Augustine Writes the Confessions
A bishop turns his own conversion into a work of philosophy disguised as autobiography
Quick facts
- Augustine's dates
- 354-430 CE
- Confessions written
- c. 397-400 CE
- Definition of sin
- The will to keep or pursue something unjustly
- Theory of evil
- Privation (lack of a due good), not a substance
What happened
Augustine, born in 354 CE in Roman North Africa and later bishop of Hippo, wrote the Confessions around 397 to 400 CE, a work that scholars describe as philosophy conducted in the form of autobiography rather than autobiography in the modern sense. In it Augustine wove Christian theology together with ideas drawn from Platonism, examining memory, time, the nature of evil, and the will, which he defined in relation to sin as the will to pursue or keep something unjustly. Augustine's broader philosophical position held that everything that exists is good insofar as God created it, with evil understood not as a positive substance but as a privation, a lack or corruption of a good that should be present.
Why it matters
The Confessions fused Greek philosophical method with Christian doctrine at a formative moment for Western thought, giving later medieval philosophy a model for treating the examined inner life, memory, time, and the will, as legitimate philosophical subject matter, and its privation theory of evil shaped Christian philosophical responses to the problem of evil for centuries afterward.
How we know
The Confessions survives complete in the original Latin and has been continuously copied, read, and commented on since antiquity; Augustine's dates and biography are independently corroborated by his own extensive surviving correspondence and other writings.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Augustine · Reputable sourceplato.stanford.edu · The domain "plato.stanford.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. St. Augustine (354-430 C.E.) · Reputable sourceiep.utm.edu · The domain "iep.utm.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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