Human beings seek to transcend limits. This is part of our potential greatness, since it is how we can realize what is best in our humanity. However, the limit-transcending feature of human life is also part of our potential downfall, as it can lead to dehumanization and failure to attain important
Augustine and the Limits of Virtue
โ Scribed by James Wetzel
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Year
- 1992
- Tongue
- English
- Leaves
- 262
- Category
- Library
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
โฆ Synopsis
Augustine's moral psychology was one of the richest in late antiquity, and in this book James Wetzel evaluates its development, indicating that the insights offered by Augustine on free-will have been prevented from receiving full appreciation as the result of an anachronistic distinction between theology and philosophy. He shows that it has been commonplace to divide Augustine's thought into earlier and later phases, the former being more philosophically informed than the latter. Wetzel's contention is that this division is less pronounced than it has been made out to be. The author shows that, while Augustine clearly acknowledges his differences with philosophy, he never loses his fascination with the Stoic concepts of happiness and virtue, and of the possibility of their attainment by human beings. This fascination is seen by Wetzel to extend to Augustine's writings on grace, where freedom and happiness are viewed as a recovery of virtue. The notorious dismissal of pagan virtue in 'The City of God' is part of Augustine's family quarrel with philosophers, not a rejection of philosophy per se. Augustine the theologian is thus seen to be a Platonist philosopher with a keen sense of the psychology of moral struggle.
โฆ Table of Contents
Preface page xi
List of abbreviations xiv
Introduction: Augustine and philosophy i
1 Time-bound 17
The entropy of personal identity 26
Sin and entropy 37
2 The discipline of virtue 45
Virtue and external goods 55
The disenfranchisement of the affections 68
Voluntary sin 76
3 Wisdom's grief 86
Involuntary sin 88
The rehabilitation of the affections 98
4 Grace and conversion 112
Two wills at war 126
Fugitive beginnings 138
5 Virtue in retrospect 161
Conversion's persona 169
Mixing memory and desire 187
Irresistible grace 197
Alienation and autonomy 206
Conclusion: Free will 219
Editions 236
Translations 238
References 239
Index 244
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
Human dependence on technology has increased exponentially over the past several centuries, and so too has the notion that we can fix environmental problems with scientific applications. The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge proposes an alternative to this
Augustine and Roman Virtue seeks to correct what the author sees as a fundamental misapprehension in medieval thought, a misapprehension that fuels further problems and misunderstandings in the historiography of philosophy. This misapprehension is the assumption that the development of certain theme
<span>Augustine of Hippo is a key figure in the history of Christianity and has had a profound impact on the course of western moral and political thought. Katherine Chambers here explores a neglected topic in Augustinian studies by offering a systematic account of the meaning that Augustine gave to
Presented in a parallel text translation, this important book brings the work of the controversial and powerful Bishop Juan de Palafox to non-Spanish speakers for the first time. A seminal document in the history of colonial Mexico and imperial Spain, Virtues of the Indian tells us as much about the