St. Augustine in 90 Minutes

Philosophers in 90 Minutes #24

by Paul Strathern

In St. Augustine in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of St. Augustine's life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from St. Augustine's work; a brief list of suggested reading for those who wish to push further; and chronologies that place St. Augustine within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Biography, Religion, Audiobook, Theology

94 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Paul Strathern (born 1940) is a English writer and academic. He was born in London, and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, after which he served in the Merchant Navy over a period of two years. He then lived on a Greek island. In 1966 he travelled overland to India and the Himalayas. His novel A Season in Abyssinia won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1972.

Besides five novels, he has also written numerous books on science, philosophy, history, literature, medicine and economics.

Reviews

[Maziyar Yf · Rating 3 out of 5]

پل استراترن در مجموعه آشنایی با فیلسوفان ، پس از ارسطو از فلاسفه ای مانند اپیکور ، سنکا و فلوطین عبور کرده و به این گونه به فیلسوفان قرون وسطی و اولین فیلسوف مسیحی یعنی آگوستین قدیس رسیده است . در حقیقت ارسطو به اندازه ای تاثیرگذار و عظیم بوده که با مرگ او زوال فلسفه یونان شروع شده و تا 600 سال پس از او و تا زمان ظهور آگوستین فیلسوفی مهم و برجسته و صاحب اندیشه و تفکر پدید نیامده بود .
مقدمه و موخره و تاریخی که نویسنده در مورد هر فیلسوف به اختصار بیان کرده ، برای اگوستین اندکی طولانی تر شده ، گویا جدای اندیشه های او ، تاریخ پیدایش او از آن جهت که 600 سال قبل و 800 سال پس از او اندیشه برجسته ای به وجود نیامده اهمیتی برابر با اندیشه های او داشته است .
آنچه استراترن از اندیشه های آگوستین به آن پرداخته ، آمیزش دو مکتب فکری نو افلاطونی ( برداشت فلوطین از اندیشه های افلاطون ) و آموزش های انجیل بوده ، این آمیزش هم برای مسیحیت یک پشتوانه فکری نیرومند فراهم کرده و هم آنرا با سنت فلسفی یونان باستان پیوند داده و از همین رو در دوران استیلای کلیسا سبب زنده ماندن فلسفه شده بود .
اما در میان انبوه اندیشه های آگوستین ، شور بختانه نویسنده تنها به پیوند دادن مسیحیت و مکتب نو افلاطونی اشاره ای گذرا کرده و به دیگر رئوس پندار آگوستین مانند تحقیق در تبیین علم و معرفت ، یگانگی خداوند ،تثلیث مسیحی ، مساله گناه و ثواب ، جبر و اختیار ، سرنوشت و تقدیر نپرداخته ودر پایان البته خواننده را به خواندن مشروح اندیشه های آگوستین دعوت کرده است .

[امیر لطیفی · Rating 3 out of 5]

روان و ساده است. از نوشته‌های آگوستین بریده‌هایی دارد. به عصر آگوستین و پس از او اشاره می‌کند. به تأثیرات وی روی فلاسفه‌ی بعدی می‌پردازد. مخاطب را با نام‌هایی چند از فلاسفه‌ی سده‌های میانه آشنا می‌کند. خلاصه که، اگر می‌خواهید اندکی از آگوستین و فلسفه‌ی قرون وسطا بدانید، منبع خوبی‌ست.

گرچه از سر و شکل و نام‌ کتاب مشخص است که باید با توقعات مدیریت شده به سراغ‌اش رفت، اما همچنان می‌توانست غنی‌تری باشد. حدود نیمی از کتاب به سرگذشت، تقویم زندگی، عصر آگوستین، و فلاسفه‌ی پسا-آگوستینی اختصاص دارد و در عوض از خود فلسفه‌ی آگوستین غفلت می‌شود. با حفظ همین مقدار از روانی و سادگی، سهم فلسفه‌ی آگوستین از کتاب می‌توانست بیشتر باشد. از این نظر، کتاب ضعیفی است.

