溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Am I Shaped by What I Have Loved?
Between love turned toward myself and love toward what is beyond me, by which am I being built?
Two loves have built two cities.
Augustine's insight that "two loves build two cities" opened the question that a person is determined by what they love. As he had earlier likened love to weight, here he set love as the root that fixes a whole life's direction — we grow to resemble what we love. This placed not "what one knows" but "what one loves" at the center of being human. The Enlightenment, by contrast, set reason and knowledge at that center, seeking to define a person by what they know. Is it love or knowledge that makes a human; do we come to resemble what we love or what we know? The question still divides seeing love as the human root from seeing reason as the root.
In an age that easily measures a person by what they know, Augustine's question — that we are shaped by what we love — asks back what it is that makes us.
Augustine reads the history of humankind as a tale of two loves: love turned toward oneself alone, and love toward something greater than oneself.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Augustine reads the history of humankind as a tale of two loves: love turned toward oneself alone, and love toward something greater than oneself. These two loves build two kinds of life, two cities. For him a person is determined by what they love — love is the direction and the very material of who they are. I feel this question joins what we leave and love into one. What I leave at life's end is, in the end, the sum of what I loved across a lifetime. A life built by love for the self and a life built by love beyond the self leave different things. By what love am I building myself?
✍️Your Answer
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