Augustine’s Philosophical Anthropology:

Immortality of Human Soul in a Composite Soul-Body

In The City of God, Saint Augustine presents Varro as his representative who holds his two-substance dualistic anthropology. He defines what constitutes a man to be a whole man. An individual human person is an essential body and soul composite. The soul apart from the body and vice-versa cannot be recognized as the whole man. The man has to have both the degenerative material body and the immortal soul together as a unity.[1] My goal in this paper is to show how Augustine used the Platonic tradition as his philosophical framework to harmonize and shape the Christian philosophical anthropology that is compatible with the teachings of the Christian Scriptures.

His works on philosophical anthropology show that he was under strong influence of Platonism, Neo-Platonist work of Plotinus and Porphyry. Frederick C. Copleston claims that Augustine used much of the neo-Platonic ideas while formulating the Christian world and life view.[2] Despite the fact that he had been a Platonist before his conversion to Christianity, his view on the soul seeks to reinterpret the Platonic and neo-Platonic view of the immortality of the soul.[3] For Augustine, the souls are created but immaterial substance simultaneously that bears the image of God. Continue reading Augustine’s Philosophical Anthropology: Immortality of Human Soul in a Composite Soul-Body →