[Jimmy · Rating 1 out of 5]

As I said in previous reviews, this series of works introducing the readers to different philosophers has been rather disappointing and now I think I’ve found the most disappointing one in the series. The disappointment started with the very beginning of the book when the author wondered out loud about what’s the big deal with Augustine’s obsession with his guilt over his sexual sins and joked about it. I think if the author would have had a deeper wrestling with Augustine’s Confessions, one might come to a better appreciation of Augustine’s contribution in Western thought concerning the discussion of the nature of man as sinful. This experience of man’s depravity is to me one of the most verifiable claims of all the competing claims out there concerning the nature of man and yet it is one that is often denied in the West. It was also unfortunate to see in the book that the author thought that Augustine's writing suffered from trivial squabbling about theological opponents and he didn't understand why men in the Church was debating on Predestination when the Roman empire around them was crumbling. I wished the book would have pointed out of how Augustine’s City of God made a significant contribution in terms of how man views history as linear versus the cyclical view that dominated the Greeks and Romans before Augustine. It might be forgivable for readers to discover something the author misses but what is harder to accept is the author’s wild assertions in the book such as his claim that Christian philosophy would have nothing worthy of its name “Christian philosophy” if it wasn't for Augustine's use of Platonic ideas into Christian thought. This shows how little the author appreciates or understand the impact of Christianity in of itself upon Western thought. The book also had a strange discussion of a psychological explanation of philosophy that sees philosophy as an exercise of exerting one's will of power by means of intellectually shaming others. Readers must remember that merely giving psychological explanations of why someone we disagree with hold the views they do is not the same thing as presenting reasoning and argument against their views. If there was one thing that I did learn new from the book was the fact that the Christian cliché “Love the sinner, hate the sin” originated with Augustine.

[Theo Logos · Rating 3 out of 5]

”Lord, give me chastity — but not yet!”
St. Augustine

Augustine was the first and arguably the most important Christian philosopher. His major contribution was the fusion of the Neoplatonism of Plotinus with the teachings of Saint Paul and the Christian Bible. This gave Christianity a stronger intellectual backing, while tying it to the Greek tradition of philosophy. Strathern writes of this:

”In this way, Christianity managed to keep the flame of philosophy burning, however dimly, through the Dark Ages.”

Augustine’s philosophical focus was on time and subjectivity. God was outsider of time, which didn’t begin until God created the world (thus rendering nonsensical the question “what was God doing before he created the world?). Time is subjective. It exists in the human mind, is an aspect of how we see, and ultimate reality (God) is not subject to it. Strathern writes:

”This essentially blind unknowing subjectivism led Augustine to question the very basis of subjective knowledge. What can we possibly know of ultimate reality if it is beyond us in every sense? Indeed, what do we know at all? Nothing in certainty, except that we exist and that we are thinking.

He then goes on to note:

”These ideas in Augustine’s Soliloquies anticipate by more than eleven centuries Descartes celebrated ‘Cogito, ergo, sum,’ (I think, therefore I am) which was to revolutionize philosophy. Fortunately, this passage was overlooked or not acted upon by Augustine’s medieval successors or they would probably ended up burned at the stake.”

Yet this powerful thinker who was responsible for encoding the philosophical tradition within Christianity likely would have remained unknown but for the fact that he perceived himself a sex maniac, and was made to feel inordinately guilty of his sexual urges by a severe prude of a mother to whom he was inordinately attached. Strathern calls him “a prig with a problem.” It was the tension of this conflict that drove him. In his Confessions Augustine wrote:

”I went to Carthage where I found myself in the midst of a hissing cauldron of lasciviousness. I ran wild with lust; the abominable things I did, bodily desire like a bubbling swamp.”

Augustine was so obsessed with his sense of sexual sin that he read it back into his very infancy (definitely Mommy issues)

”Who can recall to me the sins I committed as a baby?

Strathern dryly observes that:

”A few sessions with an understanding analyst would probably have defused the problem, but this would have robbed philosophy of its greatest exponent in almost one and a half millennia.”

It was likely this sexual dilemma that drove Augustine’s horrific contribution to Christian theology — the doctrine of Original Sin, which led him to the logical conclusion that even unbaptized babies were condemned to everlasting damnation.

Strathern put the tragedy of this obsession into focus:

”The Roman Empire was in the last vestiges of collapse before the Dark Ages, yet the finest intellects in Christendom were busily engaged in bitter controversies over the intervention of Divine grace, whether unbaptized infants went to Hell and the need for chastity.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't know what caused me to read this book, but it was a mistake. I have left with no knowledge of Augustine's philosophy beyond sex is bad. The author comes across as nothing more than a condescending critic who thinks Christian philosophy is a joke. The unneeded comments sprinkled throughout add nothing to the understanding of Augustine's philosophy or the history. The only redeeming quality is a part purely of quotations by Augustine. Now I'll go to what I should have done in the first place, Augustine himself in City of God and Confessions.

