Restless and Restive Hearts: Augustine on the Role of Emotions in this Life and the Next

MarthaNussbaum describes emotions as arising from our “neediness and lack of self-sufficiency.” They are eudaimonistic, occurring only in imperfect individuals pursuing the perfective good. Nussbaum observes this same understanding in Augustine’s account of affectivity.  In City of God, Augustine speaks of emotions – especially negative ones like grief and fear – as those which “belong to this life, not to the life we hope for in the future,” while simultaneously defending their moral significance, for responding rightly to good and evil. In this paper, I affirm Nussbaum’s understanding of Augustine’s treatment of earthly emotions, labeling them restless affectivity; then, I inquire about the possibility of emotion in the eschaton. Repeatedly, Augustine refers to love and joy as constitutive of eternal felicity. In contrast to the restless affectivity emerging from postlapsarian incompleteness, then, I propose another category of affectivity in Augustine’s account, that of restive affectivity, proceeding from fullness and completeness in grace.