Augustine and Ethics - (Augustine in Conversation: Tradition and Innovation) by Sean Hannan & Paffenroth (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Augustine and Ethics examines the topic of ethics in the life and works of Augustine of Hippo. Adopting a global perspective on ethics as a field of philosophical and theological investigation, this volume includes reflections on virtue and vice, love and sin, and the political outcomes to which certain ethical stances tend to give rise. For Augustine himself, ethics was never merely theoretical. Ethical concerns are concrete; and ethical solutions should be practical. Accordingly, this volume gives Augustinian ethical arguments realization by connecting them to modern anxieties about ministry, health care, diet, and incarceration.

Divided into five sections, the essays collected here highlight the ongoing relevance of Augustine's work even in settings quite distinct from his own era and context. The first section lays down the groundwork for Augustinian ethics by examining the foundations of his thoughts on morality, self-formation, domination, and abuse. The next three sections are oriented around the themes of love, sin, and politics. The final section makes clear the consequences of Augustinian ethical thinking today, with a view to how pastors preach, how physicians heal, how prisoners suffer, and even how we should approach the ethics of eating.

Review Quotes

""This exciting collection of essays brings together work by a new generation of scholars to explore Augustine's ideas about the moral life across a range of traditional and contemporary issues. The depth of knowledge, creativity, and independence of mind exhibited here augurs well for the future of scholarship on the redoubtable Bishop of Hippo. Highly recommended."" --Richard B. Miller, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Religion, Politics, and Ethics, University of Chicago

"This wide-ranging and expansive collection brings together serious scholarship to ground the foundation of Augustine's ethics, thoughtfully examine its key themes, and insightfully engage with contemporary issues." --Matthew Drever, University of Tulsa

""The volume Augustine and Ethics brings out what I can only see as the highly fortuitous chemistry between the ancient author Augustine and the perennially relevant topic of Ethics. By drawing on a wide array of scholars and themes, including applied ethics, it surpasses the familiar range of such edited collections in both scope and intensity. The result is an Augustine who speaks to today's moral and ethical problems in ways that are neither ephemeral nor overly abstract and philosophical. It is as if by avoiding an overindulgence in meta-language the volume can show us a more real Augustine, one who is steeped in the history of his own time and yet fully respondent to the complex lives of today's readers."" --Willemien Otten, The University of Chicago Divinity School

About the Author

Kim Paffenroth is professor of religious studies and the director of the Honors Program at Iona College.

Sean Hannan is associate professor at MacEwan University.