Overview

Augustine's Confessions, written between AD 394 and 400, is an autobiographical work which outlines his youth and his conversion to Christianity. It is one of the great texts of Late Antiquity, the first Western Christian autobiography ever written, and it retains its fascination for philosophers, theologians, historians, and scholars of religious studies today. This Critical Guide engages with Augustine's creative appropriation of the work of his predecessors in theology generally, in metaphysics, and in philosophy as therapy for the soul, and reframes a much discussed - but still poorly understood - passage from the Confessions with respect to recent philosophy. The volume represents the best of contemporary scholarship on Augustine's Confessions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and builds on existing scholarship to develop new insights, explore underappreciated themes, and situate Augustine in the thought of his own day as well as ours.

Full Product Details

Author:   Thomas Williams (Georgetown University, Washington DC)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
ISBN:  

9781316511107

ISBN 10:   1316511103
Pages:   258
Publication Date:   22 January 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Thomas Williams; 1. Theological predecessors to the confessions of Augustine Mark Edwards; 2. Trinitarian metaphysics in the Confessions: Marius Victorinus and the Neoplatonic triad 'being, life, mind' Sarah Byers; 3. Augustine's therapy of emotions: the Confessions as a Christian guide to care for one's soul Charlotte Köckert; 4. Augustine's Confessions and earlier exegesis Bronwen Neil; 5. Reading Augustine reading Scripture in the Confessions Michael Cameron; 6. Augustine on the tasks of reading Scripture Blake D. Dutton; 7. The sacramental structure and imagination of Augustine's Confessions Elizabeth Klein; 8. How great a debtor: grace and providence in Augustine's Confessions Thomas Williams; 9. Augustine's second-personal account of the virtues Andrew Pinsent; 10. The nobility of sight in the Confessions Gerald Boersma; 11. First words: Confessions 1.8.13 and the inner life of language James Wetzel; 12. Augustine on time, eternity, and temporal experience Tamer Nawar; Bibliography; Index.

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Author Information

Thomas Williams is Isabelle A. and Henry D. Martin Professor of Medieval Philosophy at Georgetown University. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Ethics (Cambridge, 2018), and his recent publications include a translation of Augustine's Confessions (2019) and Anselm: A Very Short Introduction (2022).

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