of Hippo

was the preeminent Christian philosopher and theologian of late antiquity. His writings adapted aspects of Neoplatonic philosophy to the exposition and defense of Christian orthodoxy, imbuing those religious doctrines with philosophical sophistication and influencing the character of Western philosophy and theology for more than 1,000 years. Among Augustine’s most original and influential contributions to philosophy was his egocentric, or first-person, approach to philosophical questions, reflected in his response to skepticism (“If I am mistaken, I am”), which anticipated the famous cogito (“I think, therefore I am”) of René Descartes. Augustine was also the first philosopher to clearly identify will as a distinct faculty of mind. He maintained that the human will is free, and therefore that humans are morally responsible for their choices, but he also held that God has foreknowledge of the choices that humans freely make. In the philosophy of religion, he developed an argument for the existence of God that is strikingly similar to the ontological argument formulated by St. Anselm of Canterbury more than 600



years later. A bishop of the Christian church in Roman North Africa, where he was born and spent almost all of his life, St. Augustine is recognized as philosophically the most important of the Church Fathers (the bishops and other teachers who influenced the development of Christian doctrine during the church’s early centuries).

*For 13 years Augustine maintained a monogamous relationship with a woman he did not marry; their son was born when Augustine was about 18 years old.

*Augustine’s life coincided with the last century of the Western Roman Empire. He died during a siege of Hippo by invading Vandals.

*One of the most prolific authors in the history of philosophy, Augustine wrote more than 100 books and some 500 sermons, the vast majority of which have survived.