The Second Sin: A Study of the Vice of Envy in the Thought of St. Augustine

Abstract

This dissertation examines the vice of envy in the thought of St. Augustine. Though much has been written on many aspects of Augustine’s moral theology, his theology of envy remains virtually unexplored in scholarship. This is surprising for several reasons: first because of the frequency with which Augustine writes about envy; second because of the way he links envy intrinsically with pride; and third because of the way he opposes it distinctively to charity, the virtue in terms of which he interprets the whole of Christian life. This study aims both to fill this lacuna in Augustinian scholarship and—in doing so—to contribute in a modest way to Catholic moral theology. The dissertation takes an integrated approach to this topic by exploring Augustine’s thought about envy across all the different genres, temporal periods, and polemical contexts of his writings. In particular the study focuses on envy’s relation to grief, pride, and charity—the three most significant moral contexts in which Augustine reflects on the nature of envy.This dissertation unfolds over four chapters. The first chapter lays the conceptual groundwork by inquiring into the meaning of invidia in Augustine’s writings. How does Augustine understand the nature and various forms of this vice? Which scriptural texts stimulate and norm his thinking about it? What does it mean for Augustine to refer to envy as a vice (vitium)? The second chapter extends this foundational work by exploring the nature of envy as a passion of grief. It does so by juxtaposing the Augustinian account of the passions and grief with that of Stoicism, a philosophy which not only informed Augustine’s own thought but in contrast with which he articulated his view of the passions in his City of God. The third chapter examines pride as the origin of envy. What, for Augustine, is the nature of pride? Why does he think that pride is the mother of envy? And why does envy always follow upon pride as the second sin? The fourth and final chapter explores charity as the antithesis and healing of envy. In several texts, Augustine suggests that envy represents a paradigmatic sin against the second greatest commandment: to love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:39). Why does Augustine think that envy is distinctive in its opposition to charity? What does the nature of this connection reveal about Augustine’s understanding of the two great commandments of love? And how is envy healed in the right ordo amoris? The conclusion recapitulates the major findings of this dissertation and suggests four trajectories for further study.This dissertation argues that invidia has three principal shades of meaning in Augustine’s writings, and that we occasionally see Augustine gesture toward a fourth suggestive but largely undeveloped possibility (invidere as non-videre). For Augustine, emotions are fundamentally expressions of will (voluntas), and expressions of will are, at root, movements of love (amor). This means that envy is most properly understood as a form of defective love. In striking contrast to the Stoics, who declared envy to be vicious because grief of all kinds was vicious, Augustine held envy to be a perversion of the grief which is indispensable to the life of wisdom in the present age of pilgrimage. Finally, I argue that envy is the second sin in Augustine’s moral theology. It is second in the sense that it always follows upon the first sin of pride and in the sense that it is the paradigmatic sin against the second greatest commandment: to love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:39).