Augustine's Inner Dialogue: The Philosophical Soliloquy in Late Antiquity

Augustine's philosophy of life involves mediation, reviewing one's past and exercises for self-improvement. Centuries after Plato and before Freud he invented a 'spiritual exercise' in which every man and woman is able, through memory, to reconstruct and reinterpret life's aims. Brian Stock examines Augustine's unique way of blending literary and philosophical themes. He proposes a new interpretation of Augustine's early writings, establishing how the philosophical soliloquy (soliloquium) has emerged as a mode of inquiry and how it relates to problems of self-existence and self-history. The book also provides clear analysis of inner dialogue and discourse and how, as inner dialogue complements and finally replaces outer dialogue, a style of thinking emerges, arising from ancient sources and a religious attitude indebted to Judeo-Christian tradition.

Author: Brian Stock
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 11/01/2010
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.19lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780521190312

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2011

About the Author
Stock, Brian: - Brian Stock is Emeritus Professor of History and Literature at the University of Toronto. His previous publications include The Implications of Literacy (1981), Augustine the Reader (1996) and Bibliothèques intérieures (2005).

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