Recherche – Detailansicht

Ausgabe:

Mai/2018

Spalte:

502–505

Kategorie:

Kirchengeschichte: Alte Kirche, Christliche Archäologie

Autor/Hrsg.:

McInerney, Joseph J.

Titel/Untertitel:

The Greatness of Humility. St Augustine on Moral Excellence.

Verlag:

Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. (Lutterworth) 2017. XVII, 197 S. Kart. £ 16,50. ISBN 978-0-227-17600-9.

Rezensent:

Thomas J. Savage

In Joseph J. McInerney’s monograph, The Greatness of Humility, St Augustine on Moral Excellence (2017), he explores a topic that is much in the literature and perhaps more in current debate across disciplines. Humility has a long and tattered history. C. C. Pecknold asserts that the Romans could not admire humility due to its af-finity to weakness contrasted with pride’s strength. Much later, philosophers such as Hume and Nietzsche would reject humility, arguing it as »monkish« and correlated with moral subjugation. With strident opposition, McI.’s work to amicably conjoin humi-lity and human greatness seems a difficult task.
For McI., the Augustinian corpus holds the key to this task whereby Jesus is the exemplar, whose humiliating death brings about a glorious ascent to the right hand of the Father. McI. at­tempts to address, via portions of the Augustinian corpus, the discrepancy between humility and moral greatness. McI. engages this discrepancy by comparing Augustine’s view of humility and greatness against both classic and modern interlocutors who might immediately seem opposed to this notion, such as Aristotle, Hume, and Nietzsche. In comparing the differing views via these dialogue partners, McI. uncovers potential areas of agreement between them, albeit nuanced, concluding with significant places where Augustine stands alone.
To conduct this research, McI. designs a six-chapter chiasm, whereby the third and fourth chapters stand as centerpieces, showcasing Augustine’s model and definition of humility related to moral excellence. In chapter 1, McI. explores direct influencers of Augustine’s thinking from classic literature. For example, Aristotelian greatness for the human person is bound up in magnanimity, which is the crown of all virtues. McI. ends chapter 1 with Plotinus, positing that at the very least Augustine was influenced by neo-Platonic intellectual development. In chapter 2, McI. discusses the Christian scriptures as foundational for Augustine’s thinking re-lated to humility and greatness.
Chapter 3 elucidates directly Augustine’s understanding of humility, the terminology and the moral structure he uses to de-scribe it, including his belief in the necessity of grace which allows a person to choose the good, achieving moral excellence. From there, chapter 4 steps back to Christ as he is depicted in the scrip-tures. For Augustine, Christ is the quintessential picture of both humility and greatness. In this chapter, McI. will draw primarily from Augustine’s work, The City of God, including sermonic texts.
In chapter 5, McI. explores modern critics to an Augustinian notion of humility, namely Hume and Nietzsche, noting objec-tions to humility and greatness espoused by each. Then, McI. concludes in chapter 6 with an analysis as to how Hume, Nietzsche and Augustine might share similarities, along with a discussion as to the parallels to Augustine and Aristotle’s magnanimity. McI. traces humility in Augustine’s thinking, concluding that a human person achieves her greatest calling by humbling herself as Christ did. And, in the turning of the human will toward God, the image of God in a person is illuminated, rendering her capable of reaching her greatest honour (124). This, for Augustine, argues McI., is how humility is conjoined with greatness for the Christian.
Beginning with Aristotle, McI. sees that both Augustine and Aris­totle approach morality from the stand point of eudaimonia, and that each would vie for a telos of the human person which includes acquiring the greatest good. McI. asserts that the good for Aristotle might differ from that of Augustine, yet the concept of eudaimonia subsists on both accounts. Furthermore, both Augustine and Aristotle would concur on self-awareness in that both humility and magnanimity maintain a sort of accurate self-vision. This self-awareness, for McI. is significant on both models for human greatness. For Aristotle, a person cannot be great if he misunderstands or foolishly overestimates his worth. Likewise, a person who is »small-minded«, depriving himself of things he deserves cannot ascertain moral excellence either (164). According to McI., Augustinian humility would seek a proper rendering of the self whereby a person could admit sin and acknowledge failure. Thus, McI. argues that both Augustine’s humility and Aristotle’s magnanimity exhibit the notion that a person will rightly assess herself as a sign of moral excellence. These are, what McI. terms, »significant similarities« within the two systems.
