Augustine and Time
Published on 25. May 2021
Book
Hardback
356 pages
978-1-7936-3775-8 (ISBN)
Description
This collection examines the topic of time in the life and works of Augustine of Hippo. Adopting a global perspective on time as a philosophical and theological problem, the volume includes reflections on the meaning of history, the mortality of human bodies, and the relationship between temporal experience and linguistic expression. As Augustine himself once observed, time is both familiar and surprisingly strange. Everyone's days are structured by temporal rhythms and routines, from watching the clock to whiling away the hours at work. Few of us, however, take the time to sit down and figure out whether time is real or not, or how it is we are able to hold our past, present, and future thoughts together in a straight line so that we can recite a prayer or sing a song.
Divided into five sections, the essays collected here highlight the ongoing relevance of Augustine's work even in settings quite distinct from his own era and context. The first three sections, organized around the themes of interpretation, language, and gendered embodiment, engage directly with Augustine's own writings, from the Confessions to the City of God and beyond. The final two sections, meanwhile, explore the afterlife of the Augustinian approach in conversation with medieval Islamic and Christian thinkers (like Avicenna and Aquinas), as well as a broad range of Buddhist figures (like Dharmakirti and Vasubandhu).
What binds all of these diverse chapters together is the underlying sense that, regardless of the century or the tradition in which we find ourselves, there is something about the puzzle of temporality that refuses to go away. Time, as Augustine knew, demands our attention. This was true for him in late ancient North Africa. It was also true for Buddhist thinkers in South and East Asia. And it remains just as true for humankind in the twenty-first century, as people around the globe continue to grapple with the reality of time and the challenges of living in a world that always seems to be to be speeding up rather than slowing down.
Divided into five sections, the essays collected here highlight the ongoing relevance of Augustine's work even in settings quite distinct from his own era and context. The first three sections, organized around the themes of interpretation, language, and gendered embodiment, engage directly with Augustine's own writings, from the Confessions to the City of God and beyond. The final two sections, meanwhile, explore the afterlife of the Augustinian approach in conversation with medieval Islamic and Christian thinkers (like Avicenna and Aquinas), as well as a broad range of Buddhist figures (like Dharmakirti and Vasubandhu).
What binds all of these diverse chapters together is the underlying sense that, regardless of the century or the tradition in which we find ourselves, there is something about the puzzle of temporality that refuses to go away. Time, as Augustine knew, demands our attention. This was true for him in late ancient North Africa. It was also true for Buddhist thinkers in South and East Asia. And it remains just as true for humankind in the twenty-first century, as people around the globe continue to grapple with the reality of time and the challenges of living in a world that always seems to be to be speeding up rather than slowing down.
Reviews / Votes
"In Augustine's Confessions, the saint famously uncovers time-that most familiar experience-as a rich vein of inquiry. The chapters in this volume mine that vein, showing anew its depth and breadth, through engagement with an unusually broad group of thinkers and themes. Materialist, Buddhist, and Reformation texts refract Augustine's thought in illuminating new directions, while conventional Augustinian themes like sin, grace, creation, and eschatology are productively reexamined. Above all, these chapters remind us that an investigation of time is, at bedrock, always an investigation of ourselves." -- Erika Kidd, University of St. Thomas "Drawing on an array of disciplinary perspectives, Augustine and Time offers a wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and ambitious collection of essays that brings together historical and thematic approaches to examine Augustine's views on time, the Medieval reception history of his views, and possibilities for inter-religious dialogue." -- Matthew Drever, University of Tulsa "This fine essay collection offers something rare. An international team of established and emerging scholars write from multiple perspectives, offer close readings of Augustine, fan out into reception history, and bring different disciplines and religious traditions into conversation. That breadth combines with the depth of focusing upon a single topic (time) while diving especially into one famous text (Book 11 of Confessions). The result is at once a dimensional and fine-grained take on Augustine's thought. Augustine and Time is a suggestive, absorbing group of essays. " -- Michael Cameron, University of Portland "It is difficult to think of a more Augustinian problem than that of time and temporality. Whereas in previous generations Augustine was defined by his attention to scripture, selfhood and sinfulness, our current era draws us to his sense of temporality, which comprises all three themes but does so outside of any confessional order or pre-established philosophical hierarchy. The attempt to seize Augustinian temporality in all its many-faceted aspects is what makes this volume on time in Augustine both rich and indispensable." -- Willemien Otten, The University of Chicago Divinity School Augustine and Time is about Augustinian temporality - how we live in the face of our finite lifespan, one day or week or month or year after the next, from our hazily remembered infancy through childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age. Augustine's conception of our all-too-human `temporality' is explored not only in Augustine and in the world of his time, but brought into dialogue with other ages and other traditions in a way that shows its power and flexibility. It's a fascinating idea for a book, and it is carried out with flying colors. It will change the way you think about this enterprise of living that we all are engaged in. -- Peter King, University of Toronto "Augustine was famously perplexed by time: as the condition of our very existence, perhaps nothing is more familiar to us; as the encompassing horizon of our finitude, perhaps nothing in the created order is more difficult to think. Readers who share Augustine's perplexity will find in this admirable collection not an easy answer to a difficult question ('Who can explain time easily and briefly?' asks Augustine), but rather a deepening of perplexity into wonder. Hannan, Paffenroth, and Doody have done us a great service by gathering here such varied meditations on the common theme of time. The result is a rich invitation to think time anew: from within and without Christianity; in Augustine's historical context and in the received tradition; in light of more contemporary philosophical theories of time; in relationship to language and to melody; and as embodied both now and in the hereafter (the 'time after time'). Augustine's spiritual genius consists in his willingness to tarry with mystery until perplexity blossoms into praise. This volume is an invitation to journey into time with Augustine, and to find wonder redoubled along the way." -- Paul Camacho, Villanova University Augustine and Time is a splendid treatment of one of the more nuanced and expansive aspects ofAugustine's theology. John Doody, Sean Hannan, and Kim Paffenroth have done an exceptional job inorganizing this work and inviting the various contributors to this volume. Anyone who has a fondness forAugustine will need to consult this tome for their own research or enlightenment even if they fall ondifferent sides of the many sides continuing to debate and advance the multifaceted layers of Augustinianscholarship. * VoegelinView *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
732 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-7936-3775-8 (9781793637758)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
John Doody is Senior Visiting Professor at Arizona State University. He is a member of the School for Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.
