This paper reflects on the importance of pagan Platonism to one of its most sympathetic Christian interpreters, Augustine of Hippo. Its goal is to uncover what Platonism meant to Augustine and why it mattered so much to him throughout his long career. To that end the essay begins by considering salient developments in the study of Platonism over the last fifty years, with particular attention t...

This paper examines Augustine’s account of understanding and its attainment in De Magistro. Following Myles Burnyeat,1 it is often held that Augustine is especially concerned with explanatory understanding (a complex cognitive state characterized by its synoptic nature and awareness of explanatory relations) and that a principal thesis ofDe Magistro—that there is no learning from words—should b...

The “City of God” as the most prominent work of St. Augustine can be considered a good link between the Christian and Greek philosophical tradition.  He argues that the purpose of human Justice, surrendering to order, can be considered relatively a type of human justice.  St. Augustine, like many of the philosophers before him, stress that the ultimate goal of Peace for the human being is the u...