On Ethics, Politics and Psychology in the Twenty-First Century

The Reading Augustine series presents concise, personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religious scholars.

John M. Rist takes the reader through Augustine's ethics, the arguments he made and how he arrived at them, and shows how this moral philosophy remains vital for us today. Rist identifies Augustine's challenge to all ideas of moral autonomy, concentrating especially on his understanding of humility as an honest appraisal of our moral state. He looks at thinkers who accept parts of Augustine's evaluation of the human condition but lapse into bleakness and pessimism since for them God has disappeared. In the concluding parts of the book, Rist suggests how a developed version of Augustine's original vision can be applied to the complexities of modern life while also laying out, on the other hand, what our moral universe would look like without Augustine's contribution to it.

Introduction: Before Augustine
Chapter 1: The Principles of Augustine's Moral Empiricism: Love, Truth and Sin
Chapter 2: Scientific Philosophy and First-Person Confession
Chapter 3: Augustine against Kantian Autonomy: 'Ought does not imply “Can”'
Chapter 4: Augustine on the Possibility of Justice and the Necessity of Regret
Chapter 5: Augustine against godless 'Augustinians': Machiavelli and Hobbes
Chapter 6: Augustine against Political Panaceas: the Example of Sir Thomas More
Chapter 7: Augustine against Utilitarianism and Consequentialism
Chapter 8: Augustine and Rights Theory
Chapter 9: Impersonality and Homogenization
Chapter 10: Augustine against Religious and Theological Reductionism
Chapter 11: Augustine's Brag: Against Conventionalism and Nihilism
Bibliography
Index

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