[Jimena · Rating 1 out of 5]

La entrega más decepcionante de esta saga de filósofos. Uno creería que contando con pocas páginas para exponer la filosofía de estos grandes pensadores el autor aprovecharía para sintetizar de la mejor forma posible los planteamientos intelectuales propuestos por éstos. En cambio, Strathern se inclina más por una biografía, haciendo hincapié en los viajes de San Agustín y en criticar su lucha contra los herejes que en plasmar la increíble proesa que llevó a cabo al lograr integrar teología con filosofía.

Como si esto fuera poco para hacer del libro una pérdida de tiempo, no sólo es escasa o nula la explicación de los textos de San Agustín sino que Strathern es incapaz de abordarlo desde un punto de vista objetivo, se decanta en cambio poe manifestar algunas de sus opiniones como su insistencia en no comprender la “fijación” del filósofo por su propia lujuria o la autoflagelación en la que recaía éste.

[Matthew · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you write a book on Augustine and make fun of him and trash his mom and all Christian philosophy and promote the Dark Ages myth, you are going to have a bad time.

Or your readers will, anyway.

[Mohamad Amin · Rating 3 out of 5]

به صورت جمع جور یه آشنایی در مورد اشخاص مهم در این سلسله کتاب ها داده میشه که خب برای شروع قابل قبوله

[Carmen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Por curiosidad me puse a leer este libro de una serie de panfletillos sobre filósofos "en 90 minutos". Me esperaba algo flojo, incompleto, pero que pudiera servir para animar a la lectura de buenos libros de Filosofía. No es así. Es un firme candidato a peor libro del año. Es increíble que un tipo que, por lo visto, ha impartido clases de Filosofía, demuestre una ignorancia tan abismal. Demuestra no entender no ya el pensamiento de Agustín, sino la Filosofía en general. La Teología y la Metafísica no es sólo que no las entienda, es que las desprecia orgullosamente. Un tipo capaz de decir que las Meditaciones de Marco Aurelio son una colección de banalidades de medio pelo es capaz de cualquier cosa. En este -por fortuna- breve panfleto el Sr. Strathern demuestra una ignorancia, unos prejuicios y una soberbia que, sin duda, lo harán muy popular entre los fans del pensamiento débil, del slogan y del desprecio a cualquier trascendencia.

Naturalmente, abundan las erratas, los datos equivocados y las citas fuera de contexto, las opiniones gratuitas y las interpretaciones capciosas.

Una joyita. 30 minutos de mi vida que no recuperaré, pero que me han servido para mantenerme alejada de las obras de este individuo el resto de mi vida.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve read a couple of books in this series, and this one might be the least unhelpful. As someone who’s read St. Augustine’s works somewhat extensively, it just seems like somethings are not approached helpfully in this primer. Like for example, it’s very true that Augustine was much more of a theologian than a pure “philosopher,” and the author seems to use that to look down on the historical figure, but in other works (like the ones on Wittgenstein and Kant), the differentiation between the thinkers’ “natural philosophy” (i.e., what would become known as the fields of mathematics, physics, etc.) and philosophy proper (what we would call philosophy today) is praised as positive contributions to their body of work. The issue I had with the author, I guess, stems from his critique of Augustine’s philosophy being constrained to his religious view of the world. Now some of those constraints are actually pretty ridiculous by today’s standards, but Augustine did philosophize according to his time and context. It just seems like the author didn’t appreciate Augustine’s general contribution as a prolific thinker which seems to flow out of the work as a whole. Fortunately for me, I am familiar with Augustine’s works, but all that to say, I’ve read better in the series

[Vincent · Rating 1 out of 5]

Luckily, I found this for free on Audible, because I'd hate to think I'd spent money on it. Naively, I thought this would be a short history/biography of St. Augustine, but in fact it's just a vehicle for Paul Strathern to offer his highly biased opinions of not just Augustine, but on the Catholic church and Christianity in general. Spoiler alert - he doesn't think too highly of Christians.

I'll sum the book up for you so you won't have to read it. Strathern thinks that Augustine was really, really smart, but wasted that really, really big brain on silly things like Christian morality. That's it. Nothing else to see here.

This would have been better suited as a personal blog post than an actual published book.

I'm just thankful to that God that Stathern mocks that I didn't have to pay for this nonsense. I just wish I could have those 73 minutes of my life back.

[Jessica Kiefer · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most interesting ones so far!

[Micah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve read a few of the Paul Strathern philosophers in 90 minutes over the years and they all have an acerbic wit about them which is both enjoyable and somewhat distracting in a snapshot biography. When you’re trying to gain familiarity with a thinker and their place in the history of thought, reading a biographical piece that is frequently disparaging toward their interpretation as well as their person is both insightful and distracting.

