you be?
PLATO: My name is Plato. I’m certain you’ve heard of me. There seems to have been a good number of people who took me seriously, or so I hear.
AUGUSTINE: (glances at the robed figure) Oh, yes. I suppose that’s true. We studied you quite a bit. (hesitates, then steps forward and takes a seat) My name is Augustine. Well, Saint Augustine these days.
PLATO: Oh really? (shifts in his chair) I heard you took quite a delicious position on evil.
AUGUSTINE: Perhaps, I suppose. I merely pointed out a general dissatisfaction on everyone’s part, I’d like to think. What you might call “evil” I call a privation—that is, disordered love.
PLATO: Explain.
AUGUSTINE: Do you not find human beings, in general, to be dissatisfied with their state?
PLATO: I do, so far as the living are concerned. And the ignorant.
AUGUSTINE: I’d meant to clarify that. And the only way for human beings to find fulfillment is through the Divine.
PLATO: Ah, the World of the Forms.
AUGUSTINE: I appreciate your input on the Forms, insofar as they exist as ideas in the mind of God.
PLATO: (smiles) Ah, yes.
AUGUSTINE: Though your opinions of knowledge—it’s absolute sufficiency—fell flat on my ears. I agree with you insofar as knowledge is important, but I do not believe it is the end-all for our salvation and fulfillment. We need a basic understanding of God, yes, and the capacity to appreciate His salvation, but knowing something will not necessarily prompt a person to right action. I believe a fellow can know the correct course of action and simply not choose it.
PLATO: But if he—or she—does not choose the correct course of action then he or she has obviously not understood it.
AUGUSTINE: I would argue that the issue at hand is not that one lacks understanding but—well, what I mentioned earlier, actually.
PLATO: And that is?
AUGUSTINE: You would agree with me if I said that human beings are always pursuing something—and that something, as you have argued, is ultimately actualization with the Forms, yes?
PLATO: We ultimately desire the good, yes.
AUGUSTINE: And we are ultimately good, insofar as we are?
PLATO: We all contain that spark of good, ultimately. We are diminished, perhaps, but desire better.
AUGUSTINE: If all things are reflections of the Forms—that is, reflections of the Divine, the higher good—then they are, in themselves, good, wouldn’t you say? Misguided, rather than diminished.
PLATO: Explain.
AUGUSTINE: We ultimately desire something, and that something which we desire is good unto itself.
PLATO: Yes.
AUGUSTINE: Everything has a place, does it not? We ought to love and respect things as is their due. For instance, one may love food as is appropriate-at mealtimes, and in moderation. And one may love friends—that is, people, and invest in these friends and spend time with the friends. Each thing has its place in life, but it is obvious that the friends receive more love than the food.
PLATO: So this is your chain of being. Everything has a value. It makes sense.
AUGUSTINE: However, there are many things competing for our desires. One may have a taste for good food, but when that desire for food begins to take priority over one’s desire to invest in good friendships and fine company, we have an instance of a privation of good. The time with friends has been displaced and has less been appropriated less value than is its due. We can only give so much attention to things. (pause for breath) Therefore, since it seems that we are compelled to desire something, and that we are given to loving things out of order, it would be conceivable to have a knowledge of something good and not choose the good. Not because we do not understand it, but because we have become distracted with lesser things.
PLATO: Quite a conclusion. Though I would say the reason one ends up with disordered loves is because he or she has a skewed perception of the thing in the beginning.
AUGUSTINE: I believe it is a matter of human feeling rather than human thinking. We are feeling creatures that think, not quite so much thinking creatures that feel. We experience things first and foremost, and then judge in our minds.
PLATO: All the more reason to alienate oneself from the body. It is a distraction.
AUGUSTINE: But you see—
(a bell sounds. PLATO rises)
PLATO: It’s a shame, really. Things were just starting to get interesting. But if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an appointment. Staying here would require a disordering of my loves.
(exit PLATO)
AUGUSTINE: Well, then. (he takes a magazine from the end table and begins reading)
1 comment:
ARGH! Blast Plato's early departure! I wanted to hear what Augustine would have said next! But, alas, such is the way of things. And I myself must get to working on other papers. Yay!
God bless.
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