A Theory of Coincidences (Paper)

Vessey/A Companion to Augustine, 2012

Because of the immensity of Augustine's corpus and the complex intellectual patrimony that informs it, attempts to place him within the history of philosophical traditions are often partial and in need of supplementation. In treating below of Augustine's engagement with Aristotelianism, Middle Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Stoicism, I shall be drawing attention to particular topics, lexical points, and philosophical arguments that have not received much attention in the literature up to this point, despite their centrality to Augustine's own philosophical interests. Discovery of the new philosophical material I present here is possible thanks to the use of a method only recently beginning to gain currency: that of looking for philosophical arguments and developments in Augustine's sermons and other exegetical texts (see e.g. Atkins and Dodaro 2001: xi-xii; Byers 2003: 433-4). In the past, philosophical scholarship on Augustine has treated the genre of a text as indicative of its discipline, an approach that has resulted in a fairly strict separation of philosophical research from rhetorical, "theological," or "pastoral" texts (this approach relies on methodological assumptions more appropriate to medieval scholasticism than to Augustine). In contrast, the alternative "integrative" method employed here yields a more complete picture of Augustine's relationship to various philosophical traditions. The reliability of this method is clear from the fact that its results cohere with what Augustine says on the same topics in his other, more systematic or straightforwardly philosophical works, as we shall see below. Thus the new claims here do not concern whom Augustine read (Plotinus in the translation of Victorinus or someone of similar interests and abilities, Apuleius, Cicero, Varro, Gellius, and Seneca), but rather to what degree he assimilated what he read. We turn first to what is perhaps the most controversial question, that of Augustine's Aristotelianism.

Marvell Studies, 2021

Philosophy and Literature, 2015

on whose side is st. augustine of Hippo in the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry? in his four Cassiciacum dialogues, augustine obviously favors the former, but his rhapsodic use of poetry in the dialogues-and indeed his own poetics in crafting these works-point to a more complicated attitude than is initially apparent. This essay offers an overview of the conflict between philosophy and poetry in Plato's Republic, establishes the reemergence of that conflict in augustine's four earliest dialogues, and explores augustine's somewhat surprising solution.

On whose side is St. Augustine of Hippo in the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry? In his four Cassiciacum dialogues, Augustine obviously favors the former, but his rhapsodic use of poetry in the dialogues—and indeed his own poetics in crafting these works—point to a more complicated attitude than is initially apparent. This essay offers an overview of the conflict between philosophy and poetry in Plato’s Republic, establishes the reemergence of that conflict in Augustine’s four earliest dialogues, and explores Augustine’s somewhat surprising solution.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2011

A significant motive for the recent interest in Augustine's early writings appears to be the belief that those books are the product of a youthful and optimistic philosophical seeker, more open than the old bishop whose polemical writings taught Westerners to be pessimistic about their agency and sexuality. Brian Stock's recent investigation of the relationship between Augustine's thinking about the self and his use of the soliloquy both undermines and remains indebted to that common perspective.

Augustine and the Dialogue, 2018

De imm. an. De immortalitate animae De lib. arb. De libero arbitrio De quant. an. De quantitate animae De Trin. De Trinitate De util. cred. De utilitate credendi Ep. Epistulae Retract. Retractationes Sol. Soliloquia viii CHAPTER 1 method of un-teaching and concealment in response to Stoic materialism. 1 The most important Academic for Augustine is Cicero, "by whom Latin philosophy had its beginning and also its perfection." 2 Cicero's philosophical works provide Augustine's main source of theories, arguments and definitions. 3 Yet Cicero also provides a model for how to write philosophical dialogues, and the method of un-teaching and concealment which Augustine develops and employs to structure his own works provides a fruitful if historically implausible framework for approaching this father of Latin philosophy. 4 The historical implausibility of Augustine's account of crypto-Platonist Academic skepticism has led many scholars to pass over it entirely. As a result, no one has yet appreciated the fact that through it Augustine provides the key to understanding the project he himself undertakes in these works. The odd marriage of the skeptical Academy and Platonism supplies the pedigree for Augustine's own philosophical method, and the alterations he makes to the dialogue genre serve his own project. Like Cicero before him, Augustine is content to pit competing views against each other without conclusively proving one over the other, and to end each work by declaring some view worthy of approval (probabile). 5 Yet Augustine goes beyond Cicero and Academic practice, insofar as his reflections on rational activity provide some hook 1 While Plato's Academy went through several stages in its long life, it is the skeptical new Academy of Arcesilaus and Carneades that is most interesting for C. Acad. and the early dialogues. I will thus reserve the term 'Academic' for this particular skeptical period. 2 Cicero...a quo in latina lingua philosophia et inchoata est et perfecta [C. Acad. 1.8]. 3 See Michael Foley, "Cicero, Augustine, and the Philosophical Roots of the Cassiciacum Dialogues," Revue des Études Augustiniennes 45 (1999): 51-77. I take a different view of the broader implications of such borrowings. See chapter 2 for discussion. 4 Augustine ultimately claims that Cicero's works can be read in this way; as to the question of whether or not Cicero had such readings in mind, Augustine is explicitly indifferent. See chapter 2 for discussion. 5 The English 'probable' is a false friend and has led to a great deal of misunderstanding in the literature. Augustine uses the term in its technical sense that has nothing to do with likelihood or probability. Augustine stresses that the term is interchangeable with 'truth-like' (veri simile) in Academic usage (C. Acad. 2.26). In the very final line of his De Natura Deorum, Cicero maintains an Academic skeptical position in claiming that the Stoic views expressed by his interlocutor Balbus "appear to him closer to likeness to truth" (ad ueritatis similitudinem uideretur esse propensior).

Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62/3 (1994), 869-884: "Explaining the Inexplicable: Augustine on the Fall". This is more or less the same text as the final chapter of my 1995 book Aristotle and Augustine of Freedom of Action.

Roman Alexander Barton/Alexander Klaudies/Thomas Micklich (Hgg.), Sympathy in Transformation: Dynamics between Rhetorics, Poetics and Ethics (Berlin/New York 2018) 48-66, 2018

Modern Theology, 2003

With this, Charles Taylor summarizes a grand drama for which he is perhaps the most visible spokesman. The story is familiar. In it Augustine bequeaths to the Western consciousness notions of interiority and will which Descartes brings to term in what we have come to know very generally as "modern subjectivity". 2 This story has gained currency in recent years. Stephen Menn, for instance, has reinterpreted Descartes' Meditations as a "spiritual exercise" that mimics the "ascent" of Confessions VII, a judgement with which Wayne Hankey concurs. Zbignew Janowski's great task of demonstrating a definitive Augustinian influence on Descartes catalogues parallel texts and situates the Meditations within the concern of seventeenth century Augustinian "theodicy". Despite significant differences, Taylor's basic plot remains, which is all the more remarkable for the fact that it is held in common not only by many who share his humanistic optimism, but by many who oppose it. 3 For those of more Nietzschean inclinations, who recognize that Descartes' self-grounding subject ultimately leads to the annihilation of all that is not the subject, Augustine's "inner man" inevitably brings about the death of the very God whom he was invented to praise. 4 Augustine thus exemplifies the intrinsic nihilism of Christianity and hastens the processes which reduce the world to a receptacle for the impositions of the will. I intend to complicate this story by arguing that much of what is taken to be "Augustinian" in Descartes' cogito, especially in his treatment of the will,

Tetsugaku: International Journal of the Philosophical Association of Japan, 2024

In the first book of De Libero Arbitrio, Augustine concludes that the origin of evil is "its own will and free decision" (propria uoluntas et liberum arbitrium) (1. 11. 21). Despite its importance for the development of Augustine's theory of will, researchers have largely ignored this statement and failed to provide a detailed analysis of it. This paper will, by contrast, take this claim seriously, aiming to reveal its full philosophical significance by focusing on the function of the concept of will. In the first section, I begin by exploring the meaning of propria uoluntas et liberum arbitrium by analyzing it word by word and situating it in its proper context. I show that this expression is composed of words with legal nuances and that, taken as a whole, it expresses the view that nothing other than the mind itself subjugates the mind to desire. In the second section, I focus on Augustine's formulation of philosophical inquiry in his earliest treatises before De Libero Arbitrio, showing that it consists of three steps: the purification of desire, the exercise of reason, and the contemplation of the Truth. In the final section, I demonstrate that propria uoluntas et liberum arbitrium forced Augustine to reorganize the model of the soul and of philosophical inquiry that he had forged since his earliest days. A new program of philosophical inquiry, which was formulated later in De Doctrina Christiana, places the purification at the final stage, suggesting that the concept of will was the driving force in transforming how Augustine engages in philosophy.