Kim Paffenroth is Professor of Religious Studies and the Director of the Honors Program at Iona College. He has written extensively on Augustine, the Bible, and on the interface between Christian belief and popular culture. In the last category, he produced Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth (Baylor, 2006), which won the Bram Stoker Award and led Dr. Paffenroth to write several popular zombie novels. His newest work on Augustine, On King Lear, The Confessions, and Human Experience and Nature, is due out in 2021 from Bloomsbury.
Sean Hannan is an Assistant Professor in the Humanities Department at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His first book, On Time, Change, History, and Conversion, was published by Bloomsbury in 2020. With W. Ezekiel Goggin, he is currently co-authoring Mysticism and Materialism in the Wake of German Idealism (under contract with Routledge).
Kim Paffenroth is Professor of Religious Studies and the Director of the Honors Program at Iona College. He has written extensively on Augustine, the Bible, and on the interface between Christian belief and popular culture. In the last category, he produced Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth (Baylor, 2006), which won the Bram Stoker Award and led Dr. Paffenroth to write several popular zombie novels. His newest work on Augustine, On King Lear, The Confessions, and Human Experience and Nature, is due out in 2021 from Bloomsbury.
Sean Hannan is an Assistant Professor in the Humanities Department at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His first book, On Time, Change, History, and Conversion, was published by Bloomsbury in 2020. With W. Ezekiel Goggin, he is currently co-authoring Mysticism and Materialism in the Wake of German Idealism (under contract with Routledge).
Content
Part I: Interpreting Augustine On Time
Chapter 1: Time, Eternity, and History in Augustine's Early Works by Thomas Clemmons
Chapter 2: Keeping Time in Mind: Saint Augustine's Solution to a Perplexing Problem by Alexander R. Eodice
Chapter 3: Time After Augustine by James Wetzel
Part II: Time, Language, And Song
Chapter 4: Living as Singing: Augustine's Understanding of the Voice of Creatures in the Confessions by Makiko Sato
Chapter 5: Time, Mirror of the Soul by Cristiane Negreiros Abbud Ayoub
Chapter 6: The Inner Word and the Outer Word: Time, Temporality, and Language in Augustine and Gadamer by Matthew W. Knotts
Part III: Time, Embodiment, And Gender
Chapter 7: Augustinian Temporality and Resurrected Bodies by Paul Ulishney
Chapter 8: Love in the Time of Augustine: Rape, Suicide, and Resurrection in the City of God by Patricia Grosse
Chapter 9: Augustine and the Gendered Self in Time by Megan Loumagne Ulishney
Part IV: Augustinian Temporality in The Middle Ages
Chapter 10: Augustine and Avi
Chapter 1: Time, Eternity, and History in Augustine's Early Works by Thomas Clemmons
Chapter 2: Keeping Time in Mind: Saint Augustine's Solution to a Perplexing Problem by Alexander R. Eodice
Chapter 3: Time After Augustine by James Wetzel
Part II: Time, Language, And Song
Chapter 4: Living as Singing: Augustine's Understanding of the Voice of Creatures in the Confessions by Makiko Sato
Chapter 5: Time, Mirror of the Soul by Cristiane Negreiros Abbud Ayoub
Chapter 6: The Inner Word and the Outer Word: Time, Temporality, and Language in Augustine and Gadamer by Matthew W. Knotts
Part III: Time, Embodiment, And Gender
Chapter 7: Augustinian Temporality and Resurrected Bodies by Paul Ulishney
Chapter 8: Love in the Time of Augustine: Rape, Suicide, and Resurrection in the City of God by Patricia Grosse
Chapter 9: Augustine and the Gendered Self in Time by Megan Loumagne Ulishney
Part IV: Augustinian Temporality in The Middle Ages
Chapter 10: Augustine and Avi