Augustine argued that love of God as the highest good is the source of happiness, and he saw evil as a deficiency of the good, sexual ethics as pre- and post-fall, war as a just end, and political authority as a means of controlling human nature.

Augustine’s way of happiness

Augustine describes ethics as the inquiry into the highest good. The highest good is the good that sets the standard by which we should act, the good that is an end in itself, not a means to another end. When this highest good is reached, happiness is attained.
So what is happiness according to Augustine? For Augustine, happiness is what one loves, a love that includes all forms of need or desire. What we love is what we want, and we try to get it. In addition, Augustine argues that in order to be happy, what we truly love must be good. He emphasizes that the highest and most superior good is God, and goes beyond the views of previous pagan philosophers to say that true happiness can only be achieved when we meet God in the afterlife. Because we must love God, a being greater than ourselves, he argues that only the Christian faith guarantees every human being eternal happiness for both soul and body.
Augustine characterizes this happiness in terms of the biblical concept of beatitude. It refers to the state of happiness experienced by the virtuous person, in which a person’s needs and desires are completely fulfilled by being united with God. This idea of happiness in a virtuous person is derived from mental virtue, as argued by the Stoics. However, while the Stoics argued that human beings can approach happiness on their own through virtue alone, Augustine argued that human capabilities are insufficient and that happiness can only be reached through faith and acceptance of God.
Augustine believed that virtue could not be the highest good in itself. Virtue comes from the soul’s love of something beyond itself. Since the highest good is not subject to human will, it is God, and only God can be said to be the true good. That is why Augustine says, “Virtue is nothing other than the perfect love of God.”
By loving a God who is better and superior to us, we can approach God and eventually reach happiness. According to Augustine, God is a perfect, ever-present, perfect good, unlike the material world, which is created and destroyed. The way to happiness, Augustine suggests, is to know and love the perfectly good that we can love.
Augustine says that love for God takes four forms. “Temperance is the love that keeps itself wholesome and incorruptible for the sake of God. Courage is the love that is willing to risk everything for the sake of God. Justice is the love that serves only God and, in doing so, governs all others well. Prudence is the love that discerns well what helps and hinders us on our way to God.”
Augustine also believed that humans cannot love God if they do not love themselves, for those who move toward the highest and truest good will have a proper love of themselves along the way. Similarly, loving one’s neighbor as oneself involves caring for them so that they can pursue the highest good together. Love of God serves as a moral principle.

Augustine’s Vices

Augustine’s experience of vice begins with his growing up feeling sexual desire and indulging in it. These desires continued to disturb Augustine throughout his youth and Christian life. He found satisfaction in rising above these physical desires and attaining the tranquility of self and truth. Later, Augustine was introduced to Manichaeism, which taught that the universe is in conflict between darkness and light. This conflict is also seen within humans, where light seeks salvation and purification, and darkness is seen as devouring light through carnal desire. Sexual desire, in particular, was considered the most insidious of these desires, preventing light from emanating from the physical body and spreading to the heavens. Good and evil desires were seen as emanating from opposing souls and wills within humans. Manichaeism defined evil as an uneradicable force of an evil god that was originally inherent in the material world, and said that humans need not be held accountable for their evil deeds, because a darkness beyond their control compels them to do evil anyway. This dualism, however, left Augustine feeling that he had not fully answered the problem of evil. Augustine was further troubled by Manichaean doctrine, which defined light as a force for good but also viewed it as passive and powerless. To solve the problem of why evil exists when an omnipotent God rules the world, he saw good and evil as different material entities struggling with each other. God, as creator, was thought to have the will and power to uproot and nip evil in the bud, transforming it into good. The very existence of evil challenged the idea of God’s omnipotent power and presence.
Later, Augustine read some of Plotinus’ books. He adopted Plotinus’s view that evil is not an entity but a deficiency of good. Evil was understood as a loss or deficiency of the perfection or nature that natural things ought to have.
If evil exists as an entity, the problem arises that it can be blamed on God, the creator. In response, Augustine denied that evil is an entity that exists independently of God, arguing that God, the creator, originally created the world in goodness, but that the natural tendency of creatures to return to nothingness created a deficiency that led to the phenomenon of evil, so there is no reason to attribute responsibility for evil to God.

