Work · Hellenistic, Roman & Late Antique
Confessions
The autobiography of a soul – including the famous meditation on time in Book XI.
Introduction
Thirteen books, written around 397–400, a few years after Augustine became bishop of Hippo. The whole text is addressed to God as a prayer; “confessio” means both the admission of sins and praise. Books I–IX tell his life from infancy to his conversion in a Milan garden in 386 and the death of his mother Monica at Ostia, including the famous theft of pears. Book X examines memory, Book XI time, Books XII–XIII the creation account in Genesis. The work is often regarded as the first autobiography in Western literature and set a model for later accounts of the inner life, from Petrarch to Rousseau.
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Connections
Builds on
- Enneadsc. 270 · Plotinus
Taken up in
- Proslogionc. 1078 · Anselm of Canterbury
- The Journey of the Mind into God (Itinerarium mentis in Deum)1259 · Bonaventure
- Summa theologiae1273 · Thomas Aquinas
- The Book of Her Life1565 · Teresa of Ávila
- Being and Time1927 · Martin Heidegger
- Time and Narrative1983 · Paul Ricœur
- Sources of the Self1989 · Charles Taylor
Criticized in
- Philosophical Investigations1953 · Ludwig Wittgenstein
More works by Augustine
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