Classics I

Course Content 

The Confessions are known as an early form of autobiography. There, Aurelius Augustine (354-430), bishop of Hippo Regius, looks back on his life, in which he recognizes the traces of divine intervention. Through the centuries, countless passages from this book have had a significant influence on faith and theology. Modern literary critique can help to gain a new insight into this masterpiece. The author does more than mere retrospective reporting; he creates while writing. For Augustine, this writing becomes an act of religion: it is at the same time autobiography, the nourishing of the inner life of faith, and the apologetic practice of theology directed at the reader. Its multicolored character makes Augustine’s oeuvre into an enterprise of inventive theology avant la lettre. 
More recently, epecially non-theologians, philosophers and theorists, have brought to the fore the inventive-rhetorical character of the Confessions with a new freshness. Often going against the grain of conventional Christian and ecclesial reading patterns, 20th-century thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Francois Lyotard have interpreted Augustine simultaneously as writer – that is, as a constructive artist – and as authentic religious seeker. 

The student 

• Becomes acquainted with the Augustine’s Confessions, both in terms of broad overview and in terms of close reading 
• Gains insight into the importance of the Confessions as a classical source for Christian theology 
• Gains insight into the way the Confessions have inspired (secular) 20th-century philosophy 
• Learns to work with the Confessions inventively through the juxtaposition with other texts, philosophical questions, and one’s own (faith) experience 
• Learns to speak to the problematic of confession as rhetorical genre and aporia of constructed authenticity 

Literature 

Mandatory: Augustine, Confessions, Trans. Henry Chadwick, Oxford World’s 

Classics, 2008 (to be acquired in advance!); other mandatory literature 

will be listed in the course manual and either be available online or 

made available via Canvas and in class.