Philosophers Have Used Their Works

¶ … philosophers have used their works to help foster greater awareness within their readers of shortcomings or weakness of the human condition, or a need for change. St. Augustine, Dante Alighieri, and Miguel de Cervantes were three such writers, from different time periods and within different literary genres. In this essay, I will discuss how St. Augustine, within his Confessions, Dante within the Inferno, and Miguel de Cervantes, in Don Quixote, used their particular texts to suggest or promote either change, or greater awareness of human foibles and the human condition.

Augustine's Confessions is, first and foremost, a work of self-revelation. As such, it shows the vulnerability of its author, and in particular, it shows Augustine's strong and sincere desire to repent of and learn from his sins. It also implies the philosophy that, although weakness in the face of earthly temptation is inherent in the human condition, it is never too late to change, and to devote oneself to a righteous life in service to God. Moreover, Augustine uses himself, at the age of 43, when he first began to write his Confessions (after a licentious and otherwise misspent youth) as living evidence of that fact. Augustine's spiritual philosophy is that change toward the better is always possible within humankind, and that it is never too late. Such betterment of humanity, however, must begin within oneself. Confessions forms the cornerstone of the Catholic belief that, whatever one's stage in life or past sins, it is never too late to repent, and to seek forgiveness and redemption.

Augustine's humility toward God is shown by his willingness to give God credit for everything in his own life, good, bad, or neutral: his education; his experiences (even the ones he now regrets, so that he might come to know a better way), and indeed, for his very existence. In Book I of his Confessions, for example [Childhood], Augustine states:

for my sustenance and my delight I had woman's milk; yet it was not my mother or my nurses who stored their milk for me: it was Yourself, using them to give me the food of my infancy, according to Your ordinance and the riches set by You at every level of creation.

Since God is present within every human thought and action, suggests Augustine, if one looks deeply within, one will find the God in oneself.