Morality and Immortality

Perhaps the fundamental challenges to psychological equanimity are fear of death and sexual excitation. Aristotle's Ethics is among the prominent and influential responses to those challenges, i. e. his principle of Moderation. Augustinian Morality can be understood as a more radical solution, one that not merelys seek to establish self-control, but that explains the complete elimination of the cause of the problems, which, on his etiology, have a common root. That root is the Adamic fall from eternal life, which thereby introduces into human existence both death and sexuality, i. e. the need to reproduce in order to continue. His solution is, accordingly, the return of the individual soul to eternal life, possible only via divine Grace, and, hence, possible only beyond any human knowledge of a means to it. So, Augustine shares with Aristotle, and others, the ideal of psychological equanimity, which, on his analysis, is equivalent to the immortality of the soul.