T. 1. Beim jungen Augustinus.--T. 2. Die antimanichäische Epoche.

Augustine on select metaphysical topics: hylomorphism vs. dualism, theories of God, angels.

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Where does the notion of free will come from? How and when did it develop, and what did that development involve? In Michael Frede's radically new account of the history of this idea, the notion of a free will emerged from powerful assumptions about the relation between divine providence, correctness of individual choice, and self-enslavement due to incorrect choice. Anchoring his discussion in Stoicism, Frede begins with Aristotle--who, he argues, had no notion of a free will--and ends with Augustine. Frede (...) shows that Augustine, far from originating the idea, derived most of his thinking about it from the Stoicism developed by Epictetus. (shrink)

[From the publisher] "Augustine and Roman Virtue" seeks to correct what the author sees as a fundamental misapprehension in medieval thought, a misapprehension that fuels further problems and misunderstandings in the historiography of philosophy. This misapprehension is the assumption that the development of certain themes associated with medieval philosophy is due, primarily if not exclusively, to extra-philosophical religious commitments rather than philosophical argumentation, referred to here as the ‘sacralization thesis'. Brian Harding explores this problem through a detailed reading of Augustine's (...) City of God as understood in a Latin context, that is, in dialogue with Latin writers such as Cicero, Livy, Sallust and Seneca. The book seeks to revise a common reading of Augustine's critique of ancient virtue by focusing on that dialogue, while showing that his attitude towards those authors is more sympathetic, and more critical, than one might expect. Harding argues that the criticisms rest on sympathy and that Augustine's critique of ancient virtue thinks through and develops certain trends noticeable in the major figures of Latin philosophy. (shrink)

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

Om det ondas problem i nyplatonism och fornkristen filosofi.

This paper argues that Augustine did not take the proof inSoliloquia2.22-4, which centers on the Aristotelian notion of ‘being in a subject’, from a single source but constructed it in a deliberately imperfect manner from several passages from Porphyry’s works on Aristotle’sCategoriesin order to supplement it with further arguments in Book Three. InDe immortalitate animaeAugustine explicitly discloses the weaknesses of the proof and repairs them by means of a Neoplatonic notion of causality.

Augustine is notorious for his claim that the so-called virtues of pagans are not genuine virtues at all. Bayle refers to this claim when he describes the sort of virtue that one ought to be willing to attribute to atheists.

This article explores the conception of self-knowledge in book 10 of Augustine’s De Trinitate. Augustine starts from the worry in Plato’s Meno that one cannot search for something entirely unknown and engages with Plotinus, Ennead 5.3 in developing his own understanding of the mind’s self-knowledge. He concludes that this knowledge is paradoxical in nature: it is necessary and, at the same time, futile; and it is separated from the knowledge of God. Augustine reaches this point by rejecting the Aristotelian identity (...) of the knower with the known, as well as by grounding self-knowledge in the fact of the mind’s intimate presence to itself. Ultimately, self-knowledge appears to be an ‘objectless’ knowledge, a knowledge that the mind exists rather than knowledge of what the mind is. (shrink)

“eyes are surer witnesses than ears,” says Heraclitus, deploying the term ‘witnesses’ metaphorically to steer us toward what we can see for ourselves, and away from depending literally on the witness of others.1 Much ancient epistemology leans the same way. The tendency from pre-Socratic times on is to distinguish between doxa and epistêmê, and to say that ordinary human testimony on its own can give us no more than doxa.2 Some ancient philosophers have what we might call ‘rationalist’ reasons for (...) not recognizing testimonially based knowledge: for them knowledge requires intellectual insight into some truth.3 Others have ‘empiricist’ reasons: for them, one’s knowledge must ultimately trace... (shrink)

This paper examines Augustine’s views on language, learning, and testimony in De Magistro. It is often held that, in De Magistro, Augustine is especially concerned with explanatory understanding (a complex cognitive state characterized by its synoptic nature and awareness of explanatory relations) and that he thinks testimony is deficient in imparting explanatory understanding. I argue against this view and give a clear analysis of the different kinds of cognitive state Augustine is concerned with and a careful examination of his arguments (...) concerning the deficiencies of testimony in producing these cognitive states. (shrink)

Students and scholars will find that these essays provide impressive evidence of the persisting vitality of Augustine's thought.

