Confessions (Confessiones) (c. 397–400)
Thirteen-book autobiography addressed to God, recounting his sinful youth and conversion, ending with reflections on memory, time and creation
Philosophy
Augustine of Hippo
AD 354–430 · Roman North African (born Thagaste, Numidia)
Christian Neoplatonism; Church Fathers (patristic philosophy)
Augustine, bishop of Hippo Regius in North Africa, was the most influential Christian thinker of late antiquity, fusing Neoplatonist philosophy with Christian theology. His Confessions pioneered spiritual autobiography and The City of God offered a Christian philosophy of history after the sack of Rome. His views on grace, original sin, free will, evil and time shaped medieval and Reformation thought.
How to spot them
- ▸Confessions (Confessiones); 'tolle, lege' ('take up and read'); the stolen pears
- ▸The City of God (De civitate Dei): the earthly city and the heavenly city
- ▸Mother St Monica; St Ambrose of Milan; former Manichaean; opponent of Pelagius
- ▸Evil as privation of good; 'Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet'
Key works
The City of God (De civitate Dei) (c. 413–426)
Written after the Visigoths' sack of Rome (410): defends Christianity and contrasts the earthly city with the city of God
On the Trinity (De Trinitate) (c. 400–420s)
Explores the Trinity through analogies in the human mind, such as memory, understanding and will
On Free Choice of the Will (De libero arbitrio) (c. 388–395)
Dialogue on the origin of evil, locating it in the misuse of free will
On Christian Doctrine (De doctrina christiana) (Begun c. 397, completed 426)
Handbook on interpreting and teaching Scripture, including a theory of signs
Key ideas
- Evil is not a substance but a privation (absence) of good (privatio boni), a view shaped by Neoplatonism against Manichaean dualism
- Original sin: all humanity inherits Adam's fallen condition, so salvation depends on God's unmerited grace, not human effort (against Pelagius)
- Two cities: the earthly city founded on love of self and the heavenly city founded on love of God
- Time: 'What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I do not know' (Confessions XI); past and future exist in the mind as memory and expectation
- 'Our heart is restless until it rests in you' (Confessions I.1): humans are made for God
- 'If I am mistaken, I exist' (si fallor, sum), an anticipation of Descartes' cogito; also a foundational theorist of just war
Quick-fire facts
- •Born at Thagaste (modern Souk Ahras, Algeria); bishop of Hippo Regius (modern Annaba) from c. 395/396 until his death
- •His mother was St Monica and his father Patricius; his son was named Adeodatus
- •He was a Manichaean for about nine years and taught rhetoric at Carthage, Rome and Milan
- •His conversion came in a garden in Milan in 386 when he heard a child's voice chanting 'tolle, lege' and read Romans 13
- •Baptised by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, at Easter 387
- •He died in 430 while Hippo was besieged by the Vandals
- •A Doctor of the Church, called the 'Doctor of Grace'; his feast day is 28 August
- •Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations opens with a passage from the Confessions on how a child learns language
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Saint Augustine
- Bertrand Russell — A History of Western Philosophy