The irrational Augustine / Catherine Conybeare.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Conybeare, Catherine

Series:

Oxford early Christian studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Augustine, Saint, Archbishop of Canterbury, -604?.

Christian saints--Biography.

Theology, Doctrinal--History--Early church, ca. 30-600.

Theology, Doctrinal.

History.

Theology, Doctrinal--Early church.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xvi, 223 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006.

Summary:

St Augustine's first surviving works are philosophical dialogues produced on retreat at Cassiciacum in the period between his re-commitment to Christianity and his baptism. The moment at Cassiciacum was one of remarkable freedom and experimentation for Augustine as he considered questions at the very core of his emerging faith: How does reason stand up to interrogation in the light of faith? What are the consequences of the soul's situation in the body? How can we value the changeable and impermanent? How do we take account of human interconnectedness and still attend to the divine?

Catherine Conybeare suggests reading these early dialogues the way Augustine implicitly urges-as fully realized 'performances' with meaning not just in the words but in the silences, the hesitations, the carefully narrated reactions of the participants to each other. Conybeare explores the significance of Augustine's inclusion of his mother, Monnica, as an interlocutor, and the way in which Monnica prompts and expands his most experimental ideas. And she shows how Augustine dramatizes- often humorously-his interrogation of his own reason. The Irrational Augustine considers how, in his earliest works, Augustine insists on the embodied and the relational in the face of an intellectual tradition that assigns little value to either. An epilogue develops the consequences for Augustine's later religious practice.

Contents:

Part 1 Why Dialogues? 9

1 On the Threshold 11

The Problem of Patronage 14

The Speaking Text 27

Dialogues and Logic 35

2 A Christian Theatre 42

Spectacular Dialogues 42

Documentary Details 49

Using the Emotions 55

Part 2 Women Doing Philosophy 61

3 Theology for Lunch 63

The Erasure of Monnica 64

Food for the Mind 69

'Not Without God' 80

From Need to Prayer 83

4 A Really Liberal Education 95

From Darkness to Conversion 95

Squabbling Like Men 100

Monnica Does Philosophy 107

A Disembodied Teacher? 113

Order and Evil 120

The Less Gentlemanly Disciplines 125

Part 3 The Irrational Augustine 139

5 The Interrogation of Reason 141

Ratio in De Ordine 144

Talking to Ratio 148

Potential ratio 162

The Soul of Grammar 165

Epilogue: Exploiting Potential 173

Index Locorum 217.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [203]-216) and indexes.

ISBN:

019926208X

OCLC:

62796061

Publisher Number:

9780199262083