Augustine of Hippo strongly influenced western theology, but he has often been accused of over-emphasizing the unity of God to the detriment of the Trinity. In Augustine and the Trinity, Lewis Ayres offers a new treatment of this important figure, demonstrating how Augustine's writings offer one of the most sophisticated early theologies of the Trinity developed after the Council of Nicaea. Building on recent research, Ayres argues that Augustine was influenced by a wide variety of earlier Latin Christian traditions which (...) stressed the irreducibility of Father, Son and Spirit. Augustine combines these traditions with material from non-Christian Neoplatonists in a very personal synthesis. Ayres also argues that Augustine shaped a powerful account of Christian ascent toward understanding of, as well as participation in the divine life, one that begins in faith and models itself on Christ's humility. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Wisdom, happiness, and virtue Sin, evil, and theodicy Will and personal agency Reason, understanding, and belief Method in philosophical theology God Soul, mind, and memory.

This original analysis examines the three leading traditional solutions to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human free will--those arising from Boethius, from Ockham, and from Molina. Though all three solutions are rejected in their best-known forms, three new solutions are proposed, and Zagzebski concludes that divine foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom. The discussion includes the relation between the foreknowledge dilemma and problems about the nature of time and the causal relation; the logic of counterfactual conditionals; and the differences (...) between divine and human knowing states. An appendix introduces a new foreknowledge dilemma that purports to show that omniscient foreknowledge conflicts with deep intuitions about temporal asymmetry, quite apart from considerations of free will. Zagzebski shows that only a narrow range of solutions can handle this new dilemma. A compelling contribution to the field, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge will appeal to students and scholars of theistic philosophy and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

T. 1. Beim jungen Augustinus.--T. 2. Die antimanichäische Epoche.

This book is, along with Outward Signs, a sequel to Phillip Cary's Augustine and the Invention of the Inner Self. In this work, Cary traces the development of Augustine's epochal doctrine of grace, arguing that it does not represent a rejection of Platonism in favor of a more purely Christian point of view DL a turning from Plato to Paul, as it is often portrayed. Instead, Augustine reads Paul and other Biblical texts in light of his Christian Platonist inwardness, producing (...) a new concept of grace as an essentially inward gift. For Augustine, grace is needed first of all to heal the mind so it may see God, but then also to help the will turn away from lower goods to love God as its eternal Good. Eventually, over the course of Augustine's career, the scope of the soul's need for grace expands outward to include not only the inner vision of the intellect and the power of love but even the initial gift of faith. At every stage, Augustine insists that divine grace does not compromise or coerce the human will but frees, heals, and helps it, precisely because grace is not an external force but an inner gift of delight leading to true happiness. As his polemic against the Pelagians develops, however, he does attribute more to grace and less to the power of free will. In the end, it is God's choice which makes the ultimate difference between the saved and the damned, and we cannot know why he chooses to save one person and not another. From this Augustinian doctrine of divine choice or election stem the characteristic pastoral problems of predestination, especially in Protestantism. A more external, indeed Jewish, doctrine of election would be more Biblical, Cary suggests, and would result in a less anxious experience of grace. Along with its companion work, Outward Signs, this careful and insightful book breaks new ground in the study of Augustine's theology of grace and sacraments. (shrink)

Augustine and the Disciplines takes its cue from Augustine's theory of the liberal arts to explore the larger question of how the Bible became the focus of medieval culture in the West. Augustine himself became increasingly aware that an ambivalent attitude towards knowledge and learning was inherent in Christianity. By facing the intellectual challenge posed by this tension he arrived at a new theory of how to interpret the Bible correctly. The topics investigated here include: Augustine's changing relationship with the (...) 'disciplines', as he moved from an attempt at their Christianization to a radical reshaping of them within a Christian world-view ; the factors that prompted and facilitated his change of perspective; and the ways in which Augustine's evolving theory reflected contemporary trends in Christian pedagogy. (shrink)

Introduction, by R. A. Markus.--St. Augustine and Christian Platonism, by A. H. Armstrong.--Action and contemplation, by F. R. J. O'Connell.--St. Augustine on signs, by R. A. Markus.--The theory of signs in St. Augustine's De doctrina Christiana, by B. D. Jackson.--Si fallor, sum, by G. B. Matthews.--Augustine on speaking from memory, by G. B. Matthews.--The inner man, by G. B. Matthews.--On Augustine's concept of a person, by A. C. Lloyd.--Augustine on foreknowledge and free will, by W. L. Rowe.--Augustine on free will (...) and predestination, by J. M. Rist.--Time and contingency in St. Augustine, by R. Jordan.--Empiricism and Augustine's problems about time, by H. M. Lacey.--Political society, by P. R. L. Brown.--The development of Augustine's ideas on society before the Donatist controversy, by F. E. Cranz.--De Civitate Dei, XV, 2, and Augustine's idea of the Christian society, by F. E. Cranz.--Chronological table.--Note on further reading (p. [422]-423). (shrink)

