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A Feminist Appraisal of Augustine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Employing several major lines of argument, I claim that Augustine exhibits styles of thought, literary methods and modes of inquiry that are not only accessible to feminist scholarship, but that are genuinely feminist‐friendly. I first examine the Confessions, and then proceed with analyses of Augustine's style, a comparison of his work to that of another major thinker in the Christian tradition, an analysis of his use of the notion of unity, and a final look at City of God. The work of commentators such as Chadwick, Clark, McMahon and Mallard is used in order to support the argument. Augustine's standing as one of the founding Church Fathers may make it difficult for us to mention him in the same breath as the concept of “feminism.”1 Yet in our attempts to try to come to grips with thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Quine, we have frequently noticed that concepts useful to feminists are where one finds them.
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- Copyright © The author 2007. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
References
1 Augustine is commonly described in this way. See, for example, the Introduction to the Pilkington edition of Confessions, p. xxxv. (Augustine, Confessions, New York: Liveright Publishing, 1943Google Scholar.)
2 Ibid., p. vii.
3 Copleston, Frederick S.J., A History of Philosophy, Vol. II, Part I, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Image, 1962, p. 63Google Scholar.
4 Augustine, Confessions, pp. 154‐155.
5 Mallard, William, Language and Love, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, quoted on p. 103Google Scholar. (quotation from Confessions, VII, 20, 26, trans. not noted)
6 Ibid., p. 104.
7 Among Kierkegaard's works, Philosophical Fragments stands out for its articulation of this theme.
8 McMahon, Robert, Augustine's Prayerful Ascent, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989, p. 1Google Scholar.
9 The usually‐cited sources are: Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982Google Scholar; Chodorow, Nancy, The Reproduction of Mothering, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985Google Scholar; Dinnerstein, Dorothy, The Mermaid and the Minotaur, New York: Harper & Row, 1978Google Scholar.
10 Keller, Evelyn Fox, Reflections on Gender and Science, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985Google Scholar.
11 Augustine, Confessions, pp. 152‐153.
12 Ibid., p. 153.
13 Ibid., ibid.
14 McMahon, Ascent, p. 14.
15 Augustine, Confessions, p. 139.
16 McMahon, Ascent, p. 95.
17 See, for example, Nielsen, H.A., Where the Passion Is: a Reading of Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments, Tallahassee, FL: University Presses of Florida, 1983Google Scholar.
18 See fn. 15.
19 Kierkegaard, S.K., Philosophical Fragments, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 15Google Scholar.
20 Clark, Mary, in her excellent Introduction to Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings (Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1984)Google Scholar, is very concerned to show the specificity of Augustine's relationship to Plotinus. See especially pp. 21‐25.
21 Ibid., pp. 22, 24.
22 Ibid., p. 24. (The fn. on p. 24 indicates that this is from Book VII, Chapter XXI of the Confessions.)
23 Chadwick, Henry, Augustine, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 13‐23Google Scholar.
24 Ibid., pp. 20‐21.
25 Ibid., pp. 28‐29.
26 Clark, in Introduction to op. cit., p. 33.
27 In trying to defend Augustine against the charge that he was not a mystic, Clark notes that one critic claims that, according to Augustine, “every ascent to God [by the] Augustinian method ends with an act of infused contemplation.”
28 Ibid., p. 38.
29 Augustine, City of God, in Clark, op. cit., pp. 433‐434.
30 Ibid., p. 441.
31 Ibid., p. 443. (Augustine says, in part, “Oh, happy life which seeks the help of death to end it! If it is happy, let the wise man remain alive.”)
32 Ibid., p. 456.
33 Ibid., p. 458.
34 Ibid., p. 451.
35 Keller, Evelyn Fox, Reflections on Gender and Science, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985Google Scholar.