On Love, Confession, Surrender and the Moral Self

Description

The Reading Augustine series presents concise, personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religious scholars. Ian Clausen's On Love, Confession, Surrender and the Moral Self describes Augustine's central ideas on morality and how he arrived at them. Describing an intellectual journey that will resonate especially with readers at the beginning of their own journey, Clausen shows that Augustine's early writing career was an outworking of his own inner turmoil and discovery, and that both were to summit, triumphantly, on his monumental book Confessions (AD 386-401). On Love, Confession, Surrender and the Moral Self offers a way of looking at Augustine's early writing career as an on-going, developing process: a process whose chief result was to shape a conception of the moral self that has lasted and prospered to the present day.

Ian Clausen is Arthur J. Ennis Postdoctoral Fellow at Villanova University, USA. He previously held a two-year post at Valparaiso University as a Lilly Postdoctoral Fellow. His research centers on Augustine and the Augustinian moral tradition, and extends to 21st-century debates on technology, moral theory and formation, and the good life. His publications appear in journals such as Augustinian Studies, Religions, Expository Times, Radical Orthodoxy, and Studies in Christian Ethics. He is a former British Marshall Scholar.

Clausen's main idea remains a convincing and attractive one ... Strongly recommended book. * Augustiniana * Perhaps not surprisingly ... I began to like this book more and more, and Augustine for that matter, as soon as I abandoned the dispassionate reviewer's stance, and even more having reflected on its reflexive account of my ignorance. Here, I suggest, is where good theology wins over religious studies: it encourages such readerly engagement. * New Blackfriars * The passionate desire to know who we are and where we are going, a passion we usually associate with Augustine's Confessions, is uncovered and explored by Ian Clausen in this discussion of Augustine's earlier writings. While engaging throughout with other scholarly treatments of those writings, Clausen never lets his readers forget that much more than scholarly debate is at stake in the questions Augustine invites us to ponder. * Gilbert Meilaender, Senior Research Professor of Theology, Valparaiso University, USA * This is a book that will be valued by those who want the help that a close and sensitive reading of Augustine can give, and to acquire a fresh view of how the human agent emerges into view in Augustine's earlier works. Building upon the most important new developments in interpretation of the early Augustine, Ian Clausen helps us to see how the pedagogic aspirations of Augustine's first writings are meant to elicit moral self-awareness, and so open the way for the mature awareness of the moral self that appears in the Confessions. * Oliver O'Donovan, Professor Emeritus, Christian Ethics and Practical Theology, University of Edinburgh, UK * This book offers a fresh approach to Augustine's timeless thoughts on the perennial human quest for self-location. Rather than seeing Augustine as a normative theologian, this reading presents an Augustine who in his unconditional search for truth discovers love as the vector generating meaning and direction to his, and by extension our, life. All who enjoy engaging with the big questions of today regarding human existence will find the reflections offered in this book a rewarding and perhaps surprising read. * Karla Pollmann, Professor of Classics and Head of the School of Humanities, University of Reading, UK *