En Route to the Confessions
The Roots and Development of Augustine's Philosophical Anthropology
By (author) D.A. Napier
By any standard, Augustine of Hippo casts an imposing shadow. With a retrospective distance of 1600 years, his influence on Western thought, political structures, religious institutions, and selfhood seems obviously the work of a giant. However, this god-like figure did not burst forth full-grown. His prodigious creativity was both constrained and aided by a rich complex of theological and philosophical traditions. En route to the Confessions charts the development of Augustine’s various understandings of the human person by tracing his phased interactions with particular intellectual traditions and issues from his conversion until his composition of the Confessions. The correlated alterations to Augustine’s use of spiritual exercises for human development at each stage are also explored.
By any standard, Augustine of Hippo casts an imposing shadow. With a retrospective distance of 1600 years, his influence on Western thought, political structures, religious institutions, and selfhood seems obviously the work of a giant. However, this god-like figure did not burst forth full-grown. His prodigious creativity was both constrained and aided by a rich complex of theological and philosophical traditions. En route to the Confessions charts the development of Augustine’s various understandings of the human person by tracing his phased interactions with particular intellectual traditions and issues from his conversion until his composition of the Confessions. The correlated alterations to Augustine’s use of spiritual exercises for human development at each stage are also explored. Augustine’s anthropological thinking emerges therein as a series of strikingly fruitful yet thoroughly human syntheses of ancient philosophic and Christian thought. Augustine’s philosophical resources and strategical alliances turn out to be much broader than most scholarly accounts have acknowledged. In particular, Augustine made much more extensive use of Roman Stoic conceptualities and argumentative strategies in constructing his philosophical anthropology than heretofore considered.
- By (author) D.A. Napier
Other Titles in this Series
New Approaches to Sidonius Apollinaris
With Indices on Helga Köhler, C. Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius: BriefeBuch I
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The Ladder of Prayer and the Ship of Stirrings
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Writing to Survive. A Commentary on Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters Book 7. Volume 1
The Episcopal Letters 1-11
Volume 2
Writing to Survive. A Commentary on Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters Book 7. Volume 2
The Ascetic Letters 12-18
Volume 14
New Themes, New Styles in the Eastern Mediterranean
Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Encounters, 5th-8th Centuries
Volume 16
Inside and Out
Interactions between Rome and the Peoples on the Arabian and Egyptian Frontiers in Late Antiquity
Volume 8
Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity
Encounters in the Abrahamic Religions, 6th-8th Centuries
Volume 17
L’écriture de l’histoire en syriaque
Transmissions interculturelles et constructions identitaires entre hellénisme et islam. Avec des répertoires des textes historiographiques en annexe
Volume 12
Empire, Church and Society in the Late Roman Near East
Greeks, Jews, Syrians and Saracens (Collected Studies, 2004-14)
Volume 10
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