Augustine's Confessions: Beyond Aesthetics, Ethics, and Cosmopolitanism

Shortly after his ordination as bishop, Augustine of Hippo (354–430), arguably the most influential early Christian thinker of the Western part of the Roman Empire, wrote the Confessions, a work that narrates his relentless quest for the meaning of life, which for him equates with finding ultimate truth and God. His raw honesty about his own failures that also continue after his final conversion to Christianity, his vivid, passionate style of self‐interrogation within the frame of the cosmic drama of humanity's fall and salvation, and his highly original insights into human psychology, including a psychologized notion of time and memory, have captured the imagination of readers through the centuries. Defying traditional modes of literary categorization, the Confessions have invited rich responses by philosophers like Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jacques Derrida, artists like Giovanni Boccaccio, composers from Johann Adolf Hasse to Louis Andriessen, and film directors like Roberto Rossellini.