On The Augustine’s Conception Of History

The concept of history or the view of society and history is the general opinion on the history of human. It is a part of philosophy, but the origin of the philosophy is earlier than that of the concept of history. At the time of ancient Greek, the concept of history has not a form of philosophy, because the item of Greek philosophy is the theory on the origin of our world, and the Greek philosophy believe that the visible world is not eternal, so there is not philosophy of history. With the rise of Christianity,the contradiction of Christian doctrine and Greek philosophy becomes sharp, and the performance of the contradiction is the divergence of the God and origin,and the way of solving the contradiction is to change the conception of time of Greek philosophy,and we know that the change is finished by Augustine.The conception of time of Greek philosophy believes that the time is the reason of the change of our world,and deems that the time is being-in-itself. But Augustine deems that the change of our world is the reason of the time, and the time is the extension of mind. Then Augustine believes that the God created the time and our world, so the world of phenomenon is real, because it is from the God. Then we can say that the history of phenomenon is the object of philosophy.On the other hand, the extension of mind can make the free will of people into the philosophy, then the conception of history of Augustine is based on the theory of Free Will.Augustine claims the general outline of history in confession Vol.11,Chap 28, that is that the activity of human is a part of life, and the whole life is so, the life is a part of history, and the whole history is so.And then we will discuss the conception of history of Augustine in four aspects.The first is the theory of the origins of history, the second is the theory of the dynamic of history, the third is the theory of the structure of history, the last is the teleology of history. And we will find that the history is ethical because of the free will.The characteristic of the conception of history is that it believes the history develops in straight line, and it deems only the history of all the world is meaningful,and history is free, but also is predetermined. The last two is contradictory, so we can come out a core of humanity through the contradiction. That is the history is based on the limited freedom of people.Last we will discuss the influence of the conception of history of Augustine. And we will take it as the harbinger of the philosophy of history and the theology of history.