The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Augustine

354–430 CE

Also known as Augustine of Hippo, Aurelius Augustinus

Bishop of Hippo whose writings on sin, grace, free will and time made him the most influential Christian thinker of late antiquity and the Latin Middle Ages.

Painting of a bishop in gold vestments writing at a desk, gazing up at a radiant light
Philippe de Champaigne, about 1645–1650, painted more than twelve centuries after Augustine's death. Los Angeles County Museum of Art.Philippe de Champaigne · Public domain · See the original

Born in Thagaste in Roman North Africa, Augustine taught rhetoric in Carthage, Rome and Milan before converting to Christianity in 386; he later became bishop of Hippo. His Confessions tells the story of his restless search for truth, and includes a famous reflection on the nature of time.

Reading Platonist philosophers, above all Plotinus, helped him think of God and the soul as immaterial. He wrote extensively on free will, evil, grace and the relation between faith and reason, and in The City of God he contrasted the “earthly city” with the “city of God”. His authority in the Latin West went almost unchallenged for a thousand years.

Tradition
Western
Region
North Africa and Italy
Influenced by
Plato
Plotinus
Influenced
Thomas Aquinas

Key works

  • Confessions (Confessiones), c. 400 CE
  • The City of God (De civitate Dei), 426 CE

Sources

  1. Christian Tornau, Augustine of Hippo, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy