Kristina Razoumova-Augustine on Beauty

Augustine on Beauty: Confessions

Outside Reading

Written on 10/15/15

In Confessions Saint Augustine brushes on the idea of beauty. Within this the distinction of the body and the soul in relation to beauty becomes apparent. He writes,

“in consequence of an immoderate urge towards those things which are at the bottom end of the scale of good, we abandon the higher and supreme goods.” (30)

This quote shows Augustine’s view that the soul is superior to that of the body. Unlike Plato (mentioned in a previous blog) he is not so quick to shun the material world but he does admit that God (or the metaphysical) holds the ultimate Good.

Later he writes,

“For wherever the human soul turns itself, other than to you, it is fixed upon beautiful things external to you and external to itself, which would nevertheless be nothing if they did not have their being from you. Things rise and set: in their emerging they begin as it were to be and grow to perfection; having reached perfection, they grow old and die.” (61)

In agreement to Plotinus (mentioned in an earlier blog), he believes that physical beauty can distract an individual from the Good. So while the physical world is not evil, beauty is only found in the spiritual and finding beauty in material things is holding on to something that will not last. And thus, cannot be the true essence of beauty.


Confessions, Augustine, Oxford University Press, 2009 ed.