Unreason and self-destruction

pp. 25-37

in: Peter Langford, Modern philosophies of human nature, Berlin, Springer, 1986

Abstract

Augustine's ideas regarding the irremediable evil of fallen human nature were able to exert their wide influence because of the position of the church in the ancient world. The church had become, in 380 A.D., the official religion of the Roman Empire. But it could not hope to exert more than a moderating effect upon a secular world that was both long-established and disintegrating through a dynamic the church had no power to check. This situation determined the three directions of Augustine's theory: the flight from an inherently evil world into mysticism; the attempt to divine a mysterious providence in the apparently downward path of secular society; and the belief that the masses are possessed by a fundamentally evil and ineradicable nature.