However, McI. admits that there are glaring differences, such as the magnanimous person in Aristotelian thought is capable in and of herself to achieve, via prudence, all that she morally desires for her greatest good. And, the magnanimous person in Aristotle’s moral virtue schema would have every right to look down on others because of greatness, caring more for truth than false timidity. These qualities could mean that Aristotle’s magnanimous person is pretentious. Augustinian humility, as McI. renders it, would be less inclined toward such a disposition. McI.’s conclusion regarding Aristotle’s magnanimity versus Augustine’s humility is that Chris­tian humility orients a person toward her greatest strength found in the love of God.
McI.’s approach in analysing the moral theory of Hume and Nietzsche against Augustine’s humility-to-greatness concept is not unlike what he does with Aristotle, yet with a stronger critique. McI. notes that Hume’s work was innovative for his time, applying Bacon’s experimental method to moral philosophy which moved the likes of Kant from his »dogmatic slumbers« (173). Yet, aside from innovation, McI. argues that Humean moral theory is superficial, lacking authenticity. And, when Hume’s moral principles are applied to greatness they leave room for a person to be self-serving.
Likewise, with Nietzsche, McI. notes how difficult the task is of comparing Nietzsche’s moral thought to other theories due in part to Nietzsche’s lack of systematisation when it comes to his thoughts, and Nietzsche’s isolationist approach to morality altogether. The latter is dramatically different from an Aristotelian eudaimonia perhaps leaving virtue applicable solely to an elite few. In the end, McI. argues squarely against Nietzsche’s moral theory of individual greatness, citing it as »impoverished« and weak (182).
On any or all the models of greatness from antiquity to modern philosophy, McI. concludes that there is perhaps little room for humility. Yet, for Augustine it is difficult to underestimate humi-lity’s importance related to greatness. For Augustine, humility is the »primary lesson« of the Christian religion (188). And this conclusion, says McI. is exemplified in the Person of Christ who did not think his divinity as something to hold on to, but emptied himself by taking the form of a human slave (Phil 2:5). Still, Jesus’s humility is never to be overshadowed by his exaltation and greatness. McI. concludes the book noting that, related to humility and greatness as Augustine defines it, Christian humility is attractive to outsiders because of the beauty bound up in the notion of »humble greatness« (189).
McI.’s research is significant because he dares address the difficult question: does Christian humility imply that greatness is impossible for the humble person? And, if greatness is denied the humble person, does that further imply that humble persons are subordinate? McI. seeks to answer these questions. But, does McI. succeed in his aim to rejoin humility to greatness via the Augustinian model?
Due to McI.’s careful choosing of dialogue partners, some interesting points stand out. For example, Augustine’s humility means that a person will have an eye to his interior that eclipses Aristotle’s self-awareness motif. In other words, Augustinian humility equates to a certain level of greatness by enabling the human person to look deeply into her own soul. This could be paramount to human greatness because it means a person will not have a superficial understanding of herself but a knowledge that goes beyond the pale with a view to God’s infinite love.
Similarly, McI. offers a good differentiation between Humean and Nietzschean moral theory compared to Augustinian humility, arguing that each of the former lacks a level of authenticity stemming from sentimentality and an isolated individuation towards society. What McI. sheds light on is the possibility that other moral theories could be weak when it comes to human greatness. In this way, McI. lowers defenses philosophically for a deeper investiga-tion into Augustine’s view to greatness via humility. Perhaps this alone, on some level, is a success for McI.’s research.
An area that could attract critique for McI. is that in denoting Christ as Augustine’s exemplar of humility, which he is, McI. highlights Christ’s »self-abasement« (cf. 113 ff.). Although McI. quickly moves on to Christ’s glorification, the sting of self-abasement as the Christian model of humility remains fronted in McI.’s interpretation of Augustine. These self-abasing portions are likely to receive the heaviest push back from modern scholars.
McI. has taken on a great challenge in his work. He has created the venue to discuss humility against its apparent binary, human greatness. McI. has charitably, but with decisiveness rejected the greatness models of Hume and Nietzsche while upgrading Aristotelian thought to match some of the major portions of Augustine’s work on humility and greatness. This is worth noting, yet humi-lity still seems shipwrecked. Legitimately attaching notions of greatness to it does not utterly revive it.