Search Results

This chapter sets out the argument (or ‘way in’) that is fundamental to On Free Choice. Augustine’s ‘way in’ to the will is to call the concept itself into question: ‘Do we have a will?’, and the possibility of denying that we do is explored. The way ‘will’ is called into question instantiates a concept of freedom and responsibility. Moreover, it acts as a ‘starting point’ for the rest of the enquiry. Augustine’s argument is further explored by comparing it with similar arguments in the Confessions (7.3) and On the Trinity (10.10.14).

This chapter sets out Augustine’s theory of knowledge that is manifested and deployed in On Free Choice of the Will. Augustine’s epistemology provides the philosophical context for his ‘way in’, and the rationale for the structure of the dialogue. Its understanding and acquisition require the ability to see logical connections and attain a synoptic overview by proceeding in the right order from foundational starting points. The ‘way in’ argument is itself one of these starting points in the dialogue. The ideas of freedom and responsibility are illustrated and instantiated in the acquisition of knowledge: one is free not to know, not to want to know, and no one else can do your learning for you. Other texts where Augustine sets out, discusses, and uses this epistemology are discussed: the dialogue De Magistro and the Confessions.

This chapter discusses the thought of a Latin writer, Augustine. Augustine’s importance lies in the fact that his writings and interests stamp subsequent Western theology with a distinctive character. The West becomes Augustinian, either directly, when it seeks to develop the insights of the ‘Doctor of Grace’, or indirectly, when, trying to free itself from a dominant Augustinianism, it none the less concerns itself with the problems that engaged Augustine.

This chapter makes explicit the doctrine of creation which underlies the doctrine of the image of God through the analysis of the De uera religione, the Confessions, and the De Genesi ad litteram and of its difference from the doctrines of Plato, Plotinus, and Marius Victorinus. It follows a description of the doctrine of the image of God in the De Trinitate. Knowledge through love constitutes the inner dynamism of the image of God. The drive inscribed in us by creation is based on the incommensurable gap existing between the teleological character of our created nature and the absolutely transcendent, gracious, and in the end eschatological nature of this same God‐given goal. The image of God corresponds to our dependence on God not only for our existence, but for the possibility of our knowing and loving and reaching the fulfilment of that for which we were created. We reach our fulfilment when this dependence in being, knowledge, and love becomes conscious and is converted into worship, i.e. ac‐knowledged, thankful dependence.

Jean Sartre's fictional hero Roquentin believes that one cannot seriously take the task of writing one's life. For him, biography is an impossibility, a work of ‘pure imagination’ subjected to the biases of the writer and devoid of resemblance to the subject. In the early days, biographies served as testimony to the greatness a person. They served as models from which people could emulate the exemplary individual. Then, the essential thing was to tell a story based on external facts and on psychological plausibility. However, in the age of Rousseau's Confessions, it was argued that biographies were accounts of inner truths, and that self-revelation was only achieved by the person himself: ‘No man can write a man's life but himself’. Even in the days when new methods of understanding the life of a man were increasingly becoming available, biographies were often seen as suspect enterprises. They were often seen as approaches that obscure the proper comprehension of the literary process and as illusions of profound knowledge of the inner truth, when in fact biographers continue to approach biographies with misgivings. In spite of all the criticisms against biographies, they have remained of great interest. They reach out to a broad public as a literature in its own right and have played a vital role in the history of European culture. Biographies have served as an inspiration, as a celebration of the great personages of the nation, as an insight to the gender roles of the society, and so on.

This chapter talks about philosophical pictures of thinking. It details dualistic presuppositions and the metaphysically-motivated search for inner processes. Augustine's Confessions and their philosophical significance are discussed. The distinction between Augustine actually reflecting on his past versus the philosophical picture of Augustine introspecting/reflecting on his past is examined. Augustine in practice, being neither a proto-behaviourist nor a dualist, is talked about and the philosophical significance of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and on knowing one is e.g., in pain from one's own case, is discussed. It is argued that with regard to the constitution of the self, language is anything but an afterthought.

Compares Augustine's Commentary with the other Latin commentaries on Galatians from this period, chiefly with a view to tracing lines of influence, and uncovers a complex network of interconnections among them. An argument based largely on Augustine's Confessions and De Doctrina Christiana is put forward to show the strong likelihood that Augustine made use of Marius Victorinus’ Commentary when composing his own. Augustine's rejection of Jerome's interpretation of Galatians 2: 11–14 is explained, as is Jerome's rejection of Marius Victorinus’ interpretation of the same passage. Augustine's use of Ambrosiaster's Commentary is deemed highly probable but not demonstrable, as is Pelagius’ use of Augustine's Commentary. Parallels between Augustine's Commentary and that of the anonymous commentator discovered by H. J. Frede are judged insignificant.