Augustine’s sexual ethics

Augustine follows the Christian tradition that physical sex between a man and a woman should only occur after marriage, and that its purpose should be procreation. However, while some Christians view marriage as a fall, Augustine sees it as part of God’s plan and a genuine good.
Augustine sees sexuality as a pre-fall and post-fall state. He believed that offspring are born out of companionship, not out of sexual pleasure. He believed that sexual union is not the result of sexual desire, but rather the result of the will acting on its own accord. He believed that these sexual acts are not completely free from greed, but neither are they driven by greed. He believed that human self-control can control the involuntary actions of the body, and argued that while humans after the Fall are unable to control their desires, humans before the Fall were able to do so sufficiently. Augustine says that there is no shame in the genitals or in sexual relations with them, but rather in the loss of personhood that men and women experience when they engage in sexual relations. This involuntary, lust-driven sex is what causes shame.
An understanding of sexuality after the Fall must begin with the shame that Adam and Eve felt. It wasn’t simply nakedness that Adam and Eve were trying to cover up; the genitals themselves didn’t do anything to cause shame at the time. What caused shame was that the sexual being was disobedient, that sex, which is supposed to follow the rational will, disregarded it and violated the order. This is not to say that any entity is evil in and of itself, but that the human soul is evil because it is disordered by a lack of capacity.
Augustine says that a socially respectable marriage, a Christian marriage, removes the shame that accompanies sexual intercourse. Marriage is honorable because it does not lead to evil but to good. He says of the good of marriage, “There are three kinds of good: first, the procreation of children, second, the confirmation of love, and third, the unity of the union.” Augustine describes these three goods as fertility, or the procreation of children, is the first; faith, fidelity, faithfulness, love, or the confirmation of love, is the second. Finally, vows or sacramental union. In particular, through the second line, Augustine expresses that marriage is a restraint or remedy for sin. This means that God created the institution of marriage to protect and control humanity in its fallen state. Augustine’s view of marriage as a remedy for sin is consistent with the Christian understanding of human life as predestined for redemption.

Augustine’s ethics of war

Augustine basically has a just war theory. He believed that war is evil, but that it is just when it is fought to prevent a greater evil. War, he said, is a means to pursue peace. The state should engage in war if it is necessary to defend itself and to punish grave injustice.
Augustine also gives war a religious authority. When faced with the question of war, it becomes a righteous war because it is commanded by God. Speaking of Moses through divine authority, he says of him, “In the wars waged by divine command, what he showed was not cruelty but submission.” Here, divine command seems to justify war.
Augustine speaks of the evils of war and focuses on punishing those evils. “In general, when force is required for punishment, good men may wage war, either out of obedience to God, or by some lawful authority,” he writes, suggesting that the violence that inevitably occurs in war is not done as a means of self-defense, but by lawful authority, and that it is done in an effort to punish.
Augustine viewed war as a form of religious instruction, with both a divine power and a judgmental enforcement perspective. War is righteous if it rebukes and humbles human pride and is conducted in submission to God. It was seen as a test of human endurance, a discipline of the soul, and a blessing. This perspective allows us to understand war as simply a spiritual correction of human attitudes, rather than as something we do to ourselves.
Augustine also makes it clear that “those who wage war on divine authority are not to be blamed, but those who know that God never asks for anything wrong.” Divine authority is what assures us that when we act righteously, our actions are justified.
He says that war is a sign of divine mercy because it destroys an evil that must be eradicated, is undertaken from good motives, and ensures that righteous governance takes place. For Augustine, the important point about righteous warfare is not whether the act is violent or not, but rather whether the inclinations and desires have a righteous internal order, a moral order that is maintained. If there is such a moral order, then that is the basis for justifying violence. This perception is close to the epistemological and ethical character of the New Testament.

Augustine’s political ethics

Augustine develops his political philosophy in a dualistic analytical framework, presenting the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. For him, the kingdom of God is the kingdom according to Christian teaching. On the other hand, the earthly “kingdom of man” is one that is tainted by human greed. In this light, Augustine says that political authority is inevitable. This is because humans are born with an evil nature and need politics to control it. Augustine describes politics as a relationship of domination and submission. He also argues that even good people who believe in God need proper control. This represents a realist view of politics.
Augustine’s treatment of love has a social aspect. In a world governed by eternal law, there may be authorities, husbands, parents, masters, rulers, etc., but they should not simply wield power, but should be loving caretakers of those under their command, even children and slaves. His eternal law is divine reason, or the divine will, which maintains the natural order and punishes those who disrupt it. Augustine believed that a person with an evil will could not keep the eternal laws of love of God and love of neighbor. In his approval of slavery, Augustine attempts to justify it by explaining the circumstances of the time. While Augustine did not explicitly condemn slavery for the sacrifices it caused, he did accept the protocols of war that justified its initiation and continuation. He was able to justify slavery because he saw it as a moral imperative or application of eternal law.
Augustine explains that people are bound by custom or law, and the general consent of society is submission to the ruler. Such a republic allows the ruler to unite the people, and the ruler becomes the center. Augustine recognized that political leaders used religion to deceive their subjects and to own them, but he saw it as an attempt to keep themselves honest in their dealings with others, especially in that they attempted to balance it out by repaying the people with appropriate behavior, a sort of social contract.
On the other hand, he draws on Cicero’s definition of a republic, arguing that ‘if a republic is the common good of the people, if it is derived from the people’s knowledge of justice, and from their sense of justice, then there can be no people, no community, and no republic unless justice is established. In this sense, he argues, Rome was already a republic. A country without justice cannot be a republic, even if it is a great empire. Justice here is interpreted Platonistically as justice itself, or the idea of justice, and that all temporal things must be judged to be just.
Augustine’s political ethics can be approached in a number of ways between Christian norms and political insights, understanding human sin and considering the relevance of Christianity to real life.