Augustine was the man who managed to blend stoicism and Neoplatonism into the new stately endorsed Roman religion of Christianity in a way that legitimized them politically and eventually made room for scholastic pursuits within the Middle Ages. In Strathern’s perspective, his limited but insightful focus on philosophical ideas seems to be more of a touchpoint and gateway between a Hellenistic universe and a Christian Europe that melded together the two incompatible positions of Jesus and Plotinus in a way that welcomed science and logic into the church, though with a high probability of being outed as a heretic for any new ideas.

Without any qualifications whatsoever, I would tend to assume Strathern’s perspective is pretty legitimate, though everything about his perspective is suspect and anachronistic. Was Augustine devote and sincere? Yes. Did he attempt, as did Boethius and others from his time, to shoehorn and fuse Christianity to the philosophical school of the Academy and the Lyceum? Definitely, and with some popular success.

[counter-hegemonicon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Theology is just mind-numbing 😭

[Latif Joneydi · Rating 2 out of 5]

جزئیاتی گُزیده از زیستار و عقاید و تاثیراتِ آگوستینِ قدیس و چشم اندازی کلی از فلسفه یونانی و رُمیِ پیش از او و اندیشمندانِ قرونِ وسطا‌یِ پس از او مانند بوئتیوس و آکوینیاس و بوناونتورا. صفحه چهل و توصیفاتِ استراترن از آنابایِ الجزایر یا همون هیپویِ کهن شهرِ آگوستین هم خواندنی بود. شوخی هاشو دوست داشتم و ساعتی چَمیدن در هوایِ آگوستین می اَرزید‌.

[Don · Rating 1 out of 5]

I actually gave it 1 and 1/2 stars but only for the handful of St. Augustine quotes the author put in this otherwise forgettable hit piece.

[C. Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

A great disappointment. I've read a few other books in this series but have not found them to be as severely wanting as this volume. It gets points for readability, but not much else. Strathern seems determined to use his few pages to introduce not only Augustine, but also a litany of medieval philosophers, mainly with the purpose of slandering them or at best damning them with faint praise. Early in the book he refers to Augustine's mother Monica as the "villain" of the Confessions, and shortly after suggests that if Augustine had had access to modern psychology, "sessions with an understanding analyst would probably have defused [his] problem," that being his attitudes towards sex and chastity. He spends a short section of the text outlining Augustine's life and major writings, but then moves to a section in which he introduces numerous thinkers from the following 800 years, including Boethius, calling him "an essentially Platonist" thinker who was sentenced to death for heresy; Erigena; Anselm, who is said to have founded "Scholasticism, the pseudophilosophy that was to reign supreme throughout the Middle Ages;" Bonaventure; Duns Scotus; and eventually Thomas Aquinas, commenting that once Aquinas had done his work in reconciling Aristotle with Christian doctrine, "(t)he result was disastrous." Strathern gives little rational argument for his negative evaluations in this section of the text and he has no room to do justice to the subtleties of the works of these thinkers. His bias against the relationship between faith and reason in the medieval centuries is all too obvious. He seems intent to allow Augustine to stand as the precursor to what he considers a series of errors. Such a significant figure deserves better.

[Terese · Rating 1 out of 5]

I should've known I was in for a rough ride when Strathern dismissed Marcus Aurelius as "pompous" and essentially a lame Stoic with some silly Meditations no one should pay much attention to.

I wasn't expecting to get the gossip rag of philosophy books, this is essentially an obtuse verison of US Weekly or Hello! or something, talking about Augustine's "boozy" parents and "domineering" mother, which a lot of it is really reductionistic and reading between the lines, or outright needlessly negative interpretations.

It is also very odd to me that he is a) kind of fixated on Augustine's sex life (there is more to the Confessions) but also b) oddly disappointed in it, and c) thus very dismissive of it

Look, I get it, chastity isn't cool anymore. Hardly anyone strives for, or understands, the point of chastity. But I'd like to know who picks up the Confessions expecting Manson family type drug induced orgies, because that was clearly what Strathern wanted and when he just gets promiscuity he's dismissive of its effects on Augustine and essentially goes "well, an hour on a therapist's couch could've sorted him out" like some oddball Freudian disciple. It made me feel really sad for him actually.

But I came out of this feeling that Strathern was so arrogant that he either didn't get, or care to get, a lot of Augustine's points or intricacies. It was essentially a reading of Augustine with a closed mind. There is a lot to critique in him but if you take your main points from Strathern you're gonna end up looking the simpleton for it.

