Augustine on God and Time - Short Essay
Argument and Logic of Augustine
Bernadette Matthews
PHI/105
07/08/2010
Tara Ross
Argument and Logic of Augustine
My understanding from this excerpt is Augustine and his belief on answering the question of God and Time along with Plato and Plotinus helped Augustine break new philosophical ground. Augustine believed that before God had created us that there was no time, So why did God create the world when he did. Augustine believed that time only became existent after God created us. Augustine went on to ask the question “what is time?” Augustine believed that the present is what exists and that the past has gone is no more and as for the future it has not yet come.
However, the thinking that certain things did happen in the past and that certain things will happen in the future made him think that the past and the future is real. So then the question he asked was “how can the past and the future be both real and nonexistent at the same time?” Augustine’s belief when he answered this question was that the past and the future exist only in the mind of the human. Augustine’s conclusion was that everything is all a subjective phenomenon.
However, later on an eighteenth- century philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant developed the idea that time was subjective. Kant also believed that other basic categories are all subjective of the mind on the world. That idea or theory was then carried over with the biggest conclusion by the Absolute Idealists by them stating “who said that the world is mind”.
The strengths that I found was that Augustine made very great points and his ideas seemed to be true if anyone really thought about the questions asked. The weaknesses that I found was that for every idea or theory one philosopher has, there was always another philosopher that would come along and was able to challenge that idea with their own idea or theory and that theory could be right as well. So, believing which ever philosopher a person wanted to
Bernadette Matthews
PHI/105
07/08/2010
Tara Ross
Argument and Logic of Augustine
My understanding from this excerpt is Augustine and his belief on answering the question of God and Time along with Plato and Plotinus helped Augustine break new philosophical ground. Augustine believed that before God had created us that there was no time, So why did God create the world when he did. Augustine believed that time only became existent after God created us. Augustine went on to ask the question “what is time?” Augustine believed that the present is what exists and that the past has gone is no more and as for the future it has not yet come.
However, the thinking that certain things did happen in the past and that certain things will happen in the future made him think that the past and the future is real. So then the question he asked was “how can the past and the future be both real and nonexistent at the same time?” Augustine’s belief when he answered this question was that the past and the future exist only in the mind of the human. Augustine’s conclusion was that everything is all a subjective phenomenon.
However, later on an eighteenth- century philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant developed the idea that time was subjective. Kant also believed that other basic categories are all subjective of the mind on the world. That idea or theory was then carried over with the biggest conclusion by the Absolute Idealists by them stating “who said that the world is mind”.
The strengths that I found was that Augustine made very great points and his ideas seemed to be true if anyone really thought about the questions asked. The weaknesses that I found was that for every idea or theory one philosopher has, there was always another philosopher that would come along and was able to challenge that idea with their own idea or theory and that theory could be right as well. So, believing which ever philosopher a person wanted to
References: Moore- Bruder, (2008). Philosophy: The Power of Ideas, Retrieved from University of Phoenix.