Augustine on Friendship and Belief

Abstract

The early Christian philosopher Augustine of Hippo offers a fascinating perspective on friendship by framing it in terms of the beliefs on which it depends. He argues in On Faith in Invisible Things, for example, that, in order to be someone’s friend, we must believe that they have goodwill toward us, love for us, and faith in us. This aspect of Augustine’s thought has largely been neglected in prior scholarship. Focusing on Augustine’s earlier works (386 to 400), I explore his account of how and why we ought to form our beliefs about our friends and how beliefs define different sorts of interpersonal relationships. In Chapter 1, focusing particularly on the works On Faith in Invisible Things and On the Usefulness of Believing, I argue that, while Augustine thinks our beliefs about our friends should be grounded in evidence, he thinks we should set limits to the degree of evidence that we require; these limits should be based on considerations of the benefits of friendship and of the fact that some duties to act also imply duties to believe. I also argue that Augustine thinks our beliefs about our friends should be held wholeheartedly, but with an openness to revision and an awareness that they do not, strictly speaking, amount to knowledge (scientia). Focusing especially on evidence from letter 258, Confessions, and On Faith in Invisible Things, I argue in Chapter 2 that Augustine presents different sorts of true and false friendships that may be defined in terms of their foundational beliefs. Central to my argument is the understanding that a person’s belief that another has goodwill toward them (one of the foundational beliefs of friendship) may depend on their beliefs about what is good for them. In the truest sort of friendship, each friend holds a true belief about what happiness, the ultimate good, consists of (Augustine thinks that this good can be attained only in God) and believes that the other wishes that for them. Augustine also indicates a lesser sort of true friendship where the friends do not share a true belief about the ultimate good but do hold true beliefs about lesser goods (e.g. support amid adversity); each friend believes that the other has goodwill toward them in the sense of wishing such goods for them. False friendships may arise when a person holds a false belief about what the ultimate good consists of, believes that their apparent friend wishes that for them, and therefore believes in their apparent friend’s goodwill. At Confessions 2, Augustine presents a second kind of false friendship, where neither person believes in the other’s goodwill; rather, each person regards the other as their friend because they believe that the other wishes for them to attain what they desire. In Chapter 3, I compare friendship to the relationship between a student and a person with authority, auctoritas (a person has authority over us if we ought to believe them without understanding the reasons for what they say). I am concerned here with moral authority, authority regarding how we ought to live. I argue that Augustine, in On the Usefulness of Belief, depicts a relationship between an authority and a student that, like friendship, depends on belief in another’s goodwill. The beliefs in these two relationships, however, differ in their reciprocity and their basis. In the truest friendship, each friend believes that the other wishes the ultimate good for them. In an authority-student relationship, the student believes that the authority wishes the ultimate good for them, but the authority believes only in the student’s willingness to learn. Moreover, a person believes in their friend’s goodwill because they have a preexisting true belief about the ultimate good and see evidence that their friend wishes that for them; in contrast, the student of a moral authority lacks a true belief about the ultimate good (they wish to be led to such belief by the authority), so their belief in the authority’s goodwill is based on indirect evidence that the authority is the sort of person likely to be capable of imparting truth about the ultimate good.