The robbery of the pears is one of the most talked about episodes of Confessions. At first glance it is banal: a theft of teenagers. Augustine devotes entire pages to it, and the reason is profound.
The episode
In book II, Augustine says that, as a young man, he stole pears from a neighboring orchard with a group of friends. The detail that torments him is this: he wasn't hungry, and the pears weren't even good. They threw them to the pigs. He didn't steal for the fruit, he stole for the sake of stealing. "I loved my own defect, not what caused the defect, but the defect itself."
Why is this a riddle
Almost every sin has an apparent reason: one steals out of necessity, one lies out of fear, one betrays out of desire. But here the case is pure. Augustine did not seek any good in the fruit; he seemed to seek evil for his own sake. And this, for a philosopher, is a scandal, because classical tradition said that everything you desire is desired as a good.
The answer: loving in the wrong order
The solution that Augustine finds is that even there there was a beloved thing out of place: complicity with friends, the emotion of transgressing, the pleasure of imitating a freedom that only God has. Sin is not love for nothing, it is disordered love: a real good, desired at the wrong time, in the wrong measure, against the greater good.
This is the seed of Augustine's answer to the problem of evil: evil is not a thing, it is the absence of a good due. Read the Confessions in full and understand where this intuition comes from.
In-depth study
Church History Course, with Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Bitencourt
In-depth reading of the work of Daniel Rops, where Augustine's conversion and the world that formed him appear in full.
Discover the courseFrequently asked questions
What is the theft of the pears in Confessions?
It's an episode from Book II in which young Augustine steals pears from an orchard with friends, without hunger and without wanting the fruit, just for the pleasure of doing what was forbidden. He throws them to the pigs.
Why does Augustine attach so much importance to a small theft?
Because the case is pure: he did not steal out of necessity or desire for the fruit, but out of a taste for evil itself. It is the enigma of gratuitous sin, and therefore the most revealing.
What does the episode teach about sin?
That sin is a beloved possession in the wrong order. No one wants evil as evil; wants a good (complicity, the emotion of the forbidden) out of its proper place.
Continue: Confessions: summary and analysis · Evil as the absence of good · Augustine's conversion (tolle, lege)
Source class (YouTube): Confissões, de Santo Agostinho (NousCast)