It has been over a decade since the first edition of The Cambridge Companion to Augustine was published. In that time, reflection on Augustine's life and labors has continued to bear much fruit: significant new studies into major aspects of his thinking have appeared, as well as studies of his life and times and new translations of his work. This new edition of the Companion, which replaces the earlier volume, has eleven new chapters, revised versions of others, and a comprehensive (...) updated bibliography. It will furnish students and scholars of Augustine with a rich resource on a philosopher whose work continues to inspire discussion and debate. (shrink)

A Companion to Augustine presents a fresh collection of scholarship by leading academics with a new approach to contextualizing Augustine and his works within the multi-disciplinary field of Late Antiquity, showing Augustine as both a product of the cultural forces of his times and a cultural force in his own right. Discusses the life and works of Augustine within their full historical context, rather than privileging the theological context Presents Augustine’s life, works and leading ideas in the cultural context of (...) the late Roman world, providing a vibrant and engaging sense of Augustine in action in his own time and place Opens up a new phase of study on Augustine, sensitive to the many and varied perspectives of scholarship on late Roman culture State-of-the-art essays by leading academics in this field. (shrink)

This book argues that Augustine assimilated the Stoic theory of perception and mental language (lekta/dicibilia), and that this epistemology underlies his accounts of motivation, affectivity, therapy for the passions, and moral progress. Byers elucidates seminal passages which have long puzzled commentators, such as Confessions 8, City of God 9 and 14, Replies to Simplicianus 1, and obscure sections of the later ‘anti-Pelagian’ works. Tracking the Stoic terminology, Byers analyzes Augustine’s engagement with Cicero, Seneca, Ambrose, Jerome, Origen, and Philo of Alexandria, (...) demonstrating that Augustine appropriated Stoicism with greater sophistication than other religious writers. She also shows how he moved beyond the Stoics by enriching Stoic cognitivism with Platonic motivational theory, arguing that Augustine created a coherent synthesis. This newly discovered Augustinian moral psychology has elements that contemporary philosophers and psychologists have identified as important. (shrink)

The essays in this book, by a variety of leading Augustine scholars, examine not only Augustine's multifaceted philosophy and its relation to his epoch-making theology, but also his practice as a philosopher, as well as his relation to other philosophers both before and after him. Thus the collection shows that Augustine's philosophy remains an influence and a provocation in a wide variety of settings today.

The definitive reference work on Augustine that scholars, from all fields of theological study, describe as "superb" and "indispensable" for students, scholars, libraries, and anyone interested in studying Augustine. While the work provides exhaustive resources on Augustine's own life and his theological and pastoral work, it also provides an exceptional wealth of information about scholarship, past and present on the great theologian. Moreover, it documents the influence of Augustine on the Catholic Church, the Reformation and on great thinkers and theologians (...) such as Kierkegaard, Luther, Erasmus, and Calvin. Topics range from archeology to martyrdom, from imagination to Augustine's personal friends. (shrink)

Considering Augustine's political thought and ethics in relation to his theology, this book expands on earlier works by Augustine. It focuses on the role of grace and the Bible, which Augustine saw as contributing to the soul's growth in virtue, leading him to revise the ancient concepts of heroism and the statesman. The volume will be essential reading for scholars of Augustine, Christian theology, late Roman antiquity, the history of Western political thought, and political ethics.

"Rather than showing Augustine as supporting the Christian church's domination of politics, von Heyking argues that he held a subtler view of the relationship between religion and politics, one that preserves the independence of political life.

The result is a full and wide-ranging narrative account of St. Augustine's thinking on the human condition, justice, the State, slavery, private property and war. This comprehensive sourcebook will be of value to students of St. Augustine at all levels."--Jacket.

The main concern of this book is with those aspects of Augustine's thought which help to answer questions about the purpose of human society.

Augustine and his legacy have much to answer for, but these essays show that the body of his work also has much to offer as feminists explore, challenge, and reframe his thinking while forging new paradigms for construing gender, power, and ...

A 'self-refutation argument' is any argument which aims at showing that a certain thesis is self-refuting. This study was the first book-length treatment of ancient self-refutation and provides a unified account of what is distinctive in the ancient approach to the self-refutation argument, on the basis of close philological, logical and historical analysis of a variety of sources. It examines the logic, force and prospects of this original style of argumentation within the context of ancient philosophical debates, dispelling various misconceptions (...) concerning its nature and purpose and elucidating some important differences which exist both within the ancient approach to self-refutation and between that approach, as a whole, and some modern counterparts of it. In providing a comprehensive account of ancient self-refutation, the book advances our understanding of influential and debated texts and arguments from philosophers like Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, the Academic sceptics, the Pyrrhonists and Augustine. (shrink)