Diverse Signs vs. Diverse Things

Alright, readers: I'm going to take a risk and post an incomplete thought. Not because I don't want to write it out, but because I haven't been able to put my finger on exactly what phenomenon I am looking at. So bear with me. I apologize if this post contains dispersed reasoning. Feel free to continue or argue with my reasoning in comments.

I noticed something that appeared on first sight to be a contradiction in Augustine's writing. Take, for instance, the following passage:

Some people have been struck by the enormous diversity of social practices and in a state of drowsiness, as I would put it – for they were neither sunk in the deep sleep of stupidity nor capable of staying awake to greet the light of wisdom – have concluded that justice has no absolute existence but that each race views its own practices as just. (Augustine, p. 79)

Augustine is clearly affirming absolute justice, regardless of social or cultural differences. In other places, he seems to be saying the opposite:

Likewise we must take care not to regard something in the Old Testament that is by the standards of its own time not wickedness or wrongdoing, even when understood literally and not figuratively, as capable of being transferred to the present time and our own lives. (Augustine, p. 81)

The confusion is resolved quite simply by realizing that society, as well as the signs it uses to communicate things, are only sings, and the things underneath - what is morally right - remain unchanged.

I find this particularly fascinating in an age when cultural, ethical and religious diversity are recognized and widely taught - Augustine recognized very similar patterns, and interpreted them in the opposite way.

When we observe cultural diversity, we might think that these differences are always a diversity of moral concepts, which is based on an assumption that we are internally very similar (? Maybe), with generally good motives (that all aspects of cultural behaviour are good). The effective result is that we assume people to have greatly varying understandings of justice, but that most everyone has good motives. When something seems wrong or evil, the cause lies in a difference in culture.

Inversely, Augustine assumes that justice is the same in every time and place, and concludes that the differences in our actions must be one of communication and of signs - an action might mean something different culturally and thus have different moral meaning. Here, the result is that we are more free to act in ways that may appear immoral, and simultaneously, must be more on guard about our actions which might seem externally to be moral, that they do not internally come from bad motives.



Perhaps the core difference is that we ascribe cultures with total reign over their ideas of justice, whereas Augustine considers justice the unshakable part, from which societies might stray - he does not insist that one culture is better than another, but he does imply that certain aspects of a culture itself might be 'bad'.