The Augustinian Tradition

Gareth B. Matthews

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780520209992
• eBook ISBN: 9780520919587
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Philosophie politique

Augustine, probably the single thinker who did the most to Christianize the classical learning of ancient Greece and Rome, exerted a remarkable influence on medieval and modern thought, and he speaks forcefully and directly to twentieth-century readers as well. The most widely read of his writings today are, no doubt, his Confessions —the first significant autobiography in world literature—and The City of God. The preoccupations of those two works, like those of Augustine's less well-known writings, include self-examination, human motivation, dreams, skepticism, language, time, war, and history—topics that still fascinate and perplex us 1, 600 years later. The Augustinian Tradition, like a number of recent single-authored books, expresses a new interest among contemporary philosophers in interpreting Augustine freshly for readers today. These articles, most of them written expressly for the book, present Augustine's ideas in a way that respects their historical context and the long history of their influence. Yet the authors, among whom are some of the best philosophers writing in English today, make clear the relevance of Augustine's ideas to present-day debates in philosophy, literary studies, and the history of ideas and religion. Students and scholars will find that these essays provide impressive evidence of the persisting vitality of Augustine's thought.

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RECENT BOOKS ON AUGUSTINE
• CHRONOLOGY OF AUGUSTINE'S LIFE
• 1. Augustinian Christian Philosophy
• 2. Structure and Meaning in St. Augustine's Confessions
• 3. Augustine and the "Problem" of Time
• 4. Augustine and Dante on the Ascent of Love
• 5. Romancing the Good
• 6. Primal Sin
• 7. Inner-Life Ethics
• 8. On Being Morally Responsible in a Dream
• 9. Avoiding Sin:
• 10. Do We Have a Will?
• 11. The Emergence of the Logic of Will in Medieval Thought
• 12. Augustine and Descartes on Minds and Bodies
• 13. Disputing the Augustinian Legacy
• 14. Augustine, Kant, and the Moral Gap
• 15. Augustine and Rousseau
• 16. Wittgenstein and Augustine De magistro
• 17. Toward an Augustinian Liberalism
• 18. St. Augustine and the Just War Theory
• 19. Augustine's Philosophy of History
• 20. Plights of Embodied Soul
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX