Augustine of Hippo was perhaps the greatest Christian philosopher ofAntiquity and certainly the one who exerted the deepest and mostlasting influence. He is a saint of the Catholic Church, and hisauthority in theological matters was universally accepted in the LatinMiddle Ages and remained, in the Western Christian tradition,virtually uncontested till the nineteenth century. The impact of hisviews on sin, grace, freedom and sexuality on Western culture canhardly be overrated. These views, deeply at variance with the ancientphilosophical and cultural tradition, provoked however fiercecriticism in Augustine’s lifetime and have, again, beenvigorously opposed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries fromvarious (e.g., humanist, liberal, feminist) standpoints. Philosopherskeep however being fascinated by his often innovative ideas onlanguage, on skepticism and knowledge, on will and the emotions, onfreedom and determinism and on the structure of the human mind and,last but not least, by his way of doing philosophy, whichis—though of course committed to the truth of biblicalrevelation—surprisingly undogmatic and marked by a spirit ofrelentless inquiry. His most famous work, theConfessiones,is unique in the ancient literary tradition but greatly influenced themodern tradition of autobiography; it is an intriguing piece ofphilosophy from a first-person perspective. Because of his importancefor the philosophical tradition of the Middle Ages he is often listedas the first medieval philosopher. But even though he was born severaldecades after the emperor Constantine I had terminated theanti-Christian persecutions and, in his mature years, saw theanti-pagan and anti-heretic legislation of Theodosius I and his sons,which virtually made Catholic (i.e., Nicene) Christianity the officialreligion of the Roman Empire, Augustine did not live in a“medieval” Christian world. Pagan religious, cultural andsocial traditions were much alive in his congregation, as he oftendeplores in his sermons, and his own cultural outlook was, like thatof most of his learned upper-class contemporaries, shaped by theclassical Latin authors, poets and philosophers whom he studied in theschools of grammar and rhetoric long before he encountered the Bibleand Christian writers. Throughout his work he engages with pre- andnon-Christian philosophy, much of which he knew from firsthand.Platonism in particular remained a decisive ingredient of his thought.He is therefore best read as a Christian philosopher of late antiquityshaped by and in constant dialogue with the classical tradition.

Translations from Greek or Latin texts in this entry are by theauthor, unless otherwise stated. Biblical quotations are translatedfrom Augustine’s Latin version; these may differ from the Greekor Hebrew original and/or from the Latin Vulgate.

• 1. Life
• 2. Work
• 3. Augustine and Philosophy
• 4. The Philosophical Tradition; Augustine’s Platonism
• 5. Theory of Knowledge
  • 5.1 Skepticism and Certainty
  • 5.2 Illumination
  • 5.3 Faith and Reason
  • 5.4 Language and Signs
• 6. Anthropology: God and the Soul; Soul and Body
  • 6.1 Soul as a Created Being
  • 6.2 The Human Mind as an Image of God
• 7. Ethics
  • 7.1 Happiness
  • 7.2 Virtue
  • 7.3 Love
  • 7.4 Will and Freedom
  • 7.5 Will and Evil
  • 7.6 Grace, Predestination and Original Sin
• 8. History and Political Philosophy
• 9. Gender, Women, and Sexuality
• 10. Creation and Time
• 11. Legacy
• Bibliography
  • Editions
  • Translations
  • Commentaries
  • Reference Works
  • Introductory and General
  • Greek and Latin Authors Cited
  • Selected Secondary Literature
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Life

Augustine (Aurelius Augustinus) lived from 13 November 354 to 28August 430. He was born in Thagaste in Roman Africa (modern Souk Ahrasin Algeria). His mother Monnica (d. 388), a devout Christian, seems tohave exerted a deep but not wholly unambiguous influence on hisreligious development. His father Patricius (d. 372) was baptized onhis deathbed. Augustine himself was made a catechumen early in hislife. His studies of grammar and rhetoric in the provincial centers ofMadauros and Carthage, which strained the financial resources of hismiddle-class parents, were hoped to pave his way for a future careerin the higher imperial administration. In Carthage at the age of ca.18, he found a mistress with whom he lived in a monogamous union forca. 14 years and who bore him a son, Adeodatus, who was baptizedtogether with his father in Milan and died a little later (ca. 390)aged 18. Ca. 373 Augustine became a “hearer”(auditor) of Manicheism, a dualistic religion with Persianorigins that, in Northern Africa, had developed into a variety ofChristianity (and was persecuted by the state as a heresy). Hisadherence to Manicheism lasted for nine years and was strongly opposedby Monnica. Though probably active as a Manichean apologist andmissionary, he never became one of the sect’s“elect” (electi), who were committed toasceticism and sexual abstinence. In 383 he moved to Milan, then thecapital of the western half of the Empire, to become a publicly paidprofessor of rhetoric of the city and an official panegyrist at theImperial court. Here he sent away his mistress to free the way for anadvantageous marriage (a behavior presumably common for youngcareerists at that epoch). At Milan he underwent the influence ofBishop Ambrose (339–397), who taught him the allegorical methodof Scriptural exegesis, and of some Neoplatonically inclinedChristians who acquainted him with an understanding of Christianitythat was philosophically informed and, to Augustine, intellectuallymore satisfactory than Manicheism, from which he had already begun todistance himself. The ensuing period of uncertainty anddoubt—depicted in theConfessiones as a crisis in themedical sense—ended in summer 386, when Augustine converted toascetic Christianity and gave up both his chair of rhetoric and hisfurther career prospects. After a winter of philosophical leisure atthe rural estate of Cassiciacum near Milan, Augustine was baptized byAmbrose at Easter 387 and returned to Africa, accompanied by his son,some friends and his mother, who died on the journey (Ostia, 388). In391 he was, apparently against his will, ordained a priest in thediocese of the maritime city of Hippo Regius (modern Annaba/Bônein Algeria). About five years later (ca. 396) he succeeded the localbishop. This ecclesiastical function involved new pastoral, political,administrative and juridical duties, and his responsibility for andexperiences with an ordinary Christian congregation may havecontributed to modify his views on grace and original sin (Brown 2000:ch. 15). But his rhetorical skills equipped him well for his dailypreaching and for religious disputes. Throughout his life as a bishophe was involved in religious controversies with Manicheans, Donatists,Pelagians and, to a lesser extent, pagans. Most of the numerous booksand letters he wrote in that period were part of these controversiesor at least inspired by them, and even those that were not (e.g.,De Genesi ad litteram,De trinitate) combinephilosophical or theological teaching with rhetorical persuasion(Tornau 2006a). Polemics against his former co-religionists, theManicheans, loom large in his work until about 400; the debate withthem helped to shape his ideas on the non-substantiality of evil andon human responsibility (Kudella 2022). The Donatist schism had itsroots in the last great persecution at the beginning of the fourthcentury. The Donatists saw themselves as the legitimate successors ofthose who had remained steadfast during the persecution and claimed torepresent the African tradition of a Christian “church of thepure”. Since 405 the Donatists were subsumed under the imperiallaws against heresy and forced to re-enter the Catholic church bylegal means; these measures were intensified after a conference atCarthage (411) had marked the official end of Donatism in Africa(Lancel & Alexander 1996–2002; Dupont, Gaumer &Lamberigts 2015). By way of his assiduous writing against theDonatists, Augustine sharpened his ecclesiological ideas and developeda theory of religious coercion based on an intentionalistunderstanding of Christian love. Pelagianism (named after the Britishascetic Pelagius) was a movement Augustine became aware of around 412.He and his African fellow-bishops managed to get it condemned as aheresy in 418. While not denying the importance of divine grace,Pelagius and his followers insisted that the human being was by naturefree and able not to sin (possibilitas). Against this view,Augustine vigorously defended his doctrine of the human being’sradical dependence on grace, a conviction already voiced in theConfessiones but refined and hardened during the controversy.The last decade of Augustine’s life is marked by a vitriolicdebate with the Pelagianist ex-bishop Julian of Aeclanum who accusedAugustine of crypto-Manicheism and of denying free will whileAugustine blamed him and the Pelagianists for evacuatingChrist’s sacrifice by denying original sin (Drecoll2012–2018; Lamberigts 2014). Controversy with pagantraditionalists seems to have reached a peak after 400, when Augustinerefuted a series of objections against Christianity apparentlyextracted from Porphyry’s treatiseAgainst theChristians (Letter 102; Bochet 2011), and after 410,when the city of Rome had been sacked by Alaric and his Goths. TheCity of God, Augustine’s great apology, was prompted bythis symbolic event, though it is by no means just a response to paganpolemics. Though his mother’s name may suggest a Berber or Punicorigin, there is little in Augustine’s work to indicate anAfrican rather than a Roman identity (but see van Oort 2023; on thepresence of Punic in Roman North Africa, Jongeling 2004–2010).There was however a tradition of distinctly African Christianity, ofwhich he was both a part and whose Donatist variety he fiercelycombated (Wilhite 2017: 240–263). Augustine’s life endedwhen the Vandals besieged Hippo; he is said to have died with a wordof Plotinus on his lips (Possidius,Vita Augustini 28.11,after Plotinus,Enneads I 4.7.23–24).

2. Work

Augustine’s literary output surpasses the preserved work ofalmost all other ancient writers in quantity. In theRetractationes (“Revisions”, a critical survey ofhis writings in chronological order down to 428 CE) he suggests athreefold division of his work into books, letters and sermons(Retractationes 1, prologue 1); about 100 books, 300 letters,and 600 sermons have survived. Augustine’s literary career afterhis conversion began with philosophical dialogues. The first of these,written in Cassiciacum in 386/7, deal with traditional topics such asskepticism (Contra Academicos), happiness (De beatavita), providence and evil (De ordine) and theimmortality of the soul (Soliloquia, De immortalitateanimae). Augustine continued to pursue these issues in dialogueson the immateriality of the soul (De quantitate animae, 388),language and learning (De magistro, 388–391), freedomof choice and human responsibility (De libero arbitrio, begunin 388 and completed perhaps as late as 395) and the numeric structureof reality (De musica, 388–390). The treatiseDevera religione (389–391) is a kind of summa ofAugustine’s early Christian philosophy. After the start of hisecclesiastical career he abandoned the dialogue form, perhaps becausehe realized its elitist and potentially misleading character (G. Clark2009; Catapano 2013; on the pedagogy and philosophical method of thedialogues, Kenyon 2018). Of the works from his priesthood andepiscopate, many are controversial writings against the Manicheans(e.g.,Contra Faustum Manichaeum, around 400), the Donatists(e.g.,Contra litteras Petiliani, 401–405;Debaptismo, 404) and the Pelagians (e.g.,De spiritu etlittera, 412;Contra Iulianum, 422;De gratia etlibero arbitrio, 424–427; and his last and unfinished workContra Iulianum opus imperfectum, which preserves asubstantial portion of the otherwise lost treatiseAd Florumby his Pelagian adversary Julian of Aeclanum; V. Müller 2022).Among the philosophically most interesting of these works areDeutilitate credendi (391–392, a defense of faith/beliefagainst Manichean rationalism),De natura boni (399, aconcise anti-Manichean argument for the doctrine that evil is aprivation of goodness rather than an independent substance),Denatura et gratia (413–417, a reply to Pelagius’treatiseDe natura) andDe correptione et gratia(426/427, refuting a Christian version of the Stoic ‘LazyArgument’ that had been put forward against Augustine’sdoctrine of grace). Augustine is however most famous for the five longtreatises with a wider scope he composed between 396 and 426. TheConfessiones (ca. 396–400; Toom 2020), probably hismost original work, is “philosophy in autobiography” (Mann2014) rather than an autobiography in a modern sense. It shows how anindividual life—Augustine’s own—is made sense of byGod’s providence and grace as well as by his creation andeconomy of salvation.De doctrina christiana (begun in 396/7but completed only in 426/7) is a handbook of biblical hermeneuticsand Christian rhetoric; it delineates the semiotic dichotomy of“things” (res) and—especiallylinguistic—“signs” (signa) and criticallyassesses the importance of the classical disciplines for the biblicalexegete.De trinitate (begun in 399 and completed in 419 orperhaps as late as 426) has impressed modern philosophical readers byits probing analyses of the human mind as an “image” ofthe Divine Trinity.De Genesi ad litteram (401/2–416)is an attempt at winning a philosophically justifiable cosmology fromthe opening chapters of Genesis. Here as in most of Augustine’sworks philosophy is inseparable from biblical exegesis. The monumentalapologetic treatiseDe civitate dei (begun in 412, two yearsafter the sack of Rome, and completed in 426; Meconi 2021) argues thathappiness can be found neither in the Roman nor the philosophicaltradition but only through membership in the city of God whose founderis Christ. Among many other things, it has interesting reflections onthe secular state and on the Christian’s life in a secularsociety. The sermons document Augustine’s ability to adaptcomplex ideas to a large and not overly learned audience. Two longseries on the Psalms (Enarrationes in Psalmos, ca.392–422) and the Gospel of John (In Iohannis evangeliumtractatus, ca. 406–420) stand out; a series of sermons onthe First Letter of John (In epistulam Iohannis ad Parthostractatus decem, 407) is Augustine’s most sustaineddiscussion of Christian love. The letters are not personal or intimatedocuments but public writings that are part of Augustine’steaching and of his ecclesiastical politics. Some of them reach thelength of full treatises and offer excellent philosophical discussions(Letter 155 on virtue;Letter 120 on faith andreason;Letter 147 on the “seeing” of God).

3. Augustine and Philosophy

From ancient thought Augustine inherited the notion that philosophy is“love of wisdom” (Confessiones 3.8;Decivitate dei 8.1), i.e., an attempt to pursue happiness—or,as late-antique thinkers, both pagan and Christian, liked to put it,salvation—by seeking insight into the true nature of things andliving accordingly. This kind of philosophy he emphatically endorses,especially in his early work (cf., e.g.,Contra Academicos1.1). He is convinced that the true philosopher is a lover of Godbecause true wisdom is, in the last resort, identical with God, apoint on which he feels in agreement with both Paul (1 Corinthians1:24) and Plato (cf.De civitate dei 8.8). This is why hethinks that Christianity is “the true philosophy”(Contra Iulianum 4.72; the view is common among ancient,especially Greek, Christian thinkers) and that true philosophy andtrue (cultic) religion are identical (De vera religione 8).In case of doubt, practice takes precedence over theory: in theCassiciacum dialogues Monnica, who represents the saintly butuneducated, is credited with a philosophy of her own (Deordine 1.31–32; 2.45). At the same time, Augustine sharplycriticizes the “philosophy of this world” censured in theNew Testament that distracts from Christ (Colossians 2:8). In hisearly work he usually limits this verdict to the Hellenisticmaterialist systems (Contra Academicos 3.42;Deordine 1.32); later he extends it even to Platonism because thelatter denies the possibility of a history of salvation (Decivitate dei 12.14). The main error he faults the philosopherswith is arrogance or pride (superbia), a reproach that doesnot weigh lightly given that arrogance is, in Augustine’s view,the root of all sins. Out of arrogance the philosophers presume to beable to reach happiness through their own virtue (De civitatedei 19.4, a criticism primarily directed against the Stoics), andeven those among them who have gained insight into the true nature ofGod and his Word (i.e., the Platonists) are incapable of“returning” to their divine “homeland” becausethey proudly reject the mediation of Christ incarnate and resort toproud and malevolent demons instead, i.e., to the traditional pagancults and to theurgy (Confessiones 7.27;In evangeliumIohannis tractatus 2.2–4;De civitate dei10.24–29; Madec 1989). In his first works Augustine epitomizeshis own philosophical program with the phrase “to know God andthe soul” (Soliloquia 1.7;De ordine 2.47) andpromises to pursue it with the means provided by Platonic philosophyas long as these are not in conflict with the authority of biblicalrevelation (Contra Academicos 3.43). He thereby restates theold philosophical questions about the true nature of the human beingand about the first principle of reality, and he adumbrates the keyNeoplatonic idea that knowledge of our true self entails knowledge ofour divine origin and will enable us to return to it (cf. Plotinus,Enneads VI.9.7.33–34). While these remain the basiccharacteristics of Augustine’s philosophy throughout his career,they are considerably differentiated and modified as his engagementwith biblical thought intensifies and the notions of creation, sin andgrace acquire greater significance. Augustine is entirely unaware ofthe medieval and modern distinction of “philosophy” and“theology”; both are inextricably intertwined in histhought, and it is unadvisable to try to disentangle them by focusingexclusively on elements that are deemed “philosophical”from a modern point of view.

4. The Philosophical Tradition; Augustine’s Platonism

Augustine tells us that at the age of eighteen Cicero’s (nowlost) protreptic dialogueHortensius enflamed him forphilosophy (Confessiones 3.7), that as a young man he readAristotle’sCategories (ib. 4.28) and that hisconversion was greatly furthered by his Neoplatonic readings (ib.7.13) as well as by the letters of Paul (ib. 7.27;ContraAcademicos 2.5). He is more reticent about Manichean texts, ofwhich he must have known a great deal (van Oort 2012). From the 390sonwards the Bible becomes decisive for his thought, in particularGenesis, the Psalms and the Pauline and Johannine writings (eventhough his exegesis remains philosophically impregnated), and hismature doctrine of grace seems to have grown from a fresh reading ofPaul ca. 395 (see7.6 Grace, Predestination and Original Sin).

The most lasting philosophical influence on Augustine is Neoplatonism.He does not specify the authors and the exact subjects of the“books of the Platonists” (Confessiones 7.13)translated into Latin by the fourth century Christian NeoplatonistMarius Victorinus (ib. 8.3) he read in 386. In the twentieth centurythere was an ongoing and sometimes heated debate on whether toprivilege Plotinus (who is mentioned inDe beata vita 4) orPorphyry (who is named first inDe consensu evangelistarum1.23 ca. 400) as the main Neoplatonic influence on Augustine (forsummaries of the debate see O’Donnell 1992: II 421–424;Kany 2007: 50–61). Today most scholars accept the compromisethat the “books of the Platonists” comprised sometreatises of Plotinus (e.g.,Enneads I.6, I.2, V.1,VI.4–5) and a selection from Porphyry (Sententiae and,perhaps,Symmikta Zetemata). In any event, the importance ofthis problem should not be overrated because Augustine seems to havecontinued his Neoplatonic readings after 386. Around 400 he hadPorphyry’sPhilosophy from the Oracles at his disposal;inDe civitate dei 10 (ca. 417; DeMarco 2021) he quotes fromhisLetter to Anebo and from an otherwise unattested anagogictreatise titled, in the translation used by Augustine,De regressuanimae, the influence of which some have suspected already inAugustine’s earliest works. For the philosophy of mind in thesecond half ofDe trinitate he may have turned to Neoplatonictexts on psychology. While the exact sources of Augustine’sNeoplatonism elude us, source criticism has been able to determinesome pervasive features of his thought that are doubtlesslyNeoplatonic in origin: the transcendence and immateriality of God; thesuperiority of the unchangeable over the changeable (cf. Plato,Timaeus 28d); the ontological hierarchy of God, soul and body(Letter 18.2); the incorporeality and immortality of thesoul; the dichotomy of the intelligible and the sensible realms(attributed to Plato inContra Academicos 3.37); thenon-spatial omnipresence of the intelligible in the sensible(Confessiones 1.2–4;Letter 137.4) and thecausal presence of God in his creation (De immortalitateanimae 14–15;De Genesi ad litteram 4.12.22); theexistence of intelligible (Platonic) Forms that are located in themind of God and work as paradigms of the sensible things (Dediversis quaestionibus 46); the inwardness of the intelligibleand the idea that we find God and Truth by turning inwards (Devera religione 72); the doctrine of evil as lack or privation ofgoodness; the understanding of the soul’s love of God as aquasi-erotic desire for true beauty (Confessiones 10.38; cf.Rist 1994: 155). A distinctly Platonic element is the notion ofintellectual or spiritual ascent. Augustine thinks that by turninginwards and upwards from bodies to soul (i.e., from knowledge ofobjects to self-knowledge) and from the sensible to the intelligiblewe will finally be able to transcend ourselves and get in touch withthe supreme being that is none other than God and Truth and that ismore internal to us than our innermost self (Confessiones3.11; MacDonald 2014: 22–26; Augustine’s biblical prooftext is Romans 1:20, quoted, e.g., ib. 7.16). Ascents of this kind areubiquitous in Augustine’s work (e.g.,De liberoarbitrio 2.7–39;Confessiones 10.8–38;De trinitate 8–15). Whether the condensed versions intheConfessiones (7.16; 7.23; 9.24–26) should be readas reports of mystical experiences is difficult to determine (Kenney2005). An early version of the Augustinian ascent is theproject—outlined inDe ordine (2.24–52) but soonabandoned and virtually retracted inDe doctrinachristiana—of turning the mind to the intelligible and toGod by means of a cursus in the liberal (especially mathematical)disciplines (Pollmann & Vessey 2005; Kenyon 2018: 101–140).It is remotely inspired by Plato’sRepublic and mayhave had a Neoplatonic precedent (Hadot 2005), though use ofVarro’s work on the disciplines cannot be excluded (Shanzer2005). As late asDe civitate dei 8 (ca. 417) he grants, in abrief doxography organized according to the traditional fields ofphysics, ethics and epistemology, that Platonism and Christianityshare some basic philosophical insights, viz. that God is the firstprinciple, that he is the supreme good and that he is the criterion ofknowledge (De civitate dei 8.5–8; cf. alreadyDevera religione 3–7). In spite of these important insights,Platonism cannot however lead to salvation because it is unable orunwilling to accept the mediation of Christ. It is, therefore, alsophilosophically defective (De civitate dei 10.32).

Cicero is Augustine’s main source for the Hellenisticphilosophies, notably Academic skepticism and Stoicism. As a part ofhis cultural heritage, Augustine quotes him and the other Latinclassics as it suits his argumentative purposes (Hagendahl 1967). Hisearly ideal of the sage who is independent of all goods that one canlose against one’s will is inherited from Stoic ethics (Debeata vita 11;De moribus 1.5; Wetzel 1992:42–55). Though the implication that the sage’s virtueguarantees his happiness already in this life is later rejected asillusory (De trinitate 13.10;De civitate dei 19.4;Retractationes 1.2; Wolterstorff 2012), the Christian martyrcan be styled in the manner of the Stoic sage whose happiness isimmune to torture (Letter 155.16; Tornau 2015: 278).Augustine’s “inner-life” ethics of love has someStoic overtones and may partly have been inspired by Seneca’sversion of Stoic intentionalism (Tornau 2023). Augustine’sManichean past was constantly on his mind, as his incessant polemicsshows; its precise impact on his thought is however difficult toassess (van Oort (ed.) 2013; Fuhrer 2013; BeDuhn 2010 and 2013; vanOort 2020). The claim of Julian of Aeclanum that with his doctrine ofpredestination and grace Augustine had fallen back into Manicheandualism has appealed to some modern critics, but Julian must ignoreessential features of Augustine’s thought (e.g., the notion ofevil asprivatio boni) to make his claim plausible(Lamberigts 2001).

5. Theory of Knowledge

5.1 Skepticism and Certainty

Augustine’s earliest surviving work is a dialogue on Academicskepticism (Contra Academicos orDe Academicis, 386;Fuhrer 1997; Foley 2019/2020: vol. 1). He wrote it at the beginning ofhis career as a Christian philosopher in order to save himself and hisreaders from the “despair” that would have resulted if itcould not be proven that, against the skeptic challenge, truth isattainable and knowledge and wisdom possible (cf.Retractationes 1.1.1). The sense of despair must have beenvery real to him when, after having broken with Manicheism but stillbeing unable to see the truth of Catholic Christianity, he decided to“withhold assent until some certainty lighted up”(Confessiones 5.25). His information about skepticism doesnot come from a contemporary skeptic “school”, whichhardly existed, but from Cicero’sAcademica andHortensius. Much of the discussion inContraAcademicos is thus devoted to the debate between HellenisticStoics and skeptics about the so-called “grasping” orkataleptic appearance, i.e., the problem whether there are appearancesabout the truth of which one cannot be mistaken because they areevident by themselves (Bermon 2001: 105–191; Dutton 2016).Unlike the original Stoics and Academics, Augustine limits thediscussion to sense impressions because he wants to present Platonismas a solution to the skeptic problem and to point out a source of trueknowledge unavailable to the Hellenistic materialists.

Unlike modern anti-skeptical lines of argumentation, Augustine’srefutation of skepticism does not aim at justifying our ordinarypractices and beliefs. To refute the Academic claim that, since thewise person can never be sure whether she has grasped the truth, shewill consistently withhold assent in order not to succumb to emptyopinion, he thinks it sufficient to demonstrate the existence of somekind of knowledge that is immune to skeptical doubt. His strategytherefore consists in pointing out 1) the certainty ofself-referential knowledge (the wise person “knowswisdom”,Contra Academicos 3.6; the Academic skeptic“knows” the Stoic criterion of truth, ib. 3.18–21);2) the certainty of private or subjective knowledge (I am certain thatsomethingappears whiteto me even if I am ignorantwhether it is really white, ib. 3.26); 3) the certainty of formal,logical or mathematical, structures (ib. 3.24–29), knowledge ofwhich is possible independently of the mental state of the knower,whereas the reliability of sense impressions differs according as weare awake or dreaming, sane or insane. Modern critics have not beenvery impressed by these arguments (e.g., Kirwan 1989: 15–34; fora defense, see Nawar 2019), and an ancient skeptic would rightly haveobjected that being limited to subjective or formal knowledge, theycould not justify the dogmatists’ claim to objective knowledgeof reality (cf. Sextus Empiricus,Outlines of Pyrrhonism1.13). Yet this is not Augustine’s point. To him it matters tohave shown that even if maximal concessions are made to skepticismconcerning the unknowability of the external world attainable by thesenses, there remains an internal area of cognition that allows forand even guarantees certainty. This is whyContra Academicosends with a sketch of Platonic epistemology and ontology and with anidiosyncratic if not wholly unparalleled reconstruction of the historyof the Academy according to which the Academics were in factcrypto-Platonists who hid their insight into transcendent reality andrestricted themselves to skeptical arguments to combat the materialistand sensualist schools dominant in Hellenistic times until authenticPlatonism emerged again with Plotinus (Contra Academicos3.37–43; the story is still told inLetter 118 of 410,where the renaissance of Platonism is however connected with the riseof Christianity). The only realities that meet the Hellenisticcriterion of truth and guarantee absolute certainty by beingself-evident are the Platonic Forms (Contra Academicos 3.39;cf.De diversis quaestionibus 9; Cary 2008a: 55–60).The “objects” of knowledge that appear inAugustine’s anti-skeptical arguments thus either are thePlatonic Forms themselves or at least point out the way of accessingthem. This squares with the early Augustine’s tendency tointerpret the Forms, or at any rate the most basic among them, as“numbers”, i.e., as the formal and normative structuresand standards that govern all reality and enable us to understand andevaluate it (De ordine 2.14; 16;De musica6.57–58; O’Daly 1987: 101–102; Kenyon 2018:38–44; see also5.2 Illumination). Strictly speaking, Augustine’s anti-skeptical arguments do notjustify the claim that knowledge can be derived from the senses;having sensible and mutable objects, they cannot but yield opinion or,at best, true belief. The later Augustine, in a more generous way ofspeaking, widens the term “knowledge” (scientia,to be distinguished from “wisdom”,sapientia) soas to include what we learn through sense perception and from reliablewitnesses (De trinitate 15.21; cf.De civitate dei8.7;Retractationes 1.14.3; Siebert 2018; see5.3 Faith and Reason).

Augustine’s most famous anti-skeptical argument is what iscommonly called his “cogito-like” argument because it issimilar to (and probably inspired) the Cogito of Descartes (Matthews1992; Menn 1998; Fuchs 2010). Like Descartes’, Augustine’scogito establishes an area immune to skeptical doubt by inferring frommy awareness of my own existence the truth of the proposition “Iexist”. Even if I were in error in uttering this proposition, itwould still be true that I, who am in error, exist (De civitatedei 11.26:si enim fallor, sum; for the exactreconstruction of this argument cf. Horn 1995: 81–87; Matthews2005: 34–42). The argument does not yet appear inContraAcademicos but is easily recognized as a development of theargument from subjective knowledge (Contra Academicos 3.26);Augustine considers it a valid refutation of skepticism from hisearliest (De beata vita 7) to his latest works (Detrinitate 15.21; for further attestations seeSoliloquia2.1;De duabus animabus 13;De libero arbitrio 2.7;De vera religione 73;Confessiones 7.5; 13.12). Thescope of the argument in Augustine is both wider and narrower than inDescartes. The Augustinian cogito lacks the systematic importance ofits Cartesian counterpart; there is no attempt to found a coherent andcomprehensive philosophy on it. On some occasions, however, it worksas a starting point for the Augustinian ascent to God (De liberoarbitrio 2.7, where the ascent leads to an understanding of Godas immutable truth and wisdom; for a condensed version, cf.Devera religione 72–73, where Augustine even makessupra-rational Truth the source and criterion of the truth of thecogito itself). The most impressive example is the second half ofDe trinitate. Here the attempt to reach a rationalunderstanding of the mystery of the Trinity by means of an inquiryinto the structure of the human mind starts with an analysis of themind’s inalienable self-love and self-awareness (see6.2 The Human Mind as an Image of God; Augustine does not, however, claim that the mind’s certaintyabout itself entails a similar certainty about the nature of God).Augustine’s cogito argument is not limited to epistemology butcan also be employed in an ethical context because it proves not onlymy existence and my thinking (and, by implication, my being alive) butalso my loving and willing. I am as certain that I will as I amcertain that I exist and live, and my will is as undeniably mine as ismy existence and my life. Therefore, my volitions are imputable to me,and it is I who am responsible for my choices (and not some evilsubstance present in my soul but foreign to my own self, as, onAugustine’s interpretation, Manichean dualism would have it; cf.De duabus animabus 13;Confessiones 7.5;Decivitate dei 5.10).

5.2 Illumination

Augustine’s theory of knowledge—his so-called doctrine ofillumination—is a distinctly non-empiricist epistemology basedon a probably Neoplatonic reading of Plato’s doctrine ofrecollection (Burnyeat 1987; MacDonald 2012b; King 2014a:147–152; Karfíková 2017). Like Plato and hisfollowers, Augustine thinks that true knowledge requires first-handacquaintance; second-hand information, e.g., from reliable testimony,may yield true and even justifiable belief, but not knowledge in thestrict sense. In the case of sensible objects—which, strictlyspeaking, do not admit of knowledge at all but only opinion—suchfirst-hand acquaintance is possible through sense perception.Cognition of intelligible objects, however, can be neither reachedempirically by means of abstraction nor transmitted to uslinguistically by a human teacher (see5.4 Language and Signs); rather, such cognition requires personal intellectual activity thatresults in an intellectual insight, which we judge by a criterion wefind nowhere but in ourselves. The paradigm of this kind of cognitionare mathematical and logical truths and fundamental moral intuitions,which we understand not because we believe a teacher or a book butbecause we see them for ourselves (De magistro 40, cf.Delibero arbitrio 2.34). The condition of possibility and thecriterion of truth of this intellectual insight is none other than God(a view attributed, with explicit approval, to the Platonists inDe civitate dei 8.7), who, in the manner of a Neoplatonicimmaterial principle, is both immanent and transcendent in relation toour soul. Augustine mostly explains this Platonizing theory of apriori knowledge by means of two striking images: the inner teacherand illumination. The former is introduced in the dialogueDemagistro (ca. 390) and remains frequent especially in the sermons(e.g.,In epistulam Iohannis ad Parthos tractatus decem 3.13;Fuhrer 2018b); according to it, Christ is present in our souls and by“presiding over” them like a teacher guarantees thetruthfulness of our understanding (De magistro 38–39,cf. Ephesians 3:17 for the image and, for the idea that truth“lives in the inner man”,De vera religione 72).The latter appears first in theSoliloquia (1.12–15)and is ubiquitous in Augustine’s writings (cf. esp.Detrinitate 12.24). It is ultimately derived from the Analogy ofthe Sun in Plato’sRepublic (508a–509b; cf. Rist1994: 78–79). In theSoliloquia Augustine says, in amanner strongly reminiscent of Plato, that just as the sun is bothvisible itself and illumines the objects of sight so as to enable theeye to see them, God is intelligible himself and illumines theintelligible objects (which are here identified with the objects ofthe liberal disciplines and subordinated to God) so as to enablereason (the “eye” of the soul) to activate its capacityfor intellection. The later version inDe trinitateexplicitly presents divine illumination as an alternative to Platonicrecollection and situates it in the framework of a theory of creation.Here Augustine says that the human mind has been created by God insuch a way as to be “connected” to intelligible reality“from below” (subiuncta) and with a capacity(capacitas) that enables it to “see” theintelligibles in the light of intelligible truth, just as the eye isby nature able to see colors in the light of the sun. Obviously,“capacity” in this case does not mean pure potentiality(as in thetabula rasa theory endorsed by Augustine’sinterlocutor Euodius inDe quantitate animae 34) butcomprises at least implicit or latent knowledge of moral andepistemological standards. Both images, if properly read, shouldpreclude the misunderstanding that Augustine’s gnoseology makeshuman knowledge entirely dependent on divine agency, with the humanbeing becoming merely a passive recipient of revelation (cf. Gilson1943: ch. 4; Lagouanère 2012: 158–180 and Schumacher 2011for the debates about Augustinian illumination in medieval and modernphilosophy). Cognition does not simply result from the presence ofChrist in our soul but from our “consulting” the innerteacher, i.e., our testing propositions that claim to convey a truthabout intelligible reality (or even a general truth about sensibleobjects, cf.Letter 13.3–4) against the inner standardswe possess thanks to the presence of Christ (De magistro37–38; this way of “consulting” the inner truth isrepeatedly dramatized in theConfessiones, e.g., 11.10;11.31; Cary 2008b: 100). And while every human being is“illumined” by the divine light at least from behind so asto be able to pass true judgments about right and wrong or good andevil, in order to develop these natural intuitions to full knowledgeor wisdom and to be able actually to lead a virtuous life, we need toconvert to God, the “source” of the light (Detrinitate 14.21). Thus, while all human beings are by naturecapable of accessing intelligible truth, only those succeed in doingso who have a sufficiently good will (De magistro38)—presumably those who endorse Christian religion and liveaccordingly. This strong voluntary element intimately connectsAugustine’s epistemology with his ethics and, ultimately, withhis doctrine of grace (on the parallel structure of cognition andgrace in Augustine see Lorenz 1964). Like all human agency, strivingfor wisdom takes place under the conditions of a fallen world andmeets the difficulties and hindrances humanity is subject to becauseof original sin.

In order to illustrate what he means by “seeing things byourselves” “in the light of truth”, Augustine oftencites the example of the Socratic maieutic dialogue (Demagistro 40; cf.De immortalitate animae 6;Detrinitate 12.24), and in some passages of his early work he seemsto subscribe to the Platonic doctrine of recollection (familiar to himfrom Cicero,Tusculan Disputations 1.57) in such a way as toimply the preexistence of the soul (Soliloquia 2.35,retracted inRetractationes 1.4.4;De immortalitateanimae 6;De quantitate animae 34, retracted inRetractationes 1.8.2). It is difficult to tell whether theearly Augustine literally believed in recollection and preexistence(Karfíková 2017; O’Daly 1987: 70–75;199–207), not least because he was aware that some Neoplatonistsinterpreted Platonic recollection as an actualization of ourever-present but latent knowledge of the intelligible rather than as aremembrance of our past acquaintance with it (Letter 7.2, cf.Plotinus,Enneads IV.3.25.31–33; O’Daly 1976).If, as inDe immortalitate animae 6, recollection is taken toprove the immortality of the soul (as it did in thePhaedo),it is hard to see how preexistence should not be implied. In anyevent, it is imprecise to say, as it is sometimes done, that Augustinegave up the theory of recollection because he realized thatpreexistence was at variance with Christian faith. InDe civitatedei (12.14 etc.) Augustine emphatically rejectsPlatonic-Pythagorean metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls asincompatible with eternal happiness and the economy of salvation, andinDe trinitate (12.24) theMeno version of therecollection theory, which implies transmigration, is rejected infavor of illumination. Yet it is a fallacy to claim that recollectionentails transmigration. The early Augustine may have believed inpreexistence (perhaps simply as a corollary of the immortality of thesoul), but there is no evidence that he believed in the transmigrationof souls; conversely, his rejection of transmigration did not preventeven the late Augustine from considering preexistence—at leasttheoretically—an option for the origin of the soul(Letter 143.6 from 412; cf.6.1 Soul as a Created Being).

5.3 Faith and Reason

Whereas modern discussion tends to regard faith and reason asalternative or even mutually exclusive ways to (religious) truth, inAugustine’s epistemological and exegetical program the two areinseparable. He rejects the rationalism of the philosophers and,especially, the Manicheans as an unwarranted over-confidence into theabilities of human reason resulting from sinful pride and as anarrogant neglect of the revelation of Christ in Scripture (Delibero arbitrio 3.56; 60;Confessiones 3.10–12).Against the fideism he encountered in some Christian circles (cf.Letter 119 from Consentius to Augustine) he insisted that itwas good and natural to employ the rational capacity we have beencreated with to search for an understanding of the truths we acceptfrom the authority of the biblical revelation, even though a trueunderstanding of God will only be possible after this life when we seehim “face to face” (Letter 120.3–4). Inthis epistemological and exegetical program, which since Anselm ofCanterbury has aptly been labeled as “faith seekingunderstanding” (cf.De trinitate 15.2:fidesquaerit, intellectus invenit) or “understanding offaith” (intellectus fidei), faith is prior tounderstanding in time but posterior to it in importance and value(De ordine 2.26;De vera religione 45;Letter 120.3; van Fleteren 2010). The first step towardperfection is to believe the words of Scripture; the second is torealize that the words are outward signs of an internal andintelligible reality and that they admonish us to turn to and to“consult” inner truth so as to reach true understandingand, accordingly, the good life (cf.5.2 Illumination;5.4 Language and Signs). Philosophical argument may be of help in this process;yet as Augustine notes as early as inContra Academicos(3.43), it needs to be tied to the authority of Scripture and theCreed to prevent the frailty of human reason from going astray (cf.Confessiones 7.13). The Augustine of the earliest dialoguesseems to have entertained the elitist idea that those educated in theliberal arts and capable of the Neoplatonic intellectual ascent mayactually outgrow authority and achieve a full understanding of thedivine already in this life (De ordine 2.26, but contrast ib.2.45 on Monnica). In his later work, he abandons this hope andemphasizes that during this life, inevitably characterized by sin andweakness, every human being remains in need of the guidance of therevealed authority of Christ (Cary 2008b: 109–120). Faith isthus not just an epistemological but also an ethical category; it isessential for the moral purification we need to undergo before we canhope for even a glimpse of true understanding (Soliloquia1.12;De diversis quaestionibus 48;De trinitate4.24; Rist 2001). To a great extent, Augustine’s defense offaith as a valid epistemic category rests on a rehabilitation of truebelief against the philosophical (Platonic and Hellenistic) tradition.Augustine neatly distinguishes “belief” (fides,the word he also uses for religious faith), which entails thebeliever’s awareness that he does not know, from“opinion” (opinio), defined by the philosophersas the illusion of knowing what one in fact does not know (Deutilitate credendi 25;Letter 120.3). Without belief inthe former sense, we would have to admit that we are ignorant of ourown lineage (Confessiones 6.7) and of the objects of thehistorical and empirical sciences, of which, as Augustine asserts in acritique of Platonism, first-hand knowledge is rarely possible (Detrinitate 4.21). The belief that a person we have not seen was oris just may trigger our fraternal love for him (De trinitate8.7; Bouton-Touboulic 2012: 182–187; conversely, Augustine asksthose who are united with him in fraternal love to believe what hetells them about his life,Confessiones 10.3). And obviously,the crucial events of the history of salvation, Jesus’ death onthe cross and his resurrection, cannot be known but only believed quahistorical events, even though qua signs they may lead tounderstanding by prompting us to an intelligible truth (Detrinitate 13.2). Thus, while no doubt faith in revelationprecedes rational insight into its true meaning, the decision aboutwhose authority to believe and whom to accept as a reliable witness isitself reasonable (De vera religione 45;Letter120.3). Even so, belief may of course be deceived (Detrinitate 8.6). In ordinary life, this is inevitable and mostlyunproblematic. A more serious problem is the justification of beliefin Scripture, which, for Augustine, is the tradition and authority(auctoritas, notpotestas) of the Church (Contraepistulam fundamenti 5.6; Rist 1994: 245).

5.4 Language and Signs

Augustine’s philosophy of language is both indebted to theStoic-influenced Hellenistic and Roman theories of grammar and highlyinnovative (Rist 1994: 23–40; King 2014b). He follows the Stoicsin distinguishing between the sound of a word, its meaning and thething it signifies (De dialectica 5;De quantitateanimae 66; cf. Sextus Empiricus,Adversus mathematicos8.11–12 = 33B Long-Sedley), but he seems to have been the firstto interpret language as such as a system of signs and to integrate itinto a general semiotics (Fuhrer 2018a: 1696; Cary 2008b; Mayer 1969and 1974). In his handbook of biblical exegesis and Christianrhetoric,De doctrina christiana (1.2; 2.1–4),Augustine divides the world into “things” and“signs” (i.e., things that, apart from being what theyare, signify other things) and furthermore distinguishes between“natural” or involuntary signs (e.g., smoke signifyingfire) and voluntary or “given” signs (a distinction akin,but not equivalent, to the older discussion about nature or conventionas the origin of language). Language is defined as a system of givensigns by means of which the speaker signifies either things or herthoughts and emotions (Enchiridion 22). In the exegeticalframework ofDe doctrina christiana, the “thing”signified by the verbal signs of Scripture is God, the Supreme Being.Augustine therefore begins with a sketch of his theology and ethicscentered around the notions of love of God and neighbor before he setsout his biblical hermeneutics which, again, posits love as thecriterion of exegetical adequacy (Pollmann 1996; Williams 2001). Thewords of the Bible are external signs designed to prompt us to themore inward phenomenon of love and, ultimately, to God who is beyondall language and thought. This may be generalized to the principlethat external—verbal and non-verbal—signs operate on alower ontological level than the inward and intelligible truth theyattempt to signify and that they are superseded in true knowledgewhich is knowledge not of signs but of things. This holds not only forwords, even the words of Scripture, but also for the sacraments andfor the Incarnation of Christ (Contra epistulam fundamenti36.41). Augustine’s most sustained discussion of language, theearly dialogueDe magistro, asks how we learn things fromwords and relates linguistic signification to the epistemology ofillumination (Nawar 2015). After a long discussion of how verbal signssignify things or states of mind and how they relate to other signs,it turns out, rather surprisingly, that we do not learn things fromsigns at all because in order to understand the meaning of a sign wealready have to be acquainted with the thing signified. This isultimately a version of Meno’s paradox, and Augustine solves itby introducing the metaphors of the inner teacher and of illumination,i.e., by means of an internalist theory of learning recognizable as aNeoplatonic interpretation of Platonic anamnesis (De magistro38–40). This does not mean that words are useless. They informus about things that are inaccessible to direct acquaintance and thusgenerate true belief; most importantly, they admonish us to“consult” the inner teacher and to understand things byourselves (this, according to Augustine, is the whole point of theSocratic dialogue). This goes even for the acquisition of languageitself: We understand the sign “bird-catching”, not simplyby being shown a person engaged in that activity and being told thathe is signified by that name, but by observing him and figuring outfor ourselves what “bird-catching” means (ib. 32; on thisand Wittgenstein’s criticism of what he took to beAugustine’s view of language acquisition, see Matthews 2005:23–33). In the later books ofDe trinitate and in thesermons on the Trinity, Augustine frequently refers to a phenomenoncalled “inner word”, which he uses to explain the relationof the inner-Trinitarian Word or Logos from the Prologue of John (John1:1) to Christ incarnate. Just as the spoken word signifies a conceptthat we have formed within our mind and communicates it to others, soChrist incarnate signifies the divine Logos and admonishes and assistsus to turn to it (cf.De trinitate 15.20;De doctrinachristiana 1.12;Sermon 119.7; 187.3). InDetrinitate Augustine expands this to a theory about how the innerword or concept is formed (14.10; 15.25; cf. 15.43). The inner word isgenerated when we actualize some latent or implicit knowledge that isstored in our memory. It is not a sign, nor of linguistic nature(Augustine insists that it is neither Latin nor Greek nor Hebrew), butrather seems to be a kind of a-temporal intellectual insight thattranscends language (cf.De catechizandis rudibus 3).Properly speaking, then, the theory of the inner word is not alinguistic theory at all.

6. Anthropology: God and the Soul; Soul and Body

6.1 Soul as a Created Being

Like most ancient philosophers, Augustine thinks that the human beingis a compound of body and soul and that, within this compound, thesoul—conceived as both the life-giving element and the center ofconsciousness, perception and thought—is, or ought to be, theruling part. The rational soul should control the sensual desires andpassions; it can become wise if it turns to God, who is at the sametime the Supreme Being and the Supreme Good. In his Manichean phase,he conceived of both God and the soul as material entities, the soulbeing in fact a portion of God that had fallen into the corporealworld where it remained a foreigner, even to its own body (Deduabus animabus 1;Confessiones 8.22). After hisPlatonist readings in Milan had provided him with the adequatephilosophical means to think about immaterial, non-spatial reality(Confessiones 7.1–2; 7.16), he replaced this view,which he later represents as a rather crude dualism, with anontological hierarchy in which the soul, which is mutable in time butimmutable in space, occupies a middle position between God, who istotally unchangeable immaterial being (cf. MacDonald 2014), andbodies, which are subject to temporal and spatial change(Letter 18.2;De Genesi ad litteram 8.20.39;Catapano 2023). The soul is of divine origin and even god-like (Dequantitate animae 2–3); it is not divine itself but createdby God (the talk about divinity of the soul in the Cassiciacumdialogues seems to be a traditional Ciceronian element, cf. Cary 2000:77–89; for a Plotinian interpretation see O’Connell 1968:112–131). InDe quantitate animae, Augustine broadlyargues that the “greatness” of the soul does not refer tospatial extension but to its vivifying, perceptive, rational andcontemplative powers that enable it to move close to God and arecompatible with and even presuppose immateriality (esp. ib.70–76; Brittain 2003). An early definition of soul as “arational substance fitted for rule over a body” (ib. 22) echoesPlatonic views (cf. the definition of the human being as “arational soul with a body” inIn Iohannis evangeliumtractatus 19.15; O’Daly 1987: 54–60). Later on, whenthe resurrection of the body becomes more important to him, Augustineemphasizes—against Porphyry’s alleged claim that in orderto be happy, the soul must free itself from anythingcorporeal—that it is natural and even desirable for a soul togovern a body (De Genesi ad litteram 12.35.68), but henevertheless remains convinced that soul is an incorporeal andimmortal substance that can, in principle, exist independently of abody (for a list of his arguments, see Catapano 2018). In theSoliloquia (2.24), following the tradition of Plato and ofCicero’sTusculan Disputations, he proposes a proof forthe immortality of the soul which he expressly introduces as analternative to the final proof of thePhaedo(Soliloquia 2.23, cf.Phaedo 102d–103c). Theproof is constructed from elements from Porphyry’sIsagoge and hisCommentary on Aristotle’sCategories (rather elementary texts that Augustine would haveencountered long before his Platonic readings at Milan) and seems tobe original with him (Tornau 2017; Tornau 2020: 58–73). It saysthat since truth is both eternal and in the soul as its subject, itfollows that soul, the subject of truth, is eternal too. This isfallacious, because if truth is eternal independently of the soul itcannot be in the soul as in its subject (i.e., as a property), and ifit is a property of the soul, it cannot ensure its eternity. In theincomplete draft of a third book of theSoliloquia preservedunder the titleDe immortalitate animae, Augustine thereforemodifies the proof and argues that soul is immortal because of theinalienable causal presence of God (= Truth) in it. It turns outhowever that even if this version of the proof is successful, it onlydemonstrates the soul’s eternal existence as a (rational) soulbut not its eternal wisdom (De immortalitate animae 19; ZumBrunn 1969: 17–41 [1988: 9–34]; for a more optimisticreading, Kenyon 2018: 156–157), in the hope of which theinterlocutors had set out to prove the immortality of the soul in thefirst place (Soliloquia 2.1). AfterDe immortalitateanimae, Augustine never returned to his proof. But neither did hedisown it; as late asDe trinitate (13.12), he endorses thePlatonic axiom that soul is by nature immortal and that itsimmortality can, in principle, be proven by philosophical means. Healso sticks to his conviction that immortality is a necessarycondition of happiness but insists that it is not a sufficientcondition, given that immortality and misery are compatible (cf.De civitate dei 9.15 on the misery of the wicked demons).True happiness will only be realized in the afterlife as a gift ofGod’s grace, when, thanks to the resurrection of the body, notjust the soul but the human being as a whole will live forever.Resurrection, however, is not susceptible of rational proof; it is apromise of God that must be believed on Scriptural authority (Detrinitate ib.).

Together with an essentially Platonic notion of the soul, Augustineinherits the classical problems of Platonic soul-body dualism. How cansoul fulfil its task of “governing” the body (cf.Dequantitate animae 22) if it is incorporeal itself? And how arecorporeal and psychic aspects related to each other in phenomena thatinvolve both body and soul, especially if, like passions and desires,these are morally relevant? These problems are further complicated bythe Platonic axiom that incorporeal entities, being ontologicallyprior to corporeal ones, cannot be causally affected by them.Augustine’s solution is indebted to Plotinus’ strategy ofmaking the relation of the soul to the bodily affections anessentially cognitive one (O’Daly 1987: 84–87;Hölscher 1986: ch. 2.2.1; Nash 1969: 39–59; Bermon 2001:239–281). With Plotinus, he insists that sense perception is notan affection which the soul passively undergoes (as Stoic materialismwould have it, where sensory perception was interpreted as a kind ofimprint in the soul) but its active awareness of affections undergoneby the body (De quantitate animae 41; 48;De Genesi adlitteram 7.14.20; Plotinus,Enneads I.4.2.3–4;Brittain 2002: 274–282; Nawar 2021; Karfíková2021b: 253–257). InDe quantitate animae, the frameworkof this theory is the general argument that the relation of soul tobody must be conceived of not in terms of space but of“power” (see above). InDe musica (6.11), this isdeveloped into the idea that sense perception is the soul’sawareness of modifications of its own formative and vivifyingactivities that result from its reacting to the external impulsesundergone by the body. In addition to the usual five senses, Augustineidentifies a sensory faculty that relates the data of the senses toeach other and judges them aesthetically (but not morally;Demusica 6.5; 19); inDe libero arbitrio (2.8–13) hecalls this the “inner sense” (on the Aristotelianbackground cf. O’Daly 1987: 102–105).

In Neoplatonism it was disputed how soul, being immortal, immaterialand ontologically superior to body, came to be incorporatednevertheless. The basic options, present already in Plato’sdialogues, were either that the disembodied soul had“fallen” into the corporeal world because of some error(as in thePhaedrus myth) or that it had been sent into thecosmos by God to impart life and order to it (as in theTimaeus; for harmonizing Neoplatonic exegeses, see Plotinus,Enneads IV.8, and Macrobius,Commentary on Cicero’sSomnium Scipionis 1.10–14). Augustine addresses the issuein the horizon of his doctrine of creation and, in the period of thePelagian Controversy, of the debate about the transmission of originalsin (see9. Gender, Women and Sexuality). InDe libero arbitrio (3.56–59), he distinguishes thethree options of creationism (God creates a new soul for every newbornbody), traducianism (the soul is transmitted from the parents to thechild like corporeal properties), and preexistence, which issubdivided into the Platonic options of voluntary or god-sent descent.After 412 all these options come to the fore again (Letters143.5–11; 166; 190; and the treatiseDe anima et eiusorigine). Augustine discards none of them officially except forthe notion, wrongly associated with Origenism, which was considered aheresy at the time, that incorporation was a punishment for a sincommitted by the pre-existent soul (De civitate dei 11.23;cf.Letter 164.20). In practice, he narrows the debate downto the alternative between creationism and traducianism, which appearto have been the only options taken seriously by his Christiancontemporaries. Augustine refused to take a stand till the end of hislife, probably because neither option really suited his purposes (Rist1994: 317–320; O’Connell 1987; Mendelson 1998):Creationism made original sin very difficult to explain; traducianismwas functional in this respect, but it was a materialist and evenbiologist theory that ran counter to Augustine’s Platonism andwas further compromised because it had been brought up by his Africanpredecessor Tertullian (d. c. 220 CE), a Stoicizing corporealist whohad ended his life as a heretic (Rist 1994: 123).

6.2 The Human Mind as an Image of God

Augustine deploys what we may call his philosophy of the mind mostfully in his great work on Nicene Trinitarian theology,Detrinitate. Having removed apparent Scriptural obstacles to theequality and consubstantiality of the three divine persons (bks.1–4) and having set out the grammar, as it were, of adequatespeaking about the Trinity by distinguishing absolute and relativepropositions about God and the three Persons (bks. 5–7; King2012), he turns to an analysis of the human mind as an image of God(bks. 8–15; Brachtendorf 2000; Ayres 2010; Bermon &O’Daly (eds.) 2012; Drever 2013: 110–141;Lagouanère 2023). The basis for this move is, of course,Genesis 1:26–27. Augustine follows a long-standing Jewish andPatristic tradition, familiar to him from Ambrose, according to whichthe biblical qualification of the human being as an image of Godreferred not to the living body (a literalist reading vulnerable tothe Manichean charge of anthropomorphism, cf.Confessiones6.4) but to what is specifically human, i.e., the “innerman” (2 Corinthians 4:16, quoted, e.g., inDe trinitate11.1) or the mind (mens). Assuming, in a Platonist manner,that “image” in this case does not merely mean an analogybut a causal effect of the original that reflects the essentialfeatures of the latter on a lower ontological level, he scrutinizesthe human mind for triadic structures that meet the Nicenerequirements of equality and consubstantiality and may thus givea—however faint—understanding of the Triune God. Thegeneral pattern of his argument is the Augustinian ascent from theexternal to the internal and from the senses to God; but since humanreason is, whether by nature or due to its fallen state, hardlycapable of knowing God, Augustine this time is obliged to interruptand re-start the ascent several times. The final book shows that theexercise of analyzing the human mind does have preparatory value forour thinking about the Trinity but does not yield insight into thedivine by being simply transferred to it (De trinitate15.10–11). The three elements Augustine discerns in all ourcognitive acts from sense perception to theoretical reason orcontemplation are: [1] an object that is either external to the mind(as in sense perception) or internal to it, in which case it is animage or a concept stored in our memory; [2] a cognitive faculty thatmust be activated or “formed” by the object if cognitionis to come about; [3] a voluntary or intentional element that makesthe cognitive faculty turn to its object so as to be actually formedby it. The last element ensures the active character of perception andintellection but also gives weight to the idea that we do not cognizean object unless we consciously direct our attention to it (MacDonald2012b; Karfíková 2021b: 261–265). Though thistriadic pattern is operative on all levels of human cognition,Augustine contends that only the mind’s intellectualself-knowledge on the level of contemplative reason (its “memoryof itself, knowledge of itself and love of itself”) qualifies asan image of God because only here are the three elements as closelyrelated to each other as in the Nicene dogma and because they are asinalienable as the mind’s immediate presence to itself (Detrinitate 14.19). This idea is carefully prepared in Book 10,which contains one of Augustine’s most remarkable arguments forthe substantiality of the mind and its independence of the body (Nawar2022; Stróżyński 2013; Brittain 2012a; Matthews 2005:43–52; Bermon 2001, 357–404). Augustine begins by arguing(in a manner reminiscent of his cogito-like argument; see5.1 Skepticism and Certainty) that the mind always already knows itself because it is alwayspresent to and hence aware of itself. This pre-reflexiveself-awareness is presupposed by every act of conscious cognition. Ifso, however, the Delphic command “Know thyself” cannotmean that the mind is to become acquainted with itself as if it hadbeen unknown to itself before, but rather that it must becomeconscious of what it knew about itself all along and distinguish itfrom what it does not know about itself. As the mind in its fallenstate is deeply immersed in sensible reality, it tends to forget whatit really is and what it knows it is and confounds itself with thethings it attaches the greatest importance to, i.e., sensible objectsthat give it pleasure. The result are materialist theories about thesoul, which thus derive from flawed morality (De trinitate10.11–12). If it follows the Delphic command, however, the mindwill realize that it knows with certainty that it exists, thinks,wills etc., whereas it can at best merely believe that it is air, fireor brain (ib. 10.13). And as the substance or essence of the mindcannot be anything other than what it knows with certainty aboutitself, it follows that nothing material is essential to the mind andthat its essence must be sought in its mental acts (ib. 10.16). Fullself-knowledge is reached, then, when the mind’s inalienableself-awareness (se nosse, “to be acquainted withoneself”) is actualized to conscious “self-thinking”(se cogitare). How this relates to the mind’spre-reflexive presence to itself is not entirely clear (for problemsof interpretation, see, e.g., Horn 2012; Brittain 2012b;Karfíková 2021a), but Augustine seems to think that notonly the mind’s intellectual self-thinking but already itsimmediate self-awareness is triadically structured and an image of theTriune God (De trinitate 14.7–14). Again, the ethicalside of the theory should not be overlooked. As a strong voluntaryelement is present in and necessary for an act of cognition, whatobjects (imaginations, thoughts) we cognize is morally relevant andindicative of our loves and desires. And while the triadic structureof the mind is its very essence and hence inalienable, Augustineinsists that the mind is created in the image of God, not because itis capable of self-knowledge, but because it has the potential tobecome wise, i.e., to remember, know and love God, its creator (ib.14.21–22).

7. Ethics

7.1 Happiness

The basic structure of Augustine’s ethics is that of ancienteudaimonism (Holte 1962), but he defers happiness to the afterlife andblames the ancient ethicists for their arrogantconviction—resulting from their ignorance of the fallencondition of humankind—that they could reach happiness in thislife by philosophical endeavor (De civitate dei 19.4;Wolterstorff 2012; for a more optimistic view, cf. the earlyDeordine 2.26). He takes it as axiomatic that happiness is theultimate goal pursued by all human beings (e.g.,De beatavita 10;De civitate dei 10.1;De trinitate13.7, quoting Cicero’sHortensius; for an interestingdiscussion of how the desire for happiness relates to our equallynatural desires for pleasure and for truth cf.Confessiones10.29–34; Matthews 2005: 134–145; Menn 2014: 80–95).Happiness or the good life is brought about by the possession of thegreatest good in nature that humans can attain and that one cannotlose against one’s will (e.g.,lib. arb. 1.10–12;especially in his early work Augustine shares the Stoics’concern about the self-sufficiency and independence of the wise andhappy person, cf. Wetzel 1992: 42–55). This structure Augustineinscribes into his Neoplatonically inspired three-tiered ontologicalhierarchy (Letter 18.2) and concludes that the only thingable to fulfil the requirements for the supreme good set byeudaimonism is the immutable God himself. The Supreme Being is alsothe greatest good; the desire of created being for happiness can onlybe satisfied by the creator. As Augustine puts in concisely inDebeata vita (11): “Happy is he who has God”.Alternative formulations are “enjoyment of God” (Decivitate dei 8.8;De trinitate 13.10),“contemplation of God” or “enjoyment of truth”(De libero arbitrio 2.35). To “have” God means infact to know and, especially, to love God; Augustine thereforeinterprets Psalm 72:28 (“For me it is good to cling toGod”) as a biblicaltelos formula or definition of thesupreme and beatifying good (De civitate dei 10.18; Tornau2015: 265–266). We are, in other words, happy, wise and virtuousif we turn to or “convert” to God. If we turn away fromhim and direct our attention and love to the bodies—which arenot per se bad, as in Manicheism, but an infinitely lesser good thanGod—or to ourselves, who are a great good but still subordinateto God, we become miserable, foolish and wicked (Letter 18.2;De libero arbitrio 2.52–54;In Iohannis evangeliumtractatus 20.11). Virtue is “love that knows itspriorities” (ordo amoris, De civitate dei 15.22)whereas vice or sin perverts the natural order. Just as after the Fallall human beings are inevitably tainted by sin, we need to be purifiedthrough faith in order to live well and to restore our ability to knowand love God (De diversis quaestionibus 68.3; Cary 2008a:12–13). Augustine does not discard the intellectual elementinherited from the ancient (Socratic) ethical tradition, and hisnotion of conversion is certainly inspired by Neoplatonist“return” (epistrophe), but Augustine enhances theethical relevance of conversion and aversion by emphasizing theirvoluntary character (cf. alreadyDe immortalitate animae11–12). The element of will or love is also crucial to thedistinction between “enjoyment” (frui) and“use” (uti) that is first fully developed inDe doctrina christiana, bk. 1 (c. 396) and remains basic forhis ethical thought. Following the ancient insight that we pursue somegoods for their own sake and others for the sake of other and greatergoods, Augustine states that to “enjoy” a thing means tocling to it with love for its own sake whereas to “use” itmeans to love it for the sake of another thing which we want to enjoy.We love absolutely only what we enjoy, whereas our love for things weuse is relative and even instrumental (De doctrina christiana1.4). The only proper object of enjoyment is God (cf.De civitatedei 8.8 where the same view is attributed to the Platonists).Wickedness and confusion of the moral order results from a reversal ofuse and enjoyment, when we want to enjoy what we ought to use (allcreated things, e.g., wealth, bodies or ourselves) and to use what weought to enjoy (this probably refers to the “carnal”understanding of religion of which Augustine often accuses the Jews).An obvious problem of this system is the categorization of thebiblically prescribed love of the neighbor. Are we to enjoy ourneighbor or to use her? Whereas natural moral intuition suggests theformer, Augustine’s systematic seems to require the latter. Theproblem is inherited from ancient eudaimonism, where it takes somephilosophical effort to reconcile the intuition that concern forothers is morally relevant with the assumption that ethics isprimarily about the virtue and happiness of the individual. Augustineis aware of the problem and gives a differentiated answer. InDedoctrina christiana (1.20–21) he somewhat tentativelysuggests that to love our neighbor means to use him, not because he ismerely instrumental to our happiness but because we are enjoined tolove him as ourselves and because we love ourselves rightly only if werefer our self-love to our desire to enjoy God. Love of the neighborthus means to desire his true happiness in the same way as we desireour own. In substance, this remains Augustine’s view also in hislater work (cf., e.g.,In epistulam Iohannis ad Parthos tractatusdecem 1.9), but he then prefers to avoid the counter-intuitiveand potentially misleading talk about “using” fellowhumans and replaces it by a description of fraternal love as“mutual enjoyment in God” (e.g.,De trinitate9.13; cf. alreadyDe doctrina christiana 1.35; 3.16; Rist1994: 159–168; O’Donovan 1980: 32–36;112–136). “In God” is presumably added to preventthe misunderstanding that we are to enjoy the neighbor “inherself” or “in ourselves” without reference to God.This would mean that we expect our true happiness from her, which nohuman can give; the result of this misdirection would be extrememisery in the case of the neighbor’s loss (cf.Confessiones 4.9–11 on Augustine’s excessivegrief after the death of his friend; Nawar 2014;Stróżyński 2020).

7.2 Virtue

In principle Augustine follows the view of the ancient eudaimoniststhat virtue is sufficient or at least relevant for happiness. Thereare however several important modifications. (1) The entire structureis made dependent on God’s prevenient grace. True virtueguarantees true happiness, but there is no true virtue that is not agift of grace. (2) Augustine accepts Cicero’s definition ofvirtue as the art of “living well” but emphaticallyrejects his equation of living well and living happily, i.e., theStoicizing claim that a virtuous disposition is equivalent tohappiness (De libero arbitrio 2.50;De civitate dei4.21;De moribus 1.10; contrast Cicero,TusculanDisputations 5.53). Our postlapsarian life on earth is inevitablythe locus of sin and punishment, and even the saints are unable toovercome the permanent inner conflict between “the spirit”and “the flesh”, i.e., between good and evil volitions orrational and irrational desires in this life (De civitate dei19.4, quoting Galatians 5:17). The perfect inner tranquility virtuestrives for will only be achieved in the afterlife. (3) Augustinereplaces the ancient definition of virtue as “rightreason” (as in Stoicism) or “activity in accordance withreason” (as in the Aristotelian tradition) with a definition ofvirtue as love of God or, in later texts, as love of God and neighbor.Virtue is an inner disposition or motivational habit that enables usto perform every action we perform out of right love. There areseveral catalogues of the traditional four cardinal virtues prudence,justice, courage and temperance that redefine these as varieties ofthe love of God either in this life or in the eschaton (Demoribus 1.25;Letter 155.12; cf.Letter 155.16for the cardinal virtues as varieties of love of the neighbor;Delibero arbitrio 1.27 for descriptions of the virtues in terms ofgood will). His briefest definition of virtue is “orderedlove” (De civitate dei 15.22). This does not mean thatvirtue becomes non-rational (for Augustine love and will are essentialfeatures of the rational mind; see6.2 The Human Mind as an Image of God), but it does mean that it becomes essentially intentional. Thecriterion of true virtue is that it is oriented toward God. Even ifAugustine occasionally talks as if the four cardinal virtues could beadded to the Pauline or theological virtues of love, faith and hope tomake a sum of seven (Letter 171A.2), they are best taken as asubdivision of love, the only one of the Pauline virtues that persistsin the eschaton (Soliloquia 1.14).

These modifications have several interesting consequences. Even thoughAugustine postpones the happiness that is the reward of virtue to theafterlife, he does not make virtue a means to an end in the sense thatvirtue becomes superfluous when happiness is reached. To the contrary,he insists that virtue will persist in the eschaton where it will betransformed into eternal unimpeded fruition of God and of the neighborin God. Then it will indeed be its own reward and identical withhappiness (Letter 155.2; 12). Both eschatological virtue andvirtue in this life are thus love of God; they only differ in that thelatter is subject to hindrances and temptation. For this reason, thosewho have true love of God—e.g., Christian martyrs—arehappy already in this life, at least in hope (e.g.,Confessiones 10.29; Tornau 2015). Augustine’sdescription of eschatological and non-eschatological virtues(Letter 155) is partly modelled on the Neoplatonic doctrineof the scale of virtues with its ascending hierarchy of social orcivic, purificatory and contemplative virtues (Tornau 2013; Dodaro2004a: 206–212; Dodaro 2004b). When analyzing virtue in thislife, Augustine takes up the Stoic distinction, familiar to him fromCicero (De officiis 1.7–8), between a virtue’sfinal end (finis) and its appropriate action(officium; cf., e.g.,Contra Iulianum 4.21;Decivitate dei 10.18). The appropriate action that characterizesvirtue in this life but is no longer needed in eternal bliss is tosubdue the lower parts of soul to reason and to resist the temptationsthat emerge from the permanent conflict between good and bad volitions(as it were, a permanent “akratic” state; see7.4 Will and Freedom) that results from our fallen condition (De civitate dei19.4). As the examples of the best philosophers and the heroes ofRome’s glorious past teach, whom Augustine regularly accuses oflove of glory, these actions may easily spring from other motivationsthan the true love of God. Augustine therefore distinguishes betweentrue (i.e., Christian) virtue that is motivated by love of God and“virtue as such” (virtus ipsa: De civitate dei5.19) that performs the same appropriate actions but is, in the lastresort, guided by self-love or pride (ib. 5.12; 19.25). Among otherthings, this distinction underpins his solution of the so-calledproblem of pagan virtue (Harding 2008; Tornau 2006b; Dodaro 2004a:27–71; Rist 1994: 168–173) because it permits ascribingvirtue in a meaningful sense to pagan and pre-Christian paradigms ofvirtue like Socrates without having to admit that they were eligiblefor salvation. If a “teleological” perspective on virtueis adopted that exclusively focuses on ends, the virtues of the pagansmust be judged vices rather than virtues and will be punishedaccordingly (De civitate dei 19.25, the passage from whichthe non-Augustinian phrase that pagan virtues are “splendidvices” seems to be derived; see Irwin 1999). An“operative” perspective however reveals that as far asappropriate actions are concerned, virtuous non-Christians differ fromthe foolish and wicked but are indistinguishable from virtuousChristians. From this point of view, Socrates is closer to Paul thanto Nero, even though his virtue will not bring him happiness, i.e.,eternal bliss. That he envisages a perspective on virtue thatabstracts from the causal nexus of virtue and happiness is perhapsAugustine’s most significant departure from ancienteudaimonism.

7.3 Love

Love is a crucial and overarching notion in Augustine’s ethics.It is closely related to virtue and often used synonymously with will(e.g.,De trinitate 15.38; in the cogito-like arguments, loveand will are interchangeable, cf.De civitate dei 11.27 withConfessiones 13.12) or intention (intentio).Augustine’s basic text is, of course, the biblical command tolove God and neighbor (Matthew 22.37; 39), which he is howeverprepared, throughout his life, to interpret in terms of Platonicerotic love (Rist 1994: 148–202). As in theSymposiumand in Plotinus (Enneads I.6), love is a force in our soulsthat attracts us to the true beauty we find nowhere else but in andabove ourselves; it drives us to ascend from the sensible to theintelligible world and to the cognition and contemplation of God(Confessiones 10.8–38, esp. 38). Even Christianfraternal love can be described, in a manner reminiscent of thePhaedrus, as a kind of seduction through another’s realor assumed righteousness (De trinitate 9.11). In a moregeneral way, love means the overall direction of our will (positively)toward God or (negatively) toward ourselves or corporeal creature(De civitate dei 14.7; Byers 2013: 88–99;217–231). The former is called love in a good sense(caritas), the latter cupidity or concupiscence(cupiditas), i.e., misdirected and sinful love (Dedoctrina christiana 3.16). The root of sin is excessive self-lovethat wants to put the self in the position of God and is equivalentwith pride (De civitate dei 14.28). It must be distinguishedfrom the legitimate self-love that is part of the biblical commandmentand strives for true happiness by subordinating the self to God(O’Donovan 1980). In his earlier work, Augustine has somedifficulties incorporating love of neighbor into the Platonic andeudaimonist framework of his thinking (De doctrina christiana1.20–21, see7.1 Happiness). After 400, in the context of his reflections on the Trinity and hisexegesis of the First Epistle of John (esp. 1 John 4:8; 16, “Godis love”), he finds the solution that love is by its very natureself-reflexive. In loving our neighbors, we of necessity love thatlove which enables us to do so itself, which is none other than God;love of God and love of neighbor are, accordingly, co-extensive and,ultimately, identical (De trinitate 8.12;In epistulamIohannis ad Parthos tractatus decem 9.10). Right and perverselove or intention—charity or concupiscence—thus becomesthe predominant and even the single criterion of moral evaluation;Augustine’s ethics may in this sense be labeled intentionalist(cf. Mann 1999 on Augustine’s “inner-life ethics”).He keenly insists that each and every action, even if it is externallygood and impressive, can be motivated either by a good or an evilintention, by right or perverse love, by charity or pride. This goesfor the actions prescribed by the Sermon of the Mount and even formartyrdom (In epistulam Iohannis tractatus decem 8.9, partlyrelying on 1 Corinthians 13:3). It is therefore impossible to givecasuistic rules for external moral behavior. The only thing possibleis the general recommendation to “Love and do what youwill” (ib. 7.8), i.e., to take care that the inner dispositionor intention behind one’s actions is love of God and neighborand not self-love or pride. It is important not to misunderstand thisas moral subjectivism, which Augustine’s ontological and ethicalassumptions exclude. He never excuses evil deeds done “with thebest intentions” or with a subjectively pure conscience, and hethinks that some actions, such as heresy, are always condemnablebecause they cannot possibly result from love (a point often made inthe Donatist controversy). In a sense, his ideal agent is a successorof the Stoic and Neoplatonic sage, who always acts out of inner virtueor perfect rationality (the latter Augustine replaces with true love)but adapts his outward actions to the external circumstances (cf.Sextus Empiricus,Adversus Mathematicos 11.200–201 = 59G Long-Sedley; Diogenes Laertius 7.121; Porphyry,Sententiae32). Augustine’s intentionalism has, however, the ambivalentimplication that, since love and will inevitably belong to the privacyof the mind, the inner motives for a person’s external agencyare unknowable to anyone except the agent herself and God. On the onehand, this limits the authority of other people—including thoseendowed with worldly power or an ecclesiastical office—to passmoral judgments. Augustine repeatedly recommends withholding judgmentso as to preserve humility (De civitate dei 1.26;Sermon 30.3–4). On the other hand, Augustine makes ourinner motivational and moral life opaque even to ourselves and fullytransparent only to God (Confessiones 10.7;In Iohannisevangelium tractatus 32.5). We can never be fully sure about thepurity of our intentions, and even if we were, we could not be surethat we will persist in them. All human beings are therefore called toconstantly scrutinize the moral status of their inner selves in aprayerful dialogue with God (as it is dramatized in theConfessiones). Such self-scrutiny may well beself-tormenting; the obsession of Western Christianity with innerlatent guilt here has its Augustinian roots. The public staging ofAugustine’s confession before God in theConfessionesmay, among many other things, represent an attempt to remedy theloneliness of Christian self-scrutiny (cf.Confessiones10.1–7).

Augustine’s intentionalism also provides him with arguments infavor of religious coercion. As the objective of right fraternal loveis not the neighbor’s temporal well-being but his eternalhappiness or salvation, we must not passively tolerate ourfellow-humans’ sins but should actively correct them if we can;otherwise, our motivation would be inertia rather than love (Inepistulam Iohannis ad Parthos tractatus decem 7.11; cf.Letter 151.11;Ad Simplicianum 1.2.18). Catholicbishops are therefore obliged to compel heretics and schismatics tore-enter the Catholic church even forcibly, just as a father beats hischildren when he sees them playing with snakes or as we bind a madmanwho otherwise would fling himself down a precipice (Letter93.8; 185.7; andLetter 93.1–10 in general). Obviously,this is a paternalistic argument that presupposes superior insight inthose who legitimately wield coercive power. While this may beacceptable in the case of the Church, which according toAugustine’s ecclesiology is the body of Christ and theembodiment of fraternal love, it turns out to be problematic when itis transferred to secular rulers (Augustine rarely does this, but cf.Letter 138.14–15; Tornau 2019). And as even the Churchin this world is a mixed body of sinners and saints (see8. History and Political Philosophy), it may be asked how individual bishops can be sure of their goodintentions when they use religious force (Rist 1994: 242–245).Augustine does not address this problem, presumably because most ofhis relevant texts are propagandistic defenses of coercion against theDonatists.

7.4 Will and Freedom

Though other Latin philosophers, especially Seneca, had made use ofthe concept of will (voluntas) before Augustine, it has amuch wider application in his ethics and moral psychology than in anypredecessor and covers a broader range of phenomena than eitherAristotelianboulesis (roughly, rational choice) or Stoicprohairesis (roughly, the fundamental decision to lead a goodlife). Augustine comes closer than any earlier philosopher to positingwill as a faculty of choice that is reducible neither to reason nor tonon-rational desire. It has therefore been claimed that Augustine“discovered” the will (Dihle 1982: ch. 6; Kahn 1988;contrast Frede 2011: 153–174 who, mainly on the basis ofDelibero arbitrio, emphasizes Augustine’s indebtedness toStoicism; for an up-to-date overview on will in Augustine, see J.Müller 2024). Augustine admits both first-order and second-ordervolitions, the latter being acts of theliberum voluntatisarbitrium, the ability to choose between conflicting first-ordervolitions (Stump 2001; Horn 1996; den Bok 1994). Like desires,first-order volitions are intentional or object-directed and operateon all levels of the soul. Like memory and thought, will is aconstitutive element of the mind (see6.2 The Human Mind as an Image of God). It is closely related to love and, accordingly, the locus of moralevaluation. We act well or badly if and only if our actions springfrom a good or evil will, which is equivalent to saying that they aremotivated by right (i.e., God-directed) or perverse (i.e.,self-directed) love (De civitate dei 14.7). With this basicidea in view, Augustine defends the passions or emotions against theirStoic condemnation as malfunctions of rational judgment by redefiningthem more neutrally as volitions (voluntates) that may begood or bad depending on their intentional objects (De civitatedei 9.4–5; 14.9; Wetzel 1992: 98–111; Byers 2012b).The mechanics of the will in Augustine’s moral psychology isstrongly indebted to the Stoic theory of assent, which it howevermodifies in at least one respect. As in Stoicism, the will to act istriggered by an impression generated by an external object(visum). To this the mind responds with an appetitive motionthat urges us to pursue or to avoid the object (e.g., delight orfear). But only when we give our inner consent to this impulse orwithhold it, does a will emerge that, circumstances permitting,results in a corresponding action. The will is the proper locus of ourmoral responsibility because it is neither in our power whether anobject presents itself to our senses or intellect nor whether we takedelight in it (De libero arbitrio 3.74;AdSimplicianum 1.2.21), and our attempts to act externally maysucceed or fail for reasons beyond our control. The only element thatis in our power is our will or inner consent, for which we aretherefore fully responsible. Thus, a person who has consented toadultery is guilty even if his attempt actually to commit it isunsuccessful, and a victim of rape who does not consent to the deedkeeps her will free of sin even if she feels physical pleasure (Decivitate dei 1.16–28). Augustine therefore defines sin as“the will to keep or pursue something unjustly” (Deduabus animabus 15). The second stage in the above structure, theinvoluntary appetitive motion of the soul, is reminiscent of the Stoic“first motions”, but it also corresponds to the“impulse”, which in Stoicism does not precede consent butfollows it and immediately results in action. Temptations of this kindare, in Augustine, not personal sins but due to original sin, and theyhaunt even the saints. Our will must be freed by divine grace toresist them (Contra Iulianum 6.70; see, on this theory andits Stoic and Platonic background, Byers 2013: 100–150; J.Müller 2009: 157–161; Sorabji 2000: 372–384; Rist1994: 176–177).

Augustine’s thinking about free will (liberum arbitriumorliberum voluntatis arbitrium) undergoes some developmentduring his career. In the 390s, opposing the dualistic fatalism of theManicheans, he uses the cogito-like argument (see5.1 Skepticism and Certainty) to demonstrate that we are responsible for our volitions because weare as certain that we will as we are certain that we exist and think(De duabus animabus 13;De libero arbitrio 3.3;Confessiones 7.5; S. Harrison 1999). A contemporaneousdefinition of will as a movement of soul toward some object of desireemphasizes the absence of external constraint, and the ensuingdefinition of sin as an unjust volition (see above) seems to endorsethe principle of alternative possibilities (De duabusanimabus 14–15). InDe libero arbitrio, free willappears as the condition of possibility of moral goodness and hence asa great good itself; but as it is not an absolute good (which is Godalone) but only an intermediate one, it is liable to misuse and,hence, also the source of moral evil (De libero arbitrio2.47–53). In his early exegesis of Paul’s chapter ondivine election (Romans 9), Augustine is keen to establish that Pauldid not abolish free will (Expositio quarundam propositionum exepistula apostoli ad Romanos 13–18). With all this,Augustine is basically in harmony with the traditional view of earlyChristian theology and exegesis, which is still adopted in the 420s byJulian of Aeclanum when he blames Augustine for having fallen backinto Manichean fatalism and quotes his early definitions against him(Julian,Ad Florum, inContra Iulianum opusimperfectum 1.44–47). Things change withAdSimplicianum 1.2 and theConfessiones. By c. 400 CE,Augustine had come to the conclusion that our ability to make choiceswas seriously impaired by the fallen condition of humankind and thatit made little sense to talk about free will without reference tograce. The optimistic-sounding claim in the first book ofDelibero arbitrio (1.25–26; 29) that it is in our power to begood as soon as we choose to be good because “nothing is ascompletely in our will as will itself” was probably never thewhole story; already in book 3 of the same work Augustine says thatthe cognitive and motivational deficiencies caused by Adam’s sin(“ignorance and difficulty”, ib. 3.52; S. Harrison 2006:112–130) seriously compromise our natural ability to choose thegood, and in his later, especially anti-Pelagian work he radicalizesthis to the idea that original sin makes us unable to completelysubdue our sinful volitions as long as we live, so that we live in apermanent state of “akrasia” or weakness of will (Denatura et gratia 61–67;De civitate dei 19.4;De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.35). But he never questionsthe principle that we have been created with the natural ability tofreely and voluntarily choose the good, nor does he ever deny theapplicability of the cogito argument to the will (cf.De civitatedei 5.10) or doubt that our volitions are imputable to us. Whatgrace does is to restore our natural freedom; it does not compel us toact against our will. What this means is best illustrated by thenarrative ofConfessiones 8 (for particularly lucidinterpretations, see Wetzel 1992: 126–138; J. Müller 2009:323–335; for a good introduction, Drecoll 2020). Immediatelybefore his conversion Augustine suffers from a “dividedwill”, feeling torn apart between the will to lead an asceticChristian life and the will to continue his previous, sexually activelife. Though he identifies with the former, better will rather thanwith the latter that actually torments him, he is unable to opt for itbecause of his bad habits, which he once acquired voluntarily butwhich have by now transformed into a kind of addictive necessity (ib.8.10–12). Earlier philosophical traditions would haveinterpreted this “akratic” state as a conflict of reasonand desire, and Manichean dualism would have attributedAugustine’s bad will to an evil substance present in but foreignto the soul, but Augustine insists that both wills were indeed hisown. Using medical metaphors reminiscent of Hellenistic moralphilosophy, he argues that his will lacked the power of free choicebecause the disease of being divided between conflicting volitions hadweakened it (ib. 8.19; 21). His ability to choose is only restoredwhen, in the garden scene at the end of the book, his will isreintegrated and healed by God’s call, which immediately freeshim to opt for the ascetic life (ib. 8.29–30). Before, when hehad just continued his habitual way of life, this had been anon-choice rather than a choice, even though, as Augustine insists, hehad done so voluntarily. In substance, this remained his line ofdefense when, in the Pelagian controversy, he was confronted with thecharge that his doctrine of grace abolished free will (De spirituet littera 52–60; cf.De correptione et gratia 6).While the Pelagians thought that the principle of alternativepossibilities was indispensable for human responsibility and divinejustice, Augustine accepts that principle only for the first humans inparadise (Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 1.47; 5.28;5.40–42 etc.). In a way, by choosing wrongly Adam and Eve haveabandoned free will both for themselves and for all humankind.Original sin transformed our initial ability not to sin into aninability not to sin; grace can restore ability not to sin in thislife and will transform it into inability to sin in the next (Decivitate dei 22.30;De correptione et gratia 33).

7.5 Will and Evil

Augustine’s notion of will is closely related to his thinking onevil. The problem of the origin of evil (unde malum), heclaims, had haunted him from his youth (Confessiones 7.7). Atfirst, he accepted the dualist solution of the Manicheans, which freedGod from the responsibility for evil but compromised his omnipotence(ib. 3.12; 7.3). After having encountered the books of the Platonists,Augustine rejected the existence of an evil substance and endorsed theNeoplatonic view (argued, e.g., in Plotinus,Enneads I.8)that evil is in fact unsubstantial and a privation or corruption ofgoodness. In his mature view, which was largely developed during hisanti-Manichean polemics, everything that has being is good insofar asit has been created by God. There are of course different degrees ofgoodness as well as of being (Letter 18.2), but everythingthat is real is good “in its degree”, and the hierarchicalorder of reality is itself a good creation of God (Bouton-Touboulic2004). Augustine therefore rejects Plotinus’ view that primematter is equivalent to prime evil, because the formlessness of matteris not pure negativity but a positive, and hence divinely created,capacity to receive forms (Confessiones 12.6; see10. Creation and Time). A created being can be said to be evil if and only if it falls shortof its natural goodness by being corrupted or vitiated; strictlyspeaking, only corruption itself is evil, whereas the nature orsubstance or essence (for the equivalence of the terms seeDemoribus 2.2) of the thing itself remains good(Confessiones 7.18;Contra epistulam fundamenti35.39 etc.; for a systematic account,De natura boni1–23; Schäfer 2002: 219–239). While this theory canexplain physical evil relatively easily either as a necessary featureof hierarchically ordered (corporeal) reality (De ordine2.51), as a just punishment of sin, or as part of God’s pedagogyof salvation (Letter 138.14), it leaves open the question ofmoral evil or sin itself. Augustine answers by equating moral evilwith evil will and claims that the seemingly natural question of whatcauses evil will is unanswerable. His most sustained argument to thiseffect is found in his explanation of the fall of the devil and theevil angels, a case that, being the very first occurrence of evil inthe created world, allows him to analyze the problem in its mostabstract terms (De civitate dei 12.1–9; cf. alreadyDe libero arbitrio 3.37–49; Schäfer 2002:242–300; MacDonald 1999). The cause can neither be a substance(which, qua substance, is good and unable to cause anything evil) nora will (which would in turn have to be an evil will in need ofexplanation). Therefore, an evil will has no “efficient”but only a “deficient” cause, which is none other than thewill’s spontaneous defection from God. The fact that evil agentsare created from nothing and hence are not, unlike God, intrinsicallyunable to sin is a necessary condition of evil but not a sufficientone (after all the good angels successfully kept their good will). Inthis context Augustine, in an interesting thought experiment, imaginestwo persons of equal intellectual and emotional disposition of whomone gives in to a temptation while the other resists it; from this heconcludes that the difference must be due to a free, spontaneous andirreducible choice of the will (De civitate dei 12.6). Hereat least Augustine virtually posits the will as an independent mentalfaculty.

7.6 Grace, Predestination and Original Sin

From the Middle Ages onwards, Augustine’s theology of grace hasbeen regarded as the heart of his Christian teaching, and with goodreason. As he points out himself, his conviction that human beings intheir present condition are unable to do or even to will the good bytheir own efforts is his most fundamental disagreement with ancient,especially Stoic, virtue ethics (De civitate dei 19.4;Wolterstorff 2012). After and because of the disobedience of Adam andEve, we have lost our natural ability of self-determination, which canonly be repaired and restored by the divine grace that has manifesteditself in the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ and works inwardlyto free our will from its enslavement to sin. Confession of sins andhumility are, therefore, basic Christian virtues and attitudes; thephilosophers’ confidence in their own virtue that prevents themfrom accepting the grace of Christ is an example of the sinful pridethat puts the self in the place of God and was at the core of the evilangels’ primal sin (De civitate dei 10.29).

The main inspiration for Augustine’s doctrine of grace is, ofcourse, Paul (even though remarks on human weakness and divine helpare not absent from the ancient philosophical tradition and especiallyfrom Platonism which had had a strong religious side from thebeginning; Augustine claims that with such utterances the Platonistsinadvertently “confess” grace, cf.De civitatedei 10.29; 22.22). The radical view that the gifts of graceinclude not only external good works and the internal volitionaldisposition that allows us to perform them but even the very firstbeginnings of faith—in later technical terminology: that graceis not “cooperative” but radically“prevenient”—is however his own, and it took severalyears to take shape in his thought. There is some debate on the stagesof this development (for diverging reconstructions, seeKarfíková 2012; Cary 2008a; Drecoll 2004–2010;Drecoll 1999; emphasis on the shifts in Augustine’s thinking:Lettieri 2001; Flasch 1995; emphasis on continuity: C. Harrison 2006),but it is generally agreed that Augustine’s doctrine of gracereached its mature form c. 395–397 withAd Simplicianum1.2, after several years of intense reading and exegesis of Paul, andgained higher profile during the Pelagian controversy after 412.Augustine emphasizes the necessity of grace for both intellectualunderstanding and moral purification already in his earliest works(cf. esp.Soliloquia 1.2–6), but seems to have beenconcerned to leave room for human initiative at least with respect tofaith and will (which would be in line with his concern, prominentthroughout the 390s, to safeguard human responsibility againstManichean fatalism). In his early exegesis of Paul, he explainsGod’s apparently gratuitous election of Jacob and rejection ofEsau (Romans 9:10–13) with God’s foreknowledge ofJacob’s faith and Esau’s infidelity (De diversisquaestionibus 68.5;Expositio quarundam propositionum exepistula apostoli ad Romanos 60), a “synergistic”reading that relies on the assumption that salvation results from thecooperation of divine grace and human initiative and that had beenstandard in early Christianity since Origen. This explanation isexplicitly rejected inAd Simplicianum (1.2.5–6; 8;11). In this pivotal text, Augustine, true to his program of“faith seeking understanding”, attempts an exegesis ofRomans 9:9–29 that satisfies the philosophical requirements ofGod’s justice and benevolence while taking seriously the Paulinepoint that God’s election is entirely gratuitous and notoccasioned by any human merit. The guiding intention of Romans 9,Augustine now says, is to preclude vainglory and pride (ib. 1.2.2)rather than to safeguard human responsibility (as had been his view inExpositio quarundam propositionum ex epistula apostoli adRomanos 13–18; cf. John Chrysostom,Homilies onRomans, PG 60.559). Augustine rehearses all possible reasons forGod’s election of Jacob—his good works, his good will, hisfaith and God’s foreknowledge of each—and discounts themall as amounting to an election from merit rather than from grace.Starting from the primordial willingness to heed God’s call tofaith, then, everything that is good in Jacob must be considered agift of divine grace. Free will has nothing to do with the receptionof that gift because nobody can will to receive a divine call to faithnor to respond positively to it so as to act accordingly and performgood works out of love (Ad Simplicianum 1.2.21; for theStoically-inspired theory of agency behind this see7.4 Will and Freedom). While gratuitous election is, apart from being consoling,comparatively easily squared with the axioms of divine benevolence,justice and omnipotence, its corollary, the equally gratuitousreprobation and damnation of Esau, is a serious philosophical problem(ib. 1.2.8). If it is not to violate the principle of God’sjustice, it obliges us to assume some kind of evil in Esau, which ishowever excluded by Paul’s explicit statement to the contrary(Romans 9:11). Augustine’s solution is his doctrine of originalsin. Both Jacob and Esau have inherited Adam’s guilt that hissin has spread over all humankind—a debt that God remits forJacob but exacts from Esau for reasons that, Augustine admits,necessarily elude human understanding but are certainly just. Sincethe Fall, humankind is nothing but a “lump of sin” thatGod might justly have damned as a whole but from which he has chosento save some individuals and to transform them into “vessels ofmercy” (ib. 1.2.16, cf. Romans 9:23). The notion of original sinwas not invented by Augustine but had a tradition in AfricanChristianity, especially in Tertullian. The view that original sin isa personally imputable guilt that justifies eternal damnation is,however, new withAd Simplicianum and follows with logicalnecessity from the exegetical and philosophical claims made thereabout divine grace and election (Flasch 1995; contrastDe liberoarbitrio 3.52–55). The theory ofAd Simplicianumis illustrated, with great philosophical acumen and psychologicalplausibility, in theConfessiones (especially bk. 8) andremains in place during the Pelagian controversy till the end ofAugustine’s life. Curiously, however, there are passages even inhis anti-Pelagian work that seem aimed at safeguarding freedom ofchoice and, accordingly, admit of a “synergistic” reading(De spiritu et littera 60; Cary 2008a: 82–86 and, for adifferent interpretation, Drecoll 2004–2010: 207–208).After 412, pressed by his Pelagian opponents, Augustine paidincreasing attention to the mechanics of the transmission of originalsin. The result was a quasi-biological theory that associated originalsin closely with sexual concupiscence (see9. Gender, Women and Sexuality).

An obvious implication of Augustine’s theory of grace andelection is predestination, a subject prominent in his last treatisesagainst the Pelagians (e.g.,De praedestinatione sanctorum,written after 426) but already implied inAd Simplicianum.God decides “before the constitution of the world”(Ephesians 1:4), i.e., (in Neoplatonic terms) in the non-temporal waythat matches his transcendent, eternal being (De civitate dei11.21; see also10. Creation and Time), who will be exempted from the damnation that awaits fallen humankindand who will not (“double predestination”). This knowledgeis however hidden to human beings, to whom it will only be revealed atthe end of times (De correptione et gratia 49). Until then,nobody, not even a baptized Christian, can be sure whether grace hasgiven her true faith and a good will and, if so, whether she willpersevere in it till the end of her life so as to be actually saved(De correptione et gratia 10–25; cf.7.3 Love). Like the Stoic determinists before him, Augustine was confronted withthe objection that his doctrine of predestination made all humanactivity pointless (“Lazy Argument”). While in Hellenismthis had largely been a theoretical issue, it acquired practicalrelevance under the circumstances of monastic life: some North Africanmonks objected to being rebuked for their misbehavior with theargument that they were not responsible for not (yet) enjoying thegift of divine grace (De correptione et gratia 6). Taking upideas fromDe magistro and fromAd Simplicianum,Augustine replies that rebuke may work as an external admonition, evenas a divine calling, that helps people turn to God inwardly and hencemust not be withheld (De correptione et gratia 7–9). Tothe query that predestination undermines free will, Augustine giveshis usual answer that our freedom of choice has been damaged byoriginal sin and must be liberated by grace if we are to develop thegood will necessary for virtue and happiness. The medieval and moderndebate on whether grace is “irresistible” is, therefore,to some extent un-Augustinian (cf. Wetzel 1992: 197–206); some,especially later, texts do however present prevenient grace asconverting the will with coercive force (Contra duas epistulasPelagianorum 1.36–37; cf. alreadyAd Simplicianum1.2.22; Cary 2008a: 105–110). A problem related topredestination but not equivalent to it is divine foreknowledge(Matthews 2005: 96–104; Wetzel 2001; for general discussion,Zagzebski 1991). Augustine inherits it from the Hellenistic discussionon future contingents and logical determinism that is best documentedin Cicero’sDe fato. His solution is that whileexternal actions may be determined, inner volitions are not. These arecertainly foreknown by God but exactly as what they are, i.e., as oursand as volitions and not as external compulsions (De civitatedei 5.9–10; cf.De libero arbitrio 3.4–11).This argument is independent of the doctrine of grace and originalsin; it applies not just to fallen humankind but also to Adam and Eveand even to the devil, whose transgression God had, of course,foreseen (De civitate dei 11.17; 14.11).

8. History and Political Philosophy

Augustine’sCity of God is not a treatise of politicalor social philosophy. It is an extended plea designed to persuadepeople “to enter the city of God or to persist in it”(Letter 2*.3). The criterion of membership in the city of God(a metaphor Augustine takes from the Psalms, cf. Psalm 86:3 quoted,e.g., inDe civitate dei 11.1) and its antagonist, theearthly city, is right or wrong love. A person belongs to the city ofGod if and only if he directs his love towards God even at the expenseof self-love, and he belongs to the earthly city or city of the devilif and only if he postpones love of God for self-love, proudly makinghimself his greatest good (De civitate dei 14.28). The mainargument of the work is that true happiness, which is sought by everyhuman being (ib. 10.1), cannot be found outside the city of Godfounded by Christ (cf. ib. 1, prologue). The first ten booksdeconstruct, in a manner reminiscent of traditional Christianapologetics, the alternative conceptions of happiness in the Romanpolitical tradition (which equates happiness with the prosperity ofthe Empire, thus falling prey to evil demons who posed as thedefenders of Rome but in fact ruined it morally and politically) andin Greek, especially Platonic, philosophy (which, despite its insightinto the true nature of God, failed to accept the mediation of Christincarnate out of pride and turned to false mediators, i.e., deceptivedemons; bks. 8–10 have an interesting disquisition on Platonicdemonology). Augustine’s approach in the second, positive halfis Scriptural, creationist and eschatological; this fact accounts forthe specific character of its historical dimension. The history of thetwo cities begins with the creation of the world and the defection ofthe devil and the sin of Adam and Eve (bks. 11–14; Wetzel 2012;Lagouanère 2023/24); it continues with theprovidentially-governed vicissitudes of the People of Israel (thefirst earthly representative of the city of God) and, after the comingof Christ, of the Church (bks. 15–17, supplemented by a surveyof the concurrent secular history from the earliest Eastern empires tocontemporary Rome in bk. 18); and it ends with the final destination(finis, to be understood both ethically as “ultimategoal” and eschatologically as “end of times”) of thetwo cities in eternal damnation and eternal bliss (bks. 19–22;for the structure and basic ideas of theCity of God seeO’Daly 1999). To a great extent, Augustine’s approach isexegetical; for him, the history of the city of God is, in substance,sacred history as laid down in Scripture (Markus 1970: 1–21).Obviously, however, the heavenly and earthly cities must not beconfounded with the worldly institutions of the church and the state.In history, each of these, and the Church in particular, is a mixedbody in which members of the city of God and the earthly city coexist,their distinction being clear only to God, who will separate the twocities at the end of times (ib. 1.35; 10.32 etc.). While the city ofGod is a stranger or, at best, a resident alien (peregrinus:ib. 15.1; 15.15) in this world and yearns for its celestial homeland,the earthly city is not a unified body at all but lies in continuousstrife with itself because it is dominated by lust for power, the mostwidespread form of the archetypal sin of pride in political and sociallife (ib. 18.2). All this is in agreement with Augustine’s ideason predestination and grace; the history of the two cities isessentially the history of fallen humanity. This dualistic account ishowever qualified when, in the part of the work that moves closest tosocial philosophy, Augustine analyzes the attitude a Christian oughtto adopt to the earthly society she inevitably lives in during herexistence in this world. Starting, again, from the axiom that allhuman beings naturally desire what is good for them, he innovativelydetermines the goal that every individual and every community in factpursues as “peace” (pax), which, in his view, islargely equivalent with natural order and subordination. There arehigher and lesser degrees of both individual and collective peace,e.g., the control of the emotions through reason, the subordination ofbody to soul, the subordination of children to parents in the familyor a functioning hierarchical order in the state; at the top is“peace with God” or the subordination of the human mind toGod (ib. 19.13; Weissenberg 2005). The lower forms of peace arerelative goods and, as such, legitimately pursued as long as they arenot mistaken for the absolute good. Political peace and order issought by members of the city of God and the earthly city alike, butwhereas the latter “enjoy” it because it is the greatestgood they can attain and conceive of, the former “use” itfor the sake of their peace with God, i.e., in order that they andothers may enjoy an unhindered Christian religious life (ib. 19.17;19.26; for “enjoyment” and “use” see7.1 Happiness). Political peace is thus morally neutral insofar as it is a goalcommon to Christians and non-Christians. Augustine criticizes Cicerobecause he included justice in his definition of the state (Cicero,De re publica 1.39) and thereby gave the earthly state aninherent moral quality that in reality is the privilege of the city ofGod (De civitate dei 19.21; Salamito 2021, with a critique ofthe notion of “political Augustinianism”). He himselfprefers a more pragmatic definition that makes the consensus about acommon object of “love” (i.e., a common good agreed on byall members of the community) the criterion of a state; the moralevaluation is not a matter of the definition but depends on theevaluation of the goal it pursues (cf.7.3 Love). The early Roman Empire, which strove for glory, was more tolerablethan the Oriental empires that were driven by naked lust for power;the best imaginable goal pursued by an earthly society would beperfect earthly peace (ib. 19.24; Weithman 2001: 243–4).Christians are allowed and even called to work for the well-being ofthe societies they live in as long as they promote earthly peace forthe sake of their citizens’ and their own true happiness; inpractice, this will usually mean furthering Christian religion (ib.5.25–6, on the Christian emperors Constantine and Theodosius;Letter 155.12; 16; Dodaro 2004b; Tornau 2013; Preuß2022: 45–137). But the doctrine of the two cities deliberatelyprecludes any promotion of the emperor or the empire to a providentialand quasi-sacred rank. Not even Christians in power will be able toovercome the inherent wretchedness of fallen humanity (De civitatedei 19.6). Like the vast majority of ancient Christiantheologians, Augustine has little or no interest in social reform.Slavery, meaning unnatural domination of humans over humans, is acharacteristic stain of postlapsarian human life and, at the sametime, an evil that is put to good effects when it secures social order(ib. 19.15; Rist 1994: 236–239). War results from sin and is theprivileged means of satisfying lust for power (ib. 18.2; 19.7).Nevertheless, Augustine wrote a letter to refute the claim thatChristianity advocated a politically impracticable pacifism(Letter 138; Tornau 2019). His Christian reinterpretation ofthe traditional Roman Just War Theory should be read in the frameworkof his general theory of virtue and peace (Holmes 1999). To be trulyjust according to Augustinian standards, a war would have to be wagedfor the benefit of the adversary and without any vindictiveness, inshort, out of love of neighbor, which, in a fallen world, seemsutopian (Letter 138.14). Wars may however be relatively justif they are defensive and properly declared (cf. Cicero,Deofficiis 1.36–37) or commanded by a just authority evenshort of the special case of the wars of the People of Israel thatwere commanded by God himself (Contra Faustum22.74–78).

9. Gender, Women, and Sexuality

Outright misogyny is rare in Augustine, but he lived in a society andworked from a tradition—both Greco-Roman andJudeo-Christian—that took the natural and social subordinationof women to men largely for granted (cf. Børresen 2013: 135and, for a sketch of the social and familial realities of late-antiqueRoman Africa, Rist 1994: 210–213; 246–247). Augustineinterprets the Genesis tale of the creation of woman (Genesis2:18–22) to mean that, Eve having been created as a helper toAdam and for the sake of reproduction, she was subordinate to himalready in paradise (De Genesi ad litteram 6.5.7; 9.5.9).This situation is exacerbated by the Fall; under the conditions offallen humankind, marriage is, for the wives, a kind of slavery thatthey should accept with obedience and humility (as Monnica did; cf.Confessiones 9.19–20 and, on marriage in Augustine ingeneral, E. Clark 1996). In his early anti-Manichean exegesis ofGenesis, he allegorizes man as the rational and woman as thenon-rational, appetitive parts of the soul (De Genesi contraManichaeos 2.15, cf.De vera religione 78;De Genesiad litteram 8.23.44; the pattern is well attested in thephilosophical tradition). On the other hand, he insists—as untilthen few Christian theologians had done—that the meaning of theGenesis tale was not purely allegorical but that sexualdifferentiation had begun to exist in paradise and would persist inthe resurrected bodies of the blessed because it was a natural part ofGod’s creation (De civitate dei 22.17). Following theGreek philosophical (in particular, Platonic) conviction that the souland especially its highest, intellectual part is not gendered as wellas the Pauline eschatological promise that in Christ “there isneither male nor female” (Galatians 3:28), Augustine argues thatthe words of Genesis 1:26–27 on the human being having beencreated in the image of God imply that woman is human like man becauseshe has an intellectual soul and because it is not the gendered bodybut the intellectual soul that makes the human being an image of God(De Genesi ad litteram 3.22.34; Børresen 2013:136–137; cf. also6.2 The Human Mind as an Image of God; the view that woman is made in the image of God is far fromuncontroversial in ancient Christianity). The inner tension of theview that woman is intellectually equal and, at the same time, bynature socially inferior to man makes itself felt in Augustine’sexegesis of Paul’s saying that women, but not men, should veilthemselves because man is made in the image of God (1 Corinthians11:7). Augustine compares man with theoretical and woman (the“helper” of Genesis 2:18) with practical reason and claimsthat while theoretical and practical reason together or reason in itsentirety is an image of God just as the human being as such is, invirtue of its reason, an image of God, practical reason alone, beingdirected toward corporeal things and but a “helper” oftheoretical reason, is not. (By implication, woman is an image of Godqua human being, but not qua woman.) The practice enjoined by Paul ismeant to signify this difference (De trinitate12.10–13). This exegesis safeguards the godlikeness of womanagainst a widespread patristic consensus and, it appears, against Paulhimself, but at the same time defends social inequality and evenendows it with metaphysical and religious significance (Stark2007a).

Two women figure prominently in Augustine’s literary output(Power 1995; G. Clark 2015): his mother, Monnica (her name appearsonly inConfessiones 9.37), and his partner for fourteenyears, the mother of Adeodatus. In the dialogues of Cassiciacum,Monnica represents a philosophical way of life based on the naturalintuitions of reason and on an unshakable Christian faith togetherwith a life according to the precepts of Christian morality (Debeata vita 10;De ordine 1.31–32). She, and theuneducated but faithful in general, may not be able to reach happinessin this life by means of an ascent to the divine with the help of theliberal arts, but they will certainly see God “from face toface” in eternal bliss (De ordine 2.45–46).Behind this idealization may be the male Christian philosopher’snostalgic desire for a “natural” holiness untainted bysecular occupation and learning (Brown 1988: ch. 13, on the Greektheologians and bishops of the fourth century). Monnica’sprominence and idealization in theConfessiones has provokedmuch, and mostly fruitless, psychological speculation. Augustinerepresents her influence on his religious life as pervasive from hisearliest years onwards and even compares her to the Mother Church(Confessiones 1.17). She embodies ideal Christian love of theneighbor (see7.3 Love) in that she furthers Augustine’s Catholic faith with all hermeans (mostly, tears and prayer) and never indulges his Manicheismdespite her motherly affection (e.g.,Confessiones 3.19).With this she however combines, especially in the earlier books, moremundane motives, e.g., when she arranges a marriage for Augustine inthe hope of both fencing his sexual concupiscence and assisting hisworldly career (ib. 6.23). Like the other human influences onAugustine reported in theConfessiones, she is used by God asan instrument of his grace in a way she neither foresees nor wills.Only after Augustine’s conversion does she rise to saintlyperfection, especially in the “vision of Ostia” when,shortly before her death, mother and son, after a longphilosophico-theological conversation, reach a sudden insight intowhat contemplation of the transcendent God in eternal bliss must belike (ib. 9.24–25; Dupont & Stróżyński2018). The chapter on the dismissal of Adeodatus’ mother for thesake of an advantageous marriage (ib. 6.25; Shanzer 2002; Miles 2007)has been unpalatable for many modern readers. Yet what is unusualabout it is not Augustine’s behavior but the fact that hementions it at all and, from hindsight, reflects on the pain it causedhim. True to the deliberately counter-intuitive and often provocativeprocedure of theConfessiones, he singles out an emotionthat, then as now, most people would have easily understood but whichhe nevertheless interprets as a mark of his sinful state because itresulted from the loss of a female body he had, in a kind of mutualsexual exploitation, enjoyed for the sake of pleasure(Confessiones 4.2; for the underlying defective view, commonin antiquity, of erotic relationships cf. Rist 1994: 249) instead of“enjoying” his female neighbor “in God” andrelating their mutual love to him (cf.7.1 Happiness; compare Augustine’s excessive grief about the friend of hisyouth inConfessiones 4.9–11 and contrast hispost-conversion mourning of Monnica, ib. 9.30–33).

Augustine’s views on sexuality are most prominent in hisanti-Pelagian treatises, where he develops a theory about thetransmission of original sin from the first couple in paradise toevery human being born since, making sexual concupiscence the primefactor in the process (cf. E. Clark 1996 and 2000, who also takes intoaccount Augustine’s Manichean past). In Augustine’sethics, concupiscence (concupiscentia) does not have aspecifically sexual meaning but is an umbrella term that covers allvolitions or intentions opposed to right love (see Nisula 2012). Thetransgression of Adam and Eve did not consist in sexual concupiscencebut in their disobedience, which, like the evil angels’ primalsin, was rooted in pride (see7.5 Will and Evil). For this disobedience they, and all humankind with them, werepunished with the disobedience of their own selves, i.e., theimpossibility of fully controlling their own appetites and volitionsand the permanent akratic state (the “coveting of the fleshagainst the spirit”, in the words of Galatians 5:17) that marksfallen humanity. The inability of human beings to control their sexualdesires and even their sexual organs (witness the shameful experiencesof involuntary male erection or of impotence:De civitate dei14.15–16) is just an especially obvious example. Unlike mostearlier Christian writers, Augustine thought that there was sexualintercourse in paradise and that there would have been procreationeven without the fall; he did not share the encratic ideas of someascetic circles who hoped to make good for the first sin throughsexual abstinence, and he had comparatively moderate views onvirginity and sexual continence (De sancta virginitate;Børresen 2013: 138; Brown 1988: ch. 19). But he thought thatAdam and Eve had been able to control their sexual organs voluntarilyso as to limit their use to the natural purpose of procreation; inparadise, there had been sexuality but no concupiscence (Decivitate dei 14.21–23). Original sin had destroyed thisideal state, and since then sexual concupiscence is an inevitableconcomitant of procreation—an evil that may be put to good usein legitimate marriage, where the purpose of sexual intercourse is theprocreation of children rather than bodily pleasure (De nuptiis etconcupiscentia 1.16;Contra Iulianum 3.15–16), butthat nevertheless subjects every newborn human being to the dominationof the devil from which they need to be freed through baptism (Denuptiis et concupiscentia 1.25–26; for energetic criticismof Augustine’s views on concupiscence,inter aliabecause of their impact on the sex morals of modern Christianity, seePagels 1989, for moderate defense Lamberigts 2000).

10. Creation and Time

Just as the late-antique Platonists developed their cosmologicalthinking by commenting on Plato’sTimaeus,Augustine’s natural philosophy is largely a theory of creationbased on an exegesis of the opening chapters of Genesis, on which hewrote five extended, and occasionally diverging, commentaries (DeGenesi contra Manichaeos;De Genesi ad litteram liberimperfectus;Confessiones 11–13;De Genesi adlitteram;De civitate dei 11–14). The longest andmost important of them is theLiteral Commentary on Genesis(De Genesi ad litteram). “Literal” does not mean“literalist” but denotes the hermeneutic assumption thatthe text is really about the creation of the world (as opposed to amoralist or prophetic allegorical reading of the kind proposed inAugustine’s earlyDe Genesi contra Manichaeos; the twoapproaches are compatible because Augustine, like Origen and theJewish exegete Philo before him, believes in the existence of multiplelayers of meaning in Scripture; seeDe Genesi ad litteram1.1.1 and, in general,De doctrina christiana, bk. 3; on theexegetic principles ofDe Genesi ad litteram, Drews 2022). Inline with his epistemology of illumination and his theory of verbalsigns, Augustine takes the biblical creation tale as an“admonition” that prompts him to devise, with the help ofthe “inner teacher”, a rational theistic cosmology basedon Trinitarian theology (for rejection of explanations that contradictthe findings of the natural philosophers or the laws of nature cf.,e.g.,De Genesi ad litteram 2.9.21). InDe Genesi adlitteram, in theConfessiones and, to a lesser extent,inDe civitate dei Augustine presents his exegesis in aquestioning manner and keeps the results open to revision. The reasonis that, according to the hermeneutics developed especially in bk. 12of theConfessiones, the authorial intention of theScriptural text, or indeed of any text, cannot be recovered, sothat—given that the truthfulness of Scripture can be taken forgranted—different and even incompatible readings must beconsidered as adequate if they agree with what the text says and ifthey are sanctioned by the truth which we access inwardly throughreason and which is, ultimately, God himself (see esp.Confessiones 12.27; 43;De doctrina christiana 3.38where Augustine claims that the Holy Spirit providentially allowed fora plenitude of Scriptural meanings in order to prompt different peopleto different aspects of the truth; Williams 2001; van Riel 2007;Dutton 2014: 175–179; and, on the metaphysical andepistemological foundations of this hermeneutics, Cary 2008b:135–138; Drews 2022: 9–24). The basic and recurrentfeatures of Augustine’s cosmological thought are these (cf.Knuuttila 2001: 103–109; Mayer 1996–2002, each withreferences): God does not create in time but creates time togetherwith changeable being while resting in timeless eternity himself(Confessiones 11.16;De Genesi ad litteram 5.5.12;the distinction of eternity and time is Platonic, cf.Timaeus37c-38b; Plotinus,Enneads III.7.1). Creation occursinstantaneously; the seven days of creation are not to be takenliterally but are a didactic means to make plain the intrinsic orderof reality (Confessiones 12.40;De Genesi adlitteram 1.15.29). Like the demiurge in theTimaeus, Godcreates out of goodness, i.e., out of his good will and his gratuitouslove for his creation (De civitate dei 11.24). In creation,all three persons of the Trinity are active, with, roughly, the Fatheraccounting for the existence, the Son (to whom, in Augustine’sreading, the opening words of Genesis,in principio, refer)for the form or essence and the Holy Spirit for the goodness andorderliness of every created being (Confessiones 11.11;De civitate dei 11.24). As the causality of the Trinity makesitself felt everywhere in creation, Augustine likes to describecreated beings in their relation to the divine cause in a triadicmanner, using, e.g., the categories “measure”,“form” and “peace/order” (e.g.,De verareligione 13;De natura boni 3;De civitate dei12.5; cf. Schäfer 2000 and, for a very thorough discussion, duRoy 1966). These “traces” of the Trinity in creation mustnot be confused with the Trinitarian structure of the human intellect,which, alone among all created beings, is an image of God. Changeablebeing is not generated from God (which, according to the Nicene Creed,is true only of the Son) but created out of nothing, a fact thatpartly accounts for its susceptibility for evil. More precisely, God“first” creates formless matter out of nothing (which iswhy matter in Augustine, unlike in the Neoplatonists, has a minimalontological status; cf.Confessiones 12.6; Tornau 2014:189–194) and “then” forms it by conveying to it therational principles (rationes; cf. Catapano 2022) thateternally exist in his mind (De diversis quaestionibus 46.2)or, as Augustine prefers to put it, in his Word, i.e., the SecondPerson of the Trinity. This formative process is Augustine’sexegesis of the biblical “word” of God (Genesis 1:1 andJohn 1:1). Incorporeal and purely intellectual beings, i.e., theangels, are created from intelligible matter which is created out ofnothing and converted to the creator so as to be formed through the“hearing” of God’s word, i.e., by theircontemplation of the Forms contained in God (De Genesi adlitteram 1.4.9–1.5.11, an idea inspired by the Neoplatonicpattern of abiding, procession and return). Corporeal being is createdwhen the Forms or rational principles contained in God andcontemplated by the angels are even further externalized so as toinform not only intelligible but also physical matter (De Genesiad litteram 2.8.16; 4.22.39; for a thorough account of matter inAugustine’s exegeses of Genesis, Moro 2017).

All this is the framework of Augustine’s famous meditation abouttime in theConfessiones (11.17–41), whose context isan exegesis of Genesis and which constantly presupposes thedistinction of time and eternity (much has been written on this text,but particularly illuminating treatments are Flasch 1993; Mesch 1998:295–343; Matthews 2005: 76–85; Helm 2014; Hoffmann 2017;for a concise introduction, Karfíková 2020). Augustineopens the section with the question, “What is time?”(Confessiones 11.17) but in fact has no intention of giving adefinition of time. Whereas his accounts outside theConfessiones center on cosmic or physical time, he herefocuses on how we experience time from a first-person perspective andwhat it means for us and our relationship to ourselves and to God toexist temporally. In this sense, the purpose of the book is ethicalrather than cosmological. Augustine begins by observing that though ofthe three familiar “parts” of time, past, present andfuture, none really exists (the past having ceased to exist, thefuture not existing yet, and the present being without extension),time doubtless has reality for us. This is so because time is presentto us in the form of our present memory of the past, our presentattention to the present and our present expectation of the future(ib. 11.26). The phenomenal proof of this claim is the experience ofmeasuring time by comparing remembered or expected portions of time toeach other or of repeating a poem we know by heart, when, as weproceed, the words traverse our attention (the present), passing fromexpectation (the future) to memory (the past; ib. 11.38). We wouldthus be unable to relate past, present and future events, to rememberthe history of our own lives and even to be aware of our personalidentity if our being in time was not divided into memory, attentionand expectation and, at the same time, unified by the connectednessand the simultaneous presence of these. This ambivalent stateAugustine calls “a distention of the soul” (ib. 11.33;38–39, perhaps echoing Plotinus,Enneads III.7.11.41);this is the closestConfessiones 11 comes to a definition oftime. The stability of this precarious unity is however dependent onthe higher unity of the eternal God—as the whole narrative oftheConfessiones teaches, we cannot make sense of the memoryof our life unless we perceive the ceaseless presence of God’sprovidence and grace in it. Toward the end of the book, Augustineintroduces the Pauline “straining forward to what liesahead” (Philippians 3:12–14)—as he reads it, theorientation or “intention” of the soul toward God—asa counterpoint to the soul’s distention in time and concludeswith an exhortation to turn from the dispersion of temporal existenceto the timeless eternity of God which alone guarantees truth andstability (ib. 11.39–41).

11. Legacy

Augustine’s impact on later philosophy is as enormous as it isambivalent (for an overview, see Fuhrer 2018a: 1742–1750; forall questions of detail, Pollmann (ed.) 2013; forDetrinitate, Kany 2007). Although he was soon accepted as atheological authority and consensus with him was regarded as astandard of orthodoxy throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, hisviews—or more precisely, the right way of interpretingthem—continued to trigger controversies. In the ninth centurythe monk Gottschalk took Augustine’s doctrine of grace to implydouble predestination (a term coined by him); he was opposed by JohnScotus Eriugena. The philosophical discourse of early scholasticism(11^th–12^th centuries) largely centered onAugustinian themes. Anselm’s proof of the existence of Goddevelops the argument ofDe libero arbitrio, bk. 2; histheory of freedom systematizes Augustine’s thinking about will,freedom and grace (Goebel 2019). The ethicists’ debates on willand conscience rest on the assumptions of Augustine’s moralintentionalism, and Abelard’s view that ethics is universal andapplicable to both human and divine agency may be read as a responseto the problems in Augustine’s theory of divine election. Withthe growing influence of Aristotle from the thirteenth centuryonwards, Augustine came to be interpreted in Aristotelian terms thathad largely been unknown to himself. Thomas Aquinas and others hadlittle interest in Augustine’s Platonism, and there was acertain tension between the medieval tendency to look for a teachablephilosophical and theological system in his texts and his own way ofphilosophical inquiry that was shaped by the ancient tradition andleft room for tentative argument and was open to revision. Medievalpolitical Augustinianism projected the conflict of the Two Cities ontothe Church and the State. Martin Luther (1483–1546) agrees withAugustine on the absolute gratuitousness of grace but does not followthe Augustinian (and scholastic) ideal ofintellectus fideiand makes faith in the Gospel the decisive condition of salvation. Inhis debate with Erasmus on free will, he voices a quite Augustinianpessimism about human freedom. The variety of Protestantism that wasinaugurated by Jean Calvin (1509–1564) accepts doublepredestination. In the seventeenth century Descartes’ cogito wassoon recognized as an Augustinian idea and triggered a refreshedinterest in Augustine’s epistemology. In the same epoch, theJansenist movement put forward a radical interpretation ofAugustine’s theology of grace and justification that wasfiercely combated by the Catholic Church. In the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries, the leading philosophers of Enlightenment,German Idealism and Romanticism showed little interest in Augustine,and even, in the case of Nietzsche, outright contempt. He remained,however, an important figure in Neoscholasticism or Neothomism, aphilosophical reaction of Catholic philosophers against Enlightenmentand Idealism which continued to inform Catholic theologicalscholarship on Augustine till the 1950s and beyond. In the twentiethcentury, Augustine’s philosophy of time (Confessiones11) received enormous and unprecedented philosophical attention fromthinkers like Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), Martin Heidegger(1889–1976) and Paul Ricœur (1913–2005), some ofwhom credited Augustine with their own subjectivist understanding oftime. Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) wrote her doctoral dissertationon Augustine’s philosophy of love and blamed him, not uncommonlyfor her epoch, for degrading love of neighbor to an instrument ofpersonal happiness. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) takes issuewith what he considers Augustine’s view of language and languageacquisition throughout his analysis of language in thePhilosophical Investigations. Postmodernist thinkers(Jean-Luc Marion, John Milbank) have set Augustine’s notion ofself, in which love is perceived as an integral part, against thepurported egoism and isolation of the Cartesian subject, which isconsidered the hallmark and, as it were, the birth defect of modernity(for a non-Cartesian reading of Augustine that addresses postmodernistworries, see Drever 2013). Augustinian liberalism is a strand ofcontemporary (mainly English-speaking) political theology exploringthe adaptability of Augustine’s ethical and anthropologicalthought to modern democratic ideas (Menke 2023; Lamb 2022).Postcolonial approaches, Black and African theology have developeddiverse perspectives and evaluations, highlighting eitherAugustine’s African identity or reading him as a representativeof Roman imperialism/colonialism (Wilhite 2013; on Augustine incolonial and postcolonial texts from the Maghreb, Gronemann 2021).Augustine’s early dialogues, with their inclusion of women,teenagers, and illiterate people, have appealed to the“Philosophy for All” movement (Kenyon 2021). Whilecontemporary Western culture has little sympathy for Augustine’syearning for an inner divine light or for his less than optimisticviews about human autonomy and the secular, the richness of histhought continues to fascinate readers.

Bibliography

Bibliographical tools

General:

Bulletin Augustinien, included in the second issue of eachyear of theRevue d’Études Augustiniennes et Patristiques. Reports and reviews all publications on Augustine that appearedduring the year.

Finding Augustine, an open access bibliographical collection on Augustine and his legacyproduced by the Augustinian Historical Institute (Leuven, Belgium) andVillanova University.

More specialized:

Catapano, Giovanni,L’idea di filosofia in Agostino. Guidabibliografica, Padova: Il Poligrafo, 2000.

–––, 2021a, “Augustine”, in DuncanPritchard (ed.),Oxford Bibliographies Philosophy, Oxford:Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0422

Lazcano, Rafael, 2007,Bibliografía de San Agustínen lengua española (1502–2006), Guadarrama (Madrid):Editorial Revista Agustiniana.

–––, 2021, “Boletínbibliográfico de San Agustín en castellano(2007–2020)”,Ciudad de Dios.RevistaAgustiniana, 234: 1031–1077.

Editions

Today critical editions of most of Augustine’s works areavailable. Almost all the books, the complete letters and aconsiderable portion of the sermons have been edited in the series

• [CSEL]Corpus Scriptorum EcclesiasticorumLatinorum (Wien: Holder, Pichler, Tempsky, latest volumes Berlin:De Gruyter) and
• [CCL]Corpus Christianorum Series Latina(Turnhout: Brepols). New critical editions are continually beingprepared and older ones replaced.

ThePatrologia Latina edition [PL] (Jacques-PaulMigne (ed.), Paris 1877), which used to be the standard edition, is areprint of the edition of the Benedictines of St.-Maur in Paris fromthe seventeenth century and naturally does not meet modern criticalstandards; it remains necessary only for about a third of the sermonsfor which modern editions are still lacking.

For a full list of Augustine’s works and the standard criticaleditions see

• Augustinus-Lexikon 4 (2012–2018), pp.XI–XXXIV (available online); Fitzgerald (ed.) 1999, xxxv–il.

A complete work list is also found in Fuhrer 2018a:1680–1687.

Translations

The most famous works of Augustine,Confessiones andDecivitate dei, have often been translated in various modernlanguages, but for many of the other works only dated translations ornone at all are available. TheZentrum fürAugustinusforschung, Würzburg, provides a list of (mostlyolder) translations that areavailable online.

English

English translations of Augustine’s works down to 1999 arelisted in Fitzgerald (ed.) 1999, xxxv–xlii. A nearly completemodern translation is:

• [WSA]The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation forthe 21st Century, 46 vols., John E. Rotelle et al. (eds.), NewYork: New City Press, 1991–2019. Reliable and modern, but almostwithout annotation.

Two older series of Patristic writers in translation include selectedworks of Augustine:

• [FC]The Fathers of the Church, Ludwig Schopp etal. (eds.), New York: Cima Publishing, 1947ff.
• [ACW]Ancient Christian Writers. The Works of theFathers in Translation, Johannes Quasten et al. (eds.), New York:Newman Press 1946ff.

French

The last complete translations of Augustine into French date from thenineteenth century. The—still incomplete—standardtranslation series is:

• [BA]Bibliothèque Augustinienne. Œuvresde saint Augustin, Paris: Études Augustiniennes 1936ff.Bilingual editions with rich annotation that often comes close to acommentary. Especially important are the volumes on
  • Confessiones (BA 13–14, edited byAimé Solignac et al., 1962),
  • De civitate dei (BA 33–37, edited byGuillaume Bardy and Guillaume Combès, 1959–1960),
  • De Genesi ad litteram (BA 48–49, edited byPaul Agaësse and Aimé Solignac, 1972) and
  • Letters 1–30 (BA 40/A, edited by SergeLancel, Emmanuel Bermon et al., 2011).

German

No complete translation of Augustine’s work into German exists.Useful older translations are available in the seriesBibliothekder Kirchenväter (BKV; 1^st series: 8vols., München: Kösel 1871–1879; 2^ndseries: 12 vols., München: Kösel 1911–1936;available online). An annotated bilingual edition of Augustine’sOperaomnia was begun in 2002:

• [AOW]Augustinus: Opera—Werke, WilhelmGeerlings, Johannes Brachtendorf, and Volker Henning Drecoll (eds.),Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002ff. 82 volumes planned, 14completed.

A bilingual edition of the anti-Pelagian treatises with fullannotation is:

• Kopp, Sebastian, Thomas Gerhard Ring, and Adolar Zumkeller (eds.),1955–2005,Sankt Augustinus—Der Lehrer der Gnade.Gesamtausgabe seiner antipelagianischen Schriften, 8 vols. (5completed) + 3 vols. Prolegomena, Würzburg:Augustinus-Verlag.

Italian

• [NBA]Nuova Biblioteca Agostiniana. Opere diSant’Agostino. Edizione latino-italiana, 44 vols., AgostinoTrapé et al. (eds.), Roma: Città Nuova Editrice,1965–2010. Complete.

• Spanish

• [BAC]Obras completas de San Agustín.Edición bilingüe (Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos),41 vols., Victorino Capánaga et al. (eds.), 1946–2002.Complete.

Commentaries

Except for theConfessiones and the Cassiciacum dialogues,detailed commentaries on Augustine’s writings are rare,especially in English. Here is a selection:

• O’Donnell; James J., 1992,Augustine: Confessions,3 vols., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Introduction, text andcommentary. [O’Donnell 1992 available online]
• Simonetti, Manlio et al. (eds.), 1992–1997,Sant’Agostino. Confessioni. 5 vols., Milano: Mondadori.Critically revised text, translation and commentary.
• Flasch, Kurt, 1993,Was ist Zeit? Augustinus von Hippo. DasXI. Buch der Confessiones, Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann(2^nd edition 2004).
• Fuhrer, Therese, 1997,Augustin, Contra Academicos (vel DeAcademicis), Bücher 2 und 3, Einleitung und Kommentar,Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.
• Watson, Gerard, 1990,Saint Augustine. Soliloquies andImmortality of the Soul, with an Introduction, translation andCommentary, Warminster: Aris & Phillips.
• Bermon, Emmanuel, 2007,La signification etl’enseignement. Texte latin, traduction française etcommentaire du ‘De magistro’ de Saint Augustin,Paris: Vrin.
• Trettel, Adam M., 2019,Desires in Paradise: An InterpretativeStudy of Augustine’s City of God14,Leiden/Boston: Brill.
• Foley, Michael P., 2019–2020,St. Augustine’sCassiciacum Dialogues, Translation, Annotation, and Commentary.Volumes 1–4:Against the Academics, On the Happy Life, OnOrder, Soliloquies (andOn the Immortality of the Soul),New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
• Tornau, Christian, 2020,De immortalitate animae – DieUnsterblichkeit der Seele. Zweisprachige Ausgabe, eingeleitet,übersetzt und kommentiert, Leiden/Boston: Brill.
• Brachtendorf, Johannes, and Volker Drecoll (eds.), 2021,Augustinus: De Genesi ad litteram. Ein kooperativerKommentar, Leiden/Boston: Brill. (Chapters in German andEnglish)
• DeMarco, David C., 2021,Augustine and Porphyry. A Commentaryon De ciuitate Dei 10, Leiden/Boston: Brill.
• Bermon, Emmanuel, 2022,Saint Augustin. La correspondance avecNebridius (Lettres 3–14). Texte latin et traductionfrançaise avec un commentaire, Leiden/Boston: Brill.

Reference Works

• Augustinus-Lexikon, edited by Cornelius Mayer et al.,Basel: Schwabe, 1986–2024. 5 volumes. Articles in English,French and German, lemmata in Latin. Also available online (licenserequired).
• Corpus Augustinianum Gissense, a Cornelio Mayer editum3.0 (CAG-online), Basel: Schwabe. Searchable database ofAugustine’s complete works in Latin, based on the most recenteditions (including quotation search), and bibliographical databasewith over 50,000 titles. License required. Free access to thebibliographical database at the “Literatur-Portal” ofZentrum für Augustinusforschung, Würzburg (available online).
• Drecoll, Volker Henning (ed.), 2007,Augustin Handbuch,Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
• Fitzgerald, Allan D. (ed.), 1999,Augustine through the Ages.An Encyclopedia, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Encyclopedia in onevolume, translated into
  • French:Saint Augustin. La Méditerranée etl’Europe, IVe–XXIe siècle, Paris:Édition du Cerf, 2005
  • Italian:Agostino. Dizionario enciclopedico, Roma:Città Nuova Editrice, 2007.
  • Spanish:Diccionario de San Agustín. San Agustína través del tiempo, Burgos: Monte Carmelo, 2001.
• Fuhrer, Therese, 2018a, “§ 144. Augustinus vonHippo”, in Christoph Riedweg, Christoph Horn, and Dietmar Wyrwa(eds.),Die Philosophie der Antike 5.2:Philosophie derKaiserzeit und der Spätantike, Basel: Schwabe, pp.1672–1750. With full bibliography down to 2018 (ib. pp.1828–1853).
• Pollmann, Karla (ed.), 2013,The Oxford Guide to theHistorical Reception of Augustine, 3 vols., Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Introductory and General

• Alesanco Reinares, Tirso, 2004,Filosofía de SanAgustín. Sintesis de su pensiamento, Madrid: EditorialAugustinus.
• Brown, Peter, 2000,Augustine of Hippo. A Biography. A NewEdition with an Epilogue, second edition, London: Faber &Faber (first edition 1967). Translated into
  • German:Augustinus von Hippo. Eine Biographie, Frankfurt:Societäts-Verlag, 1973, second edition 2000.
  • French:La vie de saint Augustin, Paris: Éditionsdu Seuil, 1971.
  • Italian:Agostino d’Ippona, Torino: Einaudi, 2005(first edition 1971).
  • Spanish:Agustín de Hipona, Madrid: Acento,2001.
• Catapano, Giovanni, 2010a,Agostino, Roma: Carocci.
• Gilson, Étienne, 1943,Introduction àl’étude de saint Augustin, second edition, Paris:Vrin. English translation:The Christian Philosophy of SaintAugustine, L.E.M. Lynch (trans.), New York: Random House,1960.
• Horn, Christoph, 1995,Augustinus, München:Beck.
• Kirwan, Christopher, 1989,Augustine, New York:Routledge.
• Matthews, Gareth B., 2005,Augustine, Malden:Blackwell.
• Meconi, David Vincent and Eleonore Stump (eds.), 2014,TheCambridge Companion to Augustine, second edition, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press 2014. Revised and enlarged edition of Stumpand Kretzmann (eds.) 2001. doi:10.1017/CCO9781139178044
• O’Donnell, James J., 2005,Augustine. A NewBiography, New York: HarperCollins.
• Rist, John M., 1994,Augustine. Ancient Thought Baptized,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Stump, Eleonore and Norman Kretzmann (eds.), 2001,TheCambridge Companion to Augustine, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521650186
• Vessey, Mark (ed.), 2012,A Companion to Augustine,Chichester: Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9781118255483
• Wetzel, James, 2010,Augustine. A Guide for thePerplexed, London/New York: Bloomsbury.

Greek and Latin Authors Cited

• Cicero,De officiis, Michael Winterbottom (ed.), Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1994.
• –––,De re publica, Jonathan G.F.Powell (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• –––,Tusculanae disputationes, MaxPohlenz (ed.), Leipzig: Teubner, 1918.
• Diogenes Laertius,Lives of eminent philosophers, TizianoDorandi (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
• John Chrysostom,In epistulam ad Romanos homiliae,Jacques-Paul Migne (ed.),Patrologia Graeca 60, Paris, 1862,pp. 391–682.
• Macrobius,Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis –Commentaire au songe de Scipion, Mireille Armisen-Marchetti (ed.trans.), 2 vols., Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003.
• Plato,Opera, Elizabeth A. Duke, et al. (eds.), Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1995 (vol. 1); John Burnet (ed.), Oxford:Oxford University Press 1901–1907 (vols. 2–5).
• Plotinus,Opera, Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer(eds.), 3 vols., Oxford: Oxford University Press,1964–1982.
• Porphyry,Sententiae ad intelligibilia ducentes, ErichLamberz (ed.), Leipzig: Teubner, 1975.
• Possidius,Sancti Augustini vita, Herbert T. Weiskotten(ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1919.
• Sextus Empiricus,Opera, Hermann Mutschmann et al.(eds.), 4 vols., Leipzig: Teubner, 1914–1962.
• Long, Anthony A. and David N. Sedley (eds.), 1987,TheHellenistic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Selected Secondary Literature

• Ayres, Lewis, 2010,Augustine and the Trinity, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511780301
• BeDuhn, Jason D., 2010,Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma1: Conversion and Apostasy, 373–388 C.E., Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press.
• –––, 2013,Augustine’s ManichaeanDilemma 2. Making a “Catholic” Self, 388–401C.E., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Bermon, Emmanuel, 2001,Le cogito dans la pensée desaint Augustin, Paris: Vrin.
• Bermon, Emmanuel and Gerard O’Daly (eds.), 2012,Le DeTrinitate de saint Augustin. Exégèse, logique etnoétique. Actes du colloque international de Bordeaux,16–19 juin 2010, Paris: Études Augustiniennes.
• Bittner, Rüdiger, 1999, “Augustine’s Philosophyof History”, in Matthews 1999: 345–360.
• Bochet, Isabelle, 2011, “Lesquaestionesattribuées à Porphyre dans la Lettre 102d’Augustin”, in Sébastien Morlet (ed.),Letraité de Porphyre Contre les chrétiens. Unsiècle de recherches, nouvelles questions. Actes du colloqueinternational organisé les 8 et 9 septembre 2009 àl’Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, Paris:Études Augustiniennes, pp. 371–394.
• Børresen, Kari E., 2013, “Challenging Augustine inFeminist Theology and Gender Studies”, in Pollmann 2013:135–141.
• Bouton-Touboulic, Anne-Isabelle, 2004,L’ordrecaché. La notion d’ordre chez saint Augustin, Paris:Études Augustiniennes.
• –––, 2012, “Qu’il n’y a pasd’amour sans connaissance: étude d’un argument duDe Trinitate, livres VIII–XV”, in Bermon andO’Daly 2012: 181–203.
• Brachtendorf, Johannes, 2000,Die Struktur des menschlichenGeistes nach Augustinus. Selbstreflexion und Erkenntnis Gottes in Detrinitate, Hamburg: Meiner.
• –––, 2005,Augustins‘Confessiones’, Darmstadt: WissenschaftlicheBuchgesellschaft.
• –––, 2012, “Time, Memory, and Selfhood inDe Trinitate”, in Bermon and O’Daly 2012:221–233.
• Brittain, Charles, 2002, “Non-Rational Perception in theStoics and Augustine”,Oxford Studies in AncientPhilosophy, 22: 253–308.
• –––, 2003, “Colloquium 7: AttentionDeficit in Plotinus and Augustine: Psychological Problems in Christianand Platonist Theories of the Grades of Virtue”,Proceedingsof the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 18:223–275. doi:10.1163/22134417-90000043
• –––, 2012a, “Self-Knowledge in Cicero andAugustine (De trinitate, X, 5, 7–10, 16)”, inCatapano and Cillerai 2012: 107–135.
• –––, 2012b, “Intellectual Self-Knowledgein Augustine (De Trinitate 14.7–14)”, in Bermonand O’Daly 2012: 313–330.
• Brown, Peter, 1988,The Body and Society. Men, Women andSexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press. Translated into
  • German:Die Keuschheit der Engel. Sexuelle Entsagung, Askeseund Körperlichkeit im frühen Christentum, München:Hanser, 1991.
  • French:Le Renoncement à la chair. Virginité,célibat et continence dans le christianisme primitif,Paris: Gallimard, 1995.
  • Italian:Il corpo e la società, Torino: Einaudi,2010 (first edition 1992).
  • Spanish:El cuerpo e la sociedad, Barcelona: Muchnik,1993.
• Bubacz, Bruce, 1981,St. Augustine’s Theory ofKnowledge. A Contemporary Analysis, New York: Edwin MellenPress.
• Burnell, Peter J., 1992, “The Status of Politics in St.Augustine’s ‘City of God’”,History ofPolitical Thought, 13(1): 13–29.
• –––, 1995, “Concupiscence and MoralFreedom in Augustine and before Augustine”:,AugustinianStudies, 26(1): 49–63. doi:10.5840/augstudies19952612
• Burnyeat, Myles F., 1987, “Wittgenstein and AugustineDeMagistro”,Aristotelian Society SupplementaryVolume, 61: 1–24. Reprinted in Matthews 1999: 286–303and in Doody, Eodice & Paffenroth 2018: 1–20.doi:10.1093/aristoteliansupp/61.1.1
• Byers, Sarah, 2012a, “Augustine and the Philosophers”,in Vessey 2012: 175–187. doi:10.1002/9781118255483.ch14
• –––, 2012b, “The Psychology of Compassion:Stoicism inCity of God 9.5”, in Wetzel 2012:130–148. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139014144.008
• –––, 2013,Perception, Sensibility, andMoral Motivation in Augustine: A Stoic-Platonic Synthesis,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1017/CBO9781139086110
• Cary, Phillip, 2000,Augustine’s Invention of the InnerSelf. The Legacy of a Christian Platonist, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.
• –––, 2008a,Inner Grace: Augustine in theTraditions of Plato and Paul, Oxford: Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336481.001.0001
• –––, 2008b,Outward Signs: The Powerlessnessof External Things in Augustine’s Thought, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336498.001.0001
• Cary, Phillip, John Doody, and Kim Paffenroth (eds.), 2010,Augustine and Philosophy, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
• Castagnoli, Luca, 2010,Ancient Self-Refutation: The Logic andHistory of the Self-Refutation Argument from Democritus toAugustine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Other Internet Resources

• Mendelson, Michael, “Saint Augustine,”StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta(ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/augustine/>. [This was the previous entry on Saint Augustine in theStanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy — see theversion history.]
• Augustine of Hippo, by James J. O’Donnell (Georgetown).
• Zentrum für Augustinusforschung (ZAF), Würzburg (Germany), withlist of critical editions,bibliographical database and links toonline translations
• Finding Augustine, bibliographical databse by the Augustinian Historical Institute(Leuven, Belgium) and Villanova University.
• Sant’Agostino—Augustinus Hipponensis. Augustine’s works in Latin (text of thePL), Italian,English, French and Spanish, bibliographical and other tools.
• Bibliothek der Kirchenväter. Latin texts and older translations into German, French and English ofmost of Augustine’s works.

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