Vico and Plato by Nancy Du Bois Marcus

Author:Nancy Du Bois Marcus [Marcus, Nancy Du Bois]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, General, History & Surveys, Ancient & Classical, Modern, Vico; Giambattista, Plato, Influence, Platonists
ISBN: 9780820451787
Publisher: P. Lang
Published: 2001-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

against pride and in favor of humility are explicitly supported by the Bible. The Fall is caused by pride. Pride is the most fundamental error about divine things, because the proud fail to see the proper relationship between God and themselves. The recurrent metaphor for pride is something swollen, inflated, or puffed up; for example, “the power of humility is unknown to men whose souls are inflated with the impurity of inflated pride” (CG 9.20, 366). Love builds up, whereas pride merely inflates (I Cor. 8:1; CG 9. 20, 366).

From the very first page of the City of God, Augustine draws a firm division between the proud and the humble: “I know how great is the effort needed to convince the proud of the power and excellence of humility” (James 4.6; CG 1.1, 5). Augustine is writing for the proud in order to persuade them to humble themselves and accept the Christian religion. The philosophers are guilty of the most inveterate sickness, infecting the heart as well as the mind (CG 1.1, 7). Divine providence allowed the Platonists to discover some truths, but they fell short because they did not understand the way of humility (CG 2.7, 54-55). The pride of the philosophers is the reason why the Platonists reject the Christian religion despite its similarities to their own views in other respects (CG 10.28, 413; 10.29, 416).

The Neoplatonist Porphyry is made an example to help others like him who admire humanistic learning. Porphyry's error is a moral as well as an intellectual one. 2 In the chapter entitled “The blindness of Porphyry to the true wisdom, which is Christ,” Augustine says that if Porphyry were a true lover of wisdom, he would have acknowledged Christ “instead of shying away from his saving humility, inflated with the swollen pride of useless learning” (CG 10.28, 412). In the following chapter, Augustine reveals that his intended audience is the learned who admire Porphyry. In a moment, which reveals that Augustine is engaged in the education of souls, not polemics, he pauses to reflect on his own critique: “if only you had been able to see his incarnation . . . But what can I do? I know it is to no avail that I speak to a dead man, to no avail, that is, as far as you are concerned. But there are people who hold you in high regard, who are attached to you by reason of some kind of love of wisdom, or a superstitious interest in those magic arts which you should never have studied, and they are the audience to whom my colloquy with you is really directed, and it may be that for them it is not in vain” (CG 10.29, 414). Porphyry is even closer than Plato to Christian doctrine (CG 10.30, 417), yet he too is kept from the truth by his pride. Augustine knows his task is difficult since “humility was the necessary condition for submission to

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