This influence was of equal historical importance as the other six. But if a man like Augustine has influences, then not only are these influences important for all later history, but also that which has not influenced him. And this is what I must discuss now. I concentrated around the name of Aristotle. Aristotle is missing in this development – of course, not entirely, because Plotinus took much Aristotle into himself. But Aristotle was not directly important for Augustine. This is equally important. This means that Augustine didn’t include in his theology, in his philosophy, in his life, the concern for Greek science – not only natural science science, but also political science – was not really implied in his thinking. The significance of this is so important that it determines that whole presentation of the medieval development later on.
1) What Aristotle did was to (construct) a system of mediation and not a system of dualism, as we have it in Plato and Plotinus. The system of mediation couldn’t be used by Augustme because for him the dualistic world-view seemed to be the adequate expression of Christianity. So this side of Augustine had to wait until hundreds of years of education of the barbaric tribes had been performed.
2) The emphasis in Aristotle on the importance of the individual gives a good basis for tendencies which are far from Augustine, who wanted the community of the Church.
3) Aristotle speaks about the middle way between the extremes. He denies anything like the erotic and ascetic ecstasies of Augustine. Again, it is a quasi-bourgeois attitude. The consequences of this later on became very outspoken in Protestantism.
4) Aristotle represents the special sciences, which deal with things in their rational and horizontal relationship. Augustine denies the possibility of such, or he denies their importance – what is important is the knowledge of God and the soul, but not of the natural things.
5) Aristotle is a logician. There is no special interest in logic in Augustine. The intuitive and voluntaristic character of his thinking made him disinterested in the abstractions of pure logic.
6) In some way this is the most important thing: Aristotle is an inductive thinker, he is an empiricist. He starts from the given reality in time and space and goes up from there to the highest abstractions. Augustine, following Plato, is an intuitive thinker: he starts from above and goes down to the empirical realities.
These two attitudes were due to clash in the moment in which Aristotle was rediscovered in the ancient world – in the 13th century, which for this reason is the greatest century of Christian theology, and which is completely determined by the tension between Aristotle and Augustine. This tension continues through all the following centuries, and if you want to put a label on me, call me an “Augustinian,” and in this sense, an anti-Aristotelian and an anti-Thomist, in the fundamental attitude of Augustine with respect to the philosophy of religion – not in many other things; for instance, as a gestalt theologian or philosopher I am much nearer to Aristotle than to Augustine or Plato, because the idea of the living structure of a living organism is Aristotelian, while the atomistic, mechanical, mathematical science is Augustinian-Platonic. So there are some exceptions, and we will have more of them in the Middle Ages. But if you want to have the basic line of thought, don’t forget what I told you here: After seven influences from the whole ancient world were mediated through the Middle Ages and to us, through Augustine, one of them was not (mediated): that for which Aristotle stands.