[Shea WB · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m sure there were some good nuggets in this book but they are masked by the authors clear dislike for Augustine, his mother, and Christianity. The book contains a Wikipedia level of biography about Augustine’s life and a few snippets of philosophies Augustine encountered. It was a very shallow analysis. The basic summary is this:

Augustine was obsessed by his unjustified view of himself as a sex maniac.

He was smart and a lifelong student but didn’t live up to his potential because, after a stint of checking out all the philosophies of the day, he landed back on his controlling mother’s religion and, further dwindling his potential, he backed up orthodoxy.

Augustine used NeoPlatoism reasoning to support his faith.

All in all he was a great disappointment to the author of this book who would clearly prefer to be writing about someone else.

Now you don’t need to read it. Your welcome.

[Jacky Kimes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dishonest bio on Augustine:

I never leave reviews but must do so in this case. I made it five minutes into the book and the author wears his intentions on his sleeves. He obviously has no serious interest in Augustine or the worldview which makes him an important historical figure. I have never encountered a serious historian that mocked Augustine's mother, Monica. Also the author completely misses the point of Augustine stealing the pears. Stripping the man's Christian ethics from his childhood reflection is either childish error or dishonest.

[Timothy McNeil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strathern goes exceedingly light on City of God (something my own Philosophy profs did not do when discussing Austine) and spends as much time lamenting the effect of a restrictive religious orthodoxy on philosophical thought as exploring Augustine's contributions to the field of philosophy. Now, having personally embarrassed a visiting grad student (and his professor) by suggesting that the academic orthodoxy of philosophical thought is not much different -- yes, being killed for heresy is worse than being kept unpublished, but both are attempts to keep 'thought in line' -- I think this is wasted time and effort on Strathern's part.
While he still gives plenty of worthwhile information in a very short book, Strathern would have been well suited to field this one out. Enjoyable as a read, but not anywhere near as informative as it should be.

[Jim Besaw · Rating 1 out of 5]

For such a short book the author spent a surprisingly short amount of time discussing Augustine. It quickly became apparent that the author had an ax to grind against Christian philosophy. I’m open to hearing critiques of Christian philosophy but at least have strong arguments to support your claims. This author used hyperbolic language to make statements, rather than arguments, to support his evident bias against Christianity. I was excited to learn more about St. Augustine but walked away disappointed. I learned more about the authors distaste for Augustine’s Christian faith than about Augustine’s philosophical or theological thought.

[Bahman Bahman · Rating 2 out of 5]

آشنایی با فیلسوفان مجموعه‌ای از زندگی‌نامه‌های فیلسوفان مشهور است که برای گشودن باب آشنایی با اندیشه‌ها و دیدگاه‌های آنان مدخل مناسب و مغتنمی به نظر می‌رسد. در هر کتاب، گذشته از ارائه‌ی اطلاعات زندگی‌نامه‌ای، افکار هر فیلسوف در رابطه با تاریخ فلسفه به طور کلی و نیز در رابطه با جریان‌ها و تحولات فکری و اجتماعی و فرهنگی عصر او بازگو می‌شود و بدون ورود به جزئیات نظریات و عقاید او، نکته‌های مهم آن‌ها با بیانی ساده و روشن بیان می‌شود.

[عدنان العبار · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a short volume on the life of St. Augustine. It's not the best you can find, but it's passable as a short and fun book to read. I don't remember much that is exciting here. His analysis of time and its nature is spot on, and I know that Augustine has not left any nook in the philosophy of mind or psychology unexplored, and so these things I should very much look forward to.

I should read a more formal biography to expand on the rest of the topic the saint was absolutely obsessed with..

[Christian · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author seemed very biased against Augustine and Christianity in general. He seemed to support many of the anti-Christian Greek philosophies of Augustine's time.

If you want to learn about St. Augustine, just read his writings first.

[Billy Sheppard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this series. Strathern delivers a pithy summary of the important dates and details, along with anecdotes and historical context, a timeline, and more. Great series, especially taken together as a long book of great thought and biography.

[Aileen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just okay. I feel like biographies help me understand why people are held in such esteem yet I didn’t come away with admiration of St Augustine after reading this. Just a misaligned expectation, I suppose. I might check out another one of these series regardless.

[Robert Corzine · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a profoundly ignorant and error-riddled treatment of the subject which is exacerbated by the author’s habit of being simultaneously condescending. Strathern thinks that he sees THROUGH what he apparently doesn’t even have the ability to even see.

[Paul Patterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few essential facts and philosophical influences of Augustine. Shows very little historical empathy for the cultural limitations of Augustine nor positive contributions made by him.

[Patricia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book tape. Quite cynical view of Catholicism.