Granted creation, there are two standpoints, that of God the creator, and the standpoint of the intelligent creation. The two standpoints, the eternal and the temporal standpoints, God's eternal immediate perspective, and our own, need to be kept in mind., and to be carefully distinguished. From our standpoint there was a time when God was not incarnate in Jesus Christ, but not from God's own standpoint. The distinction is illustrated from Augustine's treatment of time in Book XI of the Confessions. For him, from God's standpoint the universe is a B-series in the sense that no times are earlier than or later than any others for God. For the creature time is like an A-series, since indexicality is required to enable to us to found our ways through time and space.

This chapter examines Rousseau's Confessions as one of the first texts to use the story of a life as part of an attempt to establish a form of writing that sets itself up against an existing, largely social definition of literature, with the aim of proposing an alternative one. He opposes both the social world of letters (littérature) and a poetry in thrall to the rules of versification, to the elaboration of a language of sensation and experience that takes place in time. The mapping of literature onto an evolving life means also that the literary is involved in a constant process of revision.

This chapter examines the contests between Protestants and Catholics over the filial claims to Saint Augustine’s religious authority, as they played out in the competing translations of the Confessions into English in the 1620s. This was a constituent part of the battle that raged near the end of James I’s reign to establish religious orthodoxy and to maintain state control over it. The Confessions was not a useful polemical tool, but the chapter details the responsive confessional statements of one of its expert readers, John Donne. The two publications that framed his public life were Pseudo‐Martyr (1610) and Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624). In them, Donne challenged Augustine’s resolution of a spiritual crisis with a change of church. Donne complied, but only in respect of the body politic. He became an improbable literary spokesperson for the Protestant nation.

This chapter examines the contests between Protestants and Catholics over the filial claims to Saint Augustine’s religious authority, as they played out in the competing translations of the Confessions into English in the 1620s. This was a constituent part of the battle that raged near the end of James I’s reign to establish religious orthodoxy and to maintain state control over it. The Confessions was not a useful polemical tool, but the chapter details the responsive confessional statements of one of its expert readers, John Donne. The two publications that framed his public life were Pseudo-Martyr (1610) and Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624). In them, Donne challenged Augustine’s resolution of a spiritual crisis with a change of church. Donne complied, but only in respect of the body politic. He became an improbable literary spokesperson for the Protestant nation.

The 1783 publication of Rousseau's Confessions in English translation crystallizes contemporary debates about the nature and value of autobiographical writing. Reactions to the book oscillated between outrage and fascination, testifying to the strangeness of self-writing in this mode. In the terms of reception theory, the Confessions ruptured a ‘horizon of expectation’. It is argued that the (new) idea of ‘autobiography’ formed itself along this fault line, both as a set of expectations about the limits of self-writing and as a persistent transgression of those limits. Studying responses to Rousseau, the central issue is shown to be the problematic relationship between intimacy and publication.

This chapter explores how the theme of the ‘self’ as an autonomous and expressive agent — the ‘Romantic’ self — is produced in texts. A case study of sets of works by Elizabeth Gooch and William Henry Ireland demonstrates that autobiography invokes a self which resists or transcends the transactions in which it is enmeshed. In courtesan autobiographies and slave autobiographies, the rhetorical effects of expressive subjectivity are also set in opposition to the transactions that determine the self and its text. This idea is developed in readings of two of the master-texts of ‘Romantic’ subjectivity, De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Hazlitt's Liber Amoris.

This chapter opens with a discussion of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and explores the reasons why Puritans criticized the book as a violation of the closed canon. It considers the role of Puritan ministers as modern-day prophets, the etymology of canon and its philological solutions to the contradictions of Puritanism, the role of Puritan confessions in defining the canon, and the relationship between Puritans' providentialism and their views of the scriptural canon. It shows how important the closed canon was in shaping virtually every aspect of ministerial culture within New England Congregationalism.

The Confessions are one of Western literature's classics and one of Augustine's best known works. Here, Augustine provides a description about how he was converted to Christianity in AD 386. Even though these may have been written ten years after his conversion, the first nine Books describe some of the spectacles that were utilized when viewing various dramatic events. As such, several general books about Augustine usually refer to the Confessions when tracing his biography and to determine his way of thinking. This book, however, veers away from using these as a determining source as these can be misleading. In the Confessions, we see Augustine's version of his life after his conversion, a commentary on Genesis, and the six ways of creation. This book attempts to examine the cultural context that determined Augustine's thought and life. In this chapter, the focus is more on looking into the philosophical context of his life and works.

To move from Augustine's Confessions to the Old English ræd and rædan means encountering quite different conventions of culture, language, and literacy. This chapter suggests that it becomes easier to make this move if one recognizes that these words and their cognate forms in other Indo-European languages first denoted the act of giving counsel through speech. Meanwhile, the significance of rædan can be measured both by its complex etymology and by the range of its primary meanings, because together they establish that it denoted a variety of important functions within Anglo-Saxon culture.