Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

ST. AUGUSTINE’S CRITIQUE OF THE ADIAPHORA 179
cide was rooted in their absolutization of human freedom. But
it also proceeded from their general devaluation of the body and
the relegation of bodily existence to a morally irrelevant status.
In this particular context, Augustine does not elaborate upon the
immorality of suicide, or the reasons why it is inherently wrong.
Rather, he simply addresses the inconsistencies embedded in the
Stoic ideal of the happy life. “Is anyone so blind,” he asks, “as to
fail to see that if it were a happy life it would not be a life to seek
escape from?” 32
In response to such a contradictory claim, Augustine draws
the following conclusion:
The wise man, ought...to endure even death with a steadfastness,
but a death that comes to him from outside himself.
Whereas if he is compelled, as those philosophers say, to inflict
it on himself, they must surely admit that these are not only
evils, but intolerable evils, when they compel him to commit this
crime. 33
In Stoic terms, then, the truly wise man can be deemed
happy even in the face of abject misery. This position is justified
on two grounds: first, the attainment of virtue (along with the
condition of apatheia) is viewed as a means of buffering one
against the vicissitudes of earthly existence; secondly, physical
ills cannot be viewed as evil, precisely because they affect only
the bodily life.
Augustine, in fact, would strongly agree with the Stoics that
genuine happiness is based upon the quality of the inner life,
rather than one’s external situation or range of material possessions.
Indeed, his earliest writings exhibit a thorough commitment
to the Stoic notion that happiness must be based upon an
immutable good that can never be lost against one’s will. 34 But
by the time that he wrote the De Civitate Dei, Augustine had
developed a rather pragmatic moral theory that moved closer to
defining happiness in terms of the good of the whole person –
32
De Civitate Dei xix,4, 123-125: CC xlviii, 667.
33
De Civitate Dei xix,4, 166-170: CC xlviii, 668.
34
See n. 17, above.