On Love, Confession, Surrender and the Moral Self [Hardcover]

The Reading Augustine series presents concise, personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religious scholars.

Ian Clausen'sOn Love, Confession, Surrender and the Moral Selfdescribes 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 bookConfessions(AD 386-401).

On Love, Confession, Surrender and the Moral Selfoffers 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 Clausenis 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 asAugustinian Studies,Religions,Expository Times,Radical Orthodoxy, andStudies in Christian Ethics. He is a former British Marshall Scholar.

Acknowledgments
A Note on Text and Translations
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Being Where We Are
Chapter 1: Awakening Restless Hearts
Chapter 2: Avoiding the Question
Chapter 3: Engaging the Despair of Skepticism
Chapter 4: Escaping the Folly of Manichaeism
Chapter 5: Entering the Problem of Adam's Place
Conclusion: The Long Surrender

References
Index