Abstract
The quote is not the typical beginning to a study of someone’s ethics; yet, if at all, it is fitting in St Augustine’s case. This middle-class Roman citizen was born in Tagaste, Africa, today’s Souk Ahras in Algeria near the Tunisian border, in 354 AD.1 His was to be a life enmeshed in love, unconscious—in one sense at least and by his own admission2—and conscious, illicit and licit, and ultimately all-consuming. In stages he went from grammar school student to playboy-student, to a career-seeker using grammar and rhetoric as a means to a bureaucratic position in the Roman government. In his early 30s he experienced a career jolt as a result of reading St Paul that is reminiscent of Paul’s own sudden reversal in mid-life and at the outset of that famous person’s own career.
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© 1989 Thomas Losoncy
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Losoncy, T. (1989). St Augustine. In: Cavalier, R.J., Gouinlock, J., Sterba, J.P. (eds) Ethics in the History of Western Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20203-4_3
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