Eros and Self-Emptying: The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard as a Christian Thinker)

by Lee C. Barrett III

The centrality of desire in Augustine’s thought also undermines the concept of the self as being, at least ideally, self-controlled and self-legislating.34 If our spiritual identities are determined by the objects of our desire, then the self cannot be the self-possessed individual imagined and idealized by the Stoics, much less the Cartesian self that is often claimed as the descendant of Augustine’s introspection. Human beings are not essentially self-contained egos, scrutinizing a field of cognizable objects from a transcendent vantage point. Nor are human persons completely autonomous moral agents constituting themselves by their unconstrained decisions. Individuals are not defined by the ability to step back from themselves, detach themselves from the perturbations of desire, and legislate to themselves what their lives shall be. The Kantian struggle to master inclination by adopting the maxims of practical reason is not Augustine’s view of human life. Rather, according to Augustine, we are constituted by the relationships of desire that typify our lives. The citizens of the city of God know that the passions rightly ordered and directed are constitutive of the Christian life.35