Augustine of Hippo

St. Augustine (354-430 C.E.), originally named Aurelius Augustinus, was the Catholic bishop of Hippo in northern Africa. During the time of St. Augustine, Rome was being destroyed by barbarian. There was great conflict between Christians and Pagans. The conflict between Pagans and Christians shaped St. Augustine's political ideology. It is important to note that St. Augustine was not a political philosopher and was not interested in politics, however, St. Augustine felt compelled to defended the…

Both Augustine of Hippo and Niccolo Machiavelli seem to be “pessimistic” philosophers, taking a dim view of human history and human nature. However, their understandings of human nature are fundamentally different from, and to some extent, incompatible with each other. For Augustine, humans are sinful creatures, not by nature or creation, but by their choice of disobedience made from their defective free will, so salvation comes from God — loving God and faith in God. States should be based on…

Saint Augustine was a well-respected and historically impactful philosopher. His intelligence, diverse upbringing and worldly experience all combined to shape his philosophical ideas. One of his most recognized philosophical teachings was his thoughts regarding time. There are countless philosophers who taught their beliefs of time and the reality of existence. Many other philosophers developed complex presentations, but Saint Augustine did the complete opposite. Saint Augustine proposed a…

Saint Augustine (354-430 AD), he is known to go by the name of Augustine of Hippo painted an image of himself through his writings and teachings. In A.D. 410, a moment in The Western history, the Vandals, we're under orders of their king; Alaric captured Rome. Rome was known to be called the Eternal City; therefore, the Romans thought it would literally never fall, and the year 410 shook there beliefs to its foundations and ultimately led to the collapse of the Roman Empire. The world seemed…

Influences of Augustine Throughout the semester in the book The Confessions we come across many factors that contributed to the intellectual and spiritual/moral development of Augustine of Hippo. I believe Monica and Ambrose to be the two most influential people in his life. Neo Platonism and Manichaeism also are two philosophical schools of thought that greatly affected Augustine throughout his lifetime and all that he had encountered. Monica was his mother and she is considered to be the…

Christians had arrived the Pagan Gods, had made the Roman Empire successful. Furthermore, it would never had fallen if the Romans had stayed true to their Pagan Gods. Augustine response to these accusation, to try quell both the pagans and Christians, who believe that if the one true God existed then he should have protected Rome. Saint Augustine was born in North Africa town of Thagate. Carr (2009: 8). When he got older he was set to Cartage to study, there he got involved in with the…

Confessions by Saint Augustine of Hippo. Each of these books has a unique theme, but yet they maintain one common element in that they were all written by a Christian writer. However, Beowulf is a text laden with elements…

In more ways than one St. Augustine of Hippo has made everyone question why evil exists if God is literal perfection. Most people might answer that evil exists because God decided to give everyone free will. However, St. Augustine believes that evil stems from ex nihilo or out of nothing. He says that we are all evil and that nothing we do is ever done with true good intentions (Augustine, City of God). Somehow, there’s always some type of ulterior motive that sometimes even we are not even…

in Saint Augustine works from the City of God. These works will be discussed and analysis in order to gain a clearer picture of Augustine’s response to the Pagans, who suggest that the Christian faith had caused the recent disasters in Rome. However, Augustine does not go into too much detail of the recent disaster itself, but he does use Rome’s disaster as an example of the sins committed by the Romans Empire from the past, in order to make his case against the Pagans. Saint Augustine was born…

the ‘classics’. However, just because the applicability of Classical Political Thought is not always glaringly obvious, this does not result in an absence of all relevance. In fact, the thoughts of ‘classical’ philosophers Aristotle, Plato, and Augustine…